The iphone was continually out of service.  The maps made no sense.  My spirit was crumbling in the dreary mist of the hills of Iowa, where the road opened up into folds of green as far as the eye could see, so I stopped at the next junction and asked for directions.

I was wearing gym shorts—something I rarely do—and they got plenty of strange looks from the cadre of motorcyclists hanging outside of some scummy roadside tavern.

The clerk in the gas station had no idea where Dyersville was, nor had she heard of the phantom Route 358, which was supposed to slash through these hills and into the heart of Iowa farming land.

But when I said I was gunning for the Field of Dreams, a trucker perked up and told me to take the road by the river south; so I did, and I guess that made all the difference.

An hour later, the landscape gave way to rolling fields of corn and the gray drizzle that had been lingering for hours ceased.  The smooth country roads were dotted with little except silos and the occasional bearded Amish farmer in a horse-drawn buggy.

At 4:30, I roared into town.  Dyersville was about as small-town America as it gets, except for the stunning Roman Catholic basilica that shot up like a giant beanstalk next to its main thoroughfare.

A rural hamlet of approximately 4,000, it was known for years as the “Farm Toy Capital of the World.” Of course, that all changed in 1989, when Kevin Costner and a Hollywood movie crew swept into town to film the popular sports movie “Field of Dreams.”

The screenplay, based off the novel “Shoeless Joe” by W.P. Kinsella, called for a baseball field carved out of a cornfield—in addition to a healthy dose of magical realism.

In the Lansing family farm, the crew found what they were looking for and spent 14 weeks filming the movie over the summer.

Twenty years later, the field that spawned visions of the ghosts of baseball yore still stands, cornfield and all, and according to the Lansings approximately 65,000 visitors come from across the world to visit the site free of charge each year.

What are they looking for?’

Ghosts? God? Baseball?

Or, maybe that sweet, simple urge that Terence Mann, a 60s-era writer played by James Earl Jones, described in the film’s penultimate scene, right before the camera panned out on thousands of headlights heading down the lonely country road that abuts the farm.

A nostalgic urge, a pilgrimage for purity, a need Mann said would drive unsuspecting hordes to Iowa and to Kinsella’s door:

“They will come up your driveway as innocent as children longing for the past. It will be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they will have to brush them away from their faces….this field, this game, is a part of our past, it reminds us of all that was once good and could be again.”

When I walked across the foul lines, I couldn’t help but feel infected by the aura, catapulted back to little league.  Those forever-ago summer days, so pure and simple, when the all the world’s troubles and triumphs existed in the spiral of a four-seam fastball or a lazy pop fly.

Half of the field was doused in sunshine and the other half cloaked in ominous grey, with the dividing line somewhere in center field.  I jogged out into the outfield and, just as Kevin Costner had done twenty years ago, parted the leaves and strolled into the cornstalks.

Then back out, to lie on the neatly-manicured grass and listen to the wind rustle the leaves and watch those surrounding me.

A father hurled deep, soaring fly balls to his son, who made leaping catches, occasionally diving into the crops.

A pair of middle-age sisters stood over the bleachers and excitedly pointed out the “Ray loves Annie” carving that remained from the film over twenty years ago.

A youngster, no more than six or seven, furiously chugged around the bases as his parents videotaped him from home plate.

A college-aged couple rolled like lazy dogs across the left field foul line, caressing each other lovingly.

Yet having arrived without a ball or glove, I felt like an ill-equipped stranger in my own reverie.  How could I come to the Field of Dreams and not have a catch myself?

Then, in cinematic fashion, an errant toss dribbled toward my leg.  I went cold. Fate had smiled on me.

I hadn’t thrown a baseball in years, but with a fat grin slung the ball toward the oversized mitt of a ten-year old, where it smacked upon the leather successfully. I felt a surge of the most unadulterated happiness I could imagine.

In the aftermath, I sat paralyzed on the bleachers in the spiting rain, as the wind swept the water sideways and the remaining occupants of the field walked begrudgingly to their cars.  Part of the outfield remained illuminated by the sun, a rogue piece of landscape combating the weather.

There was nothing to do, except reflect on how in an America where few icons remain sacred, the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa feels unremittingly joyous and pure.

At 6 p.m, I left and drove into town, where I ate the All-American special (meatloaf and potatoes) at the only restaurant I could find.  Then, back to Minneapolis to catch a red-eye flight the next day

It was announced a week later that the Lansing’s were putting up the farm and the baseball diamond for sale, at a price of $5.4 million.

While some interested buyers have professed a desire to keep the field intact, others are considering transforming it into commercial real-estate, such as a hotel or a waterpark.

