Damn, where did it go?

Where has my inspiration gone?  I have been trying to write a blog entry for weeks, but I keep losing steam.  Usually, I will get a burst, most likely in the form of a sentence or a congealing idea, but I have felt little these past couple weeks.  In fact, my writing in general has taken a hiatus.  I can’t understand why.  How can lose it only after a couple months at site?  Aren’t I still seeing new things every day?  The answer is yes, but for some reason, I am lacking the creative abilities to spin into something interesting.  I don’t want to just list bland updates, and great epiphanies have abandoned me for the time being.  It is among the many things that are slipping and a constant source of anxiety for me.

It seems whenever I begin another adventure/task/phase in life, I come to a point, a trial I must pass through where I come to grips with the reality that my vision and expectations about what I am undertaking and its actual reality don’t match up.  I am there now.  When I stepped on the plane at JFK I had goals.  Goals to push myself to do more than I had attempted before, to really take charge of my professional development, to take advantage of my academically-prepped mind and be as sharp as ever.  I was really gonna figure out how to be a leader here, how to be a professional anthropologist, and maybe this time, this endeavor, I would find that I could be the best at something instead of just merely “good.”  Maybe I could be the best at learning language, the best at writing, observing, culturally understanding, or critiquing.  Maybe, in my wildest dreams, I could even be the best volunteer.  In some ways all my switching between different endeavors in life are a result of my many interests in the world—dancing when I was a kid, music when I was in high school, culture, archaeology, traveling, and language in college, jobs in (sort of) exotic locales, trying to merge them all in grad school, plus all of the minor interests in between.  And that is definitely true.  I never really possessed the ability to devote myself and my attentions to any one thing.  The world is a big, diverse, and interesting place that everyone should explore to the fullest, but a big part of all that “dabbling” has been about searching for something I was naturally better at than anyone else.  And I thought, this time, with as much work, time, and knowledge I gained in graduate school, I could be a step ahead, but also at the same time be active in gaining so many more insights and skills.  That vision, like so many others, is not being realized.  That doesn’t mean other good things aren’t created in its place, but it is still a struggle to let go of it, to not use the f-word—failure.  But now, as someone recently advised me, it’s time to come down from that.  No matter what I gain, I am still no better at anything than anyone else.  But it is even more splintered than that.  Some things I am still weak in, others I am strong.  I am not strong in all things.  All of the advanced education in the world won’t make me better at gathering people, running meetings and making inspiring speeches, but that’s what I have Kwesi for.  No amount of education can make me a complete master of my space such as he is as we walk around Damanko and I am a bit jealous of that.  I am lucky to have such and able and knowledgeable counterpart—a prime example of what Peace Corps envisioned when they created such a role in their program—so why can’t I just relish this blessing I have instead of being intimidated by it?

In many ways, I have been thrust into a role I have never encountered before.  This was not unexpected.  I wanted that as a part of continually trying to push myself to new insights and growth opportunities.  Never have I been asked or looked to to organize things, to be the source of serious quality of life improvements, the source of new ideas, knowledge and advice.  It’s rather intimidating.  In a place like this, people are hungry for ideas, for knowledge, for opportunities.  Sure there are always those who are looking to improve their lives only through money (or trips to America), because they think that is the only way they can make their lives better, but if you can find those people who aren’t worried with that, you have found the gems.  The people who want only to learn more, to be connected to something different, to be given something they can in turn give to others, are the real movers and shakers of development and the ones who will make the most impact.  So then I find myself thinking—Damn, how do I live up to that?  Kwesi and Joseph talk to me about following Peace Corps because the advice that comes to them through its volunteers suits them well and has really moved them somehow.  How do I live up to that?  People never come to me for advice at home.  Peace Corps training provides me with certain technical knowledge that I am expected to give, but life as a foreign volunteer in an underprivileged community requires a much wider breadth of advice.  Sometimes I look at the two of them and I think:  You can already do so much, what can I possibly give you?

Tis the season--even in 90 degree weather...

A little late on the post, I know, being that Thanksgiving was about a week ago, but some thoughts just struck me.

As has apparently become expected tradition, all the Peace Corps volunteers in Ghana were invited to the Ambassador’s luscious house in Accra to celebrate the most American of holidays.  And so, missing our turkey, mashed potatoes, and pies of the sweet kind (not to mention free booze and the lure of a swimming pool) about 120+ travel raggedy volunteers descended on the carefully guarded premises for an afternoon.  The perpetually warm weather, the enthusiasm for which the swimming pool was sought, the many glasses of wine poured in merriment, and many ladies’ new Ghanaian-made warm weather dresses made the gathering easily mistaken for a beach party.  We swam, drank to our hearts’ content, chatted with new volunteers we hadn’t met, caught up with some we hadn’t seen since training, the Ambassador proudly paraded his new 8 week old son, and we all eagerly awaited the time we could stuff our faces with some old fashioned soul food. 

As part of the Thanksgiving experience, the Ambassador’s people (and Peace Corps’ people too) made it possible for about half of the volunteers expected to be hosted by local ex-pat families (just in case someone doesn’t know what that is: ex-pat refers to families or individuals living in a foreign country for a temporary but extended period of time working for their own government.  Like “immigrant” but richer and not for permanent residence).   My friend Francesca and I were lucky to be housed with a woman named Lisa, who works for USAID in Ghana (and served in Peace Corps in the 80s), and her two teenage sons.  Ex-pat families tend to live pretty high on the hog, especially if they’re working in developing countries, because they earn American salaries and live in countries with lower cost of living.  Often the working for the embassy or foreign service means you are provided with a furnished house and, as part of a larger ex-pat community, able to get American products sent over pretty regularly.  Many employ a local housekeeper.  Some have swimming pools.  There is a water heater, air conditioning, internet, clothes washing machines, and dish washing machines. This allows many people who spend most of their careers abroad to maintain a very American household.  Having spent most of their lives outside of America, Lisa’s two boys are every bit as American in behavior as you’d expect.  They attend school with other ex-pat kids, fight their mom over the amount of time spent on the internet and World of Warcraft, love TV shows like Battlestar Galactica and Heroes, and they’ve read the entire Harry Potter series.

This lifestyle, of course, does not belong to American ex-pat families alone.  It is very obvious once one has been in Ghana a short while how different life can be between those that live in the northern regions and those that live in the south, particularly Accra.  Like any big city, Accra has is ghettoes, its poorer places, the people without much to their name that come to the city to seek a better life, and it also has those that do live well, those who can afford and strive to live “modern.”  I’m not just talking in material objects, but mindsets, education opportunities, ideas, and exposures are more modern/enlightened/Western (choose your favorite word—of course that’s not to say that these words mean the same thing; what is “enlightened” is not always “modern” or “Western”).  Politics in the last 50 years is mostly responsible for this enormous gap in current development situations.  It also casts a pretty rigid dye for the stereotypes of “village” and “modern” in Ghana.  Anyone from the north, or those living in the north are all villagers and know nothing but farming, or so those in the south are given to thinking.  Their logic goes something like this:  Villagers are mostly farmers, and because they are farmers they don’t value education for themselves or their children.  Because they have no education they are ignorant/stupid.  Also, they don’t know how to spend their money.  They will tell you they can’t afford to send their children to school, but if there’s a funeral to conduct, somehow they find the money for large expensive livestock.  This thinking is a problem in Damanko, and many rural places in Ghana, because the government stations people from the southern provinces in the rural areas to work in civil services.  They are teachers, clinic staff, police officers.  This is part of the government’s plan for development in rural areas.  Theoretically, if people from the more developed areas are brought to the less developed areas, specifically in jobs crucial to development, that will help, right?  Well, to a certain extent, but pretty much all of them buy into this villager = stupid mentality.  Most are not blatant about it and still perform their jobs as expected, but their motivations in performing these services begin to slip.  It’s going to be a challenge teaching or reminding people, that even these uneducated people have some worthy contribution to make and that opportunities offered to people in life are different for everyone.  Not everyone here is uneducated, is a farmer, etc etc.  There is diversity, even here!!

