Sodom, Gomorra and Tema
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), Unknown, 34 days ago
While I was down in Accra, I decided to see Attambilla who moved from Bolga to Accra a year ago to find work and to explore new opportunities for his music. A talented kologo player and singer, Attambilla has recently featured on a track with Sarkodie - One of Ghana’s best known rappers. In fact, when you listen to the track, it would be more accurate to say that Sarkodie is featured in Attambilla’s song. Attambilla did not receive any payment for his contribution although, admittedly, the exposure has helped raise his profile.Attambilla was happy to hear from me and we agreed to meet at his place in Community 2, Tema.It is a short tro-tro ride from Accra to Tema along a good road across fields of scrub littered with half finished buildings and old polythene bags. The welcome sign proudly proclaims Tema to be the“Industrial Capital of Ghana”. Certainly the factory buildings looming on the skyline are like nothing I’ve seen elsewhere in the country.Tema is never likely to be in a tourism brochure. The sprawling mass of low-built, rickety housing is split into twenty two“communities” with some less poverty stricken than others. Community 2, I learned later, is where many northerners gather to hustle and find casual employment. It is, I found out later, one of the more notorious communities.Attambilla led me into the maze of alleyways. We weaved between houses with no space to walk other than single file. The walking tracks had grooves dug into them to act as drainage sewers. People were crammed into this seething mass of humanity - old crippled men, blind women, body-building gorilla-men, scurrying children, stall women, prostitutes and holy men. Attambilla stopped and introduced me to any Fra Fras we came across. They loved my few words of the minority language and I quickly felt how, for all its frightening enormity and chaos, Tema could be a pleasant place to live. The gloomy alleys were meticulously swept. The roofs were well maintained and, although it may not be obvious to anyone recently stepping off the plane from the UK, people seemed relatively well off. Children wore shoes and did not have distended bellies; clothes were fresh, new and fashion conscious (in fact I felt a bit scruffy in my seven-year-old coffee primo polo shirt); the plentiful eating establishments were busy; people stood around drinking soft drinks or beer and there were so many items for sale that are not available in Bolga. Not only this, there was a vibrancy about Tema. People travel from all over Ghana and even abroad (Nigeria, Togo, Ivory Coast) to stay there resulting in a thrilling mingling of languages, foods, religions and customs. The younger children appeared better educated than those in the villages around Bolga, comfortably speaking English with me. The young adults I was meeting all wanted my e mail and facebook details - something very unusual in Bolga.Attambilla sleeps in a small room that belongs to his elder brother. He shares with five other people, all of whom are family members. With only just enough space for them all to fit, two people sleep on the bed, one on the settee, one in the armchair and one on the rest of the floor space. On one side of the room, a huge high definition TV with DVD player and high speakers sat like an alien mothership. It was showing music videos - girls gyrating around baseball caps and sunglasses in crystal clear widescreen. I sat down and chatted with his family members - a labourer, a university student and a factory worker.Attambilla received a phone call inviting him to take part in a programme the following evening and he immediately wanted me to play the guitar alongside him. It was to be organised by some record producers, we were told. There was a chance that, if we impress, we would be offered a record deal. Attambilla was confident of borrowing a guitar from somewhere so, after walking around the community for a while, we agreed to meet the following day.I arrived back in Tema the next evening as it was getting dark. The lights along the main roads had flickered on but in the heart of community 2, away from the lights and the traffic, the narrow alleys were gloomy with patches of pure darkness. I walked around concentrating on my feet, trying to judge which patches of grey on the ground are rocks, puddles or people. Attambilla had brought a friend with him to meet me - Mike. As we picked our way through the dark alleyways, Mike, who appeared a little drunk, insisted on babbling in my ear about how great Mike is, how Mike is such a good friend of Attambilla, how Mike has a great job working for a cement factory and how Mike really wants to be my friend and come to England. What’s my name by the way?Despite Mike claiming to know all the important people worth knowing in Tema, we were having difficulties finding someone to lend us a guitar for the evening. After many frustrating phone calls, we eventually went to some people who have a half mosque / half recording studio. As we were sitting with the proprietors, young guys who