TIA: This is Africa

I was recently introduced to a new motto: TIA, This is Africa. It's amazing, because we use it all the time. Before we would just shrug and saw, "oh Ghana..." but "TIA" has since been embraced. Today, for example:

We are walking in the burning heat in order to collect clay from the farm in order to make pottery. The sweat is pouring off our bodies, and shirts are being lifted, exposing the bright white flesh that nevers seens the light of day. TIA.

"I hope you don't mind I've decided not to wear clothes anymore." TIA.

"I haven't shaved in two months" TIA.

The beer's not cold. TIA.

"I need you to leave me something, your iPod, camera or phone so that I can remember you." TIA.

"I hope you're all getting used to this heat, because most of us are ending up in hell." TIA.

It's times like these that you laugh, shake your head - this is Africa. And I love it.

These last two weeks have been a whirlwind. We've covered several kilometers of the country, traveling from Tamale to Kumasi to Cape Coast to the Volta Region, where we've stayed in a small village called Dagbemete and yesterday arrived in the town of Sogakofe. I've had more experiences to recount, but there are a few that I will never forget.

At Cape Coast I discovered something I never knew existed: glowing sand. It's beautiful, and like magic. We walked, ran, danced and drew in the sand to watch the small sparks of light ignite and glow for miliseconds. We turned into small children as we marveled at the sand in the Gulf of Guinea. I am told that it's due to the phosphorous in plankton - this is yet to be confirmed.

While the sand made me marvel in amazement, what Cape Coast is known for made me marvel in disgust. The Cape Coast and Elmina Castles, though they are better described as dungeons.

In history class we learned all about slavery from the auction block to the plantation. But we never really heard about what happened before the Africans reached the Americas. I had seen the diagram of the ship where the people were packed like sardines, but that was where my education ended. In Cape Coast I witnessed what happened in a foreign land - a tragedy.

The dungeons at Cape Coast Castle held 1000 men and 300 women, at Elmina they held 600 men and 400 women. After they were captured and brought south to the coast the people would live in the dungeons for at least six weeks, but it was often longer. They lived amongst their own refuse and the dead were not removed often. When workers began excavation in order to preserve the dungeons, over two feet of human refuse was removed that had been packed for years into the floor. Within the mess hundreds of human bones were uncovered.

Rape was commonplace and expected. After the men and women had been held for almost two months they were marched in underground tunnels through the Door of No Return, where they were packed into the ships, one on top of the other, head to toes and toes to head. Those on the bottom rarely survived.

It was an incredible part of history to discover, however the dungeons were not the most horrifying. The worst part was that even today, the history of slavery is not taught in Ghana.

Many Ghanaians do not even understand what the word slavery means. We would say it to children and they would look back at us with blank stares. A university student can graduate without ever knowing about slavery. If it happens in Ghana, one of the most developed African countries, you can be certain that most of Africa remains in the dark.

That's a tragedy.

Photo Entry -- Afransie, Feb 26-Mar 11, Mole National Park, Mar 16-17

Kwame, a palm tree farmer who took us to his farm our second day. On his head is a canister for the palm wine. The palm tree is one of Ghana's most useful and economic trees. Similar to maple trees, the palm wine is extracted straight from the tree, but instead of leaving it standing they cut it down. They allow the wine to drain from the tree for four weeks. The wine is ready to drink straight from the tree - the closest comparison is hard cider, except it's naturally carbonated and delicious. After the wine is extracted it can then be boiled down into akpateshi, West Africa's strongest drink. It has never been proofed, but it is 100% alcohol.

The traditional homes and structures of Afransie. Outside you can see the process for getting palm oil out of the palm fruit. Palm oil is used for cooking and most recently soap.

This man produces akpateshi. There is a black barrel on the right filled with palm wine. It is heated from below with fire and at the top is a small tube that collects the evaporated alcohol. It travels from the barrel into the river (seen on the upper right). The tube coils under water, causing the gas to cool and turn into a liquid. It is then collected in the clear/white bottle you can see the man holding and it's ready to drink! Careful, it hits you hard, especially at 10 am.

