Standing arm in arm with friends and strangers as we listened to Obama’s acceptance speech, I felt like I was watching the first man walk on the moon. I have never been part of something so epic.
I had spent the night outside in the grassy backyard of a hotel in Accra along with 200-300 others, a surprising combination of ex-pats and Ghanaians, fellow students and professionals. It never ceases to surprise me how much people here care about U.S. politics. A lot of it is probably because Obama’s black – but even then, even if he’s just as a symbol, it is incredible to see how much people here care about what goes on in America. We all watched throughout the early hours as state after state was called and the electoral votes kept climbing…
And then the west coast was called, and Obama won! We danced and swung each other around and hugged and jumped up and down and raised our voices to sing along to the Black Rasta “Barack Obama” song.
We couldn’t stop smiling and hugging and dancing, and no one was tired even though it was 5:30 am and we’d been up all night. As our future president took the stage, the sky was starting to lighten behind the big outdoor screen his speech was projected on – a perfect metaphor for the way I felt. A new dawn, a new day, a new leader.
Being able to vote as an American, as a citizen of one of the most influential countries on earth, is a huge responsibility. Before this trip I had no conception of just how influential our country is all around the world, but the decisions we make effect people all over – and they know it and they’re watching to see what we do! So when I think about voting now, it’s not just for myself or my county or my state, but for people all across the globe who will be effected in one way or another.
When I finally climbed the stairs leading up to my room, I heard shouts from across the courtyard as my Volta hall mates woke up and heard the news – “ Obammaaa won!! Obammma won!!”
He did indeed.
Mani Agye paaa – I’m very happy!
Finding out a few hours later that California had voted yes on Prop 8 (eliminating same sex marriage,) made the elections a little bittersweet…. What happened, California? How could we take someone’s rights away like that? I guess it just shows that democracy is always a process and while I’m confident that some day gay marriage will be legal again, it’s frustrating that it’s been set back so far.
Still… it’s been beautiful hearing about everyone else’s election experiences. I talked to my mom right away, and my parents took the next day off to hike and celebrate. My aunt in England jumped up and down when she found out in the morning. Christina was part of the spontaneous co-op street celebration in Berkeley and Andrew watched in a basement in Beijing with fellow ex-pats... it’s beautiful to think about how many people around the world were touched and united by something that happened in my country.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Impressions II: A Little Rough Around the Edges
“You must be a Californian”
“Why?”
“You couldn’t throw that sachet away.”
This conversation was with a Ghanaian-American friend who had just met me and saw me look around in frustration before stuffing my empty water sachet bag into my purse, where I already a collection of bags from previous unsuccessful attempts to find trashcans. He had lived in California for years and laughed, telling me that he couldn’t throw things away either. It made me wonder, how exactly did the message to not litter get so ingrained in me? More than a general concern for the environmental damage and destruction that trash can do, I’m pretty sure I’m motivated by a fear of what other people around me would think if they saw me toss my trash on the ground. At home, I imagine that there would be a collective social disapproval and people would be shocked and critical.
But that social pressure doesn’t exist here, and I noticed it was absent in Mumbai as well. In fact, I remember carrying around an ice cream wrapper in market and this little kid followed me around trying to teach me that I should just throw it down. He would grab the wrapper and fling it aside and I kept picking it up and scouring the scene for a trashcan or box or bag.
My friend brian had an interesting observation on the topic. He said that maybe the act of throwing things down used to be fine, when food wasn’t packaged and plastics weren’t an issue. When we eat oranges here, (which are sold with the topics cut off so that you don’t peel them at all but squeeze the pulpy juice out until it’s sucked dry) we toss aside the peel and watch as goats fight to nibble up the pieces. So it’s easy to imagine how that action could become ingrained and be transferred to plastic water sachets and wrappers and bags.
“They can laugh because we get served first.” - Me
Rebecca and I were at the university hospital because she thought she might have malaria. There were three or four other people in the waiting room when we got there, but I assumed that they, like me, were just waiting for their friends. Becks got seen pretty quickly and everyone in the room laughed as she fumbled with the door – it seemed kind of unnecessary and even rude at the time. Until we realized that even though one of the guys in the waiting room was seriously sick and having something like an asthma attack and everyone else was sick too and had been waiting to be seen before we got there. It’s not the first time this has happened either – other obruni friends have stories of being seen immediately at hospitals even though there was obviously a lot of people ahead of them. It put their laughter in a different light – a bitter reaction to being treated so obviously unfairly.
