From priestess miracles to chicken tragedies II

(To be read after part one below. Cheating will result in revocation of plantain privileges.)

Monday through Wednesday was devoted to registration for classes, a process that basically means walking from department to department, standing in line all day and signing little pieces of paper. I signed up for Educational Psychology, Social Psychology, Historiography, Introduction to Development Studies, History of Ghana Until 1800, Introduction to Twi and a Creative Writing class. Classes begin Monday, and I'll be so curious to see how they are. More on that later.

Then, Wednesday afternoon, a group of six other girls and I went on a trip to HoHoe, about four hours away, to do some ecotouristy things. The first hotel we stayed in seemed like a Byzantine labyrinth, despite the fact that it only had twenty rooms or so. This was probably the grossest place I have ever spent the night, all neon green flickering bulbs, smudged walls and left turns, but none of us really cared because a) we were exhausted, b) we were a teensy bit drunk and c) we were so very exhausted. I especially didn't care because that night in the garden I saw my very first swarm of fireflies, which had me thrilled for a good hour. I even managed to catch one and bring it in a loose fist to my roommate, whose cynically arched eyebrow dropped as she watched it fly just beneath her nose. I think they're my new favorite insect.

The next morning, on what felt like about three hours of sleep, we took a tro-tro to Likpe Todome, a small village that boasts six caves deep in the mountains and a small set of waterfalls. The hike took about four hours and was really strenuous, but gorgeous. The weather was gray and cool and the tropical forest was lush. Each cave required vertical rock climbing to reach the center, during which our only safety was a secure rope to hold onto with several knots in it. Ages ago, before foreign sets of heels paid three Cedi to ooh and ahh and sweat, each cave had a different purpose. The first is a small, elongated one where Bakwa elders strategized during times of war. The second was a watch tower for spying enemies. The third was a hideout. The fourth was the chief's palace, and also the coldest. It even had an escape route at the top where he could escape and run to Togo during battle, which seemed strategic enough, albeit cowardly. The fifth was a punishment ground for criminals, and also housed a huge colony of bats, which were amazing to watch as they darted across the beams of our flashlights. The sixth and final cave was a long vertical tunnel which was another watch tower and a resting place. It was beautiful to look across the entire expanse of hills, still for the most part untouched by concrete housing and wide roads, and imagine what life must have been like three hundred years ago, scurrying up through the steep caves. Then we finally reached the waterfalls at the bottom and tried our first coco pods, a wonderful yellow fruit that tastes like a mixture of grapefruit and lychee when you suck on the seed, but make sure not to bite it. Trust me. Bitter is an understatement.

Sweaty and victorious, we headed back to the Waterfall Lodge, which completely made up for the first hotel. Run by a older German hippie couple, it passed the Deutschekeinschmutzdanke cleanliness test, had a beautiful garden with a gigantic gazebo, a parrot who spoke French, enormous beds with clean, fluffy pillows and the tastiest food I've had since I've been here. Spaghetti with savory vegetable sauce, cucumber and tomato salad with vinaigrette, cous-cous with vegetable stew, and even real ice cream. It was such a treat, and who would have thought I'd have a chance to practice my German all the way over here? The next day (yesterday) we went to Wli falls (taking a taxi whose driver casually ran over a chicken as I turned around to see a large flourish of feathers, horrified). Wli (pronounced Vlee, a linguistic gift from the former German colonists of Togo) are the largest falls in the area, and had an even more strenuous three hour hike. Horrible blisters from the previous day eventually convinced me to go barefoot, which was a serious adventure scrambling up and down muddy hillsides. The falls were worth it, though, as they blasted us in the face from about fifty paces away. We even used walking sticks for that hike, which helped tremendously and gave me very sore arms this morning. That evening, feeling even more victorious and even more exhausted than the day before, we relaxed in the garden and fell asleep well before the bedtime of a six-year-old.

Then, this morning, we headed back on a very bumpy tro-tro and got here in record time. Today is actually another girl's birthday, so we're heading into town later to try a sushi restaurant, per her request. I'm so curious to see what it tastes like, although my culinary reporting will be limited to avocado and cucumber. I know, I know. You're all on tenterhooks.

More to come soon!

