Good-bye

Suddenly it's time to say goodbye. Three and half months' worth of experiences, challenges, and learning in Ghana, and I'm at a loss at how to sum it up in a final blog post (literally, while most of my posts have flowed quite easily, it's difficult this time to find the right words). For the sake of those reading this post who will never come to Africa, I suppose I should talk a little about the misconceptions people in America have about this continent.

People don't live in trees here. Africans are in many ways no different from people in any other region, especially the US (to a rather disappointing degree, actually. The notion of "cultural diversity" takes on a peculiar meaning here.) Nor are people fresh out of the bush. Ghana urbanizing at a shocking (and unsustainable) rate, and has been since before independence. Ghanaians see all the images on TV that we see, and people here listen to Ne-Yo, Lil' Wayne, and every other artist popular in America (and like music in America, most people listen to crap here). There are many wealthy people in Ghana, a result of the immense economic growth in most African countries that has favored a small wealthy minority of people and in turn greatly increased inequality. Children go to schools, and for every child with a swollen belly you see at least an equal amount of children who are well-nourished. Africa is, in many ways, quite modern (and notice I use Ghana and Africa almost interchangeably, since the country that was the epicenter of Pan-Africanism in the 1950s and 1960s has had as conventional a history as any African country).

Yet exploitation and underdevelopment has taken its toll on Ghana, just like the rest of Africa, and the fact that Africa re-gained her independence only a generation ago means she has one foot in tradition and the other in modernization. The result is a tenuous society that sustains a lot of friction as people are forced to become more and more like Americans socially, economically (though still incomparably poor compared to us), and politically. Some here are trying to preserve the very traditions that are endangered, but it is a fight against the future in a way. "Globalization" gives Third-World countries like Ghana no choice but to develop the way the West wants them top develop, with no consideration of what ramifications there are to what my mentor in high school would call "cultural imperialism" (I would highly encourage those interested in how this change came about to read my Independent Study Project, posted at the bottom of my previous post).

So Africa will trod on, as the West hypocritically encourages her to develop while pretending to wring its hands at the loss of everything that made Africa wonderful for thousands of years. I believe some will be preserved and survive, but some will and already has disappeared as dances, songs, and stories fade out of existence. Again, I highly encourage everyone reading this to come see Africa for yourself. Africa is an ancient place, and she will survive this current threat. But to truly understand what I'm talking about you have to come and see it for yourself.

I hope people learned something from this blog I wrote this semester. I only managed to include a small portion of what I experienced, but what I wrote I wrote to help people back home understand what is happening in Africa and what it means to be an American in a continent where so many live on less than a dollar a day. Our world is one of Facebook, iPods, iPhones and Blackberries, laptops, cars, television, and all those things. I hope Americans can remember that beneath all those layers there is something called a human being screaming to be recognized. If nothing else, I hope the reader truly understands how lucky and unlucky they are. Lucky to live in the land of opportunity that most of world resents yet desires so strongly to live in, and unlucky to be sheltered from the real world, where humanity was born and is struggling to endure in the wake of so much de-humanization.

Winding Down

And suddenly my time in Ghana is almost over. I realized awhile ago that my favorite word in the English language is "bittersweet," and that is indeed the feeling I have experienced in the past few days. Just like before I came for the semester, I am torn between the friends I have here (though then it was in America) and the prospect of going a place I've been dreaming of going to (this time, it's home). I haven't really written about it, but I've made a lot of friends here in Ghana, many of whom I will dearly miss.


In any country the vast majority of people are normal, flawed people who make good, bad, and selfish decisions alike, but every country also has a small minority of people whose goodness and kindness shock those of us constantly mediating between selfishness and being good as well. I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of people that fall in the former category here in Ghana. It is especially fortunate considering that the old ways of kindness and hospitality are dying in the midst of "modernization." In fact, almost everything in Ghana is that is traditional and unique from the West is rapidly deteriorating, and it is being replaced by televisions, cell phones, and music videos. The central irony that those of us who come to Ghana to find something different form America is that we find many people here want nothing more than to be Americans. How can you explain to people that what they view as the ideal is really often empty and meaningless, especially when America is number one in the world, so to speak?



It all seems so backwards, that Americans think Ghana's old ways are better while Ghanaians think America is the greatest. I can't blame Ghanaians for wanting something more than what they have here. The television tells them America is the best, where everyone is rich and no one starves. It's almost impossible to explain to them that America is the wealthiest country in the world yet half the people are crazy, depressed, and/or overmedicated, and the other half are trying to ignore those very crazy ones who seem to be everywhere. It's sad, but the choice in this world seems to be being rich in culture and poor materially or rich materially and poor in culture (and for those who believe that the Core Curriculum is "culture," learn some African dance or drumming and see if you still think that).



In any case, that's the way it is. We all have to accept our roles, and for me in the end I am an American, even if I spend much more time in Ghana. With that said, those interested in Africa would do well to come here as soon as possible, because you can read every book in the world on Africa and you still wouldn't be prepared for being here. You have to see it for yourself. The fact that Africa's old ways are dying makes it all the more urgent that you come, the sooner the better. I'll try to post one last time this weekend right before I leave for JFK on Sunday night. In the meantime, here's a link to a Google Document that has my Independent Study Project on Kwame Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and de-colonization.

Part 1:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZyHAJZXkObCZGhrNjJjY25fMTZnc2N0NWo4bg&hl=en

Part 2:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZyHAJZXkObCZGhrNjJjY25fMTVkN245cGRnag&hl=en

Happy Turkey Day!