all wanted to swap facebook details, describing our situation, Mike entered a discussion with some friends of the studio / mosque owner. These blokes were sat outside the building laughing, chatting and sharing a carton of 3GHc (£1.30) Spanish wine - an almost ostentatious sign of affluence. Attambilla tried calming Mike down - the discussion was becoming a quarrel. They were shouting in Twi (the Ashanti language) so it was only later that I learned they were arguing about money and pride. Mike had been boasting about hisjob at the cement factory and how much he earned. The others laughed at him, telling him how if he was such a big man, he wouldn’t be living in community 2. Despite our efforts to diffuse the debate, Mike stood up, marched up to the group and slapped the wine carton out of their hands, challengingthem all to a fight. This was quite embarrassing for me and Attambilla. We had come to the studio to ask for a favour and now our friend was causing a disturbance. We dragged Mike away and apologised to the group of wine drinkers. Mike, however, refused to calm down. Like a wild beast, he swore atthe wine drinkers and kept trying to escape our clutches to attack them physically. We drew quite a crowd. One fat middle-aged woman who everyone called “mommy” came out and reasoned with Mike. A number of heavy dock workers appeared, muscles bulging, ready to defend their mommy if needed. Miketried sneaking around the back of the mosque / recording studio, attempting a surprise attack from behind but he was too drunk and too loud to surprise anyone. After half an hour he left, me and Attambilla breathed a sigh of relief, and we settled back down with the studio owners to rebuild bridgesand, maybe, still get a guitar.“Who is that Mike?” I asked Attambilla. “How do you know him?”“Ok, he’s a friend but not tight friend. He follows me when I play music. He likes the music but he likes drinking. He’s never done this thing before. He’s never done fighting like this before.”“Where is he from?”“He’s a Kusaasi from Bawku.”This, everyone agreed, explains everything. These Kusaasis like fighting too much. This is why in Bawku there is always fighting. Bawku people loose their tempers too easily. He certainly was living up to his ethnic stereotype.Just as things were returning to normal, Mike ran into the darkened street from the opposite direction with a number of brothers. He was carrying a large rock in his right hand. As we sat around outside the mosque / studio, before anyone could react, Mike smashed the rock into the back of a wine drinker’s skull. With a dull thud, the man fell to the floor, blood spilling immediately from an open gash. Mike dropped the stone and ran off with his friends into the dark side streets. For a moment, no one could move. Then pandemonium broke loose.The injured man was helped off the ground. He woke up and was in control of his senses - no permanent damage, we hope. Everyone within earshot came to see what was happening. Old men, young girls and dozens of gawping children, all thrilled to see the blood and gore. The victim’s brothers appeared out of the gloom and demanded to know who was responsible. Attambilla and I found ourselves in an awkward position. As we had brought Mike to the place, everyone pointed at us.In certain circles in Ghana, having white skin and / or a western accent is a protection of sorts, a respect for outsiders that borders on reverence. People listen when you speak and watch how you behave. Many people enjoy this rise in status. They find it gives them an advantage in the workplace and in society generally. Directors will listen to you and women will talk to you not because you’re more intelligent or interesting but because you are white. This was not one of these circles. My white skin meant nothing positive in the dark secluded nooks and crannies of urbane community 2. This is the area where white people come to bribe customs officials, exploit workers and pick up prostitutes. I wasn’t necessarily a do-gooder. We were in an area beyond the police, the government and even light. I enjoyed this feeling. I was unable to hide behind a facade of skin. My only protection was my friendship with Attambilla (and, by association, his friends) and how I comport myself. These blokes were as likely to beat me up as they were to shake my hand. They were judging me in the darkness, blind to my skin or, more refreshingly, indifferent. A group of human beings. I had to remain calm.Attambilla is a quiet young man. In a different culture, he might be described as an‘emo’. Serious and reserved, music is his outlet. His English and Twi are basic. It meant that I did the talking.Luckily, there were plenty of witnesses to testify that Attambilla and myself were not the aggressors.