The drive to Napoleon's village of Binaba takes 20 hours. It's far, though not nearly as far as where that amount of time would
get us back home- when you have to slow down for goats and chickens in the road every few miles and wind your way through
tiny villages you don't exactly cruise at 80 mph the whole way. We arrive at night and are led by moonlight through dried clay
village walls and I sleep in a stone courtyard with chickens scampering on top of my blanket and the cool night air giving me
the best night of sleep I've had this whole trip. We wake in a living museum- walls of clay and stone, thatched roofs framing
charcoal drawings on the walls that look to have been here for tens or hundreds of years. We are a curiosity here, no doubt
about it, the biggest this village has seen in years, maybe ever, and so we are followed everywhere by kids who eye us like
strange new toys, some of whom sleep and live here and some who have walked over from the surrounding villages- all
just groups of huts spread over the same dusty plain. Our bright green 1970's style coach bus pulled up here on the ridge
next to these thatched huts makes quite a sight- it's not futuristic exactly, more like 1976 meeting 1272.
That afternoon we sit beneath the thatched roof in the center of the village- called the Chief's Umbrella, it's pretty much
the best shade around and so the only place the old men and the children of the village sit all day- and Alex teaches us the
kpan logo rhythm, each of us cradling a kpan logo drum and straining to fit our interlocking rhythms into the overall puzzle.
The kids in the village- there are tons of them everywhere- watch us, and I can't begin to imagine what they must be thinking
of us, these white people who arrived in a bright green bus and now hang around in the heat all day playing African drums.
In a tradition for visitors or maybe just to show off for us, Napoleon rides a motorcycle into town and buys us two goats
which he then brings back and slaughters for our meal, their bright red blood running over the cobblestones in what passes
for the village kitchen- really just a space in between thatched huts with an enormous metal pot on one end. Alex skins and
guts the goats and cooks up a huge stew that feeds most of us- that is, it feeds everyone on our bus and some of the
villagers, but not the entire village, many of whom eye us longingly while we huddle next to village walls and gulp down
the sumptuous mix of rice and goat that Alex has cooked. Our amazement at eating what we saw squirming on the back
of a motorcycle not two hours ago and washing it down with hot beer is tempered when Napoleon gathers the children
together under the Chief's Umbrella and attempts to divey up the leftover rice from the pot of stew. A near riot ensues,
with the kids pushing and pulling their way into position to grab a handful of rice and run off into the field to eat it alone.
One child tells me that he will eat half his handful today and sleep with the other half to save for tomorrow.
It leaves a strange taste in our mouth as we pile in the bus and drive a couple villages over to see the local chief.
Nothing here happens without the consent of someone in charge- which perhaps isn't so different from our world, except
that those people here don't wear uniforms and don't work for any government- and our presence in this village is no
different. We are major news- the biggest and maybe most bizarre happening to come here in years- and so of course
must ask permission to be here from the appropriate person. Hence our visit to the local chief, who apparantly is the
chief of several local villages since we have to drive for 20 minutes or so, past several villages which look more or less
like the one we are staying in- to meet him.
We seat ourselves outside his house in a semicircle of plastic chairs and stand as the chief, dressed in a light blue robe,
walks out and sits in front of us with several members of his clan- a translator and a whole row of other men who sit
facing us and don't say a word. Napoleon kneels in front of the him and asks his permission for us to be in his land-
one of the village women who has piled onto the bus with us translates in whispers for me- but the chief seems more
interested in the fact that we have been on his turf since last night and have only come to see him now. Napoleon
explains that we got in late last night and couldn't make it over until just now, and though I don't speak the language
even I can hear the appropriate apologies and utterances of respect he throws in at just the right moments. This seems
to satisfy the chief, who through the translator on his left tells us we are welcome to stay a few days here, but he would
like four Aphrodesia CD's and some T-shirts for the priviledge. He then asks one of us to stand and explain who we are
and what we are doing there. David rises and in over-enunciated English speaks about wanting to save the environment,
about how we drive on biodiesel and want to bring this technology to Africa and are trying to figure out the best way to do
that. The chief nods, and I wonder if any of this makes any sense to him. Later I will have fantasies of rising and telling the
chief and all assembled that I hope they will come visit us in America so that they can stay in our house and we can cook them
a huge meal of Mexican food, and I wonder if anyone here besides us knows what Mexican food, or Mexico, is, but at that moment
I do nothing. There is an awkward silence as the chief mulls over David's soliloquy, which opens the door for Chambas to jump to
his feet and yell "Let us pray for the chief!" He then begins a Muslim prayer, which prompts us all to bow our heads in respect and
wait it out, all five or so minutes of it. We then file past the chief and shake his hand and utter words of thanks, and pile back in
the bus to bounce down the road back to our village, wondering if what just happened was genuine or just a show put on for
our benefit.
