"Wengeze, Bend Down Low" - Eazzy

Well it has been a while. I guess I’ll just try to catch up on some big points because it would be impossible to relay everything in the last month. I’ll begin with last weekend.

Last weekend I went to Togo (the country east of Ghana). It was actually the second time I had been there although the first time we mostly just passed through on our way to Benin (as you will see further down on the page, traveling back further in time). I went with Stacy (UCLA) and Janet (Cal) just for a quick weekend trip before my travel visa expired. It’s such an interesting place because on the one hand, it is so much like Ghana. It is hot and tropical and people are black and there are beautiful beaches and everything else. But on the other hand, the French influence is very apparent in more than just the language they speak (which is French) and gives it a different flavor. The French influence on food in particular was something I found quite delightful. All around town they sell avocado baguettes – basically a baguette cut open and smeared with avocado, tomato, onion, and lemon juice – for only 200 CFA (like 80 cents) and they are delicious. We got them at every chance we had basically. Except for when we made a break to get some chocolate croissants for breakfast. The other point of interest food-wise, although this was not influenced by the French as far as I know, was all the additional Fanmilk flavors. I’m not sure if I’ve explained Fanmilk before or not but basically it’s sort of a frozen yogurt/milk/ice cream type thing sold in this plastic bag that you just bite the corner off of and drink it out. In Ghana the three main types are FanIce (vanilla ice cream), FanYogo (strawberry yogurt), and FanChoco (chocolate milk). My friends and I are basically addicted to them because they only cost 50 pesewas (about 30 cents) and are a life savor in the heat of the day, or the heat of the tro tro, or for a midnight sweets craving. In Togo though, they have like 6 extra flavors! It was pretty exciting. They have one called FanLait which was sort of like frozen vanilla milk and quickly became our favorite. They had another yogurt type too called FanXtra which was tasty as well. Apart from the food though, Togo was a pretty cool place. It was really just sort of relaxed for the most part. We spent one day just strolling around Lomé, the capital, and the other exploring Aneho, a town close to the Benin border on the beach with a little lagoon. I’ve come to learn that it’s a very different experience traveling in a country like Togo as opposed to a country like France. We you arrive in Paris you immediately prioritize everything you want to do so you can make sure you see all the stuff you really want to see in the time you have. When you arrive in Lomé, there’s not all that much to see. Or rather, there’s a lot to see but it’s a different type of seeing. There aren’t long lists of tourist attractions and extraordinary places to visit so you don’t have as much of an agenda. Instead, to get to know the place, you just have to wander and try to talk to people. Talking to people was a bit difficult for me as I don’t speak French but we did meet some nice people that spoke English. And I enjoyed just wandering. We walked around the market and bought these traditional hats that sort of look like they’re made of shiny wrapping paper and wore them around town to the pleasure and mocking of the locals. And we went to the fetish (voodoo) market to see all the dead animal parts and charms and things. They had tons of monkey heads and crocodile heads and dried snakes and dried chameleons and other rodent heads. They even had a full panther head, a giant sea turtle skull, and the foot of a gorilla which was particularly creepy for how human it looks. I got some good luck charms that the voodoo chief blessed for me. Mostly it was just a relaxed weekend though and a super easy, problem-free trip.

