May 14th
Currently, I am sitting in Lounge 3 of the Amsterdam-Schiphol Airport. I’m finally on my way home after 4 ½ months in Ghana. In the last days of my stay here, I did a lot of present buying for various family members and friends. I also had a few papers to finish and hand in. Besides that, Rachel and I spent some time at our favorite beach (Tawala) and got Chicken and rice there (the best in Accra as far as I’m concerned). On the Sunday before we left (Mother’s day), Dedei’s brother Eddie came to pick us up early and take us to Tema. After visiting Dedei’s mother and niece Ayelei in East Legon a little over a week ago, we wanted to meet the rest of her family before we left. Eddie is Catholic (unlike Dedei, who is Born Again), so we went with him to a Catholic church in Tema. It was quite large, and there was even one other Obruni there! We wore the dresses Dedei’s sister KK (nickname for Korkor, the same name Dedei calls Rachel- means second born girl) made for us. We got a lot of comments on how beautiful they are. The church service talked about mothers and love. The chorus was really great, and they had traditional accompaniment with drums and everything. There are also separate groups within the church that are from different regions. For example, there were the Akan group (from the Ashanti region), the Ewe group (from the Volta Region), the group from the North (propably Hausa and a mix of other ethnicities) etc. The Ewe and Akan groups performed a couple of their own songs as well which were nice. *As a side note, the ethnicity called Ewe is actually pronounced ‘Ev-ay’. Their language was first written down by the Germans, which explains the trade of a ‘w’ sound for the ‘v’ sound.
After church we stayed with Eddie for a youth group meeting (he is one of the people who runs the group). The question posed to everyone there was ‘What is a citizen?’ and ‘What is a citizen’s responsibilities?’, as well as ‘What specific things could Ghanaians do to be better citizens?’. It was nice to see that these things are being discussed outside of Ashesi, because it seems that Ghana has a problem with personal responsibility. They have been brought up to be dependent, and see their role in politics and government as merely participating in elections. Many Ghanaians feel that once they have elected a president, their role is finished until the next time. Not many people had anything to say in response to the questions, showing another cultural manifestation.
After church Eddie took us to Dedei’s brother Osa’s house. His wife Sarah cooked us a delicious meal of boiled yam and plantain, rice, and vegetable stew with Octopus. I’d never had Octopus before, but it was quite good. It was reminiscent of Calamari but slightly less chewy and more meaty. We hung out for a while there with Osa and Sarah’s kids Ayelei (who we had already met because she lives with Grandma and Eddie), Ayokor, Ayikai, Tso Tso (pronounced Cho-Choh), and the neighbor boy Tete. Tete had never seen a white person before us, and was very scared at first. He quickly warmed up to us when we gave him some bites of our stew. He even started talking and pointing out the alphabet from a chart on the wall. The girls took us for a walk around their community in Tema. Tema is a little different from many other cities/towns in Ghana because it is very well organized. There are separate communities that are numbered. Dedei’s family lives in community 4. The houses are set up along a paved/cobblestoned pathway that are named with Letters and the houses are numbered. This is quite unique in Ghana, as it is easy to find someone just based on their street and number (most roads in Accra have names, but noone knows them). The community has a parking lot for everyone, as the paths between houses are not large enough to drive a car down, or to park. It’s very homey, and it certainly keeps the neighbors close!
After leaving Osa’s house we went to KK’s. We weren’t able to stay long since our program dinner had been moved to Sunday afternoon. We took some pictures with KK, her husband Robert, and their daughter Anita with Rachel and I still wearing the dresses she had sewn for us. Dedei’s family was very welcoming and made us feel at home. They all expressed their wish for us to return, and that we should count them as our family in Ghana. It is one of the motivating factors for my hope to return to Ghana in the future. I will definitely miss the country, and the little nuances, but I will more miss the family that adopted us as their own and treated us with such love and hospitality.
We also went to Dedei’s school one last time. They had been on ‘spring break’ for a couple weeks near the end of our semester so it had been a while since we’d seen them. They were all very cute, as usual. One of the other teachers came in to say goodbye to me and led the kids in a short dancing/singing performance. We led the kids in PE in the morning. They played a number of their traditional games as well as Football (soccer) and tug of war. Rachel got lots of videos that day which are really cute, so I’ll hopefully be able to share some of those with you all.
The trip home has been mostly uneventful so far. Getting out of Ghana was a little bit of an adventure. A while ago, CIEE took our passports to get an extension on our stay since when we entered the country they only gave us 60 days (even though the visa was for 5 or 6 months). When I looked at my extension it said it goes to May 7th. I asked the program directors if I would have to send my passport back since my flight doesn’t leave until the 13th. They said it was fine, and I didn’t think about it again until I got to the airport and apparently it was not ok. They guy at immigration said that because he believed me that it was due to their negligence, or something someone overlooked, he wouldn’t charge me the full fee. He did however want ‘a little something’. I told him I didn’t have any cedi’s and he said that’s fine, whatever I have. So I gave him my 7 US dollars and he sent me on my way. After making it through security and reaching the check-in point, the same guy who had printed my boarding passes was checking the size of carry-on bags. Mine didn’t quite fit into the given sized bin, so he said I would need to check it. I tried to tell him it was small enough, and I didn’t want to have to pay the extra fee for a third checked bag. He said that’s fine, he just needs a little something. Ha. So I gave him my 5 Euro’s that I had leftover from the trip through Amsterdam in January. He checked my bag and sent me on my way. The flight to Amsterdam was quick, and I got here around 5 in the morning (Amsterdam time, it felt like 3 in the morning for me). I slept on a padded bench at a closed restaurant for an hour until it hopened. Then I was kicked out and went to get some breakfast. Now I’m just stalling and looking for things to do for the next 2 hours before boarding time. I’ll be back in Boston around 3 this afternoon, and I’m getting a bit scared about the weather! When we landed here the weather was cloudy and 53ºF, 12ºC! I haven’t seen anything below 23ºC in the last 5 months, so that was a bit of a shocker getting off the plane. The airport is so air-conditioned that I’m wearing jeans and a fleece. I hope it warms up quickly this summer.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
May 4th
It’s been almost a month since I last wrote (sorry!). Things have been becoming more and more normal, so it feels less pressing that I write about my every experience. Longest ago, was our trip to East Legon (a more affluent region of Accra) where Dedei’s youngest brother Eddie lives with her mom and niece Ayelei. Eddie picked us up in his car and drove us there. We came with onions, pineapple, and various other vegetables Dedei wanted to bring her mother. We stopped at the Shoprite in the mall on our way there. Dedei had never been there and pointed out to me the celery (she had never seen it before we made her potato salad that one time). I’m just realizing I never talked about the night Rachel and I cooked ‘American food’ for Dedei and her sister Nakai. We cooked some chicken with barbeque sauce and made a potato salad from Mom/Grandma’s recipe. They thought the potato salad looked like something Ghanaians would eat for desert, but were surprised at how filling it was. One of the things people say about American food is that it is so light (for example, potatoes are much lighter than yams). Dedei had never seen celery before that day. She told me later that she took left over potato salad with fish and she preferred that to the chicken. Nakai called all their brothers and sisters and mother and was telling them how we had cooked for them and yum yum *click*. She’s very funny, clearly the youngest child.
Once we got there Eddie showed us some family pictures and we ate some biscuits and ice cream he’d picked up at Shoprite. Dedei’s mom Ayokor (her Christian name is Margaret) called to tell us not to leave, that she was rushing home from a funeral.When she arrived we cut up the pineapple and ate some pineapple with kenkey and pepper. I found out recently that they don’t say things are spicy meaning the same thing we do. Spicy to them just means that there are a lot of spices in it. If something is spicy as in hot, they say it has a lot of pepper. They use pepper to make two different kinds of stews (one is fried pepper) as well as adding however much they want to various stews. The fried pepper stew/sauce is called Shittoh, and is very spicy! It was really nice visiting with the family. Even though Margaret didn’t speak English very well, she was very friendly and welcoming calling us her grandchildren and everything. It was very much like any of our family gatherings, just sitting around hanging out. We took some family pictures and then got a cab home.
The next week was the week beginning to wrap up our classes. For Cultural Values, professor Ogundipe still wasn’t feeling well enough to come to class after her surgery, so she told us to work on our final paper. The assignment given us was to choose a West African country and do research on proverbs from that country. The paper is supposed to demonstrate cultural values as they are illustrated through proverbs. Oral tradition is so important in Africa, so proverbs weren’t too hard to find. For Africa in the International Setting, we’ve been working also on a final research paper with a topic of our choice. I had decided to do a paper discussing the unique role Reggae has played in the pan-African movement. I point out the power of Reggae to invoke political responses (especially with artists such as Peter Tosh and Bob Marley), and to spread cultural pride. I argue that the reason it has been so effective is because the method of dispersal was through the popular media, rather than through an academic vehicle.Leadership is still finishing up. We have a group paper due the day I leave discussing the validity of Machiavelli’s assertion that the ends justify the means. We have to give examples from our class case studies on leaders such as Ghandi, Kwame Nkrumah, and Lee Kwan Yew. Our professor has had a couple of local leaders come to give us lectures during the last two weeks that were really interesting. One of them was a woman who works for a department that looks into corruption allegations of various government officials. The second was a music artist that everyone but me knew; who promotes the production of Ghanaian music that doesn’t follow the Western trends. At the end of his lecture, they asked him to sing one of his most popular songs and everyone sang along and clapped and everything, which was really fun. We also had our final dance performance. It was free, but early in the afternoon and Dedei wasn’t able to make it because she was still at work. We got costumes made for us that were really nice and helped create a more African look (for those of us who are blond and blue eyed..). At one point during the dance we are supposed to go into the crowd and bring people out to dance, and my roommate Jocelyn was there so I got her to dance with me. The following day our Africa in the International Setting class told me I had Africa in my feet, and that the blond hair is just a cover up. I told her she should tell that to Dedei, who is forever telling me I was born in the wrong country.
The day after the dance performance, Rachel’s two friends that we vacationed with came to class at Ashesi. They were surprised to see that we actually had discussions in class, and were friends with some of the Ghanaian students. At the University of Legon, the lectures are so large and the lecturers usually just read from a book they say it is useless even to go to class. It definitely made me glad for choosing the Ashesi program over the Legon program. After class we went with Steph and Shannah back to Steph’shomestay in East Legon (nearer to their school). We met her mom and dad, who was a captain in the army, and so just goes by Captain. Her mom made us Redred and plantains that were delicious and then we sat for a while and talked to Captain. He is one of the more educated Ghanaians we’ve talked to, and also clearly very bright. One of his favorite topics is how Americans are forever talking about what a terrible president Bush was, but that really he was looking out for our own interests. We also talked about the various things wrong with Muammar Al-Gaddafi’s plan for the United States of Africa (the new head of the African Union). He had some good ideas about it, but also expressed that he didn’t think it was at all possible; that perhaps a more valid immediate plan would be regional unity. There are various problems with even this level of union. It is difficult to trade between West African countries, let alone travel between them. We decided that probably the first thing to do is create better roads connecting the countries. To do that, they would need top of the line construction tools, which they can only get from the Western world. This of course an issue because unless it is in the West’s interest (which of course African economic independence is not), they cannot get the tools they need. The following day, Ashley decided to take Rachel and I out to dinner as a pre-birthday gift/ night out for the girls. We went to the Golden Tulip hotel (which was shockingly Western, and expensive). I ordered a lobster bisque and a salad (yum! Veggies!). We went home and to bed early so we could wake up and go to the Volta Region with CIEE for our final group trip.
We arrived at the tourist office of Wli falls in the volta region just before lunch time. During our hike in to the falls we saw a law of school-aged children also apparently on some sort of field trip. It was interesting to notice the way they dressed, because it was clear they attended a more affluent, probably private school. They wore their hair however they wanted (usually public schools make everyone wear their hair buzzed short, girls included). They also showed an obscene amount of baggy shorts, bandanas, ‘bling’, and other Western hip-hop style. It was so excessive that it was almost funny, but also sad at how much they had been affected by Western pop and culture. The falls were beautiful. On the underside of the mountain near the falls, thousands of bats were hanging, flying, and eating. Two obruni’s from a different group went in before us and got completely surrounded, splashed, and kind of attacked by the kids in the water already. Rachel and I decided to venture in with our friend Adrian between us and the kids, as a block. A lot of times people men so much more than women, that it is a noticeable difference if you go somewhere with a guy. Adrian is an African-American as well, so that helped our cause as well. Once we got to the falls a few nice Ghanaians held our hands and showed us how to back up through the water so that we could touch the wall in the back. The water came down so hard it hurt if you got too close to the middle of the falls where most of the water was falling. After hiking out of the falls, we took a look at the tourist stands and bought some stuff because it was much cheaper than in Accra. We went to lunch, and then to Tafi-Atome monkey sanctuary.
The monkey sanctuary was really just a town. The guide told us that when the people migrated there, they believed the monkeys came with them, and that live harmoniously with them. It was then turned into a tourist economy. The guide gave us some bananas and showed us how to feed the Mona Monkeys in the sanctuary. We walked towards the woods and they began making very loud kissy-like noises to call to the monkeys. Then he held up a banana, saying that you have to hold on tight. The monkey climbed down to the end of the branch and peeled the banana in his hand and took the top half and ran off with it to eat. Some people who didn’t hold on tight enough lost the whole banana to one lucky monkey. The one who took my banana from me was quite strong and insistent. He put one of his little furry hands on mine and tried to take the whole banana, mushing some of it, but then gave up and just took the top part and went away to eat. We even saw a mama monkey with a tiny little baby clinging to her stomach as she climbed. It was very cute.
The next week Ashley and I decided to check out Makola market. It is the biggest market in Accra, and has anything you would ever wish for. It is intimidating much in the same way a mall is, but perhaps more so with all the people coming up to you and asking if you’re interested in buying their goods. The only thing that is better is that you can always bargain, and the prices are quite nice. I bought a pair of jeans for only 15 cedis, and a nice scarf for 2 cedis (which I didn’t even have to bargain for!). We’re going to go back this week to stock up on more clothing. Originally we had thought it would be silly to buy western-style clothing while in Ghana. However, if we’re going to have buy some new clothes at home anyways (since much of our clothing here has turned brown and stretched out from the dirt and hand washing), we might as well get it for half as much as we’d pay at home.
Dedei has also showed us how to make a tomato stew, and soup. It’s pretty easy, and I wrote it down so I can prepare it at home. She’s told me she will teach me to make Jolof rice as well as Palava sauce (my favorite). She’s tried to stick to teaching me to make things with ingredients that will be easy to get in the US, but Palava sauce uses Cocoyam leaves. They look very spinichy once in the stew, so I’ll have to try that. She also said I could try using cabbage. She loves when we learn how to cook from her, because she learned from her mom and we’re like the children she never had. The first girl who stayed with her from CIEE (during the fall semester) wasn’t very interested in learning to cook, so Dedei had been kind of disheartened from that experience. However, I’m very interested in learning to cook because I will miss Dedei’s cooking so much I’ll need to try to replicate it!
Last week Rachel got hit hard with Malaria. The nurse had originally told her it probably wasn’t malaria, but that she should get a test just in case. The test came out negative, and then four days later Rachel was so violently sick in the night Dedei had to take her to the hospital. The doctor there told her she had the symptoms of untreated Malaria. She spent the next four days lying in bed pretty much not moving or eating. Dedei and I took turns staying at the house, and I got a lot of reading done. Rachel did a lot of sleeping and losing weight. She’s much better now though after treatment, and is eating full meals again. Out of the 5 people on our program (1/3 of everyone!) who got Malaria, all of us had negative results on the lab test. I think either the prophylaxis we take, or the fact that we probably display symptoms earlier than most Ghanaians as a result of never having it before, are the reason for the negative tests.
This last weekend we traveled to Winneba again for the antelope hunting festival. Most of the festivities happened on Saturday, although people were partying in town all weekend. There were two teams, the red and white teams, who were trying to catch the antelope. On Saturday at 3 o’clock in the morning, everyone wakes up and treks toward the mountain. You could see all the red shirts from our hotel. They had to cross a river (that we didn’t cross) in order to find the antelope and catch it with their bare hands. Later on they sacrifice it and feast and party some more.
So I think that’s pretty much it for the last few weeks. Rachel and I have made a list of all the things we still need to buy (including thank you gifts for Dedei), and places we need to go before we leave. Only a week and a couple days left, and it is fast approaching. I’m getting a bit nervous about re-adapting to the US, because so many of the things that seemed weird and different when we got here are second-nature now. We have a re-entry orientation and farewell dinner this weekend and then my flight leaves on Wednesday. I’ll write again probably when I get home to talk about the last week and the trip home and initial feelings about being back in the US and everything.See you soon!
It’s been almost a month since I last wrote (sorry!). Things have been becoming more and more normal, so it feels less pressing that I write about my every experience. Longest ago, was our trip to East Legon (a more affluent region of Accra) where Dedei’s youngest brother Eddie lives with her mom and niece Ayelei. Eddie picked us up in his car and drove us there. We came with onions, pineapple, and various other vegetables Dedei wanted to bring her mother. We stopped at the Shoprite in the mall on our way there. Dedei had never been there and pointed out to me the celery (she had never seen it before we made her potato salad that one time). I’m just realizing I never talked about the night Rachel and I cooked ‘American food’ for Dedei and her sister Nakai. We cooked some chicken with barbeque sauce and made a potato salad from Mom/Grandma’s recipe. They thought the potato salad looked like something Ghanaians would eat for desert, but were surprised at how filling it was. One of the things people say about American food is that it is so light (for example, potatoes are much lighter than yams). Dedei had never seen celery before that day. She told me later that she took left over potato salad with fish and she preferred that to the chicken. Nakai called all their brothers and sisters and mother and was telling them how we had cooked for them and yum yum *click*. She’s very funny, clearly the youngest child.
Once we got there Eddie showed us some family pictures and we ate some biscuits and ice cream he’d picked up at Shoprite. Dedei’s mom Ayokor (her Christian name is Margaret) called to tell us not to leave, that she was rushing home from a funeral.When she arrived we cut up the pineapple and ate some pineapple with kenkey and pepper. I found out recently that they don’t say things are spicy meaning the same thing we do. Spicy to them just means that there are a lot of spices in it. If something is spicy as in hot, they say it has a lot of pepper. They use pepper to make two different kinds of stews (one is fried pepper) as well as adding however much they want to various stews. The fried pepper stew/sauce is called Shittoh, and is very spicy! It was really nice visiting with the family. Even though Margaret didn’t speak English very well, she was very friendly and welcoming calling us her grandchildren and everything. It was very much like any of our family gatherings, just sitting around hanging out. We took some family pictures and then got a cab home.
