Coasting

My weekend trip to Cape Coast made me realize that going to NYU means that I am officially ballin’. Despite deeply rooted resentment against the university for past injustices, when they deicide to plan something nice, they really go all out. It was so nice to be spoiled by a five-star hotel, hot water, and swimming pool. Aaah. As a program, we traveled three hours to the coastal town of Cape Coast, which used to be the central hub of West African slave trade. There seem to be relatively few tourist attractions in this country, so seeing the slave castles and crumbling European structures served as a reminder of how profound the history of Ghana actually is.

Walking into the whitewashed slave castle at Elmina, my attitude was almost immediately tuned to pensive guilt. Walking through there as a white person, you are really a dog with your tail between their legs. It’s such an uncomfortable feeling to have guilt over something that you didn’t actually do! But all of us, coming from such different backgrounds, proceeded through the whole thing like a kind of funeral march. One of the most horrifying things for me was walking into the female slave dungeon and still being able to smell the feces, urine, and menstrual blood that the some 300 women were forced to live in for up to 3 months. I never really realized just how jaded we’ve become about slavery. Like it’s something that hasn’t left a nasty residue on our society. Being able to go to the origin of this holocaust on humanity was definitely a much-needed reminder.

One of the strangest things about the castle is that regardless of its dark past, it still serves as the center of town. This is a terrible comparison but picture a Jewish community built around Auschwitz. People live in the crumbling European buildings that used to house slave traders. The fisherman have their boats docked up against the same shore that their ancestor’s were hauled off of in shackles. It just seems symbolically sinister.

After the intensity of the slave castle, we went to Kakum national park where the Ghana’s most lush rainforest is. The coolest thing ever! We did a canopy walk, which is basically a rickety system of wooden bridges, several hundred feet above the ground and all held together by ropes connected to the trees. Terrifying! The weekend trip was especially cool because it really brought to light what an amazing group of students we have here. We all have such great chemistry and positivity flowing! How much do I love this country?

Apateshi at 8am

This past weekend, I went to the village of Dzodze, the town where my drum master grew up. We went to record some traditional music and in the meantime, I learned so much about village living and how they make it work. Its just so amazing how the standards for living can be so different, but their standard for living well is just the same. You don’t need a running toilet in order to be happy.

So in this picture, you can see some of the houses that are made out of concrete. And in the forefront here is the grave of my drum master’s grandfather. Under normal circumstances, staying right in the middle of a graveyard would be ridiculously creepy, but it actually felt really neutral. Borderline comforting to have the ancestors so close. Haha. But yea, their graveyards are completely intermingled with the housing and community facilities.

Among the notable ‘community facilities’ would be the bathroom situation. For as taboo as it is in America, I feel like I talk about bathroom issues constantly. But it’s just that bathroom issues in Ghana are so goddamned hysterical! I mean the bathroom is constantly and issue, so I guess you have to make it hysterical. So you pee in a concrete room/stall that stands just outside the house. The floor of the room has a small hole that works for drainage. The thing that I found the most surprising was that I found myself taking a bucket shower in the same concrete room/stall that I had peed in the night before… Not so sanitary…and yet! If it works for them its as good as gold for me. The craziest bathroom issue in Dzodze was the ‘other bathroom’. The house of dump. The shack of shit! If you will. So it is a little bamboo house that looks similar to the one in the picture above that is built around a large pit dug in the ground. Bamboo shoots are laid over the pit in order for you to balance your self. Interesting….

The food we ate here was incredible! Shockingly, it was some of the first food I’ve eaten in Ghana that didn’t make me sick. The meals are all basic. Rice balls that expand to fill your stomach, fresh tilapia, fried fish. You can always measure hospitality by the presentation of meals and I was really touched by how well they took care of us. You figure that these people have so little by Western standards of living, and yet, their generosity is so incredibly sincere. I have so much to learn.

So Saturday we got to hang out with the priestess of the local shrine and danced agbaja for hours. Here is a picture of the priestess in all her diva glory. This is just one of many traditional drum rhythms that include not only the various drum parts, but a story and dance. When white people do agbaja, it sort of looks like a hilarious chicken dance. Haha. The priestess was a completely magnetic woman. Every time she would get up to dance, the other woman would kneel to their knees and raise their hands to her. With her were women that were in spiritual training. They are the ladies wearing white cloth and white powder on their skin. After an hour of listening to this intense drumming, you start to feel a little bit possessed. Especially after a few shots of apateshi, the local grain alcohol, which you certainly can’t refuse when offered!

After the dancing and drumming, we went to greet the village chief and pay our respects. It’s all formalities, really. But it seems natural that if you are a visitor, you should let the village’s caretaker know that you’ve come and thank him for having you. So next time I have visitors in New York, we’ll go to town hall and pay Bloomberg some respects. Haha!

