By: Michael Walsh
This weekend popped off with a bottle of bubbly at the pedicure place we all went to first thing this Saturday morning.
It was complimentary, and they even took card.
We crushed some Burger King and watched the sun set over Accra before bolting home to get ready.
Today, we were making it to Honeysuckle for Karaoke.
My coworker Carl came by as my group and I shuffled into the bar to sing Karaoke. I sang the song I sing when I’m with my best friend Baylee back home and killed it. Was promptly served sauce for my services and stepped out with my group to go.
My coworker Carl, Nate and I decided the night was still young and safely made our way to a different place to try some vegan ginger shots. Before we left, we ran into a director we met at the video shoot we did earlier in the trip. He invited Nate and I to a runway event the following day and told us to dress nice. We left to the rooftop club next-door to say hi to the owner. After exiting the elevator, we entered cloud9ine.
Nate and I returned at a reasonable hour and passed out, needing to be rested for the drive to the other side of Tema in a couple hours.
We pulled up the next morning to Nkyinkyim Museum with bofrot and a bus full of people.
On our arrival we met some pretty cute puppies.
The puppies prepared us for a powerful collection of artworks. These artworks included architecturally authentic recreations of traditional historic living structures and monuments covered in west African symbols and iconography. The works also included castings of local people’s heads into bust sculptures reimagining true-to-form versions of what people would look like from the area cast into clay. Works are created to represent rulers, modern children, personalized memorial head tokens, and most commonly slaves. These slave sculptures and memorial heads are arranged by the thousands in a tributary field that you can walk through while you witness the sheer number of human forms in it. That number is still vastly dwarfed by the real number the collection represents.
It takes a lot to justify treating people this way. While I have my own theories, I’d rather ask you what you think it would take for someone to treat your own brother as property.
Then we left to get food aside the beach at a resort with a nice pool.
After eating some whole tilapias, we missed our runway event and bounced back to Accra. A handful of us decided to walk to DNR to eat once more after the day-long road trip had finally parked back home.
We boxed up our samosas and called it a day; getting some sleep for the next one to come. This marks the end of our last full weekend in Ghana.
That Monday morning, I listened to the song Buga ten times with this ornery voice actor kid named Michael in the studio because his mom brought him in for a radio spot and asked us to watch him while she was working.
Then my coworker Carl and I chopped kenkey twice.
The first time was at work:
And then the second time at the beach with Babilo:
The second time was much better and was the time I knew what my favorite kenkey and my favorite Ghanaian food was. It was cool that I knew how to order it in Twi and I knew that I would have wanted to try it with fried egg the next time. Best feel good cure to a Monday there is.
Carl and I chilled for the rest of the day, and I hung out with my group during the night.
The next morning, I bolted past an out of home advertisement that I thought was pretty clever.
Then I wrapped up my edit for the short teaser documentary for my fashion designer friend Tina’s Runway for a Cause Non-profit episode series. There was a lot going on during this trip and it took a while to finally get it edited with a lot of limitations, but Tina seemed to like it and only wanted one thing added so it felt good to nearly finish the project I was making for my friends.
*Links to the finished video edits from the trip will come in a condensed list at the end*
Because we had recorded the voice overs we needed to, and the edit was complete, Carl and I went and got mountain dew and candy from a nearby store. We left work soon after, making sure the day was complete. We went and got jalapeño mozzarella balls and honey glazed wings. This was a much cooler Honeysuckle location than this past Saturday. They were even being sponsored by Smirnoff.
We then showed Tina the video after meeting her at a restaurant that we were going to. We were meeting her family and family friends–some of whom I had briefly met the night before on my way home. It was a great birthday party with a great cake. It was a amazing time having a celebratory dinner with my new friends. It’s been incredible being able to take part in this kind of thing with people here.
The next morning, I brought Brady to work with me and bought Lucozade for myself and our Bolt driver that needed to stop for gas.
The craziest part was that we could see another Honeysuckle location from the gas pumps in the parking lot.
Carl, Brady and I were going to shoot a music video right after getting to the studio, but we had to wait for a radio spot to be recorded. We got bored waiting and went to chop fufu and waakye in the meantime.