Well I guess I should update this blog after my 21st birthday and Thanksgiving, not to mention a few weeks of silence on my part. My Independent Study Project is almost done, and I must say researching the movement for Pan-African Unity in the 1950s and 1960s has been a very educational experience. What happened here was remarkable, especially considering the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, was the leader on the more militant side of the Pan-African movement, and was probably the biggest thorn in the side of the US foreign policy hawks. I would love to write more about this, but I'll just try to upload my finalized version to the blog so all can read what happened. All I'll say is I have a much better idea of why the continent that is possibly the richest in natural resources is also arguably the poorest continent in the world, and to tell the reader to look up what happened to Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, so you can see what happens when you start fucking with Westerners' money.

But it's the holiday season and for once I want to talk about the good in the world. Rest assured everyone that I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with a family that has taken a few of us students in and really treated us kindly. Every day or other day we've been going to their house to learn about Africa's true history (for the way we talk about it you'd think it began with colonialism and that Egypt were in the Middle East, not Africa), as well as playing some basketball, something rare in Ghana. This particular family is mostly from New Jersey, and the patriarch who moved the family has come to believe that America is in fact a police state and that all this modern technology and education is doing more harm and programming than we realize. Now there's an entire family here of Americans and Ghanaians, for they also take in local children who are at risk, and they take travelers such as myself and my fellow students periodically to teach us some real history.

So I spent my birthday/Thanksgiving with this family after taking a bus from Accra to Cape Coast in the morning. I had spent the previous night with my homestay family, who have also come to treat me like a part of their family as well. In fact, they gave me an amazing present, which was a traditional Nigerian robe, though I'm not sure if its originally Igbo or Yoruba or both. If Thanksgiving is about being with family and friends and being thankful for what you have, then I missed nothing this year, and for that I am truly grateful. Luckily, I learned when I left for Ghana just how amazing my family and friends are. Those who read my very first blog post might recall my bittersweet declaration that I am doomed to forget what I have in my family and friends and remember it, only to forget it again. But I can honestly say that I have not forgotten it, and this Thanksgiving was only a day to say it out loud. Yet I remember vividly how lucky I am.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. Yes, part of it is that it means my birthday is nearby, but I also love the meaning of Thanksgiving more so than any other holiday, especially the materialist undertones of Christmas. Thanksgiving isn't religious nor patriotic, for neither themes have ever been very attractive to me. It's holiday where you come to appreciate relationships and people, particularly the people close to you who have been there throughout, and you demonstrate that love by eating a shitload of great food and watching sports and napping. I am no believer in fate (though I do believe in meaning), but I almost believe it predestined that I would born around Thanksgiving, and that sometimes my birthday in fact would fall on Thanksgiving. That truly is a privilege.

I'll try to have more on Africa next time, though my mind is already turning towards my return to America after a nice, long break.

Freedom

After traveling the country for over a month and living in the Ashanti Region for four weeks, I have finally returned to Accra, where I left on the journey September 15th. This time around it is unsurprisingly different. I live in a homestay at the University of Ghana, Legon, and have been doing last-minute assignments here on campus. So this time the university isn't my shocking first impressions of Accra, Ghana, West Africa, and Africa, but rather just a rather beautiful university that is a shocking and heavenly escape from Accra's intensity and Ghana's reality.

And I see college students roaming around, studying in the library, smiling and laughing just as I would have if I were studying at Columbia, or if I had been enrolled here the entire semester. I must admit part of me wonders what kind of experience I would have had here in Ghana if I had just been enrolled as a student, which many Americans do (there are a ton of Obrunies here). I wouldn't seen half of the things I've written about, and probably would never have gotten to know the rest of Ghana in depth. It's an interesting thought experiment though, especially after the intensity and visceralness of the past two months.

We arrived here on Tuesday, and until Saturday we have to finish assignments and make arrangements for Independent Study Project time, which goes until December 6th. My ISP will be on Kwame Nkrumah, the man who led the de-colonization movement here in Ghana, the first country in all of Africa to get its independence (the topic is interesting but not my ideal choice. I need this to count for history credit so I can breath the next three semesters at Columbia. If I could I would study drumming and just learn to play for the next month). Sir George Padmore and W.E.B. Du Bois both came here to live here upon invitation by Nkrumah, and I know Du Bois died and is buried here. In fact, I will be doing research at the archives of the Du Bois Center, where he is buried, as well as the Nkrumah Mausoleum, where obviously Nkrumah is buried.

On November 14th I plan to head to Cape Coast to finish my research with the help of my advisor, Rabbi Kohain Palavi. We met with this man a few weeks ago, and he knows a ton about African liberation struggles, Pan-Africanism (he himself is from Mt. Vernon, NY, and told us he went to high school with Denzel Washington), and pretty everything else that's dope about Africa and the Diaspora. I plan to be there for two weeks, by which time I'll hopefully be done with my ISP and I'll spend the rest of the time traveling to various parts of Ghana, hopefully visiting friends I've made in Winneba, Kumasi, and the village Naama. On December 6th I'll be back in Accra to present my final project, and on December 13th it's back to NYC.

Things are completely different now that I'm no longer traveling with 14 other students under a completely structured itinerary. It's amazing to roam about with freedom here in Legon, and really be a college student again. I'm looking forward to doing research on Nkrumah, who it appears was overthrown simply because the CIA didn't like the prospects of an independent, intelligent, socialistic Africa (and if you think that's bad, look up what happened to Patrice Lumumba in Zaire, now known as the Congo). I spent much of my teenage years learning what the CIA did to Latin America, and now I've repeated the process for Africa.

People in America look at Africa's disparate poverty and underdevelopment, just like they look at Latin America's gross inequality, and wonder what happened. Did we just develop too fast and left the rest of the (colored) world behind? Sadly, many people seem to think that's exactly what happened, not understanding that it was our own shadow government, the undemocratically appointed national security institutions, that has actively sought to de-stabilize and disrupt the regions of the world seeking to rid itself of the yolk of colonialism and now neocolonialism. It makes me sad that a country founded on principles of freedom behaves like this. I guess it was always about freedom for certain people though. And what's scary is that this is only what we know 30 or 40 years after the fact. The CIA and other institutions go in to a country like a hitman, and the documents are classified for 30 years or so, or until they are obtained by the Freedom of Information Act, all in the name of "national security." Of course, why Ghana was a threat to the national security of the ol' Red, White, and Blue remains a mystery to me. For those Columbians interested in going into politics, maybe you could tell me some day?

