Fun with pronunciations

Addai:  I need to go buy some sauce.

Me:  Sauce?  (thinking that's an odd thing for a Ghanaian to think he wants to buy.)  Like, what kind?

Addai:  For my uniform.

Me:  Huh?  (as I watch him point to his boots.)  OH!  SOCKS!
        (Then laughing hysterically.)  I thought you said something totally different.

Addai:  It's my British pronunciation.

Me:  Uh-huh.  Sure.  And the fact that you're a native Twi speaker has nothing to do with it...

New Year's or---Prom?

Forget Christmas—New Year’s is where it’s at.  That’s the big party around here.  I think it was especially festive this year because January first was close to a Sunday, so they could stretch the party out for longer.  See, the first Sunday of the new year is really the important day, because church offers people an opportunity to get all gussied up in their new clothes.  Gift exchange is not really a part of these holiday traditions, but there is a sense of obligation for somebody (men to women and vice versa, parents to children) to buy at least one set of new clothes or dresses.  Tailors and seamstresses have been burning the midnight oil for days getting all their projects done.  And of course, if a girl gets a new dress, she has to get her hair done too, so the hairdressers have also been weaving their fingers raw.  It’s like everyone’s getting ready for prom or somethin’—complete with dance late into the night.  So Sunday afternoon/evening comes around (or Monday or Tuesday) and suddenly you see all these really neatly dressed people, and no naked children.  Everyone’s just walking around town—through the dust no less—visiting one another, children forming packs of obnoxious, firecracker-throwing hellions (though dressed up nicely in their miniature suits and sunglasses), showing off their new clothes.  Young men have new ornately embroidered jeans and sports t-shirts plus bling—they look like they just hit up a Zumiez store.  The girls and women have traditionally designed and tailored dresses from Ghanaian print fabric, and small children are in anything that looks new and clean.  Dresses, new clothes, hairdos, jewelry, and dance party at the end.  It does feel eerily similar to prom.  

One stop shopping!!

Boy it’s hard to write about something interesting about your day when you feel like there’s nothing really grand to it, just a sequence of small, mind-occupying events.  I try to invoke the spirit of Bill Bryson and channel his style of taking the mundane quirkiness of experiencing the everyday in your travels and turning it into a quippy and witty satire that elicits a lot of low chuckles, but some things you just can’t force no matter how much you try.  I walk around slightly frustrated that almost everything I see would not be mundane to those who don’t see this every day, and yet somehow I’m missing the spark to describe it—the wacky connections I could make of something unfamiliar to something familiar, finding something seemingly unrelated that somehow ties a whole string of interesting ideas together, the event or idea that serves as a catalyst for striking understanding into a previously only theoretically understood idea (I’ve been trying to write a post about gender for weeks), or even just the self-deprecatingly hilarious cultural misstep.  Have I just not been putting myself out there enough?  Taking enough risks?  It’s very tiring to endlessly contemplate whether you’re doing as well as you absolutely possibly could (a rather unsavory left-over from graduate school—I have so much to do, am I using every minute to its utmost capacity?), and yet somehow compelled to wallow there in that land of endless self-evaluation. 

Anyway, so here’s my self-assigned writing exercise for the day.  Since today was Market Day, I will attempt to describe the market.  Market happens every six days.  People (mostly women) come from all around to sell their goods here and in other towns on their market days, but today they will arrive with their goods in enormous burlap sacks which they’ve stacked on cargo trucks and which they will sit on top of in order to get here.  Once here, everyone has their place, or at least, their section.  At first glance, like much of what you see in Ghana, you wouldn’t think there’s a system or any order, but as you get used to it, a pattern begins to emerge.  Humans can’t do anything with any kind of regularity or organization if there is no pattern; nothing is repeated if chaos reigns.  It looks like chaos to the untrained observer because we lived in a very obsessive compulsive and organized world in the States.  All vendors have their special means of transport, the areas they’re assigned to set up in, equipment in which to do so, and finally, the most taken for granted of all, a prescribed or designed way by the organizers of how the consuming/buying/browsing crowd is supposed to wander easily among the vendors.  That last bit is what is really missing from this situation and what, I think, gives the illusion of chaos at first glance.  So what does one see “at first glance”?  Well, if you walk out of my front door, you are standing in the middle of the “clothing market”.  There are piles of clothing laying on burlap mats with small children sitting in the middle of them calling out prices, shirts and trousers on hangers hanging from strings strung up around my wall, and people wandering out between all of them.  Then you come to the three thatched shelters that hold the “livestock market” where one can buy everything from kittens to fowl to goats.  Right next to that are the gari women—the women who sell gari which is dried and powdered cassava, sorta.  Okay, now you’re barely 50 feet from my door and you can walk into the market/lorry station proper.  This is where it gets really hairy, because now we’re in the space where vehicles park, but see, market tends to take place anywhere there’s space, so cars full of people end up driving through crowds of people and bread sellers have to move their tables to allow more cars to park.  Anyway, once you walk past the gari women, there is the yam market on your right, which today is weird because the yam market is usually across the street.  Not sure why they moved it.  Anyway, if once continues to the right up the wide path between buildings you’ll hit what I call “Ghana Costco.”  I call it that because here you can buy many things in bulk—maize, groundnuts, 5 or 6 different kinds of beans, peppers, this nut thing that looks like a seed, more gari, etc.—and for cheap Costco prices!  These women bring their product in large burlap sacks that they probably sat on on their trip into town and pour it out into big piles on their mats, or in big basins.  They then sell it by the bowlful—which, if you’re buying for one, is a freakin’ ton.  Then they’ll “dash” you, just to make sure you get your money’s worth.  However, if you don’t go up the Costco aisle, and you continue straight, you’ll walk into the massive produce market (after passing by the guys selling belts and boxers, feminine smelly things, and the occasional aphrodisiac).  Okay, well, the produce is on the left.  There are mounds of bananas and plaintains, like, 30,000 pounds of them, probably (Harry Chapin [sp?] reference just for you, Mom).  There used to be loads of oranges too, but not so much anymore.  There can be watermelons sometimes, the occasional pineapple, etc.  Keep going straight and you’ll get to the vegetables, continue to the left and you’ll get to the wares—containers, pots, buckets, fans, brooms, baskets.  If you’re looking for vegetables, you find the ladies with the freakin’ enormous woven straw hats selling onions, tomatoes, garden eggs (like miniature yellow eggplants), okro, peppe.  On the right are the women selling printed cloth behind a big bus and behind them men selling bikes and tools and various odds and ends.  Going down the path between the buildings past the men selling women and children’s underwear will lead us to another section of the market that has tables that small log and thatch shelters.  See, everything up to this point has been out in the open.  People come and set up their things in an otherwise wide open space.  They are open to the sun, the rain, the wayward vehicle, everything.  When they are gone, the place is empty.  Here, these structures stay even if they do stand empty a good part of the week.  Anyway, this place is the “cloth and soap market”.  Most of the cloth sellers set up here, as do many of the soap sellers, shoe sellers, and those selling jewelry and knickknacks.  At the very end are people selling dried fish, just for a bit of randomness.  Oh did I mention there are also people wandering about trying to sell things from the tops of their heads too?  Yeah, can’t forget the pure water girls.

