I have been diagnosed with the tropical disease known as Malaria. Which really isn’t as bad of a thing as it sounds. Malaria is almost synonymous with the flu. People just get it and take time off from work and deal with it. Aside from the occasional vomiting and room closing in on itself feel, it’s not so bad. If Rita wouldn’t have insisted rather forcefully in taking me to the hospital, I wouldn’t have ever gone. Turns out that she has quite a few years of experience in dealing with stubborn foreign students. So I’ve spent the last days reading fun novels and chipping away at the complete collection of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, all 45 episodes fitted onto one disk that I had picked up from a guy through the window of a trotro for two cedis.
I went to the doctor the other day. He kept on trying to suck blood from my neck. Don’t go to Dr. Acula.
So when I have decided to leave the comfort of my compound in the last two days, it is both difficult and refreshing to make my daily rounds down Okpunglo junction, greeting those that I see everyday. It’s difficult in my American mentality, in not wanting to talk to anyone, wishing I could just point my eyes to the ground, avoiding eye contact with everyone. But that’s not the way life works here, so when I do see the ever so familiar people in the same places, I stop and talk. “Yaya, come. How is it?” “Oh, I’m ok. I have malaria, so I’m not feeling so well.” “Oh, no. Sorry, ok? You go get some rest. We’ll see you tomorrow.” And such a simple conversation is actually quite nice. (The lady at the corner in the car parts shop calls me Yaya, thanks to Coach, who calls me Yaa, because I was born on a Thursday, making Yaa my day name. People think it’s funny that Westerners don’t know what day of the week they were born on.)
The life down any given street is amazing to me. The way that everyone in a given perimeter is so connected is an amazing thing. What else is there to do than to be outside, conversing with the rest of your neighbors? Just the other day, my roommate Sam and I were outside on the road, playing cards with one of our guards, Uncle Sam, and the next door neighbor guard, Idim. We sat in the shade, backed away behind the fence where we could use natures wonders to our advantage on especially scorching days, while we were huddled over a small table, with our fingers on our cards so that the breeze wouldn’t carry them away. As we were playing, my friend Coach from down the road came around so Sam and I scooched down our bench to give him a spot to sit. He sat with us a while, then left to meet with someone else. Soon after, the woman who sells red red in the morning across the main road came around and chatted with us for a while. I had never actually seen her outside of her red red stand, but naturally, she lived somewhere down this road and, naturally, she was friends with Idim and Uncle Sam. So we played and shared and laughed and had a good ol’ time about it. They had a wild time with Egyptian Rat Screw.
Pretty much what I’m trying to say is that there’s something to be said about community, about having a place in the world, an identity, based on those around you versus chiseling out your own personal niche. You are therefore I am therefore we are. “Where am I?” “You’re with us.” (is what they said). I can’t say anything for internalizing it myself, but I can say that it is something beautiful and worth giving a second thought, or four or eight. thousand.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
In the Absence of Reasonable Blame
There seems to be a cut off point to when doing my laundry in the morning is feasible. The trick is to do all of your manual labor before the sun comes up, in the cool stillness of the morning, while the next door neighbor is cooking a robust breakfast and you can sneak free smells from over the wall and through the barbed wire. Doing your laundry is pretty hard work, for me at least, after being spoiled by the short cuts of normal life back home. Are we really more efficient with the time saved by the machines? Or does it just give us more time to waste idly and a lack of encouragement to be disciplined?
Every once in a while, although it’s probably more frequently than that, there are stark reminders that I am, indeed, in a developing nation. At the outside surrounding entrance to the University of Ghana, there has been a major renovation in the making since we have been here. Slowly but surely, a humongous ditch has been dug out in between the entrance and the road and every week, there poses a new challenge as to how to get around this morphing ditch. Where there once was a wide and easy walk way from the bush canteen, a winding entrance to the side of the campus, through which you walk through an alleyway of merchants selling pawpaw and phone credits, to the edge of the road, where trotro mates are yelling frantically their destination from a perimeter of their trotro which is parked in a nook to the side along with the others, trying to fill up their bus with exiting students so that they can be on their way to make their full potential of sika. Along this wide walk way was enough room for the women to set up their stands of roasted plantains and coolers of pure water, stumps for mtn phone credit guys to sit and plenty of room for the fan milk cart to pass through along with the mobs of students.
Recently, this walkway has been reduced to a narrow bumpy path that you have to balance across in a single file line, taking small steps, one foot directly in front of the other, keeping steady so that you don’t fall into the 20 foot deep ditch on either side of you. The path seems to be beaten down every day and the jump from the edge unto the path, and from the path unto the road has become steeper, so that the last time I walked across, an unspoken system had been implemented that the person in front of you, once assisted up the ledge, turned around and held his hand for the next in line, giving you a hoist up. The nook for the trotros had been eradicated in the vast influence the enormous renovated ditch has on the surrounding environment, forcing trotros to try to fit on the side of the road to pick up their customers, causing a major back up of traffic, one that even the most ingenious trotro drivahs have difficulty in finding a way around. The roasted plantain women is forced to back up against the ditch, trusting that those students fanned out along the side won’t back up and push her into the hole. The pure water girls only have enough space to wind back and forth through the thinly layered row of students. And the fan milk guy is forced to find a corner of his own and hope that his horn alone will be enough to attract the customers.
