My values have been challenged.
I often seem, if only to myself, unshakeable. I am serious business. My personality wears pumps. But I have been shaken: mainly by how unshaken I was by my time in Ghana.
I have never been to a place like Ghana, before. “Like Ghana.” What is “like Ghana?” “Like Ghana” makes me an ethnic minority, but I have been an ethnic minority. “Like Ghana” means a “third world” or “developing” nation, but I have been to “the third world.” “Like Ghana” means a place where it is hot, where settlements grow spontaneously, rather than according to plan, where people pack buses like it’s a fun challenge, a place where the currency has been artificially deflated, a place where the police carry guns—big guns, where people speak a language other than English as their first—a language I have little understanding of, a place where people from back home call you “brave” for having gone out without a tour guide. I have been to all of these places, but none of them were “like Ghana” in the ways that matter most.
We landed in Takoradi, the piece of land closest to 0-degrees by 0-degrees on the globe. Takoradi was once the most major port of Ghana, but it has been strangled by the growth in Tema: Ghana’s only planned city and the port nearest to the capital, Accra. In order to combat the decay in Takoradi, the national government has sought to make some changes, namely charging one port with imports and the other with exports, so that both have a good deal of business, but the one does definitely outweigh the other. Ghana exports a phenomenal amount of lumber and, as a consequence, has a problem with deforestation. Ghana also exports cocoa. Ghana imports most things that are considered high-tech or medium-tech products, including computer-related products, most of their electronics, etcetera.
I knew from the moment that I stepped off of the ship into the port that Ghana was different from other places that I had been… because Ghana is a lot like me. I knew I would never be able to leave Ghana, in full; that a part of me is there, tucked into the eyelashes of a child in Kasoa. I had to admit this to myself when I sat down to write this blog and realized that I only have one photo from four days in Ghana: it is a picture of Jeanette petting a stray kitten. This is the same sort of thing I would take a picture of at home. I did not feel the need to photograph Ghana, although it looks so different from the world I am used to. I also did not feel a moral obligation to not photograph Ghana, how I might feel about sacred places. Ghana did not shock me. Ghana held me. I feel like Ghana is a place we have all been, or, at the very least, it is a set of values that some of us hold, but cannot express actively in our culture. It’s like déjà vu, but it doesn’t hurt: it’s a welcome home.
The first day, I stayed on the ship. I had been recovering from temporary ails and wanted to make sure my immune system was up to snuff before I let it out into the world of malaria, dengue fever, etcetera, etcetera. I did, however, have the chance to attend a lecture onboard given by a couple of Ghanaian NGO workers; the theme was environmental activism and policy in Ghana, but we got so much more than we had bargained for. We learned about all strains and stresses of Ghanaian politics and culture, and we had the added bonus of being trusted to learn about a disturbing, but oddly inspiring situation in northern Ghana.
In some tribal areas, there is still a belief in witchcraft: once a person, usually an older woman, is branded a witch, her community abuses her and drags her through a process of verification with the local fetish priest. Even when the accused is proven to not be a witch, she is barred from reentering her community. There are fetish priests who have been given the charge of providing shelter and purpose to literally hundreds of these women. But there is good news. The woman who spoke to us about this spoke of her organization’s efforts, if not a solution, the first step being education: documentaries produced to be aired on public access networks, talking about medical conditions that might cause strange behavior people would otherwise associate with witchcraft.
The next day, I set off on an adventure Jeanette had agreed to partake in. Yet again, things rarely go as planned, but that does not mean that they rarely go well. We walked out of the port; the air was cool, whereas we were there at the end of the rainy season. It was not the most beautiful port, but it was full of friendly Ghanaian men, that’s for sure. Cab drivers vied for us as soon as we exited the gates. Entering a run-down cab, Jeanette laughed and asked if I knew any prayers about auto safety. Whatever anxieties may have been present vanished to the tune of a female radio host’s voice: she told all of her listeners, “appreciate everything, allow good things into your life.” The station also advertised scholarships and investment plans. It was not American radio.
In the center of Takoradi, we found our way into a minibus: it was certainly high class. It was air-conditioned, shiny and new, and some of the passengers were wearing suits. In order to keep prices low, and they were low, we did not leave until all of the seats were taken. We did not have to wait longer than ten minutes. Shortly after we pulled away from the city center, it began to pour. Nothing changed because of the rain: women continued to try to sell the goods they carried on their heads, children still ran around, our vehicle still pushed forward. The woman on the radio began to talk about relationships between older women and younger men and how what matters most is love and respect. It was not American radio.
I had intended to meet-up with an organization known as the Cheerful Hearts Foundation, located in Kasoa, a suburb of Accra. It was supposed to take around two and a half hours. We alighted in Accra and tried to get a cab back to where we belonged. Our driver told us that he knew where we were going, but I began to doubt him when he drove off of the main road into what seemed to be countryside. Ghanaian men know when to stop and ask for directions: ten minutes after they should. Some bits of life are the same everywhere! But what was amazing about going down these back roads and being as lost as a tadpole in a grocery store was that we got to experience one of the most amazing things about Ghanaian culture. There’s that old saying, “it takes a village to raise a child.” It takes two villages to try to find the Cheerful Hearts Foundation and still not get there. Every single person we asked for help was receptive and interested: some in our odd appearance (mainly children), but most in where the heck 369 Shaributu Road really was, if it really existed. We asked the old, we asked the young, we asked women, we asked men, we asked Muslims, we asked Methodists. And for every person who did not know, we would be given two more people who might.
