too much labadi love...please calm yourselves

We went to Labadi Beach today to mark our final day of orientation – our CRAs tried to convince us we actually wanted to go to the pool but most people were anxious to get to the beach. To set this scene correctly, some things need to be explained. First of all, we travel in either an enormous tour bus or a safari bus that has pictures of elephants on it. Secondly, we are a group of thirty mostly white students. Lastly, we look like we have no idea what is going on…because most of the time we don’t. So when we pull into the beach people selling things literally run to meet us as we get off the bus.

If I’ve learned anything from this week of orientation it is to never have any expectations or pretend to know what I think things are going to be like. Beach in New Hampshire does not translate to Beach in Accra. When I go to the beach I put in my headphones, read my magazine, and creepily check out and judge the people around me. At Labadi you cannot do this. It is that simple – there are always people approaching you to talk or to sell things, horse rides up and down the beach, a man holding a snake wrapped up in one hand (when I saw this I prepared myself to run as there is nothing more disgusting than that thing they try to call a reptile).  We paid five cedis to get in…I have no idea where that five cedis is going.

Awkward and uncomfortable moments are going to be frequent this semester...we have had far too many to detail them all. At the beach there were a bunch of performers, and one group was four men who were singing and drumming and had a young boy with them . When I say he was a performer I mean he was a performer. He was wearing a full black body suit with a colorful belt around it and a colorful striped hat on that looked like a swimming cap. This was not normal I am cute and will dance for you apparel – he was a trained professional. Because we are NYU moving in a group of thirty and love drawing attention to ourselves we attracted a lot of people singing and dancing, including this group. The boy, who was probably about seven, started doing acrobatic moves and cartwheels and flips, but then an older man, I don’t know if it was his father, started doing moves with him, boosting him into high flips and putting him on his head while the boy attempted to dance. It was entertaining, but whether this boy was doing this because he wanted to or had to made it uncomfortable to watch, especially when certain moves or tricks would make him grimace as if he were in pain or when he almost fell off the top of the man’s head and, like a pro, got his balance back while continuing to smile and dance. Afterwards they had collected the money the man would point at people who hadn’t given anything, including me, and the boy would run up asking if we had anything for him…then they moved about twenty feet down the beach and did the same thing.

When I was taking a picture with my friend a little boy, probably about seven, jumped into the photo and then hung around. This boy had style – I put down the Vanity Fair I was reading (Angelina Jolie was on the cover) and he immediately picked it up and started flipping through the pages. He and his brother would pause at certain pages and talk about them, but they scanned through the magazine fairly quickly, stood up, threw the magazine down on the towel, and summed it up with this – “Finished.” I almost felt like I was supposed to be entertaining them and doing a horrible job. The other people in our group were playing cards with the kids, sketching a portrait of a musician – one girl even spoke sign language with a child who was deaf. I sat and read a New York Magazine article on male models.

I am tired, classes start tomorrow, and I have officially been in Accra for a full week. What is my life. This all sounds incredibly negative so I will add on that I’m having an amazing time – the people here are great, our housing is amazing (I share a house, yes, an entire house, with four other people including my fantastic roommate Maggie and the multiple people who wander in and out everyday – Holley, I am talking about you), and I’m doing something different and something I’ve never done before everyday. BUT…I miss reliable internet and hot water. BUT Marjorie comes tomorrow with my dress.