Yer welcome.
OK, this one is mildly humorous, but probably the most different drunk I ever had.
1981, late Dry Season (March??), 2 1/2 months after the Rawlings coup.
Cocoa was/is Ghana's chief export, the source of their foreign exchange. At that time most of the cocoa production was in the hands of small farmers, every village had its cocoa bean drying racks. For decades prior rampant corruption had been degrading the ability of the country to even pay themselves ie. get the crop to the ports. The end of the dry season was when the sacks of the fragrant, chocolate-smelling seeds had to be out, longer than that and they'd rot.
So, March of '83, thanks to a degraded infrastructure and the chaos after the coup there was a huge backlog of cocoa about to go rotten in sheds all over Ghana. In response Rawlings announces an emergency cocoa evacuation exercise, commandeers every truck and lorry in the country, and presses the youth into service.
So out of the blue (we hadn't heard), one day a big semi truck rolls up to our school with armed soldiers on it, and they load up as many as they could fit of our 300 or so students. The truck was heading from my village of Bompata to Juaso, about fifteen miles away, and the roadhead for a bunch of back-country villages.
Transportation was always difficult, so that anything with wheels and a motor could serve as a taxi. Me and another (Ghanaian) teacher were concerned so we started walking out down the dirt road in the direction of Juaso, hopping on the first transport available when it passed. We lucked out and got to Juaso within the hour.
From what I seen, the main transportation for the public in back-country Africa ain't a truck or bus, its an agricultural tractor pulling a flatbed trailer, that combination can about go anywhere. On this occasion is was a big ol' East German Fortschritt tractor pulling about a 20ft (??) flatbed, said flatbed loaded up with our students who were all sitting crosslegged on the bed.
The soldiers, festooned with weaponry (more for looks, nobody was shooting at anybody much by then) were surprised and bemused when the Obruni (me) wanted to come along. They did insist that I ride up front with the driver. There was no cab, I rode sitting on the right side fender, feet braced on the towing hitch apparatus.
There's a thing in Ghana called "Obruni privilege", this is the almost compulsive hospitality offered to White strangers. You always get moved to the front of the line, offered stuff for free. Nothing negatively "racist" about it, this was Africa, for them "Black" ain't an issue, nor is slavery, mostly it was genuine curiosity and interest.
On this occasion, as we rolled along, a soldier gave me a big bunch of bananas. Again, no double entendre here, bananas were abundant and a staple, he was just feeding me lunch to take along with me is all. We took off at a pretty fast clip
This was the dry season, and in no time at all I look back at my students and they were all completely covered in a thick layer of red dust, just their eyes blinking
So here I am, sitting comfortably eating bananas, and they are all bumping uncomfortably along on the hard deck of the trailer, covered in dust. Naturally I smiled and waved, and figured out that if I tossed the peels up into the slipstream just right, the peels would land on them (I dunno, maybe you had to be there). Of course, in reality I ate only a few and tossed the rest to them.
So we get to the first village, a truck is waiting there, and a big pile of cocoa sacks in a shed. A standard cocoa sack was a British hundredweight (112lbs). Like most male volunteers in backwoods Africa I was skinny as a rail by that point at 5'7" and 130 pounds (by contrast, most women volunteers gain weight) but I could pick up a hundredweight sack and throw it over my shoulder without too much difficulty (I'd about kill myself trying to do that today).
I get on line with all the rest and start hauling cocoa sacks the short distance to the truck. My students ain't amazed, the know what Mr. Mike is like, but the soldiers were. See, all most Ghanaians saw of White folks were wealthy older businessmen zipping by in Mercedes, or doctors and other aid workers staying in carefully sequestered lodgings. They don't think we can work.
What they drink in the forest zone of West Africa is palm wine, n'sa fu ("white water"), the fermented sap of the oil palm tree. You knock it over, let it sit for about two weeks, then tap the abundant watery sap. Comes fresh out of the forest every day, and its actually pretty good. You drink it out of a calabash (a bowl made from the shell of a gourd), each taking a turn with the same calabash.
Drinking palm wine is how you relax in rural West Africa, every afternoon in the shade of a tree, its the daily social ritual, what guys do when they get home from working the farm plot. No women, women did drink of course but not in public.
The soldiers insisted that I come and "take palms" with them. So we are all sitting in a circle on low stools around a big clay pot filled with palm wine, emptying the calabash and passing it to the next guy to get refilled. Me, the skinny Peace Corps guy, and them in a collection of ragged uniforms, 7.65 British FNAL's or Sten guns (??) hanging off of their shoulders, the occasional guy with a Hi Power on his belt.
Palm wine is about as strong as beer so in a casual round you get a buzz but ain't flat out drunk. The soldiers are asking me questions about all sorts of things, not often getting to sit around and drink with Americans.
We move along to the next village and the process repeats itself, no sooner do I haul a couple of cocoa sacks alongside the students than I'm sitting around with the soldiers again drinking palm wine.
The Major running the show had commandeered a Chevy pickup from somewhere, it gets a flat (left rear). He ain't about to change it himself. Many Africans are skilled shade tree mechanics (they have to be, given what they drive), but there weren't any of those among the soldiers standing around. Not that they wouldn't have managed it eventually, but they didn't know right off where everything was nor had they ever changed a tire before, I did and I had.
So I hop off of the tractor and switch out the wheel in no time. The soldiers were even more impressed
Long story short.... by the end of the day I was near falling over drunk, so were the soldiers... and as me and the students are piling into a truck for the long trip back to the school the major gives me his Brit swagger stick as a gift.
Hey, I was just doing my part to win "hearts and minds"
Birdwatcher
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