end of the semester?!?

Though I still have just under a month left on this side of the Atlantic, I know that it's gonna fly! It's even stranger, because I am going to be done with classes (and thus with my college career!) as of next week Wednesday! (or Friday...depends on when I finish the final paper, but I'm shooting to be done BEFORE Thanksgiving! So what will the last 3 weeks here contain? So much fun! We are doing some traveling before we are done here. We have two more trips with our group - one to Kumasi and a final trip to the Akrofi-Christaller Institute, the bible college in Ghana that we've visited twice already. That's always a fun trip because the people there are amazing and the accommodations are fabulous! In between these trips we have just over a week of free travel. I am going with 3 other girls, Elisabeth Risch, Katie Sytsema, and Steph Lasota, to Togo! We are going to stay with a pastor-friend of the family of Elisabeth's family in the capital of Togo, Lome, for a few days. We will also spend some time on the beach perfecting our tans before we return home and some time hiking and seeing beautiful things like butterflies and waterfalls. All in all, it will be a great end to a fabulous trip! Suffice to say, internet access may be lacking from here on out... at least after next week... so I'm not sure when more updates will come. I love you all, and if you're in GR I hope to see you December 19 or around New Years, and if you're in Chicago, I hope to see you December 22, and if you're some where else, then get to a place I can see you, oK?

The Volta Region

It seems that all I have posted about recently have been the trips we’ve been on, but they are definitely the most interesting things that are going on! Being in school and our life here has become routine. Not to say that it’s boring (no way!) but finding new things to describe in a blog becomes difficult when it’s all so normal to me. So, I will talk about the trip we took this weekend. We were actually only gone Thursday and Friday, and Saturday became a day to catch up on homework and organize pictures and write this! We took off Thursday morning and drove to a fishing village on Lake Volta (which, at the time it was made in 1960, was the largest man-made lake in the world). The water is inundating this village because the lake is rising right now. It’s causing a lot of problems for the people who live here. Many of them only moved into the village when the lake was created. The lake was created by the building of the Akosombo Dam, and people who had previously lived along the Volta River had to be relocated. The people in this village had been relocated and were finding life difficult. Their main occupation is fishing, but the fish supplies are very low. The dam has hurt the livelihood of these people as well as the environment they lived in. Most people in Ghana and especially the government have ignored these negative effects of the dam that provides much of the electricity for the country. Next we visited a village where they weave Kente and saw those weavers in action. If you don’t know what Kente is, do a Google Image search for it. I’m sure you will see the bright and beautiful patterns that characterize Kente cloth. We stayed in a hotel in the town of Ho, the capital of the Volta Region. I had the best banku that I’ve had yet in Ghana! It is a meal of crushed yam and cassava. I had it with groundnut soup, which is like a peanut soup. It was delicious! I ate it at a chop bar, which is a little “restaurant” that serves local dishes for very cheap prices.
Friday we went to Wli falls, the highest waterfall in Ghana. We went only to the lower falls, but the walk and the falls were BEAUTIFUL! There were so many various butterflies I saw on our 45 minute walk to the falls. The enormity of the water cascading down was overwhelming; the spray misting our bodies was cool and refreshing. Afterwards we had delicious club sandwiches and then stopped by a monkey sanctuary on our way back to Accra. The monkeys would peel and then eat the bananas we would hold in our hands. Unfortunately I never got to try it, but it was really cool to see other people do it!

The North

Two weeks ago we spent in the North – the major reason why I have not posted anything in the past 2 weeks. I’ve been meaning to post since I returned, but internet time has been coopted by reading (for fun and for class), playing a computer game my roommate got me addicted to, going to visit a chief’s house for farmer’s day, going to Makola Market in Accra to buy fabric and going to the Bush Canteen on campus to get clothes custom made :) Yesterday I took a picture that would be my new facebook profile pic if I could ever get a picture loaded – it’s me in a dress I had made here, with my hair braided (I now have brown extensions and I like it! I’ve never been a brunette before!), drinking fresh coconut milk out of a coconut! You can all see this picture once I get back to the States and have an internet connection that can handle loading pictures.

