I am beginning a photography project in Ghana!
There are so many reasons why photographs can be important: sometimes they can communicate stories, even across language and cultural barriers; sometimes they can be used to express daily realities, both hard and beautiful; sometimes they are valuable simply because they provide a record of a loved one that otherwise would not exist.
This is the idea:
Give students from an impoverished area access to cameras and basic photography skills, and challenge them to see and create and record their life and experiences. Take the time to get to know these students, to hear their stories and learn about there passions and dreams and what’s important to them. Create a venue for them to share their images and stories with people in their community, and people around the world.
Often, the images that we see in America that supposedly represent ‘Africa’ are either exotic or shocking. So it’s important for us to see images that come from one specific community in one specific city in one specific region in one specific country in Africa – images that have been taken by the very kids who are so often photographed themselves.
As much as the students that we work with stand to gain in terms of fun, experience and expression, we have to learn from them in terms of opening our eyes and breaking down our stereotypes.
These are the numbers:
2 teachers
4 cameras
8 students
10 weeks
5 rolls of film each
3 exhibitions (Ghana, California and North Carolina)
350 dollars to make it happen
The past few days have been busy with set up and planning work – I’ve visited the school I’m going to work in, met some of the kids, researched all the costs, baked cookies and sold them door to door on campus, and met up with a fellow student who’s just as excited as I am about this project.
We start on October 8th. But we need to raise at least $200 more.
If you’re interested and want to help, here’s what you can do:
1.Make a donation to our project through PayPal to miriam_alvarado@berkeley.edu
2.Mail a check to my family in California, who will credit my account (email me at miriam_alvarado@berkeley.edu for my address)
3.Keep checking this blog for more updates on the project.
4.Tell people!
Thanks for reading this,
with peace,
Sunday, September 28, 2008
A Mixed Up, Disjointed Late Night Reflection on the Great Authentic
Today I ate breakfast at a beachfront hotel, and sat at a shaded table on an elevated patio, from which I could look out and down and see the chaos of color that was fishermen hauling in their catch and women selling fruit and kenkey on the beach a few feet away, in what metaphorically felt like a whole different world. Except that it wasn’t. The cliché contrast was apparent enough – hot chocolate on one side of the wall, a water sachet on the other; 2.30 for an egg omelet and toast on one, 0.45 for an egg sanwhich on the other; mainly white skin, mainly dark skin. But what didn’t seem cliché was how interconnected we all were – I wouldn’t be there without them, they wouldn’t be there without me, and although there definitely was a ‘them’ and a ‘me,’ I’m pretty sure the fear of feeling superior from where I sat, gazing out from on high, was only in my head.
I want to be the person who could just as easily see the beauty in someone next to me at that restaurant as in someone beneath me on the beach.
I don’t want to feel guilty for who I am, or for enjoying the things that I can afford to enjoy, like breakfast on a hotel verranda and two cups of Milo. I don’t want to be so driven by the pursuit for the Great Authentic African Experience that I can’t appreciate those luxuries, especially because they are authentic too.
“Authenticity” is such a bizarre concept, when you think about it. Anything that is, anything that is happening is authentic. I tend to think of it as a static ideal, something to be reached, but really, it’s a flowing, constant reality to be lived rather than attained.
There’s this mall here, most people call it ‘Shoprite’ after the big WalMart/Safeway-esque store that dominates the side of it facing the highway. A lot people see it as a bizarre space, a little piece of America transplanted on African soil, either an oasis of luxury or a sad symbol of globalization. But it’s in Africa, so in some ways it is authentically African, it is an authentic space, an authentic African experience. Which would you say is more authentic – the mall that sells Puma bathing suits and cell phones and Nutella, or the drums and koras and tantabens that most Ghanaians don’t know how to play?
Going back to the beach this morning -- as I enjoyed our tourist haven, I also loved seeing the things that not everyone sees: the dirt path that leads through school kids and halfway built hotels and laundry lines and brick thatched huts and a beach with only one man from Kineshie in the surf with his arms spread wide and rain clouds in the distance. When I sat down to write this, I wondered if it made my hypocritical, to write about not pursuing the Authentic, and then write about how wonderful that ‘real’ experience was. But it’s all real and I want to take it all in equally.
I was thinking (the rather obvious thought) that I’d never be a local here. But then I realized that I’d like to free myself from this local vs. global dichotomy … maybe this seems a little academic to apply to breakfast at the beach, but in one of my classes last semester, Professor Hart kept circling back to the same theme, the idea that there are these false dichotomies set up, layered upon one another to mutually reinforce each other. On the one hand, you have the passive, traditional, local; one the other, the active, modern, global. These words map onto the lens I’ve sometimes looked at Ghana through – with the people I see and meet as being helpless and stuck where they are, while I am empowered and able to move through their space. But it’s not true at all – this divide really isn’t there, or at least, excuse my hippie, tripped out image, but I imagine a row of dots and lines, except that now the dots are becoming lines too, we’re all lines, and the only difference is that some of us have resources to be moving faster or farther, but we’re all in motion, and it’s not all the same but it’s not all one-sided either.
I want to be the person who could just as easily see the beauty in someone next to me at that restaurant as in someone beneath me on the beach.
I don’t want to feel guilty for who I am, or for enjoying the things that I can afford to enjoy, like breakfast on a hotel verranda and two cups of Milo. I don’t want to be so driven by the pursuit for the Great Authentic African Experience that I can’t appreciate those luxuries, especially because they are authentic too.
“Authenticity” is such a bizarre concept, when you think about it. Anything that is, anything that is happening is authentic. I tend to think of it as a static ideal, something to be reached, but really, it’s a flowing, constant reality to be lived rather than attained.
There’s this mall here, most people call it ‘Shoprite’ after the big WalMart/Safeway-esque store that dominates the side of it facing the highway. A lot people see it as a bizarre space, a little piece of America transplanted on African soil, either an oasis of luxury or a sad symbol of globalization. But it’s in Africa, so in some ways it is authentically African, it is an authentic space, an authentic African experience. Which would you say is more authentic – the mall that sells Puma bathing suits and cell phones and Nutella, or the drums and koras and tantabens that most Ghanaians don’t know how to play?
Going back to the beach this morning -- as I enjoyed our tourist haven, I also loved seeing the things that not everyone sees: the dirt path that leads through school kids and halfway built hotels and laundry lines and brick thatched huts and a beach with only one man from Kineshie in the surf with his arms spread wide and rain clouds in the distance. When I sat down to write this, I wondered if it made my hypocritical, to write about not pursuing the Authentic, and then write about how wonderful that ‘real’ experience was. But it’s all real and I want to take it all in equally.
I was thinking (the rather obvious thought) that I’d never be a local here. But then I realized that I’d like to free myself from this local vs. global dichotomy … maybe this seems a little academic to apply to breakfast at the beach, but in one of my classes last semester, Professor Hart kept circling back to the same theme, the idea that there are these false dichotomies set up, layered upon one another to mutually reinforce each other. On the one hand, you have the passive, traditional, local; one the other, the active, modern, global. These words map onto the lens I’ve sometimes looked at Ghana through – with the people I see and meet as being helpless and stuck where they are, while I am empowered and able to move through their space. But it’s not true at all – this divide really isn’t there, or at least, excuse my hippie, tripped out image, but I imagine a row of dots and lines, except that now the dots are becoming lines too, we’re all lines, and the only difference is that some of us have resources to be moving faster or farther, but we’re all in motion, and it’s not all the same but it’s not all one-sided either.
Letter to Allie
hey girl! How’re you?? thinking about you makes me miss our lunches at La Val’s… good greasy cheap pizza and our talks about boys and life and all of the crazy things that you take on. How was your run, if it’s happened already? And how’s your semester going? You’re still going to italy next semester, right?
My roommate is in chi O too, but from UCSD. she’s crazy/spunky/spiritual and great to live with ..although it’s still hilarious to hear her describe greek life to Ghanaians, who are for the most part pretty socially conservative and don’t really drink.
