I Get It Honest 12/23/08

Where clear crabs slide sideways across broken sea shells and glass, there is a magnificent tossing and turning. To get there I escaped a traffic jam and ran past a cemetery to the North Kaneshie STC bus yard. "Do Not Urinate" was painted on the wall. A man was peeing there. Dead shrubs and trash were all around. The tombstones were broken and covered by bushes. I was afraid the bus had left me, but I arrived just in time to link with the two sistas from the States. I met them at "Bless the Mic" the night before. Erinn and Asia. Inspiring scholars, genuine, kind, and moving with the same purpose as myself. The bus to Cape Coast pulled up, we got on, and before I could really wrap my brain around where we were going, we were there. A guest house called "One Africa". My first full breath in six weeks was situated in raw and violent piece. There is a Diasporan community there. Brotha Shabazz made us feel so welcome. Finally, I wasn't alone. It was "The Africa of the African-American imagination..." as Erinn calls it. This was the thing I needed to help me remember the love.

The condemned cell at Elmina Dungeon. (Ghana, 2008)

Still, the coffin was churning and busting thru sky. A stampede of white stallions trample screaming angels and choke a catarwauling into the sea. They took the Ochosi charm that Kelly gave me from around my neck and placed me on the tip of an arrowhead pointed towards the past, penetrating the present. In blank stares, cactuses lined the coast. My head felt like a clear glass bowl full of royal blood and purple marshmallow cream being emptied and refilled.

Shouting the word Sankofa can get you killed. The shore is a Palo Nkisi, holding the sickness and pain of all those who drive nails in. Here it's power is beyond sacred. It's the rope between you and them. Everybody is tugging and trying to get heard. I had only seen it in movies and in pictures. Now I knew it in my body. A scattered breaking and resonance in my skin that burns to the top (even as I sit here to write this). Elmina is a skeleton. Cape Coast, a stone casket. It recognized me. At every moment, the swallowed souls rose up and demanded homage. Waves shaped like crescent moons sliced rock into shards of land beaten smooth and clean. Monuments to unmarked graves and runaway slaves that hid there.

Erinn and Adia at Cape Coast Dungeon.
(Ghana, 2008)

To enter I began to ask permission. (Erinn told me she always does. I don't know how I forgot that. I think it was all just so shocking.) To leave, I rinsed my feet in pools of warm sunshine. Tears hot with fire. The most quiet and beautiful "Hell" I've ever been a part of. A mirror of my soul shrinking, swelling, and big as the ocean staring back at me. Peril riding the corners of question and flailing insult at my weakness. I am their grandchild. My blood remembers this time and place. My tears are libation for them, my pieces have always been offerings to spirit. I CAN NOT STOP. All I can do is pray that the source of my substance will be open to me.

At night they sing salt water mountains of rage and revolt. We are both fighting so hard to rest as ripples in a nightmare that never ended. There are moments of rest, but never silence. Like fire shooting out of a high voltage outlets into frazzled plugs, every grain of sand, salt and sea is charged and exploding. My feet sank as I sang them serenades. Every morning and evening I wanted them to know that I had come to receive their blessings ... that they would not be forgotten.

The music is my patience, the dance is my passion. Now I REALLY understand what my mama means when she says, "The one thing I can say about you is, you got it honest."

Ancestors in the water at the Cape Coast.
(Ghana, 2008)

Stronger Neck Muscles and No Hands 12/18/08

Bush behind Kwame Nkrumah's grave.
(Accra, Ghana 2008)

... Africa is also ... capturing the green and yellow of the trees in the designs on tye dyed fabric so that each piece of cloth becomes a photograph. A woman with skin like coal, teal spandex tights, and a leopard print shirt rises from a low squat. Two bricks and four wooden crates are the play pin for four of the most beautiful, round, brown babies you ever saw. The oldest one is in charge. Smocks and heart shaped baskets hang from trees. A roadside stand where the "Jewellry" lady sells her products is also her dining room table and bed. The living room has more life when it's outside .. And sometimes the Queen's crown is a propane tank. As long as everyone is careful and moves with respect, nothing will explode. "Bluemenders" "Blokbuxter" and "Tako Bell" mimick America. The little boy that screams it (America!) from across the street every time I walk by has a terrible cough that has turned the white parts of his eyes entirely crimson red. I hope it's just a cold. His parents wouldn't let him hug me.

