STORY ONE
At a bar in downtown Accra that I've frequented over the past few months, there's a sign on the bathroom door that confounded me:
Please do not put toilet paper in Toilet. Use waste beans and help keep this place clean.
Me thinking to myself: Waste Beans? What the hell are they? (looks around bathroom) Is this some sort of new technology I'm missing? Wait, I'm in Ghana. Can't be new technology....
Me outloud: Waste beans, hmmm, waste beans....waste beeeeeaaaanssss......oooooh... WASTE BINS!
From now on, I will refer to all garbage cans as Beans. And chuckle. hehehe.
STORY TWO
This past weekend I was joined by a Princeton friend, Ariel, who's living in Liberia for a year. Ariel did the Peace Corps in Mali, so she's pretty excited about West Africa, and it was awesome to have an enthusiastic travel buddy. We headed off to Green Turtle Lodge on the Western Coast for some R&R deserted-beach style.
30 minutes down the beach from Green Turtle is the tiniest, cutest little village, and we went there on Saturday to buy cheap water. As with any small African village in Ghana, we were greeted by a crowd of children as if we were huge celebrities. Soon, Ariel found herself a cute baby to play with. No one can resist the offer to play with cute village babies. Believe me.
Soon, however, Ariel started laughing and telling me how the baby had made a huge fart. Sure was comfortable in her arms! But the next thing I knew, there was a strange gooey substance running down Ariel's beach wrap......
SHE GOT POOPED ON.
This of course caused a commotion in the village as everyone laughed at the Obruni's misfortune (I was probably laughing the loudest, Ariel second), and the mother whisked the baby off and ushered us into her house to clean Ariel. All in all, a successful visit to the village!
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
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AMAZING STORIES! Hahaha, I would have been just as confounded by waste beans! I can't even share with you what I was thinking that meant...
ReplyDeleteSo glad Ariel could join you so you could have a fun travel buddy! And that story is one for the ages... soooooo funny!!!!! And probably pretty gross, but soooooo funny!!!!!!
Thanks for sharing!
Oh man, I just laughed all over again reading this!
ReplyDeleteI want you to know that your 'waste beans' story is gaining prominence in NY (Till thinks the story is hilarious and has told a few people - of course always with anonymity!! hehe, but they all have laughed pretty heartily as well, so thank you for making the world a funnier place :) Well really I should thank the bar owner in Accra ;)
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