Continuing back in time though… Two weeks ago was the Ghana Music Awards 2010. Its like the Grammy/MTV music awards of Ghana complete with celebrities, paparazzi, a long yellow carpet (yellow is the color of the sponsor company of the event so they use that rather than red), and tons of big name (for Ghana) performances in between the giving of actual awards. In perhaps one of the most random nights of my life, I got to go. And not only did I just show up with friends and sit in the audience, but I got to role in with a band called VIP who is like the Ludacris of Ghana or something. It was nuts. Marissa, one of my friends, happened to meet a member of the group the night before who invited her to come and she was able to bring along two friends, Anabel and myself. We started the evening hanging out at the VIP member’s house, listening to their music. Then we went and met up with the other artists who are signed by the same manager, including 4x4 (the Outkast of Ghana) and Mimi (the Rihanna of Ghana). From there, with the whole crew, we drove on over to the music awards where after getting in, we hung out backstage with all the other presenters and performers for a while before going in to actually watch the performances, including a show by the VIP boys who we had just rolled in with. It was all an experience for sure. On the one hand, it was funny because for the first time as we were walking around and people were staring at us, it wasn’t because we were white girls. It was because we were walking around with three of the most famous names and faces in the country. As we were driving to the event people were pointing at the band members in the car and getting all excited and stuff. It was almost like we were famous too for about ten minutes as we strolled around backstage and talked to all the super famous (in Ghana) people about music and basketball and other normal things. On the other hand, the life of a Ghanaian music artist is infinitely different than that of an American. Firstly, they don’t actually make that much money. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Most of them seem pretty well off. But they can’t tour the country playing hundreds of concerts with thousands of seats that they sell for $100 each. Ghana is not that big and people don’t have that kind of money. Plus, they can’t even depend on selling CDs at all because EVERYONE just downloads EVERYTHING here. There aren’t really any music or movie stores here. So, while an American music artist would be driven to the awards by a limo followed by all sorts of assistants and stylists who carry his performance costume and other things for them, the Ghanaian artists drove themselves and strolled in carrying their own change of clothes for the performance. Secondly, it was strange because the people working at the venue sort of treated the performers just like everyone else. They all had to wait in the same line to enter, pushing everyone in front of them through the gate, just like everyone else. They only had a separate vip section once we entered. It was interesting too because I guess all the workers were Togolese so they didn’t recognize the artists by face and there was a big uproar trying to get the artists backstage because many weren’t carrying the passes they were supposed to carry. It was actually kind of funny waiting outside the door to get backstage with VIP, Nii, and 4x4, three of the biggest artists in Ghana who were all supposed to perform that night, as their manager yelled at the bouncers very frustrated trying to convince them that were needed to get backstage so that they didn’t miss their performance. I’m pretty sure any bouncer who refused to let Kanye West backstage at the Grammys would be fired immediately just for being a damn fool.

Further back in time… the weekend before I went to Benin and Togo (Benin is east of Togo and Togo is east of Ghana) for Easter weekend. It started off a little rougher than the first trip though. Crossing the border into Togo we were approached by a Ghanaian taxi driver who asked us where we were going and offered to take us to the Beninese border for 25,000 CFA (about US$50 for an hour car ride – aka WAAAYY more expensive than it should have been). We weren’t really sure how much it should cost but we knew to be careful about the guys that worked at the border so we told him no and decided to just walk from the border into Lomé because its relatively close. The guy kept following us and started chatting us up since he was Ghanaian and spoke English. When we went to try and ask some mototaxi drivers about how much it would cost to get a ride to the border though, the sketcky guy just started talking to them in the native language, Ewe, and got them to name a price even higher than the 6000 CFA we had negotiated him down to. Unable to speak French, faced with alternative taxi drivers who wanted to charge even more than the sketchy Ghanaian guy, we felt forced to concede and agreed to go with him. It got even weirder though when instead of returning to get his taxi, he just waved down another taxi to take me, Anabel, him, and his friend, a currency exchange guy, who had started tagging along at some point. In the taxi though they started freaking out about a police checkpoint that was up ahead, telling us to hide any foreign currencies. They were trying to explain to us that we should put our Ghana cedes between our CFA bills like a sandwich but at one point grabbed our cash to show us themselves. Anabel and I both watched intently and took back our cash immediately but didn’t see him take anything. About five minutes down the road though they told us to pay the driver the 6000CFA we agreed on. We knew better than that and refused until we arrived, but another minute down the road we stopped at a taxi station and the sketchy guy told us to pay the driver 1000CFA because we had to change cabs. We knew that the short cab ride was definitely not worth that though and at that point we were so fed up that we just got out, yelling at the sketchy man to pay the cab himself, and went to get a cold drink before trying again to find our way to the border. After all that we ended up getting a shared cab for only 800CFA each (US$1.50) but as Anabel looked through her purse on the ride to the border, she realized that in all the madness they had somehow stole about US$70 worth of currency from her. It sucked because we both felt so dumb about the whole thing and it kind of put a damper on the rest of the trip, particularly for Anabel who was from then on trying furiously to save some money. We learned a lesson though. And we tried not to let it ruin our whole adventure. We had somewhat of the same experience in Benin that I did in Togo where we mostly just wandered, ate delicious French food and way too many Fanmilks exploring the new flavors, went to the fetish market, and other stuff. We went to Cotonou, the biggest city in Benin, for the first night after a short stop over in Ouidah, the Beninese home of voodoo, and then went on to Abomey, a small town about 3 hours north of Cotonou. We didn’t stay in Ouidah long because after seeing the museum there (which was pretty boring), it didn’t seem like there was much else to see and there weren’t any atms so we couldn’t pull out any money but Cotonou was really cool. It’s a very hectic city with hundreds of motor taxis called ‘zimmy johns’ zipping around, cutting each other off, weaving around cars and pedestrians. When you get on one you pretty much feel like you are going to die but its one of those things where if you do survive, its worth it. There is really bad air pollution because of all the motos though. The Gran Marché is beautiful though and the fetish market was cool. They didn’t have as much a variety of objects as they did at the market in Lomé but it was funny because the guys that worked there kept calling us over to see what they had in their bags and one completely surprised us with a live snake. Abomey was cool too. It was a really small town but there was a cool museum about the old kingdom and the beginnings of the slave trade in the region complete with a throne raised up on human skulls. It was all pretty cool and relaxed. I enjoyed it.

