From priestess miracles to chicken tragedies

I can't believe another week has already gone by. The best place to begin is definitely last Sunday afternoon, when the lovely Nathalie and I took a tro-tro to Nima, a suburb of Accra. We were going to meet our friend Enoch, a fellow study abroad student with a slow voice, sharp wit and the subtle, remarkable talent of spinning himself into some beautifully bizarre situations. He led us from the bus stop through the bustling marketplace and into a tiny town where he had met a friend a few weeks ago. His friend, Emmanuel, is a drum maker and Rastafarian who has traveled all over Europe to make drums for and play with famous musicians. As soon as we arrived, he cut up four giant mangoes and two pineapples for all of us and put on some amazing West African music. There was a wedding ceremony outside, and the bride was dressed to the nines, if not to the elevens. Bright red dress, henna all over her hands and feet, a huge aluminum red hat that looked like a giant wheel of cheese and, by your grandfather's whiskers it's true, bright blue lipstick. I'll try to load a picture later this week.

The wedding, which had been going on for three days by the time we got there, had everyone in a jubilant frenzy, dancing and singing with little children weaving in and out of large pots of boiling stews and rice. After watching the celebration for about half an hour or so (I never can tell how long anything lasts here), Emmanuel got all six of us our own tro-tro to watch another ceremony, this one far more curious than the last. We all sat down to what, at first, appeared to be a drumming and dancing circle. As the moments flew by in rhythm and verse, however, we started to slowly notice more peculiar behavior on the part of a handful of people. Several women were scratching and swatting at the air as they danced with troubled expressions on their faces. When they weren't spinning like fast-forward whirling dervishes, they were falling into the arms of women dancing around them, seemingly unconscious for only a few seconds at a time. One woman, dressed all in white, had a beautiful but peculiar kind of swagger, and was pouring water on the ground, then on the women's heads. We learned from Emmanuel that she was a traditional priestess, and that these women were thought by the community to be possessed by evil spirits. When she spoke (in Ewe, sadly), there was pure silence, without a single toddler's mouth open or a twitching thumb on a drum. Then she would begin chanting, the music would swell again, and the women would resume their flailing and fainting. We were taught to dance during these times and given blocks of wood to beat to the rhythms. We never did witness a climax of any kind, because before too long we were whisked away into a colorful temple to sit with the Priest, also in white linens. He fed us all schnapps and advice, a match made in heaven, and told us each to drink our glass in one go, but not without pouring a few drops on the ground first, for the ancestors. Due to vegetarian small-town predicaments, I had barely eaten all day, so the liturgical gulp sent me (along with two or three others) into a slightly bubbly state of rosy-cheeked reverence for the kind-eyed Priest, which may or may not have been his intention. We listened to him talk about global unity, respect for one another and being truthful to the people you love and to yourself. Then, after returning his favor by buying him an even bigger bottle of schnapps down the road, we were shuffled back into our taxis and sent home to dream.

For the sake of tired eyes, I'll post the rest of the week in the next post above.