#street pee

[piss-movies]

street pee

[slutspee]

street pee

[pissing-erotic]

street pee

[pornurinate]

street pee

[ultra-pee]

street pee

[likethelightning]

To the Street Pisser

A prose poem to the guy who whipped it out and let flow a stream of urine in the middle of the street, right in front of me. It was just after midnight, on a deserted side street off Connecticut Avenue. The lamplight had turned the asphalt, and the night around it, a sort of maudlin Casablanca blue-gray. I parked my car, stepped out, and began to cross the silent street. And just then, you stepped out too. We met like two duelists in an old Western. The street was empty but for us. The air was pregnant. And you, my surprising one, were quick on the draw. You whipped it out and pissed in the street, legs confidently akimbo, shoulders back, gaze steady. More surprising, even, than the sheer audacity of pissing in the street for an audience of one is that you were wearing a sweater vest and loafers. My darling, my heart, my god among men . . . you were wearing a sweater vest and loafers. And you were pissing in the street. Who are you? It’s entirely possible that you just didn’t see me there, twenty feet away, on an otherwise lonely and lamplit street. But I hope not. I hope that the memory I cling to is a true one: that our eyes met over the rivulet of pee between us, and that for a moment, however briefly, we were one.

[go-away-bird]

The Big List of Pretty Much All the Things I'll Miss About Ghana (It's Longer Than You Think)

1. Meeting another expat for the first time and feeling comfortable discussing my various digestive complaints within 10 minutes.

2. Often having a doctor friend around to dispense advice about said digestive complaints/malaria symptoms/uncategorizable mystery illnesses. (This is true of our time in Swaziland as well.) And, unlike in the U.S., doctors don't seem to find it annoying when their friends ply them with medical questions - compared to what they deal with all day, my sudden heat rash probably seems like a piece of cake to diagnose.

3. This is going to sound awful, but the freedom and the means to pay someone to do just about anything - carry something heavy, dig a hole, fetch you water, peel a mango, drive you into the next country, make you a custom bookstand with a scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer carved into the back (have not done this one - yet). I hate that labor is cheap in Ghana because people don't get paid anything near what they should. But trying to accomplish basic tasks amid stifling heat, byzantine bureaucracy, and/or occasional language barriers can make your life extremely, unnecessarily frustrating. Paying someone - any one of the thousands of people around you who will gladly be paid - to do these things instead makes it less so. It runs counter to my nature, but when you remove the barriers of high cost and a highly regulated and compartmentalized economic society - as in, no one's going to claim they can't do these things for you because it's an insurance risk or it's "not what they do" - paying someone to do things for you is great. 

4. A pub quiz (that's trivia night, Americans) that's way less PC than anything you'd find in the States. 

5. Being able to smile at and greet people on the street without being thought hugely weird. Unexpected full-fledged conversations still disturb my introvert’s soul, and street harassment is still and always just street harassment, but looking other human beings in the eye from time to time is quite nice.

6. Alluded to above, but: buying a mango on the street and having it peeled, cut, and packaged in a tidy box or bag, complete with toothpicks, all for less than a dollar. One of Ghana's most gratifying little pleasures. 

7. Chasing chickens.

8. Watching chickens attempt to fly.

9. Watching chickens cross the road (never gets old).

10. Being consistently greeted with "You are welcome!", especially from the guards at Shaun's office.

11. Quiet, well-behaved children.

12. The exhilaration of hearing the power click back on after a 24-hour outage. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever be that excited again.

13. Knowing the true value of a cool breeze.  

14. Frozen Fandango.

15. Wednesday night Scottish dancing, the best and most unlikely form of weeknight entertainment to be had in all of Accra.

16. Spending 90% of my time in either flip-flops, running shoes, or bare feet.

17. Trust in strangers. Every day here, we’ve depended on people to give us information or transport us safely or negotiate a fair price or take care of our house or otherwise help us do what we needed to do. Many of those people didn’t know us from Adam. Was this a tad risky? Yes. Was it necessary? Yes, yes, yes. As hard as it is to give up the habit of Googling for all our answers, we had to accept long ago the fact that the information about Ghana in guidebooks or on the Internet is just not as useful (and definitely not nearly as current) as what real-life people here have to say. Sometimes all you have to rely on is a stranger’s word, or a stranger’s help. This is a surprisingly freeing mentality once you embrace it. It also requires a similar level of trust in you from the entire community, and it’s highly unlikely that we’ll find that wherever we settle in the States.

18. A relative of #17: the extreme helpfulness you tend to find in Ghanaians. Shaun recalls a time on New Year’s Day this year, in a rather deserted, upscale-looking area of an unfamiliar town, when he wasn’t sure if it was okay for him to pee on the street (this comes up from time to time here; roll with it). As he hovered uncertainly near the gutter, some bystander encouraged him with a smile and an “I know what you’re doing! It’s okay!” (I am not a fan of street peeing and the enthusiastic way men embrace it here, but the principle stands.)

19. Egg and bread, which, despite its simplicity and the fact that egg sandwiches in various forms do exist everywhere, is an experience unique to Ghana and cannot be replicated at home. Something to do with the bread.

20. Getting custom-made shorts, dresses, headbands, and even full-on suits for very, sometimes unbelievably, cheap.

21. The Ivorian restaurant in our neighborhood where you can stuff yourself with grilled fish, couscous, plantains, and - if you’re lucky - avocado salad, plus beer, for, like, five dollars.

There’s more, I’m sure, but I’m sitting in the airport now awaiting our flight to Turkey, and a day of dashing around moving things and inhaling dust bunnies has left me exhausted. Plus, how can I really know what I’ll miss until I’m gone?