Even in today’s America, I can think of few things more sacrilegious.

Brando during Streetcar Named Desire

New Orleans, La.–In order to obtain the role of Stanley Kowalski in  “Streetcar Named Desire,”  Marlon Brando drove to playwright Tennessee Williams’ summer home in Provincetown, Mass. to personally audition.  It’s reasonable to assume that if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have landed the part, therefore depriving the American cinema of one of the most violently sensual performances in its history.  More importantly, if Brando hadn’t made the drive to Provincetown, I wouldn’t be in the midst of this drunken frenzy in Jackson Square, New Orleans, stuffed into a V-neck T-shirt and summoning every ounce of machismo my body holds toward my vocal chords, in the hopes that at my most primal, a panel of strangers think that I resemble a young, gilded Brando.

But what about this dipsomaniac next to me?  Why is he staring so serenely into the clear, blue sky above?  He has a gut, a chest full of wild, thick, black hair, and a mug that shows me he’s probably 40 years old.    Is he channeling his inner Brando?

And what about this mime who just spilled Natural Ice on my jeans?  He’s spray-painted himself gold.  I wish he’d stop standing so close to me while he’s speaking.  Shouldn’t he be refraining from conversation anyway?

And my good friend Tom Burwell–who has inexplicably worn a white V-neck as well–making us appear like two castaways from an S.E. Hinton novel who ran smack-dab into a mob of Stella-yellers while fleeing the Fuzz

Yes, it’s a motley crew, 25 wild-eyed aspiring Brando’s, all of whom have convened  on this sunny April day to participate in the annual Stella-yelling contest, the last event of the week-long Tennessee Williams Festival.

When we signed up there were only a handful of people congregated around the balcony on the south side of Jackson Square, but now, fifteen minutes later, the crowd has engorged to hundreds and atop the balcony perch the video cameras of the local news.

It’s a terrifying feeling.  I have never done any acting before.  At least not that I remember.  I clutch my number, 14, tightly in a fist and watch as participants begin to make their way into the performance ring that has been cleared beneath the balcony.

Stella arrives. Stella doesn’t look like Stella from the movie.  She’s older and saucier, but somehow that feels right.

I begin to think there’s a whole pathos to Brando that’s crucial to nailing a good “Stella.” I ruminate on this insight as the crooning begins.  You can just think of Brando as the alpha-male, super-cool, tough-guy he was in his earlier days, I think.  That won’t give you the right scream.

You have to think about Colonel Kurtz  as well.  You have to think about “The Horror.” You have to think about decay.  About Brando dying at 80 weighing 300 pounds.

It is the mime’s turn.  He doesn’t say anything, just pantomimes a scream.  I hate this mime.

You have to realize that regardless of the fact that it doesn’t get any more iconic than Stanley Kowalski, drunk, desperate and drenched, on his knees, with his shirt torn to shreds, screaming for Stella, that it’s futile to attempt to reproduce that yell.

You’ll always fail.  You’ll be lamer than a silent mime painted gold.

Don’t scream for Stella, I think to myself as I push through the crowd and into the circle, scream for Brando instead.

It’s silent inside with the oval crowd ensconcing me.  I feel like I’m  inside of a whale’s stomach. There is nothing but white noise.  The blood flows through my body in violent cascades.  I hate this mime so much.  I find his black eyes in the crowd submerged in gold.  I stare at those eyes.

I stare at those eyes.  And I yell.

Props to PSF ( and Chico across the way) for the film below.

But New Year’s Eve, for some freakish reason, sits in a category all by itself.  It seems to be the one night that people really act freely, conducting themselves with the reckless whimsy of sailors with a sole evening in port. It is less of a celebration and more of a ritualistic cleansing, which  may be due to the fact that at least subconsciously one can attribute everything that happens on New Year’s Eve to “last year.”

This, along with a number of other reasons, is probably why I haven’t had one bad New Year’s Eve in the last decade. Rarely, if ever, do I make any sort of elaborate plan for New Year’s and 50% of the time I have no plans at all. On many occasions, the night has started out languidly and I have wondered if the streak would die, but it never has.  Yet this year, my yuletide felicity was threatened by an adversary so grotesquely powerful and omnipresent that it would make even Dick Clark cringe.  It was the only force, outside of the police, which had the clout to isolate me from everyone I know and stuff me into a pocket of self-reflection where I stumbled helplessly throughout the streets like a lost dog.

Of course, I am talking about my Iphone.