Anyway, I wanted to write to you because I met this woman last week who reminded me a lot of something you mentioned awhile back. I’ll call her Mrs. P, she’s a professor of nursing at my university. I’m doing this project with community health nurses in an urban slum, and so she took a whole morning off to drive me there and introduce me to everyone I had to know. Along the way I read her most recent research, on AIDS and stigma and income production in women (which was really really hard to read… it’s one thing to know that these things happen to people, but to actually read their own voices describing how they’ve been shunned and abused and prevented from making money… it’s tough when it’s not abstract.) She told me about her career – 30 years as a nurse in rural regions of Ghana, and in poor communities in the capital. Then we started talking about her travels (Canada, South Africa, and the US).
I asked her where in the US she’d been, and that’s when she told me that she had gone to Wisconsin in 1994 to visit Martha Higgins, the woman who had sponsored her as a child and paid for her schooling all the way through nursing school.
“Without her, I couldn’t have gone to school. We were really poor.”
“How did she find you? Did she know you or meet you or every come to Africa?”
“No, 1994 was the first time we met. We wrote letters to each other through an organization that worked in my village. All of her kids had grown up, so she began to sponsor me. All of the work that I do now, serving others, I do because of her.”
Isn’t that amazing? I’ve always been vaguely aware of these “sponsor a kid in Africa” programs, but just like the AIDS stories, they were always abstract in my mind and didn’t affect real people. Or else I wrote them off as scams. Which many of them might still be. But the fact that this powerhouse of a woman was driving me through Accra, telling me about the NGO she’s started and the research she’s doing to get her PhD, is proof that sometimes they really can make a huge difference, a difference which ripples out to affect everyone that person touches.
I remember you saying that you and Brian were going to sponsor a kid – I don’t know if you ever ended up doing it, but either way I wanted to share this story with you.
I miss you and would love to hear about your summer and semester and all of the incredible things that I know you’ve been up to.
With love,
My roommate is in chi O too, but from UCSD. she’s crazy/spunky/spiritual and great to live with ..although it’s still hilarious to hear her describe greek life to Ghanaians, who are for the most part pretty socially conservative and don’t really drink.
Anyway, I wanted to write to you because I met this woman last week who reminded me a lot of something you mentioned awhile back. I’ll call her Mrs. P, she’s a professor of nursing at my university. I’m doing this project with community health nurses in an urban slum, and so she took a whole morning off to drive me there and introduce me to everyone I had to know. Along the way I read her most recent research, on AIDS and stigma and income production in women (which was really really hard to read… it’s one thing to know that these things happen to people, but to actually read their own voices describing how they’ve been shunned and abused and prevented from making money… it’s tough when it’s not abstract.) She told me about her career – 30 years as a nurse in rural regions of Ghana, and in poor communities in the capital. Then we started talking about her travels (Canada, South Africa, and the US).
I asked her where in the US she’d been, and that’s when she told me that she had gone to Wisconsin in 1994 to visit Martha Higgins, the woman who had sponsored her as a child and paid for her schooling all the way through nursing school.
“Without her, I couldn’t have gone to school. We were really poor.”
“How did she find you? Did she know you or meet you or every come to Africa?”
“No, 1994 was the first time we met. We wrote letters to each other through an organization that worked in my village. All of her kids had grown up, so she began to sponsor me. All of the work that I do now, serving others, I do because of her.”
Isn’t that amazing? I’ve always been vaguely aware of these “sponsor a kid in Africa” programs, but just like the AIDS stories, they were always abstract in my mind and didn’t affect real people. Or else I wrote them off as scams. Which many of them might still be. But the fact that this powerhouse of a woman was driving me through Accra, telling me about the NGO she’s started and the research she’s doing to get her PhD, is proof that sometimes they really can make a huge difference, a difference which ripples out to affect everyone that person touches.
I remember you saying that you and Brian were going to sponsor a kid – I don’t know if you ever ended up doing it, but either way I wanted to share this story with you.
I miss you and would love to hear about your summer and semester and all of the incredible things that I know you’ve been up to.
With love,
Monday, September 22, 2008
Letter to Andrew H
Hello!
how’re you doing? It’s really hard to imagine that you’re in the full swing of Berkeley life again… how’re classes and roommates and singing and life?
it’s so crazy to be here with annemieke – I’m definitely getting to see a whole different side to our former prez and it’s really nice having someone here who knows some of the same friends and places and has some of the same memories.
we’re both taking bamboo flute lessons, and I’m really excited to get better and be able to bust out a haunting flute song kind of like you and your harmonica.
and, like always, there’ve been a lot of hilarious moments when I feel like Ghana has gotten the best of me. at the beginning of our semester here, our friend Kevin was invited out to dinner with this girl, and then ended up having to pay for the whole expensive dinner – Ghana: 1, Kevin (and the more universal Us): 0. Since then the score’s probably something like Ghana: 87547, Us: 3. lol. I tried to order tea for two friend and myself, but 15 minutes later only got one tea cup. only to discover that I did, in fact, get three teas – or rather, three tea bags all in the same cup! what a failure, lol.
or my friend and I were taking a tro tro (minivan converted into a public transport bus type thing) into the city and needed to get off. I yelled up from the very back, “ Mate! Mate!” in a pathetically pleading voice, trying to get the attention of the guy who controls the stops. “We need to get off here, please!” a pretty common request, but he leaned forward and turned off the radio in complete incomprehension. “We want to get off!” still nothing, and the entire tro tro full of passengers were now involved in our sad attempt to get down. Finally one of our fellow Ghanaian travelers turned and translated “The need to get off” in a more Ghanaian-esque accent. He nodded, put on the radio, and proceeded to drive five long blocks more before letting us out. Ghana scores again.
anyway, despite, and probably partly because of all of the humbling moments, it’s definitely starting to feel like this is exactly where I need to be right now. The learning curve about our/my place in the world is really steep here… still have a lot more to mull over and share...
with peace and love
how’re you doing? It’s really hard to imagine that you’re in the full swing of Berkeley life again… how’re classes and roommates and singing and life?
it’s so crazy to be here with annemieke – I’m definitely getting to see a whole different side to our former prez and it’s really nice having someone here who knows some of the same friends and places and has some of the same memories.
we’re both taking bamboo flute lessons, and I’m really excited to get better and be able to bust out a haunting flute song kind of like you and your harmonica.
and, like always, there’ve been a lot of hilarious moments when I feel like Ghana has gotten the best of me. at the beginning of our semester here, our friend Kevin was invited out to dinner with this girl, and then ended up having to pay for the whole expensive dinner – Ghana: 1, Kevin (and the more universal Us): 0. Since then the score’s probably something like Ghana: 87547, Us: 3. lol. I tried to order tea for two friend and myself, but 15 minutes later only got one tea cup. only to discover that I did, in fact, get three teas – or rather, three tea bags all in the same cup! what a failure, lol.
or my friend and I were taking a tro tro (minivan converted into a public transport bus type thing) into the city and needed to get off. I yelled up from the very back, “ Mate! Mate!” in a pathetically pleading voice, trying to get the attention of the guy who controls the stops. “We need to get off here, please!” a pretty common request, but he leaned forward and turned off the radio in complete incomprehension. “We want to get off!” still nothing, and the entire tro tro full of passengers were now involved in our sad attempt to get down. Finally one of our fellow Ghanaian travelers turned and translated “The need to get off” in a more Ghanaian-esque accent. He nodded, put on the radio, and proceeded to drive five long blocks more before letting us out. Ghana scores again.
anyway, despite, and probably partly because of all of the humbling moments, it’s definitely starting to feel like this is exactly where I need to be right now. The learning curve about our/my place in the world is really steep here… still have a lot more to mull over and share...
