“How many churches are there in Kissi?” Annett asked the boys. Now she had questions! The children began counting. They could agree on nine, although one swore it was ten. Ten churches for a town of just 1500? A town that didn’t even have paved roads, reliable electricity, or grass? It was easy to conclude there’d been a mismanagement of priorities. We passed an under-construction church, the tenth. They then took us out into the fields to the north of the village, where we stopped at a tin shack hidden back in the brush. Stooping to enter, I saw five men, three sitting along the left wall, two to the right, on red plastic chairs. Behind them, across the centre of the shack, was a large metal trough, like you might use to feed animals. In the back half of the dwelling were various drums with tubes running between them. One on my right was releasing a clear liquid into the trough.
A strong smell of ethanol stripped the whites of my eyes and split the hairs of my nose. All the men were either asleep or dead.
“I think we’ve found the moonshine.”
Annett coughed her agreement.
Kofi said something to the custodians of this rural craft brewing enterprise.
It didn’t wake them up.
He said it again, louder.
It didn’t wake them up.
He shouted it.
The man to our left rocked back on his chair, which thudded against the wall of the shack. He grunted. His face was flat, as if his features had withdrawn from the world. Then he rubbed his sunken eyes and got to his feet, swaying slightly. He and Kofi exchanged a few words in a local language.
I smiled nervously at the man, feeling guilty for having ruined his slumber. It was quite obvious to me from his gaunt face and bulging red eyes that he was having his cake and eating it, dipping his toe in his own pond, and getting high on his own supply.
He wiped at the grime on his face with a rag from his back pocket and exhaled loudly before beginning an explanation of the brewing process. Kofi translated, pointing to the barrels at the back of the shack. “In here goes the water. Then… what’s that word in English?” He looked to the other boys. They shrugged.
Michael kicked his foot in frustration at not knowing the word. “Hmm… chemicals?”
Kofi nodded. “Yes, chemicals are added. Then it’s made warm.”
It wasn’t clear if the man couldn’t explain what he did for a living, or if Kofi couldn’t translate it. I suspected a little of both. The man bent down to run his fingers through the liquid in the trough, and said something to Kofi, who accepted it warmly.
“Alcohol comes out.” I had no doubt that alcohol came out. I also had no doubt that quite a lot of it went into the mouths of the men around me, at least when they were awake. I thanked the man and edged back towards the door, wanting to let him return to his mid-morning nap.
“Would you like to try it?” Michael asked Annett and me. This excited the boys greatly. It excited my internal organs less. The boys crowded in. The man reached for a dirty orange plastic pot at his feet. He swilled it out onto the floor with water, dipped it into the trough, and held it out to me. I looked at his face. The lights were still on but the property was long vacant. As advertising for a product went, this was like being sold contact lenses by a blind man.
Offend people or drink the moonshine? It was a difficult decision, mostly because so many eyes watched me as I made it. This drink was obviously not good for humans—nothing made in the woods in a metal trough is. Yet this man had consumed rather a lot of it and he seemed fine. He passed his days asleep on a plastic chair in a tin shack. His eyes were the colour of nuclear winter, but he was still alive, mostly, I think.
I had to drink it. Or pretend to drink it. I nodded, took the pot from him, held it to my lips, and took the smallest sip that I thought socially acceptable. The liquid charred my tongue and spread south like an out-of-control bush fire. The boys laughed.
“It’s…” cough, cough “Good.” I now had the smoky, smooth baritone of a soul singer. I’d describe the moonshine’s taste as science. The drink had only one job to do, one function, and it was sure as hell going to do it. That job? Make you forget whatever awful thing had happened in your life that, by comparison, made drinking this moonshine seem like a good idea.