“Mommy” stepped into the fray, placing her short stocky frame bravely in front of an angry relative, telling them the full story in Twi. A spokesperson emerged from the angry group of brothers. A tall heavily built man, he had kind listening eyes. We would not be held responsible, he explained calmly, so long as we show him where this Kusaasi man lives. If we take him to the house, we will not be beaten up or locked up. Attambilla and I did not want to take this group to the house. What if Mike were there? Waiting? With knives? Shouldn’t we wait until morning, I pleaded with the spokesman? Shouldn’t we let the police do their work? The spokesman was polite but adamant. We should go now. There was a lot of talking in Twi so I turned to a young bright girl who had been hanging around for some time and was, I think, the daughter of “mommy”. With her excellent English, we discussed how terrible the situation was and I described how worried I was that they just wanted to get revenge.“I don’t think that’s what they want,” the girl said, looking over at the conversation in Twi. “From the way they are talking, they want to see the parents and the elders in the house. They want to talk about payment of hospital bills.”With this reassurance, and given that there wasn’t much alternative, Attambilla and I decided to lead the fifteen or twenty heavy men in convoy through the weaving corridors of community 2. As we were walking with such purpose and clearly on a mission, groups of bored children tagged onto the end of the line, following us through the maze of streets hoping to see something interesting. Navigating the warren must come with practice. I was totally disorientated.Attambilla finally stopped. The house consisted of a single room behind a tiny courtyard and a fly-screen door. It was dark inside. We called out but no one answered. The door was unlocked. Could it be a trap? We tentatively pushed the door open, calling out as we did so. I saw movement in the darkness, a figure stirring on the ground. It stood up slowly, clumsily and emerged out of the gloom. A middle-aged woman stood bleary eyed, blinking away her sleep, focussing slowly on the crowd of men. The woman was Mike’s mother. Luckily, Mike wasn’t around.The mother didn’t speak English so the spokesman went forward to describe what happened in Twi. Some aunties and brothers emerged from the tiny house like it was a tardis. They were suitably shocked to learn what happened. The spokesman warned them that unless hospital bills are paid for, Mike will be killed. Itmight be tomorrow, next week, next month or next year I heard him say as he slipped into English momentarily.Having made their intentions clear and having learned where Mike lives, the gang of us left. Attambilla and I stayed behind to explain how they forced us to show them the house - no hard feelings? The family looked shell-shocked and quite scared.By this time, it was too late to find a guitar. We were supposed to be at the venue by 10:30pm and it was already 11:30. Attambilla ran back to his house to change into his CD, kologo and stage outfit - the characteristic northern style smock and pixie hat. We picked a shared taxi to a different area of Tema and walked to the“Vienna City” nightclub. Shiny giant Land Cruisers and sleek sports cars were parked out the front. As we stood in the car park, discussing where to enter, a brand new SUV with tinted windows screeched round the corner and nearly knocked us over. It turned into two parking spaces, missed the neighbouring car by millimetres and stopped in a diagonal position. A white woman stepped out of the passenger door. In her early fifties, she wore a skimpy black frock, revealing the tattoos covering most of her wrinkly body. With a fag hanging out of her mouth and tottering about on high heels, she looked like what Amy Winehouse will become. Clearly drunk, she clocked my white face and drawled a few incoherent words of greeting in her trailer-trash American accent. Her equally drunk partner, a black bloke who talked with an African accent, staggered around the back of the car, leaning on it forsupport. He locked his car, took the white woman on his arm and they both staggered into the nightclub. Yes... it was one of those nightclubs.We were sent upstairs to one of the air conditioned hotel rooms - a room where all the musicians were to congregate. The producer greeted us warmly and asked me where I was from.“Yes, I know Croydon,” the producer shook my hand and beckoned me to sit down on the bed. “Lots of blacks there.”The producer was very busy, rushing around like he’d just snorted coke. His girlfriend sat with her back to us fiddling with her mobile phone. Attambilla fussed with tuning his kologo. I watched Paris St-Germain play Marseilles on the TV. After some time, a young man with diamonte earrings, a huge baseball cap and a fawning young girlfriend displaying most of her breasts walked in. He told us he was a hip hop artist. He tried out a few lyrics in his mock-American accent.