The Horror.

It probably won't surprise the reader to hear that being a college student in Africa is a strange experience. It is challenging to be in a place where poverty is so widespread. At every turn Ghana challenges me and shows me just how particular America is in relation to the rest of the world. After all, the Third-World poverty present here is the norm in most of the world. We in the West are lucky to say the least, and most of all college students.

It's going to be very hard for me to express what is going on in my mind right now, but here it goes. Everywhere I turn Ghana is there to remind me just how hard things are here. Everyday I am chased by food sellers, practically begging me to buy peanuts for 7 cents or water for 3 cents. Almost every day a person approaches me on the street, asking me for my contact information. They do so so they can have a friend in the United States, one who can hopefully get them a visa to get off this island called Africa. There are many other aspects that I've described in other blog posts, such as the starving children, and I see these facets all the time.

And it never stops. It doesn't care whether you're tired or homesick or don't understand a word. Like waves repeatedly crashing against a wall, slowly the college student in Africa has his or her own walls broken down. You question your very existence. For example, I am a college student studying history and anthropology. Most Columbians think I'm full of shit just for that, because I'm not pre-law, pre-med, etc. But no matter what one's major or career goals are, you come to Africa and realize just exactly how full of shit you really are. Doubtless some reading this are thinking, "Studying these things isn't bullshit, Paco. You're being too hard on yourself." Such a response is normal. I would do the same thing when I first got here too. It's natural for an individual to want to justify their existence.

But for the college student in Africa, slowly this Pavlovian response is broken down. It's broken down not by one's own consciousness. Again the tendency to defend yourself to, well, yourself is natural. The purpose of your very existence, indeed your very usefulness as a physical being in this world, is on the line. What breaks down the disconnect is the starvation, the desperation, the disillusionment, and the relentless of all of it. It takes awhile, months actually, but eventually a Westerner here in Africa is forced to confront the fact that their own unreality. I can think of the moment when I realized this. I saw a starving baby fall down and start crying, and her drunk mother just walked away ignoring her. The searing, raw realness you see here could break down the Great Wall of China. One simple college student is nothing, and I'm drawn to Colonel Kurtz famous words, "The horror! The horror." Joseph Conrad did indeed find the horror when he went to Africa over one hundred years ago. He did not find it in the African "savages," he found it in himself, and the Africans only revealed what he had been denying all his life. Here one is forced to confront their own deep demons, the darkest depths of the soul and "civilization."

There is another more contemporary character in popular culture that is emblematic of this heart of darkness, and that is Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker in the recent Batman movie. The fact that this psychopathic clown was so powerful and struck such raw never to so many Americans, especially young Americans, I believe points to the fact that deep down, people in America sense this inner insanity, this innate discontent. The horror is indeed real, and we repress it because we must. Like I said, our very existence seems to depend on it.

I've had this strange sensation once before, when I first left Oakland and moved to New York. I had grown up in an environment that was real as Africa is and exposed me to the horror, and then the incongruity of coming from a place like that and moving to Columbia had exposed me to the depths of psychological repression that our civilization is predicated on. Here in Africa, however, I am forced to implicate myself on a whole different level. History and anthropology is utterly meaningless here. Even my experiences in Oakland, while they always serve me well, in the end cannot protect me from the terribleness of it all.

I would not want the reader to think I am slipping into the depths of narcissism or that I am finally "losing it," so to speak. I am having a great time here, and I'm so glad I came. But I would be lying to the people reading this if I ignored this fundamental fact I've learned, that we in the West put layer after layer up to protect ourselves from the very realness that I am forced to confront here. The condition is created in America, and Africa only exposes it for what it is. What else could Africa do? So remember that, on the lower frequencies, I am also speaking for you.

Never Again

Cape Coast is a haunting place. You look at the beautiful beaches, the fresh seafood, and the relaxing atmosphere and you get comfortable. Way too comfortable. Then you visit the slave dungeons, and you can still hear the cries of terror and pain. Indeed, the only way I could describe Cape Coast is as if the Auschwitz concentration camps were located on a Hawaii beach. It's eerie how beautiful it is, and it's a testament to the evil that mankind is capable of.

The ironic fact is that both slave castles that I toured have quite interesting histories not related to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Elmina ("The Mine" in Portuguese) Castle was originally a trade post for the Portuguese, who were the first Europeans to land on Africa in the 15th century or so. The original reason Europe became interested in Africa was to get to the source of the gold trade to finance its Crusades against the Islamic World. Elmina then was put under the rule of the Dutch, and it served as the slave trade post for the Netherlands. Cape Coast Castle, on the other hand, was originally built by the Swedes for trade, was also controlled by the Dutch until the English captured it. Cape Coast Castle served as the slave trade post for the English.

And the slave trade will be what these castles will forever be remembered for. Slavery existed in Africa and all over the world before and during the period of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, but the cruelty of this system, which simultaneously established a link between Europe, Africa, and America that exists to this day, is what sets it apart from the other forms of slavery that have existed throughout human history.

Men and women were separated into separate dungeons, where they were kept in pitch black rooms. The conditions of these dungeons were awful. The floor would be covered in fecies, urine, blood, and vomit. Each dungeon had one window for light, air, and rain, the latter being the only means of cleaning the hellish groundfloor. Many people died in these unsanitary dungeons from the conditions alone, and those who lived were forced to stay in overcrowded dungeons. The British (and also the Dutch at Elmina) served the slaves only enough food to live, but not enough to have the energy and strength to rebel against them.