A palm tree farm - these palms are cut down. Some farmers are trying to collect the palm fruit and wine while the tree is still standing, making it much more profitable, but still many farmers cut down their trees. The leaves and trunk are also used, however, to create roofing and other tools.

Ali and I learning how to carry things on our heads. In this case it was cement for the foundation of a village home that we were helping to pour. Carrying things on your head is so smart and works so well - but beware, cement is heavy.

Ali and I enjoying the secret fruit of the cocoa, perhaps even more delicious than the chocolate produced from its seed. It's amazing, and the farmers are happy to let you suck off the fruit as long as you return the profitable seed to them.

Palm wine extraction - a hole is cut into the tree, then a very small hole is drilled to allow the wine to drain out. Twice daily the canisters fill up, and twice daily each tree must be cleaned out.

The inside of the palm tree - very porous and soft, you can see the small hole on the bottom where the wine drains out.

A vegetable they call "garden eggs." Not all that delicious.

Asante, the favorite in our village. He is four years old and thanks to one of my friends is now attending private school in a nearby village for free.

On the weekend of our stay there was a massive funeral that can be seen here. Everyone, even ourselves, were dressed in traditional black or brown garb. Here you can see newcomers greeting the entire first row. You never stop shaking hands.

The market in Bekwai.

Me and some of the village kids after they taught me how to properly cook in Ghana.

One of the several children in Afransie. We had so much fun with them. Here you can see the belly that adorned almost every child.

One of my several husbands, Bodeni Bodanka (Crazy Man). He was actually quite sweet. Every time he saw me he shouted "My wife!"

Go Packers! Even in Ghana I can enjoy some Superbowl pride.

My room - it was a square cement box. Here you see the window open, but I had to keep it locked 24/7 to prevent any theft.

The ceiling. I can't even tell you how convinced I was the roof was going to cave when we had torrential downpours.

Learning to make shea butter in Tamale.

A baboon at Mole National Park

Elephant sighting!

One of the oldest mosques in West Africa and one of the first structures in Ghana. According to the villagers it is 600 years old and the tree is 500 years old.

The beautiful view from the hostel at Mole National Park. In the distance you can see three elephants that made their way to the watering hole and took a bath.

Hot Tamale

Two posts in one day! Sorry, you can read them in chunks, but I needed to give a live update.

I am now in Tamale (pronounced TAH-mah-lay) after traveling 7.5 hours in a tro-tro of increasing heat. We are now in the hottest part of Ghana and it is not a temperature to joke about. Standing in the sun is almost physically impossible.

Most NGOs are based in Tamale, which means there are obrunis up the wazzoo. We don't even get shouted at (a strange change, especially after the villages) and the people barely give us a second glance. It is the poorest part of Ghana - in colonial days, the north was used as a cheap labor force. When the Dutch came in the 1600s they brought education to the south, but it didn't reach the north until the 1900s. It has been a region that has suffered from lack of attention and development.

I feel like I'm vacationing, despite the fact that classes have restarted. I'm in a hostel and there's air conditioning and a fan. I could barely even dream of this two days ago. It's almost the exact opposite of village life, but it was a needed relief.

We head to Mole National Park in a couple days and I am STOKED. It may be the first time I believe I'm in Africa because I'll get to do the safari and see some of the wildlife I've only experienced through Animal Planet and Planet Earth.

Like I said, vacation.

Can we skip the four hours of lecture tomorrow?

Off the Map....Literally

**WRITTEN IN THE AFRANSIE, THE VILLAGE, BEFORE THE MOST RECENT BLOG POST**

Life has changed significantly since Kumasi, as I’ve moved out of the modernized world that I know into a village. As most villages in Ghana, this place is in a transitional phase. Modernization continues to reach the people here which can be seen most clearly in the architecture. There are three types of buildings here – traditional, transitional and modern. Some are built of bamboo and red clay, some of dirt and stone and some of cement blocks. The society reflects their homes – it is a village far from the busy city life, but it feels the impact primarily through radio (the one form of media they have here) and from the younger generation that leaves and returns home to see their parents.

