15 and 16 December Pig Parties

January 27, 2010 at 7:33 am (Peace Corps)

On Monday I was at Perpetua’s store buying food for the end of term party at my house. Rofina, Portia, Hamdia, Mari and Stella were coming for dinner.

Perpetua: Are you having a party?

Me: Yes Rofina and co. are coming over for dinner.

Perpetua: Oh! The pig! We forgot to tell you about the pig.

I began to dance about.

Me: You are having pork? When!

Perpetua: Tomorrow and Wednesday. Joshua arranged the masters to buy a pig. We will eat the legs and head with light soup tomorrow and then steam and bake the body for Wednesday.

Still dancing

Me: I’m in. How much?

Perpetua: It’s five Ghana cedis and you get a choice of mineral.

Joshua arrived at the store.

Perpetua: You didn’t tell Madam Vicky about the pig.

I knocked Joshua in the head.

Me: Yeah and I love pork and haven’t had any since I have been here.

Joshua: Oh how could I? I was even movin’ with you yesterday and I never mentioned it.

Me: Yeah. How could you?

I hurried home to get my five Ghana cedis.

15 December 2009

I marked papers most of the next day. Around 5:30 pm I bathed and dressed then walked over to Perpetua’s at 6:00 pm. Joshua, Bruce and a couple of the other master’s were there.  We were supposed to start at seven; I had come early to help and visit with Perpetua, Eunice and Gloria (Joshua’s wife). I was surprised to see other masters there already. I have finally found the one thing that will make Ghanaian’s early – meat!

Gloria was in charge of the light soup. She sat under the big tree with large metal caldron set on three rocks. The branches used for fuel formed a three legged star laid between the rocks. As the ends burned Gloria pushed and pulled them under the pot to give more or less heat to the fire.

Peppay (Perpetua) and Eunice were outside in the light near the store. They were making tofu kababs to sell at the Feok Festival the next day. There were some small problems. The tofu had not quiet set as it should and was crumbling. Oh but it was delicious. They had added Maggie, garlic and ginger to the ground soya beans as they boiled them. They sent the boiled beans to the mill to be roughly ground. They cooked the ground soya again adding vinegar to bring the curds to the top. They pressed the curds under a big rock  for about 30 minutes. They cut the curds into squares and then dusted the cubes with flour and fried them. The flour seemed to hold them together.

I sat and visited with the women while we waited for the rest of the master’s to arrive. When there was a critical mass of masters I went to sit down with them at the tables arranged in the yard near the store. Eunice, Perpetua and Gloria went to get the meal ready. Master Morris was to my right. He talked to me about a program he had seen on Tele that afternoon.

Master Morris: Madam, Today on tele I watched a program about the role of women in Ghana.

Me: Really, what did they say?

Master Morris: They were talking about the changing roles of women. How men’s and women’s roles are changing now that there are more women working outside the home.

Me: O I just read that book “Changes” about three women in Accra, two were professionals and one decided on the traditional role. You should read it. I gave it to the book club.

Master Morris:  So in America are women equal?

Me: By law yes but in practice no. Women are still paid about 75% of what a man would get for the same work. Many are expected to do all the house work, cooking and child care even after working all day outside the home.

Master Morris: Sometimes here in Ghana a man won’t want to marry an educated woman because they won’t be happy in the house. The program said that husbands and wives should talk together about what needs to be done. Here in Ghana a man would never expect a woman to go out to farm or to repair the house. (I think to myself but I have seen Perpetua, Francesca and Pat all working on the farm.)

Me: Can’t a couple hire house help?

Master Morris: Oh but here if a woman cooks for a man, washes his pants(underwear) and cleans his house she is doing something very intimate for him. And you know Ghanaian men, oh; sometimes they have ended up having an affair or even leaving with the house help.

Me: Maybe you could hire a man for house help. No never mind that is probably not a job for men here in Ghana.

Master Morris: Oh boys are getting interested in cooking; taking the home economics tract in Senior High but you can’t afford to have such a man cook for you. He would be way too expensive. I think if you have house help they should not cook the food or clean the bedroom. You know they could poison you. Who ever cooks your food has a lot of power over you. And a couple’s bedroom should be sacred.

Me: You know when my children were small my husband stayed home. He took care of them because he had a home based business.

Master Morris: You worked outside? (The home)

Me: Yes and my husband did a great job. He was a good father and a good cook.

I wish I had not shared this particular fact right then because it ended the conversation. Master Morris then bothered Master Clement about his dancing style.

Master Morris: You think it’s dancing if you sit there and hunch your shoulders up and down ?

Master Clement: You show us something better Morris.

At last it was seven and Joshua rose and spoke.

Joshua: I am happy that we colleagues could all join together her tonight to relax and enjoy each other’s company small.

Everyone: Here! Here!

Joshua: It is good when colleagues can see each other outside of work and get to know each other better and enjoy together. I am glad we could all be here before we scattered to spend The Christmas with our families. When we get together in the New Year we can talk of these two nights when we ate together and enjoyed together.

Everyone: Thank you Joshua. Great Idea. We wouldn’t have done it except for you.

Joshua: (Setting a bottle in front of Master Wallace)

Now I call upon the senior member of the faculty to start the festivities. He raised his glass and toasted “Happy Christmas and a prosporous New Year to everyone.”

Then Perpetua, Eunice and Gloria brought out the food. I thought how interesting that Morris and I just had that talk about gender roles. Maybe I was in the role of School Master not female because all the men and I were sitting down while the Ghanaian women served. I wondered if the other women resented that I was sitting. Did they expect me to help? Would I get an honest answer if I asked? Eunice had cooked all day in the school kitchens. Pepe had run the store, baked bread and cared for her home and Gloria did the majority of the cooking for the pig party. The other master’s and I at most sat and marked papers all day.

We had light soup with pig leg and head. Light soup is basically a broth. It has pureed tomato, onion, garlic and garden eggs in it with maggie, salt, peppe and tin tomato (tomato paste). It is not heavy like ground nut or vegetable soup so you have room for plenty of meat. That night there was no starch, no rice ball, no banku, no TZ. Just soup and meat. It was the first time I had seen Northerners eat more than 4 oz of meat at one time.

I had three good sized pieces in my bowl. The first was a bone with meat and skin. I ate all but the bone. I tossed the bone to Vanity, Kampusi’s youngest dog. The second piece was bone and much more meat. When I finished Veto, the Kampusi’s oldest dog, had figured out  it was smart to sit by me so he got my other bone. I sipped some soup between eating the meat but the peppe was making my eyes water.

The last piece I pulled out was strange. It looked like a white conical hat. The lights from the house were not illuminating our eating area very much so it was hard for me to discern what it was. So I leaned over to Master Morris, showed him the meat and quietly said “Please tell the filika (white person) what this is. He laughed out loud and repeated my question to the rest of the group. They all laughed and Master Clement pointed to the tip of the cone and said “Chew here, there is some nice white soft stuff. You will enjoy. It’s ” “No!’ I interrupted “don’t tell me what it is!’  Which caused another erruption of laughter.  Everyone watched and waited as the filika ate this strange new food. I made appreciative noises. Thankfully their attention quickly turned back to their own bowls and I quietly slipped the rest of it to Veto.

Peppay came by with a bowl of meat and gave me two meaty chunck Not need to ask how to eat these.

Then Peppay’s favorite song came on and she called me to dance with her. It was a great ending to a great evening.

The next day, Wednesday, I marked papers all morning. I had a small breakfast and small lunch saving myself for the second round of the pig party. In the afternoon I went to the Feok Festival with Tennie. When I returned it was time to bathe and change. Then I went to Perpetua’s around 6:30 pm.

Perpetua, Eunice and Gloria were in the courtyard. They had just pulled the pork form the oven. They had steamed the meat with spices, onion and garlic and then baked it in Pepay’s large bread ovens. Oh there was plenty of pork. One large metal washing basin was filled!

I sat on the bench behind Eunice who was separating the large pieces into smaller pieces.
“This is my favorite meat” I announce to no one in particular “and I haven’t eaten any since I came here.” It worked Eunice gave me a chunk. It was the perfect piece. The thin layer of fat on the outside was crispy and the meat was tender and juicy. I closed my eyes and savored every bite.

Then Peppay handed me two ribs. After that I didn’t wait for anyone to offer. I picked small pieces from the cutting board where Eunice was separating the meat. I stole larger pieces from the platters. Peppay asked me if I would be able to eat later. Gloria answered for me “It’s her best!”

When all the meat was prepared there were four platters, each with a good sized mound of pork. It was a beautiful sight. I asked what else we were eating. They said nothing, just the meat.

Joshua came to the courtyard to tell us he was there. I told him that after 7:00 pm it was every man and woman for themselves because I was starting even if it was only he and I. Because it was the Feok I was worried that others would be late.

Perpetua and Eunice carried the trays of meat into the house. I can’t understand why the were reluctant to give me a platter of meat?

I went around to the front yard, near the store. A few masters were already there. Sampson was acting crazy. He was, well I wouldn’t call it dancing, maybe bouncing is the right word. He was bouncing all around the tables and up on the porch, around the column and into the summer hut. He said something I didn’t understand. My best guess at what he was doing was shaking down a full belly to make more room even though we hadn’t eaten yet.

Finally most the masters had arrived. Today there were no speeches, no formalities. The women put the platters down and we tucked in. For the next few minutes the only sounds were chewing and small sounds of pleasure. As we were eating the greatest praise a Ghanaian can give to food was pronounces “This is so good it doesn’t even need peppe.”  We kept focused on the business of eating until only a few pieces of fat remained on the platter.

While we were recovering from our pig out a local man stopped at the table. He asked Robert to translate for him.  He said “I saw you here last night and now tonight again. It is good for colleagues to join together and be happy. You are all doing so good teaching our children. “

Robert put two bottles of coke on the table near me and continued translating.

“Especially Madam who has come so far to teach our children ICT. I want to thank her with these minerals.”

For the first time since I have been in Ghana I was truly embarrased. Here I was sitting with all my colleagues and this man singled me out for praise. I regained my composure enough to shake his hand and thank him in Buili. Even as I write now I think a Ghanaian would have had a much more formal and eloquent thank you speech.