The female dungeons are on a whole other level. In addition to the awful conditions of the dungeons during the period of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the woman had to deal with particular issues in the slave castles. Slave women in the holding dungeons would be chosen like cattle by the sailors, soldiers, and colonial officials. The women would be taken from the dungeons to be raped, and then returned when the particular white man was finished. Each castle had its own method of executing this system, but it existed in all of them. If a slave was found to be pregnant in the dungeons, they would be removed and allowed to stay in the castle long enough to give birth. After this they would return to the dungeon and eventually be shipped to America as slaves while their children remained with the colonial officials to be raised Christian. Women found pregnant while at sea were treated the same as the slaves that were sick on the ship. They were tossed overboard, left to drown in the sea.

In the castle slaves were divided. Those considered very strong, such as the Mandingos, were kept in the dungeons to be sent to America. The weak were kept as slave hands in the castle. If slaves rebelled and fought (what Africans call "freedom fighters"), they were taken to a dark holding cell where they were given no food or water. The door would be shut, and they would suffocate to death. Those that made it to the Americas would find their destinies laboring under a similarly cruel system until well into the 19th century.

Finally, there is the "Door of No Return." Once a slave passed through this door they could never turn back. The door led to a beach where the ships would be waiting to transport them to America as "human cargo." In 1998 or so, the door was renamed on the outside "Door of Return," an event celebrating and welcoming the African-Americans who returned to Africa and the land of their ancestors.

What happened here in Cape Coast was a crime against humanity. Whatever one may feel about him, this past summer Barack Obama became the first president in American history to confront the abortion of justice and humanity that occured here. He and Michelle Obama have both left wreaths in the male and female dungeons at Cape Coast Castle. America and South Africa are the two global symbols of racism for apartheid in the latter and slavery and Jim Crow in the former, so the significance of Obama's visit to the slave dungeons is difficult to overstate. Indeed, if Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for any single reason, it is probably his visit here.

There are plaques in both Elmina and Cape Coast Castles that acknowledges the ancestors who died as a result of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, as well as those who survived and return here to the land of their ancestors. The last few lines read "May humanity never again perpetrate such an injustice against humanity. We now live to uphold this oath." I will let the reader interpret this as they will.

Tomorrow I head to the Eastern Region for a few days and then after the Volta Region, but the terrible things that I learned about here in Cape Coast will haunt me for the rest of my life. I have tried to describe the horrors that occurred on the beaches of Cape Coast to the best of my memory so everyone reading can understand. I write from a small town that witnessed a genocide, a crime against humanity that is too often forgotten in the very land that directly benefitted from these atrocities. All I can say is "Never again."

An Other Ghana

Tamale is a city that could easily be a completely different country than Ghana, it is so different. Tamale is hotter than any place I've been to thus far in Ghana, which is saying something. I don't think I've mentioned the heat in this blog, but yes, Africa is fucking hot. In fact, I slept on the floor several nights ago so I could be closer to the air conditioning, though that has more to do with the weak air conditioner in my room.

Yet the temperature is not what makes the Northern Region so different, but rather the cultural and historical. The Asante is actually a federation of some forty-eight ethnic groups known as the Akan that is ruled by the Asante group in the Ashanti Region, but the Akan Federation never reached Tamale. Most of Ghana was conquered by the Akan, but not the North. In the 10th and 11th centuries what is now called the Ghana Empire connected trade and slaves from West Africa to the Arab world. After that empire fell, from the 12th to 14th centuries what is now northern Ghana was settled by the Mole-Dagbani groups, a collection of five major clans that would come to dominate the region (there is much more to this story but unfortunately I can't remember it off the top of my head and would have to consult my notes). These groups were never conquered by the Asante and retained their own identity, so to speak.

The Northern Region is unique in other ways. Here the religion predominantly Islam, in contrast to Christianity and traditional religions. I have not yet written about religion in Ghana, so here would a good time. My instructor Yemi told us at the beginning of the program that everything the African does is religious, and indeed he is right. Religion in West Africa is absolutely hegemonic. Never before had I had the strange feeling of guilt for having no religion until I came to Ghana. 70% of Ghana is Christian or Catholic, and are more or less the Asante-dominated areas. What is interesting is that Christianity in West Africa retained many traditional practices and beliefs, making it very different from European Christianity. In fact, the parallels and similarities between African Christian churches and African-American Christian churches are striking. There are more life, celebration, and dancing in both of these forms of Christianity than Europe's version. Whenever talking to a Ghanaian, the local inevitably asks if I am Christian, to which I guiltily respond that I have no religion. Here they either look a little disappointed and move on or they engage in a discussion with me against my will on why Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior.

Again, the Northern Region is different in that it is mostly Muslim, which constitute about 22% of the country, with the rest being traditional religion mostly in the eastern regions. Here Christians defend Islam even as they disagree with it, and considering Islam reached West Africa centuries before Christianity that makes a lot of sense. Islam was probably the most resistant to colonialism because of its missionary nature, not to mention Islam had already brought education and didn't need Britain's civilization. Interestingly, I believe that one of the reasons Bush made the US so unpopular in West Africa was his treatment of the Muslim world, something I didn't realize until I got here. I think Obama has once again all but eradicated this, even though Iraq and Afghanistan remain occupied.

Another reason the northern part of Ghana is unique is that it is the poorest region in Ghana. 90% of people here live on less than a dollar per day, and here is where Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are most heavily concentrated in Ghana. Here they probably provide more support than the government. I am strangely grateful I haven't seen that poverty up close and personal like I did in Naama. It was tough enough there, and seeing it in the most extreme form here probably would have been overwhelming.