The Iphone and the corresponding meteoric rise in “smart phones” is arguably the most influential development of the last decade.  It’s become ubiquitous and ordinary at such a breakneck speed that it’s shocking to think that three years ago you were novel (possibly even cool) for having an Iphone.  In my life, owning the Iphone has changed a number of things, the most important of which are that (a) I can settle any trivial argument instantly and (b) I never have to ask for directions.  It is also an incredible device for looking preoccupied and vaguely important in situations that are socially awkward (mostly election day parties).

But there is a downside to so much technological privilege: dependency.

There are now people in this world who have become incapable of even simple navigational skills without a digital map accompanying them.  Furthermore, there are people who appear to be unable to experience any part of human existence without translating it to the rest of the universe via Twitter.  But, to be honest, most of these people likely had serious life problems before they bought Iphones.

Fundamentally, the Iphone is just an extension of the cell phone and the home phone as it simply makes it so much easier to communicate in and navigate the world and, when it is occasionally unavailable, makes the world seem like an impossibly complicated place.

This is what happened to me on News Year’s Eve in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana, when AT&T users (the only company to service the Iphone) congregated in such mass that for two hours nobody with an Iphone had service.  Thousands were stranded and transformed into refugees of the digital world. Lost in transit between groups of friends, I walked down the Riverwalk, slaloming between clots of revelers and facing the fact that I might spend the entire night alone.

I have been alone a lot this year.  I have been alone on three different continents and in a dozen countries and I have not minded at all.  But nobody wants to be alone on New Year’s Eve, when the ball or the baby or some piece of illuminated machinery drops from the heavens and drunken single people under thirty wonder which borderline unattractive person they’ll regret making out with.

Of course, the Riverwalk was flush with interesting things to see.  There were white people and black people and a number of people from Florida and Ohio (teams who played in the Sugar Bowl) and a multitude of tough-looking teenagers wearing wife-beaters and flannel and drinking malt liquor out of water bottles.  There was an excess of cleavage, an excess of knee-high black boots, a scarcity of kazoos that almost caused a fistfight, and an odd number of people who appeared to be suffering the same fate of Iphonelessness as me.

The baby fell, the fireworks exploded, the protracted makeout sessions climaxed and a number of people from Ohio attempted to drive down pedestrian walkways in their mini-vans.  It was 2010, a new year and a new decade.  My phone reception picked up within minutes and I was soon reunited with a pack of friends, many of whom had spent the last two hours floundering in the same state of abject loneliness.

We were filled with a desperate energy–a frenzy incited by isolation and cemented by the compulsion that we had dodged a bullet and needed to make up for lost time. I gestured feverishly, explaining my plight, while a friend answered a build-up of text messages. As he tapped away, he whirled toward me and his phone careened off my fingers, into the air, and then onto the cement with a thud.  The LCD screen was cracked like a glass spider web.

I was strangely jealous of the carnage.  In fact, at my basest I wished I had broken my own phone.  This feeling–the idea of hating the evolution of technology simply because it breeds dependency–is likely something one could only experience in the most recent millennium.  I doubt that in 1920 anyone whined about the nuisance of “having to do everything with the lights on” and forgetting how to work under candlelight.  Although maybe I’m wrong.  I simply know that the idea of living  without a phone that can track my progress toward a 7-11 with a light blue GPS ball feels boring and primitive regardless of how pathetic it is, which is probably why I resisted the temptation to smash mine next to my friend’s.

Instead, we shrugged, picked up the pieces and walked on happily to a party featuring a giant tree house, which I didn’t leave until 7 a.m.   Thus,  my streak of epic New Years continued (three in a row, since I’ve had my Iphone).

A boy rows a skiff down a flooded street in Rizal Province, Philippines

I was sitting in my hotel room in Macau, when a newsflash came across the television about catastrophic flooding in the Philippines.  Provinces outside Manila had been ravaged by another typhoon–the third in the last month–causing a number of low-lying areas to be inundated with water. A waterborne illness called leptospirosis was also ravaging the affected areas.  I wanted to see how people coped in a world overrun by water, so I booked a ticket the next day.

I flew into Manila and reserved a hotel room in Quezon City to situate myself closer to the flooded provinces.  I arrived at dark by bus.  It was a confounding place to be dropped off after a long day of travel.  The streets were teeming with people and bright silver jeeps (called Jeepneys), which were spray-painted with exotic designs and blared music.  This was public transport, I was told.

My hotel was close to the bus station, but to reach it I needed to climb an elevated footbridge that hung over the crowded avenue.  The steps were dark, and at the top I almost slammed into a legless man who was sitting in the middle of the walkway.  His head was hung downward, his eyes facing the ground.  His right arm was outstretched and held a paper cup full of change and I dropped a coin in it–though, when it plinked against the others, he didn’t budge.

