Of a Ghana busride and Nigerian movies
A couple of months ago I was travelling by bus in Ghana. Not just a bus, but a shiny giant with the name DIPLOMAT written all over it. The ride was going to take me from Takoradi to Accra, Ghana’s bustling capital, in about five hours time, for the sum of 6 dollars.
So there I was, in a big bus filled with Africans of all sizes and ages, talking away in languages I’d never heard. It reminded me of being in a busy massage parlor in Vietnam, the women and clients chirping away and me not understanding a word, but somehow feeling very much at home amongst all those strangers.
A man entered the bus, carrying plastic waste baskets in various colors. I thought he was selling the latest Chinese merchandise, but later on I understood that the DIPLOMAT was to be kept very clean, and that all travelers’ little black plastic bags carrying their popcorn and fried bananas, were to end up in there.
While the bus was still waiting to fill up further, a man showed up waving a little book entitled ‘PLEASE REMIND THIS’. While waving the book, he explained some of what we could find inside. He said: “For instance, do not say ‘Hey woman’, but instead ‘Good day, spinster, mistress, or whatever her appropriate title is”. As for the tenses, he explained “The woman will come tomorrow, she will come today, and she came yesterday”. “Very easy”, he said. Also, “Do not say ‘You chop?’ But ‘Have you eaten?’ And women, do not ask money to just any man, only to your husband”. I was a bit puzzled if that was some moral lesson he added for free, or if there was some English grammar in there too, that needed to be improved… Anyway, after his presentation, various people raised their hands, wanting to buy a copy.
Then another man stood up and said “I am not going to talk much”, and went on to talk nonstop for three hours straight, or at least so it seemed, because long after the bus had left the station, he kept rattling on. At first his voice was rather pleasant, but then it started crackling as if it needed some oil, and instead of giving it some rest, the man then decided to start shouting. And shouting and shouting. I looked around wondering why all the passengers kept quiet. Wasn’t anyone going to ask him to shut up? Africans are somehow very tolerant and respectful. I don’t think in Europe we’d let anyone go on like that, unpunished.
Anyway, my neighbor was a young Ghanaian student. When I asked him what the man was talking about, the student told me that the man was preaching. And yes, at times the whole bus joined him to say ‘Amen’ and ‘Halleluiah’. I think he was praying for a safe journey. But once he got the crowds’ approval and attention, he quickly switched to professing us the incredible qualities of some kind of medicine he had on offer. He tried to convince us that the bottle he held in his hand, filled with a brownish concoction, could cure malaria, constipation and infertility in one go. He sold it for only two cedis a piece, which is about two dollars, so he was not going to get very rich selling it anytime soon. Which turned out to be true, because after telling us how great the medicine was, he then continued to tell all of us that he’d been selling this thing for many years already, and that by now he was 64 years old. He looked at least 90, but no one stood up to tell him that. But I think it might have put the travelers off from buying the medicine, because not many people offered to buy some, which clearly seemed to upset the old man. He tried once more to approach every single passenger, pushing the dangling medicine bottle in their face, but when most declined, his smile turned sour and he sat down.
I quietly rejoiced, thinking that now, finally, we were going to have some quiet. But lo and behold! the bus driver then proceeded to put on maximum volume a crackling copy of some Nigerian movie where a bunch of tall men and voluptuous women clad in colorful boubous were sitting in a large living room in gigantic velvet sofas, shouting at each other. Sometimes they moved to a terrace outside and then again into the living room inside the house. The shouting never stopped, women behaved rather hysterical, and some of them were always stealing money from their rich-but-not-so- good-looking- husbands, to pass it on to some younger-and-better-looking-lovers, who then passed it on to their long-legged-and-rather-pleasantly-built-girlfriends. But then somehow the married women always seemed to run into their lovers when they were out with their girlfriends and those exchanges were not always very edifying… Anyway, lots of shouting matches, lots of women fainting, lots of men consuming large amounts of whiskey, lots of men threatening to give their women a beating or two etc etc. Meanwhile the passengers on the bus did not seem bothered by the deafening noise nor the fact that the DVD got stuck all the time. They were enjoying all of it and laughing their eyes out.
As for me, I might have preferred a documentary on the lives of wolves or wash bears, but was forced to watch this Nigerian movie because of its all-invading sound, and also because there was little else to do since the curtains of the bus were drawn, so there was no chance to observe the scenery outside, which in a way was not such a bad thing as it made it easier to overlook the car wrecks littering the road side. (Some cars were barely recognizable and reduced to a fifth of their original size…)
Anyway, the sellers and the movies and the drawn curtains somehow worked wonders because before I knew it, the central character in the movie, a huge man with a tiny moustache, had dropped death (too much whiskey? Or a heart attack after the strain of giving his straying wife a ‘corrective beating’?) Anyway, the women around him in the movie (nieces, aunties, second and third wives etc) were all crying and yelling to God that they’d never betray their man anymore, whereas the audience in the bus was cheering and the DIPLOMAT came to a halt. We’d reached Accra!