My colleagues invited him to join us. He ate some meat and had some wine while a couple of the masters engaged him in conversation. They saved my butt.

The party broke up early so some could go back to town for the Miss Feok ceremony. I just wanted to go home and sleep with my tummy full of pork.

-vc

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24 January 2010 – Are you a carpenter?

January 25, 2010 at 7:54 am (Peace Corps)

This afternoon when I sat up from my nap my mattress fell to the floor. It was a long time coming. The brace that was holding the slats was slowly pulling away from the frame. The mattress was sinking so bad it was like a craftmatic bed permanently stuck on head and feet up. I meant to get to it sometime!

So I removed everything from the bed. Pillows, two yards, book, puzzle book, two pens, one eraser, fitted sheet, mattress and the slats. Oh the brace was a mess. The nails were bent. I had no more nails so I had to straighten out the nails. I tried using a very pretty hammer my mother sent but it was prettier than it was forceful. I then looked for my multi tool to use the pliers. Couldn’t find the multi tool so I went out to get a rock.

The straightening involved feet on the brace, hammering, sweating and some cussing. Just as I finished getting the nails straight enough Dizzy came by. I was standing in the bed frame. Holding the brace against the frame with my left leg and pounding a nail in.

Dizzy’s eyes opened wide and said “Madam Vicky are you are carpenter?”

“I am when I have to be.” I replied.

The sweating and hammering continued but not so much swearing- the influence of a small child. With only three of the 6 nails fully pound through the brace to the frame I decided to quit fighting the other three and put them in enough and pound them over to the side.

I put the mattress back on, the fitted sheet, the books and pencils, the two yards, the flat sheet and the two pillows.  Dizzy and I bounced on the bed. It held.

25 January 2010

I slept through the night and the mattress stayed on the frame. Time will tell how good a carpenter I am.

-vc

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5 – 17 November 2009 – My Left Breast

January 25, 2010 at 7:30 am (Peace Corps)
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5 November

This morning I woke upand both zmy breasts were tender around the nipples. My first thought was great I am having one last period after 16 months! I was not a happy person. My breasts were tender all day.  In the evening I took one Aleve.

6 November

Today only my left breast was sore. There was a spot that hurt when I shifted a certain way. I found it just under the nipple. That night while I was bathing there a thin crusty layer over the nipple. In bed I found the specific spot. It felt like an inflamed milk duct. But what 51 year old woman get’s mastitis?

I then to my hall and picked ‘Where there is no Doctor” from my table. I read about mastitis and breast cancer.  The pus was an indication of mastitis, thank goodness. By massaging I got some of the pus out. As usually happens when I am sick it was Friday night after office hours for the Peace Corps Medical Officer (PCMO). I did the run through. Did I have a fever over 102? Was I bleeding? I would live until Monday.

7 and 8 November

My left breast continued to hurt over the weekend but no fever or other sickness.

9 November

My breast was less tender but I still thought I should call the PCMO. I texted her with my symptoms and asked her to call me after classes at 2:00 pm. I didn’t want to discuss my breast in front of the students.

She called me back right on the dot. She said she had done some reading and thought it might me mastitis as well but she wanted me to come to Accra.

“It will take me two days!” I protested.

“Then you better get moving” she replied..

So now I was a little bit scared. If it was only mastitis why call me to Accra but Cynthia had recently had breast cancer so I told myself she was only being careful.

I went to the headmaster and told him I had to go to Accra for health reasons. I stopped at Kampusi’s, only Robert was there. I told him what was wrong. Then last visited my landlord. Francescia was home and I told her. She was the first to menting the dreaded c word, but sent me off with a blessing.

I walked to the cross hoping I would catch the 2:00 pm Metro Mass bus. Instead a master with transport was on his way to Navarongo and offered me a lift. I picked a share taxi from there to Bolga and got the next to the last seat on a very nice tro to Tamale.  I made it to Tamale about 7:30 pm. The STC ticket office was closed so I headed straight to the TSO(Tamale SubOffice) and would take my chances on transport in the morning.

10 November

I got to town at 6:00 am. I really wanted to stop in Kumasi, to say hi to Mike and get some moral support,  but felt I should get a bus to Accra if there was a seat.  Lucky for me there were no seats left on the Accra bus, so I had to go to Kumasi.

My breast was feeling much better. I had to probe so hard to find a tender spot I thought of the man who said “doctor it hurts when I do this”.

“Don’t do that then” replies the doctor.

When I arrived in Kumasi I called Cynthia and told her I would be in Accra the next day. Although it was veterans day she said she would come in. She asked that I wait until after 10:00 am to call her because her favorite thing was to sleep in. She had also scheduled a Mameogram for me on the 12th.

11 November

Cynthia saw me that afternoon. My breast was fine, no more tenderness or pus. I apologized and she told me its not unusual for someone to get to Accra and to be well. She said that my amazing immune system took care of the problem.

12 November

I got my boobs squished. I want to send this technician to America. She didn’t hurt me at all. Since I had a mameogram in June we would have a very recent film to compare with this one.

13 November

The doctor at the lab reviewed the mameograms. There had been no changes since my last one. Cynthia sent me home saying that she would review them herself and then send them to DC as well. I went home confident all was well.

Cynthia called me on the way home to tell me that she had gotten the mameograms and concurred the doctor at the lab.

Later in the month she called to tell me that DC said there was no problem.

-vc

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VIGNETTES OF GHANA

January 13, 2010 at 6:21 am (Africa, Family, Ghana, Ghanian culture, Peace Corps, Travel, new culture)
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[My sister-in-law came to visit me in October. Since she has a writing background I asked her if she would write a guest post on this blog. I hope you enjoy her views of Ghana as much as I did. Check out her photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/46201642@N04/ ]

 In my first glimpse of Accra on the drive from Kotoka International Airport I began to suspect that Ghana must be ruled by four powerful tribal chiefs named Vodafone, Tigo, Zain and MTN. These cell phone companies’ logos are almost everywhere. Their distinctive, bright colors of pink/red, blue, purple and yellow glare from signs, businesses and even in the paint jobs of homes and roadside shacks.

The last few minutes took us through dusty, modestly poor, suburban streets to the beautiful Erata Hotel, a pastel blue-and-white enclosure with gaited walls topped by concertina wire. It’s an upscale place but not really opulent—not by American standards, anyway—but clean and cool. It boasts spacious rooms and two good-sized swimming pools where the manager’s young children frolicked. They were a girl and a boy whose exuberant splashing and diving were a delight to photograph.  These little hams gave an exhibition of Ghanaian kids that endured throughout my visit:  joyful, curious, friendly, chocolate-skinned creatures of pristine beauty.

The evening’s entertainment at the Erata was poolside too, a local, unnamed band with guitars, drums and an electronic keyboard.  I settled in with an excellent rice and vegetable dish and a glass of Merlot (actually a little airplane bottle as wine is fairly scarce here) anticipating intricate Ghanaian melodies. Instead they played American show tunes and pop music, especially Elvis classics. Good thing I didn’t mind these soulful renditions of “Brue Swede Shoes” and “You Ain’t Nothin But a Hun Dug.” Eventually a younger singer took over and enchanted with African and Caribbean rhythms.

Fracturing the English language (Ghana’s official tongue since independence from Britain in 1957 and the only one taught in public schools) is an amusing art form here:  road signs (Overspeeding  Kills. 38 people Died Here!); motel notice (Items that go missing is responsibility of owner. Not the management.); restaurant menu (seaf food, shrimps dinner, mashed hommos); fancy beach resort pamphlet (try our physically challenged facilities), and hotel meals that feature delicious Chinese.

You’ll be intrigued by the linguistic inventiveness of businesspeople.  My favorites are Fast Food Very Good, So Nice Cold Store, Immaculate Conception Drinking Spot, Allah’s Store, Sweet Jesus Supermarket, Wicked Cuts Hair Salon, Capable God Company Limited, and Together Again Vulgarizing Shop.  I suspect they mean vulcanizing but maybe it’s for individuals who are too prissy.

Restaurant service is sometimes excellent but more often fair to dreadful, according to Western expectations.  Food is brought in spasms and there can be as much as one-half hour between serving the first and last person at a table. Serving size is more than ample, although vegetarian choices are limited. Cheese is rarely offered although the goat variety is available. At a marketplace cafe I ordered a salad (made with shredded cabbage as fresh vegetables and fruit are curiously scarce here) and also asked for bread. The lovely, solicitous owner brought a huge salad sandwich made with bread fresh from her oven.  It was delicious.

                                                                        Children

 At another open-air restaurant we were delighted by a precious little girl, maybe three years old, and wearing bright barrettes in her carefully coiffed hair, who insisted on wandering freely among the tables. She would stop beside seated customers to stand silently smiling at our knee level. We eventually lost interest and she meandered off. Ten minutes later her mother appeared to return my heisted purse, an overloaded bag that had been parked on the floor. The woman apologized and returned to her nearby table where the little girl sat squirming on her daddy’s lap.                                           

My tour mate Brian suggested we look around for an Artful Dodger, Oliver Twist’s leader of child thieves and pickpockets.

This charming toddler is clearly a child of affluence but no less beautiful and spontaneous are those in rural villages who, at around age ten, get after-school jobs. You see them everywhere helping shopkeeper parents, peddling food or electronic devices, package carrying, water hauling or rounding up the free ranging goats, sheep, chickens or guinea fowl. They all looked happy and healthy to me with one exception. I was approached by three Muslim cow herders. They looked malnourished, wore dirty, ragged clothes and bore obvious signs of skin disease. They spoke no English, using hand to mouth gestures to ask for food. I couldn’t help giving them cash, even though warned against the promotion of begging.

Later I was told they were probably exempted from public schooling for religious reasons and would spend their days watching over the brahma cows that grazed freely in the fields around the village.

                                                                    Domestic Animals

Goats are considered walking savings accounts and they are as common as pigeons in American cities. They usually run free or lie along roads, even in big cities. Goats generally move away from approaching traffic, by a few feet anyway. Often they must be encouraged to these life-saving maneuvers by swerving vehicles and hectoring horn blowing. The custom when a driver hits one is to find the owner and politely tell of the accident. It is the responsibility of that owner to remove the carcass and dispose of it somehow.  Often at least the skin is saved but Muslims throw the whole thing away because of strict rules regarding slaughter. At least I’m told that is customary.