A blind man was playing a muddy, yet surprisingly sound version of Eric Clapton’s Layla a few feet down, with a sign hung around his neck describing his plight.  I weaved around him, bypassed a beckoning prostitute and hustled down the stairs of the footbridge and into my adjacent hotel.

The next morning, I met with the OXFAM relief team that was working in the Rizal provinces, where most of the flooding had taken place. The first storm, they informed me, had been Ketsana, and it had caused most of the damage.  The flood refugees numbered in the thousands.  They had been evacuated to a number of shelters, but in the following storms, many of those shelters had been flooded as well.

The cause of the flood wasn’t just nature; but man, too.  Most of the victims were squatters who had settled in areas on the border of various tributaries.  Their refuse had gradually clogged water passages, preventing the flood waters from draining properly.

I went to Rizal Province later that day and saw the flooded neighborhoods with my own eyes.  The streets had become canals, and taxi drivers congregated in a circle offering a number of homemade skiffs for transportation. The main evacuation center was a hub of activity, but had taken on approximately a foot of water, which residents splashed through.

I hired one of the boatmen and proceeded through the neighborhood.  It was mostly deserted–the water neck-deep in some spots–but I did spy one couple napping on top of their home.  They had managed to set up a pair of functioning speakers, and Michael Jackson ballads drifted through the air.  Many of the other residents shared a surprisingly jovial attitude–especially the children, who swam playfully in the disease-ridden water.

One of the converted evacuation centers was a Presbyterian church, run by Korean native Armando Guiraldo. Guiraldo told me the church was housing approximately 50 families.  “We are sad because our homes were destroyed, but we are happy because we have so much community relief,” he said, adding that he still holds church service every Sunday.

Relief workers noted that the neighborhood had extremely strong communal ties and the cohesiveness was partly responsible for the high spirits, but even they expressed surprise at the peaceful and positive attitude of residents.  Inside Guiraldo’s church, children giggled and played soccer, while mother’s hung laundry and prepared food. There was no vibration of panic, none of the wild fear one would expect to accompany the destruction of homes.  People had simply made an adjustment–as radical as it may sound–from living on dry to land to living in a flood zone. Even the stray dogs, who sunned themselves on narrow planks of wood, looked perfectly at home.

For more images of flooded areas in the Philippines, check out the photo gallery.

The Macau Skyline

Macau–Macau is a special administrative district located 40 miles from the coast of Hong Kong. It’s a former Portuguese colony, currently controlled by the Chinese. Like Hong Kong, it enjoys considerable independence. There is no gambling on the Chinese mainland, but there are 18 casinos in Macau. There is more gambling than any city in the world, including Las Vegas.

I went there to play Texas Hold Em. I’d yet to cash in on the American Dream, so I figured I’d give it a whirl on the other side of the globe. The slogan for Macau, as advertised on countless tourist buses and signs, is The City of Dreams. But what sort of dream is Macau trying to realize?

The peninsula–where most of the population resides–is a schizophrenic place, with two different identities wrestling each other for control. You can experience the contrast most vividly at dawn. My first morning, I woke up freakishly early and took a jaunt to a park above my hotel. A number of newly paved running trails weaved through the woods. There were fountains and park benches alongside congregations of sage-looking Chinese men performing Tai Chi.

As I navigated my way upwards in elevation, I reached Guia lighthouse, formerly used by the Portuguese to defend the city from invaders. From there, I could see the whole peninsula; it looked like two worlds smashed into one. In the foreground sat rows of narrow avenues crowded with dilapidated apartments, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, laundrymats, spice stores and other local businesses. In the distance, towering casinos shot into the air like gilded geysers and brandished huge, illuminated signs beckoning patrons.

A dawn later, as the first rays of sunshine began to illuminate the city, I was inside the gambling maw, seated at the poker table at the Grand Lisboa Casino. I had intended to leave hours earlier, but around three a.m. two Chinese men wearing outlandish sunglasses and designer shirts had plopped down at my table with a 50,000 Hong Kong Dollar marker.

“Those guys are junket,” a British expat said to me.
“What’s the junket?”
“Most Chinese high rollers take out a loan with loan sharks in Macau. If they lose it, guys like that track them down in the mainland and either collect or machete their heads off. ”

He added that the Junket were notorious for being extremely aggressive poker players. Sure enough, within five minutes of arriving at the table, they were stacking off with marginal hands and immediately reloading. They bet with the body language of men who use money as power. They didn’t slide their chips into pots; they picked them up in a single column and slammed them on the felt.