The time in the North was great. We spent a lot of time looking at NGOs and the work they do in Ghana. We visited CRS (Catholic Relief Services), World Vision, and a few locally-run NGOs as well. They are going great work in Ghana! We also toured the wildlife of Ghana. We went up to Paga and saw the sacred crocodiles who never eat people…so we sat on them and took pictures and sacrificed two chickens to them. We also went to Mole National Park where you’re supposed to be able to see elephants, but since it is mating season none of them were around :( We did encounter our share of wildlife in the bugs in our room – I was glad I had a mosquito net! We spent a ton of time in the North in our bus. The North is quite a ways from Accra – we rode 12 hours to get there. It’s not that it’s as far away as Florida is from Chicago, but the roads are not as good. Swerving around potholes and going through police checkpoints is not conducive to the 79 mph I’m used to going on the interstates in the States. The long dirt road to Mole made a few of our group members get carsick. I’m so glad I don’t suffer with that! The best part was pulling over into the bush grasses every time someone needed to pee. It was easier (and cleaner) than most of the urinals (i.e. hole in the wall – literally – is often the bathroom at gas stations and the like) we found otherwise!

Snapshots of Ghana

1. So there is this red dirt here. It’s all over everything. I think my feet are really tan, until i take a shower and realize that half of my chaco tan came simply from dirt. :( When it rains and there are mud puddles, the mud ends up all over my legs, and it doesn’t come off unless you scrub at it with a wash rag!

2. The sky here is absolutely beautiful. The season is changing (from wet to dry) and the harmattan winds are coming in. Thus every evening, along with a sunset, are these huge clouds moving super fast across the sky in these heavy winds. It really is a beautiful sight to behold.

3. My roommate gets up around 6 every morning which, for those of you who know me, is far too early for me! She goes to bed between 10:30 and 11:30 generally (which is usually fine by me – I’m usually wiped out and ready for an early bedtime!) but then is up at 6 without an alarm. In fact, the sun rises at 6 and the campus really wakes up then! There seems to be free reign to be loud once the sun comes up. One morning there was even a preacher in the parking lot with a bullhorn at 5:50 am! That was awful! And I used to think that a 9 am class was too early… Luckily, when I am woken up, I can usually go right back to sleep.

4. Mornings here make me happy, especially if I don’t have class till 10:30. Take last week Wednesday for example… I got up at 7 because my roommate was around that morning. I was able to take it slow, so I sad on my bed with my computer and played a computer game my roommate gave me, did some of my reading for my democracy class, drank a cup of French press coffee (which I brought with me so I could have real coffee every morning – otherwise they only have instant here, though there is a coffee shop in the mall which I got iced coffee at last week!) and ate cornflakes. I took a cold shower (no hot water heaters here) and then had to head to class. I stopped by the market on my way to class and bought a banana (you know, because they’re grown locally here. I actually saw banana trees when I was in Aburi!) Most mornings, when I don’t have as much free time in the morning, I buy and egg sandwich at the market for breakfast. They fry an egg and mix in some chopped veggies, then put it on bread (either brown bread or sweet bread are my favorites). And of course, I remember to take my anti-malarial pill every morning with breakfast. Usually I take a bag of water with me to class - yes, I love that I drink water out of 500 mL bags!

5. I just texted Dr. Patterson, my Calvin professor here. I love life in Ghana :)

Just a little taste of some of my daily schedule/life. In some ways very unique from my life in the States, but so fabulous!

Odwira

This weekend we went to the Odwira Festival in Akropong. I could not do this festival justice in a simple blog post. It is a festival in which they celebrate the New Year, the harvest of yams, a remembrance of the dead, a purification of the town, and a battle that was won sometime in the 1820s. The festival itself is a glorious mix of the traditional with the modern; simply another example of how tradition is not a static thing in Ghanaian culture, but rather something that changes and grows with the times. Things are not preserved for the sake of the tourists or for the sake of "history", but life and tradition are lived today, in a way that is best for those living today.
An interesting side note: a part of the festival is the Durbar, a time for the chiefs to tell their people of their town what has been done in the past year and what will be done in the coming year. Nowadays, with the democratic political system alongside the traditional chieftain system, the political leaders are also invited to join in the Durbar. Thus, we got to see the man running for president for the NPP party, Nana Akufo-Addo! In the states, he would be comparable with John McCain because his party is currently in power. The elections will be held here in Ghana in December, one month after the US elections. It has made studying politics here this semester that much more interesting!