Much fewer in numbers but presenting a more alarming traffic hazard are the free-range cows that move between and among cars in the clogged traffic of big cities. In Tamale I saw an untended herd of four or five of these large, humped beasts waiting patiently on a traffic island. When the time was right they walked unhurriedly to the other side.

Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, also contains a considerable contingent of goat-sheep-cow citizens who must share the streets with the million-plus human inhabitants, most of whom seem to be bicycling, motorcycling, driving, trucking, taxi riding or walking that moment. I expect that driving licenses are granted on the basis of amazing steering and braking skills. No wonder the Peace Corps absolutely forbids its volunteers to drive in-country.

                                                                     Police

Well armed and uniformed in camouflage blue and grey or black, police are mostly young males who man the frequent roadblocks and toll stations between cities. We found them to be respectful to foreigners but they are believed to be corrupt in penny-ante ways. The job is undemanding physically but poorly paid, I was told, and it’s not unusual to be asked for a “gift” because “we protected you.”  On one occasion we handed over the local equivalence of sixty-five cents each and they seemed satisfied. Later I wished I’d suggested a free donut instead.

Another incidence illustrates my American naiveté more than police corruptibility.

Our tour driver was stopped for speeding (utterly guilty) through a village at school let-out time. His choice was to surrender his license and return tomorrow for adjudication in court or pay a roadside “fine” then and there. While negotiations ensued an Inspector arrived. She chose to question the tourists and allowed us out of the vehicle for polite but stern inquiries. But after discovering her joyful enthusiasm for Barack Obama I asked if she happened to have one of his campaign buttons. “Oh, no,” she said, so I gave her one that I had carried in my luggage to reward some child in this Obama-mad country. She was thrilled. We shook hands and she returned to the discussion between our tour guide and her patrolmen. Immediately our driver hurried back to the Land Rover and we drove off.

He explained the situation, unknown to us before this, and we asked how much money he had to pay them. “Nothing,” he said, “they knew better.”

So.  Some might say I bribed a Ghanaian police officer with a humble campaign button. I prefer to think of the transaction as a culture-sensitive gesture of good will.

                                                                    Pikworo

Our introduction to slave trade, which was centered in Ghana and other regions of the Gold Coast, began with a visit to Pikworo. It is the preserved site of an inland collection point for Africans captured throughout the region and sold to slave merchants. They were brought to this lush savannah to be broken into permanent captivity and sorted out for survival strength. Mostly men, they were shackled and beaten and nearly starved, having to fight among themselves for food and water.

Our site guide, an earnest and well-spoken young man, explained that these prisoners were from many sources: tribal war captives, convicted criminals, mentally impaired outcasts, kidnapped citizens of a neighboring village or just sold by their destitute families. Procuring agents were usually Africans, our guide said. Their favorite currency was liquor and guns. Those enslaved who lived through a few weeks of Pikworo were walked south to the coast where they were kept in slave trade fortresses until shipment under horrific conditions to the Americas. As we learned later from another guide there was never a brighter day for most of these victims. Life always went downhill.

                                                                    Ancestral River Park

This historic place in Assin Manso was another stop on the newly enslaved victims’ trek of tears. Here they were allowed to bathe and were given enough food to enable the last stage of their journey to the coast. It is a well developed site with painted displays of slave trade resisters and abolitionists (including William Garrison and Harriet Tubman among many others) and sandstone crypts of two regional men who were sent to the United States and Jamaica. Their remains are reinterred here. There is also a Memorial Wall of Return with the signatures of visitors whose ancestors traced here.

We met the wonderful Ofori family, who live in the park, and communicated well with their eldest son, Charles.  His English was excellent and he had many questions about Britain and America, where he hopes to study one day. That is typically the biggest dream of smart, young Ghanaians, I’m told.  A younger brother was kicking around a rather pathetic soccer ball when Brian, British aerospace engineer and confessed football fanatic, offered one of the six balls and jerseys he had brought along for distribution to children. The whole family followed us back to the vehicle, where Brian made his presentation.  It’s hard to believe that any child ever received a gift more joyfully than that little boy.

                                                                     Arts & Crafts

The first of many shopping opportunities—and I did my very best to raise Ghana’s GNP a point or two—came at TK Beads. They make traditional glass jewelry, mainly with recycled bottles and jars. These castoffs are pulverized by hand to a fine powder, then dyed and poured into bead moulds. The moulds are baked in wood-fired kilns to fuse the glass powder together, making beads which then may be hand painted and strung together in astonishingly different configurations.

Our demonstrator and soft-sell salesman was Roger, a boy of perhaps 12. Apparently TK’s public relations manager, Roger’s communication skills must thrill his bilingual educators.

Another fascinating artistic experience came with our stop at the Boakye family’s weaving/printing operation in Ntunso. They produce primary- colored Adinkra cloth of intricate designs and imprinted with ancient symbols carved from calabash shells. They make their black dye from boiling Badie tree bark with iron filings. Closely supervised by Peter Boakye, a handsome, graceful artist/manager, we designed and imprinted our own banners with three selected symbols.  Mine were Gye Nyame (omnipotence and immortality), Adinkrahene (king) and Bi-nnka(bite not one another).

Peter is westernized enough to wrap us in yards of this “royal” cloth—like denim but heavier and far more colorful—before urging the purchase of this magnificent finery so obviously being worn by those to the manor born.

                                                                      Historical

Speaking of royalty, we also toured the Prempeh II Jubilee Museum near Kumasi.  (No photographs allowed for reasons commercial, I suspect.) This immaculate complex with sophisticated displays and highly professional guide staff must be seen to appreciate the Ashanti tribe as the biggest and baddest in all Ghana. I especially liked the almost incidental inclusion of a wax figure of Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa. She is seated with a rifle on her lap and possesses the steeliest gaze this side of Hilary Clinton. 

Queen Mothers are literally the power behind the throne (or golden stool, as Ashantis call it) in this tribe’s history as they advise the king and get to name his successor. As they usually choose one of their own sons it is a matrilineal lineage.  In 1900 Yaa Asantewaa provoked the country’s War of Independence by reluctant tribal leaders. After shaming them into voting for a siege of the colonial British fortress at Kumasi  she remarked that “the ghost widows in heaven will have husbands tomorrow.”

This uprising failed only when the British brought in several thousand additional troops and artillery. The Queen Mother was captured and exiled for her final twenty years. I imagine her shaking her fist at the English oppressors even on her death bed.

                                                                    Wildlife

Undomesticated animal sightseeing began at the Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary where hundreds of Monas and Colobuses live near villagers who protect these sacred charges.  While our elderly sanctuary guide’s accent made him nearly incomprehensible, he conveyed respect, even affection, for the monkeys.  Some of the bolder creatures took bananas from our hands although my offer of processed banana chips was met with rude disdain.

I was most struck with the graveyard these villagers maintain for monkeys found dead.  A funeral ceremony attends each burial, marked by a wooden cross with the animal’s species type, sex and death date. There are no individual names on these little monuments because the monkeys are, after all, wild animals who just happen to share this primitive paradise with humans.

We saw Nile crocodiles warming themselves on the banks of Lake Hanson. They looked like plastic replicas until one opened his mouth slowly to exhaust surplus heat from their solar energy absorption.

At Mole National Park, Ghana’s largest wildlife preserve, we experienced several species close up.  With an experienced, rifle-toting ranger we trudged through a two-hour walking safari. Kob deer and bushbucks froze to stare at us briefly before dashing away.  That was interesting but kind of a letdown, even with our expectations lowered with the revelation that no Big Cat predators existed in this part of Africa. Then, headed back to the park’s motel we were tipped about an elephant nearby in a mud hole.  We walked quietly up to maybe fifty yards of the massive beast who simply ignored us while sucking up muddy water to spray on his back. While shutters clicked and camcorders whirred I sneaked closer when our ranger took an apparently urgent cell phone call. When he turned back to check on his rookie charges he gasped and stage whispered to “get back, slowly, right now.” I obeyed, reluctantly.  The elephant betrayed no sign of noticing the improper intrusion and I got some great pictures.

Avian wildlife prevails at Mole (pronounced mo-lay), especially laughing doves, whose strange cries seem oddly demented. I liked best the crows in Ghana with their white bellies and clerical collars, like tuxedo cats in my home territory.

Most visible around the enclosures at Mole are olive baboons who live in the forest nearby but not close to the people. They generally tolerated our presence but moved away with uneasy grace when their comfort range, about twenty feet, was breached. Patas monkeys like to sit upright on posts with their arms resting on imaginary tables. They seemed to study the human species but don’t invite familiarity.

Undoubtedly the most ubiquitous large animals around the human buildings were warthogs. They are hairy, tusked animals about the size of Labrador Retrievers but with glorious whiskers and knees calloused from grubbing on the ground as they graze. Warthogs keep a few yards distance from us but watch out for dropped or left behind food. My closest observation came by surprise at early dawn one day when I approached the motel swimming pool. There on the deep end was a large, dark shape stretched out on a chaise lounge chair. Close up, I recognized it as a warthog but he was so still I thought him deceased. A few feet closer and he opened an eye. I stepped back, then ran to my room for a camera. But he was gone when I returned. Damn.

                                                                      Coastal Slave Forts

Our excursion along the coast included two of West Africa’s monuments to the 400-year horror that was the Atlantic Slave Trade.  Cape Coast Castle and The Castle at St. George’s .  They are whitewashed stone edifices, well preserved and magnificent in malignant ways. They are embarkation points for the international trade routes that began with gold and spices but expanded to more lucrative cargo in the late 1400s. Arguably the ugliest stain on all human history, the slave trade was run over time by Christian Europeans: Portuguese, Swedes, Danes, Dutch, French, Spaniards and the British for their eager colonists in the Americas.

Our tour mentors calmly explained how hundreds of African captives were crammed into dungeons for weeks or months at a time. Sometimes their food was thrown at them. They had to forage on top of accumulated feces, urine and even corpses.  Water too came from hatches high in the stone walls. The strongest “cupped their hands to drink or suck each others hair,” in the words of a guide book.