The other noteworthy trip was my trip to Mole National Park in northern Ghana but after writing multiple pages of nonsense leading up to this, I’m going to cut this short and just point out a few highlights. 1) We got to see tons of elephants really close up. First we went on a walking tour to see them with a group but afterwards we just rehired the guide by ourselves to take us back to see them up close and personal at the watering hole. They are the most unearthly creatures I’ve ever seen I think. They looked like they were made of stone or something with how rough their skin was. It was funny for me because watching them totally reminded me of that Jungle Safari ride at Disneyland with the elephant robots that make noise and spray water when I’m pretty sure that is supposed to happen the other way around. 2) We also saw tons of warthogs which were very ugly and baboons who were very cute but very mischievous. They would just come up to anybody with food when they weren’t totally paying attention and snatch it off their plates right in front of them, before being chased away by people with big sticks. 3) Instead of staying in the park, we stayed in a town just outside called Larabanga. There aren’t any hotels there but we stayed on the roof of this guy named Ibrahim’s house which had been recommended to us by students who had gone there before us. The town is a tiny, very poor, Muslim town with about 10 mosques for 4000 people including one which is I guess pretty famous for being the oldest one in the region. Ibrahim was amazing though. He started his own development project in the town to encourage education of the youth, mainly girls. He himself teaches 99 girls that come to learn in the courtyard of his home every day of the week, in addition to teaching at the under-funded, under-resourced government school. With the help of a few tourists who came and dedicated themselves to helping him, he works to gather school supplies and has been working on a housing project to build a small hut where volunteers could come and stay for long periods of time to help with bettering education as well as everything else. Ibrahim was really one of those people that you meet and just say to yourself, “How have you possibly been able to do what you have done? Are you really human or are you an angel?” He was very smart and very kind. He doesn’t name a price for staying on his rooftop but takes payment on donation basis to put towards his development project so we all gave him a good donation. 4) I got sick. The whole bus ride from Accra to Tamale (a 12 hour journey) and then from Tamale to Larabanga (6 hours down an incredibly bumpy dirt road) I was feeling semi-nauseous but couldn’t really do much about it at the time so I ignored it. When we arrived though, I felt so bad that I couldn’t eat and had to go lay down on Ibrahim’s bed in the dark for a few hours. When I woke up I just started throwing up though and kept going, unable to keep anything down. Because I couldn’t even keep down water though, I started getting super dehydrated in the heat and felt even worse. Ibrahim offered to take me to the clinic which I eventually conceded to doing. The clinic was interesting though because the only form of transportation in the town is mototaxis unless you call for a taxi car and wait for a few hours and because it was basically a two-room cement building with a few beds and no doctor. A local midwife actually had to come tend to me. Apparently the transportation is particularly an issue for pregnant women who can’t ride on the mototaxis and end up giving birth at home in very unsanitary conditions while they wait for a taxi car to come from hours away to come pick them up. After fainting in the clinic, the midwife pretty much just gave me a shot in the butt (without taking any information on allergies or current medications by the way) which knocked me out for a few hours and made me stop throwing up. Anaistband of my underwear because I got paranoid about carrying it all in my wallet and I didn’t haved then she gave me some re-hydration tablets. I lived though so hurray! And I was even better enough to go see the elephants the next day which I had been worried about. So that was cool. 5) The last thing to mention was one of the more embarrassing moments in my life. I had put some of my money in the w a money belt to wear under my clothes. In my wave of sickness though, I forgot about it, and when I went to go use the bathroom (a shithole in the ground) it all fell out into the shithole. If I had been alone, I totally would have just left it there because of how awful I felt at the time. However, Janet was with me, as was Ibrahim and his friend. So when they realized that I had dropped 90 cede (about US$60, a HUGE sum of money for them), they settled on getting it out for me. This was about the time that I fainted though and was then given the shot that knocked me out so all the while I was asleep, the three of them got two big sticks to use as chopsticks and fish out the money from the pile of shit 15 feet below. All I remember though was one point when I work up for just a second and Janet explained to me that they had fished out the money and disinfected it for me so it was drying on the table for me to claim when I left. I was so embarrassed and felt so bad afterwards though. Janet just laughed but said that it was the worst smell she has smelt in Ghana, and stands by that to this day. And really, that is saying a lot for all the weird ass smells in this country. My sense of smell has definitely discovered whole new realms of possibility in the past few months. Mole was awesome though.