In the dark, this walkway is especially frightening and without a light, you best find someone who does have a light to walk behind because street lights, let alone lights to light the way through this strip are not happening. It would be so easy for someone to lose their footing, or trip over a lump right into the ditch. If this same project were to be undertaken anywhere in the U.S., the safety measures would be immeasurable. And if there were any way around it, someone may just purposefully throw themselves through the measures in hopes of getting rich quick by a nice fat settlement. But no, here, people are reliant upon their own smarts and the assistance of a helping hand that belongs to another prudent mind. If you were to fall, it’s just too bad for you. Better luck next time.
Every once in a while, although it’s probably more frequently than that, there are stark reminders that I am, indeed, in a developing nation. At the outside surrounding entrance to the University of Ghana, there has been a major renovation in the making since we have been here. Slowly but surely, a humongous ditch has been dug out in between the entrance and the road and every week, there poses a new challenge as to how to get around this morphing ditch. Where there once was a wide and easy walk way from the bush canteen, a winding entrance to the side of the campus, through which you walk through an alleyway of merchants selling pawpaw and phone credits, to the edge of the road, where trotro mates are yelling frantically their destination from a perimeter of their trotro which is parked in a nook to the side along with the others, trying to fill up their bus with exiting students so that they can be on their way to make their full potential of sika. Along this wide walk way was enough room for the women to set up their stands of roasted plantains and coolers of pure water, stumps for mtn phone credit guys to sit and plenty of room for the fan milk cart to pass through along with the mobs of students.
Recently, this walkway has been reduced to a narrow bumpy path that you have to balance across in a single file line, taking small steps, one foot directly in front of the other, keeping steady so that you don’t fall into the 20 foot deep ditch on either side of you. The path seems to be beaten down every day and the jump from the edge unto the path, and from the path unto the road has become steeper, so that the last time I walked across, an unspoken system had been implemented that the person in front of you, once assisted up the ledge, turned around and held his hand for the next in line, giving you a hoist up. The nook for the trotros had been eradicated in the vast influence the enormous renovated ditch has on the surrounding environment, forcing trotros to try to fit on the side of the road to pick up their customers, causing a major back up of traffic, one that even the most ingenious trotro drivahs have difficulty in finding a way around. The roasted plantain women is forced to back up against the ditch, trusting that those students fanned out along the side won’t back up and push her into the hole. The pure water girls only have enough space to wind back and forth through the thinly layered row of students. And the fan milk guy is forced to find a corner of his own and hope that his horn alone will be enough to attract the customers.
In the dark, this walkway is especially frightening and without a light, you best find someone who does have a light to walk behind because street lights, let alone lights to light the way through this strip are not happening. It would be so easy for someone to lose their footing, or trip over a lump right into the ditch. If this same project were to be undertaken anywhere in the U.S., the safety measures would be immeasurable. And if there were any way around it, someone may just purposefully throw themselves through the measures in hopes of getting rich quick by a nice fat settlement. But no, here, people are reliant upon their own smarts and the assistance of a helping hand that belongs to another prudent mind. If you were to fall, it’s just too bad for you. Better luck next time.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
One Man Thousand
I find myself finding comfort in the libraries; I almost forgot the meditative quality they possess. A long hard research session is refreshing and a friendly anthropological reminder from my ever so supportive professors from home gives a nice fuel up for the remainder of my time spent here. It almost seems like a curse sometimes, in counting down the days. Some times, I look at a calendar and I count it down with my fingers, daydreaming about sitting on the plane, sipping from a mini bottle of wine, and watching a classic movie, courtesy of British Airway's impressive service. But then some days, what seemed like so long almost puts me into a panic like trance. Going down is always faster than the up. I know that the full effect has yet to be realized, that it can probably never really be completely realized.
I was sitting in the front on the personal development class, feeling clammy and ill, exhausted from the harsh vomiting outside due to the hundreds of one man thousand fish that I had bought from the woman who makes her daily rounds around firestone to sell the kenkey she balances on her head. I had eaten these eetsy beetsy fish the size of a chewed up and spit out finger nail, proving themselves to be fish only by the tiny black dot of an eye. And although we were having a thoroughly important and interesting discussion about abortion, I couldn’t help to be overcome by an overwhelming sense of…sense… I was listening to one of the students that I’ve gotten to know pretty well talk, and all I could think was about how at the beginning of this, it was hard for me just to follow along when someone spoke with the accent and just the general knowledge of a Ghanaian course of speech. Now, I see her as a real human with a very real past and real feelings and thoughts, and I have a genuine love for her that I couldn’t have predicted to have from the beginning. It was a...moment, infinitely.
She said we were foolish for ever thinking that we don’t find ourselves in a continual loop of energized connectivity.
