various ghanaian things

So much happens here that I don’t even know where to begin. After skipping two days of blogging I feel like I’m weeks behind.

I guess I can start with today and work backwards.

Today we met at the University of Ghana (which is a 20 minute walk from our house) and listened to a couple people speak to us about the media in Ghana. It was interesting, but we were all kind of drowsy from last night (which I’ll get to later) and a lot of what they talked about we had heard before… Ken was falling asleep across the table from me and I was struggling to maintain any level of concentration.

Then Leslie gave us a little tour of UG’s School of Communication: the little library and the school’s radio station headquarters. I think the plan was just to pop in to RadioUnivers to check it out, but the man who was running the thing in there got really excited to have visitors so it turned into more than that. There were a few people sort of hanging around in there already, but this guy insisted that we all come in and sit down. Then he proceeded to give us an oral history of the station. We all sort of sat there smiling dumbly as he explained the name of the station. “Univers is short for University. We drop the i, t, and y and you have Univers. Not Universe like the planetary configurations, or stars, you see.”

Then he introduced us to this guy who had been sitting on the side smiling as well. He had a rather fixed expression, and I have to admit, I’d been kind of staring at him this whole time, trying to figure out what was strange about him. I think the kid’s name was Soma, or something like that. Then I felt bad when I realized that he was blind. His show was on next, so RadioUnivers man insists we join them in the broadcast room. So there’s 14 oburonis and these two guys in there, and Soma starts his show.

He has a great radio voice, this guy… he knew what he was doing, too. Confident. The first song he plays is “Candle in the Wind” (or maybe that was the guy right before him?). Then something else cheesy, then Celine Dion (for how much music I’ve heard since I arrived, Celine Dion seems to amount to a disproportionate amount of it) and then Vanessa Williams. (“Did you know she was Miss America?” Soma asked us.) Soma dedicates Vanessa Williams to us, “the Oregon University students from US of A.” Then he conducts a short interview with us, live on air (How long have we been in Ghana? What are our impressions? Have we tried any Ghanaian food yet?) , or rather, with Molly, Nick and Josh, who handled themselves very nicely. Lots of medase’s. I don’t know how to spell that but medase means thank you in Twi, the main language around here.

Anyways, I’ve never had an experience quite like that at RadioUnivers. I can’t even explain how awkward it was, although thankfully the Ghanaians didn’t seem to notice. Some of us couldn’t help giggling at the musical selections, and honestly I’m surprised that no one did notice and get offended – thank God.

Then we went to Bonjour, the fast food place across the street from UG. Chicken Inn, Pizza Inn, and Creamy Inn (ice cream, and, seemingly, booze) all housed under one roof! We knew that Tuesdays at Pizza Inn were not to be missed. “Terrific Tuesdays” mean double the pizza for the same price. So we bought four and got eight, and eleven of us devoured seven of the pizzas – we were huuungry. Pizza here is better than you might expect.

That’s pretty much it for today so far. It’s kinda overcast, though, and it’s probably only about 75 degrees… which is AMAZING after the rest of the weather this week.

Sooo, let’s see, yesterday:

Leslie and “Doc” (Dr. Michael Williams) gave us a tour of Accra, which is enormous: 4.5 million people. And scratch what I said before about nobody living in huts/shacks – that’s our rich suburb, although when I got here it didn’t seem rich. After yesterday, it does. We drove past huge shantytown neighborhoods that smelled terrible, and past slightly nicer shantytown neighborhoods that smelled slightly less terrible… and, for the most part, didn’t see any houses anywhere near as nice as ours… and even though the water pressure at our house is miserable, thank God we have it: 80% of Accra doesn’t even have running water. I have pictures of some of this stuff, which hopefully I can put up here.

In the Muslim neighborhood we drove past, a pack of kids was so excited to see our bus that they ran next to it for a while. “Oburoni! Oburoni oburoni!” All we have to do is smile and wave and they completely lose their beans. It’d be so easy to start a television show for kids here: just hire some white people to smile into a camera. The kids are honestly so cute though. I think every one of us has said at least on one occasion that they want to take some home with them.