But anyway, my rant over, I’ll return to Accra.  Thanksgiving dinner was great, and I stuffed myself as required by every Thanksgiving—tryptophan effects and all.  The next day, most of us went to The Mall (gasp!) to see Harry Potter 7 P1 and I reminded a few of us that we got to be IN a mall and miss all the Black Friday craziness.  Accra’s mall (complete with Apple Store) has two big stores (plus many others)—a grocery store and a Target-like store.  In the Target-like store, I wandered through and found myself chuckling at the commercialized Christmas decorations, trying to imagine their presence in Damanko: the lights adorning a thatch roof, tinsel and ornaments hanging from Kwesi’s moringa tree, garlands strewn about being nibbled on by goats….  It did offer a pretty unbelievable picture in my mind’s eye.  Looking at them, they just felt so…..pointless.

The grocery store was fun too.  It offered many imports and included a deli, fish counter, and lots of cheese.  It was a scene familiar to me, but I did entertain myself by imagining Joseph, my 15 year old friend who’s rarely been out of Damanko, in a store such as this.  It’s common in Ghana for people to ask for small gifts when friends or family are traveling.  If I got something for everyone who asked, I’d use up my paycheck every month, so most people don’t take it seriously, yet I always take a few special people some gifts.  Since I was in this very American-like grocery store, I looked for something I knew would probably not reach outside of Accra.  Several people received pears when I got back.  I was happy to find them, to eat one for myself, and to present even a couple of my more educated and worldly friends with something they hadn’t seen or tried before.  “It is sweet, oh.  I like it.”  Maybe someday I’ll do a post just on the Ghanaian use of the word “sweet.”

So all in all, Thanksgiving was a blast, and it gave me a chance to ruminate on some things, like my fluctuating definition of “luxury.”  If you ever want to enjoy something 100 times more than you do currently, just deprive yourself of it for a while.  I have become used to bucket baths and don’t mind them so much.  Of course that doesn’t mean I didn’t nearly weep for joy during the first hot shower I took at Lisa’s.  Yes, they feel good when you have one everyday, but they feel 100 TIMES BETTER when you haven’t had one for six months.  Francesca and I slept in an air conditioned room on beds with sheets and duvets, we ate homemade pizza and pancakes (not at the same time), washed our clothes in a washing machine, and stretched out on real sofas.  Life feels so much more satisfying when even the little things become so pleasurable you can’t stand it.  I don’t feel deprived when I’m at site.  I don’t sit around and think “Damn, I’d do anything for a _____ right now.”  Well, at least not always.  Having some of those things just wouldn’t feel right out here.   They just don’t fit in with life as it’s lived here.  That said, when I get back, I’m going to get a whole lot more out of that hot shower than you will.  I am thankful for the chance to rediscover how wonderful even some minor things can be.  

Whirlwind Schedule

The holidays are upon us, and it seems I cannot get away from it's vamping in schedule even in Ghana!  Next week a bunch (like, over a hundred) volunteers will descend on the ambassador's (posh) house in Accra to gorge themselves on turkey, vegetables, and pumpkin pie.  Then (hopefully) we will be able to catch the new Harry Potter movie in the only theatre in Ghana.  (I'm really logging in the Harry Potter-viewing countries.  I saw the 2nd one in Scotland.)  I will travel back to Damanko, stay for a few days, then head out again to the first of my In-Service Trainings in Kumasi.  There is talk about travel to a happy place for Christmas, but thinking I might stay at site and brew pito in celebration with my Muslim counterpart and his family and make paper snowflakes with the zillions of kids running around here.  I even found glitter from somewhere!  I think this will be my first snow-less Christmas.  Wish I had some lights to decorate a moringa tree, but maybe the snowflakes will have to do.

Rollercoasters

One thing about Peace Corps you know going in is that it is going to a rollercoaster ride of emotions.  Being here is amazing, and most days I can log at least one Holy-Shit-I’m-in-Africa moment, but some days are just the pits.  How do I describe the bad days?  Well, it usually consists of me not having anything constructive to do, which leads me to hanging out in the house and thinking too much.  It’s left over from graduate school where time is of the essence, and so, if I had nothing to do there must be something wrong with my time management or I was forgetting something, or whatever.  Just this basic feeling that if I had done everything right, I wouldn’t have time to waste.  So some days, I am in the house with nothing to do.  Okay, I was prepared for this.  Life in a developing country—or any country not America for that matter—means lots of waiting time, down time, things not happening fast-fast, as my counterpart likes to say.  But still, down time = thinking time and sometimes that’s not always good.  I start to question my situation.  Am I integrating well enough?  Shouldn’t I be using this time to study language?  Why don’t I have any one to hang out with?  There must some cultural thing I should be observing.  And speaking of which, how am I meeting my anthropologist goals?  Why am I not out there perfecting my methods skills?  Shouldn’t I have more notes about observations?  Shouldn’t I be doing more needs assessments?  Aren’t there more people to meet?  Why am I not better at this?  Shouldn’t anthropology and graduate work have made me more able and adept at this?  Why am I not on the fast track?  Why am I not fulfilling the vision I had for myself and my experience in this space?  Ugh!  It’s so frustrating to have these thoughts cycle through my head over and over like a broken record.  I’ve always been one to be moderately patient and wait for the right opportunity to present itself in its own good time, and making sure I was available to pluck it.  Forcing things to work has never worked for me.  That’s being tested here.  Then there’s the whole comparison game:  this volunteer’s doing this, and this volunteer’s doing that, and I’m not doing either.  Should I be?  Am I behind?  Such thoughts are ludicrous, because everyone’s sites, environment, abilities, situations, colleagues are all drastically different.  But still, what have I done that’s equal to it--different but equal?  It’s aggravating.  The funny thing is that such moods are easily evaporated by simple things: a conversation with a needed person, a chance to get out of town, one child calling me Madam Kristi instead of “fada,” a visit to the guys at the police station, or even just a walk to the river.