The next week was the week beginning to wrap up our classes. For Cultural Values, professor Ogundipe still wasn’t feeling well enough to come to class after her surgery, so she told us to work on our final paper. The assignment given us was to choose a West African country and do research on proverbs from that country. The paper is supposed to demonstrate cultural values as they are illustrated through proverbs. Oral tradition is so important in Africa, so proverbs weren’t too hard to find. For Africa in the International Setting, we’ve been working also on a final research paper with a topic of our choice. I had decided to do a paper discussing the unique role Reggae has played in the pan-African movement. I point out the power of Reggae to invoke political responses (especially with artists such as Peter Tosh and Bob Marley), and to spread cultural pride. I argue that the reason it has been so effective is because the method of dispersal was through the popular media, rather than through an academic vehicle.Leadership is still finishing up. We have a group paper due the day I leave discussing the validity of Machiavelli’s assertion that the ends justify the means. We have to give examples from our class case studies on leaders such as Ghandi, Kwame Nkrumah, and Lee Kwan Yew. Our professor has had a couple of local leaders come to give us lectures during the last two weeks that were really interesting. One of them was a woman who works for a department that looks into corruption allegations of various government officials. The second was a music artist that everyone but me knew; who promotes the production of Ghanaian music that doesn’t follow the Western trends. At the end of his lecture, they asked him to sing one of his most popular songs and everyone sang along and clapped and everything, which was really fun. We also had our final dance performance. It was free, but early in the afternoon and Dedei wasn’t able to make it because she was still at work. We got costumes made for us that were really nice and helped create a more African look (for those of us who are blond and blue eyed..). At one point during the dance we are supposed to go into the crowd and bring people out to dance, and my roommate Jocelyn was there so I got her to dance with me. The following day our Africa in the International Setting class told me I had Africa in my feet, and that the blond hair is just a cover up. I told her she should tell that to Dedei, who is forever telling me I was born in the wrong country.
The day after the dance performance, Rachel’s two friends that we vacationed with came to class at Ashesi. They were surprised to see that we actually had discussions in class, and were friends with some of the Ghanaian students. At the University of Legon, the lectures are so large and the lecturers usually just read from a book they say it is useless even to go to class. It definitely made me glad for choosing the Ashesi program over the Legon program. After class we went with Steph and Shannah back to Steph’shomestay in East Legon (nearer to their school). We met her mom and dad, who was a captain in the army, and so just goes by Captain. Her mom made us Redred and plantains that were delicious and then we sat for a while and talked to Captain. He is one of the more educated Ghanaians we’ve talked to, and also clearly very bright. One of his favorite topics is how Americans are forever talking about what a terrible president Bush was, but that really he was looking out for our own interests. We also talked about the various things wrong with Muammar Al-Gaddafi’s plan for the United States of Africa (the new head of the African Union). He had some good ideas about it, but also expressed that he didn’t think it was at all possible; that perhaps a more valid immediate plan would be regional unity. There are various problems with even this level of union. It is difficult to trade between West African countries, let alone travel between them. We decided that probably the first thing to do is create better roads connecting the countries. To do that, they would need top of the line construction tools, which they can only get from the Western world. This of course an issue because unless it is in the West’s interest (which of course African economic independence is not), they cannot get the tools they need. The following day, Ashley decided to take Rachel and I out to dinner as a pre-birthday gift/ night out for the girls. We went to the Golden Tulip hotel (which was shockingly Western, and expensive). I ordered a lobster bisque and a salad (yum! Veggies!). We went home and to bed early so we could wake up and go to the Volta Region with CIEE for our final group trip.
We arrived at the tourist office of Wli falls in the volta region just before lunch time. During our hike in to the falls we saw a law of school-aged children also apparently on some sort of field trip. It was interesting to notice the way they dressed, because it was clear they attended a more affluent, probably private school. They wore their hair however they wanted (usually public schools make everyone wear their hair buzzed short, girls included). They also showed an obscene amount of baggy shorts, bandanas, ‘bling’, and other Western hip-hop style. It was so excessive that it was almost funny, but also sad at how much they had been affected by Western pop and culture. The falls were beautiful. On the underside of the mountain near the falls, thousands of bats were hanging, flying, and eating. Two obruni’s from a different group went in before us and got completely surrounded, splashed, and kind of attacked by the kids in the water already. Rachel and I decided to venture in with our friend Adrian between us and the kids, as a block. A lot of times people men so much more than women, that it is a noticeable difference if you go somewhere with a guy. Adrian is an African-American as well, so that helped our cause as well. Once we got to the falls a few nice Ghanaians held our hands and showed us how to back up through the water so that we could touch the wall in the back. The water came down so hard it hurt if you got too close to the middle of the falls where most of the water was falling. After hiking out of the falls, we took a look at the tourist stands and bought some stuff because it was much cheaper than in Accra. We went to lunch, and then to Tafi-Atome monkey sanctuary.
The monkey sanctuary was really just a town. The guide told us that when the people migrated there, they believed the monkeys came with them, and that live harmoniously with them. It was then turned into a tourist economy. The guide gave us some bananas and showed us how to feed the Mona Monkeys in the sanctuary. We walked towards the woods and they began making very loud kissy-like noises to call to the monkeys. Then he held up a banana, saying that you have to hold on tight. The monkey climbed down to the end of the branch and peeled the banana in his hand and took the top half and ran off with it to eat. Some people who didn’t hold on tight enough lost the whole banana to one lucky monkey. The one who took my banana from me was quite strong and insistent. He put one of his little furry hands on mine and tried to take the whole banana, mushing some of it, but then gave up and just took the top part and went away to eat. We even saw a mama monkey with a tiny little baby clinging to her stomach as she climbed. It was very cute.
The next week Ashley and I decided to check out Makola market. It is the biggest market in Accra, and has anything you would ever wish for. It is intimidating much in the same way a mall is, but perhaps more so with all the people coming up to you and asking if you’re interested in buying their goods. The only thing that is better is that you can always bargain, and the prices are quite nice. I bought a pair of jeans for only 15 cedis, and a nice scarf for 2 cedis (which I didn’t even have to bargain for!). We’re going to go back this week to stock up on more clothing. Originally we had thought it would be silly to buy western-style clothing while in Ghana. However, if we’re going to have buy some new clothes at home anyways (since much of our clothing here has turned brown and stretched out from the dirt and hand washing), we might as well get it for half as much as we’d pay at home.
Dedei has also showed us how to make a tomato stew, and soup. It’s pretty easy, and I wrote it down so I can prepare it at home. She’s told me she will teach me to make Jolof rice as well as Palava sauce (my favorite). She’s tried to stick to teaching me to make things with ingredients that will be easy to get in the US, but Palava sauce uses Cocoyam leaves. They look very spinichy once in the stew, so I’ll have to try that. She also said I could try using cabbage. She loves when we learn how to cook from her, because she learned from her mom and we’re like the children she never had. The first girl who stayed with her from CIEE (during the fall semester) wasn’t very interested in learning to cook, so Dedei had been kind of disheartened from that experience. However, I’m very interested in learning to cook because I will miss Dedei’s cooking so much I’ll need to try to replicate it!
Last week Rachel got hit hard with Malaria. The nurse had originally told her it probably wasn’t malaria, but that she should get a test just in case. The test came out negative, and then four days later Rachel was so violently sick in the night Dedei had to take her to the hospital. The doctor there told her she had the symptoms of untreated Malaria. She spent the next four days lying in bed pretty much not moving or eating. Dedei and I took turns staying at the house, and I got a lot of reading done. Rachel did a lot of sleeping and losing weight. She’s much better now though after treatment, and is eating full meals again. Out of the 5 people on our program (1/3 of everyone!) who got Malaria, all of us had negative results on the lab test. I think either the prophylaxis we take, or the fact that we probably display symptoms earlier than most Ghanaians as a result of never having it before, are the reason for the negative tests.
This last weekend we traveled to Winneba again for the antelope hunting festival. Most of the festivities happened on Saturday, although people were partying in town all weekend. There were two teams, the red and white teams, who were trying to catch the antelope. On Saturday at 3 o’clock in the morning, everyone wakes up and treks toward the mountain. You could see all the red shirts from our hotel. They had to cross a river (that we didn’t cross) in order to find the antelope and catch it with their bare hands. Later on they sacrifice it and feast and party some more.
So I think that’s pretty much it for the last few weeks. Rachel and I have made a list of all the things we still need to buy (including thank you gifts for Dedei), and places we need to go before we leave. Only a week and a couple days left, and it is fast approaching. I’m getting a bit nervous about re-adapting to the US, because so many of the things that seemed weird and different when we got here are second-nature now. We have a re-entry orientation and farewell dinner this weekend and then my flight leaves on Wednesday. I’ll write again probably when I get home to talk about the last week and the trip home and initial feelings about being back in the US and everything.See you soon!
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
pics
http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=336746021/a=158961882_158961882/fromupload=true/imagecount=55/videocount=0/t_=158961882
April 15th
So it's only been a week this time!
This last weekend was a long Easter weekend for us because we got both Friday and Monday off. Our professor for cultural values had surgery recently, and her class is the only one I have on Mondays. So actually, I wont be having class Fridays (as usual) or Mondays the rest of the time I'm here. Anyways, we decided to visit the Stilt Village in Western Ghana over the long break. Ashley, Rachel, Stephanie and Shannah (Rachel's soccer teamates from school who are doing the CIEE Legon program) and left Friday morning. We took a 4 hour STC bus (air-conditioned!) to Takoradi which is the third largest urban area in Ghana. It is a twin city with Sekondi. From there we decided to take a tro-tro to Axim, a town about halfway between Takoradi and Beyin (the town outside Nzulezo, the stilt village). We didn't have any reservations because all the hotels with listed phone numbers in the guide book were booked for the weekend. We were nervous about making it all the way to Beyin and not having a place to stay, so we stayed in Axim for the night and decided to wake up early to go to the village.
Our hotel in Axim left a little to be desired. The water was not working when we got there so we had to request buckets of water. The TV that we were paying extra for was not working. The matresses were so thin and squishy that it felt as if we were actually just sleeping on the bedframe. Besides all this, we had a working fan (always necessary) and electricity (to charge various items). We relaxed for a bit in the hotel before taking a walk through town. There was a fort there and an Easter celebration going on. We watched the sun set from underneath a gorgeous typical Africa-looking tree (tall thick trunk, with a canopy type branch and leaves). The children in the town followed us to the beach and stood around behind us while we watched the sun-set. Typical.
The next morning we woke up early and got a rip off of a taxi ride to Beyin. We payed 4 cedi's each (20 cedis for him, for a 2 hour drive). Once in Beyin we had to pay the tourist office for our visit to the stilt village. We drove out to the water where we walked a little ways through some very squishy and questionably parasitic mud. After getting in our canoes, we helped the two men (Pont, our tour guide, and the taxi driver came with us) paddle to the stilt village. The lake the village was on was beautiful still water with trees and grass surrounding it (see pictures). Once we reached the stilt village we got out of the boats and walked up the central 'street'. The village is exactly what it sounds like, a village on stilts. When we were there we could see a small soccer field. They only have this for the 3 driest months of the year. During the rest of it, it is also under water. Steph and I had to pee really bad so he showed us where we could go. It sort of looked outhouse-like, except that there was no door, or hole. You just had to try to aim through the boards and not get it on your own feet. We were mildly successful. For the most part Ghanaians have no qualms about going to the bathroom anywhere anytime. One time, Shannah was telling me that her taxi driver pulled over on the side of the street during a ride, and proceeded to diarrhea on the side of the road. It is not uncommon to walk by men peeing into the gutters. Even women will pop a squat if the urge is such that they cannot wait.
Some of the children in the village were playing a game that looked similar to a jump-roping game kids in the US call Double-Dutch. The 'jump-rope' was made of tied together plastic bags. After getting a snack and a drink at the 'bar' we got back in the canoes and travelled back to Beyin. Our same taxi driver drove us back to Axim where he said he needed to change his break rubber. We had negotiated that he take us all the way to Prince's Town for the same price, since he had already overcharged us. We waited for about 30 minutes while they were working on the car. We found a woman and man who were making fried balls of maize and sugar that were quite delicious. We tried to play Ampe (the rock-paper-scissors-like game I described earlier) with the children who gathered to stare at us. I tried to teach a couple of them how to do a handstand before their mother yelled at them for not doing their work. After fixing the car, our taxi driver tried to charge us extra to take us to Prince's town. We were so fed up with getting ripped off that we got out of the car and signalled a tro-tro. After a while, we got off the tro-tro in Takoradi. Oops. We had missed the junction for Prince's town. We ended up just hanging out in Takoradi for a little to get some lunch since by this point we were all starving. We then got a tro-tro to Princes town.
When we got to princes town we first went to the German fort there to see if they had room available. They had one room available that would only just barely fit 5 people, for 6 cedis each a night. The bathrooms were shared, but the view was gorgeous and there was a woman pounding fufu for dinner. We decided to look elsewhere since we were planning to stay a couple nights and would rather have more space. We found a nice guesthouse where noone was staying, and were able to get two rooms for 2 nights for a total of 60 cedis, 6 cedis each a night! For the same price we were able to get our own bathrooms with running water and fans. The guesthouse even had a lounge and eating area. The food we got there was a bit expensive, but the deal we got on the rooms evened it out.
The following day, our plan was to hike to Cape Three Points through the forest reserve where there was supposed to be some cool plants and wildlife. Rachel's knee had been a bit sore (she tore her ACL and had surgery in the fall). So we decided to do a shorter hike through a bamboo forest. We got to see rubber trees, pineapple plants, gardenegg plants, palm-nut plants (not palm trees), banana trees, pawpaw trees (papaya) and lots of other cool things before we even got to the bamboo forest. The bamboo forest was incredible. All these huge trees with bamboo stalks growing up and arching over were pretty much the only trees there. When we reached a small river we saw some smoke in the distance and our tour guide Alex said it was a traditional palm wine distillery. For one cedi we were able to go and see how they tap the trees, light a fire in a hole to scare out/kill all the bugs, and collect the palm wine. We tried some very fresh palm wine which was even sweeter than the wine we'd tasted in Cape Coast. He also gave us a taste of the twice distilled liquor that was much harder. It tasted a lot like vodka but with a distinctly palm-winey after-taste. The distillery was a big can full of the palm wine. They lit a fire under it that was fuelled by bamboo stalks. The evaporated alcohol (that evaporates faster than water) enters a tube that cools it in the lake. It then comes back up another tube into a bucket. This process is done twice to get the hard palm alcohol.
Just a ways up the hill were two men working on making a dugout canoe. They had a large tree that had falled and were hacking at either end to make the curved ends of the boat. After that they light fires in the center to kill the bugs and make the process easier. They said it takes about two weeks to make a canoe. After the hike, we spent the day on the prince's town beach near a german-owned hotel. Alex said that hotel would have cost 50 cedis a night! The beach was practically empty except for a couple other people and we had a great view of Cape Three Points. It was also very clean!
The following morning we decided to do a lagoon trip before we left. We split up between two dugout canoes and toured the Ehunu Lagoon (salt water) near Princes Town. We saw a bunch of black and white colobus monkeys in the mangroves. We also saw a very small aligator climbing out of the water (the picture of the aligator isn't very good). We saw some tucan-looking birds as well. The pictures will do this tour better justice than a description. On our way out of the boats, we saw a fisherman who had caught a stingray in the lagoon and cut it up in the bottom of his boat. My camera had died at this point but I'll get pictures from Shannah later on. After the tour we packed up our stuff and headed back to Takoradi where we got a bus to Accra. Dedei had some fufu and hot soup waiting for us when we got back! It was probably the best trip we've done so far because we got to do so many cool things that we weren't even expecting. Things worked out better than we had hoped without even having reservations. All the places we stayed were really beautiful and clean. The Western region was really appealing. If I ever moved to Ghana I think that is the area I would try to live. It seemed like things were cleaner and better organized there while still having the Ghanaian relaxed sense of time.
The computer I'm on now isn't accepting my pen drive, so I will try to post the pictures tomorrow. Today is the 4 week mark. Only a month left! Yikes. We're trying to do all the travelling we wanted to before we leave. This weekend we're planning to go to Tema to visit with Dedei's mother and family so that should be fun.
This last weekend was a long Easter weekend for us because we got both Friday and Monday off. Our professor for cultural values had surgery recently, and her class is the only one I have on Mondays. So actually, I wont be having class Fridays (as usual) or Mondays the rest of the time I'm here. Anyways, we decided to visit the Stilt Village in Western Ghana over the long break. Ashley, Rachel, Stephanie and Shannah (Rachel's soccer teamates from school who are doing the CIEE Legon program) and left Friday morning. We took a 4 hour STC bus (air-conditioned!) to Takoradi which is the third largest urban area in Ghana. It is a twin city with Sekondi. From there we decided to take a tro-tro to Axim, a town about halfway between Takoradi and Beyin (the town outside Nzulezo, the stilt village). We didn't have any reservations because all the hotels with listed phone numbers in the guide book were booked for the weekend. We were nervous about making it all the way to Beyin and not having a place to stay, so we stayed in Axim for the night and decided to wake up early to go to the village.
Our hotel in Axim left a little to be desired. The water was not working when we got there so we had to request buckets of water. The TV that we were paying extra for was not working. The matresses were so thin and squishy that it felt as if we were actually just sleeping on the bedframe. Besides all this, we had a working fan (always necessary) and electricity (to charge various items). We relaxed for a bit in the hotel before taking a walk through town. There was a fort there and an Easter celebration going on. We watched the sun set from underneath a gorgeous typical Africa-looking tree (tall thick trunk, with a canopy type branch and leaves). The children in the town followed us to the beach and stood around behind us while we watched the sun-set. Typical.
The next morning we woke up early and got a rip off of a taxi ride to Beyin. We payed 4 cedi's each (20 cedis for him, for a 2 hour drive). Once in Beyin we had to pay the tourist office for our visit to the stilt village. We drove out to the water where we walked a little ways through some very squishy and questionably parasitic mud. After getting in our canoes, we helped the two men (Pont, our tour guide, and the taxi driver came with us) paddle to the stilt village. The lake the village was on was beautiful still water with trees and grass surrounding it (see pictures). Once we reached the stilt village we got out of the boats and walked up the central 'street'. The village is exactly what it sounds like, a village on stilts. When we were there we could see a small soccer field. They only have this for the 3 driest months of the year. During the rest of it, it is also under water. Steph and I had to pee really bad so he showed us where we could go. It sort of looked outhouse-like, except that there was no door, or hole. You just had to try to aim through the boards and not get it on your own feet. We were mildly successful. For the most part Ghanaians have no qualms about going to the bathroom anywhere anytime. One time, Shannah was telling me that her taxi driver pulled over on the side of the street during a ride, and proceeded to diarrhea on the side of the road. It is not uncommon to walk by men peeing into the gutters. Even women will pop a squat if the urge is such that they cannot wait.
Some of the children in the village were playing a game that looked similar to a jump-roping game kids in the US call Double-Dutch. The 'jump-rope' was made of tied together plastic bags. After getting a snack and a drink at the 'bar' we got back in the canoes and travelled back to Beyin. Our same taxi driver drove us back to Axim where he said he needed to change his break rubber. We had negotiated that he take us all the way to Prince's Town for the same price, since he had already overcharged us. We waited for about 30 minutes while they were working on the car. We found a woman and man who were making fried balls of maize and sugar that were quite delicious. We tried to play Ampe (the rock-paper-scissors-like game I described earlier) with the children who gathered to stare at us. I tried to teach a couple of them how to do a handstand before their mother yelled at them for not doing their work. After fixing the car, our taxi driver tried to charge us extra to take us to Prince's town. We were so fed up with getting ripped off that we got out of the car and signalled a tro-tro. After a while, we got off the tro-tro in Takoradi. Oops. We had missed the junction for Prince's town. We ended up just hanging out in Takoradi for a little to get some lunch since by this point we were all starving. We then got a tro-tro to Princes town.
When we got to princes town we first went to the German fort there to see if they had room available. They had one room available that would only just barely fit 5 people, for 6 cedis each a night. The bathrooms were shared, but the view was gorgeous and there was a woman pounding fufu for dinner. We decided to look elsewhere since we were planning to stay a couple nights and would rather have more space. We found a nice guesthouse where noone was staying, and were able to get two rooms for 2 nights for a total of 60 cedis, 6 cedis each a night! For the same price we were able to get our own bathrooms with running water and fans. The guesthouse even had a lounge and eating area. The food we got there was a bit expensive, but the deal we got on the rooms evened it out.
