As im sitting hear in this small internet hut, its probably 100 degrees and im sweating, the shirt im wearing I have neglected to wash or take off in some time and even the flys are staying away! But, its all good, because the Aphrodesia Tour 2006 of West Africa is officially OVER! The band has returned home to the states, and I will remain in an attempt to relax, comprehend and adventure at my own slow african pace. This last week, much of my energy was put into organizing of free music festival.  I met a man named Powerful, a ghanian, on the plane ride out here, where we shared in a vision of black and white creating a music festival, free for the community to showcase local artists and promote environmental awareness, and just last saturday, that is exactly what happened, with great success.  The festival was called Nkabom, which means Universal Unity.  The location was in Jamestown, Accra at the Montse-Agbonaa Chief's Palace Park.  They have a large dirt soccer field surrounded by market places and overlooking the ocean.  The location was picked because Jamestown was one of the largest slave ports in all of western africa.  Overlooking the ocean, you can see the large cement ports jettying out into the water, the jail cells, and the lighthouse for the slaveships to come in.  The town around the park is a poor ghetto, where market places line the streets of crowded people and animals. By having an african and a white american produce a community music festival there was a very powerful message and energy surroudning the even.  In order to reserve the field, we had to present the idea to the cheif, and also presented him with 2 bottles of gin to help him make up his mind, it was a very informal but intense process, and most people in the world dont get to meet and talk with the chief.  We put together an incredible line-up of local artists that i had met and that powerful knew.  We got large tents for shade and to cover the area where the musicians were playing, an awsome sound system, we had 10 local groups perform plus aphrodesia and a group from congo--all styles, cultural drum and dance, reggae, hip-life, aphrobeat, traditional chanting, all varieties of music, as well as speakers from the energy commission and the environmental council and me.  The event was videotaped by 2 TV stations, and we had hundreds of people out, free of charge for them.  To begin the event, we had the cheif come out and do libation, which is a ceremony to bless the land and the spirits which surround us, its traditional to do blessing at events, and they take gin and slowly pour it on the ground as they chant, After the first two performances, suddenly thunder bursted out of the sky and lightning came crashing down, and within 3 seconds, i turned around, and every single person in the crowd had ran away, in fear of the small drizzle of raindrops coming down, but it soon turned into heavy rain, which is extremely rare for thsi time of year, as it is mid-dry season.  So, i stood there, in the pouring rain, pretty dissapointed that the festival was ruined.  But, we werent gonna give up that easily,,,, after coverign up the sound equipment, we got all the drums together under a tent, and probably 40 of us squeezed in and had the most intense drum jam session ever! probably 10 jembes, 6 congos, 3 xylophones, 1 drum kit, 3 horns, couple bass drums, couple bells, all pounding away with the pouring rain falling everywhere around us.  We bellowed on teh drums for nearly half an huor, and finally the rain cleared.  During all of this, several people pulled me aside and told me that the gods were not happy about me putting on this festival, that a whiteman would come back here, to a land where the white-man laid his vengence so many years back.  So, i made another offer to the cheif, another bottle of gin, and together we said our blessings...the rain stopped, but everyone had left except a small few of us, so we decided we werent going out like that, so we re-set-up all the sound equipment, and about 1 hour later, began the music again.  The crowds slowly filtered back, and before we knew it, it was back on, with the blessing of rain adn water for the earth, the blessings from teh chief, and the will to provide what we planned for,. So, the night was long, stressful and amazing.  All the artists performed, including aphrodesia, who got an amazing welcome and responce.  Watching the confusion of the faces of people in the crowd when an all whtie band comes in, and then watching their faces turn completely aroudn when the band starts singing in gha, and singing songs they know, its amazing to take part in that transformation...So, the festival was a success, and the first of its kind, the warmth and thanks i got afterwards made everything worth it, althuogh it has definitely drained most of the paper money that was in my pockets out, its ok, dont think i could have spent it on anything better.

Legos, Nigeria, a place the imagination fears to dream of.  Take NYC at rush hour the day before thanksgiving, then take away all traffic signals and stops, take away all the money and government which keeps the city infrastructure going (roads, sanitation, sewars, police, water, etc..) then drop a huge bomb on everything, add black-thick air from the burning trash and exaust, disease, chaos, and crazy people with guns, large iron pipes and tire spikes stopping whomeever they want whenever they want on the road.  That is Legos, Nigeria in a nut shell, and to think, so much of the world's oil, the infrastructure of our industrialized societies rely on, comes from one of the most crazy places in the world, this place makes the visions of hell look like apple pie cooling on a windowsill in summer.  So, that is why we decided to go:-) Just kidding...