I thanked the man generously, complimenting him on the fastidious, albeit illicit, job he was doing. He smiled back. I noticed he was no longer burdened by teeth. I assumed this was because he was now powered exclusively by moonshine, and so no longer needed them. Evolution in action. As we turned to leave the shack, there was a loud bang at its rear. Then a second bang. I turned back to find liquid gushing from one of the drums on the far wall. This barrel caught fire. Flames shot up towards the roof. The man leapt into action, shouting at his colleagues to help as he darted to the back of the hut. “Run,” he shouted, proving he knew at least one English word. The kids sprinted for the exit with us in close pursuit. I turned just before the door to see the man frantically turning valves and trying to calm the fire before the shack blew up. The other four men? They didn’t even stir.
By the time Annett and I made it out of the brush and onto the dirt road, the boys were already halfway back to town, giggling manically. We never found out if he got the flames under control, but back on the veranda, we saw no signs of fire in the village or the sky. We played some more Mau Mau, and Djarbah won with such regularity that accusations of foul play were levelled.
I shuffled the deck. “A lot of people blame white people for having messed up Africa. What do you think about that?”
His eyebrows rose like flags. “Blame? What should we blame them for?”
“Don’t you think Ghana would be more developed today if the British had never colonised it?”
“There is no one to blame for Ghana but Ghanaians. But why blame? Things are good here. Go to Togo, or Nigeria.”
I stopped shuffling. “I thought Nigeria was quite developed? They have all that oil and Nollywood?”
“No. Noooo! Adams, go to Nigeria. Pur-lease. You won’t make it out in one piece. I was there for tennis. Never. Never. Never again! Ghana is nothing like that. We are the African success story.”
The kids were sitting with us on the veranda, their schoolbooks spread out on the floor. “Dad, what’s the difference between me and God?” asked Nana, in English, the language in which they studied.
Djarbah pondered this question, stroking at his goatee for inspiration. “Let me see your book.”
Nana carried it over, his steps measured. He was a quiet boy who radiated thoughtfulness. Djarbah looked at it; scratched the back of his head; turned back a page; read a bit; stroked his beard; flipped a few pages forward; read a bit more and then, suddenly, his eyes widening, clapped. Several nearby houses fell over. “Easy, son,” he said, clasping Nana on the shoulder. “The difference between you and God is that you are a sinner!”
Annett’s mouth fell open. I cocked my head. This was madness. Nana broomed far, far too much to be anyone’s definition of a sinner. “God is not a sinner,” Djarbah continued. “You are a sinner. That’s the difference between you and God. Write that.”
I asked to see Nana’s workbook.
It looked like a regular schoolbook; and it covered English grammar, multiplication, the structure of an atom, etc. But then, smuggled into every fourth or fifth page, were things that didn’t seem, well, all that academically rigorous—God, Hell, the wonders of the church, miracles, creationism.
I handed it to Annett, who flicked through it tutting and sighing and then handed it back pointing at the “donated by the Church of Pentecost” text on the cover. This explained so much about the country. They really were getting them while they were young. “Are all the schoolbooks donated by the churches, Djarbah?”
He thought about this for a moment, scratching at some more of his XXL body parts. “Yes, I think so.”
“Do you think that’s problematic?”
“Problematic, Adams? Why would it be so? The churches do much good here a
nd if they didn’t provide the books, who would?”
“The state?”
He collapsed back into his wicker chair, chuckling.
“As lovely as Djarbah and his family are,” said Annett, as we were in bed that night, “I can’t wait to go home.” This wasn’t how you were supposed to feel at the end of a holiday. “It’s not the heat, or the lack of electricity, or the bad roads, or the food, or that there’s not all that much to do. It’s seeing so many people investing energy in something you’re absolutely, absolutely certain is a dead end.”
I rolled over to look at her. “I don’t know. I can see why it’s an attractive message here. To think that there might be more than this life.”
“That’s the point though! If they weren’t wasting time giving money to these groups they could invest it in making things better. Religion is the exact opposite of what they need. Which is to focus on now.”
Rather unexpectedly, since this wasn’t a Hollywood movie, the ripped, muscular, shirtless torso of a Ghanaian superhero appeared at our bedroom door.