The following day, our plan was to hike to Cape Three Points through the forest reserve where there was supposed to be some cool plants and wildlife. Rachel's knee had been a bit sore (she tore her ACL and had surgery in the fall). So we decided to do a shorter hike through a bamboo forest. We got to see rubber trees, pineapple plants, gardenegg plants, palm-nut plants (not palm trees), banana trees, pawpaw trees (papaya) and lots of other cool things before we even got to the bamboo forest. The bamboo forest was incredible. All these huge trees with bamboo stalks growing up and arching over were pretty much the only trees there. When we reached a small river we saw some smoke in the distance and our tour guide Alex said it was a traditional palm wine distillery. For one cedi we were able to go and see how they tap the trees, light a fire in a hole to scare out/kill all the bugs, and collect the palm wine. We tried some very fresh palm wine which was even sweeter than the wine we'd tasted in Cape Coast. He also gave us a taste of the twice distilled liquor that was much harder. It tasted a lot like vodka but with a distinctly palm-winey after-taste. The distillery was a big can full of the palm wine. They lit a fire under it that was fuelled by bamboo stalks. The evaporated alcohol (that evaporates faster than water) enters a tube that cools it in the lake. It then comes back up another tube into a bucket. This process is done twice to get the hard palm alcohol.
Just a ways up the hill were two men working on making a dugout canoe. They had a large tree that had falled and were hacking at either end to make the curved ends of the boat. After that they light fires in the center to kill the bugs and make the process easier. They said it takes about two weeks to make a canoe. After the hike, we spent the day on the prince's town beach near a german-owned hotel. Alex said that hotel would have cost 50 cedis a night! The beach was practically empty except for a couple other people and we had a great view of Cape Three Points. It was also very clean!
The following morning we decided to do a lagoon trip before we left. We split up between two dugout canoes and toured the Ehunu Lagoon (salt water) near Princes Town. We saw a bunch of black and white colobus monkeys in the mangroves. We also saw a very small aligator climbing out of the water (the picture of the aligator isn't very good). We saw some tucan-looking birds as well. The pictures will do this tour better justice than a description. On our way out of the boats, we saw a fisherman who had caught a stingray in the lagoon and cut it up in the bottom of his boat. My camera had died at this point but I'll get pictures from Shannah later on. After the tour we packed up our stuff and headed back to Takoradi where we got a bus to Accra. Dedei had some fufu and hot soup waiting for us when we got back! It was probably the best trip we've done so far because we got to do so many cool things that we weren't even expecting. Things worked out better than we had hoped without even having reservations. All the places we stayed were really beautiful and clean. The Western region was really appealing. If I ever moved to Ghana I think that is the area I would try to live. It seemed like things were cleaner and better organized there while still having the Ghanaian relaxed sense of time.
The computer I'm on now isn't accepting my pen drive, so I will try to post the pictures tomorrow. Today is the 4 week mark. Only a month left! Yikes. We're trying to do all the travelling we wanted to before we leave. This weekend we're planning to go to Tema to visit with Dedei's mother and family so that should be fun.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
April 6th
The Friday after my last post, Rachel and I went to Dedei’s school (as we do most Fridays) to teach. However, after showing Dedei some of our new moves from our Music and Dance class, she decided that we would have a music and dance section of class that day. Needless to say, Rachel and I were a bit nervous. The songs we sing are in Ga, which is most of the children’s first language, so we knew that our American accents could be a bit embarrassing. We also inevitably move in a very Western way, and so the African style moves look a little funny when we do them. When we sang our song, the children just stared at us for a while. Dedei said another student walked by outside and exclaimed “the white women are singing our song!”. After they got over the shock of us singing their song, they got up and showed us the song they sing for the Kponlogo dance (the song we had been singing, and a dance we learned in class). Their version was slightly different but we could deffinitly see the similarties. It was really cool to watch the children do their song and dance because every kid there knew the song and was really into it. The ones who weren’t dancing were clapping and singing, some were drumming on desks and chalk tins, others were improvising their own moves on top of the desks. Rachel and I were kind of jealous that we didn’t have that kind of experience as a kid. It shows again how dancing and music are a huge part of Ghanaian culture.
The next day Lily, Rachel, Ashley and I left Accra to go to Kumasi for the Black Starts football game. We didn’t have tickets and had been told varying things about what availability would be like when we got there. We decided to believe someone who told us we would be able to get tickets as long as we got to the stadium Sunday morning (the day of the game) at 4:30. After making reservations at a hotel near the bus station, we arrived to find that they had ‘no rooms available’. We finally found out that there was one room available, and if we were really leaving early we could all stay in that room. Apparently there was a guy coming the next day who wouldn’t be happy about having four people in one room. Anyways, we ended up paying 11 cedis each (because there was AC and a television) and stayed in that room for the night. The next morning we went to the stadium at 5:00. There were people there who told us that they don’t start selling tickets until 7:00. By this time of course we had already checked out of our room, so we ended up just waiting in line in hopes that maybe our tickets would be somehow better because we had waited so long. Along comes 7:30 and the whole line behind us runs around the corner. Not really knowing what to do, we followed them and ended up at the back of a line at another ticket booth. Now people were saying that tickets wouldn’t be on sale until 10:00. We had quite a bit of time, and I was very hungry so I bought some hard boiled eggs, groundnuts, and bananas for breakfast.
The same kinds of people who sell food in traffic often sell food anywhere else there are groups of people. Women who sell hard boiled eggs will peel the eggs for you and ask if you want ‘pepper’, which is a spicy/salty sauce with cut up onion in it. They cut the egg open and scoop some sauce in and hand you the egg. Usually they are 20 or 25 pesewa each. Groudnuts come in little baggies that are 10 pesewa each. Bananas are usually about 20 pesewa for two, but the price goes down per banana if you buy more. Other people sell plantain chips, ‘pure water’ (which is questionable. The water here is much cheaper if you buy it in a ‘sashe’ which is a 500 ml baggie of water, but some desperate people will just fill them up from a tap. This is how my cultural values professor got typhoid), grilled plantains, ‘biscuits’ (crackers of various types, a lot of them are either milk crackers, cream crackers, butter crackers, some of them actually have a chocolate mousse stuff in them), coconuts (the man will cut it open for you with his machete so you can drink the milk, then he cuts it in half so you can eat the insides), etc.
After eating, I had been talking to a man in front of us a bit, just making conversation. Some people had been going up to the gate, and he explained to me that there was a man inside who was bringing some tickets. He told me that if I gave him our money, he could get tickets for us. The tickets were 5 cedi for general seating, and 10, 15 or 20 for VIP seating. People had recommended to us that we get VIP seating because just a month ago a few people had been trampled and killed at the Kumasi stadium. In Accra a few years ago, people had gotten so rowdy that about 160 people were killed. We opted for the cheapest VIP seats and I gave the money to the man and watched him talk to the man at the gate for our tickets. I was a bit worried about giving my money to some random guy I had just met, but I had already seen his tickets and watched him give the money to the man at the gate. He came back about 10 minutes later with 4 10 cedi vip tickets. I gave him a dash (tip) for his efforts and each of us ended up paying 11 cedis for our VIP tickets. We went back to the hotel we had stayed at the night before and had some breakfast/lunch while we waited for our reservation to open up (that we made the night before so we would be sure to have a room for Sunday night). We put our stuff in the room and took a nap before getting some more food and heading to the game around 3:00. When we got there, of course the road was blocked off so we had to walk up the street with all the other fans and we got to see all the fan regalia being sold outside the stadium. There are some pictures of the kind of stuff that was being sold. I had bought an Appiah jersey in Accra to wear to the game (he is their captain). At the game I bought a Ghanaian flag to wave. When we found our seats we were excited to notice that we actually had a great view (even though we got the least expensive VIP tickets available). We were sitting so that our view of the field was just above the plexi-glass barrier by one of the goals. Ghana scored within the first minute of the game, and then didn’t score again. Benin had no goals. Ghana’s win! They had a few good shots on goal toward the end of the game but could not put the ball in the net. The game was very exciting anyways.Rachel and Lily left that night on a bus back to Accra. Lily had a project due the next day so she wanted to be sure she would be back in time. Ashley and I stayed the night in our reserved room and headed back on the 4:30 bus on Monday morning.
Wednesday morning the next week Rachel and I went with Dedei to her sister-in-law’s grandchild’s naming ceremony. Dedei’s sister in law, Georgina, is the woman who owns the international school that Rachel and I have taught at a couple times. Naming ceremonies are a traditional Ghanaian ceremony that takes place about a week after the child is born. Until then, they only go by their day name. We went to a more westernized version that was held in a church. Dedei has explained to us that in more traditional ones (which they carried out at the reception that we couldn’t attend because of class), the child is held up to the sky to offer it to God, and then it is put on the ground to show that it is now a human of the Earth.
Rachel and I had gone to Georgina’s school a couple weeks ago. We brought some plain paper and colored pencils to do an activity with them. In the US we call them fortunetellers and kids use them to ‘tell each others’ fortunes’ during recess etc. They are folded in such a way that the players can pick colors and numbers, and then behind each number is a question. We adapted this activity so that each question was a quiz question related to the things the students were learning in class. So we showed them all how to fold, color, and number the fortunetellers. They had a bit of trouble thinking of good quiz questions. Some of them had questions like “what is your name”. Others picked up on it much more quickly and thought of some really good questions. This week Rachel and I went to teach at Dedei’s school, but she had us go to the third grade class because she felt she was being selfish with our help. We did the same activity with the kids at the public school. We also played twenty questions with the object being Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president and the man who led them to independence in 1957. After being exposed to the craziness of Dedei’s class one, class three was really interesting. Dedei says that by this time ‘the cane has done it’s work’, and indeed the children are very well behaved. They were also very bright, and thought of many good questions for the fortunetellers (such as, How many religions are there in Ghana? Etc.) It was sad to realize that many of these children will not get an education past highschool because they cannot afford the fee’s. Many of the children at the international school will attend college, but may not be as smart or as intelligent as some of the public school children.
Last week Dedei made us ‘pepper’ which is kind of like the stews she has made us before. You take it in much smaller amounts than the stew though because it is so hot. We had it with banku, which I think is typical. It was quite good, and very spicy. She told us we could add some ketchup to make it a bit more mild. We have also had a few talks about how Americans are very picky about what they eat. For example, fish head is a delicacy here and people love it. People also apparently eat bones. I don’t mean like chew off all the last bits of meat until the bones are clean, but they actually bite and chew and swallow the bones. Dedei showed me a drumstick bone that I could try it on since those bones are very soft. It was surprisingly soft, and didn’t taste especially good. I guess it is an acquired taste. The doggy that we usually feed our bones to is probably happy that I didn’t like them. She has become a lot more friendly and will greet us when we come to the gate now and even get so excited she’ll jump up on us sometimes. Mostly the dogs here are wild, and no one ever gives them any attention. She has probably never had so much attention in her life. If you walk by a stray dog on the street, it wont even look up at you the way dogs in the US do. They have never had an experience that would suggest to them that a human would be somewhere to look for shelter, food, or attention. Usually people just treat them as pests, so they really are wild dogs. Speaking of animals, the kitty that we also feed our scraps to, had her kittens a few weeks ago. She only had two of them and Rachel and I named them Pongo (from 101 Dalmations, because she is spotted) and Raja (from Aladdin, because he is striped like a tiger). We’ve gotten to hold them and play with them a couple times. They are so tiny that when they make noise it doesn’t even sound like a cat. When they walk it looks like their drunk because their legs move in weird jerky motions like their muscles aren’t working properly yet. We’re glad she had them while we were here because we feed the kitty so many scraps that she is able to take care of them now. She had a little once before and ended up eating them because she was so hungry.
This weekend we went to a place about 40 minutes up the coast called Kokrobite. It is a pretty touristy beach, though it doesn’t cost any to just lay on the beach. It was by far the nicest beach I’ve been to in Ghana. There was only a very small amount of trash, and the waves were great. When we got there some people were having a drumming session too so that was nice to enjoy. When we were having lunch we ran into Adam, the British guy we met on the ferry to the northern region.
We seem to be running quite low on weekends now. We only have 5 left. The first weekend in May we have planned to go back to Winneba. There is a big antelope hunting festival that weekend where two groups try to see who can catch the antelope with their bare hands first. It is then killed as a sacrifice. One of our friends, Rose, from school is from Winneba so we are going to stay at her uncles’ hotel while we are there that weekend. We also have a weekend trip with the program still. That trip will be to the Volta region to go to a Monkey Sanctuary and also to Wli falls. This coming weekend is Easter weekend so we get Friday and Monday off. Hopefully we will be able to plan a fun trip. There is a stilt village a ways West of here almost to la Cote D’Ivoire that we might try to see. That only leaves 2 weekends open! Yikes.
The Friday after my last post, Rachel and I went to Dedei’s school (as we do most Fridays) to teach. However, after showing Dedei some of our new moves from our Music and Dance class, she decided that we would have a music and dance section of class that day. Needless to say, Rachel and I were a bit nervous. The songs we sing are in Ga, which is most of the children’s first language, so we knew that our American accents could be a bit embarrassing. We also inevitably move in a very Western way, and so the African style moves look a little funny when we do them. When we sang our song, the children just stared at us for a while. Dedei said another student walked by outside and exclaimed “the white women are singing our song!”. After they got over the shock of us singing their song, they got up and showed us the song they sing for the Kponlogo dance (the song we had been singing, and a dance we learned in class). Their version was slightly different but we could deffinitly see the similarties. It was really cool to watch the children do their song and dance because every kid there knew the song and was really into it. The ones who weren’t dancing were clapping and singing, some were drumming on desks and chalk tins, others were improvising their own moves on top of the desks. Rachel and I were kind of jealous that we didn’t have that kind of experience as a kid. It shows again how dancing and music are a huge part of Ghanaian culture.
The next day Lily, Rachel, Ashley and I left Accra to go to Kumasi for the Black Starts football game. We didn’t have tickets and had been told varying things about what availability would be like when we got there. We decided to believe someone who told us we would be able to get tickets as long as we got to the stadium Sunday morning (the day of the game) at 4:30. After making reservations at a hotel near the bus station, we arrived to find that they had ‘no rooms available’. We finally found out that there was one room available, and if we were really leaving early we could all stay in that room. Apparently there was a guy coming the next day who wouldn’t be happy about having four people in one room. Anyways, we ended up paying 11 cedis each (because there was AC and a television) and stayed in that room for the night. The next morning we went to the stadium at 5:00. There were people there who told us that they don’t start selling tickets until 7:00. By this time of course we had already checked out of our room, so we ended up just waiting in line in hopes that maybe our tickets would be somehow better because we had waited so long. Along comes 7:30 and the whole line behind us runs around the corner. Not really knowing what to do, we followed them and ended up at the back of a line at another ticket booth. Now people were saying that tickets wouldn’t be on sale until 10:00. We had quite a bit of time, and I was very hungry so I bought some hard boiled eggs, groundnuts, and bananas for breakfast.
The same kinds of people who sell food in traffic often sell food anywhere else there are groups of people. Women who sell hard boiled eggs will peel the eggs for you and ask if you want ‘pepper’, which is a spicy/salty sauce with cut up onion in it. They cut the egg open and scoop some sauce in and hand you the egg. Usually they are 20 or 25 pesewa each. Groudnuts come in little baggies that are 10 pesewa each. Bananas are usually about 20 pesewa for two, but the price goes down per banana if you buy more. Other people sell plantain chips, ‘pure water’ (which is questionable. The water here is much cheaper if you buy it in a ‘sashe’ which is a 500 ml baggie of water, but some desperate people will just fill them up from a tap. This is how my cultural values professor got typhoid), grilled plantains, ‘biscuits’ (crackers of various types, a lot of them are either milk crackers, cream crackers, butter crackers, some of them actually have a chocolate mousse stuff in them), coconuts (the man will cut it open for you with his machete so you can drink the milk, then he cuts it in half so you can eat the insides), etc.
After eating, I had been talking to a man in front of us a bit, just making conversation. Some people had been going up to the gate, and he explained to me that there was a man inside who was bringing some tickets. He told me that if I gave him our money, he could get tickets for us. The tickets were 5 cedi for general seating, and 10, 15 or 20 for VIP seating. People had recommended to us that we get VIP seating because just a month ago a few people had been trampled and killed at the Kumasi stadium. In Accra a few years ago, people had gotten so rowdy that about 160 people were killed. We opted for the cheapest VIP seats and I gave the money to the man and watched him talk to the man at the gate for our tickets. I was a bit worried about giving my money to some random guy I had just met, but I had already seen his tickets and watched him give the money to the man at the gate. He came back about 10 minutes later with 4 10 cedi vip tickets. I gave him a dash (tip) for his efforts and each of us ended up paying 11 cedis for our VIP tickets. We went back to the hotel we had stayed at the night before and had some breakfast/lunch while we waited for our reservation to open up (that we made the night before so we would be sure to have a room for Sunday night). We put our stuff in the room and took a nap before getting some more food and heading to the game around 3:00. When we got there, of course the road was blocked off so we had to walk up the street with all the other fans and we got to see all the fan regalia being sold outside the stadium. There are some pictures of the kind of stuff that was being sold. I had bought an Appiah jersey in Accra to wear to the game (he is their captain). At the game I bought a Ghanaian flag to wave. When we found our seats we were excited to notice that we actually had a great view (even though we got the least expensive VIP tickets available). We were sitting so that our view of the field was just above the plexi-glass barrier by one of the goals. Ghana scored within the first minute of the game, and then didn’t score again. Benin had no goals. Ghana’s win! They had a few good shots on goal toward the end of the game but could not put the ball in the net. The game was very exciting anyways.Rachel and Lily left that night on a bus back to Accra. Lily had a project due the next day so she wanted to be sure she would be back in time. Ashley and I stayed the night in our reserved room and headed back on the 4:30 bus on Monday morning.
Wednesday morning the next week Rachel and I went with Dedei to her sister-in-law’s grandchild’s naming ceremony. Dedei’s sister in law, Georgina, is the woman who owns the international school that Rachel and I have taught at a couple times. Naming ceremonies are a traditional Ghanaian ceremony that takes place about a week after the child is born. Until then, they only go by their day name. We went to a more westernized version that was held in a church. Dedei has explained to us that in more traditional ones (which they carried out at the reception that we couldn’t attend because of class), the child is held up to the sky to offer it to God, and then it is put on the ground to show that it is now a human of the Earth.
Rachel and I had gone to Georgina’s school a couple weeks ago. We brought some plain paper and colored pencils to do an activity with them. In the US we call them fortunetellers and kids use them to ‘tell each others’ fortunes’ during recess etc. They are folded in such a way that the players can pick colors and numbers, and then behind each number is a question. We adapted this activity so that each question was a quiz question related to the things the students were learning in class. So we showed them all how to fold, color, and number the fortunetellers. They had a bit of trouble thinking of good quiz questions. Some of them had questions like “what is your name”. Others picked up on it much more quickly and thought of some really good questions. This week Rachel and I went to teach at Dedei’s school, but she had us go to the third grade class because she felt she was being selfish with our help. We did the same activity with the kids at the public school. We also played twenty questions with the object being Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president and the man who led them to independence in 1957. After being exposed to the craziness of Dedei’s class one, class three was really interesting. Dedei says that by this time ‘the cane has done it’s work’, and indeed the children are very well behaved. They were also very bright, and thought of many good questions for the fortunetellers (such as, How many religions are there in Ghana? Etc.) It was sad to realize that many of these children will not get an education past highschool because they cannot afford the fee’s. Many of the children at the international school will attend college, but may not be as smart or as intelligent as some of the public school children.