My last post seemed to get a lot of positive feedback, so I thought it might be a good time to clarify why I'm writing this blog. I started it to record some of my experiences in Ghana and share them with my loved ones, both friends and family. Soon after getting to Kumasi, however, I realized this blog had changed in its character. It has retained that sharing-experiences aspect, but the real purpose of this blog is to establish a dialogue, however brief and flawed, between the West and Africa. People in Ghana have expressed to me frustration, anger, desperation, a sense of having no dignity because of their depraved condition, and a sense that no one cares outside Africa. This blog is no longer about me as much as it is about them. The reader sees things as I interpret them, but I try to disappear as much as possible to give the reader a glimpse of Ghana, raw and uncut. The goal of my blog is to give people a taste of the bitterness and beauty that is Ghana, since they eat our trash on a daily basis.

PS Anyone watching international soccer will know this but Ghana won the Under-20 FIFA World Cup, something no African country had ever done before. They also beat Brazil, perenially the best soccer nation in the world. I can tell you that it was a helluva party all over Ghana.

Naama

Two weeks in an Asante village is like stopping time. The world kept moving the last 13 days but you could have fooled me. While Obama was winning the Nobel Prize (can someone explain to me why or was Bush just THAT bad?) I was meeting children and mothers living in a level of poverty that I have never seen with my own two eyes. I interviewed farmers for a paper I have to write and got an itemized breakdown of the expenses and income of farmers in a remote village in Ghana's Ashanti Region.

I must say that my experience in the village was a cut above anything I've seen thus far in Ghana. In fact, my brief career in Ghanaian film is far out of my mind already. What I saw wasn't pretty, and in fact a lot was quite ugly, but I know now that the things that have shaped me the most in my life have been on the ugly side. This was just another layer of skin put on me. It's probably not a coincidence that the past two weeks in the village led me to decide with another student in the village that we would come back this summer to build another school building.

My interviews with villagers led me to realize just how crippling the "free market" is for Ghanaian farmers. When rain season is bad, the farmer gets poor quality crops and low yield, and therefore (s)he gets less money. When rain season is good, the market gets flooded with cash crops and the price is so low that the farmer gets little anyway. Either way the farmer loses, but one way is just losing more slowly. In fact, the only time the market beneficial is during dry season when crop supply is low and prices are high. Of course, farming with no rain is much more difficult and time-consuming.

Yet this was just the only the aspect of rural poverty that I studied in depth. I can't ever hope to convey the devastation I felt when realizing how little the children in the village of Naama eat. In fact, the children are probably the most searing memory I hold of Naama. The adults speak little English, and most hoped for some sort of compensation for my presence in their village. The children in Africa, however, are its most heartwarming and heartbreaking feature at the same time. When you meet the children, you see the smart ones, the bullies, the shy and quiet ones, the sweet ones, the troublemakers, and every other typecast you can imagine. Then you realize your seeing your own childhood, and without even remembering the names of the people you went to school with you remember the personalities that are being resurrected from long-dead memories by these children. Then you realize, and then you understand, these children are you. Or rather, in the terms dictated by reality and not imagination, these children could be you. But your imagination, that part of the brain not bound by reality, believes these children are in fact you. And all that comes before you realize that they go to bed starving every night.

I saw the learning conditions of the primary school in Naama, and it was indeed beyond anything I've ever seen as well. There are five teachers (including the headmaster) for seven classes, and most days the teachers arrive to the remote village late. They practice corporal punishment, but that is the least of the problems of the schools (indeed I have no problem with it, and caned a few kids as I was teaching classes). The families are so poor they can barely afford uniforms, pencils, and notebooks, and many families don't send their children to school precisely because they can't afford those things. The parents barely speak any English and in most cases no English, but their children must learn the language in a village far away from any cosmopolitan area. The children are hungry yet are expected to learn, and the teachers are exhausted, overworked, and underpaid. And there only four classrooms, including the one outdoors. Some parents send their children to go to school in the next village, and that prevents the government from sending the teachers needed since the school can't meet the minimum number of pupils for a grade, which is 20.

It is indeed a vicious cycle of poverty and poor education facing Naama, and the children, parents, and teachers have led me to the resolution that I will return to Naama this summer to build another school building. Soon I will have to begin raising the money with my colleague, and our minimun is $20,000. We're also considering taking a camera to film a documentary. It may seem an impossible number, but I know it isn't. Naama taught me what impossible really looks like. So any donations or suggestions from the world where time moves forward are greatly appreciated.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm very grateful that I was born in the United States. I know it goes against all my political beliefs, but I know a privilege when I see one. Being an American is a privilege, albeit one built on the backs of poor laborers both at home and abroad. On a stranger note, in Naama I also slaughtered a chicken. I cut its neck, or rather cut half of it. The blade was dull, so my friend Kwame finished the job, but I did indeed feel the life leave the chicken beneath my feet. Tomorrow we head to Tamale, in the Northern Region on the southern edge of the Sahara, so rest assured my next post will have something new once more.

My Role Being "The Man."

My study abroad experience here in Ghana has thus far been educational, challenging, personally touching, life-changing, and now with the latest developments, ventured into the world of surreality of celebrity. Indeed, this blog is now recounting the exploits of a semi-professional actor in Ghana. I said it in a recent blog post, I'll say it now, and I will probably say it again before I leave: sometimes the truth is stranger and far more mysterious than fiction.

Let me back up, since the reader is most likely and quite understandably lost. This tale begins last Friday, as I was spending my lunch break with my friend, Mavis, in the food court at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). I was approached by a tall young man with bright gray eyes who said his name was Kenneth. He introduced himself and said that he was helping to produce a film which required an obrunie man, and he was wondering if I was interested in playing a role in a film production.

My first reaction, as per any time when approached by a random stranger in a foreign country, was to say "No, thanks," and move on. Then I felt a rather large wave of sympathy for this man considering that he was looking for a white man in Ghana, no easy task by any stretch of the imagination. So we heard him out, and in the end he offered me 200 Ghana Cedis for participating, which is roughly 150 dollars and would sustain me for the rest of my time in Ghana. My inexperience at haggling led me to accept the offer without asking for a higher bid, but I was elated at the opportunity to be financially in the black and accepted.