“Oh yeah, oh yeah. I’m here with my girl, in this rooooom. I will be on the stage so sooon. Hanging in this crib represent. My niggaz are all here oh... and... I mean my people are all here... sorry.”He was a clown.After some more time, a group of five young men walked dressed like the blues brothers - wearing trilbies and, despite being inside, sunglasses. They had a camera and so took pictures of themselves on the bed, in front of the TV, standing with the white man, standing with the girls and standing all together. They took photos of the mirror, the air conditioning unit, the toilet and the young woman’s breasts. After they’d finished taking photographs, the blues brothers sat down in silence and patiently waited.When the producer reappeared, I asked him what was going on. He was waiting for the nightclub to fill, he explained. If I want, I can go and wait in the club. He had a pair of shoes I can borrow - flip flops are not allowed, I was told. Bored with waiting in the room, I followed him and his girlfriend downstairs into the freezing cold air-conditioned club. He sat us down on some chairs, gave us a bottle of water each and disappeared.I tried to politely talk with the girl.“Are you a singer?” I asked.“No.” She went back to staring into the middle distance.“Oh. Ok. I play the guitar.”“Really?” She looked interested. She leaned forward. “Where do you live?”“In Bolgatanga, Upper East Region.”
“What?!” She looked at me with a mixture of surprise, mistrust and disgust. “Why?”“I’m helping to train science teachers,” I started explaining but her eyes had already glazed over. She leaned back in her seat once again. The music was loud, I was having to shout to be heard and was straining to hear what she was saying. I was tired, having been up since 5:30am. I gave up talking with her and turned to people-watching.Ghana has a rich culture of dancing. In the north, you can see the frantic, spasmotic and athletic upright traditional dancing. In the south, there is deep meaning to the flowing, soft movements, delicate and stooped. In nightclubs, Ghanaians dance to simulate sex. I could see the women, fit and bare-legged, grinding their bottoms against the crotches of their dancing partners. The men just stand there, pumping their hips and thrusting their crotches forward. The women will spread their legs and bend right over, inviting men to push their crotches against theirs. One woman jumped into a man’s arms, wrapping her legs around him in the process. Holding the woman up behind her back, the man pumped her with his hips - her head thrown back, her body jerking with the man’s efforts. At one point, I saw a woman dancing in front of a man bend her knees and gyrate lower and lower, her fulllips open wide into an inviting O and her tiny dress riding higher and higher up her thighs. When she was level with the man’s penis she danced with his thrusting crotch, moving her head back and forth to the music, sitting on her haunches, legs spread wide open. If you have no partner to dance with, you find a free space in front of the full mirrors that line the club’s walls. There, you can admire yourself as you dance - pumping your hips, grinding down and running your hands over your own body.I needed a drink. I went to the bar and was told that whisky is 5GHc for one shot. I sat down again and took a sip of my water.I’d almost forgotten about my incommunicative colleague. Without warning, she jumped up and started gyrating in front of me, admiring herself in the mirror as she did so. She tossed her hair back and ran her hands across her breasts and over her hips. She leaned forward to reveal her curves, eyes locked on her own in the mirror behind me. She stood with her legs wide open, gradually dancing down, driving her hips forward and back as she went. She allowed her dress to ride up her tight thighs. She raised her hands high, as if tied to some imaginary rope, squirming and wriggling like a worm ona hook.I didn’t know where to look! I felt excruciatingly uncomfortable. What is the polite thing to do in this situation? Ignore her? Smile at her? Pretend you’re having a nice time? Perhaps she expects me to dance with her?While I was making up my mind, she sat down again, as suddenly as she had stood up. She crossed her legs, leaned away and looked severe. Shit. Ignoring her was definitely the wrong thing to do. I don’t want to offend anyone. I tapped her on the arm.“Do you like dancing?” I asked, inanely, trying to think of some neutral comment that couldn’t be misconstrued.“Oh yes. Do you like it?” She asked, flashing me a naughty smile.“Yes,” I replied, flustered and not really having a choice of answers. “You are very good at dancing.”She smiled again and turned away. Situation rescued.After another thirty minutes or so of sitting in silence, without warning she pulled me up to my feet and onto the dance floor. By this time, the club was filling with people. There were dozens of people dancing with most sat around the outside observing. I spotted a group of three white men at the bar. Roughly my age, they were sharing a bottle of champagne.I cannot dance in the style she wanted. I physically would be unable to simulate sex with this woman. Luckily, I know how to dance jive, having taken some lessons at uni. It’s easily adaptable to any music and it came to my rescue once again. I twirled her around at arm’s length and spun her round the back of me. She kept trying to grind but I kept her at bay. Couldn’t this woman see my wedding ring? Isn’t she the girlfriend of this producer anyway? Is this simulated sex thing really normal here?I made an excuse and sat down. Attambilla entered shortly afterwards so we were able to go up to the stage and prepare. The club was full. The doors were in chaos - four huge bouncers held back a shouting, pushing, grabbing crowd. No one wanted to pay to enter. No one was buying anything from the expensive bar - only the white men with their big laughs, big eyes and big pockets.The DJ cut the music and everyone booed.