Comely women were raped repeatedly. Any children they bore were killed or taken away if they looked biracial enough. These people were allowed to survive and were kept off the ships to become servants and jailors. It was a system that punished its immediate practioners too, sending them to early deaths from disease, insanity and alcohol poisoning.  West Africa became known as the “white man’s grave.”

I heard no bitter denunciations from any Ghanaians of their racial oppressors, only determination to preserve the historical record and recognize that beneficial changes came also from this white intrusion into their ancestors’ lives. They spoke of better government organizations,  new methods of agriculture and construction,  public health institutions,  suppression of brutal tribal conflicts and, especially, the spread of mandatory public education for children. All from contact with Western culture.

Christianity in several forms accumulated a lot of wealth in converts and goods during its spread in Africa, beginning with the slave trade. Western religious influence remains substantial today in Ghana (where sixty-some percent of the populace claims adherence to a Christian church and there’s a large contingent of Muslims) as seen in the parochial schools, clinics and associated businesses. The most seem to be Catholic with many variations of Protestant, particularly Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian. I expect that sectarian lobbies are politically powerful in this country.

[Full disclosure requires me to reveal that I’m a devout agnostic with serious reservations about the net effect of religious organizations on human social evolution.]

                                                                     Sandema

After my 14-day Ashanti Tribal Trek throughout Ghana I flew to the northernmost region for a few days with Vicky Chase, dear sister-in-law, intrepid librarian and Peace Corps teacher. She lives in a cement-block hut with electricity but no running water. It is graced with a bucket-flush toilet, however, so one does not have to go into the bush or use a “squatty potty” provided in less affluent domiciles. Her yard is mostly dirt but local custom requires daily sweeping with a handless broom. Neighbor children sweep Vicky’s yard every morning because, she says, “apparently my sweeping isn’t up to community standards. “

At her workplace, Sandema Senior High and Technical School, I met many eagerly friendly and curious students in this state-run complex. Most are boarders there, filling the classrooms (crowded) and cafeterias (standing only) and dormitories (cramped) in their pastel-colored uniforms like flocks of tropical birds. Their hair is kept closely cut, clothes must be kept clean and they live by an authoritarian system that imposes as much as hierarchical order as is possible with teenagers.

The students I got to know by name seem irrepressible, however. And even the shy ones tend to face newcomers with a smile and a sincere sounding “how ARE you?” At first I thought this was but the borrowed regard they feel for Madam Vicky but when alone I received the same greeting from villagers and strangers. It’s not a black/white thing, I was told, but the Ghanaian custom to be courteous to all, just common human decency. Also, offers of help were frequent, even from strangers. But that may come from my appearance as a markedly clueless obruni in a sea of dark faces.

Interestingly, the term obruni is one I heard a lot from fascinated small children who came running up to stare and smile during village stops.  “Obruni, Obruni!” Thinking it was African code for white devil or something, I asked Yaw, our tour conductor, for exact translation. It means cornflower hair, he said, and implies only a white person designation, not disrespect.

Respect is, in fact, the general attitude of Ghanaians toward others, even those of another stripe. Their cultural cleaving into families, clans and tribes doesn’t foster any xenophobic suspicion of outsiders, it seems. How do they manage that?

 By Melanie Steward

December, 2009

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14 Dec 2009 African Justice

January 11, 2010 at 6:15 am (Africa, Ghana, Ghanian culture, Peace Corps, Travel)
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 They poured from the bush back into the stadium like water from open floodgates. The whole crowd stood a little taller, their spines straighter and their walk more purposeful. One man passed me and his jaws were firm, his eyes narrowed and his arms were swinging at his sides. Another was tapping his left palm with his right fist. a third was nodding; his eyes were bright as he listened to his friend. Another was toting a log that fit comfortably in his hand and was about the length of a forearm.

 I was not afraid. I was standing with Joshua, Paul and Gideon. I was not afraid. I had done nothing to deserve African justice. I was not afraid. The punishment had already been meted out in the bush.

 Joshua came to me in the morning and said that the semi finals of the Feok Festival football match would be that afternoon. He asked me if I wanted to go into town with him and watch. I accepted his invitation.

 We arrived at the stadium about three o’clock. We walked through the opening in the cement wall onto the field. The cement wall was the only thing that differentiated the stadium from an open field. The crowd had gathered and the refs were about to start the game. Note to self: Always go to events with another Ghanaian; they have an inbuilt clock that tells them exactly how late an event will be.

 Our team was Corea, a village near the school campus. The opponents were a Sandema town team. We were rooting for Corea. The first half followed the normal events of a football game. When it was over the town team led 1-0.

 At the beginning of the second half the ball went out of bounds. A young man went to collect it but he was in no hurry to return it to play. Another young man ran out to take it from him and get it back in the game. It was Corea’s ball. Within a minute the game stopped and a crowd developed on the far side of the field. We were standing at one of the goal posts and from our spot I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

 The crowd streamed out of the far side of the stadium into the bush. The field emptied quickly as young men all over the field followed the current of people. The handful of people that remained in the field was mostly female and they were talking, shouting and waving their arms in the air.

 Me: Joshua, what just happened? Is the game over?

 Joshua: Oh that guy. Who does he think he is? That guy who went out to collect the ball, he spoiled the ball. He just pinched it somehow.

 Me: Why?

 Joshua: Oh because of some problem with his teammates from the Sandema team. They had some kind of falling out.

 Me: So he spoiled the ball because they were winning?

 Joshua: How can you act like that? You are just one person and you spoil the whole game for the rest of us here.

 Me: Yes how selfish of him. What was he thinking? Where did everyone go? Will we finish the game?

 By now even the teams were off the field. They were on the entrance side sitting down and drinking water.

 Joshua: I don’t know they have to find another ball.

 Paul: Africa. A big game like this and we only have one ball. We should have five don’t you think?

 Joshua: We may continue today or postpone until tomorrow.

 Me: So where did all those people go?

 Joshua: They are chasing him and when they catch him they will beat him.

 Me: They will beat him?

 Joshua: Yes they will beat him. How did he think he could get away with something like that with all these people here? And it’s not over. If they see him in town tomorrow, they will beat him again.

 Me: He must have known they were going to beat him. Did he think he would get away with it?

 Gideon: No he’s just a stubborn stubborn boy. He would ruin the game and take the beating. That’s how much he wanted to spoil it for his mates. He is just a criminal.

 As the satisfied posse streamed back I know I should have felt worse for the offender. My head knows that vigilante justice is not right. My head knows that the system should have dealt with him not the posse but I felt little sympathy for him. He knows this culture and what the consequences of his actions would be.

-vc

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3 December 2009 Memento

January 9, 2010 at 5:52 am (Africa, Ghana, Ghanian culture, Peace Corps)
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1 December 2009

Scene:　Evening. I am sitting in my hall. Sister Pat in a blue plastic chair; she is facing my windows. I am to her right in my wooden chair. The setting sun is coming into the windows and it is the only light in the room.

 Sister Pat: So Cantuace is gone?

 Me: Yes I had let her go but yesterday Francesca came with her to plead for Cantuace’s job. I agreed to take her back but she will have to wait until school starts next term. I think we both need a break. She needs to realize what she is loosing by not working for me.

 Sister Pat: So she will come back in January.

 Me: Knowing her situation at home I feel bad for her and want to give her one more chance. Francesca and Perpetua have both talked to her. I hope that Cantuace will listen. Although I have never made any promises or even hinted that I would help her after I left her both of them told her that it’s very possible that the relationship would not end with me when I left and she should think about that.

 Sister Pat: Yes she should work hard today for tomorrow.

 30 November 2009

 Scene: I am sitting in my hall (living room) in a wooden chair. The setting sun is illuminating my blog book as I write about Thanksgiving Day 2009. There is a knock on the door.

 Me: Just a minute. [I put my book down on the table to my right and go to the door. Francesca, my landlord's wife, is there Cantuace to her far right. ]

Me: Tia (welcome)

Madam Francesca: N Jam (I have come)

Me: Junaia (Evening)

Madam Francesca: Junonaloaaa (Fine Evening)

Me: [Opening the door] Come in.

Madam Francesca: I have come with Cantuace to plead for her job. She is afraid you will say no to her if she comes alone.

[We enter the hall I show Francesca to the chair I was sitting in and pull out my desk chair. Cantuace stands.]

 Me: [Looking at Cantuace] Junaia

 Cantuace: silence

 [Francesca tells her in Buili that she should greet madam]

 Cantuace: Junonaloaaa Madam Vicky

 Me: Francesca, I don’t know about the job. This girl has been troublesome. I no longer trust her and she is disrespectful to me and those who come to my house.

 Francesca: I talked to her. I told her she should do her work fast fast, as soon as she came home from school, then she would be free.

 Me: Yes what does she have to do here? Not so much. She needs to fetch water, sweep and wash the bowls. I want all that done before she goes to serve the evening meal. I told her. I asked her brother to explain but still she doesn’t do it until late. One night she was here until 7:30. I want to bathe and get ready for night so I want the work finished before she gets her evening meal from the hall.

 But that’s not the only problem she has been insulting the students who come here. Portia and Rofina are like daughters in this house, they deserve that respect.

 Francesca: Oh I have been insulting Cantuace about that. I have told her who does she think she is. She is not even in Jr High she is only in P5 and she is insulting those SS girls. They are not her colleagues they are her seniors. She could learn from them but she has put herself too high.

Me: I don’t know. I have talked to her. Her brother has talked to her. Madam Kampusi has talked to her and now you.

Francesca: Oh we just want to come for her to apologize and say she is sorry.

Me: [Turning to Cantuace] You can’t apologize to me yourself in English or even Buili?

 Cantuace: I am sorry madam. I won’t do that again.

 Me: Thank you; I forgive you.

 [Cantuace smiles it is the first smile I have seen on her face since they came in.]

Me: [Turning to Francesca] I will take her back on two conditions. There will be no second chances if she does wrong again she is finished. The second is that she must wait until classes start in January. We both need a break. She can have some time to think.

 Francesca: [Rising to leave] Madam Vicky, Thank you.

 29 November 2009

 Scene: late afternoon. I am in my hall, in my chair. Francesca and Tenni are pounding Fufu   in their yard. I go out and stand at their gate.