with peace and love
Letter to all of my cross country and track girls,
I am running again! It brings back so many memories of you all to be on a cross country team… even one that’s in West Africa. lol
This morning we ran the full course again, all five miles and two hills of it. It’s getting easier, and it’s always beautiful because we run up this hill that overlooks the whole suburb of Medina and there’re these trees up there that look perfect for picnicking underneath. and then there are the sunrises (because this five mile routine gets started at 5:30 every morning!).
the girl who is our pseudo coach is such a badass… her name’s Gloria and you can tell she’s a really strong athlete just by the way she walks and interacts with all of the other teams at the field. last friday we had a practice meet for all of the first year students (and internationals) and right before the last event, the 4 by 100, Gloria pulled on a pair of shorts over her dressy black Bermudas and donned a bright Volta jersey over her satiny blouse, kicked off her strappy sandals and took her place on the starting line. Then she took off and in just 100 meters gained so much on everyone -- by the time the last leg of the race started, their team was basically 100 meters ahead. it was like the continuing students were showing off – “Freshmen – you can run on our track, but you better know that we own it.” it was amazing.
my own race was not nearly so dramatic. I came in an exhausted last in the 400 m, but somehow losing that much was kind of liberating. So the next day I gamely started in the 5000 m (that’s three miles! 12 laps!) with my roomie and one other girl who’s rumored to be incredible. We’ve been reading African American literature for one of my classes and there’s this Zora Neal Hurston essay, “How It feels to be colored me” that described how I felt as the obruni facing the African girl in this epic race.
"No one on earth ever had a greater chance for glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost. It is thrilling to think, to know that for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame. It is quite exciting to hold the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or to weep."
Everyone knew that she was going to win (and she did) but it was still a giddy feeling to make them all hold their breaths about it for awhile. anyway, I was happy with my run and got so much love and support from my team – it reminded me of the best part of track and cross country meets, cheering each other on and then exhaustingly being done and free to cheer for everyone else.
and volta got 2nd out of all the girl teams!!!
this is to all of you that I’ve shared the sweat and the pain of running with -- the intimidation of Jones and his dark sunglasses and the dust of crystal springs and the beauty of rancho and the slurpee 7 11 runs behind Mitty and the Mrs. Fields melted chocolate chip cookies and the bleachers and don’t-touch-my-shoes abs and the runs through the park and past that “never give up!” church and those classic bus rides with our rowdy boys… thanks girls! I miss you and all of those goods times.
hope you’re all well and let me know what you’re up to.
with love,
This morning we ran the full course again, all five miles and two hills of it. It’s getting easier, and it’s always beautiful because we run up this hill that overlooks the whole suburb of Medina and there’re these trees up there that look perfect for picnicking underneath. and then there are the sunrises (because this five mile routine gets started at 5:30 every morning!).
the girl who is our pseudo coach is such a badass… her name’s Gloria and you can tell she’s a really strong athlete just by the way she walks and interacts with all of the other teams at the field. last friday we had a practice meet for all of the first year students (and internationals) and right before the last event, the 4 by 100, Gloria pulled on a pair of shorts over her dressy black Bermudas and donned a bright Volta jersey over her satiny blouse, kicked off her strappy sandals and took her place on the starting line. Then she took off and in just 100 meters gained so much on everyone -- by the time the last leg of the race started, their team was basically 100 meters ahead. it was like the continuing students were showing off – “Freshmen – you can run on our track, but you better know that we own it.” it was amazing.
my own race was not nearly so dramatic. I came in an exhausted last in the 400 m, but somehow losing that much was kind of liberating. So the next day I gamely started in the 5000 m (that’s three miles! 12 laps!) with my roomie and one other girl who’s rumored to be incredible. We’ve been reading African American literature for one of my classes and there’s this Zora Neal Hurston essay, “How It feels to be colored me” that described how I felt as the obruni facing the African girl in this epic race.
"No one on earth ever had a greater chance for glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost. It is thrilling to think, to know that for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame. It is quite exciting to hold the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or to weep."
Everyone knew that she was going to win (and she did) but it was still a giddy feeling to make them all hold their breaths about it for awhile. anyway, I was happy with my run and got so much love and support from my team – it reminded me of the best part of track and cross country meets, cheering each other on and then exhaustingly being done and free to cheer for everyone else.
and volta got 2nd out of all the girl teams!!!
this is to all of you that I’ve shared the sweat and the pain of running with -- the intimidation of Jones and his dark sunglasses and the dust of crystal springs and the beauty of rancho and the slurpee 7 11 runs behind Mitty and the Mrs. Fields melted chocolate chip cookies and the bleachers and don’t-touch-my-shoes abs and the runs through the park and past that “never give up!” church and those classic bus rides with our rowdy boys… thanks girls! I miss you and all of those goods times.
hope you’re all well and let me know what you’re up to.
with love,
Saturday, September 13, 2008
A Typical Day
5:10 am: I woke up to see if I my knee was feeling well enough for me to run on it. After hobbling down the hall to the bathroom and back, I decided it wasn’t and settled back within the canopy of my mosquito-netted bed. My roommate and I have been running with the Volta Hall team (our sorority-esque dorm), and what began as our quest for exercise has ended up with us getting roped into competitions and an 8k run in three weeks! The knee injury that spared me from running this morning happened last night. I was walking with Rebecca and texting my friend Andi in Accra, when all of a sudden I plummeted three feet down and my forward momentum jammed my leg into the wall of the gutter I had just stepped into. Luckily the gutter was dry, and my injury wasn’t bad at all, and the man who came to give me a hand turned out to be a nursing student and walked us all the way back to Volta.
5:30 am: Frustratingly unable to go back to sleep, I got up to read some papers on my computer about water and sanitation – I’m doing an independent research project on how to create behavior change in urban slums, how to get people to wash their hands with soap, etc. Behavior change is so hard but also interesting, especially because we can all relate to knowing we should do something one way because it’s better for us, but then do it another way because.. it’s easier, or habit, or makes us feel good, or whatever.
6:30 am: The battery on my computer’s about to die and our electric outlets haven’t been working, so I’m back to bed.
8:30 am: On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would have class, but today I’m free! After grabbing the last clean shirt that’s dry (the rest are drying outside my room on a drying rack after I handwashed them in a bucket with a detergent bar and lots of splashing and mostly futile rubbing,) I head down to the international students computer lab. I wonder why we have this lab – it’s really nice and has free internet, but what do all of the Ghanaian students do for computers/internet? For breakfast along the way, I tried corn porridge for the first time. It’s the gray brown milky looking stuff that is poured into a clear plastic bag and tied up, so that to eat it you have to tear a hole in one of the bag’s corners and drink it up. It’s definitely not my favorite, but it’s filling and cheap.
9:00 am: I wait for bout 30 minutes at the photocopy stand that copies all of the Geography department readings. The stand is outside, just under the awning of a building. I’ve been trying to get these readings for about ten days now, but everytime I come and ask for them, “They are finished. Come back tomorrow.” But today, gloriously, I get my stack of readings. I’ve never been so excited to be able to do my homework! They’re for one of my best classes too, Geography of Urbanization: The City.
10:00 am: I get free internet on my computer and read and write and check emails! An email from Christina, yay! I always am so excited to get emails from home, but feel like I end everyone reply with “ahh, I’ll write more later!” I guess I finally am.
12:30 pm: Andrew called! We didn’t talk for long but it always makes me so happy. While waiting for my egg sandwich (an egg omelet in a roll), I call the number I had saved into my phone earlier, and feel like such a development badass when I see “WorldBank” dialing on my cell phone screen. The WB Accra office secretary is finally able to connect me with the Water Sanitation specialist I’ve been trying to talk to (because he’s been out until just now). He tells me that the internship I’m trying to create, working on an Urban Water Project, is highly sensitive and because it involves the government, I might not be able to be involved. But I should still email him about it just in case.
