I was pretty excited Saturday morning because JJ and I were going to a beach party with the young single adults. I had only gotten four hours of sleep because the night before I was washing my clothes by hand in a bucket. I woke up at 5:30am, extremely groggy, and staggered into the cold shower. There was a ginormous cockroach.
Halfway through the shower, the cold water dripping from the shower head completely stopped. I was used to the lights and water turning off spontaneously, and it's normally more of an adventure. This time, though, it was just too early for adventures.
My hair was completely lathered with shampoo, and there was nothing I could do but laugh briefly, and then wonder why mornings even exist. I was left with two options: (1) wait and hope my water comes back on, or (2) humble myself to the dust and ask JJ if I can use his shower. I hated option number two.
So, I waited, shivering, teeth chattering, for about 15 minutes hoping against hope the water would come back on. When it didn’t turn back on, seeing no other possible option besides showing up to the activity with shampoo all over my head, I sent him a text message to warn him that I was coming over whether he liked it or not and that it was a ‘salty fish head’ morning (a phrase coined from our least favorite dinner experience). I put on some sopping wet clothes (they hadn’t dried yet from my washing the night before) and hiked to his house complete with lathery, wet hair glued around the top of my head like a devilish halo.
I think the first words out of my mouth when he opened the door were something along the lines of, “Laugh, and I’ll kill you.” He didn’t laugh (obviously, or he’d be dead now), but kindly let me in. Then, he calls me back, and I thought maybe he was going to tell me some trick to the shower, but no. He has the AUDACITY to HIDE his camera behind his back, then whip it out and snap a picture at six in the morning when I look like a drowned rat! That punk! The good news is I swore in my wrath I’d delete the photo if it was the last thing I did, but he accidentally deleted it himself! Haha! Don’t mess with drowned rat girl.
JJ, if you’re reading this, you know I like you. It WAS funny, looking back.
Because of this incident, I was running a bit late so we scrambled to find a taxi to the church where we were meeting our friends. I bought some koko off the street. It’s a spicy, liquid millet drink. The lady I bought it from appeared to be surprised a white lady was buying it, and asked what price I’d pay. When I told her I would take it for 20 pesewas, the price the three Ghanaians in front of me had purchased it for, she seemed insulted. She told me it would be one cedi. Normally I am a pushover like that, but this morning brought out the hidden feistiness. I told her it would be 20 pesewas or I'd find someone else to buy it from. I gave her one cedi and waited for my change. She wanted to capitalize on obruni and claimed she didn't have any change, even though I had just seen several people pay her with coins. JJ gave me some coins instead. I said 'thank you very much' through gritted teeth and recalled the moment last year when someone tried to charge a friend of mine 20 US dollars to use the public toilet.
I sat on the curbside and sucked my koko out of the plastic bag while we waited. I think I was successful in getting it all over my wet pants as well. Oh yeah, my clothes were wet all day because they hadn't fully dried from my washing them in a bucket the night before. We had arrived by the time we were supposed to leave the church, 7am, but they ended up picking us up around 10am. We sat on the curbside for three hours, both a little grumpy from lack of sleep. Ghana time. It was worth it though. The rest of the day was fabulous!
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