“Adams, we must go immediately to the hospital. Something is very wrong with Monica.” I scrambled to locate my clothes, hopping in one trouser leg towards the living room. There I found Djarbah trying to steer Monica in the direction of the front door. She was in a nightie, covered in sweat, resisting him, and muttering unintelligibly in a trance. Her expression was blank.
“Help me get her into the car,” he shouted from under one of her armpits. I ducked under the other and together we attempted to hoist her down the small hill to the car. “Annett, you’re in charge,” he yelled over his shoulder. “Look after the kids.”
“What?” she shrieked. “How do I do that?”
Annett is not into children in the same way people are not into being hit with rocks. She’s aware that they exist and that there’s nothing she can do to prevent this, but feels no desire to enjoy their existence any more than that. Perhaps because they’re so uninterested in being efficient. Fortunately, Djarbah’s children were well behaved to the point of being faulty.
Tottering on the descending dirt path, ten metres from the car, we were just about managing to keep Monica upright. She was mumbling incoherently and foaming at the mouth as we folded her in half and pushed her into the back of the car.
It was, all in all, completely terrifying.
Djarbah hit at the steering wheel in frustration, cursing every crater and crevice, as we bounced down the road in first gear. Looking at my feet, I noticed I’d left in such a rush that I’d forgotten to put on shoes. I looked to Djarbah’s; he was also barefoot. Heading out of town, we turned down a road I’d not spotted before, which curved up a slight incline, then stopped in front of a dark rectangular building: the hospital. The wheels had barely stopped rotating before we sprang out. I opened the rear door on my side and threw myself at Monica, trying to push her out the opposite door, where Djarbah stood, pulling. Eventually we freed her and were under her arms again, steering her as if she were a late-night drunk.
I’ve never seen a hospital with so few lights on and people in it. A nurse pointed us to a room with three beds. We took the closest, wrestling Monica, rear end first, onto it. She was still in a semi-lucid mummy-like state as we grabbed at her arms and legs and heaved her up and flat onto the hospital bed, wheezing from the exertion.
Djarbah disappeared to find a doctor. I had a moment to take the room in. There were no sheets on the beds. The next bed over held the sparrow-like frame of an extremely old woman, her skin like tree bark. Her breathing laboured and sporadic and causing her to vibrate with the exertion of it. I’d heard the term death rattle, but until that moment I’d never actually heard one. It sliced through all my cynicism and indifference. That would be me one day. Just as it would be all the people I will ever love. A young woman cried softly as she stroked the dying lady’s hand. A nurse entered the room and pushed some pills into Monica’s mouth. Djarbah watched on from the door frame, his face awash in fear and worry.
I waited in the hallway, feeling concerned for Monica and awkward that there was nothing I could do to help. It’s nice that human society has reached a level of sophistication and development that we don’t have to spend our time bent over in fields encouraging food to appear from the ground. However, now that we’ve all become yoga teachers, graphic designers, and writers, it’s easy to forget how spectacularly bereft we are of actual life skills, how flimsy our qualifications are in the things that really count: life and death things. If there was a zombie uprising and society broke down, what could I do? What could I offer? Metaphors? Probably the polite thing would be just to sacrifice myself to the waiting hordes in the hope that it might buy enough time for a doctor, physicist, or professional footballer to sneak out the back door to safety.
Djarbah reappeared, snapping me back to the here and now. He seemed smaller in this moment, shrunk in the wash of panic that had brought us here. He took a seat beside me, on the wooden bench outside Monica’s room. “She is a little better now,” he said. “They gave her something and she is sleeping. I will drive you back, and we can tell the children not to worry.”
“Does the doctor know what it is?”
“No. It is beyond the complexity of this place. I will have to take her to a nearby city for some tests once she is better.”
Thankfully, Monica was discharged the next day. Annett and I saw her briefly before it was time to leave. We discussed the trip on the bus ride back to Accra.
“Are you excited to go home?” I asked, while rustling through my bag looking for chewing gum. I handed her a stick.