 Me: Junaia

 Tenni and Francesca: Junonaloaaa

 [I step small small into the yard and lean lightly on the gate.  We exchange greetings]

 Me: I came to tell you that I have let Cantuace go.

 Francesca: I haven’t seen her around. Why? What happened?

 Me: Oh so many things. I just decided it was enough. Remember in August when she took Dizzy with my bike? She’s not getting her work done. I want her to finish before the evening meal and have told her often. On my birthday she was rude to the girls there cooking a meal for me. It is enough.

 Francesca: Oh that girl I will have a talk with her. I will tell her to do her work well. I will remind her that she has food and a place to bathe.  That she has someone to do for her. You know her father is gone and it’s just the mother in the house. She and Samuel (her brother) have been sleeping in the classroom block.

 Me: No I didn’t know about her father. I knew that she had little to eat in the house and have hesitated to let her go for that reason. I didn’t come to Peace Corps to sack people I came to help them. It has been a very hard decision for me.  But I don’t know, Madam Pat, Madam Perpetua and her brother have all talked to her. She is a stubborn girl.

 Francesca: Has she come to apologize?

 Me: No

 Francesca: I will talk to her again.

 Me: Thank you.

 28 November 2009

 Scene: Early afternoon. I am sitting in my chair marking papers. Someone knocks on my door.  I rise to answer the door.

 Me: Hello [I open the door and Tenni (the assistant headmaster's small girl) is standing to my left of the door.

 Tenni: Madam is Cantuace there?

 Me: No she is gone. I sent her away.

Tenni: On is she gone to the grinding mill?

 Me: No she is doesn't work for me any more. [I open the door and close it then sit on the stoop. Tenni sits beside me.]

 Tenni: Why?

 Me: She doesn’t respect me and I don’t trust her.

 Tenni: I told that girl to work harder. That she shouldn’t take things without asking you. Samuel has warned her. She won’t listen to anyone. She tells Samuel it’s not your work! She is a stubborn stubborn girl. When she’s playing that’s all she cares about.

 27 November 2009

 Scene: Perpetua, Dizzy and I are sitting outside in their yard around a small round wooden table. Dizzy and I are eating from a bowl of TZ (tee zed) and vegetable soup. Cantuace walks by from the direction of my house with at tall slim woman. The woman greets Perpetua.

 Perpetua: That is Cantuace’s mother.

 Me: Oh yes. [I raise my right hand] Junaia.

 [Cantuace's mother says something to Perpetua and Perpetua goes with them around to the bakery side of the house. I think they are going to get bread so I continue eating. About a half a bowl of TZ later Perpetua returns. Cantuace and her mother head down the path to the village.]

 Perpetua: The mother wanted me to plead with you for Cantuace’s job. I asked her did she know what Cantuace has done? How can she ask me to plead when she hasn’t even asked Cantuace what she’s done. The mother said that she saw the girl headed home with her things but the girl wouldn’t tell her what happened. Then the mother asked Cantuace again what she had done and Cantuace just stood there with her mouth shut. So I told her about Dizzy and the bicycle, Afisah and the bicycle, the potatoes and how she doesn’t do her work.

 Me: Thank you Perpetua.

 Dizzy: Are you finished. I want to give the rest to Vanity.

 Me: No. I’m Hungry! Let me finish it if you are done.

 Dizzy: But Vanity is hungry too!

 Me: The dogs have food. I saw your mother pour some TZ for Vanity and Veto.

Dizzy: But they like it with the soup.

 [Enter Cantuace's and her mother coming back from the path to the village.  They walk to the table. Cantuace's mother and Perpetua talked in Buili.]

 Perpetua translates for me: The mother has asked again asked me to plead for Cantuace. I said has Cantuace recognized what she has done wrong? Will she apologize? But as you can see Cantuace is just standing there with her mouth shut.  I already said these things to her when we went to the bakery side. Even Master came out and insulted Cantuace and told her mother what the girl has done.

 Me: [I nod towards the mother then talk to Perpetua] Cantuace and I need a break. Some time apart. She has been disrespectful and I no longer trust her. She needs some time to think and I want her to apologize. Maybe she can come back in April for my last term here.

 [Perpetua tells them and they leave.]

 Perpetua: That girl will go home. I told them she could come back when she was ready to apologize and say what she did wrong.

Me: It will snow in Ghana before that girl will apologize.

 Perpetua: Ha When does it snow in Ghana.

 Me: Exactly

 27 November 2009

 Scene: I am standing outside Perpetua’s bread room, facing the wall to the courtyard. Cantuace is sitting on a wooden stool, leaning against the wall of the courtyard. Her hands are folded in her lap and her eyes are looking down at her hands.

 Me: Good afternoon Cantuace.

 Cantuace: Nothing.

 Me: Cantuace let’s go to my house and get your things.

 Scene closes as I walk down the dirt road with Cantuace a few paces behind me.

 26 November 2009

 Scene: It is early evening the sun has just gone down. Perpetua and I are sitting at a small round table in her yard.

 Me: I let Cantuace go today.

 Perpetua: Why? What happened.

Me: It was my Birthday. Rofina and co came to my house to make a birthday dinner for me. While they were cooking there was some shouting in the kitchen.  Cantuace insulted them and just made the evening miserable. She wouldn’t help them with bowls or do anything they asked. I learned later it was because Hamdia gave her burnt rice from the bottom of the Jollof pot.

 Perpetua: Who does she think she is? No wonder they were upset. In their houses’ they ate the burnt rice when they were juniors. Does she think she is better than they are?

 Me: I feel so bad but I just don’t trust her anymore, ever since the thing with Dizzy this summer, then the potatoes, the chicken and then with Afisah and the bike

 Perpetua: After the incident with Afisah I advised Cantuace. Someone is lying to your mother and you don’t tell your mother even worse you are found with that person in the lie. Do you think the relationship will end when Madam Vicky goes away? You don’t know what that woman could do for you in the future. She could help you for a long time. I told her she should start acting smarter.

 Me: It’s true. I have thought of how I could help her. I have not said anything or made any promises but I have thought of it. I know I will help Portia and Rofina.  I don’t know what happened to Cantuace. Portia, Rofina and I all said what good girl she was. She was a hard worker. She knew what to do without being told. Now even when I tell her sometimes she doesn’t even do. Is it her age? Is she hanging with the wrong crowd?

 Perpetua: She has grown horns. [She puts her two index fingers on the top of her head.]

Here we say a child has grown horns when they become troublesome. When a young goat gets his horns he begins to fight and be stubborn and generally troublesome. That’s where it comes from.

 Me: Yes that sounds right. It hurts me to have to let her go. Well maybe if she goes away she will realize what she has lost.

 27 November 2009 Morning

 Scene: I am in my back room packing two Ghana gucci bags, a back pack and a polytin with Cantuace’s things.

 26 November 2009 Afternoon

 Scene: I am just returning from 3C cooking practical. I am about to unlock my door; Cantuace meets me at the door. I unlock the door and hold the screen door so Cantuace can bring my bike into the house. I enter my hall and Cantuace puts my bike in the back room.

 Me: Cantuace I’m sorry….. I don’t know how to say this…. Cantuace your working here is just not working out. You are not doing the small work I want you to do.

 Cantuace: Madam I beg you I beg

 Me: Cantuace you have been disrespectful to me and those who come here. You don’t respect me and I don’t trust you. You will have to go away for awhile.

 Cantuace: [She comes and puts her arms around me] Madam please. I beg I beg I didn’t do anything wrong.

Me: Cantuace we will take a break. In April you can come back and we will talk about you working for me again. Now I have to let you go.  You must leave tonight. Pack your things.

 22 November 2009

 Scene: My hall. Portia, Rofina and I are eating. I am in my chair. Portia is in the wooden chair under the windows and Rofina is sitting across from me in a blue plastic chair.

 Me: What was going on with Cantuace on my birthday?

 Portia: Oh that girl is wicked! Hamdia gave her some rice and she insulted her. She turned up her nose and said “Is that rice.”

 Rofina: Madam, she refused to help us cook or wash the bowls.

 Portia: Madam, she is a disrespectful girl. If it wasn’t for you I would have slapped her long before this. She has no respect. If she were my sister I would beat her.

 Rofina: We gave that same food to her brother and that other boy.

 Me: Thomas?

 Rofina: Yes the assistant headmaster’s boy. They ate it.

 [We move into the kitchen to wash the bowls]

 Me: But remember when she first came. You both said what a good girl she was. She was such a hard worker. She knows what to do.

 Portia: Yea madam we were praising her saying what a good worker she was.

 Rofina: Yes she was a good girl.

 Me: When I was away in Accra I talked to some of my friends. I don’t want to do this but I think I have to let her go. Can you find me some juniors if I let her go.

 Rofina and Portia: Oh madam she is a stubborn girl maybe you should let her go. We are having two juniors each. We will share them with you.

 19 November 2009

 Scene: Hamdia, Charlotte and Mari are washing the bowls outside on my patio.

Me: Why are you girls out washing bowls. Where is Cantuace?

Hamdia: Oh Madam she has refused to help us. She is a wicked, stubborn girl. She insulted the food when I gave her some. She would not eat it.

 Me: Was that what the shouting was about when you girls were cooking?

 Hamdia: Yea Madam. We didn’t want to tell you and spoil your birthday. It that girl were my younger sister I would beat her. The food she wouldn’t eat I gave to the two boys and they ate it.

 Me: Her brother and Thomas you mean?

 Hamdia: Yes Madam. Madam, whenever we come that girl is very disrespectful. She doesn’t listen to us. She won’t help us. Madam she is not a good girl.

 14 November 2009

 Scene: Kumasi Sub Office(KSO). Mike and I are sitting in the screened porch. He is on my left facing the outside door and I am looking across the green lawn.

 Me: Thanks Mike. I feel silly asking to talk to you about this it seems like such a small thing.

 Mike: Sister Vic, there is so much shit here we have to put up with sometimes it’s the little things that push us over the edge. What’s up?

 Me: It’s my small girl. She’s more trouble than she is help. She has stolen things from me, she endangered my friend’s child and she has lied to me. I want to let her go but I feel so guilty because I know she has very little food in the village and she serves my meals from the kitchen. If I let her go she won’t get those meals.

