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.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
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
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