We went to a craft market: think Eugene’s Saturday Market, except most stalls carry nearly the same thing. I haven’t gotten used to the bargaining thing yet, and I’m a sucker. I know that these people need my money more than I do so it’s hard for me to be mad even if they are overcharging me. I’m getting better at it though, although not better at not buying things. They sell a lot of beautiful things. My favorite is a silver pendant I got with an Adinkra symbol on it. Adinkra symbols are from the Ga people (I believe – perhaps the Akan, I don’t really have my tribes straight at all) and they used to go mostly on funeral stuff – shawls and things. Now they use them on a lot of stuff, sort of just culturally dominant. Most of them seem to be religious – and Ghanaians have integrated them into their new religious traditions: Christianity and Islam. The pendant I got means “God’s tree” and it connotes something like dependence and reverence to God, which I like quite a bit. I just really like the idea of “God’s tree,” it’s a really nice sounding metaphor.

Then we stayed up laaaate. Investigated the weird local bar across the street, Wazuu, where alcohol is cheap and the bartender is approximately fourteen. Thus the tiredness today.

Ciao for now…

chez ghana

Something is not agreeing with me this morning. I’m slightly nauseous. I can think of several possible reasons for this:

A) A) I have accidentally ingested some tap water and it is coming back to haunt me.

B) B) The oatmeal I had for breakfast was too heavy.

C) C) The Ghanaian “bitters” I drank last night was a Bad Choice… sort of a whisky-rum thing, but really strong… the main reason I even bought it was because the label said it “promotes vitality… ESPECIALLY in men” which I thought was hilarious.

D) D) The heat, which makes me feel like my skin is melting off (I’m already at least one shade darker, it’s only been two days, and I really haven’t even been in the sun much).

E) E) All of the above.

Ah, well. I’m drinking a lot of (clean) water to try and flush this thing out, whatever it is. I have to be ready to go soon, for the excitement of the day commences at 2: we have managed to acquire 13 tickets to a World Cup soccer match: Ghana Blackstars vs. Gabon’s team. The game doesn’t start til 5 but we want to try for decent seats. I know next to nothing about soccer but Ghanaians get so excited about it that it’s contagious.

The last two members of our group, Scot and Josh, arrived last night and we went yet again to Chez Afrique. Some Ghanaian man pulled me onto the dance floor, which was fine… until a couple other guys appeared out of nowhere and wanted to dance all close within seconds of their appearance. Ahh! I just pulled away and probably looked really awkward and they kinda got the message. The funny thing was, Ken was dancing nearby with some other Ghanaian guys who were also trying to dance all closey-close with him. Ken was really laid back about it; probably less awkward than me. Kind of weird. Apparently that kind of thing isn’t an indication of homosexuality here at all, and is totally culturally acceptable. Cool, I guess, I just haven’t adjusted yet.

I think that’s it for now. I need to just lounge for a bit to get past this nasty nausea thing.

akwaaba

After a long lapse in blog entries, mostly because I felt like my life wasn’t interesting enough for a blog and because I was too busy with school to even think about a blog, I am going to resume posting things, because both of these assumptions seem to be incorrect at the moment.

Because, A), I am not in school, not really, and B), because I am spending the next two months in West Africa…

I’m in the dining room of the house I share in Accra, Ghana, with my fellow University of Oregoners: Sheena, Katie, Molly, Ryan, Elon, Michelle, Ken, Nick, Logan, Jessica, Josh, Scot. We don’t have internet access here but it would be silly to write blogs at an internet café when I can just write them here and post later. I’m eating breakfast: Laughing Cow cheese and Ghanaian chocolate, both of which I found at a grocery store we went to yesterday. Not the best breakfast, but I can’t figure out if we have the right converters here to plug in my water-boiler thing, and I’m scared of our stove, which runs on propane and you have to light it manually. So oatmeal for breakfast today ain’t happening. And admittedly, the chocolate and cheese thing is a pretty awesome breakfast.

I came in yesterday morning on a direct flight from New York with Sheena, who coincidentally is also originally a Spokanite. A (presumably Ghanaian) woman across the aisle from us had a baby about ten months old: oh my god, so cute. I’m pretty sure I spent a good half of the flight smiling at her, which made her smile a huge, mostly toothless smile. Her mom let me hold her for a minute, but when she started looking at Sheena, she freaked out a little and I gave her back to her mom. Probably too many unfamiliar faces… Sheena isn’t the sort of person that would freak out babies, as far as I can tell.