Anyway, I was in this funk a few days ago, and then I got an interesting, out-of-the-blue call.  This guy introduced himself as Kyle, said he was a friend of one of my PC buddies, and working in Accra in a company working in sanitation, and he wanted a rural perspective, so could he come visit me?  Uh, sure, why not?  So after a quick phone call to said buddy, Kyle arrived a couple days later on an early bus to spend the day seeing a different part of Ghana.  This is important because the South (especially Accra) and the North are very different in terms of development.  Not to mention traveling this road is a travel adventure in itself.  So a couple hours of visiting and a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, we started out to see the sights.  Kyle was lucky because that day happened to be Market Day so there was LOTS of activity.  We headed to the river first so we could discuss the water situation in Damanko and watch the fishing boats for a while.  Then we got one of the fishermen to paddle us out into the river a ways, much to the amusement of the spectators on shore.  Kwesi (this is my counterpart, who, up until now I’ve been calling Kofi in this blog, but have gotten tired of the pseudonyms) and my other buddy, Addai, were at the bridge in uniform pulling over unregistered motorcycles, so we greeted them and went on our way.  We walked back down to the other side of town to the clinic then back to the house.  Kwesi was off his shift by then, so he came back to the house with a watermelon (reason #87 he’s the best counterpart EVER!) then I made him play tour guide and we went “roaming” around town.  Kyle wanted to know about the sanitation situation in Damanko so we told him about the things we were planning to do and so on.  We walked to a couple of the smaller villages just outside of Damanko whose situations can be quite different.  We sat with a group in Baduli for a while talking about our upcoming latrine project.  We walked past the other side of Baduli and stopped to sample some pito, the local brew, and then had some fun with a group of girls carrying things back from market by trying to balance things on our heads.  After our afternoon walk, we headed back to the house.  I made some market soup while Kwesi and Kyle chatted and were eventually joined by Joseph, my inherited “small boy”.  Joseph, being my cultural events alarm bell, told us there was a funeral service that night, and would we like to go?  Duh.  So later that night we went to the first of many funeral events.  Ghanaian funerals are very long, elaborate, celebratory affairs which I will write about at a different time.  This was the religious service, so there was a hefty mixture of African gospel evangelism with traditional beats and dancing.  It was amazing to watch (though not as amazing as the Kinachung event I witnessed a week later).  Kyle left the next morning.

His visit actually did a lot for my morale.  He’s the first visitor I’ve had to host since I’ve been here, and it was very helpful to have him.  Having somebody to show things to helped me to take ownership of this space and my experience.  This is MY site, MY house, MY counterpart, MY work, MY experience, MY village.  It’s always nice to pass that imaginary border where, at least for a time, one stops being the perpetual newcomer and begins to be the local.  And we just did a lot that day.  It was nice to have plenty of things going on, to see a bunch of things, even if I’d seen some of them before.  And it’s nice just to have another white person around just to diffuse some of the looks, to encourage me to react to things differently.  I was reminded, watching this new person jump right in to everything, how scared I am to just jump into things with both feet.  I feel at the center of attention all the time, so I try to hide as much as I can.  I hate taking attention away from whatever they’re doing at the time, being the perpetual distraction.  I feel like an intruder always.  So I refrain from just jumping into things, going up to people uninvited, etc unless I have another person, a doorway, something.  Kyle needed no such things, and I wish I were more like that.  I remember my Uncle Mark, ruminating on the old "sink or swim" metaphor a long time ago: “Your aunt can’t just dive into anything.  She has to check the water, find a life jacket, take swimming lessons to make sure she can swim first.  Me, I jump in, find out I can’t swim, then ask for the life jacket and swimming lessons.”  Guess I’m just like my Aunt Lori (insert snide comment from my mother HERE).  I’ve gotta have all my ducks in a row first; or at least grouped together in a queue-like fashion.

So, here I am now, taking it day by day, knowing that this experience would be a hundred times harder if it weren’t for some key people, but they can’t make all the bad days go away.  Some days I want to hug and play with all the children, and some days I want to punt all the ones that shout “Fada!”  Some days I look at goats and think “Cute!”  Other days I look at them and think “at least those annoying pests taste good.”  Some days people smile and greet me and are genuinely happy to see me; other days all I get is harassment from the men.  Some days I feel happy to see the same people all the time; other days I feel like I’m not doing my job right because I don't know enough people.  Some days it’s just too hot to do anything; other days walking to the river at sunset is an amazing spiritual uplift.  Being here is wonderful, but I guess my fundamental fear is I won’t actually be able to do the work I need to do with the skill I envisioned myself doing it with.  There are so many people who are happy to have me here and so many people that don’t deserve to be let down.

Part 3 of Kristi’s Ongoing Conversations with Herself: Race

10-23-10

Growing up, I never gave much thought on the expressions or impacts of race on my immediate environment or my person.  At least not past that which the learning of history required or the ability to think through TV talk shows.  Racial experience was always something that happened outside of my limited scope of the world—on TV or in books or something.  Being white and growing up in a predominantly white area made my experience, my lens, essentially race-less.  There were small groups of non-white people around me—first the children of Native American heritage that went to my high school and a large Hispanic minority in my second high school—and while their presence wasn’t invisible to me, it wasn’t highly visible either.  They moved around me more or less indifferently and I indifferent to them, not realizing that our fundamental cultural differences were not allowing me to connect with them and to unconsciously seek the friendships of those with whom I was similar.  Thus I never really thought my race meant anything, I being the same as all those around me.  I never really saw racial difference, but cultural difference.  Only in my adult life have I realized that the two main environments of my childhood—Vernal, UT and Wenatchee, WA—were and are not homogenously white, and that any sense of non-whiteness exists there.  In my racial naivete, I associated “race” and “non-Whiteness” with “black” and since there were no, or very few black people any of the places I lived, I perceived no experience of “race” or even, racial privilege.  I knew that a history of racism gave me opportunities that I could be born into, opportunities that previous white generations would bestow upon me as a result of racial discriminations written into laws and cultural consciousness; but I didn’t feel race operating on me everyday.

If my entrance into anthropology changes the angle of the race lens for me, Women’s Studies exploded it with vibrant color.  Anthropology attuned my eyes more critically to diversity, but Women’s Studies made me see and understand new depths of race—how I exist in this world, my place given to me and how the world reacts to me based on race.  My entry into anthropology was facilitated by a deep, unexplainable interest in people’s lives—not their personal ones, per say, but their collective ones.  I was fascinated by the different way we found to live with few important similarities.  With this budding interest and an increasingly honed eye on “diversity,” I realized my life and the people around me were not all that diverse in lifestyle or origin.  My anthropological knowledge was coming from books and texts and professors, not experiences and people.  Even the practitioners of anthropology often comment about how anthropology is still a white man’s endeavor and are always critical about how few diverse viewpoints and backgrounds there are.  So it was with anthropology that I realized my lack of racial diversity in my life—how “white” my life truly was.  In Women’s Studies I came to know what that meant.

For those unfamiliar with something like Women’s Studies or feminist theory, you may be surprised to learn that it is not all about women or women’s rights.  Properly defined (I think, anyway; there’s a TON of literature on the proper definition of feminism), feminism is the attempt to challenge, understand, and confront unequal power relationships between groups—to think through why certain groups are oppressed and why others are privileged.  This includes not only gender relationships, but those of race, class, disability, socioeconomic, nationality, any identity that renders one person or group of persons less than another.  And so, race is a big part of Women’s Studies and feminist theory.

I realize now that the ability to go through any part of life without a thought to race is an expression of white privilege.  Power and privilege may not be immediately invisible to those who have it, but its affect on those who DON’T have it, is.  Marginalized groups often have a less distorted view of power because it is being exercised on them.  I also believe the perception of the power of race experience is diluted when one is enmeshed with those of her own race.  Hence, without the experience of diversity and exposure to a variety of different viewpoints and experiences, one risks a seriously truncated and distorted view of world and their existence in it.  It is when one comes into contact with those of another race—either physically, or over media, even—that race becomes more vibrantly salient.  I learned that many who are non-White, who are not of the privileged dominant social group (whether white, rich, Christian, heterosexual, but for the purposes of this post, mainly white) think on their race all the time, judging whether it has any bearing on their present situation or interactions with others.  I began to see what had been hitherto hegemonic and to understand how, and what bearing the history of race relations had on current cultural and socioeconomic conditions and the complex nuances within.  From anthropology I understood the important debunking of biological race and the power of socially constructed race, but Women’s Studies illuminated its complex existence in this world.