My role entailed playing a British Governor, known in the Twi language as "Amrado," in the colonial era. The film recounts a tale that has previously mostly been known only among the Asante (the term "Ashanti," I have learned, is the Anglosized version of the Asante). It tells the factual tale of the Asante, known for their trickster ways, deceiving my character out of a tribute of the Golden Stool, in the process initiating the "Ashanti Wars" of the early 20th century. And believe me, the fact that my thoughts have constantly drawn back to existentialist musings of a Westerner in Africa and am now playing the literal colonizing oppressor in an important Ghanaian film did not escape me. Oh, the irony.

Ghana's film industry is small but it produces many pictures notable not so much for their quality as much as the simple that such a poor country can still present formidable entertainment. Nevertheless, there is a considerable number of Ghanaian movie stars, and many of them were acting in this important film production. So when I went to film my scenes in the picture, I was acting with some of Ghana's most recognizable actors from film and theater. It was the Ghanaian equilvalent of a Hollywood movie.

One funny anecdote in the filming is that my character leads a small regiment of African soldiers to speak to the Asante king, queen, and chiefs. So in the film I am powerful and intimidating, but filming this scene meant one obrunie playing a colonial official surrounded by native Ghanaians, as well as a Nigerian. This film is impressive for this small country, and one of the indicators of that is that they obtained real unloaded rifles from the period, and we were supervised by an actual police officer with a loaded AK-47. So after marching up to the Asante symposium, I prepared to begin reading my lines when I here a rifle load behind me. Needless to say, I got a little nervous, and it wasn't all stage fright.

But filming went off without a hitch, and at one point one of my "soldiers" served me pineapple juice while another scene was filmed. And to top it off, I was excused from school for this Wednesday when the filmmakers will take my homestay brother and me to Cape Coast to film one last scene. Since they didn't tell me about this in the initial agreement, they tacked on another 100 Ghana Cedis for the inconvenience (Cape Coast was the home of the African portion of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and was also where the British based their operations since they couldn't go inland without the high risk of getting malaria). I'll only be there for a day, but we will return to Cape Coast for my school program in late October to tour the slave castles and whatnot.

So my pilgrimage to Ghana has taken quite an unexpected turn. In a sense it's a shame that this strange series of events happened, as it will prevent me from writing more about my experiences in Ghana. As I was telling my parents last night, this blog has only documented a small fraction of my observations and experiences here, even without this latest tale. In any case, the next few days will be interesting, and this may be my last blog post for a few weeks. After returning from Cape Coast I will be spending two weeks in a local village doing research on some aspect of life there. I'm sure my next blogpost will have plenty, so until then...

"You Cannot Do Anything Without The White Man. It Is The Way God Made It."

The Ashanti are intelligent and proud. My home-stay brother, Yowa, has told me of the ways the Ashanti used tricks and optical illusions to defeat their enemies. During the Ashanti Wars against the British, they tied ropes to tree branches and pulled them to give the illusion that they were hiding in the trees. The British fired on the trees, and while they reloaded the Ashanti fired upon them from their hiding spot.

One of the more popular myths among the Ashanti is that of Anansi the trickster spider. Structuralist anthropological theories tell us that mythologies can be broken down into to basic binary opposites such as night and day, man and woman, Heaven and Hell. According to structuralism, almost all societies have some form of a mythological trickster, usually in the form of a fox or in the case of the Ashanti the spider Anansi, which acts as a go-between the binary opposites. Anansi seems to function as an identity for the Ashanti, for the Ashanti themselves view themselves as tricksters.

The Ashanti are patriarchal but also matrilineal. They are ruled by kings but the rights to the throne are passed through the women in the family. The Ashanti and their umbrella of clans (all together referred to as the "Akan") are the dominant ethnic group in Ghana and have been for hundreds of years, and they are very wealthy compared to the rest of Ghanians. In Ghana's liberal democracy, the Ashanti are powerfully in favor of the conservative United Patriotic Party, which is in opposition to the Nkrumaist Convention People's Party.

Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup backed by the CIA in 1966 (yeah, sucks right?), and over the next thirty years or so Ghana switched between military and civil dictatorships, with political assassinations and executions sprinkled liberally throughout. One man in particular, John Rawlins, today strikes fear into many Ghanians yet still retains many followers. He became the first president of the current republic under the CPP. Afterwards, the UPP took power in 2000 and moved closer to George Bush, and in 2008 they lost the presidency to Atta Mills of the CPP, who was Rawlins' former vice-president. It was this peaceful transfer of power between three administrations that led Barack Obama to come here and praise Ghana's political stability this past summer.

Of course, that political stability has not curbed corruption, unemployment, or mass poverty. Africa has an enormous wealth of natural resources (though some have called it a curse) such as gold, diamonds, timber, etc. The problems are 1) securing those resources for Africans and 2) distributing its fruits to all of the people, not the party in power. My brother is cynical about politics but supports the UPP. He criticized those who say "Keep the white man out of African affairs!" He told me, with more than a hint of bitterness, "You cannot do anything without the white man. It is the way God made it."

Ghana's modern music scene is heavily dominated by what Westerners would call Hip Hop. I read in a project about Ghanaian Hip Hop, or "Hip Life," that was written by a former student in my program. In complete contrast to America, Ghana's rappers mostly come from wealthy backgrounds with Western education.

Ironically, I met an aspiring rapper here recently who fit the model of the American rapper. He was originally from Liberia, a country that was ravaged by a horrible civil war. With an ironic smile, he said he was a singer and a businessman but things were not going well. I said "Singer or rapper?" He affirmed the latter.

He told me, "I have seen many things in my life. You have too?"

"Yes," I responded. "I have seen great and terrible things." He smiled at me with a tiny hint of sarcasm, having apparently sized me up already.