It’s a very interesting phenomenon to observe, especially because as Americans we don’t really know what we want to see. It’s shocking enough to reach a society that survives off their farms with limited electricity and no running water, but it we almost wish modernization had reached them even less and the effect of radios hadn’t reached them. This may come from a selfish motive. The radios are a measure of social status. To own a radio is to have enough money to have it, and to prove that you have it you blast it at full volume at all hours of the day. The best times are at six AM and between ten and eleven PM, often going long into the night. It’s something we haven’t quite figured out – one would imagine they would sleep sometime.

And yet here they have the most beautiful stars, the clearest air free from smog and burning trash, gorgeous jungle at every turn and barely a car in sight.

On the other hand they have a school that is falling apart and at least one hundred kids with bloated bellies from malnutrition.

It’s a constant inner battle when I try to analyze my feelings about the village. The hardest part is the people.

Most of these children have never seen white people in their lives. The last time they had white visitors was ten years ago when a group of Canadian students came. If we thought we stood out anywhere else, we were horribly mistaken compared to our small village of Afransie. The children watch us like hawks and we feel like zoo animals. They watch us talk, work and sleep. Literally. There’s no place to escape and that is the core of the problem. To feel constantly watched and as if you can’t move without someone knowing it is uncomfortable for a short period of time, and coming on the tenth day it makes your skin crawl.

Please don’t take the above and the following as a sign that I am not enjoying my time in Ghana. Every single day is an incredible learning experience and don’t regret one day of it. It’s all worth it, but it comes at a personal cost.

Our time in the village has driven something home: the role of women in Ghana, especially in the rural areas, is a strict definition of oppression. There is women’s work and there is men’s work. Women work at the farm and in the home. They are expected to take care of the children, do the washing, prepare all meals and sponsor guests. The men are expected to go the farm or work and beyond that they may do as they please. Often times they won’t come home after they work, rather they will go to “the spot” and drink akpateshie (a highly alcoholic drink made in “the bush” – it tastes like tequila, but hits you ten times harder) or have a few beers. Almost every evening the men are “boozed” and it’s considered normal and even expected. No matter how hard you work or prove yourself, you will always be a woman and you will always be less than a man.

Part of our work here has been going into the community and helping with building projects to become part of their village. We helped build a foundation for a house, mixing concrete and carrying it on our heads to the building site – it was hard work and we were all sweating bullets, but it felt good to help and we knew they appreciated it – even if it was just because they liked seeing “obrunis” work. They are simply impressed that people they think of as dolls can get dirty and work their muscles. But even at the end of the day I was approached and told “You did great work, but Jake was marvelous.” Now imagine a comment like that at least two to three times a day and see how you feel about the role of women in this society.

“The kids don’t stand a chance” – B.oB. just came across on my iPod and sang those words, which is precisely what I and my friends have noted about this village. The children here have what we would consider a very poor example, and it’s hard to look at their smiling faces and regret what they may grow up to be like.

The respected people in the community are the elders – all men who make up a council that makes decisions for the village. Upon our first day of meeting them the spokesman asked almost all of the American women to marry him, and asked Jake, the one man in our small group, to take him to America with him. Almost every time they talk to us they are asking for us to take them to America, and typically it’s through marriage proposals. If the respected elders ask us these questions incessantly you can only imagine the rest of the village.

As a white woman in this village you often feel like a piece of meat. Certainly I’ve experienced this in America, but it’s not from almost every single male adult that I come across in a day. Where are the respectable people here? Do they throw away all manners for the desperate hope that we will fall into a trap of fake love so that they can go to America, which they know little about? It might make a difference if they at least asked questions about the States, but they don’t. They assume they know about it, or at least assume that they know enough, but there are so many misconceptions, just as we had about Ghana before we came. When we met with the teachers at the local primary school, they thought that all American students that finished high school were paid. There is so much that we could share, but they aren’t very interested to learn. Instead they are fascinated merely by our skin color, which I have never wished I could tear off more than now.

