30 March, 2009
Fragments
Sheyi Adebayor’s thickly muscled frame is inclined towards the ball, which like the crowd, impatiently awaits the inevitable. We can all trace the path the ball will take, off the golden foot, past the helpless keeper, into the loving embrace of the net. A penalty kick for Africa’s 2008 Balon d’Or winner? The fact that we are even bothering with the formality is a bit ludicrous. The Togolese fans hundreds thick around me have stopped waiting. They are celebrating as if the goal is scored, the game is won, and the Hawks’ ticket to the 2010 World Cup is already punched. I don’t blame them. An upset is in the making. The Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, the top-ranked football team on the continent, have no answers for Togo’s defense. And now with Adebayor lining up his penalty kick, they look resigned to defeat.
The wheels of Fate start to turn. Adebayor is churning towards the ball, towards immortality. A stutter step freezes the goalie. A thousand breaths held. The strike. The second look. The ball is wide, very wide. It now bounces limply against the fiberglass barrier which bravely dams the disappointment of a nation from washing away its hero. I let a reference to the Mighty Casey slip. No one is listening.
The Great One for his part is unshaken, unshakeable. He turns his back on the goal, the ball, the imperfection and walks non-chalantly towards the mid-field, a jilted lover majestic in ambivalence. He has no fear for the victory. Or for his reputation. He has already scored the match’s only goal. His work was finished after the 15th minute. A teammate, lacking such divine confidence, has collapsed to his knees in front of the goal, a bit melodramatically. His head lowers to the ground so that he appears to be bent in submission to the goal.
Six men – five in a horizontal line behind the sixth – are in the same position, knees and forehead to the ground, in submission. They are just outside the stadium. It is half-time, and they are performing the evening prayer. I am looking at them from the stair well of the stadium. I trace a line from their backs to Mecca and back to Accra, to the dull blue ocean which spills out from behind a line of houses a few blocks from the stadium.
Accra is the friend I never wanted. The city is dirty and crowded, and the traffic is perennial. The architecture is forgettable, and there are few green spaces. My opinion of my adopted home further declined after a trip to Abidjan in neighboring Cote d’Ivoire. Abidjan has a lagoon and striking buildings and a je ne sais quoi which may grow from the threat of political instability which hangs over the place or the no-holds barred capitalism that created both the wealth that so enchants me and the threat of political instability which troubles my stomach. No, there is no lagoon in Accra and no air of romance. (Of course, as a man who’s spoken for, I wouldn’t be allowed to breathe such air even if it was on offer.) Instead, there is an infuriating unwillingness of the city’s contradictions to resolve themselves.
Its sense of history for instance. The Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum is a massive, brash structure anchoring the city’s southern edge. Move to the city center and you find yourself getting jostled around Nkrumah Circle. Move a few kilometers further to the north and you reach the Kwame Nkrumah International Airport. No, actually, you reach the Kotoka International Airport, whose namesake toppled Nkrumah in a bloodless coup. After which the people danced in the streets. Accra is Whitman-esque in trumpeting its contradictions.
The Togolese are celebrating with abandon now. The upset is official. Their pilgrimage has been rewarded. I feel my back pocket. My money is still there. I look to my friends. They are taking pictures of themselves wearing serious expressions which bespeak the gravity of the occasion. We join the flood of yellow shirts and French worlds pouring into the dusk.
Back on campus, I’m sitting on a wooden bench at Margaret’s stall: Fear Thou Not Special Beans and Yam. It’s where I buy my beans. And yam. Margaret has left me for the moment to buy some fried plantain which she has run out of but which I require to complete my order of beans. I hear and understand as the guy on the bench behind me tells a newly arrived customer in Twi that she’s left to go and buy plantain. I wait for the surge of pride. It’s not usual that I understand every word in a sentence. It doesn’t come. I feel – a bit tired, like I’ve been staring at a very large and complicated tapestry for the whole day. I comprehend – or pretend I do – bits and pieces. These are my measures of progress, what shows me that I haven’t been here simply popping malaria pills and calling home for the past 8 months. The stray historical allusion comes into focus here, a familiar face emerges from the crowd over there. Not everything is strange anymore.