"Here in Africa, things are hard," he said darkly.

"Yes. America is hard too." I subtly guided the conversation to where he had been implying. "In America people are killed over nothing. You don't even have to be in the game and people will kill you simply because they can." He nodded enthusiatically in affirmation. He had told me he had cousins in California, and I did not doubt his knowledge.

"I had a friend who was innocent," I said. "He wasn't even in the game and they killed him for no reason."

"He was innocent?" my brother Yowa asked with surprise, and I said yes.

It is uncanny meeting aspiring rappers in Ghana coming from an oppressed and deprived class. There are many such people here, which the writer of the project I read about Ghanaian Hip Life seemed to never have encountered. After this encounter with the Liberian businessman, I felt more at home than any other moment thus far in Ghana. In fact, at that moment being in Kumasi felt exactly like being in Oakland. It was uncanny, satisfying, and frightening. Sometimes life is not without a sense of irony. Sometimes the truth is stranger and far more mysterious than fiction.

On a slightly shittier note, my camera broke and I have to buy a cheap one here asap. Most of my pictures from this trip will not be digital and cannot be posted online. My blackberry does not work here, I left my iPod at home, and now my camera is out of commission. I am now almost completely disconnected from my Western lifestyle, so maybe my camera breaking wasn't such a bad thing after all. Until my next powerful need to write about my experiences...

PS Thanks to all the comments and praise for this blog. It has done as much for me to write these experiences down as it has for the reader to read it. I love getting messages from people back home, though it is difficult to respond quickly since my internet access is limited and I spend most of my internet time writing this blog. But feel free to write me, by email (kingpacnasty@gmail.com), facebook, or just commenting on blog posts.

"I Dance, Therefore I Live."

I have come to realize that in rushing to express my philosophical musings about being in Ghana I neglected to give everyone the nuts and bolts as to my day-to-day experiences here. Sorry about that :D. I live with a family here, and it is pretty awesome. My mother is a relatively well-known actress who teaches and lives at the university where we have been taking classes. That means I walk to school everyday, which is nice. I gave her an Obama t-shirt, and she loved me for it (Joy if you're reading this GREAT CALL ON THE OBAMA MERCHANDISE). People here love Obama, for obvious reasons (it's cause he's African, not black). I have a twenty-year old sister who is very funny, two younger brothers who are cool (I got to take the younger one, Nana, to his first soccer match to watch the national team, the Black Stars), and the youngest is a sister named Ama who I get along with very well, especially considering she acts as my sarcastic humble servant.

The cuisine here is probably not Ghana's most attractive attribute, but it is still very good. The staple dish is FuFu, which I eat often. It consists of a doughy substance made of plantain, cassava yam, and water, placed in a spicy soup with either chicken or fish. The kicker is that you have to eat it only with your right hand, which is the most authentic way to eat anything in Ghana. Tradition here states that anything done with the left hand is offensive, and eating the staple dish with your left hand would be quite the sign of being a tourist. Most of the food is very spicy, which I love, and luckily I have traveled to Mexico enough so I have a tough stomach. All the other students in the program seem to be getting some vomiting or diarrhea, but I'm quite happy with everything.

People here are very friendly. I just got into a conversation with three middle-aged men, and one of them offered their daughter in marriage (I get marriage proposals pretty regularly here). It's a popular joke in Ghana to call someone your husband or wife or to offer marriage if you like someone, but of course white people get more offers because the perception is that they have money or could take the spouse to the US. Holding hands here also means something different than what is perceived in the United States. It is a sign of platonic affection most of the time, and in a country that has made homosexual sex illegal seeing two men hold hands is common.

By far the most awe-inspiring aspect of Ghana is the traditional dance and music. African music became polyrhythmic about two thousand years ago, while Europe dabbled in polyrhythm for a little bit after the Middle Ages but returned to monorhythm early (that's right, there's actually a legitimate reason for Europeans not being very good dancers). As a result of polyrhythm African dance, in this case West African dance, and music are almost beyond comprehension for the Westerner. I am taking drum lessons, and I hope to be adequate by the time I get back.

I have heard it said several times here that the African survives by dancing. Everything that the African does, even walking, is done to a rhythmic beat. A white Ghanian music teacher, a remarkable man by the name of John Collins (look him up!), argues that the human being is naturally polyrhythmic. Our lungs breath, our hearts beat, and we walk to entirely different rhythms. He argues that Westerners alienated themselves from their own bodies by switching to monorhythm. Philosophy, the practice of sitting and thinking instead of moving, perpetuates this alienation from the body. The Western philosophy is "I think, therefore I live," while the African believes "I dance, therefore I live."

I decided to go to Ghana to study abroad before I even got to college, and as I prepared myself to come I was asked numerous times why I chose Ghana. I found myself repeating the same list of reasons, most of them historical, to express the attraction I have always felt to Africa. I found myself asking "Is it simply growing up in a community that is distantly related to West Africans that has spawned my interest in Ghana?" I questioned whether my reasons for going were ill-conceived and my decision naive. Now that I am here, I know it was the right choice to come to Ghana. I believe that the West feels an attraction towards Africa that it can't entirely articulate. It's there, but we rarely can explain. I believe we are intuitively sensing in Africa the humanity that we lost centuries ago, beginning with the so-called "Enlightenment." The attraction that I felt, and that Westerners subconsciously feel, is rooted in that alienation, from ourselves and each other. They know something here that we, with all our power, do not.

Tomorrow morning we head to Kumasi, located in the heart of the Ashanti Region and the heart of the Ashanti peoples. Once at hub of trade and one of the most important cities in Africa, it is now a densely populated area that produces much of the food for Ghana. We will be there for two weeks, and after that we spend two more weeks in a small village outside Kumasi. Here's to hoping that Ghana continues whatever the hell it's done to me these first two weeks.