All my life I have had the ability to hide, to blend into the group or the background.  Nothing I do or am makes me stand out.  I am what everyone expects me to be.  One reason I wanted Peace Corps to send me to Africa was because I wanted to change that.  I wanted to have the situation flipped, to experience what it is to be in the minority, the inability to hide, to know what it is to have race in my face—everyday.  It is wearing, exhausting, trying, and I know, completely different from any other non-White experience.  I can’t compare it to being a minority in the US, because, even here, I am a privileged minority.  Even in a place where I am an intruding foreigner, identifiable to the racial category of those that are historically responsible for Africa’s current situations, I am privileged based on my skin (and to some degree my nationality, but mostly my skin).  It is like a bright neon banner flashing in a dark field.  To have it this way when I am marked with privilege, I can’t imagine the horror to be gazed upon with racial hatred.

But still, being American, and having been ingrained with a 20^th century American history of racial injustice, tension, and the radical correction of it, to be called out to or sought because of my skin color makes me very uncomfortable.  To have this quasi-celebrity status is very unsettling and, I think, very undeserving of such behavior on both sides.

There is a lot to tell you, blog-s-sphere, about my experience of whiteness in Africa and how people react to me based on this very obvious marker.  This subject shall continue.  

Thou Shalt Not Covet My Pawpaw!!

10-21-10

There’s no real beating around the bush about it.  Damanko has given me a nice house.  Three or four generations of volunteers have added their own touches to it, making it that much more….well, better.  Sometimes I feel guilty about this.  I feel guilty that because of who I am, and where I’m from, I get a place to live that is still at better standards than most of the people here.  Of course there are perks here that Americans prefer to have that most Ghanaians really could care less for, but still, I am a participant in what Peace Corps lingo is known as “Posh Corps.”  My counterpart, Kofi, assuages some of this guilt by not begrudging me anything, even though I know my house is in much better shape than his, and by personifying good Ghanaian hospitality for its guests, especially ones that have proved themselves in the past, such as American Peace Corps Volunteers.  I really consider this house almost as much his as mine, since he has poured much of his blood, sweat, and, well, not tears, but energy anyway, into its maintenance and upkeep.  He’s planted trees, painted walls, fed the cat, organized many of the landscaping tasks, helped furnish it, and basically guarded it like a police dog both when volunteers occupied it, and the year its stood vacant.  So, I allow him his indulgence in his very overt protectiveness over the house (and to some extent its occupant).  He is as territorial as a peacock.  The pawpaw has brought this out bright and clear.

I have three papaya trees in this yard (that is enclosed by a gate I can lock, but it’s a hassle to do so), and a fourth one that is not bearing fruit.  Known as pawpaw in many parts of the world, they are apparently very coveted items—as one of my friends said “Because it is Obruni’s (the local word for White Person) pawpaw”.  The fruit is beginning to ripen, and people’s mouths are beginning to water, so to speak.  Each tree can bear as many as 20 great big pawpaws and they must be plucked when ripe.  This means one must either climb the tree (good 10 to 20 or so feet in the air) or get a long stick (of which there are plenty in front of my house) to push one off.  If you don’t “drop” them, they don’t fall, they will just rot on the tree.  Most of them are still green, but edible, and now everyone wants one. 

I let the girls from the sewing school next door drop 6 or 7, some of which I kept, but if I didn’t stop them, they would drop them all.  When I offered Kofi one, his guard flipped up and told me he told them not to do that without him there, otherwise they would drop them all.  At the time I thought, “Goodness it’s just pawpaw, and besides, me and the school’s master were there to make sure they didn’t take them all.”  I asked him what has been done with all the pawpaw in the past, and since the Chief is the landlord, some of it goes to him, which is perfectly suitable.  Several days ago, a couple boys came from the Chief’s wife’s house to ask for a pawpaw or two, and Kofi was here and told them no because there weren’t any ripe ones yet (we dropped some this morning for the Chief’s wife when they had ripened).  Even the Chief’s son has come by to ask for one.  I heard voices and noises in my yard one time, and rushed out to find Kofi’s own wife with a stick in the tree (okay, well, she’s entitled.)  Two days ago I was talking to my sister when I heard some noise in my yard and caught a boy red-handed with a stick in his hand trying to drop a pawpaw.  He promptly ran off.  Even just now, as Kofi and I rounded a corner, we saw a posse of young boys around my gate and a stick behind the wall sticking up into the pawpaw tree.  “See,” Kofi told me, “this is why you need to start locking the gate when you leave.”  (I always lock the house but get lazy with the gate except when I travel.  I was only gone a couple hours.)    Then he donned his police persona, took off at a dead run and scattered the boys.  He puffed up (which always brings to mind an cat on the offense all arched and hair standing on end) in the very particular way Ghanaians do when they get angry at someone in order to tear them a new one, so to speak; and had some choice words for the boy (yes, the very same boy I previously caught—most unlucky at thieving, poor kid) he caught with the stick.  Kofi is not a big guy, but when he summons the authority he has as an older youth exercising power over a younger one, I’m sure he looked humongous and scary. 

Watching Ghanaian anger is very fascinating and quite entertaining as well.  Most of it is display.  It reminds me of when I worked at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute at my university.  Whenever we went into the viewing area of the chimps’ enclosure, they would “display” to us, claiming the small space they inhabited as their home, and communicating to us that we were intruding upon it.  We were there on their terms.  The displays asserted their dominance over us by puffing themselves up to make themselves look bigger, quick and determined pacing, and displays of strength and vocal volume.  It could go from calm to full display in 0 to 5 seconds, and be over just as quick.  The chimps weren’t really angry or upset, they were showing us their power.  If they can display enough of that power to scare you away, then they win.  Ghanaian anger is much the same.  It can puff up quickly, and be gone just as fast.  There is yelling, furrowed brows, fast words, intense eye contact, and broad gestures.  Same ingredients of the chimps’ displays, but expressed incredibly differently.  Ghanaians don’t use politeness as a mode of interacting and resolving conflicts that Americans do until there the anger shows itself for real.  There is rarely any real rage, whoever has the strongest presence of anger and argument wins.  Yelling and broad gesticulating (minus the presence of any real anger) is also an indicator of seriousness.  If one party is quietly listening, displaying nothing, then the other party feels he is not being taken seriously.  This is especially evident in Kofi because he doesn’t see a lot of gray, and when he makes an opinion about something, he will defend it tooth and nail.  Any admonitions against it strikes him personally and against his rigid sense of what is right, honorable and the proper course of things.  And so leads him to his intense protectiveness.  “This is your first warning” he was saying as I got there, “I catch you again, I will punish you thoroughly” (which could mean he could haul him home for a beating or even off to the police station).  Stealing is a grave offense in Ghana.  Stealing even small things is not a misdemeanor.  For many transgressions, one can go to the police, but the Chief or any official elder can withdraw the case and settle it in the community.  For certain offenses—homicides, rapes, and stealing—they go immediately to court, and more often than not, there is jail time involved.  That probably would not happen to this boy, but the important thing I am noting is the rank that stealing has with other grave offenses.  These are the things I learn while hanging out at the “police station”.  J

Still, I can’t help but wonder if there is something more complicated behind this boy trying to get at my pawpaw.  Things are usually more complicated than they appear on the surface.  But even so, be careful who you mess with.  I might have to sick my Kofi on you.

Second Edition of Kristi's Ongoing Conversations with Herself: Am I "Rich"?