Another woman across the aisle from us was Liberian. Her name is Nessie, and she was going back to Ghana for her daughter’s college graduation. She asked me to help her fill out her disembarkation card, and I thought she needed to borrow a pen, or that she didn’t understand the instructions on the card. Then I realized that she couldn’t read or write at all. Liberia is a disaster of a country, at least from what I hear… lots of Liberians are in this huge refugee camp in Ghana, which is where I had considered volunteering for a while after my internship is over. So Nessie was going there. When I understood all of this, I felt so sad for her. But her daughter was graduating from University. It’s hard for me to understand such a combination of things. Obviously, I helped her fill out her card. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to anyone before that was illiterate… or at least that I knew was illiterate. It didn’t stagger me so much that she was, more how that would get in the way of doing things as simple as filling out disembarkation cards… I’m so, so lucky.

The airport in Accra is nice; but festooned all over with soccer things… or, should I say, football. I don’t know the first thing about sports, but apparently I will by the time I leave. Ghanaians are pretty much obsessed with soccer.

Leslie, the professor from UO that runs this program, and Dr. Michael Williams, who lives here in Ghana and helps her run it, picked us up from the airport and took us to our house – which, according to Ghanaian standards, is somewhat of a palace. It reminds me of the condo my family stayed in in Mexico when we went: shabby and weird by American standards but luxurious to locals. I feel bad staying here when I see the kinds of places my neighbors are living in. Not exactly huts, but not exactly real buildings, either. That said, there are other nice houses around, sort of thrown in like ours is.

The house is kind of dirty, though, on the inside. Or maybe it’s not, maybe it’s just old. It’s hard to tell. But the kitchen and the bathrooms freak me out. Enough that I might even clean them. The water pressure sucks, but there’s a French shower head in one of the showers, so that kinda makes up for it. Also, the water is exclusively cold, but that’s actually nice considering how freaking hot it is here.

Temperature-wise, it’s not that bad. Maybe 85, 95 at the peak of the day. But the sun is scorching and it feels like 80% humidity. My hair, regardless of the fact that I blow-dryed it this morning and put gel in it, is not pleased. Really frizzy… maybe I should just dread it. J

We went to Chez Afrique last night, Dr. Michael Williams’ wife’s restaurant/bar. The food was really delicious, or perhaps I was just really hungry. I had my first (probably first of many) African beers. Ghana has two main beers, Star and Club, and it seems that everyone has a preference. They’re both light. I think I’m more of a Star person; Club has a pretty strong aftertaste. They’re both a lot like American beer, though definitely a step up from, say, Miller High Life. Definitely drinkable.

On Fridays and Saturday nights Chez Afrique has live music, which is pretty excellent. A stream of stuff I’ve never heard of mixed with Bob Marley. Lots of reggae, which is great for dancing, so no complaints here. I was exhausted when we went out last night, but there was no way I could avoid dancing. Everyone just seemed to be enjoying themselves so much, and there were other oborunis (white people, think gringo without the offensiveness) who were worse dancers than us, so it wasn’t intimidating.

Other than that, the music here is an amusing blend of mostly American stuff. The very first song I heard, a car playing it outside our house, was Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. No shit. Since then I’ve heard James Blunt, more Celine Dion, some good ol’ 90s classics, and a lot of abrasive American rap, with no bleeped out words. Ghanaians as a whole seem pretty nice, and I haven’t heard any swear yet, but they definitely don’t censor their music. I don’t recognize much, but then, I’m not really a rap girl, so that’s to be expected. Lian would know most of it, probably. Leslie says that Ghanaians think that Americans (especially black Americans) talk like our rap songs sound, which is rather amusing, and to a degree, probably true, at least among my age demographic. Be slappin that ass, gonna f*** that bitch tonight. Okay, so probably not so much. But apparently Ghanaians also love country music, so I guess my musical horizons are going to be broadened a tad here…

p.s. "akwaaba" means "welcome" in Twi, the most used tribal language here.