So once you see that people set up in the same space every time, and get used to the day-after-Thanksgiving crowds that wander to and fro and anywhere there is space, it doesn’t look so much like chaos.  And wander a few paths away from the market, you’d think you found yourself in a ghost town, cuz nobody’s around.

What's in a Name? (Wow how cliche is this title?)

So here’s a nice little Christmas surprise—my sister’s preggo with #2!  Okay, perhaps not a HUGE surprise (not like the shock I would have if I found out I was pregnant), but nonetheless an obviously pleasant surprise.  Such things always get me thinking about one of those quirky little things I enjoy thinking about—names.  They are curious things when you think about them.  They’re a possession you’ve had your entire life; something that indicates only you.  Names can mean something special, or just sound pretty.  Some are chosen with great care, some are not.  Some are meant to imbibe the spirit of something or someone special or perhaps an event. 

Ghanaians have a very flexible system for names.  Not being completely restricted to official bureaucratic regiments for record-keeping allows for this.  In America, we have a million forms one must fill out in the course of a lifetime.  Your name must fit that formula—First Name, Last Name, Middle Name.  Here you have to figure out which names you were given all those years ago will fit in which spaces, and then there might be a couple other names other people use for you that go unrecorded.  Not necessarily nicknames either.

Tribes have different naming patterns that travel all over Ghana, but I’ll tell you about most Konkomba naming patterns, since I am in Konkomba-land.  Most people have a family name, sometimes it’s the father’s first name, sometimes it’s the father’s last name.  It could even be the grandfather’s name.  And then it could change between school and adulthood.  Women don’t always change to their husband’s name when they get married either.  Many then have a Christian name (or a Muslim one if you are so), and usually take the form of words us Westerners are familiar with—Franklin, Simon, Esther, Georgina, etc.  They’re often Biblical or of desired virtues—Patience, for instance.  Then they have a tribal name (or “local name”) that maybe their family and close friends use, and that I butcher when trying to pronounce.  Then there might be yet another name—your “day of the week” name.  For some reason I don’t know yet, the day of the week you were born on is important enough to warrant a special name.  There is one for every day of the week and for each gender.  I can’t remember them all, but Sunday born is Kwesi for boys and Akosua for girls, Monday is Kwajo and Adua, Tuesday is Kwabena and Abena, Wednesday is Kwaku and Akua, Thursday is Yaw and Yaa, Friday is Kofi and Afia, and Saturday is Kwame and Ama.  This system is traditionally Ashante, but the spread of the Twi language has also spread this practice as well.  This name is useful for newborn babies who often won’t receive names for the first month of life until they have their naming ceremony.  Konkombas have traditional names for certain birth circumstances as well.  Special names for twins, if you were born shortly after a death of a loved one, if your mother or father died during or before your birth, if you were born on the road, and so on.  There are many I don’t know about, I’m sure. 

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, here is tonight’s Top Ten list—my Ghanaian-names-are-awesome list.  It’s better than any you’d find in Utah, that’s for sure.  Perhaps my little niece or nephew-to-be will bear one of them!  ;)

Top Ten Reasons Ghanaian Names are Awesome:

10.  Prince

                I’ve seen Princess too, but not in the same family.  Also, Pricilla is popular too, though it’s been morphed to Prinsla.

9.  Barnabus

                Yeah.  Met a grown man with this name.  Yow.

8.  Godsway

                Also a popular name.

7.  Safety

                Don’t know the story, but thought this woman’s name was interesting.

6.  Courage

                Name of a police officer I once met.

5.  Blessing

                Also seen “Bless” and “Believe”.  Lot to live up to?  I think so.

4.  Comfort

                Another popular name.  This is the name of one of Damanko’s midwives.

3.  Alnice

                Pronounced like it looks—All-Nice.  Don’t you love it?

2.  Wisdom

                Popular male name as well.  This is my supervisor’s name.

And the Number 1 Awesomest Ghanaian Name Ever:

1.    1.   Blossom

Okay, maybe I’m biased because this is the name of Kwesi’s youngest (and my favorite baby in Damanko), but how can you not grin a chuckle a bit when you find out it’s for a baby boy?  Apparently this was a gift from his grandmother.  J

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.