From priestess miracles to chicken tragedies

I can't believe another week has already gone by. The best place to begin is definitely last Sunday afternoon, when the lovely Nathalie and I took a tro-tro to Nima, a suburb of Accra. We were going to meet our friend Enoch, a fellow study abroad student with a slow voice, sharp wit and the subtle, remarkable talent of spinning himself into some beautifully bizarre situations. He led us from the bus stop through the bustling marketplace and into a tiny town where he had met a friend a few weeks ago. His friend, Emmanuel, is a drum maker and Rastafarian who has traveled all over Europe to make drums for and play with famous musicians. As soon as we arrived, he cut up four giant mangoes and two pineapples for all of us and put on some amazing West African music. There was a wedding ceremony outside, and the bride was dressed to the nines, if not to the elevens. Bright red dress, henna all over her hands and feet, a huge aluminum red hat that looked like a giant wheel of cheese and, by your grandfather's whiskers it's true, bright blue lipstick. I'll try to load a picture later this week.

The wedding, which had been going on for three days by the time we got there, had everyone in a jubilant frenzy, dancing and singing with little children weaving in and out of large pots of boiling stews and rice. After watching the celebration for about half an hour or so (I never can tell how long anything lasts here), Emmanuel got all six of us our own tro-tro to watch another ceremony, this one far more curious than the last. We all sat down to what, at first, appeared to be a drumming and dancing circle. As the moments flew by in rhythm and verse, however, we started to slowly notice more peculiar behavior on the part of a handful of people. Several women were scratching and swatting at the air as they danced with troubled expressions on their faces. When they weren't spinning like fast-forward whirling dervishes, they were falling into the arms of women dancing around them, seemingly unconscious for only a few seconds at a time. One woman, dressed all in white, had a beautiful but peculiar kind of swagger, and was pouring water on the ground, then on the women's heads. We learned from Emmanuel that she was a traditional priestess, and that these women were thought by the community to be possessed by evil spirits. When she spoke (in Ewe, sadly), there was pure silence, without a single toddler's mouth open or a twitching thumb on a drum. Then she would begin chanting, the music would swell again, and the women would resume their flailing and fainting. We were taught to dance during these times and given blocks of wood to beat to the rhythms. We never did witness a climax of any kind, because before too long we were whisked away into a colorful temple to sit with the Priest, also in white linens. He fed us all schnapps and advice, a match made in heaven, and told us each to drink our glass in one go, but not without pouring a few drops on the ground first, for the ancestors. Due to vegetarian small-town predicaments, I had barely eaten all day, so the liturgical gulp sent me (along with two or three others) into a slightly bubbly state of rosy-cheeked reverence for the kind-eyed Priest, which may or may not have been his intention. We listened to him talk about global unity, respect for one another and being truthful to the people you love and to yourself. Then, after returning his favor by buying him an even bigger bottle of schnapps down the road, we were shuffled back into our taxis and sent home to dream.

For the sake of tired eyes, I'll post the rest of the week in the next post above.

Akwaaba!

That means "welcome" in Twi, and it has been said to me between grins more times than I can count on fingers and toes. Hi everyone! I'm finally updating this ol' mare of a website after being here for almost two weeks. Where to even begin? I suppose I'll take Lewis Carroll's advice and begin at the beginning and go on until I come to the end- then stop.

The first night we arrived, everyone was really tired and disoriented from our half-conscious hustles through Minneapolis and Amsterdam. We were met with student guides at the airport who were eager to raise our spirits by teaching us a traditional song on the bus ride to the hostel, one whose melody hasn't left my head since. The lyrics are:

Weya weya nu ko ko (x2)

Everybody, everybody

Bring your kalabashi

Mofe amo ke edje ni aba

Weya weya nu ko ko

We've learned other songs since, but that one definitely takes the cake. When we finally arrived at the hostel, a thunderstorm had started outside and all the power was out. We signed in, ate dinner and unpacked, all by candlelight. It was a really calming way to begin our trip, actually, and the first of many situations to teach patience and flexibility.