Kakum National Park and Winneba

Our trip last weekend also took us to a more pleasant area, the Kakum National Park. Here USAID helped construct a canopy walk to promote tourism (the pros and cons of USAID supporting ecotourism can be an issue to be addressed another day). We were able to go on this canopy walk over the rainforest, and it was incredible. I was reminded of my trip to the rainforests in Costa Rica during high school. I remembered a lot of what we learned about the layers of the rainforest. Highlights of the canopy walk included seeing monkeys swinging through the trees! After wards we went on a nature hike through the rainforest. I (along with Libby Howell and Becca Timmermans) was “buddies” with Isabel, our professor’s 4 (almost 5) year-old daughter for much of the hike. I really enjoy the fact that our professor brought her family to Ghana with her (her husband and other daughter, age 7, are also here). Also while we were hiking we found that there were 5 of us wearing Chaco sandals, so we made a Chaco commercial video on one girl’s camera. It was so much fun! Though it was a very “touristy” experience, it was sweet to do a canopy walk over a rainforest in Ghana. Not everyone can say they’ve done that!

After visting Kakum National Park, E (Elisabeth Risch), Katie Sytsema, and I got dropped off at a small town called Winneba, about halfway between Cape Coast, where we had been, and Accra, the city we live in. We had quite the experience visiting Winneba. A few highlights:
-we stayed in a very nice beach resort
-our rooms were taken by someone else named Elizabeth. Luckily, they still had 2 single rooms and then they gave us an extra mattress to use
-the food was amazing (particularly the coffee, and omelets with cheese in the morning)
-a professor from the Netherlands who’s setting up an electrical engineering lab at a poly-technic institute in Ghana bought us a round of beer
-we met an American (Elizabeth, who probably stole our room) and an Australian (Fion) who worked with an AIDS prevention agency and had a discussion about religion and religion in Africa with them
-we went to the beach! and went swimming in the gulf of guinea! (basically the atlantic ocean, but it’s actually called the gulf of guinea here on the coast of Ghana)
-I bought a hard-boiled egg from a lady on the side of the road, and she put spicy peppers on it, and it was yummy!

Cape Coast and Elmina

Our trip this weekend took us to the slave castles at Cape Coast and Elmina. This was an experience that is difficult to summarize. The castles bring the history of slavery to life. Being a history major and having taken African history, the stories of the slave castles were not new to me, but the physical experience being there was still startling. The dungeons at Cape Coast where they kept the slaves are underground. The muggy feeling and musty smell of the stone walls (which have been there since the 16th Century-they are not just replicas) reminded me of the reality of the brutality against the African people who became slaves. The difference between the hot and stuffy dungeons (even when empty today, not packed with 300 people) with the cool, breezy upper rooms is startling. The British owners of the castle were living in luxury, while the sights and sounds of human suffering were with them everywhere they went. The views from the castle are gorgeous – billowing palm trees, white sandy beaches, clear ocean water with cresting waves. The day was perfect – warm, bright, and sunny. The dichotomy of physical beauty and the history of human suffering was startling. How much more so for those who were there while human beings were being so abused? How did they deal with this? These questions are unanswerable for me today, but it does make the history major inside of me want to do more research. I am glad that I’ve taken African history before – I had already learned most of the historical information at the forts from my classes at Calvin. I think the fact that I wasn’t dealing with all new information at the castles helped me to not feel completely overwhelmed by the experience and to appreciate for its historical value and well as search for applications that I could take out of history to my own life. One such application was the fact that when one person puts the value of his own life ahead of the value of all other lives, horrible atrocities can happen. The Africans were dehumanized by the Europeans in the slave trade, but that is not an excuse. Rather, it is an abomination because the value of other’s lives was so reduced that it became nothing. What ways do I live my life which puts higher value on me than on any other human being? Can this be legitimate? Not if I truly believe that every human being is made in God’s image.

An Addendum...