“Oh yes. So much. You?”
I paused between chews. “No… not really. There’s not all that much there for me at the moment. Not in comparison to moonshine and blizzards and tear gas, anyway. I want more experiences like this.”
The bus lurched past three teenage boys who had been filling in potholes then begging for money for their labour, or feigned labour, since for every pothole they’d filled I could see another dozen ignored.
“I’m glad you’ve got some of your old zest back,” she said. “But if you don’t feel lucky or can’t enjoy the incredibly sweet life you’ve got, well, there’s something wrong with you.”
I nodded. “I’m working on that thing.”
“That’s good. But my life already has enough stress in it.”
“Uh-huh.” I glanced out the window, already knowing where this was going.
“I can’t drop everything any time you want to go somewhere that’s only got water half the day, and electricity even less than that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And where the most popular form of entertainment is drinking alcohol from a sock. Or some crazy dictator has changed the days of the week to his own name.”
“Uh-huh.”
She pushed me on the shoulder. “Hey. Are you listening to me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Stop saying uh-huh. I’m just asking that you also think about my needs as well, okay?”
“That might set a dangerous precedent.”
She tutted. “Yeah, wouldn’t it just.”
Thankfully, Monica recovered. The tests revealed she has a mild form of epilepsy, and she now has medication for it.
Back in Germany, I tried to make something of the Ghana experience. Was I surprised its charms hadn’t attracted more of the global tourist masses? I thought back to the bustle, diesel, and disorder of its capital, Accra. I remembered the starchy, bland food. The long, bumpy journeys. The trash covering the beaches. The omnipresence of organised religion. Sleepy evenings spent walking unlit roads looking for something to do to pass the time.
No, not especially.
But I also appreciated that Ghana doesn’t try to be something it isn’t, either. It doesn’t show off for you. Mostly, it doesn’t understand why you’ve come or what you want from it, and it’s not going to put on airs and graces trying to find out. I’d come around to Djarbah’s
way of thinking. Not every country is trying to become Germany. There’s more to life than efficiency. Change can come, sure, but it didn’t have to come at breakneck China speeds. I tried to remember that for myself and my own project of reinvention.
Ghana is what it is. It’s its own thing. It’s an African success story.
6
Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Israel: “Can you feel the fire?”
Pre-Renaissance men, wine monsters, novelty ties, conspiracy nuts
I arrived at Berlin Schönefeld early, since I’d heard security can be pretty overzealous when you’re heading to Israel, or are in Israel, or if you’ve ever been to Israel and want to go somewhere that isn’t. I was alone. Annett was coming on the trip but staying two weeks less and so had taken a different flight from the city’s other airport. In the departure hall, a small bearded EL AL (Israel’s national airline) employee collected me at the outer ring of the system of pre-check-in counters. This was new. The man had heavy black eyebrows and thin metal glasses with circular frames.
“Good morning. My name is Levi,” he said, grinning and taking my passport. Some people fit snugly into their environment—the humourless accountant, the nerdy scientist, the heavily tattooed tattoo artist. Levi was not one of these people. He was like a small Jewish cheerleader, his face permanently failing to restrain the sheer wonder that was his own existence. I found him a delightfully positive presence in the sterile, depressing, authoritarian environment of airport security. During all the weird things that were about to happen to me, that face always said, “I’m totally on your side, buddy” (no matter how firmly the rest of his body said, “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”).
“Now, Adam,” he began. “Israel, is, err, as you may know…” His eyes darted diagonally upwards in search of suitably delicate wording. His tone was that of a teacher explaining basic arithmetic to the class idiot. “We’re, well, a little bit special. So there will be some extra questions today. But if there are no problems, then you can proceed to the check-in counter. Okay?” He gestured to the counter over his left shoulder. A bored-looking woman sat there, waiting for someone to correctly answer enough questions to win her audience.
Don’t Go There: From Chernobyl to North Korea—one man’s quest to lose himself and find everyone else in the world’s strangest places Page 7