Shangri La

I’m writing this across from the kidney pool in the back of Hotel Shangri-La. A group of Ghanain women walk by. The Danish man with them explains – ‘She doesn’t want me hanging out with you.’ He slurs slightly. ‘I think she’s jealous.’.

Another man, at the bar, offers to take a young woman anywhere she wants to go. He puffs a cigarette and licks thin lips. She asks him – well, anywhere in Europe.

We all want what we can’t have until we have it. The grass is greener and so forth. My plane is leaving for London in twelve hours and I’m here at this hotel to kill those hours dead.

For the past several days I’ve had a feeling of déjà-vu. Tamale is new and different, as though I’ve come for the first time, again. Already things from only a few months ago are hazy and I know that it’s going to all go blurry once the dust is gone out of my shirts and shoes. That’s sad. There’s a whole world vanishing. I’m desperate for a Kodak moment, distributing disposable cameras.

I hold out hope that it won’t ever vanish entirely. I’ve got a new scar that will save me from getting a tattoo. I’m not cool enough to be a hipster anyway.

I can picture the grass at Beacon Hill park, Our Town, and downtown. They’re far away, no context, like postcards. These rich swimsuits in the pool, these fat expats, the old man serving tables and me, we’re all here in limbo. I’m waiting for the next life. Twelve hours.

Fin

My contract officially ran out on Friday. All done.

Not really, of course. There's still a few videos to wrap up and a few loose ends to take care of around the office. I'm hoping to spend the next couple weeks getting to know Tamale a bit better and seeing friends, etc. My time has suddenly become very valuable. Supply and demand.

I've been running a film workshop over the past few weekends. It's Hafiz's dream to eventually set up a film school in Tamale so we've started this class with a few local kids. We have some attendance issues but it's going well overall. We wrapped up the camera lesson today. They're getting it. Hopefully we'll shoot a short narrative film next week. It'll take some supervision but it's exciting too. They're getting it. I feel warm and fuzzy.

The local film scene here is this fantastic grass-roots thing. Making cheap movies for a grand or so and showing them in markets and small communities for a few cents a head. Why can't it be like that in Canada? I miss movies, putting one shot in front of the other. Scenes and scripts instead of budgets and connections. Friends and favours, too. I don't want to be successful or arty, or have a career. I want to tell stories for no money and show them to my friends.

Smile

Photo credit to Jacob.

We had the new benches made just in time. When Jacob and I arrived at the office Wednesday morning we found a mob of SHS 1 students, all arrived a day or two before they were due to pay fees at their new schools. I don’t know how many students we ran through, but we laid out around 9000 GHC in school fees.

This is the big crunch for the organization, the time of year when the office always has at least one person waiting in the foyer. Samson and Benedicta skip lunch. We improvise, lining up students, scrawling names on pieces of scrap paper and holding them up for database photos, associating names with faces. It’s easy to confuse them. Seems like everyone has the same haircut.

Ran out of ink in our whiteboard marker. Ran out of space on the camera. Ran out of the office to grab water for twentysomething people.

Today we’re picking up the bits and pieces. Everyone we couldn’t get to yesterday comes back. The photos are all processed. I’ll pick out a couple of students to interview, good talkers with a bit of energy.

Entering girls into the database, taking down names that I still don’t hear right the first time – could you spell that? Trying new ways to make them laugh, or relax, loosen up. Interview technique. Learned the dagbani word for smile – it’s lama. I think they’re only smiling because I make such a mess of the word. But a smile’s a smile so I can play it up a bit and get what I need. Everyone I meet here is someone who’ll talk a bit more when we roll by the schools in a week or so, collecting interviews. Everyone who smiles here opens up a little more next time.

The Plural

Saliminga saliminga saliminga. I can make fun of Samson when he’s talking to a group of students, telling them I need their photo. Saliminga saliminga saliminga, I have a name you know. An introduction is made.

Except now it’s come to Salimisi. That’s plural.

Jacob got here a few days ago. I took the government bus down to Accra to pick him up at Kotoka airport. There’s a list on the lonely planet website of the most disappointing cities in the world. Accra’s number two. He’s from number one, Detroit. I think this means he’s moving up in the world, or I could have the ordering of the list confused.

It’s a different

For the record, 24 hours is a long time to spend on buses.

The Sandwich I Had Today

Or what I'm up to. In brief.

I had another bout of sickness in the last week or so. A little malaria and then a little typhoid. Minor cases of both.

School's back! Every morning the office is crowded with a bunch of new or continuing sponsorship applicants. Girls, mothers, brothers, younger and older siblings. We've had more postsecondary applications than we can handle, but we're doing what we can. I'm not directly involved in this, except that every time someone gets accepted I line them up against a wall and take a photo for the database. I've learned how to say 'smile' in Dagbani - it's 'lama'. They laugh because either 1) They're surprised or 2) I'm mangling the pronunciation. Either way, I owe Mcluhan a beer.

A few lizards moved into the house with me. They shit on the floor and I clean it up. I chased one around with a broomhandle yesterday. Got him in the head. Ex-lizard. Then I had to clean up the blood, which wasn't much fun. He's rotting in my front yard right now, the little bastard.

Looking at a few options for when my contract's up. Hafiz is possibly going to get funding to make a film, which I could help with. Getting to know some of his friends who are local filmmakers, which is... nifty. There's also a local development newspaper I might see if I can help out with. We'll have to see.

Tony the Chicken: A Photoessay in Reverse Chronological Order

Poor Tony.

The Same River Twice

There's a hot, humid stream outside my front yard. The bullfrogs keep me up nights and I'm reading Huckleberry Finn. Time to go rafting?

Back 'at home' in Tamale at this point, which is a strange, strange idea. The feeling I had on the bus, seeing familiar landmarks (old rusted roadside taxi! White Volta bridge!) was the same one I've always had coming home. Same neurons firing. I think it's a standard response that we all have when returning to familiar territory.

And so on and so forth. My mom left on Monday, dropped her at the airport. It's the LAST TWO MONTHS now which is different, distinctly different from the amorphous 'just about forever' way that I've been thinking about my remaining time. The unlimited potential has become, well, not. My plans to learn two languages and play flawless Dylan on the harmonica are ... tricky.

It seems like a very empty house, now. But they've hired a new videographer. I spoke to him on the phone. He's coming out in October. The times are, as the man said, a changin'.