Before I go too far, I want to clear somethings up from my last post. It was pointed out to me that I was not being completely accurate in my word choices, and I agree. When I said that in Aburi I felt that I had finally felt like I was in Africa, I was wrong. What I meant to say is that I finally got away from some of the more Western culture in Ghana. Africa is not simply characterized by small villages with the large cities as some kind of ill-fitting abnormality. City life is a way of life just as valuable and vibrant as village or rural life. You cannot characterize America either by Chicago, it's suburbs, or the rural countryside in Iowa. You can also not characterize Africa by its urban, suburban or rural communities alone. They must all be taken into account equally in a consideration of Africa.

Obruni in Aburi

Another Tuesday adventure…
This week Tuesday was a holiday in Ghana. It was the end of Islam’s Ramadan month, and thus a national holiday (although Christianity is the main religion of Ghana, Islam is also respected. The two religions get along quite well, along with African Traditional Religion, and often these three beliefs can be found in one family. In fact, a friend of my roommate goes to mosque on Fridays and church on Sundays because her father is Muslim and her mother is a Christian! I can talk more about why these faiths all get along if anyone’s interested.) Since it was a holiday, we did not have our Twi language class. Instead, Alissa (also a Calvin student; her blog is linked on the side) and I went for an adventure in the town of Aburi.
Aburi is a town up in the mountains, about a one hour tro-tro ride away from Legon. We didn’t really know what to expect when we got there, but I was sick of experiencing western culture and was ready to explore Africa. The guide book had talked about Aburi being a place you could catch tro-tros to other places, so we figured even if there wasn’t anything there, we could keep going. Aburi does have a botanical garden, but since our group will probably go there together later, we did not go at this time. Alissa and I took our time wandering around the town of Aburi. We met a lot of interesting people and started to really feel like we were in Africa!
Let me give you a few highlights:
A man named Boat was one of the first people we met in Aburi. He is an artist, and has spent the summers of 2006 and 2007 in Michigan! He has friends in Lansing and has also attended some African-American art festival in Grand Rapids! He showed us his shop. He is a woodcarver and does some painting and other forms of art as well.
We ate fufu (pounded yams) with fish stew at a chop bar – a small restaurant of sorts; more casual than an American restaurant, but a friendly place where you can sit down and order most Ghanaian foods. There is no menu, but what they offer is painted on the outside sign. There are “chop bars” everywhere you go in Ghana, particularly in urban areas. Usually women do not eat at chop bars – it is supposed to be a place for men to grab a quick bite to eat. Women who eat in chop bars are seen as not able to cook and provide for themselves, and thus not suitable for a husband, which is the main goal of women’s lives here (a husband, as well as children).
We took a walk and ended up near what we think was the town garbage dump. We saw a man digging around in it. He had no shoes and his clothes were torn and dirty. Our hearts ached for this man. Alissa had some plantain chips (like potato chips…kind of) she wasn’t going to eat, and I offered him 1 cedi (about 1 dollar). That is enough for one to two meals. My heart ached for this man, as well as the poverty and the environmental damage of the dump right off the main road past the town.
We met a sweet woman named Beatrice. I had decided that I wanted to buy a Coke before leaving town, and I went to Beatrice’s shop. She sold me a Coke and also talked with me a bit about her culture. She taught Alissa and I a bit more Twi (the local language here that we are taking a class in), and told us a bit about the festival coming up that our class will actually be attending. She was a very nice lady. We had a good time getting to know one another before Alissa and I got back on the tro-tro and headed back to Legon.
Overall, I loved my day trip. Although we did not do anything “spectacular”, I was able to get away from Western culture and the more modern way of life of Accra. It felt like Africa. I saw men digging a trench for a gutter. I saw countless little children around who called us “obruni” (white person) which gave Alissa the title for this blog post, which I then stole from her :). Though the shops in town were open, people were having a fairly relaxed holiday, walking around town and greeting their neighbors, friends, and even strangers like us. We found the people in Aburi to be extremely friendly and welcoming to us. It was a great way to spend my holiday!

