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Published: September 25th 2005
Enuanom maduoo! My friends, good evening from Tamale, Northern Ghana! I have finally found time and mental capacity to attemt to put my past two weeks of experience into words. On Saturday our group of 18 Oburunis (people from beyond the horizon) traveled 7 hours in a huge bus up to the Northern region. Leaving my homestay family was very sad and came too quickly, but it is not good bye forever. I plan to spend a lot of time in Kumasi before I leave. My homestay brothers text message me enough that I feel like I'm there anyway. My home stay mother, Aunti, washed all of my clothes and was teary eyed when I left. They are such wonderful people. So, lots of bananas, bush pit-stops, pot holes, plantains, and bags of water later we made it to Tamale, a small relaxed city of bikes and motor cycles. We were told it would be hotter and dryer up North with a larger Muslim population and a need to wear head scarves. In reality it is actually a heck of a lot cooler, rained the whole day before we got here (making it a very muddy city) and we're staying at the Catholic Guest House. Despite the large Muslim population that ended up not being a fallacy, one thing I have learned here in Ghana: never have expections, but if you do, always expect the opposite.
These past 12 days have been a mixture of ups and downs in the land of colorful lizards, goats, chickens, dancing, drumming, greasy food and roosters. I have never felt a more bizarre combination of being completely out of place and feeling comfortably at home all at the same time. It's been a crazy challenging combination of confusion, laughter, awkwardness, frustration, excitement, sweat, over-stimulation, exaustion, humor, patients, and surprise. I have passed the three week mark in Ghana and have had my first extreme cultural emersion revelation. On my way home from school last Monday I was pickpocketed and my cell phone was stollen. I was in the midst of a crowd of 300 Ghanaians during rush hour with no electricity and only cars' head lights to illuminate the chaos. I was getting shoved all over the place and having a very difficult time pushing my way to the edge of the street to cram on a Tro-Tro. I was getting pretty flustered and it was the first time I felt my safety was at stake since I've been in Africa. I got a pretty forceful shove from two directions and the next thing I knew the main zipper of my bag was wide open and my phone was gone. I made two mistakes and I have definitely learned from the experience. I shouldn't have called my brother Broda to tell him I would be late in the middle of the crowd and I should have put my phone back where I usually keep it deep in an inside a safe pocket of my bag. In the midst of the chaos and confusion I was not thinking straight.
Mourning the death of one of my good friends at home, the food making me feel sick and fatigued, and getting my phone stolen culminated in the lowest point of the trip which caused this revelation. Prior to Monday night I was stuck between two worlds and cultures with links to home and new links in Africa but struggling to relate to either. I have now reached the point in my experience where I have been thrust out of the middle territory, deeper into the world of Ghana. The middle transition period between knowing the U.S. and living in Ghana was very uncomfortable and frusterating. I was struggling to keep in touch with life and people at home and desperatly trying to hang on to comforts form home and comparing everything I encountered in Africa to what I knew in the U.S.
So instead of getting really upset about the phone and falling deeper into homsickness allowing every single thing from fish heads for dinner to being called Oburuni all hours of the day make me miss home more, I miraculously took the pickpoketing as a lesson and know that if I'm going to be here for another 3 1/2 months I have to be more aware and avoid busy Tro-Tro junctions when possible. My new outlook is to embrace Ghana with an open-mind and an open stomach (even more open than when I got here) and take everything that is different from the U.S. not as "bad" or "worse", but instead just as a different part of the experience and part of the rich vibrant and crazy culture of a place I want to experience in the raw.
The end of Kumasi-
Any one who knows me well is aware of my ability to sleep through anything. I have found my only weakness, Roosters! I was woken up every morning at 4:15 am with out fail by a brigade of roosters right out side my window. By the time they are done with their serenade, my alarm goes off at 6 so I can fit in a bucket shower, my 3 course breakfast and then walk to the Tro-Tro stop and get to school by 7:30.
Tro-Tros are my main form of transportation here. A tro-tro experience is something you can't understand until you actually shove your way into one while sweating buckets and feel every pot hole in Kumasi right through your bones. I can't wait for my mom to visit in December and navigate the Tro-Tros with me. They are the only form of public transportation besides rare taxi cabs here in Ghana. They are white vans that comfortabley seat 10 but never have less than 15 Ghanaians and up to 20 crammed in for 20 cents each. To try and figure out where one is going and if it will take you where you need to go requires a whole separate language from Twi and English. I've had 3 whole Twi classes this past week on how to master the art of catching a Tro-Tro. Its still rather hard but most of the time exciting.