Since that first night, wondering if the power would ever come on (and this blog, not typed by candlelight, proves it has), we've done so much. Every night for a week we had traditional dance lessons with Professor Oh Nii Sowah, a man whose pearly whites probably rate among the top five greatest smiles I've ever seen. If there ever was a man to shake and jive fifty students out of jet-lag and coy self-consciousness, he fits the bill. The man just radiates energy. The power went out while we were dancing once and he insisted that if we kept dancing and clapping to the rhythm, and if we began to sing, it would be restored. Sure enough, during a particularly dramatic stomp, all of our faces appeared again with a cheer.

We've also had about twelve lectures on everything from history, political economy, gender, language, family roles, religion, development, drumming and Twi lessons. When I bring my notebook, I'll update this with some more of my favorite quotes and tidbits from those lectures. For now, what I remember most is "educate a man, educate an individual. Educate a woman, educate a nation"

Here are some more arbitrary tidbits:
-a festival is the only occasion in which people are allowed to publicly criticize a chief, and it's usually done in the form of a song
-the metaphor for the roles of king and president is that the king is like the eyebrows, which a person (or a nation) has since birth. The president comes much later, sort of like a mustache which can be shaven several times.
-the Asante tribe is matrilineal, so family heritage is always traced through the mother
-the king is considered to be the link between the physical and the spiritual realms. The chiefs are considered links to the spirits of ancestors.
-also, some slang differences:
*portable means cute, as in, "you have a very portable wife"
*several means thousands
*minerals means soda
*outdooring means to introduce a baby to the community for the first time
*to pass out means to graduate
*the equivalent of "dude" is "Charleeeeey"

That's all on that for now. What else, what else...

The food is generally really good. Vegetarianism is difficult because they don't consider fish meat, and they definitely don't consider chicken broth meat. For the most part I've eaten:
-fried plantains, which are delicious
-vegetable fried rice
-I tried banku, which is pounded cassava and corn that has been fermented and you dip it in stew. It tasted like sourdough-flavored toothpaste-dough, but worth the experience.
-their version of peanut butter, which is called ground nut paste spread on sweet bread. Mmm...
-fried egg sandwiches with onion and thinly sliced peppers
-two for one pizza Tuesdays at the gas station
-plantain chips
-fresh and delicious pineapple, mango and oranges


We went on a couple of field trips, too. The first was to Kumasi, another huge, bustling city. The drive itself was beautiful, speckled with plantain trees and vast fields of wild vegetation. Every once in a while a tiny village would pop up with a few grass huts or small steel shacks. On the way, we stopped at several craft villages. The first one specialized in Kente cloth. This cloth is one of Ghana's trademarks and it's made on enormous wooden looms that stretch across the entire room. Each piece of cloth has a meaning or a story, which is decided by the weaver. The next town specialized in woodwork and instruments.

Kumasi itself was beautiful. We visited the site of the former palace of the King, which was turned into a museum. There were peacocks roaming the grounds, and we were told all about the Asante kingdom throughout history, including the story of one woman (a Queen Mother) who led the entire Asante army into battle during a time when they were ready to surrender. Our guide told us that she caused a revolution among women, and that to this day, if the King and his man can't solve a problem (say, for example, putting humpty dumpty together again), they take it to the women's council, which they consider the seat of deepest wisdom. That made me feel amazing after all the talk of women who are completely ostracized for being spinsters who can't cook.

The second field trip was much more harrowing to endure. We took another lovely trip along the coast, but this time the destination was two castles, one Portuguese and one British, which were used for the slave trade. We were shown dungeons where the stench withheld several centuries' worth of fresh air. It was horrifying to see what human beings are capable of in the name of wealth and alleged progress. I'd rather not delve into the details.

Since Kumasi, we've been wrapped in registration red tape, so not much exciting news there. Orientation is officially over, so we're left to our own devices as far as traveling goes. No more giant, air-conditioned bus filled with Obrunis (unoffensive word for white people). Instead we get to take the tro-tros during the day, which can take you anywhere in town for about 50 cents or less. It's an amazing experience, being shoved into a giant jalopy of a minivan with about twenty other people, sometimes including livestock, and trying to figure out where you're supposed to get off. Today, I went to Madina, a nearby marketplace, where I bought nothing, stepped in an orange puddle, saw several goats on leashes and baskets of smoked fish heads, got a slight sunburn and practiced my infant Twi ramblings.

More to come later! Hopefully some pictures soon.