So as I continue the interviews and really get to know the students, I get a rejuvenated sense of passion for what goes on inside of a human brain, how rationalizations happen, and why. And I think, if I don’t continue to do something like this, I may always regret it. To be one important piece in a larger scheme, contributing to a grander significance in hopes of bettering something or another, if we were to ever be so lucky.
I was sitting in the front on the personal development class, feeling clammy and ill, exhausted from the harsh vomiting outside due to the hundreds of one man thousand fish that I had bought from the woman who makes her daily rounds around firestone to sell the kenkey she balances on her head. I had eaten these eetsy beetsy fish the size of a chewed up and spit out finger nail, proving themselves to be fish only by the tiny black dot of an eye. And although we were having a thoroughly important and interesting discussion about abortion, I couldn’t help to be overcome by an overwhelming sense of…sense… I was listening to one of the students that I’ve gotten to know pretty well talk, and all I could think was about how at the beginning of this, it was hard for me just to follow along when someone spoke with the accent and just the general knowledge of a Ghanaian course of speech. Now, I see her as a real human with a very real past and real feelings and thoughts, and I have a genuine love for her that I couldn’t have predicted to have from the beginning. It was a...moment, infinitely.
She said we were foolish for ever thinking that we don’t find ourselves in a continual loop of energized connectivity.
So as I continue the interviews and really get to know the students, I get a rejuvenated sense of passion for what goes on inside of a human brain, how rationalizations happen, and why. And I think, if I don’t continue to do something like this, I may always regret it. To be one important piece in a larger scheme, contributing to a grander significance in hopes of bettering something or another, if we were to ever be so lucky.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Get The Cool Shoe Shine
Yesterday at work, I was eagerly waiting for it to be lunch time so that I could take a break from powerpointing to go indulge in some delicious fried yams and the best shito sauce in town with an included bonus of green onions. So about three steps down the street, my nice tan and black flip flops broke! So I stood for awhile with my broken shoe, trying to figure out what I was going to do and how I was going to get home with one shoe, as people passed and offered their dismay at the situation, as all Ghanaians do at any instance of an unfortunate event. “Sorry, Sorry. Are you fine?” I hobbled down the rest of the road until I got to my yam woman and I showed her my broken shoe. “Oh Sorry, Sorry.” She said I needed to wait for a drummer shoe shine boy, you know, the one that hits the box at his side while he walks down the road. I thought, well I’ll be darned, so THAT’S what that guy does. 50 pesewas of fried yam pulled out of a silver bowl filled with boiling oil suspended over a small fire on the ground later, and lo and behold! The sound of the steady beat of a stick against a box was off in the distance. We called him over and he sat right down on a rock, took my shoe, opened his box and began threading the thong right back inside of the sandal. Even better than before, my newly mended sandal cost me 20 pesewas, though I only had 10 in my hand. My yam woman wanted to pay for it, she said “This is Ghana. Relax.” She paid for it and refused to take my 10 pesewas. Just like that. My shoe is fixed, no big deal, and just in time for an unexpectedly busy day.
There are so many new things here that it’s hard to decipher all of them. Everyday I see something new hidden somewhere down my own street. Just today, I discovered the lady selling red red right across the road. There are so many things crammed in so little space.
My internship is going well. I have officially begun teaching the classes that I have been dreading and struggling with. It’s a lot better than I thought it was going to be. The students are warm and welcoming and the fact that they are at SISS to begin with proves that they are willing and eager to learn. Sister Krysta is what they call me. The African mediator is what really really helps the whole situation. After I give my little schpeel about whatever it is, yesterday being personal hygiene, Naa jumps in and almost translates it for them, into an African framework. Which I am so so so very grateful about. I was so afraid of teaching something that was relevant to me to my life in the United States, but not so much to life in Africa. I came here to learn about life in Africa, not to impose my own norms on them. Which is why I was so bent out of shape about the whole project. So good old Naa went through it and I learned a wealth of information about African hygiene techniques, like the chewing sticks (an alternative to our toothbrushes) and lime wash.
It’s hard to be doing what I really want to be doing here. I can’t decide how cold of a person that makes me. There’s a certain degree of detachment you need to have to be an anthropologist. And I can’t decide if it’s a good thing or how selfish it really is. I knew all along that I wanted to be here and for selfish reasons, really, for my own curiosity. People have posed arguments of relative selfishness, which I think make the most sense to me. Rumble, Jumble, Mummmbleeee.
It’s good to know that I’m not the only person who has days that simply walking down the street is exhausting. Sometimes I wish I could transform into a chicken and walk down the street that way. through the gutters.
There are so many new things here that it’s hard to decipher all of them. Everyday I see something new hidden somewhere down my own street. Just today, I discovered the lady selling red red right across the road. There are so many things crammed in so little space.
My internship is going well. I have officially begun teaching the classes that I have been dreading and struggling with. It’s a lot better than I thought it was going to be. The students are warm and welcoming and the fact that they are at SISS to begin with proves that they are willing and eager to learn. Sister Krysta is what they call me. The African mediator is what really really helps the whole situation. After I give my little schpeel about whatever it is, yesterday being personal hygiene, Naa jumps in and almost translates it for them, into an African framework. Which I am so so so very grateful about. I was so afraid of teaching something that was relevant to me to my life in the United States, but not so much to life in Africa. I came here to learn about life in Africa, not to impose my own norms on them. Which is why I was so bent out of shape about the whole project. So good old Naa went through it and I learned a wealth of information about African hygiene techniques, like the chewing sticks (an alternative to our toothbrushes) and lime wash.
