Mark of Coincidence
One evening, shortly after I had arrived in Hawaii and we had found our place in Kaneohe, my friend and I stopped at Aloha Tower to get a beer. We had been surfing, or rather he had been surfing and I had been bobbing around in the water like a champagne cork. Our heads were full of seawater and our skeleton-muscular systems were fairly exhausted. Aloha Tower has a pub there that brews its own beer; it’s one of the mainland franchises of Gordon-Biersch. It’s a bit upscale, but the beer is good and the scenery is fantastic- it’s at Waikiki overlooking the beach and Diamond Head.
My friend and I were catching up on time spent away in the interim since college. He had traveled and so had I. He was telling me what it was like to live and work on a farm in northern Europe and I was telling him what the Peace Corps was like. I was trying to describe the tribal markings the Akan people used, and he wasn’t understanding. I tried to think of a better way to describe it, and in my searching for words my eyes darted around the beer garden.
Strangely, at the next table I saw a black guy with an Ashanti tribal mark. He was in a group of guys all wearing the same kind of t-shirts and hats. They had obviously just gotten off work and were having a “pau hana” beer. I told my friend to look at the next table and he would see what I was talking about. He looked and then said that there was a black guy with a scar, true enough, but there are so few black people in the islands that it was virtually impossible that an Ashanti was sitting at the next table as we were discussing the ritual scarring. Told him that that was probably true, but there he was nonetheless.
My curiosity got the best of me and I had to go and ask him. I asked where he was from and he said that he was Hawaiian. Everybody at his table laughed, and he asked why I wanted to know. I told him that I was describing Ashanti tribal marks to my friend and that I saw that the mark he had was definitely the same as an Ashanti tribal mark. Odd that it would be on a black Hawaiian. He was flabbergasted that I knew the mark, and when we carried on the rest of the conversation in fluent Ashanti he was truly beyond belief.
My friend and I were catching up on time spent away in the interim since college. He had traveled and so had I. He was telling me what it was like to live and work on a farm in northern Europe and I was telling him what the Peace Corps was like. I was trying to describe the tribal markings the Akan people used, and he wasn’t understanding. I tried to think of a better way to describe it, and in my searching for words my eyes darted around the beer garden.
Strangely, at the next table I saw a black guy with an Ashanti tribal mark. He was in a group of guys all wearing the same kind of t-shirts and hats. They had obviously just gotten off work and were having a “pau hana” beer. I told my friend to look at the next table and he would see what I was talking about. He looked and then said that there was a black guy with a scar, true enough, but there are so few black people in the islands that it was virtually impossible that an Ashanti was sitting at the next table as we were discussing the ritual scarring. Told him that that was probably true, but there he was nonetheless.
My curiosity got the best of me and I had to go and ask him. I asked where he was from and he said that he was Hawaiian. Everybody at his table laughed, and he asked why I wanted to know. I told him that I was describing Ashanti tribal marks to my friend and that I saw that the mark he had was definitely the same as an Ashanti tribal mark. Odd that it would be on a black Hawaiian. He was flabbergasted that I knew the mark, and when we carried on the rest of the conversation in fluent Ashanti he was truly beyond belief.
posted by Traveler at 11:57 AM
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