AFRICA UNITE? NOT QUITE The plan was, let's go to Ghana, play the big festival we've got booked, and then ride the wave as things are bound to accelerate from there after we are slapped on the back by every major promter in the world, dine in style wth Rita marley after our set, and travel like African rock stars for the rest of the month. Well, as we're learning all the time here, there is a new plan born every minute, and it's time for a new plan. So how was our experience at Africa Unite, the huge Bob Marley birthday celebration that was suppoed to anchor our West African tour? Think of it as a meal. To make this dish, start with some stock of a festival so disorganized it makes the worst run hippie festival we've encoutered back in the States look like a precisely calibrated military hostage rescue mission. Stir in a helping of several promoters booking their own acts without worrying about coordinating the schedule, and make sure to include a packet of the promoter who had 'officially confirmed' us for the Festival several times being the low man on the totem pole in reality. Add a dollop of our own gullibility in wanting to come to Africa so bad we let go of our normal music business scepticism and forgot the part after 'when something sounds too good to be true...'. Finally, sprinkly a medium sized dollop of rasta politics concerning the only white faces waiting around backstage to perform, and you get Aphrodesia waiting around for 7 hours or so inthe African heat and leaving without playing a note (in a subject for another, MUCH longer journal entry, the ONLY racial tension we have experienced here thus far has been from Jamaican rastas, first at Labadi Beach where several of them loudly confronted us for taking the stage and Peter and Paul for inviting us onstage, and then again at Africa Unite.

Well friends and family, the usual sorry for lack of personal correspondance, but fast internet and free time seem to be some of the many things lacking from this trip--which im ok with, just wanted to add in that disclaimer, but thanks for all the love from those who have sent it! It has only been a week since i last wrote, but on this time-line, life seems to move in its own crazy dimensions.  We spend that last week in the northern regions of ghana, traveling with 13 americans and 8 africans in a 45 passenger old coach bus equipped with a fuzzy, soundless television which is constantly rolling silent old african religious fanatic films.  The one bob marley tape we have plays almost continually, and our bus driver, Chambas, is a thick skinned, intensely devouted muslim crazy man, full strapped (yeah, packing heat!) with his entorague of 4 mechanic/security men, who will drive 14 hours straight, without break or sleep, with no other aim then to get us safely where we're going and provide good services.  The bus rides have been long, 22 hours to get to the northern region, the air on the bus is like thick chalk, at every break you can buy a bag of purewatta or smoked fish, or maybe 10 avocados for around 22 cents, piles as high as houses of old engines and transmitions fill the side of teh roads and every 10 feet for what seems to be miles, you can buy loaves of white bread from the different sellers-not the best business strategy!  We stayed in the Binaba Chiefs Village, where Napolean(head of the african showboyz) grew up and is suppose to be chief, the first show we played was like nothing you could imagine.  We rolled up to the town market in our tour bus, and started unpacking all of our gear.  We used broken sticks with duct tape for mic stands, tied the amps and speakers to the windows with old rope, and ran power from the local candy shop, which would work on and off as the day went on.  We colloborated with 2 local artists, local bob marley who played a 1 string violen made from a gord and had 3 gord shakers with him, and lady madonna, who was an elder who did african style chant-bellow-freestyle with the gord shakers and a 2 string gord guitar in teh background, they each played for about 2 minutes, then the african showboyz put ont heir show.  They do about 6 songs in traditional costumes, napolean plays his 2 string gord guitar-like instrument, and his brothers play the drums, all instruments they make themselves, they do traditional dancing, magic, glass eating! and devil sticks as they play, then we played last.  The crowd was really large and intense, everyone wanted to see and it began getting crazy, people were pushing everyone forward, the guys keeping crowd control were whipping anyone who went over the line we drew in the dirt, people just straight up push people back, little kids, old woman, doesnt matter, and the crowds were still not in control, so they took 2 torches, and started waving fire at the people to back them up-that got their attention, and we began playing again--people were packed in the market, on top of busses, climbing on building roofs, all a little confused about what a bunch of white musicians were doing playig in their village market, what a crazy day, then we went to teh local bar to relax after the show where local bob marley played for us in a sweaty, dance party like show, totally wild! We then went back to the village, killed a pig and peopel ate food.  The next night, we stayed hanging int he village, full moon overhead, we all circled up for lady madonna to sing some songs, and it turned into a dance off, one after another would get in the circle and do some stomp style african dancing, americans and africans, one after another, i got pulled in, and from my dear friend horse-mouths influence, i jumped down and did the worm across the dirty, sending every into a laughing fit, very epic, chanting, yelling, singing, dancing in this small mud village-it was something else, the next day, napolean took every kid in the village to teh near-by lake, and with teh soap that david and i bought them, washed every single child, there were lines 30 deep of girls on one side, and guys on another side, little naked african children, watiting to get soaped up and bathe, what an amazing local experience to be part of.  We played a second show in the zebilla market in a bar, where we packed the place, played all night, super intense shows, and headed back to accra.  Today we prepare for our next phase, where we head to togo to play 1 show, benin for 2 shows, one at the palace de congress, collaborating with the gongbae brass band (11 people)--that means a full bus! Then we head to Nigeria to play at the SHRINE, fela kuti's paalace, and the next day, we are opening for fema kuti, at his shrine, i have arranged for a tv crew to accompany us on all these adventures, so everything is being well documented.  The trip to nigeria is bringing on a lot of nerves from everyone, and it will be interested to see how everything unfolds.

Months of meeting, weeks of planning and days of running around san FRancisco with our heads cut off getting ready for the biggest leap of faith in our lives has taught us to have no expectations. Fair enough. We emerge from the sleek KLM jetliner that has brought us here from Amsterdam onto the tarmac at Kotoka Airport and are hit by a wall of tropical heat still sticky at 8 PM. We get our first taste of a possible charmed life ahead at customs, where the smartly uniformed agent takes a look at the mountains of gear and baggage I am wheeling and asks"You are with a group?"