I Bless the Rains Down in Africa!

It’s the wet season in Ghana, and the last couple of days have been pretty dreary. When it rains the open sewers flood over and the smell is overpowering. I also had a 24-hour cold Thursday-Friday, which was really miserable. It’s pretty striking that recovery treatments for this kind of virus are so similar between the US and Ghana – I was hoping to experience some herbal, all-powerful instafix, but instead I got cold tablets. The tablet packaging had very comical images of smiling obrunis that weren’t relevant in the least to anything, but it fits into the Ghanaian saying of “always trust the white man”.

I first experienced this maxim when Adina was explaining the treatment of her ailing mother (who’s now 90 years old, blind, and partially deaf). Her mother first lost vision a few years ago, so Adina took her to a white doctor who said it was just old age and there’s nothing he could do. Then she took her mother to an African doctor who suggested operation. After the surgery there was no change, and so now Adina believes the white man’s word holds more value than the black doctor, even though the white doctor’s approach was indolent and apathetic while the black doctor suggested action and treatment. Since hearing this story, I’ve seen the “trust the white man” truism in a variety of situations – in commercials, for instance, there is usually a German or British accented speaker doing the advertisements. On billboards for cell phones, there’s often an obruni talking and smiling, confident that he made the right choice in phone and so should all of Ghana. And of course, the random two white people on my cold tablets, smiling quite irrelevantly at the poor sick (probably) black person.

On Sunday, the rains finally disappeared and a couple of people on the program went out to the Coconut Grove Beach Resort. This is quite possibly the most beautiful beach I’ve ever been to, filled with some of the palest obrunis ever. The waves were ginormous! And quite violent – while wading a few meters in we often would wipe out and I was almost dragged out to sea on several occasions. Plus, there were large rocks jutting out of the ocean everywhere – this was more of a “sit on the beach tanning and looking at the pretty waves” kind of ocean.

This was also the place to go if you wanted to go to Ghana but not experience it. Between the large outdoor bars and air conditioned huts frolicked more pale whiteys (and the occasional Japanese tourist) than I had seen so far. There were also fully uniformed guards patrolling the beach with their massive, heavy boots stomping among the scantily clad obrunis. Welcome to Ghana!