One of the funniest things I saw in Dzodze was this kid wearing an Osama Bin Laden shirt. How bizarre is that? I can’t even fathom the journey that shirt must have taken to even get to this tiny village in the middle of Africa and into this boy’s hands. We all started taking pictures of him, and I don’t think that he had any idea why. One of the villagers saw us laughing about this shirt and started commenting “yes, yes, Bin Laden”. But it was all in jokes. In retrospect, it’s really weird that we would be laughing about something that would cause hysterical protest in the US. We should have asked the kid to trade him for this shirt!

Obruni, Take My Picture!

In the process of trying to unravel the stereotypes that are commonly held by the West about “Africans”, I think I should share some of the perceptions that Ghanaians hold about Westerners. Their perceptions seem to be especially present in their language.

First of all, obruni, means white person in Twi. People on the street will call you this just to get your attention. Or they may just call you ‘white’. “Hey, white!!” Haha. It’s pretty funny actually that they assume Westerners have any idea what that means. Children will especially start screaming “obruni!!!” It’s not meant to be taken offensively; it’s mostly intended to be a form of recognition that you are indeed different. In case you’d forgotten. I’ve heard that it’s actually not that inappropriate to respond with bibini (which means black person). Oddly enough, the term has come to also refer to any foreigner, so it isn’t uncommon for a black American to be called obruni. Being hardwired as an American, I find it incredible that the ‘racial tension’ is so nonexistent (or simply unacknowledged) that we can call each other out like that. Can you imagine walking down the street and greeting someone with “Hey, black woman!” It’s so incredibly bizarre how we avoid acknowledging other people’s ethnicity.

Another way they refer to white Westerners is by calling us all “Akosua”. Ghanaians, of Asante origin at least, are named after the day they were born. Akosua means a girl born on Sunday. They refer to us all as “Sunday” because when the white man came to Ghana, he forced the people to change their day of worship from Saturday to Sunday. How interesting! Again, it’s hysterical that they call us that and assume it’s a name we should be familiar with. At first I just though everyone was trying to guess my name!

I’m sure this is the case in many African nations, a white man is either assumed to have a camera or a cross around his neck. I can’t even count the number of time that people have asked me what my ‘mission’ is in Ghana. “So where are you volunteering?” As if volunteering is the only thing for a white person to do here. I really can’t stand that! That assumption only cultivates the victim//hero relationship, which does nothing for genuine understanding. The weird thing is, there really are an astounding number of white people on some ‘mission’ here in Ghana.

Its no epiphany that people here generally think Westerners are tremendously rich, but an experience at Liberia camp the other day really put it into perspective. Frequently, when you approach a group of kids here, they will crowd around you, hold your hand; play with your hair, etc. These kids aren’t quite so enthusiastic. The only thing one of them said to me was “Hey obruni, take my picture!” It’s so funny to see how camera-toting tourists have formed their perceptions of Westerners in great part. No wonder they think we are all so wealthy! And when I really think about it, its incredibly ostentatious to whip out a digital camera that costs more than what many of these people won’t make in a year. Needless to say, I haven’t taken too many pictures.

Liberia and Back

So much to say and yet I’m not really sure what to think. The longer my stay in Ghana, the more I become tangled up in the paradox between hope and hopelessness. If you have never been to Africa, it is probable that your perceptions of this place are more informed by cultural stereotypes a la Heart of Darkness than reality. Speaking for myself, I didn’t have a clue. I referred to Africa as the ‘dark continent’ in my first blog for god’s sake! We expect Africa to be helpless and when I first arrived, I think I was so delighted with the level of success and development that I stopped looking for the cobwebs. I was overcome with successful black owned business, notions of Pan-Africanism and overarching optimism. I forgot that ugliness is sometimes so buried that you can be walking all over it and never even notice.

Today, I went to the Buduburam Liberian Refugee Camp where I’m teaching a public speaking class with my friend Candace. When you walk onto the refugee camp, you are taken aback by how much this place seems like a city in its own right. This camp is unique because while the civil war is over Liberia, politically speaking, refugees remain on the camp because they can’t return. You can tell that these temporary shacks have been made into permanent homes. For some people, they are unable to return because the situation is Liberia is even worse than it was before. Not to mention the fact that Ghanaians won’t give these people jobs, so they have no money to make the journey….

This situation is particularly distressing for the former child-soldiers that are living at the camp. I’m ashamed to say that the only thing I really knew about child soldiers was from what I saw in Blood Diamond (we all seriously need to stop watching movies about Africa!). These ‘children’ are actually about 24 years old now and have been essentially exiled from society because of the violence that they were forced into at the average age of 10. Oddly enough, these men that are supposed to be the most dangerous are actually some of the most hospitable and genuine people that I have encountered in Ghana. Certainly, my first platonic interaction with men! My friend, Emily is doing a trust building workshop with these guys, so in between my classes, I get to go hang out too. Their willingness to tell their stories really surprised me. I’m just so horrified at humanity right now. That these people should have suffered these things. Killing their own families and friends, watching their brothers be killed, having their ears cut off for trying to escape, forced into drug addiction. And the most incredible thing is that they are all so grateful for us to be there because “we have so much to teach them”. What kind of knowledge can I possibly offer?