A Typical Ride on the Tro-tro

On Tuesday afternoon after class I went to the Medina market (a market in the town of Medina) in order to buy fabric, which I will hopefully get made into a dress. In order to get to the Medina market, I took a tro-tro. Tro-tros are basically the size of a 15 passenger van. They typically have four benches and then the front seats (also a bench). These vans are designed to fit as many people as possible. The biggest problem is that there’s never enough room for my long legs – my knees are always scrunched against the seat in front of me. 4 people fit across each row. The back bench is a four person bench, but the other benches are three person benches with a seat that folds down to form a fourth seat. These block off access to the back row, so they are used once the row behind is full. This also means that if someone in the back row needs to get out at a stop, all those in these seats must move so that there is an aisle again. A full tro-tro has 17 passengers in it, plus a driver and a mate. Two people sit up front with the driver, and the mate sits in the back by the door since he mans the door. If another passenger wants to get on at this time, sometimes they will squish in and share a seat with the mate. The more people in the vehicle, the more money the driver and mate will make! In my experience, a tro-tro driver and mate generally wait until a tro-tro is full before leaving the stop. Whenever someone gets off, a new rider is generally waiting to get on. Of course, I ride generally in the city and during busy times. I would imagine that at less busy times, in less populated places, or at less popular stops the tro-tros would leave even if they weren’t quite full. I usually get on at the University which is a very popular stop, or at one of the main stations in Accra.

In order to get on the right tro-tro, you have to listen to what the mate is calling. They will call out their final stop, or the general direction in which they are going. You can always ask a mate if your stop will be included. When you are at a large station in Accra you can ask any mate or driver for your stop, and they will point you to where you can find a tro-tro to take you there. There are also hand motions that correlate with the stops, like moving finger in a circle for the Circle stop and pointing downward and forward for Tema Station, the main station I’ve been to in Accra. When I am returning to campus, I have to ask the mate if they are going to Legon. That is where the University is. While we were in Medina yesterday, we were looking for a tro-tro back to Legon. We were just walking down the street and as a tro-tro passed I asked the mate (who was hanging out the window, which is their typical position) “Legon?” He said yes and waved us forward. We had to follow the tro-tro as it turned the corner onto a less busy street where it could pull off and wait for us to board. When the tro-tro is full, the driver will leave. The mate will often bang twice on the side of the van to signal to the driver that he should stop or take off. This is much easier than yelling forward and across the van. Once the tro-tro is on its way the mate will ask for payment. He starts in the front of the tro-tro and everyone passes their coins to him. This transaction is done fairly quietly; sometimes without comment. Most people know how much their ride will cost. We pass forward money and return change without too much difficulty. The ride to Medina, about 15 or 20 minutes, cost 25 peswas (about 25 cents). A ride into Accra is a little longer and costs 30 peswas to get there and 40 peswas to get back. I’m not sure why it costs more to get back, but whatever. I am always impressed by the mate’s ability to remember who gets on and off and who he still needs to collect payment from when the tro-tro lets off passengers and picks up new ones. In fact, Ghanaians have generally impressed me with their memories, especially of names. Even as a large group of 17 students, most people we meet remember a lot of our names after we go around in a circle and say our names once.

The tro-tro vehicles are an experience in and of themselves. The vehicles are often older. During rush hour last Friday we were going along, and as we hit a traffic jam, the mate ran out and bought a bag of water (500 mL of water – an individual sized bag) from a woman selling them (sellers walk in between the cars, like people collecting donations for things in America, and sell things they are carrying on their heads to people through car and tro-tro windows. We have bought water bags, chocolate bars, plantain chips which are like potato chips, and toilet paper from tro-tro windows, but I’ve seen things like clocks and scales near the US Embassy – a richer part of town – and other things such as bags of grapes, sugar cane, and tangerines). Anyway, our mate bought a bag of water and proceeded to pour it under the hood, probably to cool off the engine. That was probably the sketchiest tro-tro I had been on! I think that since it was rush hour, the tro-tro had been running all day and was just getting hot. Friday’s experience during rush hour was also atypical because while I tried to push through the immense crowds of people outside of the tro-tro waiting to get on, my phone was pickpocketed. Luckily it was just one I had bought here for 40 cedis (about 40 dollars). I did buy a new one yesterday, and it was cheaper than my first – it was only 36 cedis! My number is 011 233 24 029 3383. If you have the ability to call or text internationally, you should!

This has gotten longer than I expected, but hopefully this description of public transportation will give you a little bit of a better idea of what my life is like here!

