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.