END
So there I was, in a big bus filled with Africans of all sizes and ages, talking away in languages I’d never heard. It reminded me of being in a busy massage parlor in Vietnam, the women and clients chirping away and me not understanding a word, but somehow feeling very much at home amongst all those strangers.
A man entered the bus, carrying plastic waste baskets in various colors. I thought he was selling the latest Chinese merchandise, but later on I understood that the DIPLOMAT was to be kept very clean, and that all travelers’ little black plastic bags carrying their popcorn and fried bananas, were to end up in there.
While the bus was still waiting to fill up further, a man showed up waving a little book entitled ‘PLEASE REMIND THIS’. While waving the book, he explained some of what we could find inside. He said: “For instance, do not say ‘Hey woman’, but instead ‘Good day, spinster, mistress, or whatever her appropriate title is”. As for the tenses, he explained “The woman will come tomorrow, she will come today, and she came yesterday”. “Very easy”, he said. Also, “Do not say ‘You chop?’ But ‘Have you eaten?’ And women, do not ask money to just any man, only to your husband”. I was a bit puzzled if that was some moral lesson he added for free, or if there was some English grammar in there too, that needed to be improved… Anyway, after his presentation, various people raised their hands, wanting to buy a copy.
Then another man stood up and said “I am not going to talk much”, and went on to talk nonstop for three hours straight, or at least so it seemed, because long after the bus had left the station, he kept rattling on. At first his voice was rather pleasant, but then it started crackling as if it needed some oil, and instead of giving it some rest, the man then decided to start shouting. And shouting and shouting. I looked around wondering why all the passengers kept quiet. Wasn’t anyone going to ask him to shut up? Africans are somehow very tolerant and respectful. I don’t think in Europe we’d let anyone go on like that, unpunished.
Anyway, my neighbor was a young Ghanaian student. When I asked him what the man was talking about, the student told me that the man was preaching. And yes, at times the whole bus joined him to say ‘Amen’ and ‘Halleluiah’. I think he was praying for a safe journey. But once he got the crowds’ approval and attention, he quickly switched to professing us the incredible qualities of some kind of medicine he had on offer. He tried to convince us that the bottle he held in his hand, filled with a brownish concoction, could cure malaria, constipation and infertility in one go. He sold it for only two cedis a piece, which is about two dollars, so he was not going to get very rich selling it anytime soon. Which turned out to be true, because after telling us how great the medicine was, he then continued to tell all of us that he’d been selling this thing for many years already, and that by now he was 64 years old. He looked at least 90, but no one stood up to tell him that. But I think it might have put the travelers off from buying the medicine, because not many people offered to buy some, which clearly seemed to upset the old man. He tried once more to approach every single passenger, pushing the dangling medicine bottle in their face, but when most declined, his smile turned sour and he sat down.
I quietly rejoiced, thinking that now, finally, we were going to have some quiet. But lo and behold! the bus driver then proceeded to put on maximum volume a crackling copy of some Nigerian movie where a bunch of tall men and voluptuous women clad in colorful boubous were sitting in a large living room in gigantic velvet sofas, shouting at each other. Sometimes they moved to a terrace outside and then again into the living room inside the house. The shouting never stopped, women behaved rather hysterical, and some of them were always stealing money from their rich-but-not-so- good-looking- husbands, to pass it on to some younger-and-better-looking-lovers, who then passed it on to their long-legged-and-rather-pleasantly-built-girlfriends. But then somehow the married women always seemed to run into their lovers when they were out with their girlfriends and those exchanges were not always very edifying… Anyway, lots of shouting matches, lots of women fainting, lots of men consuming large amounts of whiskey, lots of men threatening to give their women a beating or two etc etc. Meanwhile the passengers on the bus did not seem bothered by the deafening noise nor the fact that the DVD got stuck all the time. They were enjoying all of it and laughing their eyes out.
As for me, I might have preferred a documentary on the lives of wolves or wash bears, but was forced to watch this Nigerian movie because of its all-invading sound, and also because there was little else to do since the curtains of the bus were drawn, so there was no chance to observe the scenery outside, which in a way was not such a bad thing as it made it easier to overlook the car wrecks littering the road side. (Some cars were barely recognizable and reduced to a fifth of their original size…)
Anyway, the sellers and the movies and the drawn curtains somehow worked wonders because before I knew it, the central character in the movie, a huge man with a tiny moustache, had dropped death (too much whiskey? Or a heart attack after the strain of giving his straying wife a ‘corrective beating’?) Anyway, the women around him in the movie (nieces, aunties, second and third wives etc) were all crying and yelling to God that they’d never betray their man anymore, whereas the audience in the bus was cheering and the DIPLOMAT came to a halt. We’d reached Accra!
END
posted by Griet at 6:37 PM
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