As it turned out, we found out in several ways over the next few days that visiting the chief may have been the most
important thing we did during our time here. Everything here happens from the top down. It's been evident in the way David
and sometimes myself have been cornered and pulled aside by dozens of people at every gig we've played- whoever is
perceived as the leader is the one everyone wants to talk to. Usually this talk is inconsequential- "Please Ezra, I would like
to have your address in America so I can write you", or "Please, I would like to know if we can meet sometime tomorrow"-
but it's always delivered with the utmost urgency, face to face. Why bother talking about anything important with people
who are just part of the team or band, or in speaking with a whole group to form a consensus and act on it from there?
Here in Africa, it seems, the concept of consensus is decided on by one leader, the chief. Who that chief is may be decided
on by consensus- the village of Binaba at that moment had been without a chief for several months and was in the
process of choosing a new one, a shadowy process that as best we could tell included the possibility of Napoleon
assuming the mantle. However, once that person was chosen it was up to them to decide how much other opinion
they felt like listening to.
This system of authority, at least where we were right then in the remote north of Ghana, seemed to trump any held
by the central Ghanaian government based in Accra. Two days after our visit to the chief, while we were packing the bus for
the drive back to Accra, a uniformed policeman who had driven down the road into the village in an unmarked car loudly
confronted Zack for being here without notifying the authorities of our presence. Apparantly a big bus containing twelve
white people and half again as many Africans parking out here for a few days was not the kind of thing that went unnoticed
by the local authorities. Of course, the local authorities here are not necessarily represented by the policeman who stood
near the Chief's Umbrella that day in the village courtyard, yelling at Zack and threatening to haul him into his car and
down to the local jail. He was immediately shouted down by Napoleon and several of the local men who were standing
around, who yelled and pointed and shook their fists until he retreated meekly into his car and drove away. Afterwards
the men all laughed and told us the man was very silly, very stupid, the chief's permission for our presence here being
worth far more than anything related to government authority.
Indeed, before we play at the bar in Zillaba two days later, I walk around with a video camera and ask people why
they are there, and if they knew there would be a band from the USA there today. One older man says he is Napoleon's
uncle (I am losing track of the people who say they are related to Napoleon), and he came because the chief told him
about us. He says the chief was very happy that we respected him by visiting and that he told everyone afterwards
that we were all honorable people. These things seem to hold more sway over people than the scarce symbols of
political authority- from a government based over 500 miles to the south- that crop up randomly in the occaissional
pair of strolling policemen, machine guns slung casually over their shoulders, or the plastered posters for the two
main political parties that sometimes line the concrete walls of the market.
Everywhere I turn here it seems our Western concept of a nation-state
only partly conveys the reality of life. On the road to Binaba and while driving back to Accra we encounter many roadblocks,
which are nominally police-run checkpoints to check people's papers and identification but in reality are only places for
buses like ours to stop for a minute while local women sell us peanuts, water, plantain chips, dough balls and whatnot
from baskets perched on top of their heads. At each of these Chambas yells at the unformed person at the checkpoint
for anywhere from one minute to five, and drives off. When there are no other vehicles ahead of us and the gate is not
blocking the road, he barely slows down. There do not seem to be any consequences to this. Indeed, the one time we
see someone pulled over by the police it is Issac and JJ on our drive back to Accra, who have stuffed Isaac's motorcycle
in the back of JJ's car, no doubt to save gas money, and have been pulled over for it. When our bus passes them we
stop, and everyone gets out and surrounds the policemen, including Desmond, our cameraman from MetroTV in Accra,
who immediately begins filming. The policemen freak out and scream at him to stop filming, then to 'delete' the film,
then for everyone- including Isaac and JJ, who are apparently no longer worth the trouble- to get lost. Hard and fast
rules- what we call "laws"- are hard to come by here.