It’s hard to be doing what I really want to be doing here. I can’t decide how cold of a person that makes me. There’s a certain degree of detachment you need to have to be an anthropologist. And I can’t decide if it’s a good thing or how selfish it really is. I knew all along that I wanted to be here and for selfish reasons, really, for my own curiosity. People have posed arguments of relative selfishness, which I think make the most sense to me. Rumble, Jumble, Mummmbleeee.
It’s good to know that I’m not the only person who has days that simply walking down the street is exhausting. Sometimes I wish I could transform into a chicken and walk down the street that way. through the gutters.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
AFROBEAT RULES
Seun Kuti!! Fela Kuti’s son who is keeping his father’s afrobeat legacy alive played a wonderful fantastic awesome show where I danced harder and longer than ever before. I think the key word for Afrobeat is STAMINA. Man, these songs are like 20 minutes of the same rhythm. And some of these guys have been playing the same beat for the last three 20 minute songs and they still go strong. Every one of them is so necessary for the whole togetherness of the song-two trumpets, two saxophones, two guitars, a bass, one large drum, one wooden beat keeper, one shaking gourd, two incredible back up singers/dancers, and Seun himself in his appropriate matching white striped black suit and shoes just like his dad. You just keep in the music, one stray thought can alter the vibe, and ohhh their stamina inspired mine and when the people in the stands could hardly contain themselves anymore and their energy spilled out into the dance floor, it was all out from there. Front and center dancing hard, everyone grinning from ear to ear, or maybe it was just me…
And in the revolutionary spirit of Fela’s afrobeat, issues were addressed. People are dying in Africa, there is no money. Rich people start going broke, they give them money. If they don’t, the rest of the world will go broke. But wait man, Africa’s been broke for some time now. A speculation of course, but some raw truth nonetheless.
And at the end of the night, I was so content and Bunmi and I caught a cab right out of there for a decent price thanks to my Twi vocabulary and my STAMINA, only to be woken up a couple of hours later by my other roommate Sam who couldn’t wait till morning to tell us about how they were invited back stage to chill hard with Seun and the rest of the band. Unbelievable.
Last weekend Sam and I and three other lovely people we have met here traveled to Togo, where the main mode of transportation is by jumping on the back of a motorcycle, and everyone speaks French. We stayed at an atrociously disgusting hotel which was only fair as the amount we paid for it couldn’t have gotten us much better. We weaved through the Lome market and found ourselves at the ocean. Once the water finally came back on in the hotel and we were able to take a shower for the first time in a couple of days, we gussied up, went out, especially looking forward to the place with the description in the travel book as having multilingual prostitutes. Afterwards paying some money for a motorcycle tour around Lome just for the sheer thrill of it. It was funny really. These guys do this all day everyday and next thing you know they’ve got a couple of white kids on the back of their bikes paying them a decent amount of money just to ride in a circle, all the while they laugh their heads off.
The next day we caught a bus up north to a little mountain village called Kpalime whose winding dirt roads were centered around the looming red and white church. We took a very scenic ride indeed on the backs of motorcycles up to the mountains where we were welcomed by drumming and dancing in the rain and then were accompanied by the wonderful Coolio Ga Ga to the waterfalls. There was a very pleasant café that served couscous and café au lait, but the best au lait in the entire world, and we were all ecstatic to drink coffee, even if it was Nescafe. We met MoMo there, who invited us to a traditional African drum and dance show, where we were joined with what seemed to be peace corps volunteers. Before this, we went out to dinner with Momo and his Moroccan and Algerian friends, where I could only say so much considering the conversation was in French through and through. Je ne parle pas francais. Weird vibes were thrown all over the room, but I suppose when the electricity is out for a whole city and the only light to be seen for miles and miles is candlelight, and you are in a cold stone fortress with people you can’t communicate with, anyone can seem shady. We did make it to la spectacular! Where beats were hard to contain and dancing games were played afterwards, of which I was one of the first to be booed of the stage, until drum circles commenced and everyone danced in a circle together.
The next day Momo found us a hidden bus stop full of charcoal eyed Muslims napping on benches where we waited patiently for the bus to fill up. But that’s the thing, the bus won’t leave until it is completely full, and at the rate this station was going, it probably could have taken another 6 hours to get 7 more people to need a ride across the border. So we all threw in a couple cedi and got to stretch out in a half full tro tro. The bumpy and winding roads through the limbo of Togo and Ghana in a decrepit tro tro whose roof could only take one large bump to have a head bust straight through the rust was a bit much for my stomach to handle so I was sick all the way back from Kpalime to Accra and at every stop we made, at the Immigration offices and bus stops. That was rough. But all is well now.