Last week Dedei made us ‘pepper’ which is kind of like the stews she has made us before. You take it in much smaller amounts than the stew though because it is so hot. We had it with banku, which I think is typical. It was quite good, and very spicy. She told us we could add some ketchup to make it a bit more mild. We have also had a few talks about how Americans are very picky about what they eat. For example, fish head is a delicacy here and people love it. People also apparently eat bones. I don’t mean like chew off all the last bits of meat until the bones are clean, but they actually bite and chew and swallow the bones. Dedei showed me a drumstick bone that I could try it on since those bones are very soft. It was surprisingly soft, and didn’t taste especially good. I guess it is an acquired taste. The doggy that we usually feed our bones to is probably happy that I didn’t like them. She has become a lot more friendly and will greet us when we come to the gate now and even get so excited she’ll jump up on us sometimes. Mostly the dogs here are wild, and no one ever gives them any attention. She has probably never had so much attention in her life. If you walk by a stray dog on the street, it wont even look up at you the way dogs in the US do. They have never had an experience that would suggest to them that a human would be somewhere to look for shelter, food, or attention. Usually people just treat them as pests, so they really are wild dogs. Speaking of animals, the kitty that we also feed our scraps to, had her kittens a few weeks ago. She only had two of them and Rachel and I named them Pongo (from 101 Dalmations, because she is spotted) and Raja (from Aladdin, because he is striped like a tiger). We’ve gotten to hold them and play with them a couple times. They are so tiny that when they make noise it doesn’t even sound like a cat. When they walk it looks like their drunk because their legs move in weird jerky motions like their muscles aren’t working properly yet. We’re glad she had them while we were here because we feed the kitty so many scraps that she is able to take care of them now. She had a little once before and ended up eating them because she was so hungry.
This weekend we went to a place about 40 minutes up the coast called Kokrobite. It is a pretty touristy beach, though it doesn’t cost any to just lay on the beach. It was by far the nicest beach I’ve been to in Ghana. There was only a very small amount of trash, and the waves were great. When we got there some people were having a drumming session too so that was nice to enjoy. When we were having lunch we ran into Adam, the British guy we met on the ferry to the northern region.
We seem to be running quite low on weekends now. We only have 5 left. The first weekend in May we have planned to go back to Winneba. There is a big antelope hunting festival that weekend where two groups try to see who can catch the antelope with their bare hands first. It is then killed as a sacrifice. One of our friends, Rose, from school is from Winneba so we are going to stay at her uncles’ hotel while we are there that weekend. We also have a weekend trip with the program still. That trip will be to the Volta region to go to a Monkey Sanctuary and also to Wli falls. This coming weekend is Easter weekend so we get Friday and Monday off. Hopefully we will be able to plan a fun trip. There is a stilt village a ways West of here almost to la Cote D’Ivoire that we might try to see. That only leaves 2 weekends open! Yikes.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
It's been a while..
March 8th
It has been a while since I last posted, and a lot has happened since then. To start with, the Monday following my last post I started to feel sick. I woke up that morning with stomach pain, but not so bad that I couldn’t go to the hospital as usual. While watching some of the nurses and nursing students admit a baby and begin IV fluids, I began feeling dizzy, nauseas, and sweaty. This seemed to ease when I sat down so I stayed for another hour. I began feeling sick again and decided I should go home to nap. After a few hours I woke up and went to class still experiencing pain in my abdomen. I had a surprisingly small appetite that day. The rest of the day went ok, although I tried to sit and not get up and walk around much. That night I had trouble sleeping because I was so hot and I was sweating a lot. I figured that maybe I had eaten something bad and my body was trying to handle it. The next morning however, but stomach was hurting even more and I hardly felt like eating at all. That day was much like the day before and I started to think maybe something else was wrong. Many of the students in the program have gotten travelers diarrhea while here, and been admitted to the hospital because they didn’t recognize it early enough and became dehydrated. One of my friends Reem said she’d had the same kind of symptoms that I did, but I was not experiencing diarrhea so that seemed really strange. That night after writing my paper, I began to suddenly feel extremely achy. Concentrated pains were all down my spine, in my neck and lower back especially. I took some ibuprofen and went to bed early. The aches got worse and spread to my whole body before they got better. I woke up often that night sweating and aching. I spent about half an hour just lying on the bed trying to breath deeply so that I wouldn’t throw up. The next morning my stomach hurt even more, and the aches had been an indicator of flu-like symptoms. I started to think maybe I had malaria and decided to go to see the Ashesi nurse. Right in line with typical ‘Ghanaian time’, she was not in yet (although it was an hour after she was supposed to be). When I finally did get to see her that day, she also thought I had malaria and gave me Alaxin (to kill multi-resistant malaria parasites) and a Vitamin-B complex to stimulate my appetite. The program coordinators wanted me to get a blood test for their records even though the nurse said it was unnecessary. She even said the test might show a negative for the parasite since it was best for me to begin the medication right away and I wouldn’t be able to get the test until the next day. Although if you are interested you should look up more on malaria, the general facts are that it can be caused by a couple different parasitic species passed on by one specific mosquito species. The parasite multiplies in the host’s liver for anywhere between 8-20 days before it ruptures and spreads to the bloodstream causing fever and other symptoms. Usually Ghanaians don’t experience the abdominal pain because they have been infected a number of times. People say that babies usually do feel abdominal pain with infection. In the eyes of malaria I was a baby, since I had never been infected before. Once someone is infected a number of times, the symptoms are less intense at onset, though medication is still needed. Many adults will not even get a blood test or go to the hospital, they will just go to the pharmacy and get medication. By later in the day I had started to take the medication, I was already feeling better. Though the aches and sweating were back, I slept more easily that night. When I told Dedei I had malaria she brought me some chicken and rice that I ate most of (my first real meal in 3 days), though that made my stomach hurt again. I finished the medication in a week and was feeling much better, though still tired, by the weekend to go with the program to Kumasi. When I got the test back from the hospital the following week, it revealed that they could not find malaria parasites. This is what the nurse expected, since I had already begun taking the medication. They also say that sometimes antibiotics will mess up the test, and doxycycline is an antibiotic so that may have had an effect on it as well. The test did say that I had a very small titer of 1/40 p. typhi which is the bacteria that causes typhoid. The nurse said it wasn’t enough for me to worry about, and since I wasn’t feeling any symptoms from it that I would be fine.
We left early Saturday morning to go to Kumasi. Before checking into the hotel we stopped at the market. I forget the name of the market, but I think they said it was the largest outdoor market in West Africa, or something of the like. It was immediately obvious that the people in Kumasi were a bit different than those in Accra. Although still tainted by the tourist industry in terms of trying to trick us into paying too much, they were on average much more friendly and genuine. They get very excited when you speak Twi with them. A woman I walked by said to me “Obruni, ete sen?” and I replied “Obibini, eye. Na won sue?” They find it especially funny when you counter Obruni (white person) with Obibini (black person). She laughed and took my hand, inviting me to her house for fufu and more Twi lessons. We also got a tour of the old Ashanti palace museum. The Ashanti kingdom was one of the most extensive and powerful in Ghana, and the Chief/King is still highly respected. He even has some political power, and the president tries to work with him on specific issues. He has one of the largest educational scholarship funds in Africa. The next morning we made stops at Ntonso, Bonwire (said Bon- wee- ray), and Lake Bosomtwe. Ntonso is also called the Adinkra village, because they specialize in cloth with the Ghanaian Adinkra symbols on them. Each symbol has a specific meaning, and some are used pervasively around Ghana. For example, the most popular one is called “Gye Nyame” which means, “accept god”. This symbol is on peoples’ tablecloths and curtains, billboards, and most obviously on every plastic lawn chair. They showed us how they make the stamping ‘ink’ by pounding bark and then cooking it down until it is a dark brown/red tar-like substance that they can dip the wooden stamps in. Bonwire is also known as the Kente village. Kente is a type of weaving unique to Ghana. There are pieces that are single weave, double weave, and triple weave (more expensive the higher weave it is). Ashanti Kings used to wear large sheets of Kente as a robe, and so some of the designs are named after these Kings. We each got to try our hand at weaving. The base strands are switched by pushing a foot down that is hooked on some string attached to the system. The pictures will better show this technique. From here we went to lake Bosomtwe for lunch at the hotel there. We got a short lecture from a local who told us that the lake was formed a few million years ago by a meteor. They have only one type of fish in the lake, a small tilapia. Other species that have been introduced have not survived. It is the only freshwater in Ghana where there is no chance of contracting a parasite. He also said that the name comes from a local legend. It is said that a hunter was following an antelope (twe is antelope in Twi) into the woods when the antelope leapt into the lake and disappeared. They believed this meant the antelope was a deity (bosom is deity/god in Twi). Therefore they called the lake Bosomtwe.
I have forgotten to mention a very interesting discussion we had in our Twi class early in the week. Our professor is from the Kente village Bonwire, so he was teaching us specific Twi to use in bargaining and telling us how much we should expect to pay for each type. He showed us a design that he had made for President Rawlings when he was in power. He then launched into a story about how they had been friends at one point, before Safo(our professor) had found out about some of the less honorable dealings of the president. He was a writer for a newspaper, and began writing stories about the lies Rawlings had been telling the Ghanaian public. He ended up getting arrested for this and put in jail for a couple of nights. He snuck his stories through the window to someone who brought them to the newspaper and continued to publish them. When he was released, he went back to his village in Bonwire. The police surrounded his house in Accra and took all his books from his library and burned them in an attempt to stop him from writing. He fled the country to la Cote D’Ivoire for 2 months without documents before spending 2 months in Burkina Faso. From there he moved to Nigeria for a year where he began teaching. He was still writing for local newspapers under a pen name, but no longer with a political agenda. When President Kufour came to power, Safo returned to Ghana. He said that the church had taken care of his wife while he had been away. He also said that he certainly would have been killed had he remained in the country. He still writes under a pen name, although it is probably not necessary today. He also told us that he had gone to school in Germany for education, and had decided to start a school for ‘weaker’ children. As I have talked about in my experiences with public schools here, he expressed that ‘weaker’ does not mean that they are slower or mentally handicapped. It is often a certain situation in which they start school late, or are not taught according to their learning styles. On his way back from Germany, all the supplies he had to start the school were stolen in Nigeria. He hasn’t yet been able to start this school, but he hopes that after one more semester of teaching Twi and working with his NGO, he will be able to start the school next year.
In class on Monday, Safo apologized to us for not being able to meet us in Bonwire like he had planned. He told us that he had gone on Friday, and realized that the chief had recently passed away. Someone had decided that they thought he should be the next chief (since it is the village he is from, and he is an intellectual). They ended up capturing him and wrestling him to the floor. Before they could force him into being their chief, he faked an injury and then jumped up and ran away. Needless to say, he was unable to return the following day when we were there. He said it is now safe for him to go back, since they have chosen another chief.
March 15th
After seeing lake Bosomtwe, our chartered bus driver (for the program) took us to the bus station in Kumasi, where he helped us get a bus to Accra on one of his friend’s busses. The trip was relatively comfortable since the bus was air-conditioned. On the busses and tro-tros here, there is an extra seat that flips down into the aisle when the seats behind you have filled up. Therefore, although I had an aisle seat, that wasn’t really the case. A large Ghanaian woman sat beside me and ended up falling asleep on my shoulder.
The next morning we woke up early for our mid-semester break adventure. Meg, Lily, Reem, Mike, Jake, Rachel and I had planned a week long trip to the North of Ghana with the aim of going to Mole National Park. We planned it so that the actual trip would also be an adventure, so that we weren’t just sitting on busses all the time. To begin the trip, we got a tro-tro at Tudu station to Akosombo. On our way to Akosombo (only an hour and a half long trip) we saw some babboons on the side of the road. We probably saw about 20 of them before reaching Akosombo. At Akosombo, we got a taxi to the ferry and bought our tickets for the ferry that was to leave later in the afternoon. The tickets were 7.50 each (and of course the woman did not have change for a 10 cedi note). We then asked a taxi driver to take us somewhere for lunch. He sat and ate with us and told us he would take us around before the ferry left. He took us to the market where we used the bathrooms (women’s urinals are quite the experience) and bought some bread and peanut butter for the trip. The market there was much nicer than the ones in Accra. Although some people do call out “obruni” or ask you to come look at their stuff, it was a much more friendly environment and much less of a hassle. It was smaller as well, although there was still a good selection of stuff. The things for sale were much less touristy, but all the necessities were available. Our taxi driver then took us to the resort hotel overlooking the dam in Akosombo. The dam was built in 1961 under Kwame Nkrumah. It led to the formation of (I think) the world’s largest manmade lake- the Volta. The making of the lake flooded a number of villages and they were made to push back up the banks of the lake. The lake made it so difficult for them to reach any cities for supplies, so the ferry was put in to help them maintain contact. The ferry we were on was bringing water to the villages and empty crates for them to fill with yams. It runs once a week.
After taking pictures of the dam and buying a cold drink at the hotel, we went to the ferry and waited for it to board. We ended up paying the man 20 cedis for the 7 of us and all of his services. He was very grateful as I imagine he doesn’t get too much business from the locals. The ferry was scheduled to leave at 4:00 in the afternoon, so we arrived at about 2:30 so that we could be sure to make it. Of course, we are in Ghana, so the ferry ended up leaving at 6:30 that evening (Ghanaian time). We had met a couple from the UK, and three German girls while waiting for the ferry to board and leave. Lily and I pushed our way through the line so that we could find some good seats for us on the ferry (we are the smallest). We had second class tickets, which meant that we were allowed to sleep in the dining room or on the deck. First class is considered the cabins, of which there are 2. The cabins would have been 30 cedis. Third class passengers were to sit with the crates in the cargo area of the ferry. We ended up on the top level outside, and we watched the sunset and went to bed very early. Some of us slept on the wooden benches, and others on the floor. I had brought 2 yards of kente print cloth, which turned out to be very useful for sitting/lying on, and then as a sheet when it got cool in the night. I also brought the Hawaiian travel pillow the Sweets gave us a while ago, which fit in the top of my backpack and significantly increased the comfort of my trip. The next day the ferry started to make it’s stops at various villages along the route. It made 5 or 6 stops and unloaded the water and crates. The villages were quite rural and poor (as you will see from the pictures).
It became significantly more frustrating as the trip went on. In our Africa in the International Setting course, a group had recently presented on “Africa in the Media”. One of the girls had shown a picture of a mud hut with straw roofing and said that these were the kinds of pictures that google returned when someone searched “how they live in Africa”. She was very upset about this kind of portrayal and called it inaccurate. Although in Accra, most people do not live like that, our traveling showed us the ignorance of that statement. The majority of Ghanaians live in such homes. The mud is actually more fitting for the environment as it keeps the homes cooler when there are not luxuries such as fans and air-conditioning. This observation, and the fact that Ghana is one of the most developed African countries, was upsetting. It seems like it was another example of Africans asserting the fact their pride in a way that makes them seem almost ignorant. Although clearly Africa is portrayed in a negative way more often than the good things are shown, the facts cannot be disputed. Africa contains a number of the poorest nations in the world, for someone to deny this is counter-productive to helping them reach a goal of attaining a higher standard of living.
The captain of the ferry and one of his crew members were especially friendly. They talked with us for a while about the stops the ferry makes and other stuff (it was from them I learned about how often the ferry runs, why it runs, etc). After a long trip, we arrived at our final destination Yeji at 11:00 PM the following day. The captain had told us of a hotel Anini that would have showers and other more coveted accomodations. We were very grateful for running water and flush toilets, so we weren’t upset about paying 9 cedis to sleep there for the night. The guidebook had told us that there weren’t any hotels in Yeji that had running water and showers so we had been preparing for much less. We were able to rinse out our clothing and wash our hair, so we were quite happy with that. The men from the hotel came to meet us at the ‘dock’ (beach with a ramp where the boat pulled up to, the plank holding in the cargo is long enough to reach the land and you can just walk from the boat onto the ramp). Apparently tourists often arrive on the ferry and they ended up lodging us, the Germans, and Brits, and two other Germans we hadn’t met until disembarking. We all wanted to get a tro-tro to Tamale the next day, so we decided to meet at the beach at 6 in the morning. We needed to cross the lake to the north side, so we payed some people 3 cedis to carry us across in their large fishing canoe. About 60 other Ghanaians were in the same boat as us, and we were packed in like sardines. There was no way you could sit without being in direct contact with at least 3 other people. The plank I was sitting on (lucky me to sit) was cutting off circulation to my feet, so I had to adjust slightly every so often. The women sitting behind me were talking about my piercings. They weren’t speaking in English so I only gathered as much because she looked at me and was pointing to her nose and ears and then to me. I noticed that one of them had a tattoo of some writing I couldn’t understand on her forearm, and I pointed to hers and showed her mine. She thought that was funny too.
When we made it to the other side of the lake, the canoe was unable to pull up onto the beach because of its size. People from the village (Makanga) came out to meet us and helped catch various items so that we could jump out of the boat into the water. After handing off my shoes and backback, I also jumped from the boat into the almost knee-deep water before reaching the shore. We then got a tro-tro that said they could take us to Tamale. A couple other Ghanaians (besides the various Europeans we had met) made the trip with us. We each payed 5 cedis for the 4 hour journey. We passed through a few villages on our way to Tamale where we added people one-by one into the tro-tro. Although we were pretty stuffed in, and it was uncomfortable and hot to keep adding people, the tro-tro was most likely the only one passing through the towns that day. It would have been cruel to turn people away. It ended up that some people sat on the roof of the tro-tro so that room could be made for two women with babies. Some of the villages we passed through were really interesting. At each village, people would come to the windows with various snacks. Some of the people had very intricate hair styles with wraps and braids etc. Some of them also had a number of piercings (in their noses and ears) and other jewelry. Tattoos were also much more abundant than anything we’ve seen around Accra or in Kumasi. A number of women had tattoos on their faces on their cheek bones outside of their eyes. One woman had extensive tattoos down her neck and chest that looked like they were mimicking her veins. We learned later that these people came either from Burkina Faso or Niger to the north. Those kinds of styles aren’t particularly Ghanaian.
Once we reached Tamale we went to the bus station to try and buy tickets for the 2:00 bus to Mole. We found out that the bus tickets were sold out, and tried to see if we could get a tro-tro instead. The driver wanted to charge us 150 cedis, so that was a definite no. They said that the road was so bad, he had to charge that much because of what it will do to his tro-tro. The bus was going to be 3 cedis, so if necessary we could have stayed the night in Tamale and made the trip the following day. We ended up running into a man who was a tourist employee in Larabanga (the town outside of Mole where we were planning to spend the night). He fought his way for us when the bus arrived, and convinced the bus driver to let all twelve of us (5 Germans, and our 7) stand on the bus (a 2-3 hour trip). We got on the bus and began driving. For the first half hour, the road was paved and standing wasn’t so horrible for me in the back of the bus. Rachel and Meg were in the front of the bus being pecked by chickens. The road began to turn to dirt then, and the typical ‘ridges’ were obvious. For some reason, on the dirt roads in this country it is typical that there are horizontal ridges all along the road. This makes for a constant vibration when you are lucky enough to be in a vehicle. The people near me were joking with me that it was like getting a massage (maybe for them, since they were seated). After about an hour and a half of that a man behind me allowed me to sit where he had been sitting, on his tire (which they spell tyre) cargo by the back door of the bus. The bus began to make stops to let people off at this point, and many women with children had to pass me to get out. They would hand the baby to their neighbor before passing me on the way out. The neighbor would then pass the baby to me, and I would hand the baby off again to the mother waiting outside the bus.