Cultural Awareness at Max Mart

This weekend a few members of our group decided to check out Max Mart, a local shopping center. This was a most interesting experience. Max Mart is a very western shopping center with a coffee shop inside. Though I loved the coffee shop, (because I love coffee, and the hot tea I got made my head cold feel better) I found myself unhappy in Max Mart. I think the reason was that I was confronted with everything I don’t like about western culture. Max Mart is a place of wealth, mass consumerism, and multi-national corporations. Max Mart was filled with every American “necessity” – movies, make-up, fine china, stainless steel pots and pans, even a massive organic foods section. This place was definitely catering to westerners. Everything was at least 3 times the price of what you could get it for on the street, and there were so many familiar name brands. Anything you could ever need or even want, you could probably find in Max Mart. Everything, that is, except my favorite parts of Ghanaian culture so far. Looking out the Max Mart window I saw a busy Ghanaian street scene – vendors selling local goods (even my plastic laundry buckets are made in Ghana, not in China!), community, and the bright colors of a Ghanaian shopping scene. Being in Ghana, I wanted to immerse myself in the Ghanaian culture, and not retreat to the American coffee shop, as easy as that can be to do. I desire to see the similarities between Ghanaian and American culture – to recognize that this country is really not so far removed from my own; but I also want to celebrate the aspects that make Ghanaian culture separate and unique. I want to buy my egg sandwich every morning from Larabe – the two girls who make my egg sandwiches are friends, both named Larabe. They are so trusting and kind- I bought bread with my dinner the other night and I didn’t have the right change, but neither did they. So they just told me to take it and to pay for it in the morning! The way they trust me warms my heart. This culture is full of respect and trust. In fact, respect is so important that I must be careful not to disrespect by using my left hand or my crossing my legs in front others. It was so interesting to see how small our world really is, and the invasion of western culture into Ghana. Although Max Mart offers me the “comforts of home”, I hope that on this trip I will not utilize this option too often and I will prefer to enjoy the Ghanaian culture for what it has to offer.

Laundry Day

I have learned the true value of a washing machine and dryer. Yesterday was laundry day, and I decided that I would not yet cave to paying $1 per kilo of laundry to have it done for me - I wanted to do my own (I sent my sheets, towels, and blanket to the washing machine today though - those are far to big for me to tackle on my first try. My roommate does her own however...) I washed 8 shirts, a pair of shorts, a pillowcase and some undergarments in my first time. It took about 2 hours to wash and hang them all. The process is relatively simple, but it does rub your fingers pretty raw! I started about 8, and though I still have some clothes left, I will finish them tonight or sometime when I have a bit more time. Basically, you fill a bucket with water and detergent and soak your whites for about half and hour with a bleach-like powder as well, then you take a bar of soap and scrub at the garment till you feel its clean, then rinse and hang on the line. You have to be sure to rinse well or else your clothes dry crusty (we'll see how well I did this afternoon when I take them off the line). I was proud of my hand-washing abilities. i got a permanent marker stain out of my shorts that had been there since this spring and the washing machine hadn't been able to get out for me! I think handwashing works really well for stains and I'll probably keep doing it on tough stains when I get back to the States. I have also learned a trick from the Ghanaians here - wash your underwear with you in the shower each night. Not only does it make for less laundry on laundry day, but you won't ever run out of underwear! It's ingenious! Yes, handwashing is a lot of work, but doing it with two friends (Katie Klok and Emily Keller) and listening to great tunes (Sufjan Stevens, Ingrid Michaelson, and Nickel Creek, courtesy of Calvin Broendyk's computer) made the time go very quickly, and I actually look forward to doing it again - which is good, because I still have some to finish! I'm not going 2 weeks without doing laundry again here!

Accra and thoughts

I spent time on Saturday with my roommate Irene, who is from Accra. We went into the city and did some shopping! We took the tro-tro (public transportation) into town and shopped on the streets for a while. The streets are just crowded with people selling EVERYTHING you can ever imagine- scrub brushes and soap to clothes and shoes to African fabrics to jewelry to vegetables and meat. And they are just set up on the roads and sidewalks. I bought two short sweaters that tie in the front (my roommate calls them petticoats), a headscarf like I’ve seen some Ghanaians wearing, a pair of brown sandals (Irene said they looked “African”) and some elastic headbands. She helped me bargain, which was fabulous. Then I came back to the dorm and did homework for the afternoon.