Little girl carrying a bucket of water on her head.
(Cape Coast, Ghana 2008)

I've been holding the water in the bucket on my head with two hands and now I want to let it go ... but my neck muscles aren't strong enough. Everytime I take my hands away the water just spills everywhere. I am most often drenched and defeated. It's absurd to think that I could have made it from the well to the house without using my hands. Especially when no one has ever shown me how. I've taught myself many things, so this just has to be another one of them. I have to concentrate. Everything is big until you break it into smaller pieces.

At this point in the game, everything has got to become about stronger neck muscles and no hands. No more spilling the water. I've got to trust and be trusted. If I do spill it, I need to be moving forward with the objective of making it all the way to the house in dry clothes. I can work on learning how to pour it from my head into the bowl on the table after that. Making mud also means making my way through it. The hope is that one day, after I've reached the house, I can turn around, see nothing but dry road and splash some cool water on my face.

Piece In Rest 12/17/08

Africa is a fuchsia wall covered in charcoal dust, ten fingers and toes, seven without tips, a man with both arms, but no hands. It's a thousand smoldering eyes watching every direction from one head at the same time. A white hen died on it's back. The trailer of a big rig balanced on a perfect diagonal between curb and street. Nothing fell. Everyone stopped and watched. Black babies w/ fake hair use white dolls as ammunition. White Jesus walks with almost everyone.

There's a fossit attached to the back of the well. I thought someone had to fill it up by hand when it got empty. Everything doesn't always have to be so hard. A wheelbarrow turned into a wheelchair/bicycle helps a cripple man move from car to car asking for money. The railroad-crossing bar doesn't always go down at Abveno, but everyone knows when the train is coming. They all stand clear.

Van in front the yard. (Accra, Ghana 2008)

Africa is a streak of light running across a freeway, mangled metal melted into plastic, a black rooster's cry ripping through the dawn and crying morning into my eyes. It's four beats on the side of the shoes shiner's box, then a space, a bell, and a coconut man's kiss in the air while he swings a machete. An old man carries a sewing machine on his head and plays a song on scissors. Africa is finally understanding "Black Star Power". It is loving the most beautiful and undesirable things about yourself at once.

Green gourds with poisonous insides grow under trees where flat leaves hang low. Reading shadows squeezes space into places where there seems to be none.

Africa is a cracked calabash played with perfect sound, an iron rod jutting out horizontally after everyone has agreed on lateral motion. It's plastic on furniture, extravagant and intricately designed hair weaves on heads, under head wraps, and balled up in the dirt next to pee and shit. The four year old across the street is wearing a "weave-on" that looks just like her grandmother's. Her name is Anita. She shouts "Obibini!" (Black person) every time I leave the house. I laugh and say "Yes Love!".

Anita and 'nem across the street.
(Accra, Ghana 2008)

Africa is opening every part of yourself just enough to close and carve legacy. I've never seen so many twins. Mostly identical. Mr. Amoo's mother had four sets. Only one set was girls. A child's toy directs traffic, pain is a part of every game. You have to concentrate.

Africa is juju so powerful that if you go to where it lives, you might not come back. Bible verses with bruised knuckles beat black eyes into children that laugh too loud, love too much, and can not yet balance a bucket of water on their head. They are trying to make them strong. A "Mother's Love" is the rock of Sisyphus and in a Ga' house, the "Father's Love" is all that matters. Everything means something and has a purpose. I saw another monkey today. This time in the city. It was sitting on a concrete wall.

Faustina says, " It's so funny. Africans are scared of rain and the sea, but not cars. lol." Reggie Rockstone says, " Ghana should make a statue in honor of the mosquito. Malaria chased the white folks away...", but today I saw them at the Accra Mall. I went there just so I could be around people. I miss Ben so much.

Somedays the porcelain vases at the roadside are the same color as the imported apples they sell in traffic. The bats are in the sky again. Time was flying by, but now it's moving way too slow. Oh, and the not so small spider came out. Yesterday I went to bed early, woke up to fight a water bug, then the lights came back on. This morning I waited for wind to blow through the corn and visited Kwame Nkrumah's grave.

Blonde Monkeys and Pretty Turkeys 12/13/08

Yeah so they couldn't do it. Imma a Boygirl again.