At one such stop, another bus pulled in next to us, and our friends Carly and Erin got off and got on our bus. They had also planned to go to Mole, but had gone up the west side of Ghana through Sunyani. The bus stopped about 20 minutes later (after we all finally had seats) in Larabanga and we got off there to stay the night. We had planned to stay with the Salia Brothers because the guidebook said they were the best place to stay in Larabanga. Al-Hassan met us at the bus and showed us into their guesthouse compound. His twin brother lives at their Savannah Lodge up the road. He opened a room to us so that we could leave our stuff somewhere. We planned to sleep on the roof. After settling in and talking to Al-Hassan for a bit, we walked with him to the Savannah Lodge where his brother’s wife made stew and boiled yams for us. We hung out with their kids Oussie, Adam, Samira, and ‘Monkey’ while we waited. After eating, we walked back to the guesthouse and helped Al-Hassan put our ‘matresses’ (4 inch think foam) on the roof, with a sheet over them. In the middle of the night we woke up to rain, and moved down into the rooms. The tour guide that we had met in Tamale came by the next morning with his friend Mohammad and gave us a tour of Larabanga for 2 cedis each. We were able to see the Larabanga mosque (built in the 1400s), the schools etc. On our tour we were swarmed by children, a typical experience as a white person in Ghana.
In Accra, sometimes you will see a person with a long horizontal scar on one cheek. There are also people with two vertical scars outside their eyes almost to the jaw bone. We had asked our Twi professor (Safo) about these, and he told us that sometimes parents do that when children are very young as a mark of their clan. He himself has two short scars by his mouth on one side. As a child he had convulsions, and they thought that cutting him would allow the evil spirits to leave his body. Sometimes they make cuts around the mouth and nose like cats’ whiskers if a woman had a lot of trouble keeping her children alive. In the more urban areas this is less common now because people know the real medical reasons for such things. Safo had also told us that people used to kill mentally retarded children as a common practice. It was thought that mental retardation was an indicator that a spirit snake had taken the form of a child. The men of the village would tell the women they were taking the child to the river to set the snake free. The women give food offerings for the snake to feast on. Safo found out by following these men that they would take the child to the river and kill and bury it, then eat the food themselves. When they returned to the village they would tell the women the child had eaten, turned into a snake, and swam away.
In Larabanga, the scars were much more common. About 60% of the people we saw had a short scar on their left cheek. We asked our tour guide Mohammad about these scars, and he told us that everyone in the Larabanga community had scars in the shape of a sun around their belly button. With closer inspection of the children (many of them shirtless), we saw that this was true. Mohammad showed us his, and allowed us to take pictures because his were larger than the children’s (whose were more recent in comparison). After the tour we asked Al-Hassan about renting bikes to bike to Mole (which is 6km from Larabanga). Not all of us were able to bike, because he didn’t have bikes to rent us, he had to ask around to see who had a bike they were willing to rent out for a couple days. So 5 of us were able to get bikes. My bike was called the “African Champion” and had no brakes, and only one pedal. Luckily the trip to mole wasn’t very hilly, and brakes weren’t too necessary. On the ride there, we saw more babboons cross the road ahead of us. Just a bit farther up, a large one barked at us from his perch in a tree. When we reached Mole, we went to the edge of the canyon where our motel overlooked two water holes to see an elephant bathing, and another one getting a drink. The food and lodging here was quite overpriced, as it is the only place you can stay in Mole so they can get away with charging so much.
That afternoon we took a walking safari tour. The first animals we saw were two elephants at a smaller watering hole. Another one came towards them from the left. We saw a lot of different kinds of antelope. The ones that look like deer are called Cops, or Corps (I’m not sure, I couldn’t understand our guide very well). Though my suite-mate Ashley had gone to South Africa for her break, and she said there they call them Impalas. We also saw Bushbuck and Waterbuck. There were Warthogs everywhere, even in the parking lot for the motel. We saw a group of Babboons as well, but they were too quick to get a very good picture. Guinea fowl were also pretty common (and pretty tasty as we found out later, a lot like chicken but more flavorfull). The next day we did a driving tour and saw a lot of the same animals, but no Elephants. Since they are wild animals, you just have to get lucky. We were really lucky the first day to see as many as we did so we were happy. That night we went back to the Salia Brothers. I was sitting reading and Al-Hassan was looking at the tattoo on my foot. He was saying how the Tibetan looks a lot like Arabic. He taught me how they write their vowels (as a dot or other design above or below the consonant it follows), and how to write my name. In the schools in the north, students are taught Arabic and English because the Islamic influence is so much more pervasive. In every small village, there is a mosque. The picture of the mosque (not the old famous one) is typical of the mosques there. Every time they have their prayers, the project them over the loudspeaker. The first night we stayed in Larabanga we woke up to the prayers at about 5 in the morning. He also told us a bit about his and his brothers lives. It had been hard for them to get an education, because it is less valued in the more rural areas. He also was telling me about why it was necessary for him to come to the bus to get us when we had come from Tamale. He said that sometimes the villagers in Larabanga will try to convince tourists that the Salia Brothers are full, and that they should do a homestay with them. Sometimes these people are the subjects of theft and overcharging, so Al-Hassan tries to tell them to leave, and to get to those who have made reservations with him beforehand. He had even told us to leave laundry with him during the day we were gone. He washed our clothes for us, as the dirt there is quite dry, and gets everywhere very easily. We told him we didn’t mind doing it ourselves, but he said we would never be able to wash it all out and we should just let him do it. He was one of the nicest people we met on our trip. It was really refreshing to meet people who were genuinely interested in helping us throughout the trip. It seems like the tourist/urban mentality has not reached them to the same degree as it has in the city. Al-Hassan was also telling us that often it is the people who aren’t satisfied with what they have, who move to the city. It breeds an aggressive mentality.
We got on the bus back to Mole the next morning at 4:30 and reached Tamale at about 7:30. We went to the STC bus station and bought overnight tickets to Accra for 19.50. This was the most expensive thing we had payed for the whole trip, but the bus was comparable to Greyhound, and the trip was going to be 10-12 hours long. The bus wasn’t supposed to leave until 4:00 that afternoon, so we decided to visit the market. The traditional market in Tamale was interesting because they sold fetish items, like animal skins and furs, feathers, etc. I bought some beads and fabric. We had originally planned to stay the night in Tamale, and Dedei had asked us to stay at her sister-in-law Wilhemina’s hotel (the Picorna hotel). We had decided that it would be best to just go back to Accra as soon as we could (since we had a mid-semester term paper due the next day), we planned instead to have lunch with her at the hotel. After lunch, she sent us on our way with meat pies (ew) and Tampico (tropical citrus juice, yum) for the bus ride. We had stopped at a pharmacy to get sleeping pills so that we could sleep for most of the bus ride.
Along our ride home, we stopped at a couple rest stops to use the ‘bathroom’s and get some snacks. On this trip, I began to take a liking to the hard boiled eggs some women sell. They peel them and cut them open for you and then put a salty pepper sauce between the halves. Each egg is only 25 pesewa each. Fan-choco also became a favorite of mine. Often, men with coolers on a bike, or on other wheels of some sort with travel the roads honking their horn (kind of like the ice cream man). They carry Fan-ice, Fan-yogo, and Fan-choco. The Fan-ice is like soft-serve vanilla ice cream. It is very creamy, so a lot of people like it but it is too rich for me. The Fan-yogo is a frozen yogurt (literally yogurt that has been frozen). Fan-choco is frozen/slushie chocolate milk. It is perfect when it is really hot out. Each of these ice creams comes in a closed off plastic wrapper/bag, like the sashet waters you can buy for 5 pesewa. To eat them, you have to bite off a corner, and then squeeze the contents into your mouth.
Overall, a very successful trip. It also only cost me 200 cedis (~ 140$, since the dollar has gone up again to 1.39 of 1 Ghana cedi! It’s like I’m getting richer… almost).
March 22nd
Not very much exciting has happened this week. We had class as usual. Our time here is now more than half over. We leave in less than two months. I will be sad to leave, and excited to be home. I will definitely miss Ghana, but there are things I will not miss (like being stared at everywhere I go, asked for money, being disrespected because I am a white woman, being overcharged for things etc.). I will miss the weather, my roomates, the food, the friendliness and willingness to help others and more. I’ve been thinking a lot about the reverse culture shock recently, which I think will be quite surprising. I’m going to have much less patience with people who take what they have for granted for one thing. I will also have to get used to the fact that most things are punctual and begin when they say they will, that prices are set, that water, electricity, and internet ALWAYS work, and everything is more advanced, clean, and modern.
Another thing that is obvious in Ghana is that every child is just about born dancing. It is a way that people here celebrate life, and everyone loves to do it. We went yesterday to the engagement ceremony of one of Dedei’s cousins. Although we didn’t understand most of what they were talking about, it was clear that there was a lot of thanking God, and gift giving to both sides of the family. There was a lot of singing and dancing as well. Some of the women were wearing dresses made of authentic Kente, which must have been expensive. Dedei’s (meaning first born) sisters Korkor (second born), and Kai (third born) sat with us at the ceremony because Dedei was unable to attend. They were quite friendly, but not as conscious of our ignorance of their culture and customs as Dedei is. Sometimes Korkor would speak to us in Ga, and we would just have no idea what she was saying. One time, it turned out she was telling us to open her car door for her (which may have been expected? We were unsure..). It was definitely interesting to see their traditional ceremony though because it isn’t as common anymore. Apparently they also were bargaining over the bride price. Weddings have become more Westernized with the introduction of Christianity and church weddings. They do carry out traditional ceremonies though as well, to keep expressions of their own culture.
It has been a while since I last posted, and a lot has happened since then. To start with, the Monday following my last post I started to feel sick. I woke up that morning with stomach pain, but not so bad that I couldn’t go to the hospital as usual. While watching some of the nurses and nursing students admit a baby and begin IV fluids, I began feeling dizzy, nauseas, and sweaty. This seemed to ease when I sat down so I stayed for another hour. I began feeling sick again and decided I should go home to nap. After a few hours I woke up and went to class still experiencing pain in my abdomen. I had a surprisingly small appetite that day. The rest of the day went ok, although I tried to sit and not get up and walk around much. That night I had trouble sleeping because I was so hot and I was sweating a lot. I figured that maybe I had eaten something bad and my body was trying to handle it. The next morning however, but stomach was hurting even more and I hardly felt like eating at all. That day was much like the day before and I started to think maybe something else was wrong. Many of the students in the program have gotten travelers diarrhea while here, and been admitted to the hospital because they didn’t recognize it early enough and became dehydrated. One of my friends Reem said she’d had the same kind of symptoms that I did, but I was not experiencing diarrhea so that seemed really strange. That night after writing my paper, I began to suddenly feel extremely achy. Concentrated pains were all down my spine, in my neck and lower back especially. I took some ibuprofen and went to bed early. The aches got worse and spread to my whole body before they got better. I woke up often that night sweating and aching. I spent about half an hour just lying on the bed trying to breath deeply so that I wouldn’t throw up. The next morning my stomach hurt even more, and the aches had been an indicator of flu-like symptoms. I started to think maybe I had malaria and decided to go to see the Ashesi nurse. Right in line with typical ‘Ghanaian time’, she was not in yet (although it was an hour after she was supposed to be). When I finally did get to see her that day, she also thought I had malaria and gave me Alaxin (to kill multi-resistant malaria parasites) and a Vitamin-B complex to stimulate my appetite. The program coordinators wanted me to get a blood test for their records even though the nurse said it was unnecessary. She even said the test might show a negative for the parasite since it was best for me to begin the medication right away and I wouldn’t be able to get the test until the next day. Although if you are interested you should look up more on malaria, the general facts are that it can be caused by a couple different parasitic species passed on by one specific mosquito species. The parasite multiplies in the host’s liver for anywhere between 8-20 days before it ruptures and spreads to the bloodstream causing fever and other symptoms. Usually Ghanaians don’t experience the abdominal pain because they have been infected a number of times. People say that babies usually do feel abdominal pain with infection. In the eyes of malaria I was a baby, since I had never been infected before. Once someone is infected a number of times, the symptoms are less intense at onset, though medication is still needed. Many adults will not even get a blood test or go to the hospital, they will just go to the pharmacy and get medication. By later in the day I had started to take the medication, I was already feeling better. Though the aches and sweating were back, I slept more easily that night. When I told Dedei I had malaria she brought me some chicken and rice that I ate most of (my first real meal in 3 days), though that made my stomach hurt again. I finished the medication in a week and was feeling much better, though still tired, by the weekend to go with the program to Kumasi. When I got the test back from the hospital the following week, it revealed that they could not find malaria parasites. This is what the nurse expected, since I had already begun taking the medication. They also say that sometimes antibiotics will mess up the test, and doxycycline is an antibiotic so that may have had an effect on it as well. The test did say that I had a very small titer of 1/40 p. typhi which is the bacteria that causes typhoid. The nurse said it wasn’t enough for me to worry about, and since I wasn’t feeling any symptoms from it that I would be fine.
We left early Saturday morning to go to Kumasi. Before checking into the hotel we stopped at the market. I forget the name of the market, but I think they said it was the largest outdoor market in West Africa, or something of the like. It was immediately obvious that the people in Kumasi were a bit different than those in Accra. Although still tainted by the tourist industry in terms of trying to trick us into paying too much, they were on average much more friendly and genuine. They get very excited when you speak Twi with them. A woman I walked by said to me “Obruni, ete sen?” and I replied “Obibini, eye. Na won sue?” They find it especially funny when you counter Obruni (white person) with Obibini (black person). She laughed and took my hand, inviting me to her house for fufu and more Twi lessons. We also got a tour of the old Ashanti palace museum. The Ashanti kingdom was one of the most extensive and powerful in Ghana, and the Chief/King is still highly respected. He even has some political power, and the president tries to work with him on specific issues. He has one of the largest educational scholarship funds in Africa. The next morning we made stops at Ntonso, Bonwire (said Bon- wee- ray), and Lake Bosomtwe. Ntonso is also called the Adinkra village, because they specialize in cloth with the Ghanaian Adinkra symbols on them. Each symbol has a specific meaning, and some are used pervasively around Ghana. For example, the most popular one is called “Gye Nyame” which means, “accept god”. This symbol is on peoples’ tablecloths and curtains, billboards, and most obviously on every plastic lawn chair. They showed us how they make the stamping ‘ink’ by pounding bark and then cooking it down until it is a dark brown/red tar-like substance that they can dip the wooden stamps in. Bonwire is also known as the Kente village. Kente is a type of weaving unique to Ghana. There are pieces that are single weave, double weave, and triple weave (more expensive the higher weave it is). Ashanti Kings used to wear large sheets of Kente as a robe, and so some of the designs are named after these Kings. We each got to try our hand at weaving. The base strands are switched by pushing a foot down that is hooked on some string attached to the system. The pictures will better show this technique. From here we went to lake Bosomtwe for lunch at the hotel there. We got a short lecture from a local who told us that the lake was formed a few million years ago by a meteor. They have only one type of fish in the lake, a small tilapia. Other species that have been introduced have not survived. It is the only freshwater in Ghana where there is no chance of contracting a parasite. He also said that the name comes from a local legend. It is said that a hunter was following an antelope (twe is antelope in Twi) into the woods when the antelope leapt into the lake and disappeared. They believed this meant the antelope was a deity (bosom is deity/god in Twi). Therefore they called the lake Bosomtwe.
I have forgotten to mention a very interesting discussion we had in our Twi class early in the week. Our professor is from the Kente village Bonwire, so he was teaching us specific Twi to use in bargaining and telling us how much we should expect to pay for each type. He showed us a design that he had made for President Rawlings when he was in power. He then launched into a story about how they had been friends at one point, before Safo(our professor) had found out about some of the less honorable dealings of the president. He was a writer for a newspaper, and began writing stories about the lies Rawlings had been telling the Ghanaian public. He ended up getting arrested for this and put in jail for a couple of nights. He snuck his stories through the window to someone who brought them to the newspaper and continued to publish them. When he was released, he went back to his village in Bonwire. The police surrounded his house in Accra and took all his books from his library and burned them in an attempt to stop him from writing. He fled the country to la Cote D’Ivoire for 2 months without documents before spending 2 months in Burkina Faso. From there he moved to Nigeria for a year where he began teaching. He was still writing for local newspapers under a pen name, but no longer with a political agenda. When President Kufour came to power, Safo returned to Ghana. He said that the church had taken care of his wife while he had been away. He also said that he certainly would have been killed had he remained in the country. He still writes under a pen name, although it is probably not necessary today. He also told us that he had gone to school in Germany for education, and had decided to start a school for ‘weaker’ children. As I have talked about in my experiences with public schools here, he expressed that ‘weaker’ does not mean that they are slower or mentally handicapped. It is often a certain situation in which they start school late, or are not taught according to their learning styles. On his way back from Germany, all the supplies he had to start the school were stolen in Nigeria. He hasn’t yet been able to start this school, but he hopes that after one more semester of teaching Twi and working with his NGO, he will be able to start the school next year.
In class on Monday, Safo apologized to us for not being able to meet us in Bonwire like he had planned. He told us that he had gone on Friday, and realized that the chief had recently passed away. Someone had decided that they thought he should be the next chief (since it is the village he is from, and he is an intellectual). They ended up capturing him and wrestling him to the floor. Before they could force him into being their chief, he faked an injury and then jumped up and ran away. Needless to say, he was unable to return the following day when we were there. He said it is now safe for him to go back, since they have chosen another chief.
March 15th
After seeing lake Bosomtwe, our chartered bus driver (for the program) took us to the bus station in Kumasi, where he helped us get a bus to Accra on one of his friend’s busses. The trip was relatively comfortable since the bus was air-conditioned. On the busses and tro-tros here, there is an extra seat that flips down into the aisle when the seats behind you have filled up. Therefore, although I had an aisle seat, that wasn’t really the case. A large Ghanaian woman sat beside me and ended up falling asleep on my shoulder.
The next morning we woke up early for our mid-semester break adventure. Meg, Lily, Reem, Mike, Jake, Rachel and I had planned a week long trip to the North of Ghana with the aim of going to Mole National Park. We planned it so that the actual trip would also be an adventure, so that we weren’t just sitting on busses all the time. To begin the trip, we got a tro-tro at Tudu station to Akosombo. On our way to Akosombo (only an hour and a half long trip) we saw some babboons on the side of the road. We probably saw about 20 of them before reaching Akosombo. At Akosombo, we got a taxi to the ferry and bought our tickets for the ferry that was to leave later in the afternoon. The tickets were 7.50 each (and of course the woman did not have change for a 10 cedi note). We then asked a taxi driver to take us somewhere for lunch. He sat and ate with us and told us he would take us around before the ferry left. He took us to the market where we used the bathrooms (women’s urinals are quite the experience) and bought some bread and peanut butter for the trip. The market there was much nicer than the ones in Accra. Although some people do call out “obruni” or ask you to come look at their stuff, it was a much more friendly environment and much less of a hassle. It was smaller as well, although there was still a good selection of stuff. The things for sale were much less touristy, but all the necessities were available. Our taxi driver then took us to the resort hotel overlooking the dam in Akosombo. The dam was built in 1961 under Kwame Nkrumah. It led to the formation of (I think) the world’s largest manmade lake- the Volta. The making of the lake flooded a number of villages and they were made to push back up the banks of the lake. The lake made it so difficult for them to reach any cities for supplies, so the ferry was put in to help them maintain contact. The ferry we were on was bringing water to the villages and empty crates for them to fill with yams. It runs once a week.
