Great Day-- afternoon

Later on that day, I visited Women´s World Bank for an interview for one of my final news stories. The interview went great and that´s always rewarding enough to make the day great. After Women´s World Bank, I had lunch on the street (plantain chips and water) and then I headed over to the fortress, which took me a while because traffic was awful. Once back home, I changed out of my black jeans because the heat was now unbearable.
The day was beautiful and Julia, an NYU friend, needed to interview some musicians, so a couple of us went with her to the Accra Arts Center which is hands down one of my favorite places in the city. Shacks full of masks, stools, necklaces and other crafts are hanging around everywhere you look. Their specialty, however, is drum-making. Men are sitting on the floor carving tree logs, while animal skin lies out in the sun to be dried and later tightened with a metal strap to the top part of the drum. The drums are first sand and carved with African designs, they are then polished to make their bases shine. Most of them have color, but others are just plain wood or black. Regardless all of them are amazing. Our friends at the shack also showed us what they call a “tourist drum”—a drum made from wood of poor quality and wrapped with leather at the top that will never deliver a good sound. Basically, the tourist drum should be solely used for decoration.
The four of us, Elana, Julia, Allie and I, got to play real drums. We played for a long time and besides the blisters in my hands, I discovered that drumming is perhaps the closest I will ever get to being “good” at playing an instrument. Too bad this discovery was so late in my life.