"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.