The night of our visit to the chief we are entertained by the "Local Madonna", an elderly (or maybe not- life is so hard
here it is hard to tell age the way we are used to) singer who has walked two hours from her village to perform with her
band of gourd shakers and a violin player for us. She sings the news from the next village, welcomes this band from the USA
that has come here to see her, and asks the village how it has been managing since the death of its chief, accompanied by a
wailing, Arabic-sounding violin and by three men who sling gourds roughly like pizza dough, weaving impossibly complicated rhythms
that sound like they have been here since the beginning of time. It is trance music, Local Madonna (who does not appear to have
any other name, everyone calling her that our entire visit here) spinning verses that draw us in like quicksand, punctuated by the
piercing high-pitched wails of another older woman who sways in rhythm next to her. We are gathered in a circle- men, women
wrapped in beautiful printed fabric, kids crowding everywhere you look, and us- in the middle of the village, the locals taking
turns dancing in the middle of the circle to everyone's shouted delight. When one of the dancers ends her turn by pulling
Nicole into the middle of the circle, everyone squeals with delight- earlier in the day some of the local women had been
showing Nicole and Lara some of their moves, watched by dozens of children who couldn't wait to see what these
strange white people from the big bus would do next. Now one of them was right here in the middle of the circle
with all eyes on her, and by extension us: let's see what these white folks can do. Nicole leaps and spins her way
around the circle, the villagers scream and clap, and soon we are all pulled one by one into the ring- I mimicking
the stop-start jumping the Showboyz taught us last summer, Lara showing off her moves from African dance class
before Zack, bless him, becomes the first person of any color ever to perform "the Worm" at a small African village
party like this one.
The next day we all rise not long after sunrise- there is no sleeping in when the merciless African sun is turning the
air around your head into an oven as soon as it peeks its face over the horizon- and spend the first part of the day outwitting the
heat under the chief's umbrella and in whatever shade we can find. We also take a dip in the lake that lies a few hundred yards
from the village and that we have heard from the villagers has only 'good' crocodiles in it. Before we left for Africa, we had all
discussed the dangers of water-bourn diseases, of insidious worms that burrow their way into your intestines after one
innocent dip in a tempting, cool river or lake somewhere in the African bush. We traded anecdotes of friends of friends
who lived with debilitating parasites for months- years, even- all because they couldn't take the heat and couldn't resist
temptation. We all more or less pledged to each other that we would be strong- no matter what, we would remember
that our fragile, alien constitutions were not suited to this environment, this refreshing lake that held unseen intestinal
terrors the likes of which we could hardly imagine, and we would suffer through the heat that surely couldn't be so bad,
considering the risks, could it?
It took us about as long to break those pledges as it took to dart through the onion fields that ringed the village,
strip off our clothes on the bank of the lake and crash into the cool water, laughing as we splashed each other with the
muddy water. We bathed in the lake, we swam out and looked for crocodiles, we yelled "crocodile!" and dived for each
other's ankles and pulled in our best reptile imitations, we brought our shampoo and soap to the bank and scrubbed
ourselves clean for the first time in days. Four or five days later, when we travel to Togo, I get the chills, and a fever
that gives me the sweats and makes me unsteady on my feet. I blame this lake in Binaba, of course, but even then
I don't regret a thing.
In early afternoon we drive the bus to the nearest market, where we
string an extension from the nearest store (a tiny shack selling pharmaceuticals)
and pound sticks into the ground for microphone stands while a gathering crowd
watches our every move and laughs when I foolishly try to pound the sticks into
the ground from the top- the ground here is too hard. Before we even start the show
with Local Madonna, we have a huge circle of people watching, fascinated at this improvised
entertainment spectacle unfolding in front of them, backed up against this bright green bus
that has parked where women normally sell plantains and onions. Local Madonna enraptures
the crowd like she did us last night, and many
of the local women walk up and paste small bills of money on her forehead while she sings-
the local sign of respect for performers. Local Bob Marley (again, apparently his real name)
follows, and he's a revelation- in the same style as Local Madonna but different, rougher,
and he plays the small gourd violin and sings against his backdrop of gourd shakers like a
master teasing out another aria from a well-worn opera.