My life in Ghana and my life in America are truly not all that different from each other. I am still me. I sweat more and need to shower more often; I am sad that I don’t get hot water from the tap and that there isn’t toilet paper provided in the bathrooms, but really, I am still me. I think that I thought that my life would be so completely different, and it’s not. I can still get anything I need. I live in a giant city with so many goods – both imported from the west and locally made. Having the Calvin group here means that I have friends here who understand me and where I’m coming from. Although they don’t know my history the way a lot of my friends at school do, they understand me. And we are all similar enough to be able to have meaningful conversations even this early into the trip. So it’s not a struggle to relate to those around me either. I know that as I experience more of what my roommate calls “culture” (the life in the city of Accra she just calls “modern way of life”, not “culture”) I will be challenged and fascinated in different ways. And my life here does make me think about the way American culture works. I think that is most important to me right now. Here I see how a balance needs to be reached between the rich and the poor. I see that there are difficulties in getting basic needs met for all the people (especially the handicapped), and I see that as a basic justice issue. But I also see a lot of the Ghanaian way of life as closer to my values than the American way of life. Ghanaians buy most of their products locally. It is very easy to eat food that was grown close by, and buy all products that were made in Ghana. Imports are available, but actually more expensive. Public transportation is really the best way to get around, it is easily accessed, and it is cheap. Ghanaians have a pride in their daily work and in their country’s heritage and their own ethnic culture that I do not see in a lot of Americans. Finding the balance in life between the economy and the environment is important for me, and seeing such a different balance here than the one in the States still has my mind spinning, and I’m not sure yet where it will land. I know that a lot of the American lifestyle is not for me, but the Ghanaian lifestyle is not perfect either. I see improvements that can be made, but I also feel inadequate to judge the Ghanaian way of life because I have had so little interaction thus far with it. I feel like I can legitimately point out things I want to fix in the American way of life because I have been a part of it for the last 22 years. I’m not really sure where I’m going with this, but suffice to say, my life at this time doesn’t look too much different from my life in the states, and I am comfortable here. Not to the point of complacency, but enough that I feel like this place can truly become my home for the next 3 months.

Class...

Well, classes began yesterday! Things are going well. Our Ghanaian professors are good, our classes will be interesting, and things shouldn't be too difficult. If anything, it will be difficult for me to get into a homework routine again after not doing that for the past 8 months! I don't think we'll have too much though. Today we will have our first African dance class - probably the one I am most afraid of :) We will also have our second Twi language class, which I am excited to begin using. I feel as though I am ripped off in the markets here sometimes, and I am told if I speak Twi to the vendors they like it and will give you a better deal! Not that being ripped off is losing me much money - everything is much cheaper here than in the states!
I am putting links to other blogs of our group members on the side as I get them. Check out those blogs if you're interested in more details about things we do here. There is so much I want to write but feel that I can't. It's hard to give you all a full view of what life is like here. All I can give are snapshots, which will have to do, even though they can never be a full picture.