On a completely separate note though, I want to mention this… In relaying my experience about Ghana I could talk about all the things that most people probably expect me to talk about since I am in Africa after all. I could talk about how I have been taking bucket showers for weeks and my hands are sore from ringing out the clothing I have to wash by hand. I could talk about the overly aggressive men that harass us because we are girls or the salespeople and taxi drivers that try to rip us because we are white. I could mention the multiple kids that were stabbed at the university beach party I went to a couple weeks ago, or the car that was set on fire outside, or all my friends who had their bags and phones stolen there and elsewhere. I could talk about how I saw a six year old boy get beaten for misbehaving, or how the schoolchildren in general here are punished for relatively minor offences with lashing and other inhumane (in my western view) ways such as carrying bags of gravel around or digging big holes. I could even go into how going anywhere in Accra takes 50 times longer than it should at all times because of inexplicable gridlock traffic, how I almost never stop sweating, how my feet are seemingly permanently brown from the dirt grained into the skin, how I haven’t not had a single mosquito bite for three months now, and how my legs are all scraped up from sharp edges on tro tro seats and various other random hazards. As shitty, and at certain times fucked up, as that all sounds though, it’s not all like that. Yes, that is a part of the experience, but so is all the other amazing/awesome/different stuff I have also mentioned. And its funny because the longer I am here, the more normal all of that stuff becomes. Part of my issue in blogging consistently is that after a while everything just becomes the norm in my eyes and I don’t think about it as different or noteworthy anymore. Yeah maybe showering with cold water out of a bucket sucks in comparison to my free flowing, multi-temperature shower at home, but that’s just how it is here. You do it because that’s how it’s done. And because that’s just how it’s done, you don’t even think about alternative options. Many of the administrators warned us early on in orientation to be careful what we write about in our blogs and what we email our parents about for the very reason that that narrow part of your experience which you share with them is all that they hear and all that they come to know of Ghana unless by some small chance they have been here for themselves. Its difficult though because many of those things seem to be expected anecdotes from someone traveling to Africa so I feel like I have to confirm those perceptions, while others do make for interesting stories. But I don’t know… I guess my point is that the “bad” stuff is really not that bad. But the good stuff… that’s awesome. Its just life ya know.... Ghanaian life… That’s it.

A Tit Bit of Stuff

Well, looks like I haven’t updated in a while. Time goes by so fast here that I don’t even realize it. I can’t believe I’ve been here almost two months. Six months is really not that much time. Let me see if I can fill in here what I’ve been up to the last month since I wrote.

I’ve been taking some weekend trips with friends to get out of Accra. For our first trip flying solo we decided to extend out stay in the Volta Region, a couple hours north on the eastern coast, just a few minutes from Togo, after our program drove us up there for the day to visit a monkey sanctuary and go see some the Wli waterfall, the biggest waterfall in West Africa. We arranged to stay in a homestay that night and planned to spend the next day hiking Afadjato, the tallest mountain in Ghana (it's not very tall) and going to see some other waterfalls. We did do that and it was beautiful but everything fairly rapidly turned into a hectic mess when one of our friends started puking blood on the trail and had to be taken immediately to the hospital (actually not so immediately as he first persevered to climb the mountain and then had to arrange a series of motor taxis to get back to the main city). The hospital we took him to in Ho Hoe had only two doctors for the whole facility with patients spilling out to beds in the hallways, no running water, no soap in the bathrooms, and posters scattered throughout the hospital with detailed directions for the nurses to recessitate someone. He ended up having to stay overnight in the hospital there and when he got back to Accra he had to go immediately to the local hospital to spend a few more nights but he ended up being alright. We, or at least I, was a little scarred after all that on our first solo trip traveling Africa. If that one incident wasn't enough, we were all covered with bedbug bites from the homestay beds and I somehow contracted this eye infections that made all the area around my eye turn red and swell up so that I had to walk around campus looking like the victim of domestic abuse. After about a week to recover though, as my eye turned somewhat back to normal and when Gareth (the sick guy) got out of the hospital, that maybe a second shot at traveling was necessary. It was after all far too early in my Ghanaian adventure to quit traveling already. And we definitely learned some valuable lessons about bringing our own sheets and sticking to bottled water instead of sachet water) when we're not in the greater Accra area.