1:30 pm: “Let there be light, baby!” – a text I send to my two roommates after having successfully hunted down the electrician, ‘Bernard’ who was hanging out in the back of our annex. Apparently all we had to do was flip a switch to turn our electricity back on, but unfortunately one of our light bulbs burned out at the exact time, so we never realized how easy fixing it would’ve been. When the electrician came in I had to quickly hide the mattress Irene, our Ghanaian percher roommate sleeps on because no one can know that there’re three of us because there’s not enough housing on campus for everyone so people squeeze in extra mattresses for their friends while the hall supervisor tries to hunt them down. Irene texted back: “N There was light!”
1:50 pm: Ran into two friends at the tro-tro station. Tro-tros are minivans converted into buses, except that they keep no schedule and are flexible about where they’re going and how they’ll get there. So you show up at a station and wait until you hear one of the mates calling “Circ circircirc” if you want to go to Circle, a big station in Accra. Or “kinesh kineshkinesh,” or “acrra cra cra.”
3:00 pm: Finally made it to Korle Bu, and found the man I was supposed to meet and interview for my independent research. He didn’t mind that I was late and told me about his research at UCLA and his daughter in Ann Arbor. He reminded me of a grandfather – he was so kind and patient with me, and left several times to go hunt down so and so’s phone number or the name of this or that organization.
4:00 pm: Bought a small mango at a street vendor and ate it out of the plastic bags they cut them in… one of the best mangoes I’ve ever had, especially because I ate it in the shade of a tree-lined street. I followed it up with a FanChoco, which is a genius invention – frozen chocolate milk in a bag. You tear off a corner with your teeth and suck it out, which is perfect for the hot weather almost every day. Interestingly, FanIce is always only sold by men. This particular guy was riding a bike, and when he cycled away I saw that he had written “Love” on the back of his bike.
5:00pm: After passing a beautiful mare and colt nibbling along the road, contrasting in a surreal way with the bright blue wall behind them and the chaos of the gritty urban setting, I spotted a bunch of bicycles and stopped to find out how much ($70 for a beach cruiser, but I should bargain more if I end up buying it) from a guy who calls himself Daddy. I also spotted an urban garden – rows of vegetables on a piece of land sandwiched between the road and a slummish settlement. Supposedly urban gardens produce 90 % of Accra’s produce!
6:00pm: Walked into an ArcBright meeting late with Rebecca – the nursing student who helped me with my leg yesterday is the president and invited us to this meeting. Apparently they do health education activities and might be really cool to work with. Everyone seemed really friendly and laughed when we both introduced ourselves in Twi: “Yefre me Adwoa.” Which means, my name is Adwoa, or Monday-born. In Ghana, you are given a name that corresponds to the day of the week that you are born on. Since we’re both Monday-borns, I’m Adwoa Kakra, or little, while Becks is Adwoa Peni, or big.
7:00pm: Got dinner from a guy near our dorm – rice and ketchup and mayonnaise and salad and a sliced up hard boiled egg all wrapped up in a bag again. Exhausted at this point, we settled in to watch the pilot of Arrested Development and catch up on work. Rebecca and I traded stories about our friends back home… I love and miss them all!
1:00am: Turned off the lights and closed up the mosquito net.
5:30 am: Frustratingly unable to go back to sleep, I got up to read some papers on my computer about water and sanitation – I’m doing an independent research project on how to create behavior change in urban slums, how to get people to wash their hands with soap, etc. Behavior change is so hard but also interesting, especially because we can all relate to knowing we should do something one way because it’s better for us, but then do it another way because.. it’s easier, or habit, or makes us feel good, or whatever.
6:30 am: The battery on my computer’s about to die and our electric outlets haven’t been working, so I’m back to bed.
8:30 am: On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would have class, but today I’m free! After grabbing the last clean shirt that’s dry (the rest are drying outside my room on a drying rack after I handwashed them in a bucket with a detergent bar and lots of splashing and mostly futile rubbing,) I head down to the international students computer lab. I wonder why we have this lab – it’s really nice and has free internet, but what do all of the Ghanaian students do for computers/internet? For breakfast along the way, I tried corn porridge for the first time. It’s the gray brown milky looking stuff that is poured into a clear plastic bag and tied up, so that to eat it you have to tear a hole in one of the bag’s corners and drink it up. It’s definitely not my favorite, but it’s filling and cheap.
9:00 am: I wait for bout 30 minutes at the photocopy stand that copies all of the Geography department readings. The stand is outside, just under the awning of a building. I’ve been trying to get these readings for about ten days now, but everytime I come and ask for them, “They are finished. Come back tomorrow.” But today, gloriously, I get my stack of readings. I’ve never been so excited to be able to do my homework! They’re for one of my best classes too, Geography of Urbanization: The City.
10:00 am: I get free internet on my computer and read and write and check emails! An email from Christina, yay! I always am so excited to get emails from home, but feel like I end everyone reply with “ahh, I’ll write more later!” I guess I finally am.
12:30 pm: Andrew called! We didn’t talk for long but it always makes me so happy. While waiting for my egg sandwich (an egg omelet in a roll), I call the number I had saved into my phone earlier, and feel like such a development badass when I see “WorldBank” dialing on my cell phone screen. The WB Accra office secretary is finally able to connect me with the Water Sanitation specialist I’ve been trying to talk to (because he’s been out until just now). He tells me that the internship I’m trying to create, working on an Urban Water Project, is highly sensitive and because it involves the government, I might not be able to be involved. But I should still email him about it just in case.
1:30 pm: “Let there be light, baby!” – a text I send to my two roommates after having successfully hunted down the electrician, ‘Bernard’ who was hanging out in the back of our annex. Apparently all we had to do was flip a switch to turn our electricity back on, but unfortunately one of our light bulbs burned out at the exact time, so we never realized how easy fixing it would’ve been. When the electrician came in I had to quickly hide the mattress Irene, our Ghanaian percher roommate sleeps on because no one can know that there’re three of us because there’s not enough housing on campus for everyone so people squeeze in extra mattresses for their friends while the hall supervisor tries to hunt them down. Irene texted back: “N There was light!”
1:50 pm: Ran into two friends at the tro-tro station. Tro-tros are minivans converted into buses, except that they keep no schedule and are flexible about where they’re going and how they’ll get there. So you show up at a station and wait until you hear one of the mates calling “Circ circircirc” if you want to go to Circle, a big station in Accra. Or “kinesh kineshkinesh,” or “acrra cra cra.”
3:00 pm: Finally made it to Korle Bu, and found the man I was supposed to meet and interview for my independent research. He didn’t mind that I was late and told me about his research at UCLA and his daughter in Ann Arbor. He reminded me of a grandfather – he was so kind and patient with me, and left several times to go hunt down so and so’s phone number or the name of this or that organization.
4:00 pm: Bought a small mango at a street vendor and ate it out of the plastic bags they cut them in… one of the best mangoes I’ve ever had, especially because I ate it in the shade of a tree-lined street. I followed it up with a FanChoco, which is a genius invention – frozen chocolate milk in a bag. You tear off a corner with your teeth and suck it out, which is perfect for the hot weather almost every day. Interestingly, FanIce is always only sold by men. This particular guy was riding a bike, and when he cycled away I saw that he had written “Love” on the back of his bike.
5:00pm: After passing a beautiful mare and colt nibbling along the road, contrasting in a surreal way with the bright blue wall behind them and the chaos of the gritty urban setting, I spotted a bunch of bicycles and stopped to find out how much ($70 for a beach cruiser, but I should bargain more if I end up buying it) from a guy who calls himself Daddy. I also spotted an urban garden – rows of vegetables on a piece of land sandwiched between the road and a slummish settlement. Supposedly urban gardens produce 90 % of Accra’s produce!
