Drumming

The past few days have been so crazy, its felt as though I’ve been here for weeks. I was in a funky mood after I wrote my last blog—Accra is realy reminiscent of Taipei to me because of the pollution, traffic, crowds, etc. It’s really not a beautiful city, and there’s not really much to do besides go to markets…

The day after I was in a bad mood, from my allergies acting up, and it being hot and stuffy at night when we’re trying to sleep, we decided to go to the Arts&Crafts Center. This outdoor market is a jumble of small crowded booths, goods, and aggressive hawkers trying to sell you their goods. Erin, Valerie, and I wandered around for a while, bargained for a really long time for some wall hangings that we ended up not buying, and gaped at rows upon rows of beautiful wooden statues, carvings, masks, hand woven cloths, clothes, daishikis, earrings…pretty much anything you can think of related to “Africa” was for sale in this market.

I decided I would probably buy a drum for my Dad. Once I mentioned this fact to a local shop man (named “Billy Ocean”) he proceeded to lead us to the drum shop where they make the drums. We head over to a row where there are lots of small, cramped wooden shacks and sat down on long low benches. Valerie and I were handed jimbas (sp?) the large drums, and Erin proceeded to video record us as we drummed, sang, and danced for about 40 minutes with about 10 locals guys. The longer we played, the more attention we attracted, and eventually there was a crowd of about 20 people there, watching or participating, (including the guy who had followed us around all afternoon with a batch of wall hangings that we had considered buying). It was the first time I really felt happy in Ghana.