So we kept travelling. Recently we’ve been exploring the western part of the country on the coast heading towards the Ivory Coast, near to a smaller city called Takoradi. The first weekend we went to a town called Prince’s Town (although the locals changed the name to “Princess Town” because they couldn’t pronounce the colonial-given name of “Prince’s Town”), about a hour and half from Takoradi (which is itself 4 hours from Accra) via the Agona junction, and then last weekend we went to another town, also about an hour from Takoradi, called Butre. Both trips were awesome. Both towns tiny little fishing villages right on the beach. Prince’s Town was especially cool because we got to stay in a German fort from the 1600s (the Germans were never involved in the slave trade so it wasn’t creepy and depressing like many of the other coastline forts in Ghana) as its only guests. Originally we went to Prince’s Town because the people there are traditionalists, that is that they practice traditional African religions, and are known to have their fetish priest perform a ceremony where he calls a crocodile out of the water to feed it a live chicken and coke. Once in Prince’s Town we went to meet the fetish priest to inquire about watching the ceremony but he told us that because the town was in conflict (they were in the midst of a chieftaincy conflict with a neighboring village because the two villages, as they were a part of the same ethnic group, shared only one chief and each village wanted the chief to be from their town) then the gods were unhappy, and it was absolutely impossible to call out the crocodile under those circumstances. They did have a tiny tourist office (basically a one man phone booth) that was built for them by an Italian NGO so we consulted them and they took us on a tour of the mangrove forests to see the monkeys in the early morning which was actually really cool. I felt like I was in a water color painting. The lagoon we were on was perfectly still at that time of the morning so you could see a perfect reflection of the sun rising on the surface of the water. Our canoe was sort of constantly sinking though so we were a little preoccupied bailing out water. It was worth it though. Our guide told us that the lagoon was formed when a big bowl of water fell off a tree. We all agreed that it had to have been a rather large bowl of water though, and for that matter, a very large tree. The whole place was so beautiful though. Even in Butre where we didn’t really do anything except walk to the neighboring town of Busua, just to sit on the beach and swim in the water was awesome. The beaches are indescribably pristine and amazing in that area, unlike some of the trashy ones in Accra. They remind me of beach scenes out of Lost or something… something Hollywood and invented by man to represent perfection, but its unbelievable that it is so perfect naturally. The sand is white and soft and the water is a deep blue blue and the edge of the sand is greeted by rows of palm trees to provide a little shade. And the people in the little towns are so nice. They all greet you, saying hello or waving, and all the kids run up to you and try to hold your hand.

It’s when I go into towns like that when I really start to think about what I study; development. All that’s keeping any one of those towns from turning into 5 star hotel beach resorts with private beaches and a host of celebrity guests is the infrastructure necessary to make getting there easy – the bumpy dirt roads packed in the back of a Tro Tro with 20 other people that all have unique body odor scents, unsure of whether the breaks will actually stop you or if the doors will fall off or if the car will simply stop working doesn’t fit on the list of many people’s relaxing paradise vacation plans – and it is lacking the more-than-basic amenities that people tend to want in paradise like air conditioning, fresh water showers with the option for hot water, cold beverages, laundry facilities, and wide variety of food. My biggest issue when I really start to think about development is that I always come back to one big philosophical question, namely, what is the ultimate end, the ultimate goal, and do the means justify the path to it? I would say that many people are ultimately searching for happiness. Some seek money and health and relationships and other things as well but I tend to lump that all in the happiness category as they are things that tend to provide you with happiness if you are the type of person that seeks them. I always start to think though… will the people of these towns really be happier if their country develops? I see the children running around the dirt roads barefoot with friends and siblings, playing games or splashing in the water, living in a state of complete and utter freedom and worrielessness – a type of childhood freedom that I never experienced with my parents having to worry about me wandering away or being swept up by some bad guy. And the adults, although they do seem to dedicate a fair amount of time to fishing or cooking or bathing children, they also seem to have infinite hours to sit and talk with family and neighbors, or lay around lazy in the shade during the heat of the day. I know that as a complete, 100% outsider, all this is probably really easy for me to say about their lifestyle. And I know that they probably face all sorts of daily difficulties regarding sanitation or health or clean water or educating their children. But I still wonder, would building a Hilton Beach Resort next door really make them happier? The best way I have figured out how to rationalize development as a solution for attaining the final means, of giving people a better life, is that through development people gain opportunities. When they gain health and they gain education, a whole new world of doors are opened to them. And in that circumstance, perhaps they are better off because they can choose what life does make them happy. If the small town, beach side fishing lifestyle was not what made them happy, they can choose to move on to something else. The issue for me still lies though in the fact that development does come at a price. And often its not something that can be reversed all the way to the beginning. If ever these towns here in Ghana do get blown up and absorbed into the world of spas, piña coladas with mini umbrellas, and rich old men with their far younger, far more attractive, mistresses, I hope to never go back. I want to remember these towns forever as beautiful as they are now.

