Yum, gravy

Pilgrims? No. Harvest? No. Family? Sadly, no. 

But turkey? Yes! While you were all tearing into your big birds, well, so were we. Of course Thanksgiving is not celebrated here in Ghana by the locals, but it is by the ex-pats, of which there is a huge community. Our own gathering was thanks to the US Ambassador who invited a big group of ex-pats – mainly Peace Corps members – to his residence for turkey and all the trimmings. Yum, it really was great – lotsa gravy and even pumpkin pies,  sans the whipping cream. (Dairy is not big here.) There were 16 turkeys! The PC-ers dove into the beer and food line as if they were starving, but there was a little left for the likes of us!

Ambassador  Donald Teitelbaum at the turkey table

It was fun and a chance to meet interesting people. One young woman is in Kumasi studying childhood pneumonia, another woman is here with her 9-yr.-old daughter, also in Kumasi, doing research on street girls. And there are lots of other interesting projects going on.

Our tax dollars at work. Nice residence, a little different from our flat.

The ambassador’s residence is very nice, including a big collection of art from the National Gallery. He declined the opportunity to switch homes for a weekend, can’t imagine why. 

The next day we left on a trip in our CAR! That is something we are really thankful for – we have a small-but-strong Yaris and we gave it an inaugural voyage east of the Volta. More on that in the next post. We are also thankful for our friends and family, all of you who let us do this crazy thing that we do.

 

Little Abena (Tuesda) Saree-Su (after the person who managed the money to purchase it), our car ...

No feed, sorry

Apologies to everyone who is supposed to be getting a feed to the blog. And thanks to those telling us that it got stuck appropriately enough on "Stuck in Traffic."

I can't figure out why it stopped, and I've tried and tried to fix it. It seems lots of people have this same issue. But it doesn't help to know that!

If there is anyone out there who knows how to fix this to start the feed up again, please let me know!

Obolobo, obolobo

I learned a new word yesterday. I was leaving the library in Madina. It is at a teachers' college, and there was a long line of young teachers blocking the driveway. Kwame, the taxi driver, shouted at one of them to move. "Obolo," he said, and added something else. Well, I knew the word because I was introduced to someone earlier, and he was described as "obolo" which means, "fat person." I said to Kwame, "That is mean to call her that." But he said no, it wasn't an insult, he just said, "Fat girl, get out of the way" in the local language, twi.

I guess it isn't an insult - "fat" still means you are doing well, apparently. We ran into that in Uganda, where "fat" was really a compliment.  But I'm not so sure - as Bill said when I told him about it, we should ask a woman if she thinks this is a compliment.

But honestly, "obolo" (said o' bo-lo') is so much fun to say. I told Kwame that, and he said, "If a person is REALLY fat, you say obolobo." Now, that is even more fun to say! O'-bo-lo'-bo!

There are lots of words in twi that are fun to say - it is a tonal language rather than accented, like ours. I hope to run into a really fat person soon so I can say Obolobo!

Making do

 We are away from home.

We are in an interesting place, someplace very different from our ordinary world. We have our regular market ladies who sell us fruit and vegetables. We know how to reject certain green peppers that are a little soft for better ones without being obnoxious ex-pats. We know that pedestrians have no rights and therefore we are adept at leaping open ditches to get out of the way of speeding taxis. We can elbow our way onto the most crowded tro-tro, completely ignoring the people trying to get off – just like the locals do. We rip the corner of plastic bags of filtered water with our teeth (though we don’t slug the whole thing down in one gulp like most!). We are settling in here.  

But we are away from home.

And we have to be creative to get some of the comforts of home. Here are a few ways we make do:

Bathroom WMS

• First and most important, we have what we call a Water Management System. Our water either runs entirely out, or slows to something that doesn’t even justify the word “trickle.” When we have good water flow, we get a little hot water in the tub (yay!), but most of the time, no hot water. We are pretty used to cold showers. When the water is completely gone, we dip out of two big garbage cans that we have filled in more liquid times – one is in the bathroom, and one is in the kitchen. Then we have a medium-size bucket in the bathroom that we keep filled as well – we can use it for “bucket showers,” and also to flush the toilet. (We also save dish rinse water in a little bucket to use for flushing.)

