Stir Fry a la West Africa

Alan and I were invited for a dinner at a Chinese restaurant this weekend to celebrate his British colleague's engagement to a Ghanian man that she has met while working here. We were about 15 people gathered around two large banquet tables in our own private room in the restaurant - half of us were white Westerner corporate expats (or partners of) and the other half were Ghanian rastafarians, one of whom was Alan's colleague's fiance. We all agreed that we would sit black person, white person to encourage mixing and mingling which I thought was a great idea. I found it funny that we predicted we would need to do that because otherwise all the Ghanians would sit together and all the white expats would sit together.





So Alan and I sat next to Easyman and King. We soon learned that the guys were all friends of the fiance because they play music and dance in a group together and perform around Ghana. Over our egg rolls and shrimp appetizer, Easyman pulled a few instruments out of his shoulder bag and sampled them for us which was great...they told us they carry their instruments with them because they never know when they will get the feeling to want to play their music. Easyman and I talked about his music, and his other interests in selling crafts which he gave me his business card for. We're hoping to buy some drums while we're here. Alan and his friend, King, seemed to be getting along well and had a conversation about one of Ghana's major tribes, the Ashanti's, and the way in which they name their children. They are largely named for the day of the week they were born. For example, someone born on Monday is named Kojo whereas someone born on Friday is named Kofi. Our two new friends were trying to guess, based on our temperments, which day of the week we were born on so we could figure out our Ashanti names. They were convinced that Alan was a Monday and that I was a Tuesday. In an attempt to give Alan a Rastafarian-Ashanti name they called him "Kojo Simple Guy" which they found fitting.






Needless to say we laughed a lot with them over our Chinese banquet which honestly all felt a little surreal. Here we were, a few weeks into our stay in Ghana having a Chinese banquet dinner with Ghanian Rastafarian drummers and dancers. The night proved to become even more surreal.

After dinner, the 8 or so Ghanian guys brought out their drums, flutes, and one guy was even just improvising with two knives from the dinner table and they played a full concert of West African music and dancing. It was really amazing and we got front row seats to this impromptu concert. Soon, more guys came in to the restaurant, who were also band members and they switched out players on the drums.




Slowly, the waiters from the restaurant started gathering in our private room to watch and I think they were just as much in awe at what they were seeing as we were. How many times in your life will you hear a West African band break out in a Chinese restaurant? The owner would occasionally peek his head in to observe...he did not seem particularly pleased with what was going on since he had a restaurant full of people whose conversations I'm sure were drowned out by drum beats and singing but he never asked them to stop which I was really impressed with. Soon, the dancing began and they got us white people to carry a beat with clapping our hands which was a small feat!




Alan's colleague's fiance is an acrobat and specializes in dancing so he soon was doing all kinds of wonderful things with his body including picking up one of the serving tables and dancing with it on his forehead! Some of us white people joined in the dancing which was very funny and the waiters definitely got a kick out of watching us dance.





After they finished, Alan quickly took a seat at one of the drums and proved that he actually has some natural drumming talent. The guys took turns giving Alan some pointers and we were all hysterically laughing as Alan showed off his skill.






We ended the night at a local street bar nearby, called Lizzy's. where the people overflowed onto the street dancing and drinking local brews. But we luckily had warmed up our dancing skills at the Chinese restaurant and had a great time partying with our new friends! I'm sure this is only a small taste of what is to come at Alan's colleague's wedding which will be here in June.