At the moment when day descends into dusk, the evening begins to rise into the sky and everything starts to glow. The light surrounds you. Halos appear around every object and man. The terracotta roads become bright orange and tangerine colored piles of dust. The medicine trees blow from side to side like giant horsetails stirring the wind and changing the shape of clouds. My skin turns into copper. Darker skin turns into sepias, mahoganies, and ebonies. The maroons and dark reds rise to the surface. Everything looks like it tastes as good as Amara Tabor Smith's desserts. Ripped tire treads on the road look like black snakes from the bush. The palm frawns on the tree I pass to walk home have been cut because they were hanging down too low on the road. (Kinda like when elders yank sagging pants up on the hips of the young brothas and tell them to stand up straight). The branches were becoming a nuissance and eyesore to everyone that tried to pass. I didn't mind bending down to get by, but somehow ... the palm was now in order and line with Ghana's vibration.

Artwork by Cece Carpio. (2006)

This is a special time. The death of a day and the birth of a night. Everyone says African sunsets are amazing, but it's so much more than that. Like the lightning storm last week that charged the air so full I jumped to my feet and began walking around the room while I was still dreaming. When I realized I was standing up, I laid back down .... And today, there was a rope tied to the top of the wall suspending a block of concrete in the air so that it didn't fall to the ground. I bet everyone knows what it's for and why it's there except me. lol ....

Me and the red/orange face and tail lizard had a funny ass run in the other day. I was coming around the corner and he was coming from underneath this deck thing at the same time. I screamed and jumped, he freaked out, ran towards me and like skiddered to the right. I started rollin' cuz I saw that he was as scared of me as I was of him. I found out that a red face and tail mean it's a full grown male. Orange means it's a male that's still growing. The males that are younger than that just have little orange speckles on their back. The females are green.

The bats would come next. Night falls. Then the grasshoppers wake up and shake music into the corn. I hear them on my latenight walks to the bath house where the not so small spider lives behind the plastic yellow containers stacked in the corner. She doesn't come out anymore, but I know she's there.

Adia at the W.E.B. Dubois Center. (Accra, Ghana 2008)

I visited the W.E.B. Dubois Center. It used to be his house when he lived in Ghana. His remains are in a room shaped like an octagon. I went in. The remains of his wife were there too. There is a spiderweb (W.E.B.) painted on the ceiling. I smiled. It was one of those moments when you know you're in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. The tour guide explained the web to me just as I had in my first blog. I've been trying to understand how to build one (a spiderweb, a nation, whatever..lol) in dance since I came here. I've been tying elastic to everything in my room. Navigating the construction of a spiderweb in time with tradition and rhythm is hard. Imma get it tho'. I just need a little more time. I asked for him and his wife's blessing.

Everyone's pinky finger is stained with black ink. Ghana will be voting again on December 28th because none of the parties got 50% + 1 of the vote. The NPP (New Partriotic Party) received 49.4. I got caught in the middle of a drag race between two drivers that supported opposing parties. (I was the passenger in the taxi of one of the drivers). It was the sideshow in Accra for about a good ten minutes. All behind who's car was stronger and who's party was stronger. I was hella mad at first, but then I just had to laugh. It's not like the same thing hasn't happened to me as a Frisco youth. At least this time I had on shoes. (Don't ask. It was during my transition from "R.B.L. Posse, 40 Ounces, and relaxers to Outkast, Digable Planets, and dreadlocks. I still bump the Chronic album when I clean the house tho'. Some things are just classic).

When I return to the family house (from the bath house), I have to move very carefully. It's dark. Akushia sleeps in the doorway of my room so that we can share the fan. I have to make it over her in one step. Akushia is one of Mr. Amoo's nieces and the daughter of the Amoo brother I call, "The American". He's a Ghanaian U.S. Citizen that lives in Portland, Oregon visiting home for the holidays. Remember Obroni is the carpenter. I call him "Strong Man", then there's Mr. Amoo, Artistic Director of the Ghana Dance Ensemble, "The Christian", I just met him the other day, (he's an older brother). There's a bunch more that I can't even imagine because the one's I've met are such STRONG personalities. Like MEN, MEN. Gruff and solid. Like if any of them was my daddy I would always be good type a dudes. Like if more black men in the U.S. were like them, we wouldn't have so many lost youngins in our communities. They are a testament to what happens when black fathers take care of their children. Oh, I also met the one that's the High Priest to the family shrine.