 There is a basin too that we use for the bucket showers, and we also have a little empty yogurt container that we use to wash hands at the sink when the water is gone.

In the kitchen, the WMS is also very plastic intensive. There is the big garbage can, then a smaller pail to haul the water to the sink for dishes, then an electric kettle for boiling water, and then several jugs and pitchers that we fill with boiled water for brushing teeth, rinsing vegetables, etc. And then there is a huge jug of filtered water that we buy for drinking, and Bill fills two glass pitchers of it so we can keep one in the fridge and use it to fill our water bottles that we carry, and the other so he doesn’t have to heft the big jug so often. Every other week or so, we return the empty jug to the store and get a full one. There is also another basin that we keep filled for rinsing dishes.

Closet door holder - the meat was good!

We have enough water in the various containers for an outage of about two days, maybe a little more.  Only once have we had to call someone to come fill the big water tanks on the roof of our compound. When the water comes back – well, let’s just say it is cause for celebration to hear that gurgle coming through the line!

•  Our closet doors won’t stay shut, so we use skewers from the ubiquitous “meat on a stick” snacks to hold the handles together.

Knitting headlamp could be a new invention

• At night, sometimes we watch TV shows or movies on the computer (thank you, Meg and Sarah for the Castle referral and CDs respectively). I like to knit while watching, but the only lights we have are big fluorescent ones, and you have to turn those off to see the screen. So I knit while wearing a camping headlamp. Not glamorous, and a few missed stitches, but it mainly works.

• We are our own barbers! In the hot climate, our hair grows fast. Twice now we have given each other haircuts. It’s a little scary, since our relationship is at stake, but so far so good. We use my knitting scissors, which are really kindergarten craft scissors, and Bill’s beard trimmer. The hotter it gets (and the less water we have), the shorter our hair gets! (Last week I used the scissors to prune the bush in the courtyard that encroaches on the clothes line. Those scissors are great!) Yes, we could find someone to do it, but we wouldn't like the results, and the price is certainly right in our own kitchen. 



Bill looks a little scared



The clothespins are an added touch

Toaster

•  We don’t have a toaster and don’t really want to buy one. So we use one of our camping pans that we brought to toast one slice of bread at a time over the gas stove. Works fine.

•  We use masking tape to supplement the mosquito frames that have big gaps between the frame and the windowsill. Masking tape also helped seal the gaps around the bathtub tile where the cockroach and maybe the scorpion snuck in.

•  We have someone who takes our laundry once a week (aforementioned water shortage) but there are always things we want before the laundry day since we don’t have that many clothes with us. So we wash clothes in the sink, and rinsing them is a big pain. Of all the appliances we don’t have – many – the washing machine is the one I miss most. The dish washing is not easy either – we have to heat water – but it’s easier than the clothes washing!

When we get home for the holidays we already have a plan in place: First, drink directly from the faucet; second, hot shower!; third, hot shower; fourth, hot bath; fifth, real haircut!

  

Chief, priests and schnapps – oh, my!

Warding off evil with white clay paint

“Everything here is a National Geographic photo,” says Bill as he stares at chiefs in tiaras, fetish priests, dancing women in wild headgear, trembling drums and offerings of schnapps. It’s true: Our eyes pretty much pop out of our heads all day as we finally get to one of the traditional Ghanaian festivals.

 Last weekend we took a trip to the lower Volta to see the Hogbetsotso (sounds like Ho-be-jojo) Festival in the little town of Anloga.  The festival has not happened for 5 or so years because of a dispute over who was the true king of the Anlo people. But now that it’s back, everyone turned out – chiefs from all over Ghana paraded into the festival grounds trailed by supporters, some carrying huge colorful parasols to shade the important men. (Even the president of Ghana showed up – though we didn’t see him – the crowd by that time was HUGE.)

