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The African… proverb? Expression? I'm not sure what to call it,
exactly, but it goes like this: A village raises a child. Well,
that has hit home for me in my time in Ghana. As a teacher it made
sense to me that, all teachers help to raise children - but in
different ways than at home. A teacher (or a coach) plays a part in
a different realm of a child's life, and therefore helps the child
to learn and understand appropriate behaviour, how to act, etc.
However, a teacher or coach doesn't take part in the matters that
go on at home, as this is what I always perceived as the
responsibility of having a child. You talk to others for advice,
but in the end it is the parent who teachs the child right from
wrong, with the decisions that he or she makes.
Africa is different.
A village raises a child.
So when some parents came to Aba House to discuss their child
skipping school and arriving home late, I was expected to discuss
this matter with the child as opposed to offering the parents
advice with what to do. I was expected to "warm the heart" of the
parents, and then take the matter up with the child. Despite the
fact that it had nothing to do with me or my work with the child,
they were coming to me and inadvertently asking me to step in. So I
did. And now I have weekly counselling sessions with the child.
Amazing how quickly one becomes the parent - of an adolescent!
At first I was put off by the translation of what I was meant to
do. Isn't that the responsibility of becoming a parent? But I came
to terms with it: a different culture, where parents discuss these
things with everyone except the child. Even a stranger whom they
have just come to know upon the meeting about the issues they are
having with their child. And then I became a parent. In retrospect
of my first reaction, however, it started to make sense, as
different people have different influences over a person - be it
adult, adolescent, or child - and whatever will make the child grow
up into a mature, independent adult, so be it. I guess. I do still
wonder why the parents never spoke with the child about the matter
- but something that was said along the way has somehow started to
send the child back to school each day, so…
Ghanaian culture has proven difficult to understand, as most things
that are spoken are spoken in proverbs, but many things are not
spoken at all. There is a lot of ssssting that goes on to get the
attention of someone, but to avoid attracting the attention of
others, and a number of actions mean a variety of different things;
again, to detract from others' attention. There is a lot of talk of
"armed robbers" and lying and deceitfulness, that I have difficulty
keeping up with - and it's harder to understand what's going on
with all of these secrets being kept. Learning through experience
is definitely the way here - which, don't get me wrong, I
definitely feel is a good thing, but coming from the United States
culture of spoken word, it just takes a lot more effort and work to
understand.
Ghana at 50 came and went. There was a huge Independence Day
celebration in Accra, with loads of diplomats and VIPs from various
countries coming for the festivities. Miriam, a woman from
California had been hired, in conjunction with a very large number
of Ghanaians, to organise the Independence Day concert at Labatty
Beach, and she stayed at Aba House; therefore I was awarded a free
ticket to attend. Some big-name talented Ghanaian artists (Tic Tac,
Rocky, Batman) performed at the event - which was meant to start at
12noon. But in true African time (or, as they call it here, GMT:
Ghana Maybe Time) the first act started up around 3:30 in the
afternoon. The greatest part about the whole late-ness of the
afternoon was, the staff planning the concert had decided that it
would in fact start on time, and be finished by 6pm, and therefore
hiring a lighting set would be unnecessary. Alas, the concert was
finished around 9pm, an was a truly wonderful event despite the
fact that you could not see much after 7pm. It was a tremendous
event for Ghana, with BBC and a number of other television, radios
and newspapers from all over the world to film and report on it.
One thing that was different was also reminiscent of Namibia,
regarding Independence Day. In the United States, each and every
village, town and city has a celebration - if not many - every year
for the Fourth of July. I am not sure why this isn't true in
Namibia and in Ghana - maybe in other parts of Africa as well, but
on that I can't comment. There is the major celebration in the
city. In Accra, there was the marching ceremony at Independence
Square, and there was the concert just maybe ten kilometres
outside, and that was it. The community of Nungua, if they didn't
not travel into Accra for the festivities, then they sat at home
and watched it on television. Some of the youth went out at night,
but there were no parades or celebrations or marching or anything
to celebrate the major feat of fifty years of being an independent
nation. Why?