6:00pm: Walked into an ArcBright meeting late with Rebecca – the nursing student who helped me with my leg yesterday is the president and invited us to this meeting. Apparently they do health education activities and might be really cool to work with. Everyone seemed really friendly and laughed when we both introduced ourselves in Twi: “Yefre me Adwoa.” Which means, my name is Adwoa, or Monday-born. In Ghana, you are given a name that corresponds to the day of the week that you are born on. Since we’re both Monday-borns, I’m Adwoa Kakra, or little, while Becks is Adwoa Peni, or big.
7:00pm: Got dinner from a guy near our dorm – rice and ketchup and mayonnaise and salad and a sliced up hard boiled egg all wrapped up in a bag again. Exhausted at this point, we settled in to watch the pilot of Arrested Development and catch up on work. Rebecca and I traded stories about our friends back home… I love and miss them all!
1:00am: Turned off the lights and closed up the mosquito net.
Cape Coast Festival
I found myself meandering through the carnival-esque streets, alone and gloriously happy. With a bag of 20 pesawa sweet popcorn, I roamed the main street of Cape Coast. I saw old people sitting in bunches by store fronts in plastic chairs, women selling peeled oranges neatly arranged in metal frames and a woman announcing “Milo, Milo” (the hot-chocolate esque drink that’s sold cold and in a green skinny can,) and the smoky haze announcing another kebab stand rich in red fat hot dogs and dark delicious beef strips. I caught myself automatically heading towards our hotel, but only out of habit. So I doubled back and walked towards the ocean, following the warm golden light of late afternoon. Everything looked beautiful and alive and pulsing.
I sat alone on the bluff behind the castle overlooking the tumultuous beautifully conflicted waves and long stretch of sandy beach hemmed by its accompanying palm tree lining and fishing canoes. The waves are like nothing I’ve ever seen before, which seems fitting actually, given the stories people say about what happens if you swim in these waters. The story is that the hands of the slaves who died at the castle and were thrown in the water reach up and pull you down down into their murky depths. I wonder how many bones once littered the ocean floor around here. Anyway, all you can see today are the waves that fling themselves at the rocky acropolis and then ricochet backwards, to collide head-on with the next oncoming wave. The result is a huge spray of water and foam that reaches up and surges along the length of the waves, almost like a row of Broadway dancers kicking their legs out one after the other in perfect flowing synchronicity.
Regardless of these endless watery collisions, and of the dominance of the castle in the background, the beach is a happy exuberant place. Looking down the stretch, I watch with a smile I can’t help as a crowd of little black boys practice a string of backflips into the surf. They’re far away so all I can see are their dark silhouettes against the golden haze and reflection of the sand.
Dusting myself off, I decide to follow the curve of the coastline and meander through one of the smaller streets – as I do I get the impression that not a lot of tourists walk this way, and from now until I rejoin the main street I’m the only obruni I see. Everywhere there are people in and along this street, walking places, hugging people they run into, selling things (but to each other, not to me – which is a refreshing change), eating, cooking. Now there’s a procession of people in blue and white up ahead, a throng of them even, and I squeeze between a car and a gutter to slip ahead of them. We’re climbing a hill now and the street is even smaller and it feels like everyone knows each other, which can’t be true because it’s a big city and there’re so many people but it feels like a small town and the people dancing in the streets are the same people who live in the slummish shacks a few feet away. The homes are built in succession receding from the road and little dirt paths branch off but I am too ... self conscious? Afraid? To venture down any of them and instead step off onto a platform at the top of the hill. From here I can see down to a narrow strip of beach, and stand by as the blue and white parade passes by. I can see roofs of corrugated metal and washing lines laden with colorful clothes and brown dirt packed down from walking over it, and a little boy with a bucket and a woman who slips around a corner gracefully. I feel serene and peaceful, even amidst the noisy boisterous procession.
I sat alone on the bluff behind the castle overlooking the tumultuous beautifully conflicted waves and long stretch of sandy beach hemmed by its accompanying palm tree lining and fishing canoes. The waves are like nothing I’ve ever seen before, which seems fitting actually, given the stories people say about what happens if you swim in these waters. The story is that the hands of the slaves who died at the castle and were thrown in the water reach up and pull you down down into their murky depths. I wonder how many bones once littered the ocean floor around here. Anyway, all you can see today are the waves that fling themselves at the rocky acropolis and then ricochet backwards, to collide head-on with the next oncoming wave. The result is a huge spray of water and foam that reaches up and surges along the length of the waves, almost like a row of Broadway dancers kicking their legs out one after the other in perfect flowing synchronicity.
Regardless of these endless watery collisions, and of the dominance of the castle in the background, the beach is a happy exuberant place. Looking down the stretch, I watch with a smile I can’t help as a crowd of little black boys practice a string of backflips into the surf. They’re far away so all I can see are their dark silhouettes against the golden haze and reflection of the sand.
Dusting myself off, I decide to follow the curve of the coastline and meander through one of the smaller streets – as I do I get the impression that not a lot of tourists walk this way, and from now until I rejoin the main street I’m the only obruni I see. Everywhere there are people in and along this street, walking places, hugging people they run into, selling things (but to each other, not to me – which is a refreshing change), eating, cooking. Now there’s a procession of people in blue and white up ahead, a throng of them even, and I squeeze between a car and a gutter to slip ahead of them. We’re climbing a hill now and the street is even smaller and it feels like everyone knows each other, which can’t be true because it’s a big city and there’re so many people but it feels like a small town and the people dancing in the streets are the same people who live in the slummish shacks a few feet away. The homes are built in succession receding from the road and little dirt paths branch off but I am too ... self conscious? Afraid? To venture down any of them and instead step off onto a platform at the top of the hill. From here I can see down to a narrow strip of beach, and stand by as the blue and white parade passes by. I can see roofs of corrugated metal and washing lines laden with colorful clothes and brown dirt packed down from walking over it, and a little boy with a bucket and a woman who slips around a corner gracefully. I feel serene and peaceful, even amidst the noisy boisterous procession.
Slave Castles
Slave castles are places of paradox. First of all, the two that I’ve visited, Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle, are both white and grand and commanding. They could even by called beautiful, if your imagination wasn’t tainted with an understanding of what they were and what they represent.
Secondly, from the upper ramparts of one, you can stand in such a way that exactly half of your field of vision is filled with the view of a beautiful, even pristine beach with white sand and palm trees and quaint fishing canoe boats and bright colors and blue sky. The other half is white and gray and black – you can see down into this courtyard from which there are doorways leading into cellars and holding rooms and even a death room marked with what has come to be a cliché skull and crossbones, except this time the meaning is literal and real. You can see canons and stacks of cannonballs, and the officer’s third story flats and the wrought iron railings from which they could look down onto the whole scene.
Thirdly, you’re touring a place based on a history of pain and suffering and cruelty and power, but the act of you being there is supporting the local economy, and, fourth of all, the people who live in that community may have been descendants of both escaped slave conscripts and enriched slave traders. There’s a quotation in a photo book I bought about a slave-trade tour guide in the north who said, “We do not judge because we are the descendants of both those enslaved and those (Africans, and sometimes Europeans) who sold them into slavery.”
Some of the things that I remember from our tours: the men and women were separated and several hundred of them were kept in single chambered dark stone-walled rooms, partway underground. There may have been one or two small windows high up, but only enough to let in a gloomy amount of light each day, and a splashing of water each rain. There were small, shallowly inadequate sewage drains that ran through the middle of each room, more as cruel irony than any kind of practical sanitation. Over the years, the blood and vomit and urine and feces of hundreds of people built up in the rooms, forming a three foot deep floor entirely made of human waste. We walked over it.
The commanding officer’s three room apartment was built on the highest part of the castle, with a beautiful three window veranda facing the ocean. That damned contrast again – I imagine he must have been able to hear and smell the suffering beneath him even sheltered in his beautiful bedroom. There was a chapel directly above one of the slave chambers.
And there is a death room. They locked sixty men inside a completely dark chamber, and didn’t open the door again. At least, not until everyone inside was dead.
