Guilt Trip - February 21
Posted by Bruce Norris on 3/06/2006So, things go from bad to.. a different kind of bad.
Accra is huge and steaming hot and pretty overwhelming, the most overwhelming part being that, by virtue of it being a big city and by virtue of my sticking out like the sorest of thumbs, I have been subjected to a sort of relentless hustle today. (I should mention that I did leave the grotesque Novotel after one fabulous night; it felt a little like eating an entire cheescake in front of a starving child or something - the contrast between inside and outside was just a little too surreal.) Every street I walk down I meet a new “friend” such as the good friend I just met outside this filthy internet cafe who approached me with all sorts of laudatory comments for my country, how much he loved it, and so forth. I asked, “what country do you think I’m from?” “England?”, he asked. I corrected him and he assured me that his compliments applied equally to the US. In short order it became clear that there was a certain package that I, as his new friend, could carry to America for him…
And that’s about the tenth such encounter I’ve had today. The saddest of all… well, sad for what it says about me, actually, was the young man (and it’s always a young man) named Johnson whom I met yesterday. He trailed me for blocks and blocks, telling me about his gospel singing (Ghana is CRAZY with Christianity) and how he wants to coninue his course of study in… two guesses. Well, of course, in each of these encounters I could just be a hardened, jaded New Yorker by way of Chicago, dulled to the potential beauty of a rare human encounter. Could be. But if so, why did I know so well where it was going? As I turned to the bio-dome, aka the Novotel, he took my hand and requested my email address to help him obtain his US Visa. What would you do? How many different internet scams arise from this part of the world. So, and believe me, I feel like shit about this, completely, but… well, I made up a fake email address. Maybe I just avoided a scam. Maybe. Or the other possibility is that I just deliberately fucked over a poor young man in Africa who was simply looking for a way out. And of course, I’m certain that’s exactly what I did. And as a PS, I ran into him again today and told me how much he looked forward to corresponding.
Tomorrow I’m paying an African man about $150 USD to take me on a private tour of some of the forts and castles from which my ancestors undoubtedly bought and sold some of his ancestors. Feel free to take note of the irony.