People have also got to calling me Krystabell. See, the first couple of weeks here, every once in a while someone would call me Krystabell and I would think, NO WAY! only mi madre calls me that. but then I figured out it is a sort of common name around here and i've discovered that it's hard for people to understand Krysta right away, so I say Krystabell and they get it instantly. So people call me that here, and I walk down the road and kids scream Krystabell. I can't say I don't love it. It feels like home. Where else???
And in the revolutionary spirit of Fela’s afrobeat, issues were addressed. People are dying in Africa, there is no money. Rich people start going broke, they give them money. If they don’t, the rest of the world will go broke. But wait man, Africa’s been broke for some time now. A speculation of course, but some raw truth nonetheless.
And at the end of the night, I was so content and Bunmi and I caught a cab right out of there for a decent price thanks to my Twi vocabulary and my STAMINA, only to be woken up a couple of hours later by my other roommate Sam who couldn’t wait till morning to tell us about how they were invited back stage to chill hard with Seun and the rest of the band. Unbelievable.
Last weekend Sam and I and three other lovely people we have met here traveled to Togo, where the main mode of transportation is by jumping on the back of a motorcycle, and everyone speaks French. We stayed at an atrociously disgusting hotel which was only fair as the amount we paid for it couldn’t have gotten us much better. We weaved through the Lome market and found ourselves at the ocean. Once the water finally came back on in the hotel and we were able to take a shower for the first time in a couple of days, we gussied up, went out, especially looking forward to the place with the description in the travel book as having multilingual prostitutes. Afterwards paying some money for a motorcycle tour around Lome just for the sheer thrill of it. It was funny really. These guys do this all day everyday and next thing you know they’ve got a couple of white kids on the back of their bikes paying them a decent amount of money just to ride in a circle, all the while they laugh their heads off.
The next day we caught a bus up north to a little mountain village called Kpalime whose winding dirt roads were centered around the looming red and white church. We took a very scenic ride indeed on the backs of motorcycles up to the mountains where we were welcomed by drumming and dancing in the rain and then were accompanied by the wonderful Coolio Ga Ga to the waterfalls. There was a very pleasant café that served couscous and café au lait, but the best au lait in the entire world, and we were all ecstatic to drink coffee, even if it was Nescafe. We met MoMo there, who invited us to a traditional African drum and dance show, where we were joined with what seemed to be peace corps volunteers. Before this, we went out to dinner with Momo and his Moroccan and Algerian friends, where I could only say so much considering the conversation was in French through and through. Je ne parle pas francais. Weird vibes were thrown all over the room, but I suppose when the electricity is out for a whole city and the only light to be seen for miles and miles is candlelight, and you are in a cold stone fortress with people you can’t communicate with, anyone can seem shady. We did make it to la spectacular! Where beats were hard to contain and dancing games were played afterwards, of which I was one of the first to be booed of the stage, until drum circles commenced and everyone danced in a circle together.
The next day Momo found us a hidden bus stop full of charcoal eyed Muslims napping on benches where we waited patiently for the bus to fill up. But that’s the thing, the bus won’t leave until it is completely full, and at the rate this station was going, it probably could have taken another 6 hours to get 7 more people to need a ride across the border. So we all threw in a couple cedi and got to stretch out in a half full tro tro. The bumpy and winding roads through the limbo of Togo and Ghana in a decrepit tro tro whose roof could only take one large bump to have a head bust straight through the rust was a bit much for my stomach to handle so I was sick all the way back from Kpalime to Accra and at every stop we made, at the Immigration offices and bus stops. That was rough. But all is well now.
People have also got to calling me Krystabell. See, the first couple of weeks here, every once in a while someone would call me Krystabell and I would think, NO WAY! only mi madre calls me that. but then I figured out it is a sort of common name around here and i've discovered that it's hard for people to understand Krysta right away, so I say Krystabell and they get it instantly. So people call me that here, and I walk down the road and kids scream Krystabell. I can't say I don't love it. It feels like home. Where else???
Monday, February 9, 2009
With the Band
Hello!
A lot has happened since I last wrote. I offer my apologies to you if you have been checking to see if I’ve written anything. My inconsistent, limited, and abnormally slow (to my standards at home) internet connection leaves me frustrated and without blog entries. So tada.
My roommates, Sam and Bunmi, and I, also accompanied by the all cheese Sonny, just came back from a few days vacation in Cape Coast, which is about a 3 hour car ride west of Accra. It was wonderful. We went to Kakum National Park where we floated above the rainforest on a teetering canopy walk, of which I am still puzzled as to how it even got there, and we were welcomed half way back down the hill to some freshly gathered palm wine, which is delicious. It tickles the lips, as Sam says. And it hits just the right spot. The hotel we stayed at had air conditioning! And fierce Egyptian chain smoking chess competitors who were eager to go back home to their families and cooler temperatures. This morning we went to Elmina Castle, a massive building (actually the largest European structure in Sub-Saharan Africa) used originally by the Portuguese as a trading port for goods and lots of gold, but where these goods were eventually swapped for men, women, mothers, children and fathers for the slave trade. Where the British worshipped above, while people were crying below. The heavy air in the dungeons was evidence enough to convince any doubtful person of the atrocities acted out. It was so very real. The smell still lingered where the people were kept. The door of no return still serves as an easy access out to the ocean. It’s all just so very real.