Before reading ask yourself the following:

Are you rich? 

Is Africa poor? 

What characteristics determine whether one (individual or country) is rich or poor?

Really think about it.

I am white.  Most of you already know that.  My body is like a flashing neon sign in a dark field in Africa.  But I will save a discussion on race until the next Kristi’s Ongoing Conversations with Herself.  For right now I will say that here, for most people here, White = Rich, unequivocally.  So, I ask, what does “rich” mean?

My current hypothesis is that most Americans, and indeed the rest of the West, determines wealth solely based on material possessions—the accumulation of Stuff.  If you have a large bank account, you are obviously rich.  Okay, but bank accounts are not overly visible displays of wealth, so wealth really is determined by what one can purchase with that large bank account.  As a result we have established culturally certain kinds of possessions that immediately display wealth and, therefore, success.  They are things such as: electronic gadgets (trendy ones such as Apple products and entertainment technologies), clothes (including shoes), vehicles, and living structures, just to name a few.  These key things have been established as markers of wealth, however, just because one has them doesn’t mean they are wealthy.  Americans have mastered the art of looking rich without being so.  We have milked the practice of borrowing unnecessary amounts of money to its utmost.  Our inability to manage debt has allowed us to indulge in this image without the meat to back it up.  So, how does this translate to Ghana and my experience in it?

A history of unregulated giving and limited interactions with people from the outside, many people in Africa associate white people with lots of possessions, which must mean they are rich.  This leads to regular experience of children (and even old men) chanting “Give me small money, give me small money” as I pass.  Many even assume that because I am there, Peace Corps will bring them money (and maybe jobs?) which is the antithesis of PC.  This image extends to a blanket stereotype of America in general.  Several people I have talked to have been generally shocked to learn there are “poor” people in the US.  That there are homeless people, and people who can’t afford to eat.  To them, America is a land of milk and honey.  If they can only get there, their problems will go away.  I try to tell them that No, they don’t go away, they only change.  I also try to tell them that even though Americans (even low-income Americans) make more money than the average Ghanaian, but we incur many more expenses than they do.  There are so many more bills to pay!

The West possesses most of the imaging and idea-generating power in this globalized world.  For generations, Africa has been told by White travelers, development workers and missionaries that they are poor and need to be saved.  This same Western voice has said so because its sole marker of wealth has been cash flow.  If you can’t make or spend money, you are poor.  So Africans must be poor, and we must find ways to increase their cash flow so they can be rich, and their problems will go away.  It’s become a part of the cultural consciousness in many places.  So let’s mess this straight and narrow line up a little.

What is poverty?  Ghana, like any nation on earth, has its problems, but starvation isn’t one of them.  People don’t make a lot of money, but they can afford to feed themselves and their children, buy cloth to make beautiful clothes, afford electricity when the infrastructure permits its existence, travel small when they need to, etc.  Everyone has a cell phone (and some of them are really nice too).  Some own motorbikes.  But their houses are falling apart.  They can’t always afford school fees.  Children may go around in tattered clothes, but that does not mean they don’t bath or have nice clothes for church.  I have met many Ghanaians who are well educated and working hard to improve the quality of life in Ghana.  Opportunities and capacity are existent here, maybe just not as abundantly as in America.  But then, America isn’t always the Land of Equal Opportunity it strives to be.  Gross inequities exist everywhere in the world, they just manifest differently in different places.

So I wonder if the real discussion about causes of wealth and poverty, and their definitions, don’t exist so much at the relative individual scale, but perhaps through governments.  I am not rich in my country, and I’m not really any richer here.  I don’t have an income, my bank account is miniscule, but my safety nets are richer.  My government will pay for my healthcare for the next two years (though not when I actually go home) and I have a safe home to go to should something unspeakable happen here.  Even the poorest Americans have access to certain amenities (like running water) because the infrastructure has been established to facilitate and support that.  Does that make me richer than Ghanaians?  Sure Ghanaians may not have as much stuff, and the children may not have toys, but don’t we complain that too many Things have corrupted our youth?  Don’t we complain about the hours young Americans spend in front of the TV, Playstation, computer, etc?  Children here possess a freedom American children don’t.  They can roam safely.  They are able to socialize well with their peers.  They contribute to the maintenance of the household (by sweeping, fetching water, running errands, etc).  They have time to be children, to do leisure activities of their choice without being overscheduled with a hundred extracurricular activities.  So, in this light, the children don’t seem so “poor” do they?

Ghanaians are rich in time.  They have the time for leisure, the time to do nothing, the time to wait, the time to sit and chat with their neighbors, their friends, their sisters.  They have the time to properly greet everyone they pass.  They are not running from appointment to appointment, never claim to be too busy to do something, not too busy ferrying their kids to different activities that they can’t cook a proper meal.  In Time, I’d say Americans are very poor.

Many volunteers, upon leaving for their service, are bombarded with well wishers complimenting them on the unselfish decision and an admiration of a perceived dedication to “helping those poor people.”  This makes my skin crawl, because it implies to me that the person believes people here don’t have the power, the ability, or the capacity to help themselves, that they are powerless, which is not true.  Service in Peace Corps is every bit as selfish as it is unselfish.  We often get more than we give. 

My argument is not that there is no such thing as a rich person or a poor person, or that it only exists in relativity.  My argument is that when you look on someone as a rich person or a poor person (or a group of people) you should ask yourself what is contributing to that judgment.  What visual (or other) indicators is making you judge this way?  And what is your reaction to it?  Maybe wealth and poverty exist in other realms of life besides just monetarily and materially.  If that is so, there are many cases, I’m sure where Ghana is richer than the US.

Thus Far

So what have I done for the last month in Damanko?  To recall it, it feels like “not much” though I suppose that’s not really true.  In a nutshell, I’ve really just been trying to feel at home in the place, make myself a presence in the town, and observe alllllllll I can.  My days are not really filled with tasks, yet somehow the days pass.  In the mornings, I like to walk to the bridge over the river and watch the fishermen go out in their boats.  It is the end of the rainy season, so the river has swollen to twice its normal size.  Its flood plains have increased more than anyone can remember; it’s taking farm crops and submerging the water intake (which has been waiting to work, but that’s another story).  For all its destructiveness, it’s still beautiful.  On Wednesdays I go to the town’s clinic to help with the baby weighings.  In order to monitor malnutrition, the government of Ghana instituted Child Welfare Days throughout the country.  Once a month mothers take their children from newborns to four years old on a designated day to have them weighed, registered with the state for birth certificates, and given childhood immunizations.  All these things are recorded and kept in every child’s individual health book.  If a child is underweight, the nurse counsels the mother or refers her to a bigger clinic. This is a chance for me to get to know the staff at the clinic (all 5 of them!) and to see and be a presence to the women in the community.  Other times, I may walk down to the police barrier at the end of town to get to know the other police people since I have an in there with my counterpart anyway.  I might sit with the apprentices at the sewing school next door to my house and try to learn Likpakpaln from them or just chat with Simon, the teacher.  Other days I might travel a short distance to Kpassa or Nkwanta—bigger towns with local government people who have an affect in Damanko without being there.  Or I might devour half a book, or watch the kittens romp in the garden, or take a nap, or do a crossword puzzle.  Who knows?  

Zen Buddhism and Ghana?

