Sunday Supper

Once upon a time, in an effort to further forge the Mer-bond, I invited the Mer-maids over for a Sunday taco night. The night progressed with laughter and wine (perhaps not in that order), but regardless, the night was a success. And thus, a Sunday Supper tradition was born.

Every Sunday evening, around 7pm, we would progress to the weekly hosts’ for a deliciously prepared meal. I gormandized over the sweet potato enchiladas, crab imperial, and turkey-stuffed peppers while thinking OneRepublic got it right; This has gotta be the good life. In retrospect, inviting everyone over for the first Sunday Supper was nothing short of the foot-in-the-door technique, which was pretty easy given the fact that I was entrusted with the girls’ spare apartment keys.

Well, after numerous dinner rotations, it became apparent that my toil and tears was not fully appreciated. There was first the incident of the personal pizza. I purchased dough, cheeses, and a cornucopia of toppings and thought it would be pleasant for everyone to decorate their own dough; an interactive dinner of sorts. But this thoughtful gesture was dismissed as a mere attempt to outsource the food preparation process. How rude of me.

The most notable dinner delinquency was the Sunday chili and cornbread. I won some and I lost some. I won with the cornbread. I lost with the chili. Honesty, the chili wasn’t bad, I just ran out of time so the chili still contained many vegetables…oh, how do I say it…in the raw. The cornbread, on the other hand, sat stacked on a serving dish in a pyramid that gave the Great Pyramid of Giza a run for its money (or at least a run for its taste). The cornbread was edaciously devoured by all dinner party guests. In turn, they each praised the meal with their backhanded compliments.

-This cornbread is delicious. It even makes the chili taste good. How thoughtful.

-How did you make this cornbread, I’m going to need the recipe? Oh, I travelled to my local grocer and picked it up. The key to good cornbread is all in the way you slice it. Now exposed as a charlatan, I guess it is safe to say I lost with the cornbread too.

My life has a rather circuitous way; Sunday Suppers have followed me to Ghana. Seeing as commerce is closed for the Lord’s Day, and preferring not to fast, it seemed to be the logical next step. But I’ve learned my lesson – I don’t participate in the preparation. Everyone knows that there were the hunters and the gatherers. I hypothesize that there was a third group, the eaters, who died out through evolution. Yet, somehow I have managed to survive. I always knew I was an evolutionary miracle.

Things that are Swedish

While at a local Irish pub in Accra, we befriended a group of volunteers. Since first impressions can be a deal-breaker, I wanted to make sure I was on top of my game. I was having a fruitful conversation with my new Dutch acquaintance, when somewhere shortly into the conversation, Ikea, the Scandinavian home furnishing giant, became a topic of discussion. I decided to weigh in by sharing my favorite Ikea memory. Disclaimer: I was not present for the formation of the memory; it only became my memory through the retelling.

Years ago, my friends embarked on a rather ordinary Ikea run. But of course, with my friends, nothing can be ordinary. It turns out that a radio station was broadcasting from the parking lot, and a swelling crowd gathered, similar to the phenomenon when Ikea offers sheet sets on sale for $9.99. Well, it came time for a give-away for an audience contestant who was able to correctly answer a question from the DJ. Of course, my friend Katie exhibited extreme enthusiasm and was selected to demonstrate her knowledge and win the radio promotion.

In front of and broadcasted to a throng of strangers, Katie simply had to name three things that are Swedish. So very confidently, she declared Well, for starters…Holland. A rather quizzical look comes over the radio host. Actually, Holland never has been and never will be Swedish. (Although, since I haven’t conquered the time-space continuum, I can’t officially confirm that Holland will never be Swedish). But who knew that a region in the Netherlands, a Nether-region, would not meet the criteria for something Swedish?

Since I wasn’t present for the original Ikea outing, there is a chance that the fish has grown in size through the retelling, but the there are two things I am certain of. First, that the question was to name three things Swedish. Second, that the answer was Holland. Of course, I couldn’t help but rattle off a few acceptable responses to reveal my superior comprehension to my Dutch friend. Well, for starters…Ikea, Swedish meatballs, my personal favorite, Swedish fish. Perhaps boasting a bit of bravado, I pushed the envelope on my grasp of Nordic societies. Or clogs. It turns out, clogs are not exclusively Swedish. Comprehension checkmated by the Dutchman. I suppose it could have been worse. At least I didn’t suggest windmills.