In preparation for the Independence Day concert, both Miriam and
Barbara, came to stay at Aba House, both from California. Barbara
is about my age, and had volunteered in Ghana for a few months last
year, and often went out for drinks with her friends. One of these
nights she invited me to join her, and it was then that I came into
contact with the extensive nightlife of Ghana - alive and kicking!
Accra is a fun city if you know where you're going, and there are a
number of clubs, bars and lounges suited for anyone's desires.
Thanks to Barbara, I've made some friends and have had the chance
to go out with people my own age who share similar interests and
have good conversation. It took me many months to make real friends
in Mariental, and I've made some good ones here which is just very
nice.
My "cousin" Mike from Namibia was here, as I mentioned in my last
email, and the night that he left I gathered Enock, one of the
older boys - sixteen years of age - that I work with here at Aba
House, and we travelled in Accra to meet Mike. It was an adventure
getting there: we had all of his stuff, and used to tro-tro (small
bus/public transport) system to get there. Mike didn't have a
phone, and neither of us had been to our meeting place, but
miraculously it worked (not that I was at all surprised; everything
seems to work out here, no matter what. Luckily time is not of
great importance, however) and the three of us got some food before
heading over to the airport.
Enock had never been to the airport before, so we went to the
domestic part and watched planes take off and land for a while. As
I was on a plane at the ripe old age of six weeks for the first
time, and certainly have been on many since then, I forget what a
novelty airplanes are. Enock was ecstatic at having the opportunity
to watch these planes, the little cars that ride around, the people
boarding and disembarking. We stayed until security kicked us out,
well after dark, and then Mike went to check in. Enock is a sweet
boy, but turning into the "punk" that most sixteen-year-olds become
- part of the reason that I love working with kids of this age. But
while we were waiting for Mike to come back out and say goodbye, to
make sure he was able to check in okay, Enock turned into that
little boy that he used to be, blubbering on incessantly about the
planes and the people getting on and off them, asking millions of
questions about what it was like to be in a plane - where does the
food come from? How do you get water? Where are the bags? - and
dreams of being in one or even flying one. It was just such a
spectacular time, listening to him gush about this newfound love -
and he slept in the taxi on the way home, dreaming about flying,
I'm sure.
I had to buy tampons. These are not cheap, nor are they easy to
find. You can find a gazillion sanitary napkins (Aussies say "fanny
packs"), but very few tampons. Finally I found some in Osu, the
area of Accra where the diplomats live, and where you can find ice
cream and iced coffee regularly, as well as mozzarella cheese and
pretzels. I stepped into a pharmacy and looked around, finally
finding some on a shelf in the back, but without a price on them. I
grabbed a box and went up to the counter, intending to ask how much
the box would cost me without being too culturally inappropriate. I
found a young woman at the cash register, assisting a young man
while he was paying for his things. After he left I put the box on
the counter and asked, as sweetly and innocently and appropriately
as possible (whatever that means!), "How much does this box cost,
please?" I smiled sweetly. She stared at me for about a minute (oh,
shit - I thought), and then made a short grunting noise and pointed
toward the crotch of her trousers. It was then my turn to look at
her for a minute. She probably thought the same thing I had thought
a minute before. Then I tried repeating my question, using
different words to phrase it differently, the words of my Professor
Keith from the University of Rhode Island's Exercise Science
Department (though unfortunately she is no longer there) running
through my mind: If someone doesn't understand you, you must say it
differently.