9/31/10

In order to retain one’s sanity here, one must have an interesting mix of Buddhist outlook and an incredibly fine tuned attitude of flexibility.  From my very meager understanding and brushes with Buddhism, its main appeals to me have been the lifelong dedication to total enlightenment and a near constant analysis to all earthly impacts on the purity of a person’s soul or existence.  This often leads to a vow of poverty, a disavowal of attachment to all earthly things, a removal of the temptation of material possessions and desires, because to focus your life on the accumulation of Things and a selfish attachment to objects hinders your enlightenment and your ability to be your best self. (did I just throw in a dash of Oprah?)  Oddly enough, Ghana is testing my Buddhist abilities, and creating some where I had none.  Nothing is sacred, safe, or reliable here (okay well sometimes it is, the trick is, you just don’t know when it is or will be reliable—the reliability is unreliable, weird).  Ghana, the Peace Corps, is hard on stuff, hard on desires.  One must not rely heavily on one object, one course of action, because it will inevitably collapse—or change.  One must have an arsenal of paths, possibilities, plans, and back up plans that can be inserted at the drop of a hat, or, three days before.  Everything I have been attached to has been mangled in some way (and I’ve only been here 4 months!).  Every eagerly awaited visit, meeting, or promise that “I will definitely be there” has faltered in some way and come about by a different route.  Clothes you love will eventually become rags from the sweating and washing (or otherwise asked for by a random person).  Electronics will be fried by the voltage.  That bottle of wine you can’t wait to drink will break during rough transit.  The packages you eagerly await sit idly waiting to be delivered.  The boy whose visit you’ve been eagerly awaiting and expected on this day can’t get there for three or four more days.  Ghana tests my unhealthy attachment to anything.  When first I got to site, I was giddy to find an electric tea kettle left for me by previous volunteers.  In the last couple years, tea has been my comfort and indulgence through long papers and dry textbooks.  I had tea a whole three weeks before the kettle died.  All through training I looked forward to breaking out of my host family and cooking for myself once again.  Most PCVs cook with a pair of burners hooked up to a propane tank.  When I got to site, I found mine empty and a propane shortage throughout Ghana.  I still don’t have gas (although I sent off this week to be filled; there’s finally gas in Accra).  After a couple weeks at site, I finally cleaned the store room and found, quite unexpectedly, a rice cooker!  That made my day, and I could use it make several things other than rice!  Alas, I used it a whole three times before the voltage melted it.  (Luckily, however, when I thought all hope was lost, the local appliance guy was able to resurrect it by replacing a wire—even the death of appliances is unreliable; but I had to give the tea kettle a burial.)  Even the presence of a voltage regulator doesn’t guarantee anything.  I forgot my computer’s power cord at the PC office, and the arduousness of Ghanaian traveling doesn’t allow me to return easily to retrieve it.  After years of using the computer everyday (or even every few days since coming to Ghana), I haven’t turned on the computer in a month.  Also the battery has died and can’t seem to charge itself when plugged in.  The precious moringa trees that provide medicine and shade in my yard get eaten by goats because the lock on the gate doesn’t work.  The garden I’ve been excited to plant for a month still lies empty because the seeds are in a package that sits in the Tamale PC office waiting to be retrieved (along with the power cord).  The project I was really excited to start work on might not happen, or at least wasn’t as I imagined it.  Ghana tests to the limit my unhealthy attachment to Things and makes sure I don’t want anything too much.  Truthfully, though, the problem isn’t that things don’t happen at all or that this single treasured item breaks and isn’t replaceable (I left all the irreplaceables in boxes at my Grandpa’s house).  Things get done.  Things will happen.  Other objects will function to fill a desired role (tea water prepared in the rice cooker!), just not on your schedule or at least how you plan, thought, or unconsciously assumed it would happen.  There just might be an incredible (and previously believed insurmountable) amount of waiting involved.  Waiting requires (hopefully breeds?) patience.  Flexibility is Patience’s kissing cousin.  It’s also a survival mechanism.  If you can’t “roll with the punches” you will surely dies—death by implosion of undirected frustration.  Patience, Flexibility, and Letting Things Go—the tenets of Peace Corps Buddhism.

A History of Development: First Edition of Kristi's Ongoing Conversations with Herself

8/22/10

So, I’ve been meaning to write this entry for ages, but not sure how to do it.  But thanks to my mom, I have a spark.  And a fun metaphor.

Let’s contemplate this well-used proverb:

“If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day; if you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.”

We’ve all heard this little proverb a million times.  It’s one of those clichés that has been repeated so much, we’ve lost where it comes from or why it came to be in the first place.  So, I’m about to rip it apart in good old analytical form as the academic world has pounded into me over many years.

The history of development can be painted by this proverb.  In post-WWII times, colonial empires began to break down, and new countries—who had for generations been propped up, created, and consequently messed up by outside colonial powers—began to gain independence; many of these countries were in Africa.  During this era, when much of the world was rebuilding itself, the West turned its gaze not only on itself, but on these new countries as well.  These new countries were categorized as poor and in need, not having the ability to fend for themselves and in need of outside help.  In truth, many countries asked for such help, not being given two legs to stand on after the dissolution of colonial governments and already operating on a Western notion of riches, success, and modernization.  So, many argue, with the need for “development,” a new colonizing project began. 

So, the West began “giving men fish.”  Lots and lots of it, because these poor souls needed help and aid to combat their dire poverty.  It came from governments, from churches, from missionaries, from organization with private donations, and yet, the problem didn’t go away.  This “fish” could have been anything from food to clothes to technology to latrines.  People were still hungry.  Enough fish couldn’t be given.  The “development experts” scratched their heads and realized, well, if we give them the tools to do it themselves, surely that will solve the problem.  So, they gave the people fishing poles.  Lots and lots of them.  They gave them fishing poles that were high powered for optimum fish yield, made of the best state-of-the-art material and heavy duty line.  They forgot, though, to teach the people how to use them, so they ended up as measuring sticks or trophies or as status symbols.  So, the experts designed teaching seminars and sent in the best knowledge to show the men how to use it, but they went back after a year and found the poles collecting dust and the people still hungry and fish-less.  Why?  Well, the mechanical reel broke on one and the line was lost on another.  But who knew how to fix it?  How could one get more line?  The broken part costs $1 in America, but we can’t get it in Cambodia.  We have to import it and that costs a whole month’s wages for that one lonely fisherman.  And the people were taught how to use them, but not how to fix them if they broke.  So the experts designed poles made from locally available materials and decided to diversify tools—they give the people nets as well.  Still, they go back after a few years and the tools are used less than what was expected.  Why?  It turns out they have only given the tools to the men who then sell the fish for cash, but it is the women who do most of the fishing to feed the household.  So, they give the women poles and nets and show them how to use them.  Still, there are some people fishing and fishing well with great tools and knowledge, but it has not caught on like the experts thought it would.  Why are people still hungry?  Turns out there’s a cultural taboo against eating this particular kind of fish.  It’s believed to create impotence and infertility.  So the experts provide scientific evidence to the contrary, but it’s met with confused looks and raised eyebrows.  “Well, maybe not for you, White Foreigner, but for us _____ people, it has always been so.”  So now we are at a crossroads.  Chip away at the cultural belief, or find a different, equally viable source of food?