The festival marks the exodus of the Anlo people from Togo. The story is that to fool their enemies, the people walked backwards into Ghana. Pretty smart.  But, no, they didn’t walk backward into the festival grounds, much to our disappointment!

Chiefs come marching in ... with the band

“Colorful” was the word of the day. Chiefs traditionally wear individual patterns of kente cloth (woven in strips and then stitched together into a bed-sheet-sized cloth); the fabric usually includes diagonal or zig-zag patterns in bright, contrasting colors, though some are white with black swirling patterns. They wrap the cloth around their body and over one shoulder so that the other shoulder and part of their back is bare. Of course, their smooth chocolate skin is perfectly set off by the colors of Ghana – bright oranges, blues, and greens. With dozens of chiefs at the festival, if you squinted it seemed like one big sea of kente.

My twi teacher (that’s another story!) told us that when one chief greets another, he lowers the cloth to his waist to show that he doesn’t have any weapons hidden on his body.

It is traditional for those who have been helped by the chiefs – or want to be helped – to bring offerings to them, mainly bottles of schnapps. And so, knots of people carried offerings on their heads and then set them in front of the chiefs. In one metal tub there were bottles, but also a child’s doll. Probably that meant a child had been cured, or the person was asking for help bearing a child.

Chiefs and their entourages

The spectators – who are really participants – were equally brightly dressed, some painted with white clay or powder to ward off evil spirits. Others were traditionally dressed in bold-patterned dresses and shirts, with some men in the woven smocks of the north. Drumming and dancing was everywhere. And everyone – men and women - wore necklaces and bracelets of ceramic beads. (Even Bill!)

The fetish priest oversees the drummers and dancers

Oh, and the fetish priests. Well, there was one in particular that we stumbled upon and gratefully sat down on a shaded bench to watch. He was surrounded by a circle of believers and the curious. In the circle were dancing women, some with bouncing babies strapped to their backs. And 4 or 5 men who were dancing themselves into a trance. One man fell down and they carried him to a bench,  his eyes rolled back in his head. It was pretty scary, and some men threw a cloth over him until he came to. Another was in a frenzy and kept coming up to us to shake our hands or slap us roughly. A little off-putting, but people around us yelled him off.  

We came to the festival with Kwame, a young man who is a driver for the libraries and comes from the Volta region. Kwame told us the fetish priests and their followers sometimes are in such a trance that they use a cutlass (machete) to make cuts in their arms and the cuts don’t even bleed. But, he said, the priest was watching to make sure that didn’t happen at the festival, which was “not the place for that.”

Bill playing monster

The festival was so hot we were in a bit of a trance as well, so we left in the afternoon and visited Kwame’s village and his brand new grand-niece. We were swarmed with kids as usual - at one point, they pulled Bill outside the hut, where he promptly pretended to be a monster and chased them around, he roaring and the kids all squealing and running. Our friend Carl got into the act too, and there were two white men chasing laughing black kids around cisterns and over wooden wagons until everyone was exhausted. 

If we had any doubt about where we were, that day – between the festival and the village – proved that we are, indeed, in Africa.

  

Afternoon at the polo grounds

Two profs, one yogi, and me with hat perfect for polo-watching

Last Sunday was our friend Carl's birthday. With a little arm-twisting, he decided he'd like a party at the Accra Polo Grounds. Yes, Ghana has a polo ground. It's a former British colony, after all. We had heard about the polo matches that supposedly occur every weekend at this time of year, and Bill and I have been trying to get there to see what it's all about, so this was a good excuse. Depending on what reference you use, the matches start at either 3 or 3:30, so we got there promptly at 3 so we wouldn't miss anything. The match actually started at 4:30, "after the heat of the day."

 

Oh, well, we didn't mind sitting in the shade of the bar, with a nice breeze on us. We learned after the rather scruffy match started that it was just a practice session - the real match is this coming weekend. But it was fun anyway; many of the riders were Ghanaian, though there were definitely more obrunis riding.

Action on the field

Young Ghanaian kids warmed up the ponies and we wondered where they learned to ride. There were lots of ponies, and the riders rotated through them all to keep them in playing shape.