Akropong

This weekend (Sunday through Tuesday actually) our group went to the Akrofi-Christaller Institute in Akropong, Ghana (it's in the Eastern region up in the mountains, about an hour from where we are in Accra). There we had our first "excursion" and some orientation about culture, customs, and religion in Ghana. We heard lectures on Muslim-Christian relations in Ghana (which are remarkably peaceable), Christianity's relationship with the African Traditional Religion (which explains a lot of the culture we see), and Culture and Customs, like doing everything with your right hand (including waving) and using family titles to address people based on what age group they are to you (mammy, auntie, sister, brother, etc.) Hopefully that will help us learn how to address the vendors in the Night Market, the place where we buy our cheapest meals because it's right by our hostel and you can get a meal for under 1 cedi (basically the same as 1 dollar).
I want to tell you a bit more about African Traditional Religion. The Traditional Religion holds to the belief that the spirit world affects every aspect of the physical world. An accident, an illness, anything that happens has a spiritual explaination too. Thus, the spirit world is very important to the physical world. All of the shops here are called "God's Time Resturaut" or "Jesus Saves Hair Salon" or something similar. It is not a matter of taking the Lord's name in vain, but a matter of truly believing that God is in all and through all, a matter of believing that God has complete control over all aspects of our life. In truth, it's quite Calvinistic!
The final thing we did as a part of our Akropong trip was to visit the Cedi Bead Industry and the Akosombo dam which provides electricity for 70% of Ghana, as well as parts of Burkina Faso, Togo, and Benin. It created Lake Volta, one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. It also displaced a lot of people to do it... our guide said they were resettled along the banks of the river and a lot of them have jobs fishing, but seeing how controversial the displacement that is occuring in China for Three Gorges is, I can't imagine that it was smooth or desired by the residents that were displaced from their homes. How difficult it is to deal with some of those dilemmas- the dam provided electricity for so many, yet displaced so many people.
The Cedi Bead Industry was very cool to see. It was very sustainable bead-making, and they made some really neat stuff! They used a ton of recycled glass bottles to make their beads, everything is done open-air so there is no heating/cooling costs, and most things are done by hand so there is very little pollution from machinery. I was impressed by the output and the quality of these beads. It really was a neat place.

Markets

I can't believe its only been three days since I got here. It feels like so much longer! I am much more comfortable here. Yesterday we went to the Medina market and today we headed into the capital city of Accra for the day. I was reminded by going out how "sheltered" the University campus is compared to the outside world. When we go out into the markets we are called "obruni, obruni" (which is twi for white person) and asked if we want to buy things. They assume we have a lot of money because we are foreigners. We are able to purchase anything we want in the markets here. There are all kinds of foods, fruits and vegetables (both familiar and not), meat (including pig legs...kinda gross) and tons of fresh fish (smelly). There are all kinds of fabrics and even second-hand clothes (American clothes) for sale. You can buy any necessity - soaps, towels, buckets, all kinds of silverware, knives and other cooking utensils, really anything!
Today we went to the cultural market in Accra and visited a drum shop. The guys there were great - they said because we were students we were, of course broke, and we should receive free drum lessons from them. So we did :) They played us some welcome music and then let us try. We did not have much time because we had to go to lunch, but they invited us to come back soon! My funny moment of the day: one guy asked me if I was a model. I said no, but he said I should be because I have a "sexy body". HA! (that laugh's for you Beth). It was hilarious :) Well, I will update further later. Thanks for reading!

Arrived!

We did arrive, safe and sound, all luggage intact! We got to Accra around 7 p.m. Wednesday night, and back to our dorm around 9 or 10. We had a reception first with some people from Grand Rapid's "sister city" in the Ga District of Ghana. We were all exhausted.
We started orientation, registration for classes this morning, etc. We are tired, but doing well. The trip was long - 7 hours from Detroit to Frankfurt, 6 hours in the airport in Germany, and 6 more hours through Lagos, Nigeria (where we stayed on the plane as it refueled) to Accra, Ghana. The weather is very humid, but not overly hot today, which is nice.
I currently feel a little shell-shocked - it's day 1 here and a bit confusing not to know exactly where I am and where I'm going. It's been really nice that we're spending most of the day with our professor and being guided around campus. There is no need for me to make my own decisions quite yet. I'm sure when it is I will be ready, but for now it is nice.
I am looking forward to meeting all kinds of new people. My roommate, Irene, is a high school friend of Amma at Calvin, for those of you who may know her. She's been really friendly and nice, very open and shares what she can with me! It's been great.
Hope you're all doing well!

Address

hey folks!
My address while I am in Ghana is as follows - so feel free to write! (though packages would be a bad idea):

Amy Baas
Calvin College Program
Institute of African Studies
University of Ghana
PO Box LG 73, Legon
Ghana


I leave in 4 days (on September 2nd). I am feeling a healthy mix of excitement and nerves, but I think I'm ready to go! I am still sad about leaving, but I think that's legit. I've had some good times this summer, and will be sad to leave these good friends behind. I'll be back in 3 1/2 months, but do not know where I will be living when I return. That is yet to be determined!

New Blog

Welcome to my blog. I plan on keeping this space updated while I travel abroad to Ghana in the fall of 2008. Enjoy!