Eventually, we decided to get to an ATM and an internet café, pay our driver for his fantastic efforts and try to make sense of our mess. The sense we wound-up making was that we would get some food into our tummies, call it a night in Kasoa and try to get to Cape Coast to visit another organization I had my sights set on. Easier said than done. After spending about twenty minutes in an internet café, though we paid for an hour and were offered a refund for something like 40 cents, we realized that we would be free-falling. But we would have to free-fall into dinner before anything else. We were hungry, and Jeanette had spied a Chinese restaurant on our way into Accra.
You can snark at us all you want for getting Chinese food in Ghana, but it is just as valid of a cultural experience as having Ghanaian food in Ghana. If you bring a Chinaman to a “Chinese restaurant” in the United States, he will laugh, then cry, then vomit. International cuisines are always adjusted to the tastes and means of local people, and that was no different in Ghana.
So, we wanted Chinese food, and a bunch of cabdrivers wanted us in their cabs. Looking confused and foreign, we were offered some help. Again, the chain reaction of knowledge-seeking took place: we told them all we knew about the Chinese restaurant with the blue sign, and seven or eight people down the line, we were able to tell a cab driver where we needed to go and have him actually understand how to get us there. On the one hand, these people were probably friends with the cab drivers. On the other hand, the streets are a social area in Ghana: at home, a cab driver wouldn’t have his friends there to stop passersby to get totally random directions.
We got to the restaurant. It was open. They did not have all of the food listed on the menu. But what they did have was amazing. I ate absolutely everything I could. The fried rice had no soy sauce in it, but lots of little bits of meat and veggies. We had wonderful spicy chicken and gooey delicious shrimp. It tasted very little like the Chinese food I am accustomed to: the peanut oil flavor was very strong, and the spices were different. But I loved it. So much.
Noticing how late it had gotten, we decided that we did not want to go to Cape Coast and try to find a hotel in the dark. Conveniently for us, the Chinese restaurant was part of a hotel. A very nice, but well-priced hotel. It happened to be one that catered mainly to Emiratis, so we got to stay up late watching Aljazeera, Ghanaian and Nigerian shows. It was objective, informative and not American television.
Up in the morning, we got in a cab to Kasoa and in a TroTro to Cape Coast. It took at least a half hour for the TroTro to be filled to capacity. Different sellers flocked the TroTro with their goods, but one woman really stuck out to me. She was the matriarchal type, telling people how to arrange themselves and their children into the TroTro, so that everyone would fit and be comfortable. As time passed, I decided to buy some of her biscuits. They were pretty good. I will remember that woman’s face for a long time. I think that part of what I liked about her, aside from her being good to other people, was the fact that she reminded me of my friend Lisa, back home: she had the same humble smile. She was satisfied being good to people.
When you go to Ghana, take a TroTro. Take it to nowhere. Take it to Banana Inn TroTro Station. It does not matter. You’re not in Ghana until you are in a TroTro, until you are crammed between two other women, smelling a roomful of smells in the space between your nostrils. It was the most pleasant experience of Ghana, possibly of my life. Though I was physically uncomfortable, I could not stop smiling. I made faces at babies, I chatted with my neighbors: it was a social occasion. When the police pulled us over for having too many people in our TroTro (by about 50%), I began to worry. We were back on the road again in no time, though, and we were in Cape Coast just as quickly.
We were able to get a cab directly to the headquarters of Women in Progress/Global Mamas. Women in Progress is a Ghanaian NGO dedicated to the socioeconomic advancement of women; Global Mamas is their fair trade distributor for the items their beneficiaries make. I was happy to get to talk to one of their staff members for a few minutes about the state of Ghana and the improvements that WIP/GM has contributed to.
Upon exiting the office, Jeanette and I were distracted by both a stray kitten and a cloth stall with the most beautifully patterned fabric. We took some time to pet the kitty and talk to the women selling the fabric. Not long after that, we got a cab back to Takoradi.
Jeanette pets kitty.
Back in Takoradi, we shopped and were propositioned by, of all people, port security.
Getting back on the ship was difficult: it felt cold, it felt empty… it felt dirty. Don’t yell at the crew, it was just as clean as usual! It felt dirty on a moral level. Yes, there are people in the world who live heart-to-heart, rather than minute-to-minute, and they are more than happy. Yes, there are people who put making a difference above making a dollar, and they are more than happy. Yes, there is laughter in every corner of some people’s hearts. Yes, you are walking away from this. You are returning to a life of schedules and steel rafters, concrete life-containers and rat race rhythms. You are returning to the belly of a machine, after having returned to the womb of your soul’s mother.
I will not lie; I became very depressed during the week between Ghana and South Africa, and I had seriously considered getting a flight back home from Cape Town. That would not have helped. The only thing that can help this is for me to further evaluate and reevaluate and rereevaluate my values, to decide what is necessary for my spiritual health and to make that fit into my personal culture, even if it makes it difficult to function within the local culture of my community.
On to Cape Town...
I have just returned from the world:
a place I never knew I had left;
where the earth is rich with the red of life,
rather than the red of death;
where love is both in the forefront
and squeezed into the margins;
where time is a gift,
rather than a prison,
and it is owned by goodness,
rather than ritual.
I am dirty.
I am sweaty.
I am more alive than life itself:
Yes.
Here reeks of motion:
the bite of human sweat,
sweet grass, by the season, wet.
Oh, Ghana, oh,
Ghana.
My sensibilities are not offended,
but are saddened
by your beat:
your hum and drum hold
half my heart,
but the clock
ʼs tickholds my feet.
No comments:
Post a Comment