But yea… what else…

I started playing volleyball here with the men’s team which has been a lot of fun. They train every day but you are only expected to go two or three times a week it seems and although practice officially starts as 3:30 pm every day, nobody shows up until at least 4:30. Basically its totally Ghana-style volleyball. The players are super athletic and strong but have no fundamentals and very little knowledge of the game. I guess they have a coach but I haven’t seen him yet. They play on this old, cracked, cement volleyball court outdoors in the middle of campus. The net is pretty legit, and they even have lights to turn on as it is getting dark toward the end of practice. They don’t have antennas though. And there is no outer barrier to the court so if the ball goes out, it will roll across the field for days, or into the road and way down the street. Fortunately everyone in Ghana gets one another’s attention by hissing and everyone seems capable of hearing the hiss from at least a half mile away so you can usually just hiss and point to the ball if there is someone relatively near it and they will go get it for you. I still feel a little weird doing it because I feel like hissing at someone in the US would be so rude, but I’m pretty used to people getting my attention with it here, and its sort of a novelty for me every time I attempt it so I don’t have run after the ball and it actually works. When we were in Takoradi for a night before going to Prince’s Town, my friend Chris tested the limits of the hissing call by standing on the balcony of the second story of our hotel and hissing loudly to an ice cream man down the street and yelled “Fanmilk!” (the name of the brand of ice cream) and the man came all the way down the block on his little bicycle to thrown us ice cream up to the balcony. Needless to say, it’s a rather useful skill to master here.

I guess the other interesting thing worth mentioning since this post is already getting to be ridiculously long, is how big of a deal Valentine’s Day is in Ghana. They say its bigger than Christmas. We talked about it in my Spanish class a lot which was pretty interesting. Regarding that class there were two notable things said. Firstly, our teacher started the conversation by going around and asking people who they were in love with and the very first girl to respond replied “Jesus”. The other notable thing was just basically the cynicism of the girls in love, and the exhaustion of the boys with the holiday. The girls talked about how boys will break up with their girlfriends right before Valentines Day and get back together with them after just to avoid the holiday. After hearing the boys’ point of view though, I don’t know if I blame them. It seems that basically girls just make lists of things they want and want to do for Valentines Day and the boys have to comply and pay for everything and pick out the perfect gift to show they care enough without breaking the bank. I guess that’s not totally unlike many people’s Valentines Day in the US but here the whole holiday is just such a big deal that it sort of surprised me. And its totally not how I hope to spend any Valentines Day in my own life. I don’t see why commerciality is such an integral part or why the women can’t also contribute finances. Our teacher even asked the girls in class if they could see paying for something as liberating gender roles and empowering themselves as women, but the girls denied that. Relationships are still about stability and babies here. Marrying someone to provide that is still the most important thing. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in the 50s here.

Anyway… that’s it for now I suppose. Maybe I’ll write more often to keep people up to date and avoid these super long messages. But psh… finding the time and will to write more than once a month? Who am I kidding??

As for the title to this blog though... here in Ghana they say "tit bit" instead of "tid bit". I thought that was kind of funny.

Classes/Stuff

Well its still hot here, no surprise there. We have had running water for the last week though so that is exciting. Classes are finally beginning as well which is cool. It’s nice to have something to do and start to get into real life here. I don’t know for sure what I am taking yet but so far it looks something like Industrialization and Development, Human Rights in Africa, Political and Economic Reform and Democracy in Africa, West African Drumming, West African Xylophone, Traditional African Dance, and Spanish. The Spanish class is interesting because Spanish is not a very useful language in this region of the world so people aren’t all that familiar with it. I’m in a 400 level class since that is the hardest one they offer and most of the students still struggle with basic conversations. Even the teacher confuses the genders of words. It’s a really small class though so its easy to meet people and I am happy to stay practicing so that I don’t lose everything I learned in Chile. My other classes seem cool too. I did sign up for the Dance class with Oni, the dance instructor from orientation that I loved so I’m really excited for that. Drumming and Xylophone are also really cool. They are so relaxing and fun. Its cool to be able to take those classes here since they generally aren’t available or open to students that aren’t in the art or music departments at UCLA.