Mike: Have you talked to her?

 Me: Yea

 Mike: Has a friend talked to her?

 Me: Yes Perpetua talked to hear after Afisah lied about needing my bike. Perpetua let her have it and Perpetua is a force of nature. Her brother works for Perpetua. You know I feel guilty too because in a small way I feel like Cantuace is invading my space she is there early in the morning and then late at night. I tried to explain to her that I wanted her chores done before dinner and she didn’t do it. Then I talked to her brother and asked him to tell her.

 Mike: You gotta do what you need to make it here this is a tough job. You know you can still give her food if you like.

 Me: Yes I could. I could give it to her brother.

 Mike: Here’s what you can do. You can tell her that Peace Corps won’t let you have a small girl.

 Me: No I don’t want to lie.

 [Someone came in the porch to ask Mike a question]

Mike: Sorry. Ok how about this. You tell her how hurt you are by her actions. You say you don’t think you deserve to be treated they way she has treated you. You are so hurt you just need her to go away for awhile. Maybe she could come back later and see about working for you again.

Me: Yes! I like that idea!

Mike: Sista Vic you gotta do what ever you can to keep sane here. If she’s making it harder for you then let her go. Don’t feel guilty. You know a Ghanaian wouldn’t analyze it or worry or anything. They would just do it. We worry ourselves too much sometimes.  The second year is tough. There of stories of second years going off on their counterparts. You know it’s always the people you are close to that you lose it with.

 Me: So when I lose it with you Mike you’ll know its cause I care.

 2 November 2009

 Scene: Morning. Cantuace has just arrived with the sunrise. I open the door for her and step out to talk to her brother, Samuel.

 Me: Good morning Samuel.

 Samuel: Good morning Madam.

 Me: Samuel, can you help me? I have told Cantuace something to do and I am not sure she understands me clearly. You know my Buili is small and her English is small. Two nights ago she didn’t come back from serving dinner until after 6:30. You know she was late because you were here waiting for her to finish the bowls at 7:30. That’s too late. I told her yesterday but she still didn’t come back from serving until after 6:00 and I sent her home without doing the bowls. So could you tell her that I want the bowls done and the barrels full before she goes to serve?

 Samuel: Yes Madam.

 26 October 2009 Afternoon

 Scene: Kampusi’s yard. Perpetua and I are standing near my bike.

 Me: So who brought it back?

 Perpetua: Neither one of them some boy I don’t even know carried it here.

26 October 2009  Morning

 Scene: I am sitting out under my summer hut in a blue plastic chair. My tea and some student papers are on a small wooden table. I am marking papers. Abraham walks into the summer hut. (He is 6 years old)

 Abraham: Saluia

Me: salunaloaaa

Abraham: Madam Vicky, Afisah sent me to ask for your bike to take me to the hospital.

 [I look at him he looks fine until I see a bandage on his left leg]

 Me: Are you sick? What’s wrong?

 Abraham: [He points to his leg] The dressing on my leg needs to be changed. There’s no one home to take me.

 [I hesitate because I don't lend my bike to the kids but Afisah is going to SS surely she will be responsible and it seems like a good reason.]

 Me: Cantuace has my bike at the bore hole. Tell Afisah to go get it then come talk to me about borrowing the bike.

Abraham: All right Madam. [Abraham leaves]

  Fifteen minutes later Cantuace comes from the borehole with the gallon on her head.

 Me: Cantuace where’s the bike?

 Cantuace: Afisah told me you said she could have it.

 One hour and a half later I walk by Abraham’s house on my way to market. Abraham is outside playing. I know Ghanaian hospitals. There’s no way they could have gone and come in this short of a time. I  begin to think I trusted the wrong girl with my bike.

 Me: Abraham, come.

 [Abraham comes to me]

 Me: Abraham, where’s Afisah?

 Abraham: I don’t know. She’s not here.

 Me: Where’s my bike?

 Abraham: With Afisah.

 [I look at Abraham and see he has a new bandage on his leg except that it's on the right leg now not the left.  Now I know something is up.]

 Me: Abraham did you go to the hospital.

 Abraham does not answer me.

 Me: You tell Afisah I want to see her when she gets back.

Abraham: Yes Madam

 I go to the borehole and ask the girls fetching water if they have seen Afisah. One tells me that she has gone to Cantuace’s place to do wash. I go to the cross since there is nothing else I can do about the bike right now.

 At the cross: I am entering the lorry in the front seat when one of my students from the back of the lorry speaks.

 Student: Madam isn’t that your girl and your bike?

 [I turn to look behind us and there are Cantuace, Afisah and MY BIKE coming from Navarongo side. The Hospital is in the other direction in Sandema. I wait until they are even with the driver's window in the lorry then I lean out.]

 Me: Cantuace! Afisah! Take that bike to Kampusi’s NOW! I am calling her to tell her you are bringing it now.

 [I sit down and call Perpetua on my cell phone.]

 Me: Perpetua, How are you? Me to I’m OK. Can you do me a favor. Cantuace and Afisah are coming with my bike. Will you lock it and keep it there for me? I’m on my way to market. Please call me back quick when it comes. Yeah I’ll talk to you later. Thanks!

 30 September 2009

 Scene: Rofina, Portia and I are eating in my hall, sitting in our usual places.

 Me: Rofina did Portia tell you what Cantuace did the other day?

 Rofina: Oh Madam how it hurts me what that girl did to you. You have done so much for her. The new uniform, the school bag and the school supplies then she turns around and does that to you.  Oh Madam it is paining me!

 27 September 2009 After School

 Scene: I am sitting in my hall Cantuace comes home from school.

Me: Cantuace please come here.

 [She comes]

 Me: Cantuace did you boil all the potatoes this morning?

 Cantuace: Yes Madam

 Me: Cantuace that was One Ghana Cedi worth of potatoes. We could have eaten them for two meals. From now on don’t take any food without asking me first. This and the chicken are just too much.

 27 September 2009 Morning

 Scene:  Sister Pat enters my hall. I am sitting in my chair.

 Pat: Madam Vicky, what has happened.

 Me: Pat my girl she stole has stolen from me. I wanted to make an American dish for Portia and Rofina and I went to cook it this morning. I had one Ghana Cedi potatoes in the cupboard to make potato salad. When I went to the cupboard this morning I couldn’t find them anywhere.

 Pat: One Ghana Cedi that is plenty of potatoes.

 Me: Yes I planned two meals for them. Well I turned to the stove and saw my silver there. I took the lid off and there were two small potatoes in the pot. Cooked.

 Pat: You think Cantuace took them?

 Me: Yes. What should I do? I am so angry I want to let her go. The chicken, Dizzy and now this. I just don’t know.

 Pat: Well maybe you have bee too free with her. You don’t know our ways and now she thinks this is her house.

 Me: Yes, maybe but I have wanted her to think this was her house. What should I do?

 Pat: First tell her she can’t even take a spoon of sugar without asking you. That’s just how it is here. And kids usually bath outside not in your bathing room. You have seen Tenni and my boy bathing outside. That’s how we do it.

 Me: Pat, thanks so much for coming from work to talk to me I feel so much better.

 Pat: Oh our Madam Vicky has a problem and of all the people here who does she call but me. It’s a pleasure.

 11 September 2009

 Scene: My back room. Cantuace and I are standing by the refridgerator. I am holding a plate with one small piece of chicken on it.

 Me: Cantuace did you take more chicken last night with your jollof?

 Cantuace nods.

 Me: I gave you chicken with the jollof. The chicken that was in the fridge was for tonight’s ground nut soup. Don’t take food from the fridge without asking me.

 21 August 2009 Evening

 Perpetua’s (PeePee) yard: She is sitting on a stool bagging sugar for her store. I am in a plastic chair beside her.

 Me: Perpetua I came to apologize that my girl took Dizzy to town on my bike today. I have sent her home. I just said go home I am so mad I don’t know what I will do or say. She won’t be able to use the bike for quite some time.

 PeePee: That girl is wicked, not only did she take Dizzy but she also taught dizzy to tell a lie. She told Dizzy that if anyone asked she should say Madam Vicky said it was ok to go to town.

 Me: Please in America when a child does something wrong to a neighbor they must apologize and do something for the neighbor. Say they broke a window, they should apologize and pay for the window. I want to send Cantuace over to apologize and to do something for you.

 Peepee: I don’t know what that girl could do for me.

 Robert:(Peepee’s husband) Madam Vicky I talked to the girl. She’s sorry and I don’t think she will do that again.

 Me: Perpetua and Robert I am so sorry.

 Perpetua and Robert: Madam Vicky you did nothing to apologize for.

 21 August 2009 Noon

 Scene: I am walking into my yard. Dizzy and Cantuace ride up to my house on my bike.

 Me: Dizzy where have you been? We have been looking all over for you.

 Dizzy: To town with Cantuace.

 Me: Cantuace what do you think you were doing? Go Go back to your house. I don’t want to see your face. I am to angry to talk to you. You can come to my house again Monday. No sooner.

Cantuace: Madam, it’s not my fault. Dizzy just jumped on the back.

 Me: STOP Cantuace. Stop right now. Who is older? You couldn’t get her off the bike? You couldn’t turn around and send her home? I won’t talk to you I am too angry. Go home.

 21 August 2009 11:30 am 

Scene: Robert Kampusi and I are standing in their yard.

 Me: Robert, Samuel came by my house earlier asking for Dizzy. I told him the last time I saw her was just after breakfast. She had been at my house. She helped Cantuace wash bowls and then they sat outside eating some porridge. They were thick as theives. After that I sent her home because Cantuace was going to take my bike into town. Samuel said that no one has seen her. We just went around to the master’s houses again. No Dizzy. I went back to the house. In the house I began to think. Maybe Cantuace took Dizzy to town on the bike. I can’t think of anywhere else she might be.