Power, Privilege, and Continuity in Ghana

I heard once that people go to Ghana to regain their humanity. I can honestly say that I understand this statement after having been here ten days. Being an American makes it easy to forget how young the United States is as a country. The Native Americans are of course ancient societies too, but the fact that their were almost completely annihilated makes them an exception, not the rule.

Being in Ghana has made me realize how ancient Africa is as a society. I have studied the processes of colonization, decolonization, capitalist modernization, "globalization," and the like to learn about the creation of the so-called developing world (I know I'm using ironic collegiate terminology, but it's bullshit and I can't just write these Western notions without deconstructing terms such as "globalization," "Third World," and "development.")

Yet being here, I can't help but think that my presence, the presence of other Westerners, and these new social, economic, and political systems in the developing world are perceived as a finite and incidental by indigenous Africans. Here are ancient societies and ancient traditions of music, dance, trade, commerce, and philosophy. The white man can never hope to entrench himself here the way African cultures have.

I will come and go, Westerners will come and go, but Africa will always be here. If capitalism were to collapse on itself, life here will continue, while a new West would be forced to emerge from the ashes of disaster. Such is the strength of these ancient ways of living. On the other hand, I can't help but worry that something such as global climate change might devastate regions such as Africa acutely. Africa and the rest of the developing world are mostly agriculturally based, and droughts here are far more devastating than in the West. Droughts have increased dramatically in the past several decades as carbon emissions continue to rise.

On a slightly different note, here in Ghana I am forced to comfront my own privilege in unexpected ways. Coming from America endows all but the poorest people with a great standard of living compared to the rest of the world. I know that the statistics imply that Americans work harder, longer, and for less, but relative to most people here in Ghana we enjoy many privileges such as consistent water access (I take bucket showers here, though I don't mind at all), electricity (power goes out here regularly), a strong government that has the ability, though not always the will, to deal with pressing issues, and much more.

I expected to observe this privilege, but I have learned a lot about other forms of it as well. We hear a lot in progressive academic circles about "white privilege." I am very wary of this notion, because it obscures as much as it reveals, but it is undeniable that white privilege exists socially, economically, and in the media in American in some form. This is nothing new either, but I have been forced to confront privilege I have in Ghana that is every bit as tangible as class or "race" (or rather the privilege of being free from racist dicrimination). That is gender privilege.

Ghana is a country with deeply entrenched gender roles, and it plays out in almost every single interaction here. The young woman in this program tell me that there is almost never a single moment without them receiving cat-calls, getting comments, and the like. While I was aware of it in the States, here in Ghana I am forced to confront first-hand my male privilege. The privilege to not be harassed on an hourly basis is one that is easy to neglect to see for most men. Being here in Ghana has helped me understand male privilege both here and in the States. What's scary is not what is different regarding gender roles here and in the States, but in fact what is similar.

The Cradle of Civilization

My first week in Ghana was predictably loaded with cultural adjustments, meeting new people (both Ghanian and American), homework, and a whole lot of other stuff I can't name off of the top of my head. The program held our hand for the first few days, but once we got with our homestay families, culture shock definitely kicked in. It's not that I was unprepared and ill-equipped to handle the immersion. It's just that when you enter a new country with no roots or knowledge or local customs, you truly are an infant within that society.

The word for white person here is "obraunie" (oh-brawn-eee), and our Academic Advisor told us that this is a word that is not negative but is affectionate and only meant to identify white people in a crowd. This is one of the more blatantly misleading things we have been told about Ghanian culture. It is true that Ghanians (and most non-Americans) are not as sensitive about racism as Americans, but being an American nonetheless exposes you to rather shocking assumptions about Ghanians.

I went to a World Cup qualifier (Ghana versus Sudan), which was a crazy experience in itself. There was one man who was heckling me, the only obraunie in the section, throughot the entire game. I grew up a white boy in Oakland, so I can take the punishment. Yet he said something towards the end that typified his attitude, as well as many people in the so-called Third World. He said "This is Ghana! Not America! We don't invade Iraq or Afghanistan." I learned more from this moment about Ghanians' attitudes towards Americans than anything else.

I explained to him that I hated Bush, loved Ghana, and loved Obama. He literally said there "Oh, you're alright." I've spent my entire life proving myself to others, as well as to me, so it's weird to be a child in a foreign country, barely able to take care of yourself. It's even stranger to have people believe you support your government's policies when your political beliefs are defined by opposition to them, like my beliefs. It's sad that a large minority of insecure white voters increasingly represent an entire nation. That is why the election of Obama was so important.

People in Africa love Obama, and America's image in the world has improved only because of him. People still view us as an imperialist threat and a symbol of racism, but Obama's presidency is undeniably changing that. Hopefully he'll continue to do so, but until then, fuck it, I'm telling people I'm from Mexico.

Winding Down

It's about 10 AM, and I'm 12 hours away from takeoff. I woke up this morning feeling more nervous than I have in all the weeks of preparation for Ghana. I half wish I could get on the plane right now just to get out of this purgatory of not being able to function as if it were another normal day but not being able to leave yet either. The other half of me wants to stay.

I think the most common question I have been asked these past few weeks is whether I'm excited about going to Ghana. I am excited, but getting excited is the easy part. These last few weeks before my departure have been marked by well-wishes, being taken out to dinner (by mostly poor college students, no less), and even a parting gift or two from family and friends, but this has made saying goodbye all the more difficult. Or rather, I have made saying goodbye all the more difficult. 

It appears I am doomed to forever forget and re-learn this fundamental truth: you never truly appreciate what you have until you lose it. Losing my family and friends, if only for three and a half months, has only truly begun to sink in these last few days as Ghana ceases to be an abstraction and has turned instead into an imminent departure. In 12 hours the goodbyes will be over. I leave at 9:45 tonight and arrive at 8:25 PM tomorrow Ghana time. Until then, purgatory.