Our whole group visited the shrine of a traditional Akan Priestess last week. One of those experinces that is virtually impossible to explain with words. I hope to post photos soon to facilitate my explaination, but in short, this woman is seen as a traditional herbal healer for her village and tells peoples fortunes and futures through being possessed by spirits good and bad. To get your fortune told you have to prove your self and allow her to feel your energies dancing in the drum circle with her while being pelted with talcum powder and embraced by the priestess her self smothered in her 200 lb. breasts. I passed this test bearely and then entered her private sacrificial room to have my fortune read. She told me some very eerie and rather true things about my self and told me I was to marry a very big man who is a pastor! haha!! She then told me that if I wanted to find out more about certain bad spirits surrounding my family I should bring her a bottle of Schnapps the following evening. I called Leo and Kathleen, was reasured that my family was not being attacked by evil spirits and decided against purchasing an imported bottle of Scnapps and left it at that. She did tell me that I have a need to write down everything I live and see, and as I sit here frantically typing away at an internet cafe, I seem to believe she's not compleatly full of goat droppings.
My daily traditional West African dancing and drumming class ended in a performance for our homestay families on the last night in Kumasi. We all gathered at an outdoor bar restaurant surrounded by palm trees, a huge grass drum circle, and open fire pits grilling every imaginable part of animals. The SIT "friends" took us one by one into a small hut to dress us in our costumes (another part that photos would help describe). About 4 yards of green African print fabric made into a strapless dress and a hairnet/head wrap. You would have all paid a pretty cedi (Ghanaian currancy) to see this event. I was a main dancer and had a blast dancing around in a circle for hours making the crowd go wild and feeling the drum beats like they were coming from inside me. My homestay family was pretty impressed! haha.
Now in Tamale, life is at a much more relaxed pace and the stress of trying to fit in and communicate with a family is removed with our humble hostel accomidations. We went to the central market today and I bought more fabric to have traditional dresses and skirts made. I have given away the mojority of my western clothes and am loving my new African look. Half the girls in my group have already had their hair braided with extensions put in, but after my homestay sister "plaited" my hair over the weekend and the end product resulted in me looking like one of those mutilated dolls from Toy Story, I have decided to not go the complete African route. Many of you at home should be relieved. It was pretty bad! Since this is the city of bikes, I have already rented my self a rickety excuse of a beach cruiser bike for 12,000 cedis a day ($1.30). It'll get me from our hostel to school and the market and will prove to be a great solution to eating like a big goat and feeling like the shape of a yam. Ahh Ghanaian cuizine! I continue Twi classes here and afternoon culture and history lectures. On Friday we venture to Mole National Park Animal reserve and camp over night near one of the main watering holes. This part of the trip I have been looking forward to the whole time.
Love to everyone at home, especially the Lake Avenue crew through tough times. Happy Birthday AJ Blum! I'm thinking about everyone and hoping to stay in touch despite my distance and drastically different life. Love, Kate
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Kwasi Appiah
non-member comment
Ghana Travels
Kate, there have been few travelogues which have affected me as much as yours have. Two main raesons account for this. You are visiting places of my youth and writing about my old haunts. Secondly, you have a very accomodating yet demanding sensibility. All combine to give your account of Ghana a richness and complexity that few can equal. There is the sharp eye you have for the unusual and the incongrous and the sensitivity you display for cultural differences. Even the flasbacks to standards in America does not prevent you from learning something from your experiences. Everywhere your humanity peeps through. I hope you grow even larger through your experiences - spiritually and intellectually, of course. As for the tro-tros, beware of them. Those drivers have more of the kamikazee spirit than life in them. Even I, born in Kumasi, have never entirely reconciled myself to their sanity. And about your latest experience, I too had my bag ripped open at a tro-tro station during one of those rushes. Fortunately all I had in the bag were smelly clothing I was taking to the laundry. I have enjoyed your journals. Interesting fact for you: I live in Chicago and attend the University of Chicago.