"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.