Family. (Accra, Ghana 2008)

Akushia's hands do the work of an entire village in one day. She takes care of everyone and she's only twenty-one year old. Her birthday was two days ago. She bought herself some high heels and spent the rest of the day washing, ringing, and hanging clothes on the line. The day before yesterday I watched her pack the trunk of a car full of pots, pans, folding chairs, buckets, a cooler, and one rooster perfectly, then help push the car when it broke down on the way back to Accra from Kokobrite .... in a dress that was mostly white. Hair stayed snatched and the dress stayed clean. She used a white handkercheif to keep the sweat off. Can you say AFRIKA! That's why I be looking at my students crazy when they come with the whole, "Ey yo Miss... my Muva just got me new clothes and she said I can't sweat in them." I mean, I don't even be asking them to deal with livestock! You should've seen it, she just did that shit like an O.G. I don't remember what I was doing when I was twenty-one, but I fa sho' wasn't grabbin' up roosters and pushin' cars in Ghanaian rush hour traffic! lol. Bush Goddesses rock the hardest SUN!

Oh...And Hell no! I saw two monkeys yesterday in Kokobrite. Like right there. Hi, I'm walking down the road w/ Atsu .... and goats ... and people ... and cars.. and then, two blondish/white colored kinda sorta REAL live with no fence between me and them monkeys?! If they stood up they would've been like up to the top of my stomach. It could've definitetly been "When Animals Attack!" if I didn't make the right move. lol. I wasn't exactly sure of the proper monkey etiquette so I just kept it Barbara Whitaker's daughter a backed up respectfully. I was trying to look at them a little bit, but they were trying to look at me too, so I had to go. Monkeys are kinda deep. I felt their spirit animal power kind of strong. Yeah Imma have to think about monkeys somemore. I saw some Guinea fowl too, but ofcourse I just thought they were pretty turkeys. lol.

Lite Off 12/10/08

So... yesterday I sat down at the computer and started to compose a new blog. I had been conceptualizing the whole thing for a few days so it was super colorful. Full of details, twists, turns and themes and imagery... All kinds of antecdotes, poigniant insight, and folkloric gems. The ideas and stories were coming out hella clear, hella vibrant. It was like I was a fossit with the pressure turned all the way up just spraying ARTTTT everywhere. lol. BLOUW! Just cold and refreshing after the long hike up the mountain on a blistering hot day. I'm telling you. It was the stuff that movies and best sellers are made of.

Okay so, I finished everything, proofread it, pressed the button to post it... and POOF! Gone. Sucked away into the abyss of cyberspace forever. An hour and a half of creativity and wit lost deep inside the internet jungle. Never to be seen again. (My hand is on my forehead. Can you see it? lol.)

I tried to look thru the little notes I wrote here and there in the hopes that I could put things back together, but I've just been sitting here for about thirty minutes re-writing the first couple sentences. Magical; '... Today the butterfly turned yellow and black. The same color as a bee, but with no stinger. Bigger. Sweeter. Like a small, elegant bird. I shaved my head today for the first time in two months. And..., just like that, Ghana saluted me as an African Queen. One man even greeted me as such. Two men walked me down the road and the Ga (name of one of the ethnic groups) seamstress across the street from the bank smiled and told me I looked beautiful. This is something I never thought I would hear during this trip. All of a sudden there is no question as to whether I am a boy or a girl. From Obroni (Twi for English speaking foreigner) to Obibini (Twi for Black person) in five minutes..' Good rite?! Lol.

Adia composing lyrics in Abavana Down.
(Accra, Ghana 2008)

Yeah, I wanna know what happens next too. I think it was something about how tribal marks, hairstyles, accessories, dress and adornment are all things that African people use to identify where and which tribe you come from, and how this was connected to the ways that my hair has always captured the spectrum of my internal landscape ... something, something, something ... that ended with the grand statement, '...Spirit will bring my hair back when I have grown to the place and time where my head has become the throne apon which they can sit to conduct business. Until then, a bald head will be my crown...: oooh. Swirling waves of analogy and metaphor were just CRASHING down! I was POUNDING the shores of imagination and intellect! BOOSH! Drowning surfers left and right! Sehu, I was getting my 'oracular offering' ON!... And then... 'Lite off'. Crickets. Lizards. Frogs. Stars. Moonlight. I have to wait until the electricity comes back on. It's always funny how I make the decision about when to mock myself and when to take myself seriously. The Cancer/Leo cusp can be quite crackish.

