Vacation on a vacation

After being in Ghana for three weeks, I am starting to feel more at home here. It is really amazing how fast humans acclimate to situations and how quickly strange and foreign things become normal.

As obrunis, we are a constant spectacle. I have to prepare myself for the barrage of hassling as I walk down the streets with my EAP friends. Everyone wants us to buy something from them, and each seller promises the best price. Sometimes it is really draining but I have tried to adopt a Ghanaian attitude about it; smile, say hi and walk on. I think the main reason why so many people try to make us buy their goods is that white skin is associated directly with America, which is associated directly with money.

That being said, I have had some great experiences with individual people that really demonstrate what a kind culture this is. After some friends and I traveled for the weekend, we took a tro-tro (a public transportation van that is really cheap but somewhat difficult to use- as in, not always sure where the tro-tro is going, mad rush to get on it and the possibility of getting left behind, etc.) back to the university. The tro-tro let us off at a really busy intersection in downtown Accra. We didn’t know that this was our stop, so in a mad rush to get off, my cell phone dropped out of my bag and into the back area of the van. Apparently a man grabbed my phone and tried to run off with it. Another man, whose name I later learned is Pastor Robert, stopped the man and took my phone back from him. Pastor Robert came up to me and my three friends and asked if the phone was one of ours. I told him it was mine, and he proceeded to lecture me for ten minutes about how careful we need to be about our personal belongings and how easily they can get stolen. We all were in shock at the chaos of the situation and at how adamant he was about our safety. Then he hailed us a cab, got us a good price for it and took down my phone number. We all got into the cab, still in shock. 30 minutes later, Pastor Robert called me to make sure we had gotten back to campus safely. At first his call struck me as creepy and weird, but when all he wanted was to make sure we had returned safely, I had a different view. He didn’t know us at all, but he saw how overwhelmed and helpless we were in the middle of this busy intersection and tried to help. Most people that I meet in Ghana are friendly and are genuinely interested in knowing you and what you’re all about. In turn, they can offer you an interesting glimpse into their lives. I really enjoy this openness. It is expected that when you walk past someone on the street, you greet them instead of just ignoring their existence like we often do in the US. In customer interactions, before you tell the cashier what you want, you ask how they’re doing. The label “obruni” is another extension of this openness. It literally means “white person” and doesn’t really have a negative connotation; it’s just a physical observation. In turn, the term “obebedi” means “black person” and can be used just as freely. Instead of attaching stigma and connotations to these terms, they are common terms of identification. I find this practice refreshing and much healthier than the US tendency to tiptoe around labels of race.

Last weekend we went to Kakum National park in Cape Coast. The national park is a rainforest that is really rich in biodiversity. Our entire group of 50 people did the canopy walk, which is seven rope bridges tied between talllll trees 40 meters above the rainforest canopy. It was so beautiful seeing everything from up that high. Next we went to the Elmina Slave Castle, where we learned that between 8 and 12 million slaves passed through the castle under Portuguese and Dutch rule. It was a moving experience to be in the same cells the slaves lived in for months with minimal food and extremely harsh treatment.

After these group activities, 12 of us decided to go on a weekend trip to a nearby beach resort called Safari Beach resort. It is right on the coast, with picturesque huts, an outdoor kitchen and lobby and white sand. It was so beautiful! Our group went on a canoe trip in the neighboring village, guided by three brothers who were 19, 20 and 22 and had never left their village. It was so fun talking with them. They told us about their Adventist church, the chief of their village and their relation to the queen mother (their aunt), and their schooling. Each village has both a chief and a queen mother. The queen mother is not married to the chief and is not the chief’s mother. She is the most senior woman in the village and is chosen based on her wisdom and fariness. She is the chief’s counterpart and chooses the successor to the chief. Because these boys are related to the queen mother, they are eligible to become the next chief of their village. The chiefs are represented in the national government and are not primitive, but are a form of local governance. It was really awesome how much we could relate to them. (They told us they love Rihanna, Beyonce and Akon.) The oldest brother is paying for his two younger brothers’ schooling, so his English was not as strong. We met the boys later that day to eat lunch at a taco stand on the beach (random, but we were craving California food!). They weren’t quite sure how to eat the tacos but I’m sure that having five American girls instructing them on how to do it all at once really helped. The owner of the taco stand is Paco, or Patrick. He is a multi-millionaire in America who has dedicated his life to starting sustainable communities in third-world countries. He has successfully completed communities in Papa New Guinea and elsewhere, and is currently starting a project in the boys’ village of Akwiida. He wants to implement solar and wind energy and have the village own 100% of it within the next 7 years. He gave us his email address and urged us to contact him if we were interested in helping out. It was so inspiring to see someone in the job of their dreams, living on the beach and helping the village modernize itself in a really environmentally conscious way.

Now we are back at the University for class registration! Last night we tried fufu, which is a traditional African dish that's basically a ball of dough in a bowl of spicy soup. You eat the dough with your hands, so it's totally normal to see people here picking pieces of dough off, eating it with their hands and then licking their fingers afterwards. The Ghanaian ladies laughed at us as we tried to eat it- there's totally an etiquette to eating with your hands that we definitely do not know yet. Today I walked around to all the different departments to sign up for my classes that I want to take. I won’t know the times of the classes until Monday so I’ll have to drop a few that conflict. Some friends and I are going to Salsa Night on the beach tonight- features a live band!

Peace and love from Ghana.

Katie