I have almost started to begin drumming lessons from this very nice guy named Edward who dances like a serpent and drums wild rhythms. I haven’t actually started the lessons yet, but I went to his drum and dance troupe practice last week that is held at his family home two nights a week. It seems that most of the group is members of his family, who all live in the same gated compound which is very common here with the nature of the large extended families and all. So the drummers sit on the bench, and the dancers take their positions and when the music begins, it attracts the attention of all the children from the school across the way who all gather and swarm at the gate. They were all snickering when they saw the oburuni who was trying to drum with the rest of them. African rhythms are just so complex. It’s a whole new sound. It’s a completely different way of doing music than I’m used to. So even to play one simple repeating part on a cow bell is difficult for me seeing as how I still can’t really pick out how it fits into the rest of it. But it’s so fascinating for me and the way the dancers move and act out their whole part is beautiful and the drumming would be incomplete with the absence of the dance. They are the same side of the coin. People don’t understand when I tell them I want to learn how to drum, but not to dance. It is inconceivable to their ears, leaving me with no choice but to attempt to learn how to dance as well.
They also invited me the next day to a gig they were drumming at, at a graduation ceremony for students who were studying to be teachers. Being with the band is one of my most favorite things in the whole world. After the ceremony was finished and all the cultural breaks were enacted, I sat with the drummers and they tried to scrounge up some free food. We chilled hard on the ledge and seeing as how I was with them, we gathered good food and way too much soda (or mineral as they call it). I was forced to drink more than my share and scrounge for empty water bottles so we could put the soda we couldn’t drink in them. Giving back the soda would be offensive considering it was their offering to us, so we were forced to stuff our bellies with it and find separate containers for it so they could have their bottles back. Then we crammed into a cab that should really only fit three in back, but where we become hip to hip and cozy with each other.
Working at SISS (Self-Help Initiative Support Services) has been good and very informative. I’ve met some really really intelligent and caring people. There is one guy named Samuel who just graduated high school last year and who volunteers his time at SISS. He is a wonderful guy. When we played chess, we couldn’t help but notice we were playing with the pieces that matched the color of our skin. He turned out to be a great chess player, declaring that yes, the black man defeated the white man. Interesting, really. That this is normal discourse. Interesting.
I’ve been learning how to cook! And all the women are more than thrilled to teach me, saying that to be a woman with a career that can also cook is a woman of substance! I go to the market and gather my necessary ingredients, being mostly tomatoes, paste, and spices, and I dance while I cook a nice stew and a pot of rice and I feed my children while we watch the Cosby Show. It’s nice really. I’ve been introduced to some delicious herbal teas. I watched a woman at work take a branch from a tree everyday before she left, so I asked her one day why. Turns out that it was a Moringa tree and that it makes a wonderful tea when you boil down the leaves and that it will keep the malaria away! So she boiled me up some and it was the delicious! It tasted like Earth, and my mouth tasted good for hours! And then my friend Noah came over today bearing gifts of Sobola, which he claims are leaves but I’m convinced they are flower petals, which we boiled with lots of ginger and made the most lusciously rich red tea ever that we all enjoyed on the verandah, even Mr. Daniel, our stern yet sometimes gentle guard who is concerned when we leave in cars and come home late and who I just learned was a bodyguard for good old Jerry Rawlings, a former president of Ghana. Who would of thunk it.
Also, check out this song. It has swept the entire Ghanaian nation of its feet and it is inescapable. This is what Ghana sounds like right now. It really is quite catchy. It’s an easy way to fill up the dance floor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIIDr0HlGeE copy n paste
A lot has happened since I last wrote. I offer my apologies to you if you have been checking to see if I’ve written anything. My inconsistent, limited, and abnormally slow (to my standards at home) internet connection leaves me frustrated and without blog entries. So tada.
My roommates, Sam and Bunmi, and I, also accompanied by the all cheese Sonny, just came back from a few days vacation in Cape Coast, which is about a 3 hour car ride west of Accra. It was wonderful. We went to Kakum National Park where we floated above the rainforest on a teetering canopy walk, of which I am still puzzled as to how it even got there, and we were welcomed half way back down the hill to some freshly gathered palm wine, which is delicious. It tickles the lips, as Sam says. And it hits just the right spot. The hotel we stayed at had air conditioning! And fierce Egyptian chain smoking chess competitors who were eager to go back home to their families and cooler temperatures. This morning we went to Elmina Castle, a massive building (actually the largest European structure in Sub-Saharan Africa) used originally by the Portuguese as a trading port for goods and lots of gold, but where these goods were eventually swapped for men, women, mothers, children and fathers for the slave trade. Where the British worshipped above, while people were crying below. The heavy air in the dungeons was evidence enough to convince any doubtful person of the atrocities acted out. It was so very real. The smell still lingered where the people were kept. The door of no return still serves as an easy access out to the ocean. It’s all just so very real.
