Tan Lines

I have always loved tan lines. I find farmer’s tans very attractive and why people take off a portion of their bathing suit to get an “even tan” is something I will never understand. Due to the fact that my ancestors largely came from Scotland and England, I am very white and don’t often tan easily. When I do “tan”, unless I have a tan line for proof, people don’t believe me when I tell them that I actually did get darker. Strangers and acquaintances look at me and assume that I simply have always been “that skin tone.”  But them I show them my watch tan line, or my shorts tan, and they look like they’ve seen a ghost. Which honestly, isn’t to far from the truth, the parts of me that never see sun are ghostly white. But it had never occurred to me that Ghanians have never seen tan lines. 

When I showed my Ghanaian friend my tan lines on my feet from my sandals, he thought I had painted myself different colors just to play a joke on him.

Performances Galore

I picked up learning the xylophone on a total whim. I needed another class to be a full time student and the friend I am traveling with suggested I try a music class because the schedules were flexible. I walked over to the department and didn’t know which instrument to learn. After a riveting round of ennie-meany-miny-mo, I settled on the xylophone. It was totally arbitrary. Little did I know that it would be one of my favourite parts about Ghana.  

Over the past few months, I’ve learned several different xylophone songs. I have been going around performing duets with the same friend who convinced me to learn an instrument in the first place. Below are some clips from our most recent performance. 

During the most upbeat song of our set a Ghanaian Chief (who happened to be at the venue) came stuck cedis (Ghana currency) to our foreheads, as he was so pleased that two foreigners came all the way to Ghana and were interacting in such a big part of Ghanaian culture. I was thrilled that him coming onto the stage didn’t distract me enough to completely stop playing the song!

We performed at the Abajo Art and Culture Cafe in Accra. Abajo means “Come out and dance” which is exactly what the crowd did.

You can be certain that whenever I cease to be an expat and find a home to settle down in, I will have my very own Ghanaian xylophone. 

P.S. Please excuse the random British spellings of miscellaneous (favorite vs favourite etc.) words in this post, as well as any others. For one reason or another my laptop no longer accepts American spellings of words, and I have decided to let it have it's way.