To my gratification, she smiled and explained that she had thought
I had asked what they are used for. Oh-ho! Cultural
misunderstanding (or was it just a communication error?) at its'
best, and I was trying to be so appropriate! She giggled, rang it
up, gave me the price, and I went back for more. Job finished. Well
done - sort of. :)
In January, five of the boys cooked a meal for the three inhabitant
volunteers at Aba House, myself included. It was very nice, and
they did a spectacular job. I went to the market with them and they
picked out what they needed, and then we came back to the house and
they cooked. In exchange, a few weeks ago I cooked them pizza. I
got mozzarella cheese in Accra (Osu), cheese being something most
of them had never tried before, and in the morning I took a trip to
the market with the five boys. What an ordeal it was! The entire
excursion took a good few hours, trying to find everything, keep
the boys appeased, and convince them that although I had never used
some ingredients before, it would be fine. Everything has a
singular use here, it seems, and deviation from the norm is a
serious excursion in itself.
On our adventure to the market, the boys taught me various words in
their language for different foods. Akuadu is plantain, for
instance. They asked me how Namibians would say it, and then I
became the good Peace Corps Volunteer from Namibia, completing a
goal of Peace Corps that I believe doesn't even exist: Sharing
Namibian culture with Ghanaians! In Afrikaans, bietjie means small,
pronounced "bee-kee". A simple tjie ("kee") added to the end of a
word gives it the impression of being small. For instance, a very
popular mix of English and Afrikaans comes in the word thingitjie,
meaning small thing. You could say, This thingitjie is confusing
me, meaning I don't understand this small thing.
So on our walk at the market, we came upon a bunch of small
plantains, and Micheal asked me what they would be called in
Namibia. Now, I don't recall ever having seen plantains in Namibia
- it's entirely possible that they existed there, but I never
learned a word for them in any language. So I told him the Namibian
word would be akuadutjie. It took a minute for the word to settle
in, and for Micheal to realise that it was so similar to his own
word, and burst out laughing. Then I went back and explained what I
have just explained above.
Every language that I learn about or study leaves me with a few
words that I keep in my regular vocabulary - for instance, bietjie.
In Namibia I learned a few key words and phrases of Khoekhoegowab
(one of my favourites being, Kiss me, let me die), and a very
popular word that is used by many is /na, meaning good or fine. How
are you? /Na.
When I was student teaching at Ashaway Elementary School in Rhode
Island, my phenomenal cooperating teacher, Kelly Gordon, had a
poster of different words for good, such as spectacular, fabulous,
wonderful, etc. The point was to use different words to help
increase the vocabulary of the children, as well as give you other
words to use instead of continuously saying, Nice work, Great job.
So that fall I made an effort to use different words, and have
continued that since then. On occasion (maybe more often than not),
I probably sound quite facetious, but I'm really not trying to be.
As a result of these attempts, I took the words with me to Namibia,
and used them with my kids there - an even greater task, as English
was not a first language. Then I came to Ghana. Now, in Africa, you
always greet everyone, and it is very insulting not to (I learned
the hard way, in the United States, luckily for me prior to coming
here). But the greeting, whether in English or another languages,
translates most directly to, How are you? I am fine. So, as you can
imagine, when you greet twenty people in the course of a morning
and everyone is doing fine, it gets a little tiring. Not tiring -
boring. So when I started asking the children at Aba House how they
were, and they would tell me, Fine, I would say, That's all? Hence
we started coming up with others words. Now I hear that school was
excellent, they slept fantastic, and their health is outstanding.
So on top of teaching them other words in English, I taught them
the favoured /na of Namibia. The clicks are hard to learn if you
have never heard them, and even harder if you will not hear them
regularly ever again, so often with my Ghanaian children try to
tell me that they are /na, they sound like they are blowing a loud,
grandmother-like kiss in the air, mooah, as opposed to the light
click that occurs from just behind the teeth, as one might make a
tsk tsk sound. So every now and then I hear that they are feeling
mooah and that their painting is looking mooah. Oh, my Nama
teacher, the Beautiful Lucas, would be proud.