This handy little “teach a man to fish” proverb, when a metaphor for development, is rife with hidden assumptions.  First, the assumption is that the man is hungry and unable to feed himself properly.  Therefore, someone outside must give him food or teach him to feed himself.  He is a man to be saved.  Second, given that the man really is hungry, fish is going to solve all his hunger problems.  They ignored why the man was hungry in the first place (drought or politically unequal distribution of food?) and the circumstances that led him to be hungry.  When “development” first began as an industry and a field, it was thought that increasing productivity, capital and economy would solve all the poverty problems.  If people could only make more money, they could buy all the solutions to their needs.  Good ole trickledown economics and the American notion of purchasing power.  If we can only increase their cash flow, other sectors will naturally improve—education, health, gender equity, civil unrest, political instabilities, social welfare... Because they would be able to purchase all these things and carry more power with their money.  Third assumption:  the man is the one who fishes.  Oddly enough, Western aid has favored giving men all the tools for development from education to farm equipment because they are the obvious breadwinners right?  Women may actually provide all the household labor, but all that was needed was for men to make more money.  Women’s inclusion in development programs up until the 1980s was purely as baby machines.  Development institutions never saw the actual labor that women do in agriculture or the informal business market.  They were using their own cultural lens when distributing development: the solution to underdevelopment and poverty was to transform it into a modern patriarchal system.  We are still working—25 years later—to properly resist this type of development.  The inclusion of women into development and their participation in it has its own history and ideas, beliefs, and critiques.  That will be the subject of another post.  The fourth assumption is that by teaching a man to fish, these skills are sustainable for a lifetime.  What happens if he fishes too much and then all the fish are gone?  What happens if there’s a drought and the fish don’t come?  What if he dies before being able to pass the fishing knowledge on to someone else?

So where is the field of development today?  I’d say these three buzzwords cover it pretty accurately:  Environment:  Now that we’ve taught the people to fish, they are overfishing, and there is too much strain on the environment.   Gender:  We must make sure we include the women in everything!  Sustainability:  Will they continue this after we leave?  How long can the West prop up the non-West?   In order for it to be sustainable, whatever tools, skills, or knowledge we give them must be already congruent with the lifestyles they lead.  This is Peace Corps’ favorite buzzword.  Sustainability.

In a previous post, I linked to my friend Emma’s blog because she had already done a good job of explaining Peace Corps’ approach to development and why we think it is different, and, hopefully, more successful.  Development is a long, arduous process with no straight forward answers about how to make people’s lives better—especially in a cross-cultural context.  It also has no clear steps about how one place should develop.  Contrary to popular belief, development is not linear.  It moves forward and backward, and at times, from side to side.  After 60+ years of development theory and practice, we still don’t have it right.  But we keep trying to make it so, because what else are you going to do?  The best we can do is to learn from our mistakes, and that doesn’t happen unless we continue to look critically and analytically at what we are doing so we can make new solutions.  The development process is long and slow, frustrating and confusing.  We, as Peace Corps volunteers or NGO workers, are only a teeny tiny piece in the monstrous apparatus of development.  One can see why, after discovering the past trespasses of previous development paradigms, how it has indeed made much of the world poorer in many cases, and overwhelmed with the knowledge of how the richer developed world continues to dump on the underdeveloped world can argue and shout for the complete severance of all contribution to the global South.  It becomes easy to ask: Why are we doing this if we just continue to screw it up and because it’s our fault in the first place?  As a wise professor once told me:  we must not use this information to become paralyzed to inaction.  This knowledge is intended to inform so that we may continually evaluate and change our thinking, our views, our processes, and, hopefully, the outcomes.  We live in a globalized world.  Country boundaries mean less and less as our physical and information travel increases.  Everything we do, together as a planet, affects everyone else.  If a child is malnourished in Ghana, it affects me in America.  Even if there are malnourished children in America.  They affect me too.  Suffering and poverty know no political boundaries.  Philanthropy shouldn’t either.

Next on Kristi’s Ongoing Conversations with Herself:  What is poor?  And who says so?

Greeting the Chief

Once I had been in Damanko a couple of days, Kofi took me to “greet the chief,” who is actually his uncle.  Every town and community has a chief and it is proper whenever you are in their community, to seek them out and say hello and what you are doing in their community.  Every community we have been in while training, while visiting volunteers or whatever, one of the first things we did was greet the chief.  Though the situation differs due to tribal practices or region, they usually proceed in this way: you approach the chief’s compound and seek out either him or one of his elders after having prearranged this meeting.  All official chief business takes place in a round concrete room with a large pedestal on which sits his official seat and that of the Queen Mother.  The individual or group must be “invited in” so once the chief situates himself on the pedestal and sorted out the cloth that drapes him, the group is invited into the round room.  For northern chiefs, the protocol is to squat when you approach and stay that way until he invites you to sit (which isn’t very long).  After the proper greetings of hello and how are you, you tell the chief your name and your purpose for seeing him and being in the community.  You say this to the chief, but he also has “a linguist” who repeats, translates, or summarizes what you just said so the chief doesn’t have to question in case he doesn’t understand something.  They also say the linguist is responsible for “polishing” the language—using the right words/language in the presence of the chief.  It is also proper to bring the chief a gift, usually something small like kola nuts or alcohol which you then present, especially if you need something from him—permission, knowledge, etc. 

Armed with these experiences, Kofi and I went to greet the chief.  Now I know for the Konkomba people (who is the predominant tribe in this village) their chief system is considerably less formal that most of other tribes in Ghana.  In this chief’s round room, sits his pedestal and throne and Queen Mother seat, but also a stack of DVDs, a TV and DVD player, a ceiling fan, and probably 20 large burlap sacks of groundnuts.  Three women were in there watching TV and shucking groundnuts, much like one would shuck peas.  Kofi and I sat down in the plastic yard chairs that are everywhere in Ghana, and a few minutes later, the chief came.  We squatted as he came in the room and he sat on the edge of his pedestal.  We exchanged greetings and I told him my plans for the next few months.  There was no linguist (I’m not sure this chief has one) so Kofi was translating, though I know the chief must speak at least as good English as Kofi does.  After that we presented him with the small gift of alcohol.  Now when alcohol is given to a chief it is usually the locally brewed gin.  It’s very strong and used for ritual blessings and the like, so when I asked Kofi what I should bring to the chief, he dithered then eventually said “Bring him a beer.”  The conversation went something like this:

“You mean like Star or Stone or something?” These are the Ghanaian brewed beers. 

“Yes.  Bring him a Star.”  Star is about like PBR, I think.  “And a biscuit.” 

“Kofi, are you telling me I should bring the chief a Star and Obama biscuits?”  I nearly died laughing.  Biscuits are cookies here, and because Obama’s name is on everything, there are Obama biscuits everywhere.  They’re small wheat type cookies that taste little sweet and how I imagine dog food would taste.  We didn’t get the biscuits, but we bought a Star on the way and gave it to him, still in the plastic bag.  The chief knew before this greeting that I was here, and has been expecting me to come for a long time and seems very excited for me to get started.  He’s rather young—in his forties—and pretty easy-going.  He was wearing a yellow anti-malaria shirt and denim jeans.  I think we’ll get along just fine.

