Last week while in a tro-tro, Lauren and I were reminiscing with her friend McKell about McKell's first few days in Ghana. McKell is a Mormon from Utah who opted to delay graduation from college at age 20 by spending four months volunteering independently at an orphanage in Cape Coast, Ghana. Lauren had met McKell at church and invited her to the local minor league football game that afternoon with us. We sat on the bleachers about five rows up behind one of the goals; Lauren and McKell were on my left and on my right were eight kids all about 10 years old.
When the game ended the three of us stayed seated to let the bulk of the crowd leave the stadium first. The kids next to me decided to wait out the crowd too. Conversation lulled and we were watching the fans shuffle slowly to the exits. One of the kids hacked some phlegm in his throat and spit at the ground. As my eyes lingered on the pool of spit, I said, "That.. was some pretty good leverage!" The statement seemed to crescendo with admiration; I turned to Lauren, who had been in Ghana for the same amount of time as I had. "I was thinking the SAME THING!" We laughed at ourselves for being unphased by their eradication of body waste in public, a commonality of Ghana’s culture that had caught us off-guard the first few occasions we had witnessed such acts. We found most of the humor in the fact that we were not only unphased but were admiring the level of skill with which this boy could spit. We didn't even have to look at McKell to know how she would respond to the scene - we had been there, jaws ajar, two months earlier.
From that memory we branched into McKell's realization, after a month of being in Ghana, she had grown to appreciate when the men who urinated in the street would aim away from people’s view. How courteous of them! she would think to herself. Then McKell told me her and Lauren's most recent experience urinating outside.
Lauren and McKell organized a two-day series of competitions between the two villages in which they had been performing their public health outreach. While watching the two villages play each other in football, they realized they both had to pee. They asked a young man Lauren knew named Sammy to show them where they could use the washroom. He first showed them to an enclosure that, from their description, sounded nothing like an enclosed area. They stared from him to the enclosure and back at him as if he was joking, then laughed at how anyone thought this scenario was any different from urinating into the sewers, as so many Ghanaians are keen on doing. They asked Sammy to show them another place; he guided them into a grove and waited at the entrance while Lauren and McKell walked farther into the grove for more privacy. When they finished they returned to Sammy. They were laughing about the situation and all of a sudden Sammy interjected and told McKell, who believes he singled her out because her laugh is louder than Lauren's, that she laughs too much.
"What’s wrong with that?" McKell asked, not knowing whether to continue laughing.
"You laugh so much," Sammy repeated. Whenever any Ghanaian says “so much,” they draw out the “so” for emphasis. "If you marry a Ghanaian you will have to stop laughing."
McKell shot Lauren a glance. "Why?" she challenged.
"Because he wouldn't like it. And you must do what your husband tells you to do. If he says you need to stop laughing, you must stop laughing, or else he will take you to court."
"To court?" McKell repeated, bewildered.
"Yes, he will take you to court."
"Well, I like laughing and I don't plan on marrying someone who doesn't like that I laugh a lot." She paused, "Sammy, do you not like that I laugh all the time?"
"No! No, no no!" He assured her. "I like very much when you laugh. You are very good at laughing!"
Story time ended when our tro-tro arrived at Gynkabo. Lauren, McKell and I served as the judges of the talent show and drama competition between the two villages Gynkabo and Frami. Highlife music was the conclusion to the performances - everyone young and old from the two villages was dancing happily in the town square. Lauren, McKell and I were waiting passively for a tro-tro to pass through town so we could head back to Cape Coast. Sammy, who did not strike me as a condemner of laughing, was engaging me in small talk while we watched Lauren and McKell were dancing/jumping and taking pictures with about 20 children.
"McKell cannot dance!" Sammy exclaimed.
I laughed. "She looks like she's having fun, though."
We watched them dance some more and then I told him the story McKell told me and asked him to explain why it's considered a bad thing for people to laugh too often.
"People sometimes choose to not laugh so much because they want to be taken seriously. And sometimes you could laugh at something you think is funny and someone else thinks you laughing at them."
"Oh, I see." I looked back across the street at the dancing. My eyes fell on a toddler gyrating to the beat by herself. I've decided that no matter how long I live in Ghana I will always be impressed by the way Ghanaians seem to be born with the ability to move to any rhythm.
Still watching the toddler, I showed Sammy I understood by repeating his views in my own way, (although heavily adapted - I have to adapt my speech constantly): "Too much confusion can happen with too much laughing." I hoped he understood what I meant by that more than I did.
The teenagers who performed Frami's skit paraded in front of Sammy and I in a dance line down the middle of the street, the leader of the line with the prize Lauren and McKell had bought and I had presented to their town leader for earning second place in the village competition. He held it over his head, still in its wrapping paper. They had so much pride in their second place prize, it made me wonder what they thought was inside the wrapping paper. I was curious what their response would be when they opened the gift and saw it was only a plastic container of candy.
Lauren and McKell had crossed the street and were dancing over to Sammy and me. I joined them and began dancing down the middle of the street as if we were all part of a musical and the show would end with Lauren, McKell and I dancing back to Cape Coast, disappearing around the road's curve and into the dusk.
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