Sounds Like Octopus

I grew up as a what man, reflexively asking what after being spoken to. Brian, did you finish your homework? What, mom? Brian, did you take the dog for a walk? What, dad? Part of the reason was well-intentioned chore avoidance, but I’m convinced that the larger part of it was because I was, and am, audibly challenged. Perhaps I probed too far with a Q-tip growing up, or maybe it is just a natural defect, but I have found that I often have trouble processing auditory stimuli. Such is the case when it comes to song lyrics. Fortunately for me though, when I can’t understand the lyric, I make them up.

So take my hearing struggles and introduce them into a foreign culture with a slightly different dialect, and the output is scrambled eggs. Thankfully, I’m in good company. While having a pint with a local volunteer from southern Australia, he asked if I was familiar with the local hiplife song that contained the lyric Sexy as cheese. Well, I originally thought maybe the bloke had a roo loose in the top paddock, but quickly dismissed this notion when he began humming the tune. Yes, I was familiar with this song. Soon enough, I too was able to pick out the lyric sexy as cheese. The problem was that I never really considered cheese to be sexy, and if I had, I would at least have had the decency to keep such a fetish to myself. The second problem was that it turns out the lyrics are actually Sexy as she is. Clearly.

Well, I recently put my ears to the test again at Reggae Night. Reggae Night draws a melting pot of personalities. Set on the sands of Labadi Beach, the musical evening brings together a varied clientele from Rastafarian locals to hippy expatriates, from university exchange students to working professionals. This particular evening, my friends and I were blessed with a well-informed emcee, or master of ceremonies as he liked to believe. Every 30 seconds he would interject with just one word. Octopus. I was not sure why he kept drawing attention to our eight-legged mollusk. Perhaps it was our proximity to the ocean, maybe he was informing the masses that octopi are sentient creatures, but whatever the reason for the incessant interjections, I found them disruptive.

Come to find out, the microphone monopolizer wasn’t trying to warn the crowds about a potential octopus invasion, but rather exclaiming On the bus. But how can you keep demanding that I get on the bus without telling me where that bus is going? Please don’t say Tamale.

Times in Transit

Travelling the roads of Ghana; sometimes it can be exhausting. Sometimes it is a fun cultural experience. But always, it comes with a story. As society has yet to master the science of teleportation, I can be thankful for my times in transit.

Tro-tros. Derived from the local Ga language word “tro” meaning three-pence, a tro-tro is the primary means of public transportation in Ghana. This informal yet seemingly codified system is the artery of Accra. It’s usually crowded and confining, yet generally furnished with comity. I once had the pleasure of sitting next to a gentleman who was travelling with his poultry. Slightly humored and mildly terrified, I tried to ignore the feathered squawks coming from below my bum. I fought to block the background bowwow, but eventually found the situation escalating. With great haste, I jumped out of my seat, feeling the chicken attacking my ankles. Causing quite a disturbance, all eyes turned to the loco hombre. I soon realized the farm foul was still safely secured. Turns out it was just my shoelaces. Who’s the chicken now, Brian?

Motored-canoe. The most efficient way to get to Ada Foah is to take the motored-canoe. The motored-canoe is 60 minutes faster than travelling by foot, and about 5,000 ore strokes faster than travelling by traditional canoe. The only flaw in water-travel is that too many people sink the ship. If you are travelling in a large-enough party, someone is given bucket bailer duty. Well, on a recent trip, the captain asked me to come navigate. I’m not sure if he wanted a short nap, or if he just thought it would be funny to have an obruni as his skipper. Either way, I was responsible for steering, speed-changing, and stopping. When we disembarked, I told the captain that perhaps I shouldn’t pay for my fare and that he should pay me for my services instead. He disagreed.