The Showboyz follow, and seeing their act here I get where they come from- the crowd is delighted, laughing and practically crawling
over themselves to get a better look at JJ eating fire and Isaac breaking beer bottles and eating the pieces like candy. Things get out of
hand fast though- crowd control in West Africa does not consist of hired professionals with headsets behind steel barricades, to put it
mildly, and when the pushing and shoving in the crowd gets out of hand and the circle of the audience is encroaching dangerously close
to the Showboyz and pushing us all up further against the side of the bus, men with ropes begin whipping the crowd back in an attempt
to clear some more room for us all, as if this were a herd of cattle that had wandered en masse into the wrong pasture. It's a shock for
us to see, and as the crowd surges back and then sideways, kids running every which way, it feels like a mini-riot is about to ensue
right here in front of us. As the Showboyz stop the show and the chaos of the crowd shouting and scrambling from the men with whips
grows by the second, our roles are reversed- the crowd are the performers and we the audience, and with our backs to the bus and
nowhere to go we accept this role reversal because there's nothing for us to do about it. The men with whips have only partly beaten
the crowd back, and with the show on hold JJ lights his sticks and waves fire at people's feet, their faces and hands, and all of a sudden
the crowd is scrambling to get away, falling backwards into the dust and picking themselves up as JJ waves his fire further down the line.
It feels as if we're riding an unseen border in the air- this could go either way, turn ugly and make us run for cover as we witness an
outburst of chaos and violence here in the African dust, or simply blow over as another routine moment in a culture we know nothing
about. Within moments it blows over- JJ's fire has done the trick, the crowd settles roughly into position a few yards back from where
it had advanced a few minutes before, and Napoleon strums another riff on his stringed kone as the show resumes. We breathe a sigh
of relief that the situation didn't spiral further out of control while uneasily realizing that beatings and tramplings here are not all that
uncommon, and that the crowd here seems to accept that as a part of life.
We are on edge when we finally play, and the crowd, which minutes earlier had threatened havoc as it pushed and shoved its way closer to the Showboyz, is stopped in its tracks. Normally this would be a bad sign for us- non-reaction usually means they don't like us- but the truth is that here the normal preferences of like and dislike are almost irrelevant. Many of the kids here who have watched us with wide eyes but then cower behind the nearest adult if we stop to wave hello have almost surely never seen many, if any, white people before. If they have, they have certainly never seen ones that play electric instruments and drums and sing through overdriven loudspeakers that balance precariously out of bus windows, blaring lyrics sung by white girls in vaguely familiar African languages. As we play "Ting Be", a song whose Ewe lyrics had noticeably moved the crowds in Accra, there being a large population there from the Ewe regions to the north and east that understood the language, the sense of cultural collision I feel is so thick I could bathe in it. I am pressed up against the bus, rubbing shoulders with an older African man on my left who stands on a crate for a better view of us, glancing feet away into the eyes of people who eye us with more curiosity than enthusiasm. I can't help but think that if Martians landed in Times Square and sang their version of a rock opera, the crowd might look at them like this.
Still, there are signs of recognition, of enthusiasm from the people here as we plow through our set.
Some of the local women from our village come up and paste money on Lara's forehead during "Sirena";
when some random strangers in the crowd follow suit it means more than a thousand hand slaps and
starry-eyed compliments in backstage American lounges ever could. By the end, a raucous and distorted
version of "Kari Buro", the crowd has closed the circle tighter around us but many of them are now
bobbing their heads, and an old man even dances in the center right in front of the girls, inspiring
a few other people to follow suit. The sun has set and it's growing dark, and the trucks and buses
whose roofs were packed with people who had climbed up for a bird's eye view of the spectacle
are thinning and some have driven away, and when we wrap up and Napoleon thanks the crowd
for us we are besieged by villagers who crowd around us and want to buy cassettes of our music,
the ultimate compliment from people who survive on far less each day than the price of a used CD
back home.