The point. One will not acheive greatness without practicing patience. (Especially not this one.) For someone that has been nicknamed A.D.Dia, patience is the Ebbo that brings forth my Ase. Africa really teaches you how to appreciate some shit. Like water just doesn't come out hot you feel me. lol.

Oh and let me not get my hopes up about this whole being recognized as a woman thing. How much you wanna bet it'll be back to "Boygirl! Hey Boygirl!" tomorrow? C'mon Africa! You can do it!

Take The Poison So It Won’t Hurt You 12/5/08

Look fast. Move slow. The ground is on fire, but I don't even worry myself with that anymore. If I was at home I would ask if the fumes were toxic. Now, toxic is relative and intersections are the eye of the storm. In Africa, 'Everything Exists In Nature' is the holy book that tells people what to do and how to do it. The land is Jesus. The people his disciples. Judas is the juju that prevents progress, but holds the hands of the baby while it is learning to walk. Live wires hang from electric poles like raffia skirts on the waist of dances for Ogun. It is possible for one man or woman to do the work of many. Kings and Queens are made of the village. Difficult becomes rigorous, but not un-doable when the family is order. Palm frawn leaves glow in the streetlight as I walk home in the evening. They look like shiny, wet daggers curving down off bent arrows. They tell me where to go. I have been speaking to my enemies in dreams.

Eleven by Cece Carpio. (2006)

The scars I've seen on Sekou and Delina's legs from scratching mosquito bites have made their way to mine as well. They're small, but I still have a month and change to go. Today is December 5, 2008. I have been in Ghana for one month. The corn has grown taller. I am skinnier. The lizard with the black body's red face and tail have turned orange. The weather is changing. Although it seems to be getting hotter, breezes come stronger and more often. Bell patterns ring rhythm into my focus. My memory cards are almost full and I am waiting for my money to fill up again. Lesson wise, Gadzo is more like Petwo than Mayi. Black bees at Makola Market seem quicker to sting than to protect. This morning, two hens and a rooster sifted through the charcoal on the street in front of the Amoo house to find food. Take the poison so that it won't hurt you .... and me ....I've been so tired again.

Rush Forward, Fall Back 12/3/08

I don't know if it's like this everywhere in Africa, but Ghana is revealing itself to me as a bunch of controlled spills. Libations. Traffic spills into more traffic with splatters spraying out into whatever spaces are left in between. There's almost no room for negative space. Greetings spill into conversations that spill into some kind of movement. Depending on which way the streams run into each character's day, the spills can either become big oceans like Kwame Nkruma Circle or smaller rivers, like the soccer games in the field at Abavana Junction in Kotobabi (where I go to have my lesson with Robert Fugah everyday). Everything is a drum, nothing is monochromatic, or even three dimensional. You have to reach far into the perimeters of all your senses all the time just to be able to move. Creation is inherent in the hustle.

I am beginning to understand how things work. Ghana is watching me and I am learning how to watch Ghana right back. My brothers make me valuable to the women, my sisters make me valuable to the men, and I can't rely on the shadows to tell me what's coming. It looked like an ant, but I saw it was a spider when it landed on my back. It fell from the clothesline when I was brushing my teeth. A little girl picked her brother up by the ears to help him over a ditch and a tro-tro driver hit the side of his van as if it were a horse to get the traffic moving.

On the way to class. (Accra, Ghana 2008)

Mr. Leach read this quote that talked about how shadows die when the light gets stronger, so I should know better than to count on them. Here, it seems as though the spills get out of control when people don't consider the collective movement of whatever space they have committed to. Driving on the road, selling in the marketplace, sewing clothing, whatever. You have to know exactly when to rush forward, fall back, twist, bend, and balance. If you don't take in the panaramic view, fill up the container, and then spill the movement into the right space...the picture comes out blurry. Cars crash. People die. Baskets fall. Dresses rip.

The Ghanaian Presidential Elections are Sunday. This should be interesting.