 Robert: Oh I don’t think she would do that. Peepee’s in town I will call her. Thanks for coming over Madam Vicky

 -vc

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2 December 2009 American Dream

January 7, 2010 at 5:52 am (Africa, Ghana, Ghanian culture, Peace Corps)

 Last night I dreamt I had finished my Peace Corps service and was back in America. In the dream I was in a cavernous, cave like grocery store. The shelves reached to a ceiling that was at least 6 feet above me. I was looking for a snack sized bag of Lays Original Potato Chips. I was lost among the aisles and as I searched the aisles began to tilt in on me. I hunched down and scrunched my shoulders in towards my body. I looked and looked and I couldn’t find the chips. Then the products on the shelves began tilting off the shelves but were still attached so it was like I was walking through product seaweed. I finally found the chip aisle but couldn’t see the Lays. I began to paw through the bags of chips; my hands were shaking and I was panting. I began throwing bags of chips off the shelf then woke up.

-vc

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26 November 2009 Crème Caramel and more

December 11, 2009 at 5:44 am (Africa, Ghana, Ghanian culture, Peace Corps, food)
Tags: , , , , , ,

Thanksgiving USA.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
The smell of turkey since 5:00 am.
Family.
Stuffing.
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
Cranberry sauce.
Madison High vs Skowhegan  High annual rivalry.
Winter jackets.
Friends.
Snow.
Chocolate cream pie.
Meme’s now Uncle Raymond’s sausage.
Green bean casserole.
A fire in the fireplace.

Did I miss it? Oh yes and much more than I  last year. Last year Ghana was still fresh and new. Missing Thanksgiving seemed small compared to all the great things that I was doing, seeing and learning. But this year I have been away from home for more than a year and am occasionally homesick.  So what was I going to do? Ever since I missed the July 4th picnic at the Kumasi Sub office I had been planning to go to the (KSO) and have Thanksgiving with Mike, Lenore and other PCVs in the area. But like most long term plans in Ghana this one was thwarted. Two weeks before Thanksgiving I had to go to Accra for medical purposes. (I am fine my doctor was just being careful. They give us good medical care here.) Thus I missed more than a week of classes. End of term exams were coming up and I felt I needed to stay here and prepare my students for their ICT exam.  Lenore was disappointed. We had planned to have Thanksgiving on the Saturday after and it was her birthday. I would have loved to share her birthday with her but Lenore understood. I sent Mike a text and he replied  with “God will bless you….”.

I had no classes on Thanksgiving Day. My first decision was not to be a baby and mope about thinking about what I couldn’t have.  I planned to have my own holiday.  I would read, do puzzles and take some photographs. In the morning I did the reading and the puzzles. I also had a mineral and some popcorn. The popcorn reminded me of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Just before lunch some of the students from 3C, the home economics tract, came by and said that at 12:00 pm  they were having practicals. Hamdia wanted to borrow my coal pot and some utensils. They invited me to come watch. I agreed thinking it would be a good photo op.

I had an orange and finished my scrabble puzzle. Then I took a bath. I put on jeans. I actually felt cool and now that I can again wear my favorite jeans again I wear them every chance I get. Last year at this time the heat and my weight would have kept me out of them. Changes. It was about 10 minutes to one and I had done everything I could to make myself late. In a year I have also learned that nothing starts on time. Even though I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach the whole time I am “late” I still try to be late. The exception to this is when I am in control of the situation like my classes. I will not be late to them.

I rode my bike to the uncompleted dinning hall. There were 5 people in the hall. Madam Miriam, the Home Economics madam, Dr. Jesus, a local photographer and 3 students dressed in their catering whites.  Madam Miriam was upset and threatening to leave because the students were an hour late. Dr. Jesus was asleep. The three students were setting up a table where they would do their cooking.

Over the next hour students trickled in an set up their tables. There were four groups of students. Each group had a table and had laid out their pots and ingredients in a orderly display along the edge of the table. Behind each cooking table were one or two coal pots, a small bucket of water and some more cooking pots.

Two groups shared a table where they would display their finished products. These tables had five stands on them, one on each corner and one in the middle. Over the wooden stands they had draped a lace cloth. Their serving platters were on the display tables under the lace, protected from the flies.

Around 2:15 the cooking finally began. Yam balls was the first dish they were cooking. The yams here are huge. They look like the calf of a leg. One yam can feed a family. They yam balls were very simple to make. The yam was boiled then mashed. They added butter, salt, white peppe and two egg yolks. I was surprised that they didn’t use the whole egg because in Ghana nothing is wasted. Then they formed the mashed yam into balls, dipped it in the egg white (ah ha!) and then rolled it in bread crumbs. Then this was deep fried.

While the yam balls were frying they started on the beef or cow meat for the kebabs. In Ghana they steam the meat. If you have read this blog you might remember me praising this  particular culinary method. The meat becomes tender and saturated in the spices added to the pot and its so simple to do. Chop the meat into 1 inch cubes. Place it in a pot. Add spices. In Ghana maggie is the spice of choice; it is very similar to our bullion and can be found in beef, chicken, onion and shrimp flavors. One cube of maggie for each serving, salt, and curry powder.  I add some American spices when I cook and leave out the maggie. I put celery powder, ground ginger and cumin as well as black pepper. Slice a small onion and a few cloves of garlic, to taste. Then put a small amount of water into the pot, cover and cook at least 30 minutes. In Ghana they are not afraid to cook their food plenty. I assume in this heat that well cooked  food has less chance of carrying disease or spoiling.

Next was the fruit drink which was made from fresh watermelon, pineapple and oranges. Madam Miriam shared a section of watermelon with me and I ate it as I watched the cooks grate watermelon and pineapple then sieve out the pulp. They used a familiar juicer on the orange. This was put into a lovely pitcher and placed on the display table.

The yam balls were ready. The four best were chosen and put on a serving platter.  They were garnished and placed on the display table. Students wanted to pose with their platters of yam balls and I obliged them by taking a photo. In fact during the whole day students were hamming it up for the camera. I did get some nice candids but they were always aware where the camera was and some even jumped into then photos. A few times during the day I told them to go back to cooking because they were so distracted by the camera.

There were plenty of yam balls left and I wished for one but continued with my photography instead of asking. Master Amino came in about that time. When I saw him walking around eating a yam ball I went to one of the groups and complained. I had been here suffering with them, taking photos and encouraging them. They gave master one, who just came, but they didn’t give me a yam ball! I got two. One from group I complained to and one from those next to it. Yum.

I walked behind one table to see a pot of yellow water about to boil. I think my face showed some concern because one girl hurried to show me the red powder they used to color the water. They were making saffron rice. Phew! I have eaten a lot of things in Ghana but…..

Madam Miriam was at a table and called to me to see the next dish. She was cracking six eggs into a metal mixing bowl then she added 4 tablespoons of sugar. She took a wire whisk. Wait a wire whisk I haven’t seen one of those in Ghana ever. I asked where she bought it. “In town” was her reply, “at the plastic sellers in front of Good Family.” Thats my friend. I’ll have to ask her next time I am at market. She began to whisk the eggs and sugar together. No could they be. Oh please don’t get your hopes up Vicky but could it be true are they making a dessert? Is that dessert going to be custard? I asked Madam what they were making. crème Caramel. I did shout for joy! I said I would watch closely to see how they make it without an oven.  Madam told them to whisk the sugar and eggs well. Then she told some others to caramelize some sugar.During the preparation I walked around to each table telling the cooks how much I missed crème caramel and that I hadn’t had any since I came to Ghana.

They had four small Ideal milk cans and Madam told them to grease the inside of the cans with margarine. Some caramelized sugar was then poured into the bottom of each can. The eggs and sugar were beaten to a frothy mass and a can of ideal Milk was added and folded in. The liquid was poured through a seive into the Ideal milk cans.  At another table there were four pieces of notebook paper covered in margarine. The cooks were covering the top of the ideal milk cans with this greased paper and tying the paper around the top of the can. This table used strips of polytin bags, another had string. The margarine was to help the paper stick to the can.

I walked over to the table where madam was demonstrating putting the cans of crème caramel into the pot. She filled the bottom of the pot with about 2 inches of water, then placed a clean napkin (Americans call them kitchen towels) in the pot. The cans of crème caramel were placed on top of the napkin. The pot was covered and then placed on the coal pot. Within an hour I could be eating crème caramel! Was this a good Thanksgiving or what!

With all my excitement over the crème caramel I missed them making a syrup from some of the fruits and the cooking of the rice. The rice came out a lovely light yellow color, not disgusting at all and was garnished with, tomatoes and green peppers. They were going to use the syrup on a fruit salad. They began cutting up the fruits but I knew how to do this so I wandered off.

In Ghana the rice must have a stew(it’s more like what we call a sauce and is usually tomato based). So a simple tomato stew was made for the rice. I didn’t watch because at one table the crème caramel was coming out of the pot. Madam called me over. The papers were removed from the cans and Madam slid a knife between the can and the custard to loosen it. (I was secretly hoping for a large chunk to be left behind in at least one of the cans.) Then she tipped the can over onto a serving platter. Then she dug into that first can and came up with a nice chunk of custard dripping with caramelized sugar, which she offered to me!

I followed Madam Miriam as she demonstrated how to remove the crème caramel from the tins. I picked up the empty tins and got the rest of the caramel out with my finger. The third group had made custard in a poly bag. They put it in a can and gave it to me, with a fork. Oh heavenly day, thankful day DESSERT in Ghana! I ate slowly making sure that I had carmel with every bite.

There were 16 servings of crème caramel on the display tables. I almost suggested that the cooks post guards. I was not sure I could control myself! As I was eying the desserts my phone notified me that I had a text message. Liz had sent me a Happy Thanksgiving message.  Students read over my shoulder we read Liz’s message  “Happy Thanksgiving! I hope whether you are working or spending the day with friends and family, your day is filled  with good food and fun!  We all laughed and I said to the girls surrounding me “Yes my day has been filled with good food and fun!” I immediately replied to Liz’s text assuring her I was having both and telling her the menu.

Charles, one of the two young men in the class, came with some questions about my camera. I gave my baby to him and watch as he took some photos near me. I relaxed when I saw that handled the camera with care and kept the strap around his neck.

Last to be done was the kebabs. The meat was well steamed and ready to skewer. The cooks cut up tomatoes, green peppers and onions and made the kebabs. They put them on a platter and then poured some of the stew over the kebabs. Weren’t they going to cook the kebabs? No, I guess not, the platter went to the display table with some garnish of spring onions.

