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[title]Ringside with Time Out – cheering on Jamestown's hometown hero...
It is one humid hour after midnight in Accra. The floodlights of the stadium stand dazzling bright under a hot black sky. Inside, to a 5,000-strong audience, a man in a basketball vest winds up an old air-raid siren, sending deafening circles of noise up and out into the night.
Among the thronged plastic chairs and water-sellers, there is a boxing ring. We have a spectacle at hand - hard-talking hometown fighter Braimah Kamoko, aka the Bukom Banku, is shortly to step under the lights to take on a notoriously gutsy Brazilian challenger.
Kamoko gets his nickname from the Accra quarter where he's from - Bukom is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Jamestown, also home to more than 20 boxing schools. There is no other area of the world with this quantity of boxing schools, and there is no other place that has produced so many world champion boxers in the last 75 years.
It is Kamoko's first fight back after an enforced lay-off due to an eye problem. The crowd are expectant, and the man they've come to see appears in suitably dramatic fashion. He is wearing full Muslim dress and dark sunglasses, surrounded by a mob of bawling drummers.
Mocking his injury, he walks slowly, tapping his white cane as if feeling his way to the ring. Once there, he milks the swelling applause, stares at his opponent and strips off. The rhythms of the djembe drums keep coming. When he leaves the ring some 30 minutes later, covered in blood and sweat, he has another victory to his name. The night is thunderous with cheers.