After taking pictures of the dam and buying a cold drink at the hotel, we went to the ferry and waited for it to board. We ended up paying the man 20 cedis for the 7 of us and all of his services. He was very grateful as I imagine he doesn’t get too much business from the locals. The ferry was scheduled to leave at 4:00 in the afternoon, so we arrived at about 2:30 so that we could be sure to make it. Of course, we are in Ghana, so the ferry ended up leaving at 6:30 that evening (Ghanaian time). We had met a couple from the UK, and three German girls while waiting for the ferry to board and leave. Lily and I pushed our way through the line so that we could find some good seats for us on the ferry (we are the smallest). We had second class tickets, which meant that we were allowed to sleep in the dining room or on the deck. First class is considered the cabins, of which there are 2. The cabins would have been 30 cedis. Third class passengers were to sit with the crates in the cargo area of the ferry. We ended up on the top level outside, and we watched the sunset and went to bed very early. Some of us slept on the wooden benches, and others on the floor. I had brought 2 yards of kente print cloth, which turned out to be very useful for sitting/lying on, and then as a sheet when it got cool in the night. I also brought the Hawaiian travel pillow the Sweets gave us a while ago, which fit in the top of my backpack and significantly increased the comfort of my trip. The next day the ferry started to make it’s stops at various villages along the route. It made 5 or 6 stops and unloaded the water and crates. The villages were quite rural and poor (as you will see from the pictures).
It became significantly more frustrating as the trip went on. In our Africa in the International Setting course, a group had recently presented on “Africa in the Media”. One of the girls had shown a picture of a mud hut with straw roofing and said that these were the kinds of pictures that google returned when someone searched “how they live in Africa”. She was very upset about this kind of portrayal and called it inaccurate. Although in Accra, most people do not live like that, our traveling showed us the ignorance of that statement. The majority of Ghanaians live in such homes. The mud is actually more fitting for the environment as it keeps the homes cooler when there are not luxuries such as fans and air-conditioning. This observation, and the fact that Ghana is one of the most developed African countries, was upsetting. It seems like it was another example of Africans asserting the fact their pride in a way that makes them seem almost ignorant. Although clearly Africa is portrayed in a negative way more often than the good things are shown, the facts cannot be disputed. Africa contains a number of the poorest nations in the world, for someone to deny this is counter-productive to helping them reach a goal of attaining a higher standard of living.
The captain of the ferry and one of his crew members were especially friendly. They talked with us for a while about the stops the ferry makes and other stuff (it was from them I learned about how often the ferry runs, why it runs, etc). After a long trip, we arrived at our final destination Yeji at 11:00 PM the following day. The captain had told us of a hotel Anini that would have showers and other more coveted accomodations. We were very grateful for running water and flush toilets, so we weren’t upset about paying 9 cedis to sleep there for the night. The guidebook had told us that there weren’t any hotels in Yeji that had running water and showers so we had been preparing for much less. We were able to rinse out our clothing and wash our hair, so we were quite happy with that. The men from the hotel came to meet us at the ‘dock’ (beach with a ramp where the boat pulled up to, the plank holding in the cargo is long enough to reach the land and you can just walk from the boat onto the ramp). Apparently tourists often arrive on the ferry and they ended up lodging us, the Germans, and Brits, and two other Germans we hadn’t met until disembarking. We all wanted to get a tro-tro to Tamale the next day, so we decided to meet at the beach at 6 in the morning. We needed to cross the lake to the north side, so we payed some people 3 cedis to carry us across in their large fishing canoe. About 60 other Ghanaians were in the same boat as us, and we were packed in like sardines. There was no way you could sit without being in direct contact with at least 3 other people. The plank I was sitting on (lucky me to sit) was cutting off circulation to my feet, so I had to adjust slightly every so often. The women sitting behind me were talking about my piercings. They weren’t speaking in English so I only gathered as much because she looked at me and was pointing to her nose and ears and then to me. I noticed that one of them had a tattoo of some writing I couldn’t understand on her forearm, and I pointed to hers and showed her mine. She thought that was funny too.
When we made it to the other side of the lake, the canoe was unable to pull up onto the beach because of its size. People from the village (Makanga) came out to meet us and helped catch various items so that we could jump out of the boat into the water. After handing off my shoes and backback, I also jumped from the boat into the almost knee-deep water before reaching the shore. We then got a tro-tro that said they could take us to Tamale. A couple other Ghanaians (besides the various Europeans we had met) made the trip with us. We each payed 5 cedis for the 4 hour journey. We passed through a few villages on our way to Tamale where we added people one-by one into the tro-tro. Although we were pretty stuffed in, and it was uncomfortable and hot to keep adding people, the tro-tro was most likely the only one passing through the towns that day. It would have been cruel to turn people away. It ended up that some people sat on the roof of the tro-tro so that room could be made for two women with babies. Some of the villages we passed through were really interesting. At each village, people would come to the windows with various snacks. Some of the people had very intricate hair styles with wraps and braids etc. Some of them also had a number of piercings (in their noses and ears) and other jewelry. Tattoos were also much more abundant than anything we’ve seen around Accra or in Kumasi. A number of women had tattoos on their faces on their cheek bones outside of their eyes. One woman had extensive tattoos down her neck and chest that looked like they were mimicking her veins. We learned later that these people came either from Burkina Faso or Niger to the north. Those kinds of styles aren’t particularly Ghanaian.
Once we reached Tamale we went to the bus station to try and buy tickets for the 2:00 bus to Mole. We found out that the bus tickets were sold out, and tried to see if we could get a tro-tro instead. The driver wanted to charge us 150 cedis, so that was a definite no. They said that the road was so bad, he had to charge that much because of what it will do to his tro-tro. The bus was going to be 3 cedis, so if necessary we could have stayed the night in Tamale and made the trip the following day. We ended up running into a man who was a tourist employee in Larabanga (the town outside of Mole where we were planning to spend the night). He fought his way for us when the bus arrived, and convinced the bus driver to let all twelve of us (5 Germans, and our 7) stand on the bus (a 2-3 hour trip). We got on the bus and began driving. For the first half hour, the road was paved and standing wasn’t so horrible for me in the back of the bus. Rachel and Meg were in the front of the bus being pecked by chickens. The road began to turn to dirt then, and the typical ‘ridges’ were obvious. For some reason, on the dirt roads in this country it is typical that there are horizontal ridges all along the road. This makes for a constant vibration when you are lucky enough to be in a vehicle. The people near me were joking with me that it was like getting a massage (maybe for them, since they were seated). After about an hour and a half of that a man behind me allowed me to sit where he had been sitting, on his tire (which they spell tyre) cargo by the back door of the bus. The bus began to make stops to let people off at this point, and many women with children had to pass me to get out. They would hand the baby to their neighbor before passing me on the way out. The neighbor would then pass the baby to me, and I would hand the baby off again to the mother waiting outside the bus.
At one such stop, another bus pulled in next to us, and our friends Carly and Erin got off and got on our bus. They had also planned to go to Mole, but had gone up the west side of Ghana through Sunyani. The bus stopped about 20 minutes later (after we all finally had seats) in Larabanga and we got off there to stay the night. We had planned to stay with the Salia Brothers because the guidebook said they were the best place to stay in Larabanga. Al-Hassan met us at the bus and showed us into their guesthouse compound. His twin brother lives at their Savannah Lodge up the road. He opened a room to us so that we could leave our stuff somewhere. We planned to sleep on the roof. After settling in and talking to Al-Hassan for a bit, we walked with him to the Savannah Lodge where his brother’s wife made stew and boiled yams for us. We hung out with their kids Oussie, Adam, Samira, and ‘Monkey’ while we waited. After eating, we walked back to the guesthouse and helped Al-Hassan put our ‘matresses’ (4 inch think foam) on the roof, with a sheet over them. In the middle of the night we woke up to rain, and moved down into the rooms. The tour guide that we had met in Tamale came by the next morning with his friend Mohammad and gave us a tour of Larabanga for 2 cedis each. We were able to see the Larabanga mosque (built in the 1400s), the schools etc. On our tour we were swarmed by children, a typical experience as a white person in Ghana.
In Accra, sometimes you will see a person with a long horizontal scar on one cheek. There are also people with two vertical scars outside their eyes almost to the jaw bone. We had asked our Twi professor (Safo) about these, and he told us that sometimes parents do that when children are very young as a mark of their clan. He himself has two short scars by his mouth on one side. As a child he had convulsions, and they thought that cutting him would allow the evil spirits to leave his body. Sometimes they make cuts around the mouth and nose like cats’ whiskers if a woman had a lot of trouble keeping her children alive. In the more urban areas this is less common now because people know the real medical reasons for such things. Safo had also told us that people used to kill mentally retarded children as a common practice. It was thought that mental retardation was an indicator that a spirit snake had taken the form of a child. The men of the village would tell the women they were taking the child to the river to set the snake free. The women give food offerings for the snake to feast on. Safo found out by following these men that they would take the child to the river and kill and bury it, then eat the food themselves. When they returned to the village they would tell the women the child had eaten, turned into a snake, and swam away.
In Larabanga, the scars were much more common. About 60% of the people we saw had a short scar on their left cheek. We asked our tour guide Mohammad about these scars, and he told us that everyone in the Larabanga community had scars in the shape of a sun around their belly button. With closer inspection of the children (many of them shirtless), we saw that this was true. Mohammad showed us his, and allowed us to take pictures because his were larger than the children’s (whose were more recent in comparison). After the tour we asked Al-Hassan about renting bikes to bike to Mole (which is 6km from Larabanga). Not all of us were able to bike, because he didn’t have bikes to rent us, he had to ask around to see who had a bike they were willing to rent out for a couple days. So 5 of us were able to get bikes. My bike was called the “African Champion” and had no brakes, and only one pedal. Luckily the trip to mole wasn’t very hilly, and brakes weren’t too necessary. On the ride there, we saw more babboons cross the road ahead of us. Just a bit farther up, a large one barked at us from his perch in a tree. When we reached Mole, we went to the edge of the canyon where our motel overlooked two water holes to see an elephant bathing, and another one getting a drink. The food and lodging here was quite overpriced, as it is the only place you can stay in Mole so they can get away with charging so much.
That afternoon we took a walking safari tour. The first animals we saw were two elephants at a smaller watering hole. Another one came towards them from the left. We saw a lot of different kinds of antelope. The ones that look like deer are called Cops, or Corps (I’m not sure, I couldn’t understand our guide very well). Though my suite-mate Ashley had gone to South Africa for her break, and she said there they call them Impalas. We also saw Bushbuck and Waterbuck. There were Warthogs everywhere, even in the parking lot for the motel. We saw a group of Babboons as well, but they were too quick to get a very good picture. Guinea fowl were also pretty common (and pretty tasty as we found out later, a lot like chicken but more flavorfull). The next day we did a driving tour and saw a lot of the same animals, but no Elephants. Since they are wild animals, you just have to get lucky. We were really lucky the first day to see as many as we did so we were happy. That night we went back to the Salia Brothers. I was sitting reading and Al-Hassan was looking at the tattoo on my foot. He was saying how the Tibetan looks a lot like Arabic. He taught me how they write their vowels (as a dot or other design above or below the consonant it follows), and how to write my name. In the schools in the north, students are taught Arabic and English because the Islamic influence is so much more pervasive. In every small village, there is a mosque. The picture of the mosque (not the old famous one) is typical of the mosques there. Every time they have their prayers, the project them over the loudspeaker. The first night we stayed in Larabanga we woke up to the prayers at about 5 in the morning. He also told us a bit about his and his brothers lives. It had been hard for them to get an education, because it is less valued in the more rural areas. He also was telling me about why it was necessary for him to come to the bus to get us when we had come from Tamale. He said that sometimes the villagers in Larabanga will try to convince tourists that the Salia Brothers are full, and that they should do a homestay with them. Sometimes these people are the subjects of theft and overcharging, so Al-Hassan tries to tell them to leave, and to get to those who have made reservations with him beforehand. He had even told us to leave laundry with him during the day we were gone. He washed our clothes for us, as the dirt there is quite dry, and gets everywhere very easily. We told him we didn’t mind doing it ourselves, but he said we would never be able to wash it all out and we should just let him do it. He was one of the nicest people we met on our trip. It was really refreshing to meet people who were genuinely interested in helping us throughout the trip. It seems like the tourist/urban mentality has not reached them to the same degree as it has in the city. Al-Hassan was also telling us that often it is the people who aren’t satisfied with what they have, who move to the city. It breeds an aggressive mentality.
We got on the bus back to Mole the next morning at 4:30 and reached Tamale at about 7:30. We went to the STC bus station and bought overnight tickets to Accra for 19.50. This was the most expensive thing we had payed for the whole trip, but the bus was comparable to Greyhound, and the trip was going to be 10-12 hours long. The bus wasn’t supposed to leave until 4:00 that afternoon, so we decided to visit the market. The traditional market in Tamale was interesting because they sold fetish items, like animal skins and furs, feathers, etc. I bought some beads and fabric. We had originally planned to stay the night in Tamale, and Dedei had asked us to stay at her sister-in-law Wilhemina’s hotel (the Picorna hotel). We had decided that it would be best to just go back to Accra as soon as we could (since we had a mid-semester term paper due the next day), we planned instead to have lunch with her at the hotel. After lunch, she sent us on our way with meat pies (ew) and Tampico (tropical citrus juice, yum) for the bus ride. We had stopped at a pharmacy to get sleeping pills so that we could sleep for most of the bus ride.
Along our ride home, we stopped at a couple rest stops to use the ‘bathroom’s and get some snacks. On this trip, I began to take a liking to the hard boiled eggs some women sell. They peel them and cut them open for you and then put a salty pepper sauce between the halves. Each egg is only 25 pesewa each. Fan-choco also became a favorite of mine. Often, men with coolers on a bike, or on other wheels of some sort with travel the roads honking their horn (kind of like the ice cream man). They carry Fan-ice, Fan-yogo, and Fan-choco. The Fan-ice is like soft-serve vanilla ice cream. It is very creamy, so a lot of people like it but it is too rich for me. The Fan-yogo is a frozen yogurt (literally yogurt that has been frozen). Fan-choco is frozen/slushie chocolate milk. It is perfect when it is really hot out. Each of these ice creams comes in a closed off plastic wrapper/bag, like the sashet waters you can buy for 5 pesewa. To eat them, you have to bite off a corner, and then squeeze the contents into your mouth.
Overall, a very successful trip. It also only cost me 200 cedis (~ 140$, since the dollar has gone up again to 1.39 of 1 Ghana cedi! It’s like I’m getting richer… almost).
March 22nd
Not very much exciting has happened this week. We had class as usual. Our time here is now more than half over. We leave in less than two months. I will be sad to leave, and excited to be home. I will definitely miss Ghana, but there are things I will not miss (like being stared at everywhere I go, asked for money, being disrespected because I am a white woman, being overcharged for things etc.). I will miss the weather, my roomates, the food, the friendliness and willingness to help others and more. I’ve been thinking a lot about the reverse culture shock recently, which I think will be quite surprising. I’m going to have much less patience with people who take what they have for granted for one thing. I will also have to get used to the fact that most things are punctual and begin when they say they will, that prices are set, that water, electricity, and internet ALWAYS work, and everything is more advanced, clean, and modern.
Another thing that is obvious in Ghana is that every child is just about born dancing. It is a way that people here celebrate life, and everyone loves to do it. We went yesterday to the engagement ceremony of one of Dedei’s cousins. Although we didn’t understand most of what they were talking about, it was clear that there was a lot of thanking God, and gift giving to both sides of the family. There was a lot of singing and dancing as well. Some of the women were wearing dresses made of authentic Kente, which must have been expensive. Dedei’s (meaning first born) sisters Korkor (second born), and Kai (third born) sat with us at the ceremony because Dedei was unable to attend. They were quite friendly, but not as conscious of our ignorance of their culture and customs as Dedei is. Sometimes Korkor would speak to us in Ga, and we would just have no idea what she was saying. One time, it turned out she was telling us to open her car door for her (which may have been expected? We were unsure..). It was definitely interesting to see their traditional ceremony though because it isn’t as common anymore. Apparently they also were bargaining over the bride price. Weddings have become more Westernized with the introduction of Christianity and church weddings. They do carry out traditional ceremonies though as well, to keep expressions of their own culture.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Saturday, February 28, 2009
February 26th
The hospital has gotten much better since I last posted. On Thursday we cleared up the miscommunication about observing the doctors. They had said I could watch the doctors do their rounds, and I hadn’t actually seen any doctors since I’d been there. After figuring out that they had thought I was asking about sitting in the consulting room with the doctors, we determined that for the most part the doctors do not come to the children’s ward until around 11:30. As this is when I have class, I hadn’t seen them come through. On Monday I was able to go in later to the hospital since I don’t have class until 3. A young nurse showed me how to fill out the temperature chart form when a patient is admitted. I was also able to observe as a newly admitted patient was hooked up to an IV and given treatments. When the doctors came around, the nursing students and I followed to each patient. We were able to look at the x-rays of a child who had broncho-pnemonia. We also learned what the typical temperature drop looks like on a child who has malaria. He showed us how if the child also has another sickness (often gastroenteritis), the temperature will drop and then climb again slightly, but in the case of just malaria, it drops off quickly and returns to normal with treatment.
The same young nurse showed me the record books where they document when each patient is admitted, the diagnosis and notes. Somewhere around 95% of the patients in the children’s ward are there because of malaria. Other common diagnosis include Urticaria rash, anaemia, sepsis, dysentery, abscesses, convulsions, and there was a boy there who had severe burns on his face and some on his arms. The blanket treatment for almost every child is an analgesic, antibiotic, and anti-malarial. The record-keeping system seems to be a bit out of date, and people end up writing and re-writing patients conditions on different forms. I haven’t seen any computers in the hospital.
Last weekend we went to Cape Coast with the CIEE program. We toured Elmina castle, which is the oldest European building outside of Europe. It was built by the Portugese (I think) and was originally used for the gold trade. It then passed to the hands of the Dutch who used it for the slave trade. We were taken into the different slave dungeons and the ‘room of no return’ which was where the slaves exited to the ships. The tour guide told us that when the men in charge wanted to sleep with one of the slaves, they would line the women up in the courtyard and they would pick one. These women were fed a meal (it could have been about a week since the last meal) and bathed before they were taken to the men’s rooms. Those we got pregnant from situations such as this were not shipped off for slavery. They were moved to a specific place along the coast to give birth. The children were then treated as almost a whole separate race, somewhere between the ‘superiority’ of the Europeans, and the ‘inferiority’ of the Africans. The last names of some of these lines of ancestry are still present today.
That night we stayed in a hotel that cost 75 ghana cedi a night (60$). The hotel had a pool and air conditioning! After dinner we tried some palm wine. Cape Coast is supposed to be the place to get palm wine, but we had forgotten to get some fresh when we were out earlier. The less fresh wine tasted slightly carbonated, coconutty, with an aftertaste somewhat like deli meat. It actually didn’t taste that way until someone made the comparison, and then it inevitably tasted like salami juices. Needless to say, I didn’t have any more that night. The next day we were able to get some fresh palm wine that was quite good, and did not taste like deli meat.