Like ants at a picnic masters came though the door. How did they know the food was finished and ready to serve?  They claimed they were just headed to foootball practice and the aroma brought them in. Before they decended I grabbed a plate and took a heap of saffron rice, small stew, two kebabs from one table and one from another, two yam balls, fruit salad and one georgeous crème caramel. One of the cooks poured me some fruit juice. I found a student desk and sat down to enjoy!

Thanksgiving Ghana

Crème Caramel
Laughter
Coal pots
Fruit salad
Family
Kebabs
Saffron rice and stew
Friends
Yam balls
The smell of meat steaming for 40 minutes
Jeans
Bicycle
Fruit juice
Students

-vc

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11 October 2009 Slave Camp

December 9, 2009 at 5:28 am (Africa, Ghana, Ghanian culture, Peace Corps)

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund  Burke

It took 16 months to face my ancestral heritage in Ghana. Last year I visited Cape Coast but I only looked at the Castle from a distance. I told myself I would have plently of time to see the place where Ghanaian captives embarked on the journey to slavery in the New World. I would return to the Castle before I left Ghana. At the Feok festival I became a Builsa and celebrated the victory over Baba Too and Sarana _________ the slave raiders from Paga. Sandema men rose up and fought their brothers who were catching Bulisas, Burkinans and Malians for the White Man. I was proud I lived in a town where they said “Hell no we won’t go!”. The slave camp was only an hour away but some how I never managed to get there. Now Mel, my brother’s wife, was coming and her tour was going. It was time to face the White Man’s legacy in West Africa.

The slave camp is located in Paga on the border of Ghana and Burkina Faso. Baba and ______ , the slave raiders, would travel north into what is now Burkina and Mali and west to Ghana’s Builsa land. They would bring the captives back to the camp where they held them until southern traders came to buy them.

Our guide was a young man about 20 years old. His upper arms were thick and his chest was broad. Two hundred years ago he could have been a part of the story he was about to tell us. Instead he had taken on the culture of his old colonial masters. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and spoke to us in English.

As we walked through some trees on our way to the camp I looked for the buildings where they captives slept. The first stop on the tour was a spring. It came up through some rocks. The oval basin was no more than five feet long and 2 feet at the widest spot. The captives got all their water for drinking and bathing in this one small spot.  The spring is plugged up now. The local people did it because they were so ashamed at what happened and they never wanted another slave camp at this spot. The spring was the deciding factor in locating the camp in Paga.

The rocks where the spring came up were a ledge overlooking a valley and the guide pointed and said that’s where they kept the slaves. There were no buildings. They slept, chained together in the valley open to the mosquitoes, the dry cold  of the hamattan season, the 100+ degree heat of March and April and the dampness of the rainy season.

The granite ledge was the captives’ dining hall. Our guide pointed out oval indentations in the rock. That is where the captives would be served their meals. The captives hands were unbound only during their meals. The ‘bowls’ were carved out of the granite with another piece of granite. Making the ‘bowls’ was a punishment given to unruly captives.

Near the ‘dining hall’ there were three boulders about the size of timpani drums. It’s hard for me to write about this part. My head and heart are going everywhere but to this part of the story. I found some dishes to take into the kitchen. Solitaire was calling out my name then finally I got back to the story. The boulders were drums. In the evenings a few ‘boys’ would come up from the valley and beat the boulders with rocks. There were three local boys at the drums now and they began beating and singing.

Our guide told us that they were trying to cheer up their mates. That they thought some entertainment would make their hearts happy. Our guide said the song they were singing encouraged the captives telling them that this trouble would soon be over. To work hard and look to the day when they would come back home to be with their families, wifes, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. The songs were hopeful. As they sang I had to turn away. I don’t cry in public. While I was turned away the guide told us that after the ‘boys’ drummed the masters would leave cedis( shells, the currency of the time) on the boulders. The masters believed the music calmed the ’savages’ so they wanted to encourage the drummers.

When I turned around I saw fires breaking the darkness in the valley. Thirty to forty captives were around each fire dancing and singing. I could hear their chains clinking to the beat of  the drums. Their song rose above the valley mournful and hopeful. The smell of bush meat rose to the ledge as the women cooked the small animals the men could manage to catch in their captivity. The smoke from the fires and the dust from the arid ground made it seem like a dream or a vision. I wanted to go down into the valley and dance and eat with them. I wanted to sit with them and tell them how much I hated what my white brothers had done to them, my African brothers. I wanted to tell them that I would have fought to stop that evil and to keep them in Ghana with their families and friends and that I will fight hard to stop it if other such evil ever returns. I will remind those who have forgotten that we are all human beings.

The music stopped and the dust and smoke cleared. It was daylight again. The valley was green with the rainy season vegetation and all the fires were gone. I walked to the drums and laid down one modern day Ghana Cedi in acknowledgement that my ancestors played a part in this evil.

Although there were others with me on this tour, I was scarcely aware of them. This was a private journey I was taking. I was looking at the evil that men can do and looking in to see if I could have done this thing? What little prejudice attitudes and feelings will lead to the bigger prejudice of thinking I had the right to take someone captive and make him serve me. I don’t want any to water and nurse any such seeds in myself.

The next stop was the slave meeting grounds, a euphamism for auction block. Slave traders came from the south to buy these slaves. They liked northerners, say the people in Sandema, because they were taller and stronger. I think there may also have been other reasons. Traditionally the people in southern Ghana are predjuice against the northerners. When they heard my posting, I received a lot of sympathy from Ghanaians around the Peace Corps training center in the south. They told me the northerners were uneducated, supersticious, and implied they were some what less than the southerners. So this attitude allowed the southern Ghanaians to come north and take their “lesser” brothers. It was probably easier for the colonialist to dehumanize the northerners. They didn’t have much contact with them because they spent all their time on the coast, near the trading centers and the ports. Many of the colonialist worked daily with southern Ghanaians.

So the southern buyers gawked at the wares on the auction block. The slave was stripped except for a small loin cloth and his sturdieness and health were displayed for sale.  I heard a horse whinney and looked up to see five roughly dressed Ghanaians dismounting and heading towards the auction block. They buyers were dusty from the journey. Their heads covered with large floppy straw hats to protect them from the sun. I heard one send his boy to fetch water for them all to drink.

The captives for auction that day were standing in small groups in the midday sun with little more than rags on their backs to protect them. I saw a mothers touching her son’s arm in a last attempt to connect before they were seperated. A wife and husband crowded together with their small baby between them. They were quiet but their eyes showed the uncertaintity and fear they were feeling. A father and son stood side by side.

The traders looked them all over and pointed to the new father. The the wife cried out and her eyes plead to go with him. The trader ignored her and motioned for the man to remove his clothing. They examined him like a piece of horse flesh. Firm muscles? Straight and strong back? Good teeth? The camp guard started the bidding. The new father stood straight and faced the valley. He was sold to the highest bidder. Another was put in his place.

Our guide’s voice brought me back to the present. He was saying that after the captives were sold they then marched to the slave bathing place. They had little food and water so many died on the trip south. At the bathing place they were bathed and shaved before being sent to the Cape Coast Castle, the ships and then America.

We then walked to five boulders piled up on each other. Our guide climbed about 25 feet to the top. From there he told us the guards could watch the whole camp, the dining hall, the meeting place, the valley and the punishment area.

From the lookout we walked to the slave graveyard. Many captives died in the camp but there were only a few stone markers. Our guided explained that just like the spring, the local people destroyed the graveyard out of shame. Later they realized they should have something to memorialize the people burried there so they returned these few markers. The graves were communial  graves. Big pits dug in the ground to take ten or more dead bodies.
An unmarked stone was then laid on the mass grave.

Near the graveyard was the punishment rock. It was unshaded open to the elements. The slave was beaten according to the offence. and then made to sit on the rock with his hands chained behind him. His feet were chained around the rock. I could see where the chains had worn the base of the rock away. The captive was made to sit on the rock and turn his face to the sun. If he should turn away to give relief to his eyes he was whipped again.

Here I asked our guide how he learned the story of the slave camp. He told me it was passed down to him from his grandfather. The story has been passed orally through the generations.
I will add to this legacy in a new medium.

My feelings from the day can be summed up in this poem. I hope I have learned the lesson of the slave camp and this poem.

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

-vc

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14 September 2009 First Day (Con’t)

December 7, 2009 at 5:19 am (Africa, Ghana, Ghanian culture, Peace Corps)

(Author’s note: In my eagerness to post something on the blog, I neglected to make sure that the First Day entry was finished. Today (28 November 2009) I discovered it was not finished! So here’s the rest.)

The writing was finished so I decided to sit out under my summer hut, do a kakuro and enjoy the fact that the sun was shining. For the first time in at least 10 years I was enjoying the absence of children due to the beginning of school. There is a boisterous, jumbly joy to having your children home but today I was enjoying the quiet, still joy of an empty house. While doing the puzzle I also sat and watched the goats. They are a riot. Today this one little goat kept bounding away. He looked like a stone skipping over water. His hoves would touch down for a second and then he was in the air again. He was bleating the whole time. Then his mother would reply in a low bleat. Bounce, high squeeky bleat, land, low bleat, high squeeky bleat, bounce, low bleat and so on.  Finally homing in on it’s mother the baby goat turned in mid air and shot off towards comfort and milk.

Mama goats and babies communicate like this all the time. You will hear the high squeeky bleats of the babies and the low waah of the mama. Sometimes the baby will wail and wail with no answer. At times I think the mother goat is hiding. If I were a mother goat I would hide. When the baby wantes to nurse he darts at the mother then bashes her teat with his hard little nose, three or four times! I am sure its to start the milk flowing but geesh it’s gotta hurt! If there is reincarnation then coming back as a she goat has got to be a punishment!

The goats play king of the mountain on my summer hut walls. The walls are only 1 foot high but every kid wants to be the only one on it’s section. They will head butt. They will push each other. Sometimes they pusher falls off then leaps back on like that was what he was planning all along. Sometimes a third goat will come when two are head butting and bleat like she is the referee.

The goats entertained me until the kids came home from school. Then it was “This happened today. Madam said that. We cleaned all day no classes. It was so wet and muddy.” The noises of a full house and compound filled the evening.

-vc

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