Everyone here is a ridiculously good dancer. Dancing is all over. My
sisters are always dancing (not much else to do). And I went to church
a few weeks ago, which was basically one-third dance party, one-third
preaching and one-third miscellaneous ("God has blessed me with these
yams").
Everything here comes in a black plastic bag (called "poly-tin" bags).
Tomatoes at the market - black plastic bag. 500 mL of treated water in
a bag for 3 cents - black plastic bag. Fried rice from a street vendor
- black plastic bag (I eat with my hands directly out of a plastic
bag).
FanIce is wooonderful. This is ice cream that comes in a plastic pouch
(not black) produced in Ghana but apparently owned by some folks in
the Netherlands. You bite off a corner of the plastic and suck/squeeze
out its tasty goodness. The artificial stabilizers, colors, and
flavors give it a taste and consistency that has been aptly compared
to frozen cake batter. Wooonderful. I eat about 5 a week.
Vehicle safety has not reached Ghana. Yesterday I put on a seatbelt in
the front seat of a cab and after it clicked in, a cloud of dust
escaped from the clicky part. It probably hadn't been used in years.
It's not unusual for 2 people to ride in a passenger seat or for 20
people to pile in to the back of a pickup. But one of the best things
I've seen in Ghana was a train in Accra the day before the first World
Cup game. The train had a locomotive and 4 passenger covers. The
entire thing was covered with people riding on the outside hanging on
waving Ghanaian flags and other paraphernalia. No vehicle emissions
standards either.
I've rode in a taxi with a goat. Chickens and goats are everywhere.
Lizards too. The school I was teaching at (as practice for when I'm a
real teacher) has a crocodile pit. But they were just sitting there,
which was boring (and nature exists to amuse me). So I poked one of
them in the eye (with a very long stick). This got his attention and
for a split second (the one in which he tried to bite the stick in
half) looking at crocodiles was fun.
I let my 4 year old brother draw in my notebook. This makes him very
happy. So my guess is that either the family can't afford extra paper
for the kid to scribble in or they just don't consider that a good use
of resources (probably a little of both). For example, his mother
yelled at him for spoiling my notebook. But he drew a worm, a snake
(which looked a lot like the worm), a cat (the family cat is named
Poos), a horse and a cup. If the family had a fridge, that's where
they'd go. He also tries to spin his pen like I do.
Littering: Just Do It. There aren't many garbage cans around, probably
because there aren't many garbage trucks either. So, people litter. I
hate littering, but is it litter when that's what everyone does with
their garbage? It's actually not as bad as you may think because with
the exception of the black plastic bags, 500 mL water bags and FanIce
wrappers, Ghanaians don't create much trash.
Music here is seemingly random, although I'm sure there's some order
to it. Other than Ghanaian music which I won't go into because I don't
know enough about it, there's a lot of random dance music from the 90s
(Matt: Danzel is too recent for Ghana), and Ghanaians like hearing the
lyrics. So that means slower songs (tons of Celine Dion) and country
music. Country music is kind of big here. It's funny every time.
OK, that's about it for now...2 more weeks of living with a Ghanaian
family until we all leave for a few days to visit our permanent sites.
Then we come back and continue living with our Ghanaian hosts for
another 2 weeks. Time...goes...by...so...slowly... when you're living
with a Ghanaian family in a small village. My hobbies in the village
include sweating, not understanding the language, washing my clothing
by hand until my knuckles bleed, and killing cockroaches!
Today marks one month in Ghana for me. Not surprisingly, I still
haven't mastered the language. The most popular language is Twi, and I
am living in a Twi-speaking region. But the language at my site is
Fante, which is confusingly similar to Twi (and is the native language
of Kofi Annan). So I have classes in Fante and am getting by in
Twiland with a few key phrases and just talking Fante, since it's so
similar (not that I really know much Fante either). Fante is only
spoken in Ghana, and only in about 15% of the country. No clicking
noises (in case you were wondering), but there is a quasi-whistle
sound). Luckily English is the official language anyway, and most
people speak some small-small English (that's a bit of Ghanaian
English there).
In New York, I can walk for miles and not talk to anyone. Not so in
Ghana. Partially because I'm white and partially because it's part of
the culture, I have to greet people. And people greet me. This all
happens in Twi, and luckily for me it's the same conversation over and
over again. I could literally have the following conversation 20 times
in a single day (translated from the original Twi):
Me: Greetings.
Ghanaian: Greetings.
M: How are you?
G: I am very fine. And you?
M: Also, I am fine.
G: What is your name?
A: My name is Ari. And you?
G: Also, my name is ______. Where are you going?
A: I am going to ______. We will meet again.
G: Yo (elongated).
There are about 5 other questions I can respond to, but I'm learning.
Luckily, the schools are all in English and using the native language
is discouraged.
The computer here is frustratingly slow, so that's all for now. I just
tried to upgrade my flickr account so i could upload more pictures but
was told I was in the United Arab Emirates (I'm not).