“I’ve never felt more aware of having black skin.”
-Naa
My friend Naa is a fifth year Ghanaian student who I met in my Econ class. She studied abroad in Russia for a year, so it’s been really cool to talk to her about her experiences there and how they parallel mine. It sounds like it was the first time she’s really experienced racism – people telling her to go back to Africa and the like. Which made me think about the assumptions people make about me because of my race – (I’m definitely an oburoni, but I’ve gotten everything from Indian, to Japanese, and from Mexican to African American!). and even though it’s been frustrating to be categorically stereotyped, it’s still a powerful, privileged stereotype. Some people make snide comments or are intentionally rude, but at the end of the day, we both know that my skin color gives me a lot of opportunities and words are just words.
“The state has failed in Africa. The market has failed in America. So which one do you trust? Neither!” Prof KJ
“The cocoa board buys 1 bag of cocoa for 1 GH cedi then gives 1,000 sacks to their friends who can sell them for 50-60 GH cedi. For some people, they get 1,000 sacks/week!” Prof KJ
One of my friends responded to this story by telling us about his job in one of the government’s ministries. He was in charge of something to do with revenue, and found a lot of holes in the system where people were funneling money away for themselves. So he tried to clean it up, and within a month, revenue was up 100%, and kept rising. Some people praised him. Until he got a call in the middle of the night, telling him that if he valued his life, he had better stop. So he did. And now, he admitted, he even takes a little himself, because, everyone else is and that’s how it works.
“I have a small garden in my backyard and I was watering it one day with the treated water that gets pumped to my house. I realized that between the crops in my garden and the people in my village, the cassava drinks better water than my chief!”
Prof KJ
“In my village, there is a rock in the sea, and people see it as the god of the village. Every year they sacrifice a dog there. There are a lot of fish there, but the villagers don’t fish them because they don’t want to anger the god.”
Prof KJ
“every district got TVs, because some big businessman was selling tractors (even if they didn’t’ need them) and then saw that the price that was deducted from the TV could’ve bought them three TVs!”
Prof KJ
As crazy and frustrating as this is, it sounded familiar. The same thing happens in the US, with military suppliers destroying their own products so that they can be paid to replace them at a huge profit… and did you know that Dick Cheney’s Halliburton was involved in the biggest corruption scandal in Nigeria? Which is saying a lot… they paid $180 million in bribes to secure contracts for a $6 billion deal. Halliburton’s 3rd leading executive has testified against himself and the company…
“We buy things small small. They used to break up match boxes and sell them in little bundles so that you could recycles your old matchboxes and just buy the few matches that you needed.” Prof JS
“Costco is a huge store for wealthy people. You can buy your whole year’s supply of anything there. You need to have a card to be able to shop there, so my friends would take me. I could’ve gotten lost in there.”
- Prof JS
It’s true that this professor is a little old fashioned and given to exaggeration. But still, it was so interesting to hear this perspective. To me, Costco is a place that you shop if you’re low- to middle-class and trying to save money by buying in bulk. Rich people would never shop at Costco. But apparently, having the ability to invest in a whole year’s supply of anything implies that you have enough extra money to be able to make that investment. In contrast, poorer people who have to live more day to day cannot reap the benefits of wholesale prices because they have to buy things in single serving sizes. Both here and in Mumbai, there are a lot of small packaged products, like shampoo and coffee and 10 cent sacks of flour and butter. When Rebecca and I went to buy a wheel of laughing cow cheese (8 wedges of cheese, each costing 20 cents) at one of the shops on campus, they didn’t know how much to charge us – apparently no one here buys cheese by the wheel! It’s crazy how you need to have a certain amount of money to be able to save money. Even in America, things like banking and groceries are more expensive in poor areas. …
“Market women have good logic. Charge the rich a lot and give discounts to the poor. In the US, they charge you all the same, rich and poor.”
Prof JS
I would have always thought that I was a big supporter of Robin Hood – but when you’re on the other side of the redistribution it suddenly doesn’t feel that heroic or noble anymore. But this attitude has helped me be less frustrated by ‘oburoni prices.’
