Koforidua
The email in Koforidua is veeeerrrry slow. For example, it took 26 minutes since log-on to get to this blogging page. Often, my Stanford account never loads. So it's been a quiet week on the blogging front, and it may be another quiet week or so until we get to Kumasi.
Daily life at the house here is nice; we're very much taken care of, on every level. Affie, Jefferson's older sister, doesn't let us do anything, to the point that I feel a bit guilty about it. But I have to admit that I'm not a fan of washing clothes by hand, and she does do a great job! Our room is really posh, with a better bed than the one in Legon, and a bathroom where there's always running water, even if the pressure's not that high (they've installed a private tank which takes up the slack when the water from the pipe gets shut off). I've come to love cold bucket baths! Who knew.
Every morning we're woken up around 4am by the local mosque's call to prayer. Usually, I can fall back asleep, but not always, and Jefferson has less luck. We're usually up by 7am, way after everyone else in the compound. We both do some work first thing in the morning (who knew that 7am was a great time to textgrid some vowels?!) and then have breakfast around 8am. After breakfast we do any number of things, including going into town to try to email, or going to the market to buy fabric (the only thing that I've bought, so far). In the afternoon the kids come home from school and I usually sit outside and play with them or watch them perform some hand-clapping games. Dinner is around 7pm, and then we either sit around and do some reading or watch TV, which consists of Filipino and Latin American telenovelas dubbed bizarrely into American English. Bedtime is around 10pm.
Ah, the food! Whereas in Legon, food consisted of bread & juice for breakfast, fried rice for lunch, and bread & canned food for dinner, here breakfast is always bread (homemade in a huge oven in the back of the house, by Jefferson's Aunt Esther), juice, tea, and often something else like pancakes or eggs. Every night for dinner, Affie has made us some kind of Ghanaian dinner for me to try. Fufu is my favorite! Affie let me help pound the yam for it one day, just for laughs really. We have a photo that will be posted come September!
The kids here are the best, though they can be a bit over attentive. I still maintain that the cutes of them all is Fi. He sits at the table with me, Jeff, and Jeff's mother for every meal -- the kid's got a huge appetite. He talks very little but he'll say "Good morning, Auntie" when told to. Also, if you say "Bye-bye" he'll reply with "BYE?" as he's walking away; it's not a question but it sounds like one. I guess it's something you'd have to see for yourself. There's a little girl in the compound that is about Fi's age who has taken a real liking to me and always askes for me. In addition to those two and a few other little little ones there's a gang of 8ish-year-olds who follow me everywhere like the pied-piper!
Learning Twi has been really frustrating. I've been trying to study every night but progress seems too slow; I think I'm just impatient, although it's also been hard to find patient people to sit and talk with (I've been shy, too). Most of the time it's discouraging because I'll be with a big group of people, and someone will ask me a question in Twi, which takes me a minute to decipher, and then respond, and as soon as respond the group erupts in laughter, and I don't know whether it's because I said something funny or because it's just funny that I said it.
I'm getting a little tired of some other things, too. Ghana has some rather frustrating elements to it. One is the constant "obroni" (whitey) shout. I never thought I'd make a baby cry because my skin was light! There have also been some seriously frustrating moments with pseudo-official people, some of which Jefferson just wrote about in his post. That misunderstanding with the "walk" at Boti Falls was horrid; it was half hiking and half rock climbing, which would have been fine if we'd been expecting it, or even if there'd been a waterfall at the end! The race thing actually came up at then end when we were fighting to get our money back. I was exhausted and furious, and was yelling at the guy, who in return got frustrated and mad and yelled back "Just because your white, you think you can yell at me like that!" Talk about a bizarre comment to my ears; I am definitely not the brown person here that I am in the US!
On a final sad note, the hardest day for me so far was when we were walking in town and say a man beating a woman with a switch. She was crying out chillingly and in utter fear, and seemed to be mentally off -- perhaps she got that way from beeing beaten, although apparently some people here think that abuse is a good way to discipline the insane. To top it all of there were people everywhere, and no one did a thing (the horrors of mob mentality). Needless to say, it was a disturbing moment.
Daily life at the house here is nice; we're very much taken care of, on every level. Affie, Jefferson's older sister, doesn't let us do anything, to the point that I feel a bit guilty about it. But I have to admit that I'm not a fan of washing clothes by hand, and she does do a great job! Our room is really posh, with a better bed than the one in Legon, and a bathroom where there's always running water, even if the pressure's not that high (they've installed a private tank which takes up the slack when the water from the pipe gets shut off). I've come to love cold bucket baths! Who knew.