At the other castle, Elmina, our tour guide told us about how all of the women would be marched outside into a courtyard. Above them, from a terraced vantage point, the commanding officer would survey the women and pick out the one he wanted to rape that day. They would clean her up (after having lived in her own shit and blood for weeks without a shower,) and if she resisted, chain her up in the courtyard. If she became pregnant, she would be kept at the castle but treated a little better, and her kid might get some kind of education while she worked as a cook or cleaner.
There are some signs about how these places have been healed, have been transformed from bloody open sores to white scars on the landscape. First of all, they provide tourism and income for a lot of people. In Cape Coast, the castle was built on a holy religious site, so during the slave trade, the holy stone marking the place and representing Tibur, the God of Protection, was relocated to beneath a tree some distance away. Now, it has been brought back and there is a shrine offering type place in one of the slave rooms itself, where we saw a sacrificed goat’s head and watched a priest make an offering and sprinkle holy water. He explained that they give thanks to the Tibur for protecting those who passed through here and giving them the strength that they had.
We revisited the Cape Coast Castle several weeks after going on the tour – and I noticed that already, after only one other visit, the horror was more subdued and I could nap and laugh in the same places where I had cried and been silent.
Secondly, from the upper ramparts of one, you can stand in such a way that exactly half of your field of vision is filled with the view of a beautiful, even pristine beach with white sand and palm trees and quaint fishing canoe boats and bright colors and blue sky. The other half is white and gray and black – you can see down into this courtyard from which there are doorways leading into cellars and holding rooms and even a death room marked with what has come to be a cliché skull and crossbones, except this time the meaning is literal and real. You can see canons and stacks of cannonballs, and the officer’s third story flats and the wrought iron railings from which they could look down onto the whole scene.
Thirdly, you’re touring a place based on a history of pain and suffering and cruelty and power, but the act of you being there is supporting the local economy, and, fourth of all, the people who live in that community may have been descendants of both escaped slave conscripts and enriched slave traders. There’s a quotation in a photo book I bought about a slave-trade tour guide in the north who said, “We do not judge because we are the descendants of both those enslaved and those (Africans, and sometimes Europeans) who sold them into slavery.”
Some of the things that I remember from our tours: the men and women were separated and several hundred of them were kept in single chambered dark stone-walled rooms, partway underground. There may have been one or two small windows high up, but only enough to let in a gloomy amount of light each day, and a splashing of water each rain. There were small, shallowly inadequate sewage drains that ran through the middle of each room, more as cruel irony than any kind of practical sanitation. Over the years, the blood and vomit and urine and feces of hundreds of people built up in the rooms, forming a three foot deep floor entirely made of human waste. We walked over it.
The commanding officer’s three room apartment was built on the highest part of the castle, with a beautiful three window veranda facing the ocean. That damned contrast again – I imagine he must have been able to hear and smell the suffering beneath him even sheltered in his beautiful bedroom. There was a chapel directly above one of the slave chambers.
And there is a death room. They locked sixty men inside a completely dark chamber, and didn’t open the door again. At least, not until everyone inside was dead.
At the other castle, Elmina, our tour guide told us about how all of the women would be marched outside into a courtyard. Above them, from a terraced vantage point, the commanding officer would survey the women and pick out the one he wanted to rape that day. They would clean her up (after having lived in her own shit and blood for weeks without a shower,) and if she resisted, chain her up in the courtyard. If she became pregnant, she would be kept at the castle but treated a little better, and her kid might get some kind of education while she worked as a cook or cleaner.
There are some signs about how these places have been healed, have been transformed from bloody open sores to white scars on the landscape. First of all, they provide tourism and income for a lot of people. In Cape Coast, the castle was built on a holy religious site, so during the slave trade, the holy stone marking the place and representing Tibur, the God of Protection, was relocated to beneath a tree some distance away. Now, it has been brought back and there is a shrine offering type place in one of the slave rooms itself, where we saw a sacrificed goat’s head and watched a priest make an offering and sprinkle holy water. He explained that they give thanks to the Tibur for protecting those who passed through here and giving them the strength that they had.
We revisited the Cape Coast Castle several weeks after going on the tour – and I noticed that already, after only one other visit, the horror was more subdued and I could nap and laugh in the same places where I had cried and been silent.
Impressions -- an essay for my program
During one of our orientation lectures, Kwame Shabaz told us pay attention to the things that provoke strong reactions – whether they be reactions of passion, curiosity, disgust or bewilderment. While the following represent only a few of such moments, they were all memorable enough that I jotted down in one of my many disorganized notebooks and journal margins. I labeled them as “Thoughts,” and set them apart from other notes with brackets and stars and italics. At times I found myself more interested in these notes than in the lectures that were producing the material for them; at other times these observations were made possible precisely because a lecture did not happen. In any case, these represent only the extremes and thus do not really represent anything, except for the peaks and ploughs of my emotional experience of Ghana. Most especially, these quotations have been taken out of context and thus, in many cases do not completely represent the speaker.
“A student of mine once observed that there is a noticeable difference between African students in the department and African American students: the former are self-assured and confident, while the latter are often struggling against a sense of inferiority”
Prof. Adams
This quotation was shocking in several ways. First of all, I am still learning so much about race in America – I’ve only ever had one real conversation about being black in the States. So it’s been easy to imagine that we’re all the same and that our experiences are only different if we chose to make them so. But I know that isn’t yet true (will it ever be?) and even my own experiences as a bi-racial Latina have shown me that the racial hierarchy still exists in phantoms and memories and projections and for some, in realities. I think the only way to move away from racism is for one person to take a chance and be truthful and drop the mask in a duet of truth and honesty and nakenedess with someone equally scared and equally brave. And as I haven’t done this very much, I still have a pool of quiet racism to face, to see myself reflected in, and to begin to drain.
Secondly, it’s a surprising twist that this professor was comparing Africans and African Americas – in a way that elevated Africans. Most of the time there’s an implicit assumption in America that it’s better to be an ‘anybody’ in the States than a king in an African country. We even read a Zora Neale Hurston essay in which she writes (controversially) about slavery being the price her ancestors had to pay for civilization. When my Ghanaian classmate challenged that line, our professor could only agree that the “Africa as uncivilized” ideas was, in fact, exactly what Ms. Hurston was implying. Although I do not intentionally place Americans over Africans, at some level I must have unconsciously absorbed that message. I know, because of the surprise I felt when my professor described African Americans as lacking something that Africans in America have.
“I will give you a Bible if you come up here to throw away a condom.”
- A Preacher, sermonizing before one of my lectures.
Listening to the dark, dark skinned man in his deep blue shirt, a blue which brought out the heavy purples and indigoes of the reflections of light on the sweat layer swathing his face, I felt both angry and indifferent. I knew enough to put him in context, to separate his words from his proclaimed role and religious association. I saw my deeply Christian friend shake her head and pointedly ignore him, and I listened as conversations continued in the rows ahead and behind me. But even then, just the fact of his presence, and the devout and keen listeners he managed to scrounge up from amongst the class, were enough to challenge my ideas about tolerance. I suppose I may have a West-centric view on AIDS in Africa and the role of condoms and of religion – but neither abstinence nor condoms has proven to be very effective on the population level, and on the individual level either can work but need not be traded against each other.
“There’s a modern scramble for Africa going on between China, India and the US.”
- Prof. Jacob Songsore
The original scramble for Africa happened when European powers raced to lay claims to various African territories, in the hopes of gaining political influence and access to valuable resources. The name is deceptive – “scramble for” implies that all of the power of motion, of action, lay with these European nations, when in fact the historical melee was a product of interactions between various European and African actors and segmented classes and interests. This time around, the same assumed ideologies are at play – Africa as the passive static continent waiting to be divvied up by the big boys around the corner. And the assumption is wrong again, for much the same reasons.