The other players at the table became unnerved by their presence. They were either intimidated by their strong bets, or induced into calling with terrible hands by the allure of breaking them for a big pot. Soon, the junket duo was rolling up big stacks. Then, a man sat down at the table, who I will never forget.

He was broad-shouldered with sandy, brown hair and a looseness in his movements that signaled a modest, yet intimidating confidence. He was silent and issued no greetings upon arriving, but simply bought in for the maximum. Then, from a plastic bag sitting next to him, he pulled out a pair of sunglasses and a large straw Vietnamese peasant hat. There was a chorus of laughter at the table, but the stranger’s lips didn’t even crack a smile.

Two hours later, I trailed him out of the casino into the brutal heat of the early morning sun. He had broken the junket–taken all their money with shocking ease– and sent them fleeing to the Baccarat table. He had not spoken a word the entire time. He was an enigma–a silent assassin–and as he left, his arms weighed down with chips, I dashed after him, only to watch him tip his hat to me as he peeled away on the back of a silver Kawasaki.

A tortured passenger awaits his fate in Mumbai

We were sprawled on benches, chairs and countertops in a restaurant called Celebrations.  There were fifteen of us from a half-dozen countries.  Some had resigned themselves to fate and drifted into slumber, but it was a painful sleep.  Their bodies were twisted and stuffed into agonizing positions to fit onto a bench or a chair.  A few stalwarts, including myself, were drinking at the bar and getting angrier by the minute.  We wanted blood.   We wanted the blood of a man who promised us salvation and then ripped it away.

Our flight from London to Mumbai had been delayed when a passenger suffered a heart attack, forcing us to land in Budapest.  For this reason, we arrived around midnight and missed our connection to Hong Kong. Jet Airways officials showed no sign of concern.  They simply herded us into a restaurant and explained that there were no flights to Hong Kong until midnight tomorrow.  We would have to wait in the airport for twenty-four hours, because Indian immigration would not grant us one-day visas to stay in a hotel.  We would not receive any compensation.  We would not even be allowed in the fancy lounge with the comfortable chairs and wireless Internet

Of course, it didn’t happen exactly like that.  It wasn’t one swoop of bad news, but a long protracted drama in which we were kept in the dark as much as possible, until the gory truth had to be revealed.  At first, we knew nothing. Then, the first rumors of the delay crept in.  After that, we heard about the problems with immigration.  We worked ourselves into frenzy, speculating on our future, until a customer service agent finally descended into the restaurant and delivered the news.

The crowd was rabid.  The agent had the appearance of a human being, but her unflinching robotics made me question if she was perhaps a mirage.  As she stood, reiterating her sentence, I snuck behind her and poked her gently in the fold of her bicep.  Her flesh felt squishy and real, yet she didn’t react to my prodding.

After she departed, they fed us, but we continued to be charged mercilessly for beer.  Then, around 6 a.m., those still awake began to buzz with the unmistakable hum of rumor.  I poked my head into a group and found out there was a flight to Bangkok in two hours. You could go there and fly to Hong Kong, if you wanted.  My cohort and I didn’t care about Hong Kong anymore.  We had no business there.  Bangkok would work fine.

I located the agent just outside of the restaurant, huddled conspiratorially with three or four other passengers.  They weren’t friendly to my intrusion, as seats were limited, but after a bit of finagling I arranged  two tickets.  The agent left and said he would be back in an hour.  We would be spared.

We went to the bar and toasted our good luck. We finished a round and nervously ordered another, followed by one more.  Then, the terror struck.  No one had wanted to comment on what was happening, as if pronouncing the obvious would make it more real, but finally an Englishman crumbled onto the bar, clasped his hands over his face and violently cursed the agent. “That prick; he’s not coming back,” he said.

We couldn’t find him; they wouldn’t let us past security.  We wondered if he had done it just for the sick fun of watching us squirm.  But it didn’t matter.  It all quickly became a blur.

I slumped onto a couch and oscillated back and forth between consciousnesses like a pinball.  The restaurant filled up and the bright lights and clatter of dishes and conversation made it impossible to sleep.  I was kicked out of the VIP lounge twice, maybe three times.  Finally, I broke down and handed over my credit card.  The price didn’t matter; I just wanted one of those black leather recliners.  I would have given my life for it.  I had been debased beyond the point of recognition.