Every morning we're woken up around 4am by the local mosque's call to prayer. Usually, I can fall back asleep, but not always, and Jefferson has less luck. We're usually up by 7am, way after everyone else in the compound. We both do some work first thing in the morning (who knew that 7am was a great time to textgrid some vowels?!) and then have breakfast around 8am. After breakfast we do any number of things, including going into town to try to email, or going to the market to buy fabric (the only thing that I've bought, so far). In the afternoon the kids come home from school and I usually sit outside and play with them or watch them perform some hand-clapping games. Dinner is around 7pm, and then we either sit around and do some reading or watch TV, which consists of Filipino and Latin American telenovelas dubbed bizarrely into American English. Bedtime is around 10pm.
Ah, the food! Whereas in Legon, food consisted of bread & juice for breakfast, fried rice for lunch, and bread & canned food for dinner, here breakfast is always bread (homemade in a huge oven in the back of the house, by Jefferson's Aunt Esther), juice, tea, and often something else like pancakes or eggs. Every night for dinner, Affie has made us some kind of Ghanaian dinner for me to try. Fufu is my favorite! Affie let me help pound the yam for it one day, just for laughs really. We have a photo that will be posted come September!
The kids here are the best, though they can be a bit over attentive. I still maintain that the cutes of them all is Fi. He sits at the table with me, Jeff, and Jeff's mother for every meal -- the kid's got a huge appetite. He talks very little but he'll say "Good morning, Auntie" when told to. Also, if you say "Bye-bye" he'll reply with "BYE?" as he's walking away; it's not a question but it sounds like one. I guess it's something you'd have to see for yourself. There's a little girl in the compound that is about Fi's age who has taken a real liking to me and always askes for me. In addition to those two and a few other little little ones there's a gang of 8ish-year-olds who follow me everywhere like the pied-piper!
Learning Twi has been really frustrating. I've been trying to study every night but progress seems too slow; I think I'm just impatient, although it's also been hard to find patient people to sit and talk with (I've been shy, too). Most of the time it's discouraging because I'll be with a big group of people, and someone will ask me a question in Twi, which takes me a minute to decipher, and then respond, and as soon as respond the group erupts in laughter, and I don't know whether it's because I said something funny or because it's just funny that I said it.
I'm getting a little tired of some other things, too. Ghana has some rather frustrating elements to it. One is the constant "obroni" (whitey) shout. I never thought I'd make a baby cry because my skin was light! There have also been some seriously frustrating moments with pseudo-official people, some of which Jefferson just wrote about in his post. That misunderstanding with the "walk" at Boti Falls was horrid; it was half hiking and half rock climbing, which would have been fine if we'd been expecting it, or even if there'd been a waterfall at the end! The race thing actually came up at then end when we were fighting to get our money back. I was exhausted and furious, and was yelling at the guy, who in return got frustrated and mad and yelled back "Just because your white, you think you can yell at me like that!" Talk about a bizarre comment to my ears; I am definitely not the brown person here that I am in the US!
On a final sad note, the hardest day for me so far was when we were walking in town and say a man beating a woman with a switch. She was crying out chillingly and in utter fear, and seemed to be mentally off -- perhaps she got that way from beeing beaten, although apparently some people here think that abuse is a good way to discipline the insane. To top it all of there were people everywhere, and no one did a thing (the horrors of mob mentality). Needless to say, it was a disturbing moment.
posted by Lauren | 4:34 PM
3 Comments:
Hey Lauren!
I'm so glad you're writing these blogs. It's all so interesting. It's so much to take in just reading it. I hope you're doing well and I miss you!
Much Love,
Michelle
Hey guys, Koforidua was where I was born and lived for a few years during my infancy. My mom is presently there. From hot and steamy Chicago, I say take it easy and try to understand the mind-set of the people you meet. Most of them have not have the facility that living in a multi-racial culture like America affords; add to it the consciousness of inclusiveness that came with the civil rights movement. It would be nice if they could raise their level of consciousness to meet yours, but you know how habit and cultural environment affect our disposition and blind us to our defects and shortcomings. Kumasi is an old haunt of mine too. Post some pictures, will you. It has been years since I saw the land you lucky guys are presently traversing. Cheer up, dynamic duo.
I forget to add, I am Kwasi Appiah
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