Clay and Sweating

Saturday, 9 June 2018

Clay

Flying low over the treetops of far outer Accra, I gazed out the window at the landscape pouring slowly by. Below me were dark green tree leaves in thinning and clumping groups, cut through by clay-red lines of straight bumpy roads. Occasionally a collection of houses and shacks gasped out of a road intersection, its fingers of houses and people grasping for purchase despite the ever-pressing growth. Off on the urban horizon the reds and greens faded to grays, browns, and that strange color which when you get closer is a cacophony of flashy bursting advertisement, but from far away just looks like trash.

As we deplaned onto the tarmac, and rode the waiting buses to the terminal, and wandered to baggage claim, and passed through customs, and were greeted by PC staff outside, and stood in the sun for pictures, and rode other buses out of Accra, I missed those city outskirts. Through the chatting and smiling and hand-shaking and sweating, I missed the look of deep leaves and clay roads. It must have been when we’d driven an hour from the airport, and our tires started to redden with the road, that I exhaled and thought that this might be okay after all.

The city is lots of things, but first it is stressful. This has been true for every city I’ve seen, and even more true for the developing cities, where the dust and trash and dilapidated buildings and margin-chasing masses jostle you this way and that, all while the hubbub and honks make you feel like, despite all this, you must keep moving, keep moving. It thins us. I found myself, like those old slime toys that sometimes did and sometimes didn’t stick to the walls, thickening and pulling back together as we drove out of the impact of Accra. On the clay roads I felt the roots of a person slowly growing.

Ghana is a country of many years and many peoples, thrust into a world of the West as jarringly as its trees and tribes were severed by map-drawn borders. The streets of its cities hum with the spirit of fresh history; its citizens, streaming to urban capitals from village huts, bring sharp to the air their salt of the earth. And in that wilder land still there are chiefs and ancestors, libations and prayers, apart from the law, apart from our gods. We judge the tree according to its trunk and branches, and the country according to its city. But let’s remember too the roots – the soul – in that red clay.

Sweating

Have you ever sweat? I mean really, really sweat?

Have you ever walked upright through stifling humidity under the sun of the tropics, in slacks and a button-down? You sweat all the way into the tips of your hair. The salty slick beads fall through your eyebrows and into your eyes, around the nosepiece of your sunglasses, down past the edges of your nose and into the corners of your mouth. It cascades from behind your ears down your neck, filling the collar of your undershirt, seeping in spots to your button-down. From your armpits and the small of your back it rides your tucked shirt to your underwear, and the hot trickle keeps falling, keeps falling. From your belly button to your darkening waistband. From thighs and calves to soggy socks and squishing shoes. You curse your body for sweating so much. You think about how awful you’ll smell, and already smell. You wonder if you have enough clothes for this week, or even for today. And the sun beats down, and the rooms are stuffy, and the breezes are just never strong enough.

Have you ever peeled off sticky clothes for a muggy bedtime? You have to fight with your shirt and your pants until they’re finally inside-out in a pile on the floor, and you have to groan and lean over and pick them up and hang them to dry in the wet air. In the shower, no amount of pouring of buckets over your head cools your radiating skin, and with sweat still pouring down your face you towel off, never really cool, never really dry. Then, already sticky again, you lay on the bed. But the mattress returns the heat to you from below. The thin sheet you pull over yourself is too much. You throw it off. The air hanging over your chest and outstretched legs is far too much. You lay helpless. When you shift, the fitted sheet tries to roll with you. Your pillow is damp, the area below it is wet. The fan, if you’re lucky enough to have it, is feeble and insulting. Maybe it will cool before morning, you think. So you close your eyes and wait for the sunrise.