We’ve been keeping pretty busy outside of class as well. Last week we went to Reggae night at Labadi Beach which was really cool. They have a stage right on the sand where they play live music and that is pretty much the only thing lit up so its really serene and fun. And the weather at night is perfect. Its perfect for walking around in a dress or tshirt without feeling the tiniest bit too hot or too cold. Plus the beach was full of real Rastafarians which is quite a sight to see. It was just really chill in general. This weekend we also went to go explore a new area of Accra with a Ghanaian man named Justice who my roommate Anabel had met on the plane. He picked us up on campus and took us to his flat in Tema, a neighborhood in Accra, where he lives with his mom when he’s not at sea (he is in the marines). They we went to his uncle’s house where his aunt made us some delicious Red Red with yams, plantains, and some sort of eggplant salad thing. After that we went to see the marine academy where he is currently earning his master’s degree before going to visit his sister and brother-in-law at their home, and then his brother-in-law’s mother at her home. We basically met all his family members who were all equally sweet and welcoming. They were all so happy to meet us. It was just funny because we all felt to some extent like Justice’s new toy or something that he was showing off to everyone. It was really cool to see the way in which each of them lived though and talk to them a while. I think everyone we met individually asked each of us if we go to church. That is a pretty common question here but I still haven’t mastered a good response. If I say I don’t go to church than I feel like I have to endure their insistence in going to church with me one time. If I say I do go to church than I have to deal with the same thing. Lately I have been saying that I am Jewish, or that my family is Jewish. Usually that works because people sort of just accept it and respect that you have different beliefs and therefore do not go to church but Justice’s brother had never heard of Judaism before so that opened up a whole new can of worms. I pretty much just explained that Jesus was a Jew and left it at that.

It really is a very Christian country. Its kind of surprising since the traditional tribal culture is still very much alive. Historically in many parts of the world I feel as if the choice was to pick one or the other, the old or the new, tradition or modernity. Here both carry on strongly though. The women in particular are very Christian and very conservative on a whole, which makes it difficult to meet them and make friends because they don’t really do anything except go to class and go to church. The rest of the time they stay in their rooms. Many of the men on the other hand, are much less conservative and generally very outgoing, although sometimes they come on a bit to strong. They way the men and women interact here is actually very interesting and kind of sad in my opinion. Many of the women who come to school here, the most educated women in the country, aspire to nothing other than getting married when they graduate. And many of the country’s politicians actually come to our campus to scout out future wives because the women here are young, gorgeous, and highly educated. There is even a “Preparation for Marriage” class offered in the Home Science Department. I considered taking it just to see what it was all about. Its just so strange to me because people don’t marry because they love and care about someone here. They marry to have a partner in life to raise kids with. It is all about the kids. In some regards it does actually make sense, especially considering how frequently Americans divorce because our reason for marriage is based on a sentiment that is not stagnant, that changes constantly in every interaction and life experience. It still seems so unfulfilling though. Justice even told us a story about how his uncle had previously been married to a Nigerian woman but they constantly fought because they couldn’t have children. She blamed it all on him so he made her take a fertility test, and when it was shown that she was the one with fertility problems, he divorced her for embarrassing him. Now he is remarried to a much younger woman and they have a six-year-old daughter (the uncle is probably 60 years old now). It’s all weird too because historically women were very powerful. Among many of the tribes here, the royal bloodline was matrilineal, passed down through the Queen Mother. The sons of the king had no particular importance. And it’s weird because men still tend to carry very high regards for their mothers and aunts and sisters, they just don’t translate that into respect for their wives.

The other cool thing I learned from Justice was about a particular tree near Tro Tro stop 37 in downtown Accra where there is a group of trees that are constantly full of flocking and flying bats at all times of the day. We had seen it before on our way to Osu (also in Accra) and had wondered what the deal was because it was so strange to see. Apparently there is a legend that one time a chief was sick so he was taken to the hospital right next to the trees and the whole flock of bats came with him. He ended up dying in the hospital so the bats never left because they are still waiting for him to leave. Justice told us too that they have tried poisoning the bats, cutting down the trees, scaring them, shooting them, and just about everything imaginable to make them go away but they won’t leave.

Also, one last side note. I learned that people from Niger and people from Nigeria are both called “Nigerians” but people from Niger pronounce it “Nee-jer (J like a French J) – ians” while those from Nigeria call it “Nai-geer-ian”.