Eventually we haul our equipment back in the bus and head to the local bar, where what seems
like the entire village packs in with us to watch Napoleon and Local Bob Marley climb on plastic chairs
and sing while many of us dance and jump around, sweaty and exhilarated. After a while they lead a
huge crowd out of the bar and through the streets and onto our bus for a wild ride back to the village-
every available inch of bus airspace taken up by ourselves and local villagers who sip our beers with
us and pass around bottles of apeteshie, the local gin drink that is fast becoming a staple of our diet here, as Napoleon and
Local Bob Marley keep playing music the entire way. The party continues at the village, where we stream out of the bus and
dance around the Chief's Umbrella for Local Bob and then Madonna, who shows up again with her band to perform for us,
this time for a more raucous crowd that dances as she sings and which overflows from the village center into the
surrounding fields and through the moonlit clay walls of the village. Lara is determined to get the women of the
village- who have become our fast friends- drunk, and succeeds brilliantly after sending someone- where we
don't know- for bottles of apeteshie which we all pass around. The women then grab us and dance, we dance
in the moonshadow of the bus, we dance in the stone courtyard of the village to Bob Marley and his men who
play impossibly intense trance music that makes me realize I have never partied, never been to a rave or listened
to anything worthwhile in my whole life up to now. Bongo informs me at one point that the party will continue
until we tell them to stop, "they will keep going all night" he says, and I realize that what he means as a warning
is instead the sound of angels in my ears, there being nothing and no one on Earth that could make me want this
to stop, ever.
The next day at the Zebilla Market there is no electricity (which everyone
here calls "light") in the square, so somehow Zack talks the owner of a
local outside bar into having us set up our entire production there (see
"Differences in booking gigs", "Africa" and "America"). Mully somehow
wires our entire stage through the one outlet that exists in the whole
building, and we play for an outdoor patio of full of sullen men who watch
us impassively while sipping tall beers and kids who climb the wall behind
us to peer over and see what in the world is going on. The non-reaction
may be because we are all horribly out of tune with each other the first
few songs- getting horns and stringed instruments to hold their pitch in
the African heat and humidity has proven to be a challenge- and because
the power keeps cutting out- African electricity grids making us fantasize
about the simple joys of getting home to America, plugging an amplifier
into the wall and watching it turn on and off every time we flick the
switch.
We break to fix our equipment problems and the Showboyz take
over. They're a hit- and it's moving to see them play again for what is essentially
their hometown crowd. The kids are delighted, the adults yelling and screaming in
laughter when JJ puts his lit torch out down his pants. We fire up again after their
set and things go more smoothly this time, by the end of the set most of the skeptics
have been won over- bills being pasted on Alex's sweaty forehead by the men on our
left who rightly appreciate the polyrythmic barrage he has been unleashing on them
all night. When Napoleon joins us at the end for our collaborative tunes we even have
our own mosh pit/dance floor in front of us, only half of which consists of our friends
from the village.
We finish as darkness descends- there being no electricity for
light in the bar patio most people just sit around and drink in the dark,
and the precious few streetlights outside do little to cut through the
darkness. We pack up as Zack returns triumphantly from the bar with
our pay- a milk crate full of tall beers, all warm, and all grabbed up enthusiastically
as we mill around, take down the speakers we have nailed to the overhead beams
for the show and begin to lug our stuff outside to the waiting bus. When we do there
is an ugly confrontation with Isaac and JJ from the Showboyz, who have been demanding
money from us the entire trip, telling us they will be stranded up here with no way to get
back to Accra if we do not give them more money. It all boils over when Isaac screams at
Zack in front of a lingering crowd as we're almost ready to leave. "It's all about money,
fuck you! Everything with you is about money!" he screams. It's for show, since some of
the crowd is his family from the village, and since Zack has, at that moment, just finished
giving Isaac one hundred American dollars. It's bizarre and unsettling too- a reminder of
how complicated relationships are here and how even musicians who struggle like we do
to pay our rent every month in San Francisco are rich white Americans in Africa. It's also a
deterioration of our relationship with the Showboyz- the original reason we came to Africa
in the first place, and certainly the only reason we came here, 20 hours by bus from Accra
in the middle of nowhere. As we pull away and settle in for the long drive to Accra we all
face the fact that we will embark on this next leg of our journey here very much alone.