The following day we made a trip to Kakum national park rainforest. Although there are animals present in the rainforest, they told us not to expect to see any. The monkeys have been made shy of human presence, and only one picture has ever been taken of the forest elephants (who are apparently quite stealthy). Instead of looking for wildlife, we hiked for about 10 minutes up to the beginning of the canopy walk. The canopy walk consisted of 7 rope bridges from the high beginning point out into the forest where there were platforms at various tall trees. Some people had a lot of trouble with the height, but it wasn’t very scary for me. They test the ropes more than once a day, so it is very safe and unlikely that you will fall. Pictures of the whole weekend will be posted this weekend hopefully.
This week Rachel and I made a trip to the post office. This was quite an adventure. To get there we had to take a tro-tro to circle (Kwame Nkrumah circle, but all the mates just call it circle since it’s the biggest one). There are a huge number of vendors on the streets here so we were hassled quite a bit to buy things as we walked through. When we finally made it, I bought a couple envelopes and sent a thank you letter for my scholarship to Lehigh Financial Aid. Rachel was picking up a package that her mother had sent her through the US mail. Sending it this way had its pro’s and it cons. Pro; it was cheaper than fedex (which would be delivered directly to the school for us to pick up). Con; she had to bargain on how much tax to pay for the contents of the package. This means that she had to open the package in front of the postal worker. He then used some crazy logic to tell her that on an estimated value of 45$ and 41$ to send it, he wanted her to pay 23 cedis as tax. Our friend Carly had gone to pick up a digital camera that her parents had sent the week prior. When they told her she had to pay 70 cedis tax, she left and came back with Mr. Gyasi (our program coordinator). He bargained them down to 30 cedis. We told the postal worker this and he said she should have paid 56 cedis. In any case, we told him we only had 15 cedis and he gave us the package for that much. This was still over-priced but it can be hard to bargain when you are a white woman in Ghana.
Often people think that you don’t know how much things should cost and try to overcharge you excessively. Sometimes a taxi driver will say that a ride that should cost 1.50 is going to be 5 or 6 cedis. Quoting a price this high is sometimes funny because it is so ridiculous that they would try to charge that much for such a short trip, but it can get very frustrating because it is clear they are only saying it because you are white and that is associated with wealth and naivety.
This leads me to another interesting topic of discussion. Although most people told us as part of the introductory and orientation material that race is not as much of an issue here in Ghana as it is in the United States, almost all of us have experienced a much different illustration of racial attitudes. For us, racism has been defined over and over as oppression and aggressive behavior (almost exclusively toward people of African descent). However, being here and being in the minority makes one rethink these notions. As Rachel and I experienced at Birdies’ International School, sometimes Ghanaians have a lingering perception (most likely from the colonial education system) of white superiority. White customers are commonly seen to be treated better at restaurants etc. At the school, Rachel and I could tell that they believed us to be highly qualified and knowlegable solely because we were white. Although our past experiences haven’t prepared us for a racial experience like this, it made both of us extremely anxious and uncomfortable to be thought of that way and judged superior because of our skin color. It seems that there is also a pervasive attitude of self-sufficiency among Ghanaians. They are one of the most developed countries of sub-saharan Africa, and want to be seen as progressive and given credit where it is due. These types of attitudes sometimes lead Ghanaians to treat us as if we are pretentious as I experienced in the hospital. It seems that they resented me for being white in a situation where they could feel superior to me. It was as if they were refusing my help on the basis that they didn’t need it, proving to me (and therefore the ‘whites’) that they were doing fine without it. The most common types of racial attitudes are those that assume we are promiscuous, naive and wealthy. The taxi example I gave is a very common example of this. Further, although some Ghanaians are truly genuinely friendly, many of the most ‘friendly’ are men between 16 and 45. Sometimes the first three things they say are “what’s your name? What is your phone number? Where do you live?” Easier to brush off at first, this assumption of stupidity and promiscuity can get to be very difficult. The program coordinators have told us that we have to not be afraid to get rude with people who do this. It is difficult sometimes because one must be very blunt and rude in a way that people really don’t do in the United States. In the US, cultural understandings allow rejection to be a more unspoken subtle action in the case when two people meet who don’t know each other. The question that we go back and forth about among ourselves is whether or not these attitudes and assumptions qualify as racism. In many cases it is difficult to determine whether or not you are being treated the way you are because of your gender, race, or cultural differences.
*The power went out for a few hours the other night and I began to worry about how I was going to sleep without a fan (since that is almost impossible). HOWEVER, the water has been running for two days now! A record.
The hospital has gotten much better since I last posted. On Thursday we cleared up the miscommunication about observing the doctors. They had said I could watch the doctors do their rounds, and I hadn’t actually seen any doctors since I’d been there. After figuring out that they had thought I was asking about sitting in the consulting room with the doctors, we determined that for the most part the doctors do not come to the children’s ward until around 11:30. As this is when I have class, I hadn’t seen them come through. On Monday I was able to go in later to the hospital since I don’t have class until 3. A young nurse showed me how to fill out the temperature chart form when a patient is admitted. I was also able to observe as a newly admitted patient was hooked up to an IV and given treatments. When the doctors came around, the nursing students and I followed to each patient. We were able to look at the x-rays of a child who had broncho-pnemonia. We also learned what the typical temperature drop looks like on a child who has malaria. He showed us how if the child also has another sickness (often gastroenteritis), the temperature will drop and then climb again slightly, but in the case of just malaria, it drops off quickly and returns to normal with treatment.
The same young nurse showed me the record books where they document when each patient is admitted, the diagnosis and notes. Somewhere around 95% of the patients in the children’s ward are there because of malaria. Other common diagnosis include Urticaria rash, anaemia, sepsis, dysentery, abscesses, convulsions, and there was a boy there who had severe burns on his face and some on his arms. The blanket treatment for almost every child is an analgesic, antibiotic, and anti-malarial. The record-keeping system seems to be a bit out of date, and people end up writing and re-writing patients conditions on different forms. I haven’t seen any computers in the hospital.
Last weekend we went to Cape Coast with the CIEE program. We toured Elmina castle, which is the oldest European building outside of Europe. It was built by the Portugese (I think) and was originally used for the gold trade. It then passed to the hands of the Dutch who used it for the slave trade. We were taken into the different slave dungeons and the ‘room of no return’ which was where the slaves exited to the ships. The tour guide told us that when the men in charge wanted to sleep with one of the slaves, they would line the women up in the courtyard and they would pick one. These women were fed a meal (it could have been about a week since the last meal) and bathed before they were taken to the men’s rooms. Those we got pregnant from situations such as this were not shipped off for slavery. They were moved to a specific place along the coast to give birth. The children were then treated as almost a whole separate race, somewhere between the ‘superiority’ of the Europeans, and the ‘inferiority’ of the Africans. The last names of some of these lines of ancestry are still present today.
That night we stayed in a hotel that cost 75 ghana cedi a night (60$). The hotel had a pool and air conditioning! After dinner we tried some palm wine. Cape Coast is supposed to be the place to get palm wine, but we had forgotten to get some fresh when we were out earlier. The less fresh wine tasted slightly carbonated, coconutty, with an aftertaste somewhat like deli meat. It actually didn’t taste that way until someone made the comparison, and then it inevitably tasted like salami juices. Needless to say, I didn’t have any more that night. The next day we were able to get some fresh palm wine that was quite good, and did not taste like deli meat.
The following day we made a trip to Kakum national park rainforest. Although there are animals present in the rainforest, they told us not to expect to see any. The monkeys have been made shy of human presence, and only one picture has ever been taken of the forest elephants (who are apparently quite stealthy). Instead of looking for wildlife, we hiked for about 10 minutes up to the beginning of the canopy walk. The canopy walk consisted of 7 rope bridges from the high beginning point out into the forest where there were platforms at various tall trees. Some people had a lot of trouble with the height, but it wasn’t very scary for me. They test the ropes more than once a day, so it is very safe and unlikely that you will fall. Pictures of the whole weekend will be posted this weekend hopefully.
This week Rachel and I made a trip to the post office. This was quite an adventure. To get there we had to take a tro-tro to circle (Kwame Nkrumah circle, but all the mates just call it circle since it’s the biggest one). There are a huge number of vendors on the streets here so we were hassled quite a bit to buy things as we walked through. When we finally made it, I bought a couple envelopes and sent a thank you letter for my scholarship to Lehigh Financial Aid. Rachel was picking up a package that her mother had sent her through the US mail. Sending it this way had its pro’s and it cons. Pro; it was cheaper than fedex (which would be delivered directly to the school for us to pick up). Con; she had to bargain on how much tax to pay for the contents of the package. This means that she had to open the package in front of the postal worker. He then used some crazy logic to tell her that on an estimated value of 45$ and 41$ to send it, he wanted her to pay 23 cedis as tax. Our friend Carly had gone to pick up a digital camera that her parents had sent the week prior. When they told her she had to pay 70 cedis tax, she left and came back with Mr. Gyasi (our program coordinator). He bargained them down to 30 cedis. We told the postal worker this and he said she should have paid 56 cedis. In any case, we told him we only had 15 cedis and he gave us the package for that much. This was still over-priced but it can be hard to bargain when you are a white woman in Ghana.
Often people think that you don’t know how much things should cost and try to overcharge you excessively. Sometimes a taxi driver will say that a ride that should cost 1.50 is going to be 5 or 6 cedis. Quoting a price this high is sometimes funny because it is so ridiculous that they would try to charge that much for such a short trip, but it can get very frustrating because it is clear they are only saying it because you are white and that is associated with wealth and naivety.
This leads me to another interesting topic of discussion. Although most people told us as part of the introductory and orientation material that race is not as much of an issue here in Ghana as it is in the United States, almost all of us have experienced a much different illustration of racial attitudes. For us, racism has been defined over and over as oppression and aggressive behavior (almost exclusively toward people of African descent). However, being here and being in the minority makes one rethink these notions. As Rachel and I experienced at Birdies’ International School, sometimes Ghanaians have a lingering perception (most likely from the colonial education system) of white superiority. White customers are commonly seen to be treated better at restaurants etc. At the school, Rachel and I could tell that they believed us to be highly qualified and knowlegable solely because we were white. Although our past experiences haven’t prepared us for a racial experience like this, it made both of us extremely anxious and uncomfortable to be thought of that way and judged superior because of our skin color. It seems that there is also a pervasive attitude of self-sufficiency among Ghanaians. They are one of the most developed countries of sub-saharan Africa, and want to be seen as progressive and given credit where it is due. These types of attitudes sometimes lead Ghanaians to treat us as if we are pretentious as I experienced in the hospital. It seems that they resented me for being white in a situation where they could feel superior to me. It was as if they were refusing my help on the basis that they didn’t need it, proving to me (and therefore the ‘whites’) that they were doing fine without it. The most common types of racial attitudes are those that assume we are promiscuous, naive and wealthy. The taxi example I gave is a very common example of this. Further, although some Ghanaians are truly genuinely friendly, many of the most ‘friendly’ are men between 16 and 45. Sometimes the first three things they say are “what’s your name? What is your phone number? Where do you live?” Easier to brush off at first, this assumption of stupidity and promiscuity can get to be very difficult. The program coordinators have told us that we have to not be afraid to get rude with people who do this. It is difficult sometimes because one must be very blunt and rude in a way that people really don’t do in the United States. In the US, cultural understandings allow rejection to be a more unspoken subtle action in the case when two people meet who don’t know each other. The question that we go back and forth about among ourselves is whether or not these attitudes and assumptions qualify as racism. In many cases it is difficult to determine whether or not you are being treated the way you are because of your gender, race, or cultural differences.
*The power went out for a few hours the other night and I began to worry about how I was going to sleep without a fan (since that is almost impossible). HOWEVER, the water has been running for two days now! A record.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
more pics!
http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=255544133/a=158961882_158961882/t_=158961882
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
February15th
On Sunday the 8th, Rachel and I went with Dedei to her church. It is a pentacostal church called “Deeper Life of Christ”, a group of born-again christians. It is not charismatic in the way that many pentacostal churches are. They did a lot of reading from the bible, and verbal praying. By this I mean that while one person (a prayer-leader?) sermonizes from the heart/mind, the congregation will say their personal prayers aloud. Some people get really into these prayers and include gestures and movement, but for the most part they just stood and prayed aloud. Dedei gave us scarves to cover our hair, which we were thankful for because all the other women had scarves covering their hair. Everyone was very welcoming and friendly and wanted to meet us. Dedei was the proud mom. No one pushed us to become of their faith, but all of them were encouraging of our return and presence at bible study. Most of the CIEE program members went to Labadi beach on Sunday evening to get dinner to celebrate Victoria’s birthda. She goes to Princeton at home, and just turned 20 (she’s a sophomore). A surprise to us, there was a sort of beach party going on when we got there. Some acrobats were performing, and Rachel and I recognized one of the young boys as a boy in Dedei’s first grade class. We had noticed that one of her students was abnormally muscular for a young child and had asked her about it. She told us that he did acrobatics, so it was funny to see him performing.
On Monday I went to the hospital for the first volunteer experience. A woman showed me around the children’s ward, and I saw an abandoned baby boy who had a cough they were checking on before putting him in an orphanage, a couple other young children with typhoid, and malaria, two cases of cellulitis, a girl who got hit by a car, a girl with sickle cell anemia, and a babywith jondice undergoing photo-treatment. The girl who had been hit by a car had a broken femur that had been splinted for a while. She still had her leg resting on a wedge of pillow, undergoing skin traction. She had been there for more than two months and had all her schoolbooks with her. A nurse taught me how to take temperatures by putting the thermometer under the childs armpit for some time. The temperature was of course taken in celcius. I knew that body temperature is 37º because that is the temperature of many incubators we use in the lab. The nurse told me that the normal range is between 36-37º and that anything 37.8º and above is considered a temperature. There wasn’t much to do since the children were in recovery, but I hung out with the abandoned boy for a while. He seemed kind of scared of me because of my skin color, but he soon got over that when he realized that I was the only one willing to pay attention to him. Later in the week when I went to the hospital the boy was gone. This time, there wasn’t anything at all going on so the nurse supervisor told me to come back in the morning when I don’t have classes. She said I would be able to follow the doctors around on their rounds that they do in the morning. This should be much more interesting than the recovery room!
In class this week one of my professors was absent because she has come down with typhoid fever. We were assigned some reading from a West African History book. We’ve read about the tribal empires and conflicts that went on before the Europeans decided to colonize. This related nicely to the international setting class in which we read an article detailing the reasons for colonization from the European perspective and its effects on African society. In leadership we began to watch a movie about Mahatma Ghandi, as a case study for effective leadership. In Twi we had a quiz on the alphabet. In music and dance we began to learn another dance style and song. The songs are often a call and response type of song that includes a clapping beat. Our professor split us into three groups and had two or three callers and the rest response. The challenge was to see who could have the most fun. Each group had to make the song their own and really get into it. It was really fun to hear the different sounds people would make with their mouths and include parts of the dance into the singing. Dance is a lot of fun, but the class sometimes dreads it because it is so hot. During the summer at home the hottest part of the day is usually between about 12:30 and 2, and the sun sets around 8. Here the sun sets at 6:30, so the hottest time of the day is around 9:30-12, and our class is from 8-11, of which we spend the latter 2 hours outside dancing.
On Thursday, Jocelyn’s friend came to braid my hair. Many African women wear their hair in braids. It allows more air to reach the scalp, so it is cooler. It is also a style because black women’s hair is very brittle, and breaks easily. It is also hard to manage. To do the style, someone will braid hair pieces (other than your own hair) into your hair. They can do it in cornrows (tiny French braids close the head), rasta (just straight braids from the head), or twists (two pieces of hair twisted around each other), or a mixture of any of them. My roommate Antwiwaa has just rasta, Jocelyn has cornrows the the crown of her head and then twists, and I decided to get cornrows to the crown of my head and then rasta for the back part. The style of the cornrows in the front will also vary from person to person. Typically someone will keep the style for 3-4 weeks. They try not to get them wet (because it takes forever to dry and can mess up the braids faster). This isn’t too difficult for most of them because excersise isn’t a very common Ghanaian practice, so they don’t have to worry about sweating from that (they are so used to the heat, they don’t sweat as much as we do). I’ve had them in for almost 4 days now, and have washed them once. I haven’t run since Thursday morning, and am nervous to try it tomorrow. The braids are really interesting to have. I like the style, although it is quite uncomfortable. The first day, my scalp really hurt from how tight they were. They loosened up overnight quite a bit, but I’m still not used to the feeling. The wind does certainly cool off my scalp more though which is nice. I also get a lot of comments from Ghanaians about how they like my hair. It cost me 15 cedi’s to get it done (~12$).
On Friday we left for Winneba. A bit up the coast to the west, Winneba is another town. To get there, we took a taxi to Kaneshi market where the mass transit busses wait. The ride to Winneba was only 1 cedi. The busses just wait until they are full to leave, so there isn’t a timed schedule. When we got out of the taxi a man asked us where we were going and showed us to the queue for that bus. (the English the Ghanaians use is British English so they use words like queue, chips for fries, centre, theatre, colour etc.) The bus arrived shortly and filled up quickly. While we were waiting, many of the market women came up to us trying to sell us biscuits, water, etc. Even when you’re sitting on the buss they will sell you things through the windows. It seems that on one hand the marketing system here is really great because it is so convenient for the consumer. You can pretty much get anything you need delivered to you while you’re waiting in traffic. It also keeps the prices down and affordable for the majority of the urban population (I haven’t been to anywhere really rural yet so I’m not sure about affordability for them) due to the high competition between vendors. The downside is of course that sales cannot be taxed. This is even questionable as a downside because I am unsure of how capable the government is of using tax money efficiently and effectively. It seems like corruption is a real issue in that department.
The bus sat 2 on one side and 3 on the other, no air conditioning, but comfortable enough with the windows open. Everyone around us was really helpful in letting us know when to get off and how to get to where we were staying after that. Once we got off the bus, people would say hello to us and ask where we were going and point us in the right direction. When we got to the Winneba Lagoon Lodge, it was so beautiful. The sun had begun to set and the mountain behind the lagoon was lit as if it was a movie. We spent the weekend with Ashley, Carly, Erin, Lily, Becky, Edward, Nana, Tiffany, Adrian, Jake and Taye. We spent most of Saturday on the beach, where three little boys came to sell us biscuits. Then, they decided they wanted to stay and hang out and began singing and dancing just to entertain themselves and us (they weren’t asking for money). Ashley and I walked down to the end of the beach where there was a rock area jutting into the ocean. It seemed to make a pool that was filled with ocean water that people were playing with a ball in. This area was much more crowded than the section of the beach we were sitting on. Walking into this crowd was a bit daunting because everyone stared at us shamelessly. Outside of Accra and the bigger cities, it is less common to see white people. Some people even called to us as ‘white woman’, they didn’t even say Obruni. It was hard to tell whether or not they meant it derogatorily, or if they just said it as a direct translation to English of Obruni, in which case it wouldn’t be offensive.