Khalil grabbed my key light that I had forgot at the apartment and caught us at work. We finally shot the music video we had been waiting to finish and only had to lip-sync to the song four times which could’ve easily been ten and I think everyone was thankful to hear the same recording a few times rather than a lot.
We finished the day, went home, watched the sunset, and ordered a medium sunset combo from Rocomamas.
The burger and the bubblegum shake put me on my butt for the night and I watched movies with Khalil until our group came back from our final Wednesday salsa night at Afrikikos.
The next day began Founder’s Day, the Ghanaian Independence Day celebrating the leaders that paved the way for Ghana to be what it is today. I knew Founder’s Day was in full swing when I got an app-wide discount notification for Bolt Food, reminding me about the holiday and the 50% off I could get.
I began my day in the living room of a friend’s friend’s family friend after Brady had invited me to join him at a lunch where he planned too to meet these people. It was a gorgeous home and amazing company. We shared hand-made Lebanese food and reminisced about the ending of breaking bad.
I spent the rest of my Thursday night writing blog posts and eating 50%-off Joloff from Bolt Food.
I woke up to the final view of my living situation before it was deconstructed and packed away.
I will miss this place and the memories I have. I knew it would never look this way again.
I bolted to work wearing my custom shirt our seamstress Janet had made at the beginning of the trip. After arriving at work, I finished editing the Runway for a Cause documentary. I was running out of time at work and needed to shift my focus onto the tv shoot that we were setting up for, so I finished it right away. We set up in the den and I got to sit in front of the cameras to be the lighting test subject.
We shot an episode of the TV show and made our way back into the studio to reshoot our music video with a higher megapixel camera.
We called it a wrap on the shoots for the day, and I made my way inside the office to make my going away party. We had pizza, roasted sausage, kabob, and sugar free sprite. I gave a speech and accepted a farewell gift that seemed to signify the impending end of my internship.
We stepped outside and took final group photos in front of Innova with the people I’ve come to understand as the life force of the agency. My friends and colleagues all lined up in 6K. We even tried the jump-at-the-same-time photo which never really works right.
Goodbye for now Innova, you’ve enforced a sense of confidence in myself that can never be taken. I will miss you and the people that bring you to life.
I bolted home with the same Bolt driver I had bought a Lucozade for earlier in the week named Viktor who happened to be exiting an account executive job from a nearby agency, and caught up with my group after wrapping up my internship. I would have loved for this whole experience to be longer, but I had no time to slow down. I got home, opened my gift, picked one of the three amazing wax fabric shirts I was given to put on, inserted contacts, bolted a few minutes away, and pressed ‘25th floor’ in the elevator of the tallest building in west Africa.
Welcome to Skybar, the 25th floor bar and grill for the richest residents and visitors of Accra. We were told not to take photos of the bar so here’s the Accra skyline instead:
After collectively spending more money than many Ghanaian families make in a year, our group exited at the ground floor of Skybar. We enjoyed our final night in Ghana revisiting other places we had become familiar with. I’m going to miss this time I shared with my group, we really did get to know this place in an unexpected way. We even learned some vocab on our way home.
I woke up Saturday morning to start packing immediately. If I wanted to do anything before 6pm I needed to have everything done. I got about three quarters of the way through packing and was pulled away to bôndai.
Where we had a boat full of sushi.
And saw the gift of god on our way home.
We got home, I dumped the images from my Ghana phone, wiped it clean, opened the letter from home I had left in my bag, and snapped some photos during golden hour for the last time on the trip.
And got a lift from Dr. Williams to the airport with Peyton and Khalil.
While there I ate chicken at Bubra bar with my friends, got a facetime call from Carl, and sent I’m heading out texts to the people I needed to.
Thank you, Ghana. You have shown me a lot. You’ve been good. I wish to be back one day.
Kwaku the Traveller, taking off.
*Work links*
Playlist + Doc – https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMje0ewEq2d5zYlDAfTn1WwhpzfAKV-a2
Innova DDB (Portfolio) – https://themichaelwalsh.com/?page_id=176