Greetings from the center of the known universe: Humjibre, Ghana. It’s Saturday morning, the people are up, the mosquitoes are napping, and the palm trees are shimmying in the breeze. Life is good.
I arrived here Thursday night. After long flights and a very short rest, my boss and I hopped on an Accra-Kumasi bus, transferred to a Kumasi-Sefwi Bekwai bus and then took a shared taxi down the surprisingly well-paved Bekwai-Humjibre road. It was an all-day affair, 10 hours of heat and tsetse flies, of snake-oil salesmen pitching their ointments and bus drivers leading us in prayer (which instills less confidence than you would think). The scenery was pleasant, but bland. The landscape seemed to alternate between densely scrubby and lightly wooded, except for the minute and a half during which we passed through what must be the smallest rainforest in the world.
This is just as well, because it allowed me focus in on one of my favorite developing world activities: sign reading. The hobby started in Cayambe, Ecuador when I passed a store called Lolita’s Children’s Clothing Bazaar, but I think Ghana is proving to be my most fertile hunting ground. The Ghanaians have taken the Kenyan business owners’ habit of plastering the interior of their businesses with religious slogans and gone a step further. Thus, you have the Choose Jesus Hair Salon, Christ the Redeemer Food Kiosk and the Christians’ Drinking Spot. All told, I’d say about one in every eight businesses has an overtly religious name. My personal favorites were the By His Will Rasta Hair-Do Salon and the Holy Virgin Photography studio (which would be engaged in something entirely different if it were located in the San Fernando Valley). There are, as everywhere, those that don’t quite conform to this piety, and I am particularly fond of the owner- whoever he is- of the Lover Boy Internet Café in Kumasi.
Having survived- physically and mentally- that journey, I am safely ensconced in Humjibre. I’ve gotten a tour of the village, seen its schools, its churches, its bars, its stores, its cocoa farms and its cocoa depots. I’ve met some of its people and some of its more spectacular insects. There was the 9-or-10” long snail, which we flung off our porch and which left a breathtaking trail of slime. There were also the insects, which I’ve never seen before or even heard of, that I can best describe as flying scorpions. Seemingly better-suited for the late Jurassic period or a particularly fevered nightmare, these almost-baseball-sized creatures are heavily-armored, equipped with a stinger and can draw blood if they fly into you (though, from what I’m told, they’re not poisonous). They seem to be attracted to the light on our porch, so after a few near-misses, my housemate Ray and I decided to shut off the light and enjoy the darkness. I think daylight will be my friend here, so I am off to enjoy it.