It’s taken a lot of introspection to analyze these feelings, and they grow stronger every day I am in the village. But that’s not to say that I’m not having a good time. I have met many kind people who are more than willing to share their lives with me. The children love us, and when we aren’t exhausted we love playing with them. They want nothing more than to hold our hands and learn our names, and have us know theirs. It’s particularly hard for the kids these days because as of last week every public school teacher in Ghana is on strike. Although the Ghanaian teachers deserve their proper pay and the government has been abusing them, it’s sad to know that the only people that will suffer are the kids. Many of them won’t complete primary school (sixth grade) and will end up working on their family farms and halting their education does nothing to encourage learning.

It’s hard for us to watch, knowing that many of these children won’t complete school, many of the boys will become just like their fathers, and many of the girls who might want to continue school won’t be allowed to because they need to care for the house.

On a lighter note, every day I receive gifts of fruit from a seventy year old man looking for me to marry him. I have received four marriage proposals since reaching Afransie, and the number is almost uncountable for Ghana as a whole. I am given so much attention here, I think I will miss it when I get back home. 

Why aren’t all you guys after me? Why don’t you think I’m beautiful? Where’s my fruit? 

Jerks.

**END OLD POST**

A Comparison

I had this great, well thought out, long and detailed blog post written up that described my village experience and then I forgot my flash drive at the hotel. Needless to say, it's coming. Until then, a cliff notes version.

Life in Ghana has changed drastically in the last three weeks. Going from the city to the middle of nowhere was an experience that I needed and that taught me important lessons, whether they were through positive or negative experiences.

Given the novel that I am going to post shortly after this, I will focus in on only one piece of village life: the children. The children absolutely adored us, so much so that they were often the one thing we were trying to escape from, if not the men. They wanted to watch us sit and read, listen to music, talk or even sleep. We felt like we were in a zoo, and it was often the most uncomfortable feeling especially when it was 24/7 for two weeks.

When I look at the children right before me, I think immediately of their bloated stomachs and limited futures. The many malnourished village children go to the local school through Primary 6 (the equivalent of 6th grade), then are forced to travel to the neighboring village for continued education. Many of them don't even make it to P6, instead they are asked by their families to stay home and help on the farm. It's a sad story, and one that seems to be on a never-ending cycle.

But then I take a step back, and think about the children I have met in America. Before leaving for Ghana I traveled to Chicago on the bus, and sitting behind me was a small, five year old black boy who was obsessed with the pictures on my Kindle. He had his head poked around my seat for hours, talking my ear off, telling me about all the cars that he owned and how we would get off the bus soon and he would drive us the rest of the way to Chicago. Throughout the entire trip his mother kept shouting at him:

"Sit your ass down!"

"She don't want to talk to you!"

"Shut the f*** up!"

"Listen to what I'm f***ing telling you!"

She took several smoke breaks and left him in the bus alone, and spent most of the bus ride on the phone, telling her friends to ditch her kids with her mother because they were "going out to the clubs." It was hard for me not to pass judgment, but I'll be honest and say I don't know the whole story.

The past tells us that this child raised in poor Chicago may not have many chances in life to go far. He may wind up completing high school, getting a job, trying to support himself. He may go to college, get a scholarship and move to DC. Who knows. But watching this child, and comparing him to the children in Ghana made me realize that I think the Ghanaian village children are better off.

There's a theory in Africa that you can always go back to your roots. It doesn't matter where you are in life, you have an obligation to your family. You can see that daily in Ghanaian life. Everyone will talk about their family, usually they are living with them in some form, and more often than not they are in the same city at the least. No matter what, the children that I met can always go home and can always find love. Can the same be said for the individualist culture of the States?

This a broad analysis, and it may not be based in any fact. But after seeing that little boy in Chicago, and seeing these African children running around the village in flip-flops and torn clothes, I felt happier for them than I felt walking away from that bus.