“They incorrectly charged me a $50 fine and I’m still waiting to be reimbursed. You can take it all because I know that you are suffering under this sub-prime thing.”
Prof JS
This reminds me of a scene from an incredible play about Nigeria – the white playwright talks about being approached by a man asking for money while he was sitting down with a nigerian associate. The playwright said “No, I don’t’ have any money to give you.” Then the beggar turned to the Nigerian who gave him some money. The beggar turned to the white playwright, gave him the change, and said, “Here you go, now you have money.”
The dynamics of who has the power to give and who receives are so interesting… I’m coming to believe less and less in money aid. What does it do to a national psyche to always receive hand outs from “First World” countries, and grow up knowing that you are poor and “Third World”?
“I was staying in L.A. in an apartment the university arranged for me. There was a contraception above the door with a hole in it, and remember being angry that they had installed a camera to watch me. I stood on a chair and taped a piece of paper over it so that they wouldn’t be able to see me anymore. Then, one day, a friend came to visit. Shocked, he asked “Kwesi, why did you do this? If there’s a fire, this smoke detector won’t work!”
It’s nice to know that cultural misunderstanding go both ways – I’ve definitely grown a lot more humble after living in somewhere not familiar to me. But as hilarious as this story is – it’s kind of crazy that this professor thought someone would videotape him in his own apartment – and even crazier that he didn’t get more outraged about it if that’s what he really thought was going on.
The US embassy felt like home. It felt efficient and fast and clean and organized and I knew exactly how to behave and what to expect. I walked past benches full on Ghanaians, who I guessed were applying for visas. This whole experience has made me realize how deeply American I am. I used to want to live and work abroad, but I’m thinking more and more that I will be happier and more effective if I stay in the US. One of my friends here put it well:
There are so many people who don’t have the opportunity to put on a suit and gain access to powerful positions in America. But you do. Are you just going to throw that opportunity away?
I still admire all of the people who do work ‘on the ground’ – (what would Prof. Hart say about that language? Doesn’t everyone work ‘on the ground,’ and why are some places considered local while others are constructed as global?) but I think that’s it’s not for me.
Just that realization alone would have made this whole trip worthwhile.
“Why?”
“You couldn’t throw that sachet away.”
This conversation was with a Ghanaian-American friend who had just met me and saw me look around in frustration before stuffing my empty water sachet bag into my purse, where I already a collection of bags from previous unsuccessful attempts to find trashcans. He had lived in California for years and laughed, telling me that he couldn’t throw things away either. It made me wonder, how exactly did the message to not litter get so ingrained in me? More than a general concern for the environmental damage and destruction that trash can do, I’m pretty sure I’m motivated by a fear of what other people around me would think if they saw me toss my trash on the ground. At home, I imagine that there would be a collective social disapproval and people would be shocked and critical.
But that social pressure doesn’t exist here, and I noticed it was absent in Mumbai as well. In fact, I remember carrying around an ice cream wrapper in market and this little kid followed me around trying to teach me that I should just throw it down. He would grab the wrapper and fling it aside and I kept picking it up and scouring the scene for a trashcan or box or bag.
My friend brian had an interesting observation on the topic. He said that maybe the act of throwing things down used to be fine, when food wasn’t packaged and plastics weren’t an issue. When we eat oranges here, (which are sold with the topics cut off so that you don’t peel them at all but squeeze the pulpy juice out until it’s sucked dry) we toss aside the peel and watch as goats fight to nibble up the pieces. So it’s easy to imagine how that action could become ingrained and be transferred to plastic water sachets and wrappers and bags.
“They can laugh because we get served first.” - Me
Rebecca and I were at the university hospital because she thought she might have malaria. There were three or four other people in the waiting room when we got there, but I assumed that they, like me, were just waiting for their friends. Becks got seen pretty quickly and everyone in the room laughed as she fumbled with the door – it seemed kind of unnecessary and even rude at the time. Until we realized that even though one of the guys in the waiting room was seriously sick and having something like an asthma attack and everyone else was sick too and had been waiting to be seen before we got there. It’s not the first time this has happened either – other obruni friends have stories of being seen immediately at hospitals even though there was obviously a lot of people ahead of them. It put their laughter in a different light – a bitter reaction to being treated so obviously unfairly.
“I’ve never felt more aware of having black skin.”