However, it is interesting to see which countries have a lot of influence here and how that is manifested…we keep spotting TATA trucks (an Indian super-company,) and a lot of the projects that are referred to in my lectures are Chinese-sponsored. The US presence is harder for me to point out explicitly, because when I experience it, it almost feels natural. So many international players have so many vested interests in Africa: for military bases, for access to oil resources, for aid delivery channels and good PR.
“In Ghana, people don’t want to hurt foreigners, but they’ll want to marry you to get a passport out of Ghana.”
-Prof. Jacob Songsore
Perhaps even more than the quotation itself, I was struck by the delivery. This professor, who is brilliant and intimidatingly academic most of the time, seemed to be sharing an inside joke with all of the Ghanaians in the class (so, everyone but me and one other girl.) Everyone kind of chuckled in a knowing sort of way, but actually, from an outsider’s perspective, that’s a really loaded comment to make, especially when it’s tossed out with the same disregard exhibited by the pooled taxi driver who casually chucked his used water sachet bag out the window after taking one last drag on his chewed up corner.
‘People don’t want to hurt foreigners’ – in Ghana, which implies that in other African countries, the same is not true. In fact, my professor went on to talk about the dangers belaying a white person in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Why is this? Because Ghana’s economy is better or its government more stable? Is there inter-African ethnic stereotyping, when one defines a Ghanaian by what a Nigerian is not?
And then the next part – ‘but they’ll want to marry you to get a passport out of Ghana,’ which no one really had to tell me, or any girl on this trip, because we’ve all been solicited by at least one out of every five to ten male acquaintances. I once took down a taxi driver’s phone number because he wanted me to call him when I go back to the US so that I can bring him with me. As I was writing it down, I knew that my smile and inked numbers were a lie; the friends I was with watching knew they were a lie; and I don’t understand how he could have actually thought it was anything more than a lie either.
Whenever I mention that I’m from California, people talk about wanting to come, and as much as I love my state and my home, I can’t help thinking that some of the people who talk about coming would be disappointed with the reality of it. Then again when my Literature professor asked her friend “Why do so many Ghanaians want to come to Germany as cleaners or caretakers? They could definitely get better jobs in Ghana,” he responded “But even with a better job, sometimes they can make more money being a cleaner in Germany than a professor in Ghana.” Zing.
[Incidentally, my Economics professor makes $1700 a month, and told us not to begrudge him the days his misses lecture to complete a project that pays $2,000.]
Last word though: The first Ghanaian-raised educated in American student I met was talking about going back to start school in September. When he said he had 25 days left, I said “Oh, you’re already counting down?”
“No. I don’t want to leave at all.”
“You don’t know anything. If I ask you about the US, you can rattle of an answer. You’re looking at the US, Coca Cola, iPods, you’re looking outside and don’t know anything about your country. How will this lead to development?”
- Prof. Jacob Songsore
This professor is really passionate about being rooted in Ghana – Ghanaian culture and history and geography. But in response to his question – whose fault is it if the students in front of him know more about American pop culture than the ancient history of Ghana? Is it the fault of their teachers before them? Of schools? Of government? Of the US-spawned global consumer culture? Of globalization itself? It would take so much effort for these students to not know about Coca Cola and iPods, and would it be better if they didn’t? I don’t think so.
Interesting what he chose to represent America though. If I was a student in Ghana, would I prefer to pursue an education and career and life abroad? Or stay here? Today I just visited the office of a high-ranking doctor at the Center for Community Health, which in the US would warrant shiny windows, a swirly chair, a secretary, full AC, filing cabinets, and a private office. Instead, this beautiful, kind accomplished man was sitting in a shared office surrounded by light green paint, old shutters, and piles and piles of documents, and furnished with two basic desks and chairs, with the AC remote carefully wrapped in a protective plastic bag on the table. It’s a tough, unglamorous, potentially unthanked decision. I don’t know.
“It’s OK, baby girl, it’s over.”
-Grace, on slavery at the Cape Coast Castle
How can it be OK, how can it be over? When you and I are both still living with the consequences of this place, of these people, of these ghosts and bones and demons? When the descendants of the people who passed through here are some of the people I read about getting shot in my neighboring Oakland, when they are some of the people I address a public policy memo to, highlighting the racial discrimination inherent in US coke and crack sentencing laws, when they are some of the people who live in the Afro-dorm across the way from which I hear Gospel singing and in which I feel uncomfortable and distinctly like an excluded and excluding outsider. When you are the descendent of the people who avoided passing through here, and perhaps also of some of the people who brought people here in exchange for money or arms. How? How can you be so much stronger than me, so that despite the weight of the world leering in at Africa, you are the one holding me up as I full body sob uncontrollably? How can it be over for you, when it’s just beginning for me?
“They didn’t open the doors until everyone was dead.”
-Cape Coast Castle tour guide
I read this book called the Wave once, about how easy it would be for Nazism to take hold in a small town high school classroom. It’s hard for me to know or imagine how near or how far away we are from repeating this.
I’ve never been imbued with death like this… the memory still makes my body and mind fall into silence.
“Tell people back in the US.”
-Joshua, Volta porter
We were talking about my recent trip to Cape Coast, and no, I didn’t see the Castle this time, but I have been through it a few weeks before and how could that have happened. ‘How?’ he asks me, incredulous that I should ask the question. He tells me that Africans are strong, strong people, and points out that so many great American athletes are of African descent. He himself is a big man, and strong, and is also soft and warm. He’s the Joseph to my Mary turned Miriam. And he knows I understand, or at least, he thinks I do. But how am I going to communicate all of this, without self-righteously blaming them, or self-consciously saying nothing?
“Fair-skinned is a term that implies that light skin is a positive attribute. Lighter is better”
-Adams
Even so, light and dark have their own powerful connotations. I wonder how black got re-branded as beautiful and to whom the message was made clear?
“There’s a joke, if you want to hide something from an African man, write it down”
-Econ prof
I couldn’t tell if the class laughter was at the joke or at the man for being so racist as to tell it. He is Ghanaian, since that seems like it would matter. Why would you continue to propagate that kind of idea, even jokingly? And in a classroom? Is it funny? Perhaps he retold it bitterly, as a sentiment which should motivate his students to prove it wrong.
“In Nigeria, I’m Ibo. In England, I’m Nigerian. In the US, I’m African.”
-Rebecca, a joke she once heard
“It is finished.”
– multiple photocopiers on multiple occasions in relation to a multitude of readings and textbooks that I have yet to find. Also, several vendors, on the absence of laughing cow cheese.
“A student of mine once observed that there is a noticeable difference between African students in the department and African American students: the former are self-assured and confident, while the latter are often struggling against a sense of inferiority”
Prof. Adams
This quotation was shocking in several ways. First of all, I am still learning so much about race in America – I’ve only ever had one real conversation about being black in the States. So it’s been easy to imagine that we’re all the same and that our experiences are only different if we chose to make them so. But I know that isn’t yet true (will it ever be?) and even my own experiences as a bi-racial Latina have shown me that the racial hierarchy still exists in phantoms and memories and projections and for some, in realities. I think the only way to move away from racism is for one person to take a chance and be truthful and drop the mask in a duet of truth and honesty and nakenedess with someone equally scared and equally brave. And as I haven’t done this very much, I still have a pool of quiet racism to face, to see myself reflected in, and to begin to drain.
Secondly, it’s a surprising twist that this professor was comparing Africans and African Americas – in a way that elevated Africans. Most of the time there’s an implicit assumption in America that it’s better to be an ‘anybody’ in the States than a king in an African country. We even read a Zora Neale Hurston essay in which she writes (controversially) about slavery being the price her ancestors had to pay for civilization. When my Ghanaian classmate challenged that line, our professor could only agree that the “Africa as uncivilized” ideas was, in fact, exactly what Ms. Hurston was implying. Although I do not intentionally place Americans over Africans, at some level I must have unconsciously absorbed that message. I know, because of the surprise I felt when my professor described African Americans as lacking something that Africans in America have.