The Jet Airways officials returned to Celebrations restaurant around six p.m. the next day.  They led us, like tranquilized dogs, through a maze of security checks and luggage claims before finally shoving us onto a plane.  They are, by far, the coldest, most brutal individuals, I have ever encountered.  It seems unfortunate that they have chosen the airline business as their base of operations.  It would be much more appropriate if they were employed as enforcers in a Gestapo.  I would prefer to be waterboarded and have my genitals mangled by electric shock than ever fly their airline again.

This is the first of a number of posts I’ll be writing about my travels in Asia.  Check back for more articles or read  my previous posts on West Africa.

Kunati, an Accra art vendor.

My last day in Accra.  I’ve been here for three months.  In twelve hours, I’ll be on a plane to Germany.  I eat wachi for breakfast.  It costs a quarter.  It’s a spicy mixture of spaghetti, beans and rice.  I used to hate it.  Now I eat it everyday. I’ll miss it big time.

I jump in a sweaty tro-tro and head to Osu, where I meet up with my friends in the vacant lot they live in.  It is the  site of a hotel that was previously demolished.  There’s a huge steel foundation and a wall.  The wall is covered in graffiti.  There are  portraits of Bob Marley, Helle Sellaise, Kwame Nkrumah and Barack Obama drawn on it. There are pictures of lions and a map of Burkina Faso and a bunch of writing in different languages and dialects that I can’t understand.  There is only one phrase in English.

Art is a mission,
He reminded his fellow artist,
Not a competition,
Some men use the
Art to cause confusion

To get into the lot, you have to go through a huge steel gate.  When I enter, Daoma, Kunati and Baba are sitting in the corner.  They know it’s my last day.  They give me a Goni (an African guitar), with my name carved in it.  Daoma wears a necklace with a huge Africa medallion and he ties it around my neck.  Kunati gives me a handful of wood carvings.

I give them clothes–all of the clothes I brought, but don’t care about any more. A glorious purge; I give them anything I haven’t worn at least five times in the last month. It’s like Christmas.  They are fighting over a lime-green Hilfiger shirt.  Kunati is strutting  around in a pair of grey slacks.  Baba’s got my socks on. I’m wearing more jewelry than a Hollywood starlet.

What do you do in a vacant lot with your friends on your last afternoon in Africa?

You drink beers, play drums and freestyle rap.

Baba tells me his DJ name is Baba Wisdom.  Kunati says he doesn’t need a DJ name.  “I’m Kunati, that’s who I am,” he thunders.  Kunati raps fast.  He’s a lyrical cyclone.  He raps sitting down on the pavement.  Behind him, the wind blows litter onto a group of mattresses.  One of those mattresses is Kunati’s  He doesn’t rap about that.

Baba provides the rhythm for  Kunati’s rap.  “Bop, Bop, Clack,”  Bop, Bop, Clack.”  Then Baba raps.  He’s sitting in his wheelchair.  It’s slow at first, then picks up speed.  Baba raps in French.  I always thought of French as a feminine language.  Suddenly, it’s not.

Then I rap.  Then the sun sets.

When I wake up it’s 6 a.m. in Frankfurt, Germany and I’m freezing and stumbling drearily across the tarmac into a waiting shuttle bus.  And in the terminal, I chase Carlsbergs with Carlsbergs to try to kill the pressure that blitzkriegs my neck and my shoulders when I see American media pundits gesticulating  on T.V., but I can’t.

“Bop, Bop, Clack.”  Bob Bop CLACK.

For more images of Accra street life, check out the photo gallery.

I will not die here. I am not meant to die here, in the rain, in Togo, tonight.  But if this motorcycle taxi keeps driving at this speed, if this cascade of warm African rain keeps falling, if the sun doesn’t rise soon, if we kill one more round of aperteshie, it  seems inevitable that something bad will happen.  But it doesn’t, so I continue to breathe and we continue to ride on.

My friend Baba is on the backseat of the motorcycle across from me and he’s snapping pictures with my camera.  Baba has polio and he can’t straddle the bike because of it so he positions his legs crossways and howls like a demon as he whooshes by me.  It’s 4 a.m., the streets are dark and vacant, and I’m soaked with rain.  There’s a memorial, or a statue, or some sort of icon in the middle of the city and we pull up to it and snap twenty out-of-focus pictures and then fly off, and as usual I’m in the dark about where we’re going but that’s fine.

These motorcycle taxi drivers have quickly become our best friends.  We hit bar after bar after bar with them and my wallet becomes lighter and my mind moves faster and now I want the bike to fly and NOW I want the bike to burn the asphalt off the road!

On the back of this bike, I know that at any second we could hit a slick and go careening into the blackness of the shoulder and my life would end, and I enjoy that fear.  Thoreau dug into the marrow of life in a shack in Concord, but he should have tried a motorcycle in Togo and I’m dripping with exhilaration and Jesus this rain is really starting to come down hard.