Akwaaba

Well, after 16 hours flying to Dubai where we had a 12 hour layover, followed by another 9 hour flight to Accra, I finally made it to Africa and it is exactly as I had pictured it. They welcomed us at the airport with big banners that read “Akwaaba” (Twi for “Welcome” to a land of red red dirt, decorated with sparse eucalyptus trees and white buildings remnant of the colonial era. The campus here at University of Ghana in Legon is actually very pretty in its own way with its quaint colonial style buildings and tree lined roads. The actually city part of Accra is fairly dirty as it is littered with trash and people pretty much pee freely anywhere but it has its own charm with its women selling goods out of big baskets that balance on their heads and everyone dressed in clothing made of vibrantly colored cloth. It is hot as hell though. Very very hot. Always. And very very humid. Last I heard, it was 84 degrees with 84% humidity and I have been told that we are in the cold/dry season. I can’t imagine what April with bring for us. After being here a little over a week though I am starting to get used to it a little bit and getting settled in in general. All of last week everyone in my program had been staying together in the International Student Hostel (Ish) on campus but a few nights ago I moved into my permanent room for the semester in one of the Ghanaian dorms, Volta. Only four of us actually got to move in here while the rest stayed at Ish because there weren’t enough rooms open and they couldn’t kick out Ghanaian students for us to stay here since its cheaper and many Ghanain students can’t afford the more expensive alternative. I am happy to be living here though, even though it is famous for not having running water or electricity. I had to take a bucket shower my first night here which was interesting but now that we’ve only had running water one of the nights here so far, I am starting to define my technique. Its not so bad actually. And now, the one time that we did have running water, I was unusually appreciative of the resource and extremely careful to use as little as possible. I feel like everything will be that way for me when I finally get home though. It is really not so bad to get by here but the fact is that that is exactly what you are doing, just getting by. There is cheap food and clean water and decent shelter but it lacks all the amenities we have at home for comfort like air conditioning and running water and vegetables and nice beds and TVs. And its interesting because as white people, here called obrunis, the people here are very aware of that fact and very aggressively go after us to try and sell us their goods or use their services. Many times, children have come to greet us when we get off the bus and they hold our hands and ask our names and then when we finish doing whatever activity we were going to do, they come back to us with some good that they personalized with our name, telling us we need to buy it since they can’t sell it to anybody else. Its kind of sad really. Many of the street vendors just pull out a mosquito net at night to hang over their table and they sleep on the ground underneath. It is definitely a different world here.

I am really enjoying everything so far. I live with a girl from Watsonville/Cal named Anabel who is pretty nice and everyone in the program is really cool on a whole. I think it takes a special type of person to want to come here and do this for this long. And we have done some cool things with our program in orientation. We had a bunch of lectures on language and culture and history and had a few really fun West African dance classes. Our teacher was so cool. He was this older Ghanaian guy with graying hair, a drooping gut, glasses, large crooked white teeth, a goofy smile, and he literally walked with a cane until he started dancing as if he was cursed with boogie legs and had to walk with a cane to walk normally. Plus he spoke like a guru, always giving us wisdomous advice such as “you have to look beyond the boogie to see humanity”. He cracks me up. I am going to try to take a class with him during the semester. Beyond that though, we also got to go on a few field trips. We went to Kumasi for a weekend, about 2 hours north of Accra, where we went to a couple different really cool craft villages to learn about/buy traditional kante cloth and woodwork. We also went to the Cape Coast and Elmina to go on a canopy walk in the rain forest which was pretty cool, and then to see St.George’s Castle where they used to export a lot of goods in the colonial era, including slaves. The tour of the castle was really interesting but totally weird. Before starting, they separated all the white and black students in our group into two groups to take the tour separately in a very sly way, although it was totally obvious. Nobody understood why so I was the ballsy one that decided to ask the question, to which our tour guide replied that it was a coincidence. That was obviously untrue though so we asked a guide from our program after who told us that two years ago, the black students got mad at the white students for not being serious enough and asked them to leave the castle, at which point a huge fight broke out. Its still so dumb though. I really can’t believe they did that. First of all, they were talking all about how the history is important so that we can share the experience and learn from each other’s perspective and make sure that it won’t happen again but how do they think we can possible do that if we can’t interact. Plus, it was dumb because many of black students, also have European ancestors. And it is not tally implausible that the white students don’t have African ancestors. And color doesn’t determine who is affected by it. Yohanan, a black student, is from Ethiopia, a country whose people were essentially completely unaffected by the phenomenon. Plus, it was a huge crime against humanity, we were all affected by it. We should all learn to see it as such. Anyway though… that is it for now I guess. School starts on Monday so I will just be finalizing my classes and exploring and all that this week but I am excited!

Peace.