“I will give you a Bible if you come up here to throw away a condom.”
- A Preacher, sermonizing before one of my lectures.
Listening to the dark, dark skinned man in his deep blue shirt, a blue which brought out the heavy purples and indigoes of the reflections of light on the sweat layer swathing his face, I felt both angry and indifferent. I knew enough to put him in context, to separate his words from his proclaimed role and religious association. I saw my deeply Christian friend shake her head and pointedly ignore him, and I listened as conversations continued in the rows ahead and behind me. But even then, just the fact of his presence, and the devout and keen listeners he managed to scrounge up from amongst the class, were enough to challenge my ideas about tolerance. I suppose I may have a West-centric view on AIDS in Africa and the role of condoms and of religion – but neither abstinence nor condoms has proven to be very effective on the population level, and on the individual level either can work but need not be traded against each other.
“There’s a modern scramble for Africa going on between China, India and the US.”
- Prof. Jacob Songsore
The original scramble for Africa happened when European powers raced to lay claims to various African territories, in the hopes of gaining political influence and access to valuable resources. The name is deceptive – “scramble for” implies that all of the power of motion, of action, lay with these European nations, when in fact the historical melee was a product of interactions between various European and African actors and segmented classes and interests. This time around, the same assumed ideologies are at play – Africa as the passive static continent waiting to be divvied up by the big boys around the corner. And the assumption is wrong again, for much the same reasons.
However, it is interesting to see which countries have a lot of influence here and how that is manifested…we keep spotting TATA trucks (an Indian super-company,) and a lot of the projects that are referred to in my lectures are Chinese-sponsored. The US presence is harder for me to point out explicitly, because when I experience it, it almost feels natural. So many international players have so many vested interests in Africa: for military bases, for access to oil resources, for aid delivery channels and good PR.
“In Ghana, people don’t want to hurt foreigners, but they’ll want to marry you to get a passport out of Ghana.”
-Prof. Jacob Songsore
Perhaps even more than the quotation itself, I was struck by the delivery. This professor, who is brilliant and intimidatingly academic most of the time, seemed to be sharing an inside joke with all of the Ghanaians in the class (so, everyone but me and one other girl.) Everyone kind of chuckled in a knowing sort of way, but actually, from an outsider’s perspective, that’s a really loaded comment to make, especially when it’s tossed out with the same disregard exhibited by the pooled taxi driver who casually chucked his used water sachet bag out the window after taking one last drag on his chewed up corner.
‘People don’t want to hurt foreigners’ – in Ghana, which implies that in other African countries, the same is not true. In fact, my professor went on to talk about the dangers belaying a white person in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Why is this? Because Ghana’s economy is better or its government more stable? Is there inter-African ethnic stereotyping, when one defines a Ghanaian by what a Nigerian is not?
And then the next part – ‘but they’ll want to marry you to get a passport out of Ghana,’ which no one really had to tell me, or any girl on this trip, because we’ve all been solicited by at least one out of every five to ten male acquaintances. I once took down a taxi driver’s phone number because he wanted me to call him when I go back to the US so that I can bring him with me. As I was writing it down, I knew that my smile and inked numbers were a lie; the friends I was with watching knew they were a lie; and I don’t understand how he could have actually thought it was anything more than a lie either.
Whenever I mention that I’m from California, people talk about wanting to come, and as much as I love my state and my home, I can’t help thinking that some of the people who talk about coming would be disappointed with the reality of it. Then again when my Literature professor asked her friend “Why do so many Ghanaians want to come to Germany as cleaners or caretakers? They could definitely get better jobs in Ghana,” he responded “But even with a better job, sometimes they can make more money being a cleaner in Germany than a professor in Ghana.” Zing.
[Incidentally, my Economics professor makes $1700 a month, and told us not to begrudge him the days his misses lecture to complete a project that pays $2,000.]
Last word though: The first Ghanaian-raised educated in American student I met was talking about going back to start school in September. When he said he had 25 days left, I said “Oh, you’re already counting down?”
“No. I don’t want to leave at all.”
“You don’t know anything. If I ask you about the US, you can rattle of an answer. You’re looking at the US, Coca Cola, iPods, you’re looking outside and don’t know anything about your country. How will this lead to development?”
- Prof. Jacob Songsore
This professor is really passionate about being rooted in Ghana – Ghanaian culture and history and geography. But in response to his question – whose fault is it if the students in front of him know more about American pop culture than the ancient history of Ghana? Is it the fault of their teachers before them? Of schools? Of government? Of the US-spawned global consumer culture? Of globalization itself? It would take so much effort for these students to not know about Coca Cola and iPods, and would it be better if they didn’t? I don’t think so.
Interesting what he chose to represent America though. If I was a student in Ghana, would I prefer to pursue an education and career and life abroad? Or stay here? Today I just visited the office of a high-ranking doctor at the Center for Community Health, which in the US would warrant shiny windows, a swirly chair, a secretary, full AC, filing cabinets, and a private office. Instead, this beautiful, kind accomplished man was sitting in a shared office surrounded by light green paint, old shutters, and piles and piles of documents, and furnished with two basic desks and chairs, with the AC remote carefully wrapped in a protective plastic bag on the table. It’s a tough, unglamorous, potentially unthanked decision. I don’t know.
“It’s OK, baby girl, it’s over.”
-Grace, on slavery at the Cape Coast Castle
How can it be OK, how can it be over? When you and I are both still living with the consequences of this place, of these people, of these ghosts and bones and demons? When the descendants of the people who passed through here are some of the people I read about getting shot in my neighboring Oakland, when they are some of the people I address a public policy memo to, highlighting the racial discrimination inherent in US coke and crack sentencing laws, when they are some of the people who live in the Afro-dorm across the way from which I hear Gospel singing and in which I feel uncomfortable and distinctly like an excluded and excluding outsider. When you are the descendent of the people who avoided passing through here, and perhaps also of some of the people who brought people here in exchange for money or arms. How? How can you be so much stronger than me, so that despite the weight of the world leering in at Africa, you are the one holding me up as I full body sob uncontrollably? How can it be over for you, when it’s just beginning for me?
“They didn’t open the doors until everyone was dead.”
-Cape Coast Castle tour guide
I read this book called the Wave once, about how easy it would be for Nazism to take hold in a small town high school classroom. It’s hard for me to know or imagine how near or how far away we are from repeating this.
I’ve never been imbued with death like this… the memory still makes my body and mind fall into silence.
“Tell people back in the US.”
-Joshua, Volta porter
We were talking about my recent trip to Cape Coast, and no, I didn’t see the Castle this time, but I have been through it a few weeks before and how could that have happened. ‘How?’ he asks me, incredulous that I should ask the question. He tells me that Africans are strong, strong people, and points out that so many great American athletes are of African descent. He himself is a big man, and strong, and is also soft and warm. He’s the Joseph to my Mary turned Miriam. And he knows I understand, or at least, he thinks I do. But how am I going to communicate all of this, without self-righteously blaming them, or self-consciously saying nothing?
“Fair-skinned is a term that implies that light skin is a positive attribute. Lighter is better”
-Adams
Even so, light and dark have their own powerful connotations. I wonder how black got re-branded as beautiful and to whom the message was made clear?
“There’s a joke, if you want to hide something from an African man, write it down”
-Econ prof
I couldn’t tell if the class laughter was at the joke or at the man for being so racist as to tell it. He is Ghanaian, since that seems like it would matter. Why would you continue to propagate that kind of idea, even jokingly? And in a classroom? Is it funny? Perhaps he retold it bitterly, as a sentiment which should motivate his students to prove it wrong.
“In Nigeria, I’m Ibo. In England, I’m Nigerian. In the US, I’m African.”
-Rebecca, a joke she once heard
“It is finished.”
– multiple photocopiers on multiple occasions in relation to a multitude of readings and textbooks that I have yet to find. Also, several vendors, on the absence of laughing cow cheese.
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