Taxis. As is true of many urban locales, taking a taxi can be as terrifying as sky diving. But sometimes this trill is stretched to the extreme and I’m fearfully waiting for the parachute to deploy. Such was the scenario one evening when my colleagues and I piled into a taxi to head across town. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the driver, let’s call him Charlie, was in the middle of a high speed get-away. As soon as we pulled the taxi door shut, our jockey, Charlie, was off like Citation at the Belmont Stakes. Like most of the world, Ghana uses a similar traffic light pattern; green for go, red for stop. Not for this cab. Red light. Be my guest. By the time we sped through the second highway intersection without regard to the cross-traffic, I was fast-forwarding through the highlights of my life. Thank Beelzebub that the Ghanaian police force found this reckless. We were pulled over and instructed to find safety in another driver. Our taxi-jockey was soon united with that Citation he deserved.

LifeTime Fitness

I’m constantly impressed with my friends that possess athletic abilities superior to mine (which is basically stating that I’m impressed with all of my friends). While I have long written off my hopes of becoming a world-class athlete or Olympian, I still dabble in the art of kinesiology. Living in Ghana, I’ve been able to exercise at Pippa’s Health Centre to maintain my athletic pretense. And in this setting, I have been provided with ample time upon the treadmill to reflect upon my personal athletic timeline.

I am pretty sure that it began (and ended) in elementary school, fourth-grade. I was just entering the first season of kid-pitch baseball, where strikes are as abundant as Siberian tigers. The team’s strategy was to walk our way to victory simply by relying on the inaccuracy of the opponent’s pitcher. See, my coach was all about skill-development. Before we went to the plate, we had to first agree not to swing the bat. Even if you spotted a strike, it was best not to swing because (a) the umpire might still call it a ball, and (b) even if it was a strike, odds are the next pitch would be a ball.

It wasn’t much better for me when it came to fielding. Let’s not kid, being positioned in the outfield was never because you were the next Kirby Puckett. The outfield formula in fourth-grade was part unfortunate fielding skills, part poor depth perception skills, and part lack of speed, which, in total, had quite the charming effect on the opponent. Of course, outfield was my specialty. I preferred right-field where I could put some distance between myself and the vitriol of my coach. Needless to say, my team failed to book a win all season, so instead of putting myself through another year of torture, I cut my losses (which were many) and threw in the glove.

Well, hindsight is 20-20 right? My Pippa’s treadmill overlooks a soccer pitch, and I am often entertained by pee-wee soccer practice. Just the other day, I was watching a scrimmage where the goalie grabbed possession and decided to practice his punt. The only problem was that there was a shrimp from the opposing team standing two feet in front of him. It all happened so quickly, but the trajectory of the soccer ball was interrupted by the young face, off of which it quickly ricocheted, toppling the runt and throwing the Lilliputians scurrying in a new direction. It was at this moment that I had an epiphany. I realized that my former coach was really just looking out for my own safety. Walking to first base pretty much eliminated the possibility of a collision with the first-base man. And as an outfielder, I was far less likely to be injured by a line drive.

Well, regardless, I now stick to the treadmill. One might suspect the treadmill to be a relatively safe venture; definitely safer than kid-pitch baseball and pee-wee soccer. Let’s just say that when you’re running at 8.5 miles per hour and the power goes out at the gym, kid-pitch doesn’t sound so terrifying after all.

Caffeine Please

Bookended by two red-eyes, Dulles to Heathrow, and Heathrow to Accra, I found myself in London for a short 19 hours. Not wanting to let my precious time go to waste, I planned to meet my friend Rachel for lunch, and leg it across London all afternoon.

She suggested meeting on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, to which I swiftly agreed. After having spent one sleepless night on the plane, I was running on adrenaline and prepared to sight-see, so I bought a day pass for the Tube, and set off for St. Paul’s. While on the Tube, I snuggly squeezed a second fleece over top of my first (since winter-weather clothing did not make the packing list) and was prepared to embrace the frigid air. Catching up with Rachel was great; she took me to a quintessential London pub where we both ordered fish and chips with a Kronenbourg lager. Her life as an expat mirrored mine in myriad ways. For example, we commiserated over the difficulty of starting anew with zero social capital.