“Now we have live music for you people this evening. We have three different acts who will perform. Give a big round of applause for Attambilla!”Nobody clapped. The MC handed Attambilla the microphone and his CD came on the system. It quickly became obvious that the microphone was off. It was also clear that Attambilla would not be able to hold the microphone and play the kologo at the same time. With the impatient crowd already shouting insults, Attambilla was left to style it out - lip synching to his own track. After a minute or two, halfway through the track, the music cut and the MC grabbed the mic.“Well done to Attambilla. Next up we have...”The producer grabbed me.“Quick,” he hissed. “Go and grab the microphone and get Attambilla to do one more without backing track. Get him to play live with the kologo.”I leaped up onto the stage and went to take the mic from the MC. He was reluctant to give it up.“Yes? Would you like to say something, white man?”“Thankyou,” I shouted into the microphone. “We have come from Bolgatanga to be with you tonight ladies and gentlemen. You will now hear the talented Attambilla play live for you.”I thrust the microphone at Attambilla who immediately started up with his famous Sarkodie track sung as he’d written it originally. Everyone in the club knew the song. They kept quiet whilst he played - an achievement in itself. The sound of the kologo filled the nightclub and Attambilla’s voice flew up passionately in accompaniment. It’s rustic, acoustic, genuine sound filled my heart in this place where everything seemed so fake, so dressed up, so up for sale.The DJ broke the spell by playing some filling sounds. Attambilla stopped and the MC took the microphone from me.Next up was gangsta boy. His backing track came on and he lip-synched with attitude - jumping down from the stage at one point to lip-synch closer to the bemused crowd. When the DJ stopped his music he went mental - shouting and cursing and refusing to give up the microphone. Eventually the DJ gave him another couple of minutes before the chorus of booing from the crowd reached intolerable levels. He left the stage in a shower of curses and went to dance /simulate sex with someone else whist his young girlfriend sat in the corner pretending not to watch, trying to manipulate the buttons on her phone with her enormous fake fingernails.Two of the jokers in sunglasses and trilbies were on next. They jumped around like noisy rabbits. They tried to sing at one point.The crowd were restless. They started shouting at the DJ to put the music back on. The DJ did as he was told and everyone went back to simulating sex. Attambilla and I left.As we were walking back to community 2, we stopped for tea, egg and bread. Surprisingly, given that it was 3:30am, we found one quite easily. I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch. The woman had set up a TV next to her stall and was watching a straight-to-TV American film. The shiny-teethed, blonde and blue-eyed hero and heroin were trying to get away from a nasty black guy with a gun. They ran along tarmac roads with no pot-holes. They dived down a side street that was lit by a neat row of high, bright lampposts. They passed shiny new cars and big, two-storey houses with grass and flowers outside. At one point, they escaped into a shopping mall. It was made entirely of glass and had trees growing inside. They knocked over a crate of apples, a rack of new clothes and a tower of chocolate.As I watched this fantasy land that I used to be so familiar with, like a dream from a different age, a young girl stood next to me and begged for 20ps (8p) to buy bread. As I was digging in my pocket, a taxi driver who had been sleeping in his vehicle jumped out and started shouting and marching towards us. As he came, he removed his belt and doubled it up, buckle side out. He raised the belt above his head and ran towards the girl. Terrified, she scampered like a mouse off into the darkness.“That girl is a terrible girl,” the taxi driver told me, putting his belt back on. “She’s a junkie. She just likes drugs. I have seen her so many times. She tricks and robs people. She has friends that she works with. She is a bad bad girl.”He went back to his taxi, shaking his head, tutting and muttering about the state of Tema.Attambilla and I walked back to his place. He swept an area in the courtyard, spread a blanket onto the hard ground and gave me a towel to rest my head upon. I slept outside on that blanket, listening to the chorus of snoring coming from neighbouring houses.At first light I left. I sat on the minibus back to Accra and watched as the sun lit up this crazy world once again in its enduring brilliance.