Training and Trying out a Ghanaian Life

So now it is time for training.  For two months, we exist in this limbo under the label of “trainee” as we get our heads stuffed with a new language full of foreign sounds that we inevitably butcher and technical skills that must be absorbed and mastered quickly before we get sworn in as full fledged Peace Corps Volunteers.  I am finding, for the first time in my life, that I am beyond prepared for this training, that the skills from graduate school and all the freakin’ theory they crammed into my brain is actually being visibly expressed before my eyes and I am excited that I am able to witness and articulate it without much trouble.  I think that now that I am no longer surrounded by my academic peers, whom I was constantly struggling to keep up with, I feel more free to develop my own ideas and recall with better clarity previous things I have learned.  I also feel I am able to absorb more now that my saturation point has been raised by graduate school.  I can take my time with a text a few pages or a chapter at a time without having to get through the whole thing in a week, AND have some brilliant insight about it.  A friend of mine said to me several months ago: "There's no reason to not be always theorizing why you're there."  I didn't realize how easy it would come this time.  It is invigorating to merge my academic with the real world, and finding out where it fits and doesn't fit.

So for the training stage, our group of 72 has been split by sector and language needs.  We have been grouped by sector (education, Health/Water and Sanitation, Environment, and Small Business) and placed in separate communities for living and training, but all within 10 kilometers of each other.  Every Friday, we come together at the PC “hub” in Kukurantumi for “seminar days” which include medical and safety sessions.  I have been placed in a village called Anyinasin with a family of Ghanaian farmers.  We live in what’s called a compound—an enclosed courtyard that is surrounded by a rectangular building consisting of 6 or 7 rooms and a locked front entrance.  I have one of the rooms and my host parents one of the others.  A couple of the rooms are rented out, one is used for sitting, and the other three are storage or empty.  Most of the social time is spent in the courtyard—that’s where the cooking, the eating, the conversing, the playing, etc takes place.  The bathing space is inside an enclosed wall and the pit latrine is out back.  My host parents have five grown children, three or four of which live down the street in other compounds or living arrangements.  I think two of these children have children and so they make regular visits to grandma’s house.  Prinsla, Grace, Karen, Gladys and Phillippa are always here, though Gladys is the only one who sleeps here.  And though they are small, they can nearly knock me over with their hugs.  Anyinasin is a small community of probably 500 or so, and rather busy and active.  The children roam freely between and among homes entertaining themselves and each other.  Many nights I find myself engrossed in their games and watching their interactions.  It is usually young girls that surround me as their games require no props or items, and they are brilliant at entertaining themselves.  They know dozens of games and songs that require nothing more than their hands and voices and each other.  They spend their days and play time in constant interaction with each other reciting chants, hand clapping games, songs, and dances.  They have their own system for order in a large group and conducting such games.  None shy away from the center nor spend time pouting about a loss.  It’s about the game and the action, not about getting out or winning.  They also break at a moment’s notice to perform some chore or other activity.  They collect water when needed, carry my bags, get a chair, wash dishes, pound fufu, etc without a second thought to the interruption, then go right back to what they were doing.  I think this is the first time I’ve actually enjoyed children.

This is mostly the evening’s activities.  The daytime is taken up by training activities.  For these first two weeks, we are concentrating hard on the language portion of training with only a little technical until after we visit our sites and regroup to focus on the technical.  So, for 4-6 hours a day I am trying to pronounce sounds and make words that my mouth resists.  I am learning likpakpaln (though sounds something like “li-pa-pa”) with two other people in a small church just a hundred yards from my house.  We try to ignore the children that sit at the windows and the door and shout “Obroni, obroni” all day, though our shooing sometimes works.  There are so many languages in Ghana, that most other groups are small as well, though I think likpakpaln is especially rare.  But that is what my village speaks, so there I go.

I am enjoying most of the food, though my host mother tries to feed me way too much.  Three or four times a week I come home to find her or her and one of the other girls pounding fufu for all they’re worth.  Fufu is the quintessential Ghanaian dish made from plantains and cassava and smothered in soup.  They take the plantains and cassava and place it in a big wooden bowl, then take the end of a five foot long stick and pound it till it softens.  Little by little water is added until the plantains and cassava make a thick dough.  The pounding is something to watch though.  Often, the elder woman sits at the bowl while a younger person stands holding the stick and lifting it up a foot or two in the air before bringing it down on the food.  This is repeated over and over, and between pounds, the older woman flips the dough with her hands.  There is definitely an element of trust, rhythm, and experience at work as the fufu is pounded, because if one misses or miscalculates, fingers are smashed.  Once the fufu is pounded into a round soft dough, it is placed in a bowl and the soup, made of ground nuts, palm nuts, or other soup with meat (or fish) is poured over it.  The eater then tears off a piece of the fufu little by little, dips it in the soup, and swallows it whole.  It is good, but dense and filling.  I cannot post a picture now, but I will, since you really should see its process.  Or look it up on YouTube.  I'm sure there's something there....

Tomorrow we are off to see some falls--I can't remember their name--but I am excited to get out into some bush, some nature, the Ghana landscape and feel invigorated by a short hike.  It always helps with my connection to a place.  Don't get me wrong, things are going well, and all that I have given you, Blog-o-sphere, are the good things.  This has definitely been a challenge, even thus far, but a challenge I know I am more prepared for than I would have been three or four years ago.  I know myself better--what my obstacles will be, and the mood stages I will go through--at least nothing will catch me unawares.  It has not been all unicorns and rainbows, but not dark clouds either.  Transitioning is always abrasive and difficult, and integrating even more so, but it's easy to wade through when you know there is light on the other side.