After lunch, we walked along the Thames until she had to report to work. She pointed me in the direction of the tourist attractions, and off I went. Prior to departing, I casually asked my parents what I should see in the afternoon I had to explore London.

Mother: Well you should see Westminster Abbey, the Tower Bridge and London Bridge…

Me: Let me tell you a little something about London Bridge

Mother: …oh, Parliament and Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and you should go to the National Gallery, Hyde Park is beautiful, the London Eye, Oxford Street…

Father: Probably Abbey Road and don’t forget to see Wimbledon.

Me: You realize that I’m there for an afternoon right? Does your recapitulation come with cliff notes? Wait…shouldn’t your recapitulation be the cliff notes?

Well, finding myself with the afternoon at hand, I set about my checklist. Unable to bear the arctic chill and with my adrenal glands taking a nap, I decided to reward myself. After each sighted landmark, I found a coffee shop for both stimulus and warmth. After splitting my time between Starbucks and UNESCO World Heritage sites, I stumbled to the underground in the direction of Heathrow, doing everything in my capacity to fend off slumberland.

Two sleepless nights and one hectic day as a tourist had me landing exhausted in Accra at sunrise. Lucky me, I arrived just in time for my first day back at work. Instant coffee. Blimey.

Perfectionism

In 8^th grade, my English and Civics class required us to write a joint thesis. At the time, the task hovered over my head like Morena Baccarin in ABC’s V. Well, one of my classmates, friends, and neighbors, Greg, wrote his first thesis on how procrastination was a sign of perfectionism, which I’m sure he wrote mere hours before the semester-long deadline. So it is no coincidence that this thesis invaded my personal space. I ossified as a perfectionist around the same time as my first bout with braces.

Whenever I’ve needed an excuse for pushing something off until the last minute, I have always had a scapegoat – my perfectionism. Procrastination has a habit of crawling into all my business, including the time leading up to my flight across the Atlantic back to Ghana. When it comes to international travel, I told my parents it would be prudent to arrive at Dulles two hours before departure. So three hours before departure, I pulled myself away from Franzen’s Freedom (deeper meaning?) to begin packing for the next seven months of my life. Reserving the final hour for frantic packing for the next seven months definitely falls under my perfectionism umbrella.

No problem. Trying to pack lightly, I began gathering my belongings and started to strategically divide them according to weight and value between travelling bags. I ignored my parents’ incessant berating of Brian, shouldn’t you be packed by now? No. Brian, do you have a packing checklist? No. Seriously? No. Brian, are you a perfectionist? Why yes, I thought you’d never ask.

As it turns out, my total travelling volume exceeded my luggage volume. Well shucks. But through a series of rearrangements to optimize my luggage and through forced containment not seen since President Truman, I was able to secure my belongings. Perfect, given that now I should have been at the airport 10 minutes ago. But I was ready to leave, and thankfully my blessed birthers live mere minutes from Dulles.

Brian, what about this home haircutting kit? my mother shouted from the top steps. Shit. For Christmas, I asked for a an electric razor with the description “something I can cut my own hair with.” Papa Garv turned out to be quite the giver and bought the ChromePro 25 piece deluxe set. So instead of a relaxed and sincere send-off from my family, I frantically spent the final moments with my parents unpacking and forcing items into my one suitcase, my one travel backpack, and my one carry-on.

We sped (maybe I made this part up, my father is a law-abiding citizen and driving five over the speed limit provides as much thrill as eating an entire peach cobbler provides to Dudley Dursley) to the airport and quickly got in line at the Virgin Atlantic counter. Standing in a stationary line, I started nibbling my nails, beginning to think that my streak might come to an end at the Virgin counter. I was no longer using my perfectionism as a scapegoat, but rather the Brady Bunch at the ticket counter. The number of questions they had for the Virgin ticket agent was only outnumbered by the number of their checked bags.

My mother sarcastically conjectured Maybe this will finally teach you a lesson. Perhaps perfectionism and procrastination have their limitations. I was beginning to believe her until I finally arrived at the ticket counter. Mr. Gavron. Unfortunately this flight is overbooked and there are no more economy seats. So we’ve gone ahead and upgraded you. Upgrade? Perfect.