The Blog I Started to Avoid “Unsubscribe” Responses to My Mass E-mails

The small children of Bechem, the sleepy one-road town I lived in for two weeks, took to calling out “Jesus?” in confused awe while I walked by — a reference to the only other white person they’d ever seen. The older, more experienced youth elbowed each other and chanted “Bruni, Bruni” - politely translated: “hey whitey.”

When the local women wrapped me up in traditional garb for a funeral, the community was brought to collective and hysterical laughter. To be fair, it was warranted - the same dresses that make Ghanaian women regal and stunning were always sadly awkward and unflattering on me. My romantic dreams of staying on and fully assimilating were pretty well dashed at that point.

When I chuckled at the town’s side-clutching laughter (see, the foreigner can be good natured!) and replied “Akwaaba!” - their delight only intensified. Now the white woman was trying to speak Twi.

You really can’t take yourself too seriously in Ghana.

For half of February, I was fortunate enough to worm my way into the home of a friend of my father’s who was raised by a Catholic missionary, sent to the US for 40 years of education and employment and returned home to the Ashanti region of Ghana at nearly 80 years of age to resuscitate a fledgling cocoa farm and care for numerous young and fully dependant relatives.

Most days began with a 6:00 a.m. mass (which my Catholic friends will call poetic justice for my years of mockery, I’m sure). The service was in Twi but the music was great - the church band featured a dozen native drummers, one tuba, a trumpet and absolutely no organ or piano. And Catholic or not, Twi or not, there really is something centering about just being present in any place of worship, isn’t there? Though I grumbled through my bucket bath each morning in preparation, I secretly kind of treasure those quiet hours at mass. Don’t tell Mr. Fobena.
The rest of the day was spent eating, cooking, welcoming the neighbors and relatives who stopped by to visit and listening to excerpts from Mr. Fobena’s old-testament-like life. I learned on day two to remove my watch and slow my internal pace. Of all the lessons I received in Ghana, that has been the most valuable still. Some days were deliriously slow, and felt that way; overall, I am grateful for being forced to calm down and become a gentler more patient version of myself.

In other great life lessons, I also learned to eat and cook like a local - foo foo, banku, kinkey. If a grain or starch can be boiled, beaten and molded into a wet, sticky softball sized lump, I’ve consumed it. Over and over again. Breakfast was boiled yams and plantains with a spicy tomato and fish sauce. Which I actually still crave - it was really good.

On the other hand, I did hit a culinary stumbling block the night they served boiled cow skin. Gather round with me and picture this — half inch thick strips of flesh with *most* of the leather scraped off with a dull knife. It is a pale tannish/translucent color with a strong gummy consistency that is surprisingly difficult to chew through. Like really tough beef scented jello, I guess. Let’s never speak of it again.

More than any of the countries I’ve visited so far, Ghana is a steady if good natured assault on the senses:

The scent of lavender trees and plantains cooking over every home’s charcoal fire pit.

Sweeps of color — the blood red of palm oil with which every meal is thick, the arching green of the defiant but sparse troops of trees that have escaped loggers, the extravagant clothing artistically tucked and swept around strutting women.

The omnipresent drum beat setting the rhythm for the symphony of domestic life — the clickety-clack of the Bonwire men weaving kente cloth, the deep and steady thump thump thump of pounding foo-foo, the incessant roosters, the angry bawling of free-range goats, the distant strains of music from transistor radios that sing on day and night.

The Ghanaians I met are the proud and defiant ancestors of Ashanti kings and warriors.

They know they are poor by American standards but they didn’t let that dilute their self-confidence for a second - which was really kind of admirable. The older women and the small children were my favorite companions. They both went out of their way to take care of me, teach me and guide me out of the tourist-zone and into real family life.

Can I Adopt Her??

Overall, Ghana was a great experience and offered a lot of time to think, read and pray and most importantly set the tone for a more successful and patient voyage through the rest of West Africa. At the time, I thought Africa (as introduced by Ghana) was pretty rough. Looking back, I have to laugh — Accra has luxury super markets, chocolate and coffee, cars and real restaurants. Many families have electricity and a lot of kids can afford to go to school; one of my buses even had air conditioning for crying out loud.
I still have next to no real grasp of Africa and I know there are places that are far more rugged and dangerous than I have seen so far, but I have to admit now that my perspective at the beginning was pretty naive and I was lucky to start the trip in a relatively comfortable setting.

After bidding my foster family goodbye, I took a 24 hour bus ride up over the border and into Burkina Faso. Twice our driver pulled over, shuffled us all off the bus into a dark and abandoned squat of land and took off for a couple of hours — with no explanation other than “people, calm down!” Which is really funny considering none of the Ghanians seemed anything more than mildly curious and I was the only foreigner on the bus. But there wasn’t anything we could do but find a comfortable plot on which to sprawl out and try to sleep through the mosquitoes…and it was actually pretty amusing once the driver eventually returned for us.

I spent a few good days in Burkina - I actually thought Ouagadougou was a great, laid back town, a surprisingly livable place.

Even though it is one of the world’s poorer nations, they still had this French refinement thing going on that was really charming and endearing despite all the dust and touts.

Oh - and I let a Burkinabe man there named Emmanuel cut my hair off (well, to chin length anyway).

On the ride down to the south of Burkina and over into Bamako, Mali I had pleeeenty of time to ponder the countryside, which was beautiful - over and over these enormous, lush green trees rose out of soil that looked inhabitably dry.

Oh, and all the buses actually ran on time (even if you always had to share half your seat with a large Nigerian man). So I say Kudos to Burkina!

Next up: Mali - IE, Both the Bane of My Existence and Potentially the Greatest Place I’ve Ever Been.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 9th, 2006 at 10:42 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.