A Day in the Life of a Ghanaian Household

Funerals in Ghana are big celebratory affairs when done properly.  There's a procession, a wake, a burial service, a soothsaying ritual and a celebration afterwards--and the whole proess can number in the days rather than hours--and with lots of pito (fermented guinea corn, tasting vaguely like warm, sweet beer) flowing from numerous calabash bowls in between.  Normally, things are going on much of the day, but since everything comes in it's own time in Ghana, most of the day was spent waiting for this particular funeral's activities to start.  Today was the celebration and the soothsaying part (more about that later), which meant that mostly there was going to be lots of drumming and dancing--Kinachung dancing.  Since the funeral was being hosted by Kwesi's household and the dancing didn't get started until late in the afternoon, I spent most of the day hanging out and observing the activity in his house.  Hence you get: A Day in the Life.

Kwesi, his wife and two young boys live in what's called a compound house.  Think of it as a village apartment building.  Three rectangular buildings surround a large cement courtyard with a wall making the fourth side.  These 3 buildings are split equally into separate rooms with one door opening to the courtyard.  Each of these rooms acts as a sleeping room and quasi-, semi-private living room for each occupying family.  Kwesi's family sleeps all in one room as do the other small families in the compound.  A couple empty rooms act as storage spaces.  Cooking areas, washing areas, playing areas, bathing and latrine areas, are all shared in a desgnated place in the courtyard.  In fact, most life happens in the courtyard; most of life is spent outside.  They even set up the tv outside where everyone can sit around and watch it.  Now this compound is owned by Kwesi's father--who also owns/has built two or three other neighboring compounds to accomodate his ever-largening family.  And I mean VERY. LARGE. Family (especially since his grown children are bringing back spouses and children and so on).  Well, those that are still living in Damanko anyway.  Father Taka, like many other obedient Muslims, has four wives (a tradition Kwesi assures me will probably die with his father's generation--"The young ones, we don't make like that") and 22 children between them (it was fun making Kwesi count), among which Kwesi is the 3rd oldest and the first born of his own mother (who is wife #2).  Twenty-two siblings may seem a lot until you realize the extent of the extended family system.  Many of Father Taka's own brothers live nearby or in his other compounds with their own offspring.  These children are not considered cousins, but complete brothers or sisters.  Sometimes, it's hard to discern who's nuclear and who's not.  But that only matters for my own Western-oriented systematic pigeon-holing of everybody.

Anyway, about as far as I can guess, the people living in particular compound besides Kwesi and his family is his elder brother Joseph and his wife and baby, Kwesi's mother and Wife #1, Kwesi's father, another couple of girls/women/sisters I don't know, and another (unmarried?) brother  There ther are several rooms empty or used for storage, endless streams of children running in and out as well as goats, chickens (and their babies), pigeons, dogs, and Father Taka's tom turkey (I think I'll name him Herman).

So anyway, the Day in the Life started as I started walking towards the house.  Almost as soon as I got out of my house I nearly stumbled upon Mpwon, Kwesi's four-year-old son following Aku, one of the girls in the neighboring house.  Kwesi doesn't like his young son to "roam" far from the house and I knew that he was much further out of bounds than he should have been and I knew they'd be missing him.  Luckily, the little tyke adores me, so I had no problem convincing him to go with me.  Halfway there, he wanted to get on my back, so I obliged and he got a few precious minutes of undivided attention from his neighbors as they stared at little Mpwon on the obroni's back.  As we walked into the house, there was no alarm, just the requisite finger-shaking.  Though he'd been MIA most of the morning, no one was really alarmed because they knew he'd eventually come back and he's in no danger, because, well, it's a village--and a village of which Mpwon is related to half the residents.

So, anyway, after walking in and the greetings finished, I sat down next to Lingamwe, Kwesi's wife, who was in the middle of unraveling hair pieces.  I had just sat down to help her with it, when there was Kwesi's mom with a mug of pito in her hands, insisting that I take some.  Now, I like the stuff, but it gets old on the tongue after a short while, and it would taste much better cold.  So, anyway, I took some, and set to the hair pieces.  The compound looked like it did on any other day, save for the headless goat meat hanging from the rafters in the kitchen area--the morning's wash, including Mpwon's school uniform, hanging from the overhang beams; the roosting hens in the corner of the compound; random make-shift children's toys in the courtyard; the water barrel propped up on an old tire; drying bits of yam, cassava and whatnot drying on the roof; a small girl sweeping out a room; a group of boys sitting around a pot of groundnuts and cracking them; Mpwon playing his favorite motorcycle game where he says "bye-bye", then revs up and runs out of the compound and back again and says "Ayikoooo". 

After a short time, Blossom, Kwesi's two year old son, woke up from his nap and peeked out of the room door at me.  This, of course, prompted an immediately fun game of "peekaboo" of which Blossom never tires.  After a while of this, Lingamwe got up and fetched a bucket of water and set it down in the middle of the compound.  Before I knew it, both boys were naked and ready for their bath (not before Blossom peed on the side of the bucket, however).  I watched as she soaped them both up real good--teeth and all--with the omnipresent Ghanaian scrubby bathing cloth (takes the dirt and, if you scrub hard enough, the top layer of skin right off) and rinsed them off.  Whodda thunk one bucket of water could make two little boys clean?  Afterwards, Mpwon came out of the room with his everyday blue shorts and his favorite pink parka.  Yeah, that's what I said.  I think it was probably 100 degrees that day.  Doesn't faze him though.  After I snapped it up for him, he picked up an old bike tire and rolled it out of the compound (a favorite game for children around here--the rolling tire with the stick thing; it involves lots of running).

Since Blossom was all clean, he wanted to sit on my lap.  I can't resist, so we sat there with the other girls still unraveling hair and talking.  The open fires in the kitchen area were going as women were cooking the mid-day meal and pounding fufu.  I saw Kwesi's mother head out with an empty silver basin and plastic meaning she was headed out to fetch some water.  Lingamwe and another small girl were washing some pile of dishes.  One of brothers came in to collect some eggs from the chickens who made quite a retaliating racket.  All in all, it was a day of some lazy chores, just doing the things that keep a household running.  People (most of them women) work hard, yes, but it's punctuated with breaks of pito-drinking (especially on funeral days), sitting and shelling something, or what have you.  Most of the work takes place in the cool hours of the early morning, and, if they're not at farm, by the time the heat of the day comes around 11 am or so, people are more sluggish and doing less activity until it's time for the Water March at around 4 pm.  Then it cools down some and all the women migrate to the river to fetch water.

So anyway, a Day in the Life.  It wasn't a very active day this one, but maybe now you have a little better idea what one looks like.