-Naa
My friend Naa is a fifth year Ghanaian student who I met in my Econ class. She studied abroad in Russia for a year, so it’s been really cool to talk to her about her experiences there and how they parallel mine. It sounds like it was the first time she’s really experienced racism – people telling her to go back to Africa and the like. Which made me think about the assumptions people make about me because of my race – (I’m definitely an oburoni, but I’ve gotten everything from Indian, to Japanese, and from Mexican to African American!). and even though it’s been frustrating to be categorically stereotyped, it’s still a powerful, privileged stereotype. Some people make snide comments or are intentionally rude, but at the end of the day, we both know that my skin color gives me a lot of opportunities and words are just words.
“The state has failed in Africa. The market has failed in America. So which one do you trust? Neither!” Prof KJ
“The cocoa board buys 1 bag of cocoa for 1 GH cedi then gives 1,000 sacks to their friends who can sell them for 50-60 GH cedi. For some people, they get 1,000 sacks/week!” Prof KJ
One of my friends responded to this story by telling us about his job in one of the government’s ministries. He was in charge of something to do with revenue, and found a lot of holes in the system where people were funneling money away for themselves. So he tried to clean it up, and within a month, revenue was up 100%, and kept rising. Some people praised him. Until he got a call in the middle of the night, telling him that if he valued his life, he had better stop. So he did. And now, he admitted, he even takes a little himself, because, everyone else is and that’s how it works.
“I have a small garden in my backyard and I was watering it one day with the treated water that gets pumped to my house. I realized that between the crops in my garden and the people in my village, the cassava drinks better water than my chief!”
Prof KJ
“In my village, there is a rock in the sea, and people see it as the god of the village. Every year they sacrifice a dog there. There are a lot of fish there, but the villagers don’t fish them because they don’t want to anger the god.”
Prof KJ
“every district got TVs, because some big businessman was selling tractors (even if they didn’t’ need them) and then saw that the price that was deducted from the TV could’ve bought them three TVs!”
Prof KJ
As crazy and frustrating as this is, it sounded familiar. The same thing happens in the US, with military suppliers destroying their own products so that they can be paid to replace them at a huge profit… and did you know that Dick Cheney’s Halliburton was involved in the biggest corruption scandal in Nigeria? Which is saying a lot… they paid $180 million in bribes to secure contracts for a $6 billion deal. Halliburton’s 3rd leading executive has testified against himself and the company…
“We buy things small small. They used to break up match boxes and sell them in little bundles so that you could recycles your old matchboxes and just buy the few matches that you needed.” Prof JS
“Costco is a huge store for wealthy people. You can buy your whole year’s supply of anything there. You need to have a card to be able to shop there, so my friends would take me. I could’ve gotten lost in there.”
- Prof JS
It’s true that this professor is a little old fashioned and given to exaggeration. But still, it was so interesting to hear this perspective. To me, Costco is a place that you shop if you’re low- to middle-class and trying to save money by buying in bulk. Rich people would never shop at Costco. But apparently, having the ability to invest in a whole year’s supply of anything implies that you have enough extra money to be able to make that investment. In contrast, poorer people who have to live more day to day cannot reap the benefits of wholesale prices because they have to buy things in single serving sizes. Both here and in Mumbai, there are a lot of small packaged products, like shampoo and coffee and 10 cent sacks of flour and butter. When Rebecca and I went to buy a wheel of laughing cow cheese (8 wedges of cheese, each costing 20 cents) at one of the shops on campus, they didn’t know how much to charge us – apparently no one here buys cheese by the wheel! It’s crazy how you need to have a certain amount of money to be able to save money. Even in America, things like banking and groceries are more expensive in poor areas. …
“Market women have good logic. Charge the rich a lot and give discounts to the poor. In the US, they charge you all the same, rich and poor.”
Prof JS
I would have always thought that I was a big supporter of Robin Hood – but when you’re on the other side of the redistribution it suddenly doesn’t feel that heroic or noble anymore. But this attitude has helped me be less frustrated by ‘oburoni prices.’
“They incorrectly charged me a $50 fine and I’m still waiting to be reimbursed. You can take it all because I know that you are suffering under this sub-prime thing.”
