AFRICA UNITE? NOT QUITE

The plan was, let's go to Ghana, play the big festival we've got booked, and then ride the wave as things are bound to accelerate from there after we are slapped on the back by every major promoter in the world, dine in style with Rita Marley after our set, and travel like African rock stars for the rest of the month. Well, as we're learning all the time here, there is a new plan born every minute, and it's time for a new plan.

So how was our experience at Africa Unite, the huge Bob Marley birthday celebration that was supposed to anchor our West African tour? Think of it as a meal. To make this dish, start with some stock of a festival so disorganized it makes the worst run hippie festival we've encountered back in the States look like a precisely calibrated military hostage rescue mission. Stir in a helping of several promoters booking their own acts without worrying about coordinating the schedule, and make sure to include a packet of the promoter who had 'officially confirmed' us for the Festival several times being the low man on the totem pole in reality. Add a dollop of our own gullibility in wanting to come to Africa so bad we let go of our normal music business skepticism and forgot the part after 'when something sounds too good to be true...'. Finally, sprinkle a medium sized dollop of rasta politics concerning the only white faces waiting around backstage to perform, and you get Aphrodesia waiting around for 7 hours or so in the African heat and leaving without playing a note.

 In a subject for another, MUCH longer journal entry, the ONLY racial tension we have experienced here thus far has been from Jamaican rastas, first at Labadi Beach where several of them loudly confronted us for taking the stage and Peter and Paul for inviting us onstage, and then again at Africa Unite. By contrast, our large and growing circle of African friends hangs around with us all day, and goes with us into town when we have to conduct business so as to "Beat the price down" and "get us African price", among many other things. We are quite certain these people would jump in front of a tank for us if need be- and we would for them without a second thought. And none of us- save for Napoleon and his Showboyz brothers, who are hardly ever around- have known each other for longer than seven days in our lives. They- Sappho, Annis, Francis, Costudia and all the others- were more upset and angry than we were when we were finally told we would not be performing. Which is not to say all the rastas here-who, African or Jamaican, are very different from other Africans- are like that- at Labadi Beach several came up to us with big smiles, hugs and praise after our set, and we met several wonderful rasta people backstage at the festival. But the hostile subtext from some of them is undeniable.

Still, it is a measure of how well things are going for us here that the experience of sitting around all day and not performing was not the crushing heartbreak it might have been. We are disappointed and pissed off, yes, but we are in fact more annoyed at being told to wait all day rather than just told no right away, and we are more than a little amused at the level of disorganization at a festival featuring such major international acts as Damien Marley, Steel Pulse, Culture, and the rest of the Marley clan (an hour and a half after the scheduled starting time for the first act, the crew is still plugging in monitors and affixing red, green and gold balloons to the front of the stage). But the fact is we have already played for more people than turn out to the festival anyway- at the Art Center on Friday with the Showboyz and Kusun, at Labadi Beach, at La Pirogue Restaurant on Saturday, and especially on Metro TV on Thursday morning, for which we are all constantly being recognized every time we go out and walk around. Our experience has turned out to be completely different than we might have expected, but all of us knew that would be the case anyway. And so at Africa Unite we shrug, put our instruments away, and go buy beers for a dollar and listen to Steel Pulse. The heart palpitations can wait.

SPEAKING AFRICAN

In America, if you are white and talk black you are a jerk, and probably a racist who insults the intelligence of black people with your failed attempt hip ghetto solidarity (unless you're Eminem). Here, you are communicating more effectively. It's called Pidgen English, and it works. For example, if you need to find an Internet Cafe and you say to someone on the street "Excuse me, do you know where I can get online and check my email?", you will likely experience a minute or so of wild gesticulating before the person tells you something you only partly understand. If, on the other hand, you say "I need Internet! Email! Do you know where is this?", the same person will likely immediately say something like "Ah! You take Tro, there, you tell the mate first junction, there, second floor, you see. You understand?" Which means, pack into the minibus (tro tro) with everyone else, tell the money taker guy First Junction stop so he lets you know when you get there, once you're there you'll see an Internet place up on the second floor, where you can post an update on your Internet site for all your American friends to read who will think you're being alternately condescending, a braggart and showoff, completly off base about everything based on their experiences of Africa, or that you are providing the most interesting insights they've ever read. You understand?

AFRICAN CELL PHONES

Buying a cell phone plan- with monthly minutes and nights and weeekend cheaper and etc.- is an idea that may as well be from the moon over here (as one woman put it when we told her about 'nights and weekends'- "Oh, nobody in Africa would call all day during the week then"). It is one of the trillions of ironies of a place as desperately poor as this one that just about everyone here has a cell phone. Of course, these phones rarely work, because everyone buys units for them when they can afford them, which is rarely- at least with anyone we seem to know. The other problem is that everyone's phone is constantly running out of batteries, because charging it requires steady electricity and in our case it would require plugging it into the one outlet in our rooms overnight, which would mean unplugging the fan and trying to sleep, which is NOT an option. To combat this, everyone we know is an expert at taking a cell phone apart, removing the chip inside, and installing it in someone else's phone who has more batteries, units, etc. Before I got here I had never seen this done, and yet here it's routine. An example perhaps, of some pretty ingenius creativity in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Or maybe the whole thing is just one more frustrating example of a system that doesn't work in a country where everything seems to be broken or out of service all the time. Take your pick, and depending on th hour of the day and if we can figure out whose chip is in whose phone calling which phone number, we will agree with you either way.

UPDATE 2/8/06, ACCRA, Ghana
So much to tell and no time to tell it. Everything here happens so fast, the chaos and activity and new agendas for our route and plans swirl around and change every minute like dust kicked up from a packed tro tro on the Teshie-Nungua road we ride home every day. We have a bus, a big coach way fancier than anything we have ever driven in the States. It's going to be a little out of control, but screw it- we're in this giant hand of poker so deep now this is no time to blink and fold. This morning we contacted the Gangbe Brass Band in Benin about playing with them there in Coutounou next week, and we contacted people in Nigeria about playing in Lagos as well. We will see how things shape up. In the meantime, we leave for the north of Ghana tonight, with a crew that looks to number about 25 and includes two drivers and a film crew from the largest TV station in Ghana. It will likely be hard to post any updates for some time given where we are going, but we'll see. Today I am on my way to meet the Afro Queen (her real name) downtown about Nigeria and the Shrine, Zack's cell phone is still ringing off the hook with people interested in producing biodiesel in Ghana who saw us on TV last Thursday, and Rene at La Pirogue wants me to come by so he can give me the names and phone numbers of all the government ministers in Burkina Faso who will come see us if we play there. And it all feels absolutley normal.

Later we will write about how our music is received here, and the businessmen who want to plant jatrofa trees to make biodiesel, and spending all day in a hospital with our friend Asia, who came down with malaria, and going to an Ivory Coast party the night they won their African Cup soccer match against Cameroon, and our incredible new percussionist Alex, and walking around and being invited into chruches to hear the incredible music last Sunday, and so many other things it's a good idea I'm carrying around a notebook and pen with me everywhere I go. And later we will figure out how to upload photos from an African internet cafe too. But that's later, and this is now....