On the Road to Damanko

8/17/10

So this is it.  I am sitting here in my new house in Damanko.  Now the work begins for real.  I have hit the deep end of the water now.  It seems to me that training has been an act of removing a series of safety nets one by one until you’re finally left alone, standing on your own.  From what I have now observed and experienced, Peace Corps training creates a continuum for us new trainees to move along from “fresh off the boat” to “fully integrated.”  When I first arrived, I was enmeshed in a large group of people in my same situation—here for the same purpose, from the same country/culture, and similar walks of life.  Though we all came from different experiences and backgrounds, we all became comfortable in our shared backgrounds and sense of purpose that stood in stark contrast to our new surroundings.  Peace Corps kept us more or less isolated, restricted our activities on our own pretty severely, carefully monitored our food, provided for much of our transportation by private Peace Corps car, and made sure every place we stayed for any length of time was highly fortified for our protection.  And all around treated us real delicate-like.  At first it was a little aggravating, having been used to striking out and exploring things on my own, but they repeatedly told us it was for our safety, and for our comfort, so as not to overwhelm us too soon and increase somebody’s risk of terminating early.  After a time of careful isolation, time used to get to know our fellow American and develop bonds we would use for the next two years, Peace Corps gave us a little language skill and sent us out in groups to travel to a current volunteer’s site as our first introduction to life and operation in Ghana.  Upon return we were placed into homestays which incurred a higher degree of culture shock than previously encountered, but was still closely monitored by Peace Corps.  The homes are carefully chosen, the family members instructed on how to properly cook for their new American children, and language and cultural facilitators placed in the villages themselves, should there be any friction between the American, their homestay family, and the integration into Ghanaian life.  Still, I was not far from my fellow volunteers, my trainers, or other support staff and still spent most of my day with these people while we were receiving the necessary skills for the next two years.  After a time in homestay, getting used to living at a different standard, getting used to a different rhythm of life and family structure, but still having an escape in my own room and with my American counterparts, we were introduced to our assigned Ghanaian counterparts and given a chance to visit the place we would spend the next two years.  On my second opportunity traveling in Ghana, I was still not required to do it on my own, and was guided by people who have been navigating this scene their entire lives.  After site visit, there was technical training at a different village, more remote, more rural, more underdeveloped before going back to homestay and preparing for the official swearing-in.  Afterwards, when they have fully grown their new volunteers, Peace Corps stands at the door and waves good-bye, wishing you luck, and promising to be there at the most critical times, but otherwise will remain at an arm’s length to let you succeed and falter by yourself.  You’re welcome back anytime, but your bedroom will now be converted into the craft room.  And with that, they send us off to our sites.  As many of us were traveling the same direction—through the Volta Region—we could begin travel as a small group, and one by one as we got farther, people would drop off, making the group smaller and smaller.  I am one of the furthest away, so one of the last to get to site.  It has taken me two days, but even so, I arrived here with another new volunteer, my friend Nhial, who waited here until his counterparts in the next village could come pick him up signaling the real end of training.  As he left, I suddenly had this vision of my last safety net being surreptitiously pulled away.  It reminded me of one single moment after moving to college for the first time.  When my parents walked out of my dorm after moving me in, the transition to adulthood hit me for real.  I was on my own now and completely responsible for everything I do and don’t do.  One safety net right after the other has been peeled away as training has progressed, until now I am here in Damanko, by myself, and starting from nearly scratch.  I know some language, and know some of what to expect; I have a good APCD (Peace Corps acronym meaning Boss) and good counterparts I can rely on.  These are safety nets I still have, they are just further below me and I have farther to fall before I hit them.  I am not too overwhelmed by the newness of it all anymore, but it is still jarring to finally be the only American anywhere around and without the comfort of time and experience in a place.  It’s definitely a challenge that I want to look back on and be proud I conquered.  It just takes time.

Anyway, that said, I have a long, interesting, and exciting road ahead of me.  I have a great house for starters.  Housing is provided by the communities that request volunteers and have to meet certain Peace Corps requirements, like: a concrete or plaster structure with two locked rooms, exclusive latrine and bath room, and a place to cook.  My house is my own little Fortress of Solitude.  I am quite amazed at its presence and functionality.  I have my own small compound, which can be closed off with a locked door, and that, in turn, is surrounded by a plastered wall with a closeable and lockable gate.  I have two large rooms, one for sitting and one for sleeping, my own latrine and bath room, and a kitchen room with a storage room.  I am the fourth generation Peace Corps Volunteer to be here, so I have the benefit of piggy-backing on previous volunteers’ accumulations.  It’s quite the Peace Corps jackpot really.  Others I know that are at brand new sites have only the rooms and the bed and must otherwise acquire their household needs (which PC does give us money for).  This means I have furniture, a furnished kitchen with propane to cook with (which is proving a task to get currently since there is an apparent nationwide shortage at the moment), even drapes and flooring.  In the middle of my compound is a vine that reaches up to the roof and provides a nice canopy in the small courtyard.  I’ve called it my White Tree of Gondor.  My house sits on the edge of the market space, a space which every six days is overflowing with people, merchandise, meanderers, loud voices, vehicles, livestock—the chaotic bustle life which comes like a wave and splashes against my wall, flowing around the sides of it like a tide.  However, once past that gate, the world washes away (well, except for the noise), and I have a respite from the stares we PCVs refer to as “being in the fishbowl.”  This is a rare privilege for a PCV, and I hope that the temptation of hiding that the house offers does not impede my work or my integration.  I go out in short spurts at time, allowing myself to take it slow, because who says I shouldn’t?  I go out once or twice to buy food for me—and the cat. 

Damanko sits nestled in the curve of the River Oti that feeds into Lake Volta.  Its main social center is marked by a two story green mosque next to a filling station.  Throughout the day, the call to prayer rings out above the chatter and clatter and hubbub of life in the town.  Behind the mosque is a large open space surrounded by small enterprise sheds making small businesses.  This space holds the Damanko market every six days, but it is so large that it snakes along through improvised alleyways and into a different market space behind with shelters make of rudimentary logs and thatch.  The food sellers tend to be in the open, laying their produce on burlap sacks separating them from the dirt covered ground.  They sell tomatoes, oranges, garden eggs (which taste a lot like eggplant), hot peppe (not pepper, but “pep-pay” as it is locally pronounced), brofut (fried cornbread balls—yum), seeds, beans, fish, okra, onions, and some other things.  The back space is left for clothes and cloth sellers and other ready-made products. 

I have been amusing myself the last week or so by walking all over.  I walk to the large steel bridge that crosses the river and watch the men go out in their long fishing boats, paddling along and setting their nets, their silhouettes dark against the bright river.  I’ve walked to the clinic which is just behind the many school buildings which are empty and quietly peaceful while the students are still on vacation.  The clinic sits out in the bush outside the hubbub of town with a beautiful view of the valley.  It beautiful and quiet place to heal, I think.  Right next to my house in the market square is Grace’s hair salon.  It is only a room with chairs, hair products, and a couple of mirrors.  I sit with her while she does women’s hair trying to coax her 13 month old daughter to like me.  Connected to my house is another small building which holds a sewing school.  In Ghana, if you don’t buy Western clothes, you buy yards of cloth and take it to a seamstress or a tailor who will sew a dress or shirts and trousers for you.  This is a trade many men and women participate in, and next door to me is a government run school.  It’s very informal and the teacher and I get on really well.  The girls there enjoy helping me brush up on my language skills.  I watch the teacher sew men’s trousers.  Man, I never realized how complicated they are.  Sheesh.  Now that I’ve been here a little while, the people who were friends with the previous volunteers (a married couple from Ohio who left a year ago) have started to stop by and make themselves known.  Young Joseph comes by in the afternoons and though he’s only 13, I think he knows everything about the plants around here.  Rebecca comes to sell me bread.  She is my “tea bread” hook up, and I’m happy for it.  She’s really smiley and happy and I liked her immediately.  The bread she sells pays for her school fees (you have to pay to attend high school in Ghana) and hopes to go to nursing school afterwards.

So slowly I am settling in and beginning the slow process of integrating.  Kofi and I finally got the leaks fixed in the roof and now I can begin to organize my things.  If only I could get that darn propane so I can cook something.