Unlucky in cards, lucky in.......Rock

Thursday saw a couple of social events. Firstly, a game of Canasta, then a pub quiz night. Canasta is a card game introduced to Sarah just before I arrived. Since my arrival, the three of us have been filling evenings with these games. Essential practise then for the big game. After being introduced to all the ladies of the Canasta group, they enquired as to how well I knew the game. Saying we had played almost every night and sometimes until six am, for a week, wouldn’t have shown me to be a beginner. “A few times in the evening” would suffice. The group is a collection of wives living out here. All professionals in their own right, in Ghana because of their husband’s businesses. Oil has not taken over here quite yet, Sarah being the only one whose husband is involved with the oil industry. Wives of lawyers, diplomats, accountants surrounding us, we played cards and enjoyed home bakes. I don’t mind being in a circle of women. They viewed me as something of a novelty. Conversation was varied. I am bound to secrecy as to the content of some discussions. It’s a good chance to realise there are others who struggle with exorbitant supermarket prices and the various mosquito prevention and repellent methods adopted. Some were shocked that Sarah chose to drive here. Most opting to have a local driver to take them anywhere they needed to go. The downside of this, was one admission by a lady who had no idea where she lived in relation to the rest of Accra. If she is looking to go anywhere, she instructs her driver to call the other person’s driver for directions.

After Canasta, we returned back to the apartment where Sarah went through some of my CV with me. I say some of, as I do have rather a lot on there. In the past, trying to condense everything into two pages has proved a challenge. My mother tells me, whenever she has difficulty falling asleep at nights, that she goes through my resume in her head rather than count sheep. She proudly tells me it never fails and she rarely gets to the end before entering the land of nod. My CV therefore needs to be condensed. There has been quite a lot of interest in me since arriving barely a week ago. All these social occasions inevitably lead to people’s occupations and interests. Representatives from multinationals, or those out with aid agencies. It is all very well my taking work out here, the trouble is, I will not be able to attend Canasta and catch up with the gossip!

The regular quiz night at a sports bar was our evening destination. Kevin fought through traffic to get us there early enough to reserve a large booth. We would be eating too. Champs bar is owned by a Canadian, being a sports bar, any wall which is not adorned by television screens, has framed football shirts. From the ceiling, hang flags of countries thousands of miles away. Most of these have been left by visitors. The Scots’ stamp being prominent with several Saltires and Lion Ramparts. The building has air conditioning, it also has vinyl seating. The AC was either needing serviced or set deliberately inefficiently to promote more drinking. The three of us sat while our backsides fused with the vinyl. Only a copious amount of sweat preventing us becoming permanent fixtures. Sarah and Kevin enjoyed kebabs, while I had a themed chicken dish referred to as Chicken Gazza. Any tears would’ve been more appropriate to their choices. Three beef kebabs on skewers. Sauces of piri piri, barbeque and shitto. Yes, shitto. A hot spicy sauce very popular here. I’ve tried it and once you get over the instantaneous sweating, any unpleasant toxins that may have been sitting in your system, become dislodged in much the same way as a drain surges as it finally unblocks. The result is thankfully not as quick as the all over sweat. Only next day do you get the fully flushed feeling! There is a kebab place nearby the current apartment where I’ve been told the shitto is even stronger. As we were finishing up, some more bodies arrived. The team slowly assembled until there ten of us in the booth. I had earlier suggested a team name of “Tro-tros” given that there would be a lot of us crammed in and odd hand gestures may emanate from time to time. In the absence of any better suggestions, that’s the name we agreed upon. A Tro-tro is the bus service here. Usually they are Ford Transit or Mercedes minibuses with a stated capacity of twenty three but all too often, filled with many more. I still have to find one without a single dent. Being bigger than most things on the road, they regularly just pull straight out into a line of traffic. If the drivers bother to use indicators, this is not always obvious. Tail lights rarely are in one piece, or there at all. At nights, it is a common sight, or not, to have a Tro-tro driving along with no lights showing. They have conductors on board. Their job is to hang out the window as they approach agreed stopping points, gesticulating to passengers waiting. With no destination signs, coded hand signals are used. A hand in a downward swirling motion might mean they are going down to the city centre. A signal that could be excused for a cyclist signal for slowing down may mean a different district. With little chance of rust and no chance of having to get through an MOT test, some of these machines are real classics. Ok, classics in my eyes if no one else’s. On my first day in Oxford Street and before I knew what a Tro-tro was, I saw the evolution of the Transit van in a few minutes. First up, a Mark I in red, followed by a dark blue Mark II, oh how that brought back memories of my old Mark II friend. Soon after, appeared a light blue Mark III. I am almost accustomed to them now. Seeing twenty or thirty year old vehicles still in constant use. They will break down from time to time, creating chaos. Obviously when they are working, chaos is still the name of the game, swerving from lane to lane. The battered bodywork a reminder they have done it before and will do it again. Best just to let them through. As the only smokers, the three of us chose to step outside as courtesy to the rest of the team, sliding as best we could over the sticky bench seats. This continued as we anticipated the arrival of the quizmasters. I have been to plenty quiz nights in my time and have even conducted some myself. I was rather puzzled by the numbers involved. Two boffins with bald heads and pony tails, they sat with a laptop each, a lady, whose job it was to gather quiz papers and one man to call the questions. This wasn’t a quiz night, it was an episode of countdown! There were seven or eight teams, ours was by far the largest, well, if you don’t count the fifty million extra helpers our neighbouring team had in the form of Google, a problem that permeates nearly every quiz night. Without an expensive blocking system, where complaints would almost certainly come forward, there is no way of stopping this, unless, of course people grasp the simple concept of cheating being wrong. After the first two rounds, our team were tied with the neighbouring Google team. Perhaps excessively vocal contributors on our team helped them too. We had ages nineteen to fifty, they had ages fifteen to nineteen. It is quite possible those with their phones out were just texting, odd though, that they had the phones out during questions and not so much after. The final few rounds had the focus purely on me. Music lyrics where the Tro-tro hand waving came into play as I racked my brains for the tune, followed by guitar riffs, ending appropriately with some Jethro Tull. We ended the night in third place, a prize of a fifteen Cede bar voucher becoming ours. Not a huge amount but, given that the tab for ten of us for three hours of drinking, was just over sixty, money in a bar goes a lot further here.

Returning to the car, we passed through an open air bar we had visited a few days before. Making eye contact with an attractive local woman at a table, I smiled. To my surprise, she made a kissing motion with her lips. I announced my bite of interest, only to be greeted with laughter from Sarah and Kevin. Once they regained their composure, they confirmed it wouldn’t have mattered how I looked to that particular table of ladies. I’ve been told we should manage a proper night out before I leave, so my fingers remain crossed. At least buying someone a drink won’t cost too much. As long as it’s only the drink I need to buy, I’ll be happy.