Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Bird Watcher: Peace Corps Stud

How about this one? 1981, twenty-four years old, in the months after the coup, one hundred-thirty five pounds dripping wet.

I had to travel to the next country over, Togo, to get supplies, meet my Peace Corps buddies, and get very drunk. To do that I had to get down to the coast at Accra, maybe 150 miles.

Walked out to the main road and waited, if it was a taxi or bus you squeezed in and paid. More often than not a local would pick you up and give you a ride for nothing simply because your were an Obruni, we called it Obruni privilege (literally "White Privilege" ).

Sure enough that morning a beat-up old semi truck with tires down to the chords was hauling sacks of produce down to Accra, it squealed and smoked to a halt. I climbed up on top of the sacks on the trailer in back and rode up there in the wind. People along the road would see the Obruni up there and wave, and I would wave back. I felt like the Pope

Sure enough about two hours later the guy had a flat and limped to the lorry park in Nsawam, a town along the way. I was pretty thirsty by that time and stopped in a bar to have some palm wine (AKA n'sa fu AKA the fermented sap of the oil palm), about like beer but with more bugs and vitamins. There was a photography studio by the lorry park. Since the coup you had to get a government permit to leave the country, and for that permit I needed a photograph, my passport wasn't gonna be enough. So, with my palm wine buzz on, I wandered over to get a picture took.

When I took this photo I was quite aware of the fact that this photo was gonna be it, my official living on the Frontier like in the Old West photograph. After this I was never gonna experience another military coup, I was never gonna be getting my water out of an African stream, I was never gonna be eating the exact same food every day, I was never gonna be living in a mud-walled African village, and I was never gonna be that skinny again without trying. All of this and everything else, I was never gonna do again for the rest of my life. This was it, THE portrait, closest I'd ever come to looking like a longhunter, or fur trapper, or Confederate.

In short, I was at the top of my game and knew it. So I when this photo was took I was trying to look like a bada$$ like kids do in Middle School



The driver in the crowded, beat up little Toyota taxi I took after the photo was developed was much, much drunker'n me. I thought we was all gonna die, so was I pretty sober again by the time we got to Accra