We slam to a halt in the middle of the street.  The night freezes.  I tumble off my bike and Baba does too, but somehow neither of us are hurt.  Instead we just laugh like we’re insane and then we’re back on again and he howls and I howl and the drivers howl and our yawps boom over the engines and I feel like I’m riding into battle.

A motorcycle taxi driver pours moonshine in Lome, Togo

There is only one taxi driver who wears a helmet, which is why I picked him, because I assumed that he was the safest, and sure enough he keeps that helmet on all night while he out-drinks everyone.  And he leads us, like a pack of lions, through the fog and back to his house. There I meet his mother who is just waking up to begin the day.  Her business is selling moonshine.  My man with the helmet takes out bottle after bottle and pours and pours. “Do you sleep with that helmet on?” I crow.

My man with the helmet takes me home at dawn.  Lome looks woebegone in the morning, like a sickly child.  I want to go to the beach–”Let’s swim I shout!”- but instead we piddle back to the hotel and I climb into bed where I sleep four abreast with strangers.

When I wake up at noon, I’m still dead drunk and everyone else is gone. The night clings to my mind like a strange reverie; I know it happened, but I don’t know how and why.  I know I loved it, but I’m not sure if I’m proud or frightened by that fact.  I look at the pictures on my camera and they make me shiver.

For more pictures of nightlife in Togo, check out the photo gallery.

A body contortionist in Lome, Togo

My friend Baba says we should go to a bar called Panini because it’s the best Lome has to offer.  Lome sits on the ocean in the West African nation of Togo.  It’s a broken city, full of huge decaying buildings that point to a much rosier past.  Its main road is a long sweeping boulevard that abuts the oceanfront and is populated mostly by motorcycle taxis.  The drivers drink heavily on weekends, and wrecks are prevalent.

We charter four motorcycle taxis to the bar.  The place is packed.  The main attraction is dancing, and throngs of people clog the dirt street.  Prostitutes, most of whom are well under age, dominate the dance floor.  Two or three of them wiggle into the center at a time and gyrate wildly.  Their hips explode like cannons, from angles that seem inhuman, and with an unabashed sexuality–a fierce, wild lasciviousness that frenzies the bar.  At one point, a fat hooker bends over and displays her massive ass while her companion slams her pelvis into it.

When they finish dancing, they collapse in adolescent laughter and mingle about, chatting.  They’re just girls again, and it dawns on me, suddenly, that if it wasn’t for the ass-hugging hot pants, the massive gold hoop earrings and the thick lip-gloss, they could be at a junior high dance.

Other people are dancing, but no one dares to lay claim to the dirt road, which is acting as the main stage, until a fat man in grey sweat pants sidles by.  His eyes are coal-black, vacant and wild–the eyes of a man barely clinging to his mind.  The hookers clear a space and he swivels his hips and jiggles the fat of his gut beneath a stained white undershirt.  The crowd whoops and cheers.  They approve.

A prostitute at a bar in Lome, Togo

The jiggler has one other move, which involves grasping the drawstring on his pants and pulling it to his mouth like a microphone, and when he does this, everyone cackles, especially the hookers, who shower him with small change and scream for him to “Dance, dance, dance!”  Someone hands him a half-finished beer and he swigs it down.  He doesn’t stop dancing while he drinks, and the beer spills from the corner of his mouth and tumbles down his hairy neck and onto his shirt.

The most spectacular performance comes from a body contortionist, who suddenly appears next to me with both of his legs over his head.  He then hops, like a toad, across the road, holding this freakish posture.  I’m impressed and pay him a dollar, but no one  else is interested.  When he tries to hop back onto his chair, a security guard pulls it out from underneath him. Everyone laughs riotously and minutes later the fat man in the grey sweat pants is back jiggling his gut again by popular demand.

Baba says we should leave and go to another bar, so we stand and walk toward the roadside, but on our way out chaos erupts.  A scuffle has ensued, apparently among drunken friends, and the security guard pulls out a giant cane and menaces the participants.  At the same time, the hookers eye me leaving–the only white man in the bar–and come rushing over, their long acrylic nails groping at my arms and beneath my belt.  We round up four motorcycles on the quick and I peel the girls off me, but before we pull out of the traffic, I spy a naked man recumbent on the ground.

He is contorted into the fetal position on a patch of mud next to an open sewer.  His head is partially obstructed by the tires of a truck, but his body is visible, along with his genitals, which are pinned between his legs and twisted in a strange way.   I think he might be dead, but then see his arm twitch.  No one seems concerned, and the girls resume their shimmying feet away from his head.