I have almost started to begin drumming lessons from this very nice guy named Edward who dances like a serpent and drums wild rhythms. I haven’t actually started the lessons yet, but I went to his drum and dance troupe practice last week that is held at his family home two nights a week. It seems that most of the group is members of his family, who all live in the same gated compound which is very common here with the nature of the large extended families and all. So the drummers sit on the bench, and the dancers take their positions and when the music begins, it attracts the attention of all the children from the school across the way who all gather and swarm at the gate. They were all snickering when they saw the oburuni who was trying to drum with the rest of them. African rhythms are just so complex. It’s a whole new sound. It’s a completely different way of doing music than I’m used to. So even to play one simple repeating part on a cow bell is difficult for me seeing as how I still can’t really pick out how it fits into the rest of it. But it’s so fascinating for me and the way the dancers move and act out their whole part is beautiful and the drumming would be incomplete with the absence of the dance. They are the same side of the coin. People don’t understand when I tell them I want to learn how to drum, but not to dance. It is inconceivable to their ears, leaving me with no choice but to attempt to learn how to dance as well.
They also invited me the next day to a gig they were drumming at, at a graduation ceremony for students who were studying to be teachers. Being with the band is one of my most favorite things in the whole world. After the ceremony was finished and all the cultural breaks were enacted, I sat with the drummers and they tried to scrounge up some free food. We chilled hard on the ledge and seeing as how I was with them, we gathered good food and way too much soda (or mineral as they call it). I was forced to drink more than my share and scrounge for empty water bottles so we could put the soda we couldn’t drink in them. Giving back the soda would be offensive considering it was their offering to us, so we were forced to stuff our bellies with it and find separate containers for it so they could have their bottles back. Then we crammed into a cab that should really only fit three in back, but where we become hip to hip and cozy with each other.
Working at SISS (Self-Help Initiative Support Services) has been good and very informative. I’ve met some really really intelligent and caring people. There is one guy named Samuel who just graduated high school last year and who volunteers his time at SISS. He is a wonderful guy. When we played chess, we couldn’t help but notice we were playing with the pieces that matched the color of our skin. He turned out to be a great chess player, declaring that yes, the black man defeated the white man. Interesting, really. That this is normal discourse. Interesting.
I’ve been learning how to cook! And all the women are more than thrilled to teach me, saying that to be a woman with a career that can also cook is a woman of substance! I go to the market and gather my necessary ingredients, being mostly tomatoes, paste, and spices, and I dance while I cook a nice stew and a pot of rice and I feed my children while we watch the Cosby Show. It’s nice really. I’ve been introduced to some delicious herbal teas. I watched a woman at work take a branch from a tree everyday before she left, so I asked her one day why. Turns out that it was a Moringa tree and that it makes a wonderful tea when you boil down the leaves and that it will keep the malaria away! So she boiled me up some and it was the delicious! It tasted like Earth, and my mouth tasted good for hours! And then my friend Noah came over today bearing gifts of Sobola, which he claims are leaves but I’m convinced they are flower petals, which we boiled with lots of ginger and made the most lusciously rich red tea ever that we all enjoyed on the verandah, even Mr. Daniel, our stern yet sometimes gentle guard who is concerned when we leave in cars and come home late and who I just learned was a bodyguard for good old Jerry Rawlings, a former president of Ghana. Who would of thunk it.
Also, check out this song. It has swept the entire Ghanaian nation of its feet and it is inescapable. This is what Ghana sounds like right now. It really is quite catchy. It’s an easy way to fill up the dance floor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIIDr0HlGeE copy n paste
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
It's Tantalizing!
Watching Barack Obama become sworn in to be the next president of the United States 3:00 , we all stopped what we were doing to sit down to watch the inauguration. The whole experience just brought home the whole notion of how connected the world really is. People know what is happening in America Africa seem thrilled to see an African American become president of the U.S. Kenya
One guy was disappointed in the John William’s piece being performed by the orchestra. “Where are the drums?!” HA! Ohhhh, it’s not
The whole experience was positively surreal. I don’t think I could have been in a better place to witness this historic moment. It blows my mind to think about it.
Everything is swell here though! I am so happy to be here and to be experiencing these things. Everyday is a new adventure.
Friday night we went out to Chez Afrique, a pretty happening place on a Friday with a live band and everything. Man, people can DANCE in
We went to the beach on Saturday. BEAUTIFUL beach. Yes, the
Mmmmhmmm…We’ve had a couple of seamstresses come over to our house. Talk about service!! They come to your house, with a bag full of pre-made shirts and dresses, AND THEN you can pick out any fabric they have and ask for any style of dress, and they take all your measurements. Two days later, they stop by again with the finished and customized dress! It’s unreal! A lady selling baked goods tagged along with the first seamstress and I was intrigued to try her muffins after being assured by the seamstresses that her cooking was “tantalizing!” And it was! You can’t beat real home grown cocoa.
