my drumming class was away at a funeral.

my teacher's senior-brother's wife is dead and you see her face on everyone's 'in loving memory' t-shirts and in the tears and in the dancing and in the singing. the first day in the afternoon is parades of men and women in reds and blacks dancing drumming singing down the street and you wouldnt know someone had died for all the joy and freedom in the way their bodies moved. later that night we join drum circles and dancing and stars stars stars. stars might be my favorite thing about Ghana. we sleep for two hours until the drums start again around midnight which means it's time for the all-night wake. we sit and listen to words in Ewe, understanding only 'amen' and 'hallelujah' and then music starts and everyone stands and they pull you in and old women old men young girls young boys take your hand and grab your waist and it's a mob of free movement free emotion sweat smiles. liberating. and all the while there is sobbing on the outskirts of celebration, those wiping tears, those wailing. and at first we are uncomfortable with such a dichotomy of emotion. dancing then crying, crying then dancing, happiness and sadness don't often exist in the harmony that i see this day. and i think this harmony was possible because of how truthfully these emotions were expressed. nobody is afraid of doing what they feel like doing when they feel like doing it--crying screaming laughing dancing--and at home we feel naked with such truthfulness because this means vulnerability. and sometimes you may want to scream your sadness to the world but you cant because nobody screams theirs. but here, someone will scream back.


grave-hopping. maybe more admirable than the aged traditions of flower-dropping.

his shirt read:
i'm not a bitch
i'm THE bitch
and it's MISS bitch to you

where you will see ashton in bell bottoms and eat a pomme d'amour

aahh so long since my last entry. but i'm all over the blogging life again i swear. after this weekend i'm posting photos from a funeral in a small village. it was beautiful beautiful and so sad.

we went to Ivory Coast for Easter Break. despite the whole civil war thing and the 'don't go to ivory coast or you'll die!' warnings of peers. we felt pretty rebellious. and were glad afterward because we decided we would like to stay forever and only petty obligations were presented in protest of this idea. petty obligations won. on the basis that maybe they weren't as petty as we were willing to make them out to be if it meant we could stay forever. but maybe we'll stay forever another time.

french west africa. and it's really french. west africa. baguettes on street corners, croissants and tea for breakfast and we're ready to go. croissants and tea for breakfast everyday and any day means an automatic new favorite place. which makes sense considering paris is a favorite place and Abidjan was hailed as the 'paris of west africa' in its prime, its prime being the 70s which is quite possibly the best time to be in your prime if it means every building is a geometric puzzle and Ashton Kutcher may peek out in bell bottoms and all of a sudden set-location will be obvious, how did you not know it before? i also thought it looked like what i'd imagine an African Cuba to look like based on what i imagine Cuba to look like which may or may not be solely based on 'Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.'









the cathedral.
we find an abandoned dark stairway at the bottom and used a flashlight on a phone to go up the twisting staircase, dark and dusty enough to make you think you may step on an assortment of one or all of the following: dead bodies, a homeless man that upon being stepped on will awaken angry enough to kill you, the non-casper ghosts in casper that unlike casper are really mean. we climb all the way to the toptoptop of this weird abstract structure thing protruding from the church, the highest point you see in this next photo of the outside of the cathedral. we feel we are on top of the world. we are proud to have gone so high, to have done something probably illegal, and to have carefully evaded the homeless man with potentially murderous tendencies. so proud in fact, we sign our names. we were here.




the grocery store. we were really excited. as evidenced by the unnecessarily great amount of photos taken there. lipton tea is what i have four cups-a-day-three-spoons-of-sugar of everyday. nutella is what we dream of having everyday. milo is the ghanaian equivalent of ovaltine except EVERYONE drinks it ALL the time. and a nun at the butcher is just funny.






the art gallery. we love it. and those that run it. i am especially fond of the black hats and how much they laugh.





we kept trying to take 'serious family portraits.' we mostly fail.

apples of love!