For more pictures of nightlife in Lome, check out the photo gallery.

]]> http://www.danlawton.com/2009/11/01/a-scene-from-a-bar-in-lome/feed/ 0 http://www.danlawton.com/2009/10/19/strung-out-on-my-balcony-in-accra/ http://www.danlawton.com/2009/10/19/strung-out-on-my-balcony-in-accra/#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:38:45 +0000 Dan Lawton http://www.danlawton.com/?p=510 This is the last of six posts I have written about the witch camps of Northern Ghana. You can find additional posts below.

“When will you file your story?” Cephus asks.
“Soon, it will happen soon.”
“It is about witches, right?”
“Yes, witches and wizards.”
“Where did you see wizards?”
“In Yendi.”

Cephus is the managing editor of The Mail, the newspaper I work for and he is calling me about the witch article, which has yet to be started.   Not only have I yet to start it, but none of the notes have been transcribed.  They are all scribbled in my tattered yellow notebook, which sits in the rucksack below my bed.  The only thing I have looked at so far are the pictures.

It has been two weeks since I left Gambaga and I have spent most of the time on my balcony.  It’s a private balcony,  attached to my massive ocean-side room, all of which costs me about six dollars a night.  My guesthouse is managed by a woman named Perpetual, but she is currently on vacation, so most of my interaction is with her sister Sawah.

Today Sawah is doing my laundry and I am watching intently from my balcony.  The pools of flesh around her elbow flap as she scrubs my jeans.  She wrings the soap from my underwear with the force of her palms.   She hangs my light-blue dress shirts from the line with care and they bounce, ever so gently, as the wind whips past the beach, the palm trees and the stone gazebo in the yard.

Today, Sawah does my laundry.  But most days, she spends her time sitting with a look of abject hopelessness on the stairs.  The stairs face a wall.  She could easily face the ocean, which bursts in torrents of white against the huge black rocks on the beach, but instead she faces the wall.

I try to write in the late afternoon, as the sun hemorrhages over the water in hues of purple and orange, but I can’t produce a word.  I want to get a drink with Sawah and stare at the wall, but Sawah never drinks in public–she stumbles and slurs in public, but she only imbibes alone–so I go to the bar by myself, and then walk along the beach through the piles of litter that dot the sand.  My thoughts begin to blur and pool.  They run in jagged, uneven lines, like a glass of spilt water on a dirt floor.  Mostly, I am awash in images– Polaroid pictures flipping through my brain.

I see Simon at dinner, eating voraciously, confiding his “secret” belief in the specious nature of the supernatural, licking the frothy head of a Guinness; the Gambaranna, cloaked in his flowing white tunic, staring ahead with his soft brown eyes, as I slip money under his rug; the Juju man, stonewalling me with his obstinate guru bullshit, mocking my questions in his tiny shack full of antiquated weaponry and voodoo charms; the guys at the bar laughing at the idea that witches may not exist; the youthful organizer, Ernest Cudjoe, telling me in his perfectly polished English, “It’s not up to me to decide who is a witch or not;” Magaji –the guilty witch–confessing spiritual murder listlessly with her dead gray eyes.

I see a copy of The Crucible in my hand in high school, a fantastical play about something that happened in America four hundred years ago and something that is happening in Africa right now. “Did you hear about the witch that flew into Nungua the other day on a broomstick without clothes on?” I recall a friend asking me.  ”RITUAL MURDER TAKES ANOTHER VICTIM,” a newspaper headline proclaims. “BOYS TURNED INTO SNAKES FOR BLOOD MONEY,” another shouts.  I fixate on the dent in the forehead of the wizard in Yendi; the nail hole looms large in mind.

I want to write an op-ed, like I do in America whenever something offends me.  In America, I can call people out, I can  castigate them if I think they’re false or hypocritical, but in Africa my voice is so small.  I want to say that Northern Ghana is in the Stone Age and that these beliefs retard development, democracy and human rights, but my pulpit is so flimsy here. And who would ever feel sympathy for a witch?  And even those who might–like Simon–still don’t believe that maybe these men and women aren’t witches at all.

A deluge of pity hits me, followed by a breathless moment in which all I can hear is the mortar-like pounding of the waves.  Pop, pop, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! The rocks take their beating peacefully.  The tide crests, the sun fades, and a violent bout of loneliness descends upon me in its wake.   It hurts more than usual this time.

Visit the Gambaga archive for all the posts in this series or check out the photo gallery for more images from the witch camps of North Ghana.