 Pretty horses, friendly patrons who filled us in on what was happening, lively chukkas, good friends, g&t's ... a pretty sophisticated afternoon in Africa! 

Fishy trip to the coast

Lots of flags and colorful boats

You smell Elmina before you see it. This little town on the coast of Ghana is teeming with fish – and people catching, hauling, smoking fish, fish, fish. Drive into town, as we did last weekend, and the smell gets stronger the closer you get to the huge fish market and fishing boat harbor.

At the edge of the market, women walk by, effortlessly balancing huge tubs of fish on their heads - sometimes long fish droop over the edge of the overfilled tubs, bodies swaying like shiny snakes. Wagons of many, many tubs of fish are pulled by one man, then pushed from the back by a couple of others – or boys pretending to be pushing when dad isn’t looking. Racks full of small fish rest on top of smoking clay ovens, tended by women in bright head-wraps and aprons.

Hauling tubs of fish, mainly herring. Taxis just have to wait

And the market itself! It’s so full of people doing everything related to fish that there’s no visible path in.

Elmina is divided by a small yellow bridge over the entrance to the lagoon that is the fishing boat harbor, and it’s possible – as we did – to spend a chunk of time in the morning just watching the action from the height of the bridge deck. The fishing boats each fly a flag from some other country – it doesn’t really matter which one, a man explained to us. It’s just to identify when “your” boat is coming in from the night’s work, presumably so the women can get the big tubs – the size of those old-fashioned washtubs – ready. The flags provide part of the color of the harbor – the boats the other, since most are painted with symbols and proverbs. There are dug-out canoes jockeying for space with bigger boats with actual outboard engines (sort of!), and even bigger boats with the laundry of the crew hanging off the crosspieces that are wired with little lights. You can watch them come and go under the bridge, everyone yelling at everyone else, occasional boats drifting in the way of others as someone attempts to fix a motor. 

And so many boats! Bill counted 70 one morning from the beach in the front of our hotel on the ocean a little ways from the town itself – and that was before he gave up counting. We treated ourselves to a nice stay at Elmina Bay Resort, worth every penny. Our first night there we walked west down the beach to another little fishing town, Ankwanda. Kids ran after us in clumps asking for cedis, a dreadlocked man asked if we wanted to buy some waterfront (sure!), and one man stopped to just chat. He had, he said, just come back from working in a gold mine and was in the village because there was a festival starting next week. He answered all our many questions, and then we wandered back the way we’d come, still trailing kids and stares from the fisherman mending nets and working on the boats.  (The kids don’t care when you say no to their cedi requests, it’s all part of the game.) 

After herbs, you can see what happened to us. Bill on left, Theresa on right.

 The next morning we walked into Elmina, this time straight through a “smoking village,” with stacks of smoking racks and ovens. I’m pretty sure no white-haired obrunis had ever appeared in this village before – people looked at us with shocked faces. The village seems to have been built in an old graveyard – crumbling gravestones jam up against chop bars (fast food) or little kiosks or mud houses with thatched roofs. It’s odd to see a stone cross emerging from a clump of goats grazing under someone’s laundry. 

The castle looks nice, but hides a horrible history

Besides gawking at the fishing spectacle, we visited the historic Elmina Castle, one of several gold trading castles turned slave dungeons on the Cape Coast. We knew it would be sobering, and it was. The guide occasionally closes the barred doors on guests, just to demonstrate how horrible it would be to be jammed into a tiny, dark room with over 100 people before descending through the “door of no return” to the waiting ships. No one comes across very well here: not the Portuguese, nor the Dutch, nor the British – all of whom occupied this castle at one time or another - nor the Ghanaians who sold their own people into slavery. And certainly not the Americas, where the demand for slaves came from. We left the castle wondering at man’s inhumanity to man. As Bill said, “It’s a reminder of what is inside of us all.”

(Oddly enough, on the way home our driver was telling us about the drug trade through Ghana. Apparently there is a new demand from the Americas to be met …)

More photos of our Elmina trip on Picasa - link on right.