But I take my beans and wish Margaret good night and know that there has been no progress. She is still a stranger. We still occupy different worlds. None of my dumb smiling has erased that barrier. The only progress is that now with weary eyes I look out with a shade more humility, not expecting to understand, not believing that there is something to understand. I see fragments. Not puzzle pieces or clues to the Secret. Just shards of experience, mostly forgotten.
I am getting my beans on credit because I don’t have exact change. Tomorrow or the next day I will return and pay her. And a few days later, it will be forgotten. I will be forgotten.
The wheels of Fate start to turn. Adebayor is churning towards the ball, towards immortality. A stutter step freezes the goalie. A thousand breaths held. The strike. The second look. The ball is wide, very wide. It now bounces limply against the fiberglass barrier which bravely dams the disappointment of a nation from washing away its hero. I let a reference to the Mighty Casey slip. No one is listening.
The Great One for his part is unshaken, unshakeable. He turns his back on the goal, the ball, the imperfection and walks non-chalantly towards the mid-field, a jilted lover majestic in ambivalence. He has no fear for the victory. Or for his reputation. He has already scored the match’s only goal. His work was finished after the 15th minute. A teammate, lacking such divine confidence, has collapsed to his knees in front of the goal, a bit melodramatically. His head lowers to the ground so that he appears to be bent in submission to the goal.
Six men – five in a horizontal line behind the sixth – are in the same position, knees and forehead to the ground, in submission. They are just outside the stadium. It is half-time, and they are performing the evening prayer. I am looking at them from the stair well of the stadium. I trace a line from their backs to Mecca and back to Accra, to the dull blue ocean which spills out from behind a line of houses a few blocks from the stadium.
Accra is the friend I never wanted. The city is dirty and crowded, and the traffic is perennial. The architecture is forgettable, and there are few green spaces. My opinion of my adopted home further declined after a trip to Abidjan in neighboring Cote d’Ivoire. Abidjan has a lagoon and striking buildings and a je ne sais quoi which may grow from the threat of political instability which hangs over the place or the no-holds barred capitalism that created both the wealth that so enchants me and the threat of political instability which troubles my stomach. No, there is no lagoon in Accra and no air of romance. (Of course, as a man who’s spoken for, I wouldn’t be allowed to breathe such air even if it was on offer.) Instead, there is an infuriating unwillingness of the city’s contradictions to resolve themselves.
Its sense of history for instance. The Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum is a massive, brash structure anchoring the city’s southern edge. Move to the city center and you find yourself getting jostled around Nkrumah Circle. Move a few kilometers further to the north and you reach the Kwame Nkrumah International Airport. No, actually, you reach the Kotoka International Airport, whose namesake toppled Nkrumah in a bloodless coup. After which the people danced in the streets. Accra is Whitman-esque in trumpeting its contradictions.
The Togolese are celebrating with abandon now. The upset is official. Their pilgrimage has been rewarded. I feel my back pocket. My money is still there. I look to my friends. They are taking pictures of themselves wearing serious expressions which bespeak the gravity of the occasion. We join the flood of yellow shirts and French worlds pouring into the dusk.
Back on campus, I’m sitting on a wooden bench at Margaret’s stall: Fear Thou Not Special Beans and Yam. It’s where I buy my beans. And yam. Margaret has left me for the moment to buy some fried plantain which she has run out of but which I require to complete my order of beans. I hear and understand as the guy on the bench behind me tells a newly arrived customer in Twi that she’s left to go and buy plantain. I wait for the surge of pride. It’s not usual that I understand every word in a sentence. It doesn’t come. I feel – a bit tired, like I’ve been staring at a very large and complicated tapestry for the whole day. I comprehend – or pretend I do – bits and pieces. These are my measures of progress, what shows me that I haven’t been here simply popping malaria pills and calling home for the past 8 months. The stray historical allusion comes into focus here, a familiar face emerges from the crowd over there. Not everything is strange anymore.
But I take my beans and wish Margaret good night and know that there has been no progress. She is still a stranger. We still occupy different worlds. None of my dumb smiling has erased that barrier. The only progress is that now with weary eyes I look out with a shade more humility, not expecting to understand, not believing that there is something to understand. I see fragments. Not puzzle pieces or clues to the Secret. Just shards of experience, mostly forgotten.
I am getting my beans on credit because I don’t have exact change. Tomorrow or the next day I will return and pay her. And a few days later, it will be forgotten. I will be forgotten.
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