I've been living in with my host family for more than a week. A little
bit about the place:
My estimate is that the village is about 6 city blocks (say from 96th
and Broadway to 99th and Columbus). It extends a bit farther than
that, but it's very sparsely populated once you leave the main area.
It's home to about 2,500 people. The layout shown in my pictures (link
on the right) is fairly common. Houses range from a mudhut with a
grass roof to a small compound with an open-air courtyard in the
middle and several isolated rooms around the courtyard.
The village is along the main road, which is a good thing. The
electric poles seem to also follow the main road, so the village has
electricity. As far as I've seen, it's used for lights, TV and radios.
If there is any refrigeration, it's probably only in stores and spots
(aka bars). Being along the main road also means that the nearby city
is easily accessible. This means economic opportunity, better schools
and probably other good things that I can't think of.
I think I've finally figured out who lives in the house - there's my
mother, sisters ages 16, 15, 12 and 8 (roughly), brothers ages 2 and 4
weeks, and 2 of my father's brothers who are both in their 20s. I have
my own room as do the two uncles and everyone else seems to sleep in
one room together.
My oldest sister, the one who speaks the best English, is always doing
chores - washing dishes, cooking, selling rice at the market, fetching
water, doing laundry, sweeping (the dirt - yes, they sweep the leaves
from the dirt), etc. Last Sunday, after I came back from town where I
went on the Internet and drank beer with other volunteers, I asked her
what she did that day. Her reply: "I fetched water." Oh. I didn't have
any follow-ups.
The next two oldest sisters also speak English, but not as well, and
they're busy too. So with the English speaking crowd occupied, it's
basically me, the 8 year old and the 2 year old much of the time. So I
don't spend a whole lot of time around the house, although I do enjoy
putting the two year old on my shoulders and last week the 4 week old
fell asleep on my stomach. It's also very hot in my room - it seems
that the metal roof insulated with burlap sacks is quite adept at
trapping heat, an unfortunate property in this climate.
When I am home, it's usually to eat. I get almost the same food
everyday. Breakfast is an omelet with tomatoes and onions, a huge hunk
of bread, an orange, and hot water with chocolate powder. I get lunch
in town because the two times I was home for lunch they served a plate
of fruit. Dinner is either boiled yams or rice with some tomato-based
sauce that either has fish, canned meat or chicken in it. I'm not sick
(yet), so I'm not complaining.
I poop into a pit, but it's a better situation than a lot of other
volunteers have. It has a concrete and plastic throne and it's in a
nicely built little wooden structure with a pipe coming out of the
roof so the place doesn't smell. I'm doing my own laundry (by hand). I
take bucket baths.
Sleeping is hard because villagers seem to have a different conception
of personal space. They either don't realize or don't care that when
you blast the radio, the sound waves travel farther than your ears.
And Ghanaians loooove playing things loudly. As a Ghanaian on PC staff
explained, when Ghanaians buy a radio, they are buying it for the
whole house. I'm also next to a spot (aka bar), so that only makes
things worse. Oddly, the spot not only blasts music at night but also
at about 6:00 am. I guess there's a morning drinking crowd. Oh, and
there are goats, chickens and roosters everywhere. So they're pretty
noisy too. Generally, there is a different definition of privacy here.
It's not just about personal space - a pretty standard question is to
ask for my mother and father's names. In the US, we would assume that
it's part of a scam, but in Ghana it's such a standard question that
answering it is one of the first things they taught me how to say in
Fante.
Homestay lasts until August 15 with a break in the middle to visit my
eventual site. I am really looking forward to that.
Addendum #1: Uri - I have not used the epoxy. It looks complicated.
But it was on the list of stuff to bring, and it was cheap, so I got
it. So basically, in terms of the epoxy, I basically brought it in
terms of me bringing stuff to Ghana.
Addendum #2: Another comparison to camp - they have a beit am here. I
don't think they call it that, but the biggest building in town is
large open room that's used for meetings.
Addendum #3: Ghana is out of the World Cup. After the game, someone in
the village said that it was the white referees trying to keep African
football down. I pointed out that Ghana failed to score a goal, which
was not the refs' fault. The whole being white in Africa thing will
not go away...ever. Yesterday, I made a little girl cry, just by being
white. I got into a cab, which she was already in. When she turned and
saw me, she just started crying and wouldn't stop. So they took her
out of the cab, which was not moving at the time, but every time they
tried to put her back in she started to cry. Sometimes little kids get
really excited. The other day I was walking through a new part of town
and a girl, probably about 5, spotted me and started screaming,
"obrooni! obrooni!" She was so excited that she ran inside to get all
of her brothers and sisters. A small pack of children came running out
of the house after me (not in a dangerous way, they were genuinely
excited).
Addendum #4: Happy July 4 and Happy July 6 (one-year anniversary of
New York not winning the 2012 Olympics).