In Namibia many a Peace Corps Volunteer does not feel well from
time to time, and often consults the Peace Corps-issued Where There
Is No Doctor, a wonderful book that tells you every possible
symptom for every possible disease known to mankind, and how to
treat it, allowing hours upon hours of wonderment over what your
headache could really mean. Usually it's a simple lack of water in
the desert heat, but you could spend hours upon hours, night after
night with nothing better to do, paging through determining what
the best cure is for that miniscule scratch you got on your wrist
from the thorn bush next to your door. And when you are lacking
companionship or a person to talk to (aside from the walls), Where
There Is No Doctor is also an exemplatory learning tool where you
can learn to deliver a baby and possibly even cut off a body part
if necessary (I may be exaggerating here; I can't remember if I
ever read about cutting off limbs).
So when Miriam arrived from California, she brought with her the
Ghanaian Yellow Pages, a book of white pages with every possible
business in Ghana. This has provided me with hours worth of ideas,
places to go, things to do - and has told me where I can do just
about anything that I needed to while in Ghana. Incredible! Why
they are called the Yellow Pages, please do not ask. But it clearly
states that as the title of the inch-and-a-half thick book. Very
informative.
Now, Ghana sometimes reminds me of Vermont in the case of street
names. It was not until 1999 that Vermont enacted 911, and then
every street had to have a name. Some already had names, but no
signs, and so signs were erected and streets were named if
necessary. My personal favourite is Chicken Farm Road in East
Corinth. Indeed, there is a chicken farm on that road.
So here in Ghana there are street names for most of the roads - I
believe - but finding a sign is trying, and I don't think anyone
knows the names anyway. When one refers to "the main road" in
Nungua, they could easily mean one of two different roads - the one
that runs parallel to the beach, or the one that leads to Accra.
Therefore, when an address is given, there are usually a number of
land markers that are used in an effort to assist those in finding
a place. So one night I went through and found a few that I found
particularly enjoyable. At the time I was looking for a place in
which to replace a mouse for one of the laptop computers that was
donated, so you'll see a pattern of the types of stores I was
searching through.
Aftech Computer Selections: Near Alatia Bus Stop.
Adepa Computer Accessories: Behind Frankies, opposite Standard
Charter Bank, Osu.
Bytes Tech Ltd: Kojo Thompson Road, opposite Engen Filling Station,
Adabraka.
Hitech Business Service Ltd: Near Makola Market.
House Party Computer Plus: Inside H.P. Building, Accra New Town,
near SG-SSB (what in the world is SG-SSB?!).
K. Eriteh Systems: Behind Busy Internet. (Then you look up Busy
Internet: Next to Barnetts Furnishers.)
And as a result of the address debacle, Martha, a Ghanaian woman,
came to visit Aba House one evening. She took a taxi to Nungua,
then started asking people where it was. No one seemed to be of
help, and it took her quite a while to find the front entrance of
the house. Unfortunately for her, she arrived at night and did not
see the bell - and the back entrance is the one that's unlocked and
allows easy access. So she called my cell phone. Again,
unfortunately for her, she called me on my mobile phone, but it is
a mobile phone and I was mobile at the time. So the directions I
gave her were as follows: Face the front of the house. Walk to your
left until you get to the lower fence, and climb over it. Go under
the trees until you get to another fence on your right that is low
enough to climb over, and climb over that. Follow the cement fence
until you reach a wooden door, and push. Harder.
Akwaaba to Aba House!
Growing up in Vermont, our forty-five minute drive to school each
day was kind of a pain, but normal. When I attended university in
Rhode Island, driving that forty-five minutes to Providence was a
seriously thought-about trip. In Namibia, taking a two-and-a-half
hour drive to Windhoek was not so bad - we considered ourselves
living close to the capital. In Ghana, making the thirty-minute
(with no traffic, mind you) trip into Accra is something to think
about. Funny how close and proximity are such relative terms.
And thus is my life here. It is a nice, relaxing life. Today is a
Saturday, with plans for kite-making with the children, and then
taking them to the beach to see them fly.
D:)
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