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!
Friday, October 24, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
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!
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!
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
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!
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!
Monday, October 6, 2008
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.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
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!
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!
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