Carly, Edward, Nana, and Rachel stayed up all night. I went to bed from 2-4 in the morning. It was hard to sleep though because Rachel and my fan was broken, so I was too hot to sleep. I got up at 4 and walked with them to the beach to watch the sun rise. It didn’t end up rising until about 5:45, but didn’t peak out from the cloud cover until 6:30. The waiting paid off though and I got some really nice pictures. Some people began to come out and fix up the fishing boat at about 5:30, and soccer teams were jogging on the beach around the same time. On our way back from the beach we saw a boy climb up a palm tree. He was cutting down some fronds for burning maybe. On our way back to the lodge we saw the police training students working out in the clearing we used as a shortcut the night before. We stayed another night and got more sleep that night. At dinner I had an interesting talk with Taye about his Ghanaian experiences. As an Ethiopian, he even gets called Obruni sometimes. Typically Ethiopians (and Eastern/Northern) Africans are lighter skinned. In the North (like Egypt/Morocco) this leads to a separation in African unity. Oftentimes Northern Africa is considered middle-east because of skin color and religion (Islam). Taye said that he understands some Arabic just because he grew up around it (the same way many people in the US live near Spanish speakers). On the way home this morning Jake and I talked about the differences in social culture here and in the US, and what aspects we will and will not miss. Jake made a good point about it being more obvious here that everyone appreciates each other as having value. It seems that in the US people are quick to dismiss someone as being useless or lazy, whereas here, everyone has a contribution and people aren’t dismissed as easily. This may be because they place a higher value on human connection, and a lower value on productivity. In the US, people are so focused on getting things done that they only have connections with those they are most immediately and commonly in contact with. Here, people are genuinely interested in having a conversation with anyone. They make time to hang out with others, and aren’t as focused on completing the next task. This has taken some getting used to, but it ultimately a much more comfortable way of living. It allows you to really enjoy each day, without getting to ahead or too focused on planning the next course of action. The downside are things I’ve already talked about, like being seen just as money. It is also different being a foreign female than a foreign male. A lot of Ghanaian men will say hi as a woman passes, and then the second or third thing they ask will be your phone number or where you live. Sometimes this is harmless and you can joke it off, and other times it is obvious that they see you as an object, which can be uncomfortable. We have become better at discerning who means what when they talk to you, and being clear about what we’re willing to tell them or not. Some of our Ghanaian friends had said we were too naïve about which of them are genuine, and too nice about saying no. This has become more obviously a cultural thing that we have picked up on. In the US most of us understand so well the expected interactions that we don’t have to say no for someone to know we aren’t interested. Here, it is a bit different and you have to be more forward. It is difficult to say no though because Ghanaians don’t like to be embarrassed so they will almost pretend like you haven’t said it at all. The best way to go about it is to not yield to their requests, but to joke it off without making any promises. It is a bit of an art that many of us are beginning to perfect.
*Another interesting cultural aspect of Ghana is how people get another’s attention. They will often make a hissing sound, or a sort of course kissy noise. People are very tuned to this noise, especially those who are selling things. At first it seemed really rude, but it is just another thing to get used to. It works much better than yelling ‘hey’ at someone you want to buy something from.
*Also, because the water from the pipes isn’t clean enough to drink, most people drink what they call ‘sashe’ water. These are plastic bags that hold 500ml of drinkable water (about the size of a small water bottle) that are sold for only 5 pesewas each. If bought in bulk they are even less expensive. A bottle containing the same amount of water is typically 50 pesewas. With the steri-pen that Nick and Gina lent me, I usually just purify my own drinking water from the taps.
Feb 16th- The hospital was really frustrating today. They had said on Thursday that I would be able to follow and observe the doctors while they do patient treatments. On Monday Julie told me that I could sit and talk with the patients about why they’re in the hospital. There was only the girl, Henrietta, who got hit by a car, left in the recovery room. I found out that she just turned 10 (on Chelsea’s birthday). Part of the way through my time there she said the doctors hadn’t come to the children’s ward yet, but that they were on their way. At the time when I had to leave for class, the doctors still hadn’t come. She then told me that I wouldn’t be able to follow them because usually it is the students who have had some medical school who are allowed to work with them since they know more, and wouldn’t hold the doctors from their work with questions. I told them I just wanted to observe as we had originally decided, but they said that it would be best if I stayed in the recovery room and watched the nurses and learned to do what they do. The disconnect in communication is really starting to frustrate me. I am told one thing one day, and then it changes (even in the same day!). They seem to forget that I’m in school and expect to see me every day, though I don’t do much while I’m there. No one seems to take much interest in telling me what I could do that would be helpful. I once offered to help a nurse who was just cleaning and tidying up, and she said asked me to let her do it. It is hard to know when I should step in and see if I can learn, and when it would be rude to do so. Often, the nurses speak Twi, or Ga to each other, so I can’t understand what they are saying or what is going on. I even once asked if there was a tissue or handkerchief I could use to wipe the baby boy’s nose with, and they laughed at me. It is really difficult to know how to place myself so that I can be of some use, while learning, without getting in the way. I’ve talked to one of our program coordinators about it today, and she was really understanding. She said she doesn’t see why it would be a problem for me to just sit and observe since that was what we had originally determined.
As a general experience that many of the students have had, it is actually difficult to volunteer here in Ghana. Becky has begun to volunteer in an orphanage. She said that it is hard for them to let her actually help. She has found that she is treated as a guest, or celebrity observer- similar to the experience Rachel and I had at the schools (although somewhat different at Dedei’s school). It seems like at the hospital, they don’t have any tasks they are ready to entrust to me, but also seem like maybe they feel that they don’t need my help. This may be a function of my being white, and not wanting to accept charity. Ghanaians seem to be a somewhat proud people. As one of the more developed countries in Africa, they want to show off all the ways that they have advanced. When learning about the situation they are in and where they have come from, it is easy to see where this frame of mind has come from. However, another property of Ghanaians (and African’s in general so they say..) is lacking punctuality. This makes it hard to rely on someone when they tell you they will be somewhere at a specific time, or even that something will happen then. You learn to sort of take what they say with a grain of salt. This seems like something that directly relates to their laid back, non-progressively oriented attitudes. It also seems like it is something that holds them back in the further development of their institutions. This is especially obvious in the hospital, where things could deffinitly run more smoothly. It would be great if I could help in this way, or just observe treatments. I have ended up spending 3 hours sitting talking to a 10 year old girl, so it frustrates me that they can’t think of something more useful for me to do for them.
I did meet two young nursing students today in the hospital who were interested in nursing programs in the United States. I told them that there were certainly programs that they would be interested in, but that they would be very expensive. I’m not sure what the financial aid programs for international students are like.
On Sunday the 8th, Rachel and I went with Dedei to her church. It is a pentacostal church called “Deeper Life of Christ”, a group of born-again christians. It is not charismatic in the way that many pentacostal churches are. They did a lot of reading from the bible, and verbal praying. By this I mean that while one person (a prayer-leader?) sermonizes from the heart/mind, the congregation will say their personal prayers aloud. Some people get really into these prayers and include gestures and movement, but for the most part they just stood and prayed aloud. Dedei gave us scarves to cover our hair, which we were thankful for because all the other women had scarves covering their hair. Everyone was very welcoming and friendly and wanted to meet us. Dedei was the proud mom. No one pushed us to become of their faith, but all of them were encouraging of our return and presence at bible study. Most of the CIEE program members went to Labadi beach on Sunday evening to get dinner to celebrate Victoria’s birthda. She goes to Princeton at home, and just turned 20 (she’s a sophomore). A surprise to us, there was a sort of beach party going on when we got there. Some acrobats were performing, and Rachel and I recognized one of the young boys as a boy in Dedei’s first grade class. We had noticed that one of her students was abnormally muscular for a young child and had asked her about it. She told us that he did acrobatics, so it was funny to see him performing.
On Monday I went to the hospital for the first volunteer experience. A woman showed me around the children’s ward, and I saw an abandoned baby boy who had a cough they were checking on before putting him in an orphanage, a couple other young children with typhoid, and malaria, two cases of cellulitis, a girl who got hit by a car, a girl with sickle cell anemia, and a babywith jondice undergoing photo-treatment. The girl who had been hit by a car had a broken femur that had been splinted for a while. She still had her leg resting on a wedge of pillow, undergoing skin traction. She had been there for more than two months and had all her schoolbooks with her. A nurse taught me how to take temperatures by putting the thermometer under the childs armpit for some time. The temperature was of course taken in celcius. I knew that body temperature is 37º because that is the temperature of many incubators we use in the lab. The nurse told me that the normal range is between 36-37º and that anything 37.8º and above is considered a temperature. There wasn’t much to do since the children were in recovery, but I hung out with the abandoned boy for a while. He seemed kind of scared of me because of my skin color, but he soon got over that when he realized that I was the only one willing to pay attention to him. Later in the week when I went to the hospital the boy was gone. This time, there wasn’t anything at all going on so the nurse supervisor told me to come back in the morning when I don’t have classes. She said I would be able to follow the doctors around on their rounds that they do in the morning. This should be much more interesting than the recovery room!
In class this week one of my professors was absent because she has come down with typhoid fever. We were assigned some reading from a West African History book. We’ve read about the tribal empires and conflicts that went on before the Europeans decided to colonize. This related nicely to the international setting class in which we read an article detailing the reasons for colonization from the European perspective and its effects on African society. In leadership we began to watch a movie about Mahatma Ghandi, as a case study for effective leadership. In Twi we had a quiz on the alphabet. In music and dance we began to learn another dance style and song. The songs are often a call and response type of song that includes a clapping beat. Our professor split us into three groups and had two or three callers and the rest response. The challenge was to see who could have the most fun. Each group had to make the song their own and really get into it. It was really fun to hear the different sounds people would make with their mouths and include parts of the dance into the singing. Dance is a lot of fun, but the class sometimes dreads it because it is so hot. During the summer at home the hottest part of the day is usually between about 12:30 and 2, and the sun sets around 8. Here the sun sets at 6:30, so the hottest time of the day is around 9:30-12, and our class is from 8-11, of which we spend the latter 2 hours outside dancing.
On Thursday, Jocelyn’s friend came to braid my hair. Many African women wear their hair in braids. It allows more air to reach the scalp, so it is cooler. It is also a style because black women’s hair is very brittle, and breaks easily. It is also hard to manage. To do the style, someone will braid hair pieces (other than your own hair) into your hair. They can do it in cornrows (tiny French braids close the head), rasta (just straight braids from the head), or twists (two pieces of hair twisted around each other), or a mixture of any of them. My roommate Antwiwaa has just rasta, Jocelyn has cornrows the the crown of her head and then twists, and I decided to get cornrows to the crown of my head and then rasta for the back part. The style of the cornrows in the front will also vary from person to person. Typically someone will keep the style for 3-4 weeks. They try not to get them wet (because it takes forever to dry and can mess up the braids faster). This isn’t too difficult for most of them because excersise isn’t a very common Ghanaian practice, so they don’t have to worry about sweating from that (they are so used to the heat, they don’t sweat as much as we do). I’ve had them in for almost 4 days now, and have washed them once. I haven’t run since Thursday morning, and am nervous to try it tomorrow. The braids are really interesting to have. I like the style, although it is quite uncomfortable. The first day, my scalp really hurt from how tight they were. They loosened up overnight quite a bit, but I’m still not used to the feeling. The wind does certainly cool off my scalp more though which is nice. I also get a lot of comments from Ghanaians about how they like my hair. It cost me 15 cedi’s to get it done (~12$).
On Friday we left for Winneba. A bit up the coast to the west, Winneba is another town. To get there, we took a taxi to Kaneshi market where the mass transit busses wait. The ride to Winneba was only 1 cedi. The busses just wait until they are full to leave, so there isn’t a timed schedule. When we got out of the taxi a man asked us where we were going and showed us to the queue for that bus. (the English the Ghanaians use is British English so they use words like queue, chips for fries, centre, theatre, colour etc.) The bus arrived shortly and filled up quickly. While we were waiting, many of the market women came up to us trying to sell us biscuits, water, etc. Even when you’re sitting on the buss they will sell you things through the windows. It seems that on one hand the marketing system here is really great because it is so convenient for the consumer. You can pretty much get anything you need delivered to you while you’re waiting in traffic. It also keeps the prices down and affordable for the majority of the urban population (I haven’t been to anywhere really rural yet so I’m not sure about affordability for them) due to the high competition between vendors. The downside is of course that sales cannot be taxed. This is even questionable as a downside because I am unsure of how capable the government is of using tax money efficiently and effectively. It seems like corruption is a real issue in that department.
The bus sat 2 on one side and 3 on the other, no air conditioning, but comfortable enough with the windows open. Everyone around us was really helpful in letting us know when to get off and how to get to where we were staying after that. Once we got off the bus, people would say hello to us and ask where we were going and point us in the right direction. When we got to the Winneba Lagoon Lodge, it was so beautiful. The sun had begun to set and the mountain behind the lagoon was lit as if it was a movie. We spent the weekend with Ashley, Carly, Erin, Lily, Becky, Edward, Nana, Tiffany, Adrian, Jake and Taye. We spent most of Saturday on the beach, where three little boys came to sell us biscuits. Then, they decided they wanted to stay and hang out and began singing and dancing just to entertain themselves and us (they weren’t asking for money). Ashley and I walked down to the end of the beach where there was a rock area jutting into the ocean. It seemed to make a pool that was filled with ocean water that people were playing with a ball in. This area was much more crowded than the section of the beach we were sitting on. Walking into this crowd was a bit daunting because everyone stared at us shamelessly. Outside of Accra and the bigger cities, it is less common to see white people. Some people even called to us as ‘white woman’, they didn’t even say Obruni. It was hard to tell whether or not they meant it derogatorily, or if they just said it as a direct translation to English of Obruni, in which case it wouldn’t be offensive.
Carly, Edward, Nana, and Rachel stayed up all night. I went to bed from 2-4 in the morning. It was hard to sleep though because Rachel and my fan was broken, so I was too hot to sleep. I got up at 4 and walked with them to the beach to watch the sun rise. It didn’t end up rising until about 5:45, but didn’t peak out from the cloud cover until 6:30. The waiting paid off though and I got some really nice pictures. Some people began to come out and fix up the fishing boat at about 5:30, and soccer teams were jogging on the beach around the same time. On our way back from the beach we saw a boy climb up a palm tree. He was cutting down some fronds for burning maybe. On our way back to the lodge we saw the police training students working out in the clearing we used as a shortcut the night before. We stayed another night and got more sleep that night. At dinner I had an interesting talk with Taye about his Ghanaian experiences. As an Ethiopian, he even gets called Obruni sometimes. Typically Ethiopians (and Eastern/Northern) Africans are lighter skinned. In the North (like Egypt/Morocco) this leads to a separation in African unity. Oftentimes Northern Africa is considered middle-east because of skin color and religion (Islam). Taye said that he understands some Arabic just because he grew up around it (the same way many people in the US live near Spanish speakers). On the way home this morning Jake and I talked about the differences in social culture here and in the US, and what aspects we will and will not miss. Jake made a good point about it being more obvious here that everyone appreciates each other as having value. It seems that in the US people are quick to dismiss someone as being useless or lazy, whereas here, everyone has a contribution and people aren’t dismissed as easily. This may be because they place a higher value on human connection, and a lower value on productivity. In the US, people are so focused on getting things done that they only have connections with those they are most immediately and commonly in contact with. Here, people are genuinely interested in having a conversation with anyone. They make time to hang out with others, and aren’t as focused on completing the next task. This has taken some getting used to, but it ultimately a much more comfortable way of living. It allows you to really enjoy each day, without getting to ahead or too focused on planning the next course of action. The downside are things I’ve already talked about, like being seen just as money. It is also different being a foreign female than a foreign male. A lot of Ghanaian men will say hi as a woman passes, and then the second or third thing they ask will be your phone number or where you live. Sometimes this is harmless and you can joke it off, and other times it is obvious that they see you as an object, which can be uncomfortable. We have become better at discerning who means what when they talk to you, and being clear about what we’re willing to tell them or not. Some of our Ghanaian friends had said we were too naïve about which of them are genuine, and too nice about saying no. This has become more obviously a cultural thing that we have picked up on. In the US most of us understand so well the expected interactions that we don’t have to say no for someone to know we aren’t interested. Here, it is a bit different and you have to be more forward. It is difficult to say no though because Ghanaians don’t like to be embarrassed so they will almost pretend like you haven’t said it at all. The best way to go about it is to not yield to their requests, but to joke it off without making any promises. It is a bit of an art that many of us are beginning to perfect.
*Another interesting cultural aspect of Ghana is how people get another’s attention. They will often make a hissing sound, or a sort of course kissy noise. People are very tuned to this noise, especially those who are selling things. At first it seemed really rude, but it is just another thing to get used to. It works much better than yelling ‘hey’ at someone you want to buy something from.
*Also, because the water from the pipes isn’t clean enough to drink, most people drink what they call ‘sashe’ water. These are plastic bags that hold 500ml of drinkable water (about the size of a small water bottle) that are sold for only 5 pesewas each. If bought in bulk they are even less expensive. A bottle containing the same amount of water is typically 50 pesewas. With the steri-pen that Nick and Gina lent me, I usually just purify my own drinking water from the taps.
Feb 16th- The hospital was really frustrating today. They had said on Thursday that I would be able to follow and observe the doctors while they do patient treatments. On Monday Julie told me that I could sit and talk with the patients about why they’re in the hospital. There was only the girl, Henrietta, who got hit by a car, left in the recovery room. I found out that she just turned 10 (on Chelsea’s birthday). Part of the way through my time there she said the doctors hadn’t come to the children’s ward yet, but that they were on their way. At the time when I had to leave for class, the doctors still hadn’t come. She then told me that I wouldn’t be able to follow them because usually it is the students who have had some medical school who are allowed to work with them since they know more, and wouldn’t hold the doctors from their work with questions. I told them I just wanted to observe as we had originally decided, but they said that it would be best if I stayed in the recovery room and watched the nurses and learned to do what they do. The disconnect in communication is really starting to frustrate me. I am told one thing one day, and then it changes (even in the same day!). They seem to forget that I’m in school and expect to see me every day, though I don’t do much while I’m there. No one seems to take much interest in telling me what I could do that would be helpful. I once offered to help a nurse who was just cleaning and tidying up, and she said asked me to let her do it. It is hard to know when I should step in and see if I can learn, and when it would be rude to do so. Often, the nurses speak Twi, or Ga to each other, so I can’t understand what they are saying or what is going on. I even once asked if there was a tissue or handkerchief I could use to wipe the baby boy’s nose with, and they laughed at me. It is really difficult to know how to place myself so that I can be of some use, while learning, without getting in the way. I’ve talked to one of our program coordinators about it today, and she was really understanding. She said she doesn’t see why it would be a problem for me to just sit and observe since that was what we had originally determined.
As a general experience that many of the students have had, it is actually difficult to volunteer here in Ghana. Becky has begun to volunteer in an orphanage. She said that it is hard for them to let her actually help. She has found that she is treated as a guest, or celebrity observer- similar to the experience Rachel and I had at the schools (although somewhat different at Dedei’s school). It seems like at the hospital, they don’t have any tasks they are ready to entrust to me, but also seem like maybe they feel that they don’t need my help. This may be a function of my being white, and not wanting to accept charity. Ghanaians seem to be a somewhat proud people. As one of the more developed countries in Africa, they want to show off all the ways that they have advanced. When learning about the situation they are in and where they have come from, it is easy to see where this frame of mind has come from. However, another property of Ghanaians (and African’s in general so they say..) is lacking punctuality. This makes it hard to rely on someone when they tell you they will be somewhere at a specific time, or even that something will happen then. You learn to sort of take what they say with a grain of salt. This seems like something that directly relates to their laid back, non-progressively oriented attitudes. It also seems like it is something that holds them back in the further development of their institutions. This is especially obvious in the hospital, where things could deffinitly run more smoothly. It would be great if I could help in this way, or just observe treatments. I have ended up spending 3 hours sitting talking to a 10 year old girl, so it frustrates me that they can’t think of something more useful for me to do for them.
I did meet two young nursing students today in the hospital who were interested in nursing programs in the United States. I told them that there were certainly programs that they would be interested in, but that they would be very expensive. I’m not sure what the financial aid programs for international students are like.
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