On another note, Converse has taken over the world. You can’t escape them…
Friday, January 16, 2009
Harmattan
It's the harmattan season right now, meaning the winter winds from Europe are being carried across the Sahara desert right into our backyard, resulting in my teeth being covered by a layer of dust by the end of the day. Today is especially windy and I can feel the dust in my mouth and the sting in my eyes after only being awake for half the day.
Sam and I rode the trotro by ourselves for the first time today. There was a little confusion but the relief sets in when people prove just how kind they can be. I rest assured that no matter how lost I may get one day, people will be more than willing to tell me how to get home. To Opungalow junction. Everything is set by junctions more or less here. Getting on the right trotro that will pass your destination is the tricky part. There are no lights directing you to the right trotro, telling you where this particular one is going. Rather, there is a guy that sticks half his body out of the window as it passes the stop and he yells a destination, like circle, accra, legon, medina. So it is your job to know which bus is going which way and where your stop is along the way. Even if you get on the wrong one, as we did today, they are kind enough to tell you. They let us off at the next stop and didn't even charge us. One trotro ride to the accra mall was 30 pesewas. Really. Really. Really. Versus a taxi ride being about 3 cedis.
The right choice makes itself obvious.
Sam and I rode the trotro by ourselves for the first time today. There was a little confusion but the relief sets in when people prove just how kind they can be. I rest assured that no matter how lost I may get one day, people will be more than willing to tell me how to get home. To Opungalow junction. Everything is set by junctions more or less here. Getting on the right trotro that will pass your destination is the tricky part. There are no lights directing you to the right trotro, telling you where this particular one is going. Rather, there is a guy that sticks half his body out of the window as it passes the stop and he yells a destination, like circle, accra, legon, medina. So it is your job to know which bus is going which way and where your stop is along the way. Even if you get on the wrong one, as we did today, they are kind enough to tell you. They let us off at the next stop and didn't even charge us. One trotro ride to the accra mall was 30 pesewas. Really. Really. Really. Versus a taxi ride being about 3 cedis.
The right choice makes itself obvious.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Mema wo aha!
Hello from Ghana!
I've been in Accra for a few days now and life couldn't be better.
I'm staying in a nice house with two others that is surrounded by high walls and barbed wire and we have our own personal three friendly armed guards at the door who are also good for killing slow moving bugs that have infested boomni's room.
But yes, Life is so far so good here.
Accra is a huge city with so many people. I have already been identified as an obruni (foreigner) by several young children but have been welcomed by many, even while passing through in the market. The market is an explosion of senses and my one walk through it still a blur in my mind. As is so many things right now. Everything is so new that it's hard to start picking things out. I'm getting there though.
We explored the city some more today and found ourselves in a drum making shop with guys who were eager to welcome us through drumming. It was wonderful and my body was filled with happiness.
Trotro riding is truly getting down to the nitty gritty of Ghanian life. Being crammed in a minibus full of people and trying to figure out which direction to go and which stop to get off at is going to take some getting used to. Talking to some foreigners who have been here for a bit longer than I have reassures me that I will catch the hang of it in no time.
Women walk around the streets with their foreheads scrunched at the weight of the load of goods balanced on top of their head. Water packets are available everywhere. I share the house with several newts.
It is
very
very
hot.
I get the feeling that the women at the shop down the road is here to help and I am gracious for her sincerety.
I've been in Accra for a few days now and life couldn't be better.
I'm staying in a nice house with two others that is surrounded by high walls and barbed wire and we have our own personal three friendly armed guards at the door who are also good for killing slow moving bugs that have infested boomni's room.
But yes, Life is so far so good here.
Accra is a huge city with so many people. I have already been identified as an obruni (foreigner) by several young children but have been welcomed by many, even while passing through in the market. The market is an explosion of senses and my one walk through it still a blur in my mind. As is so many things right now. Everything is so new that it's hard to start picking things out. I'm getting there though.
We explored the city some more today and found ourselves in a drum making shop with guys who were eager to welcome us through drumming. It was wonderful and my body was filled with happiness.
Trotro riding is truly getting down to the nitty gritty of Ghanian life. Being crammed in a minibus full of people and trying to figure out which direction to go and which stop to get off at is going to take some getting used to. Talking to some foreigners who have been here for a bit longer than I have reassures me that I will catch the hang of it in no time.
Women walk around the streets with their foreheads scrunched at the weight of the load of goods balanced on top of their head. Water packets are available everywhere. I share the house with several newts.
It is
very
very
hot.
I get the feeling that the women at the shop down the road is here to help and I am gracious for her sincerety.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Rusty Nerves
I have fallen victim to perpetual cold and clammy sweats and the inability to focus.
It is due to the knot in my stomach that has folded itself fifteen times over since yesterday.
I am only admitting this to the internet because it is the truth and honesty is real.
So in order to appease the masses, I will be honest and I will put this here for your non-enjoyment.
#1. done.
Sunday is the word.
It is due to the knot in my stomach that has folded itself fifteen times over since yesterday.
I am only admitting this to the internet because it is the truth and honesty is real.
So in order to appease the masses, I will be honest and I will put this here for your non-enjoyment.
#1. done.
Sunday is the word.
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