Prof JS
This reminds me of a scene from an incredible play about Nigeria – the white playwright talks about being approached by a man asking for money while he was sitting down with a nigerian associate. The playwright said “No, I don’t’ have any money to give you.” Then the beggar turned to the Nigerian who gave him some money. The beggar turned to the white playwright, gave him the change, and said, “Here you go, now you have money.”
The dynamics of who has the power to give and who receives are so interesting… I’m coming to believe less and less in money aid. What does it do to a national psyche to always receive hand outs from “First World” countries, and grow up knowing that you are poor and “Third World”?
“I was staying in L.A. in an apartment the university arranged for me. There was a contraception above the door with a hole in it, and remember being angry that they had installed a camera to watch me. I stood on a chair and taped a piece of paper over it so that they wouldn’t be able to see me anymore. Then, one day, a friend came to visit. Shocked, he asked “Kwesi, why did you do this? If there’s a fire, this smoke detector won’t work!”
It’s nice to know that cultural misunderstanding go both ways – I’ve definitely grown a lot more humble after living in somewhere not familiar to me. But as hilarious as this story is – it’s kind of crazy that this professor thought someone would videotape him in his own apartment – and even crazier that he didn’t get more outraged about it if that’s what he really thought was going on.
The US embassy felt like home. It felt efficient and fast and clean and organized and I knew exactly how to behave and what to expect. I walked past benches full on Ghanaians, who I guessed were applying for visas. This whole experience has made me realize how deeply American I am. I used to want to live and work abroad, but I’m thinking more and more that I will be happier and more effective if I stay in the US. One of my friends here put it well:
There are so many people who don’t have the opportunity to put on a suit and gain access to powerful positions in America. But you do. Are you just going to throw that opportunity away?
I still admire all of the people who do work ‘on the ground’ – (what would Prof. Hart say about that language? Doesn’t everyone work ‘on the ground,’ and why are some places considered local while others are constructed as global?) but I think that’s it’s not for me.
Just that realization alone would have made this whole trip worthwhile.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Letter to Aniket
Hey!
It’s hard to imagine that you’re at school and doing the ivy league thing while we’re roughing it in the back of tro tros and eating egg sandwiches and paw paw and, of course, still drinking those good old Stars.
I can’t believe that it’s been almost two months since you left -- we still comment when we pass your old hotel room or that smoothie place, and keep mentally jotting down election-related news and conversations for you. Speaking of, here’s a summary:
Basically, no one knows what will happen still, but everyone’s personal predictions are pretty interesting. Here are some of the extremes:
- We celebrated Eid ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, in Nima, a mainly Muslim urban slum community in Accra. After the main procession of chiefs and dancers passed, a throng of NDC supporters filled the street, decked out in red and green and white and sporting their umbrella-like logos.
[for everyone else, here's a summary of Ghanaian politics right now. The presidential elections are being held on December 7th, and there are two main parties competing for power. The first is the NPP, New Patriotic Party. They're the incumbent party and were the first democratially elected party to peacefully gain power in 2000. Since then, there's only been one other democratic election, in 2004, so this year is pretty historic. The other party, the NDC, or National Democratic Congress, began as a military party under the leadership of J. Rawlings. They were the party in control before the NPP was voted in. ]
Then one of the Parliamentary candidates and Vice Presidential candidate Alhaji Aliu Mahama drove by, waving at the impassioned crowds. It was the first time I’ve felt the power of a crowd like this… more than just being a political rally, this group of people were unified by another common identity – their religion. Maybe because of the stories I’ve heard about religion and politics from Mumbai, or for whatever other reason, I felt that there was a lot of latent power in this group because they were united by more than just politics. Or, politics had become about and a part of a larger identity. Which, I guess, can be true everywhere. It was just so tangible in this moment.
- Over dinner that night with my friend, we slipped into a conversation about the election. He said “if the NDC doesn’t win, then the NPP will have used tricks and there will be a civil war.” We asked him more about it, but he was adamant that the NPP couldn’t win legitimately (the registrar of voters is NPP, he claimed). He was equally confident in the succession of events, repeating that if the NPP won, there would be civil war. Just one perspective, but I do respect this man a lot, so it was interesting to hear this position from him.
- Another night, becks and I got a taxi ride home and had the back and forth Obama-McCain, Akufo-Addo Mills conversation. He said he was definitely for the NPP, and when we asked why, his answer was also suprising. “Because the NDC killed my family. I will never vote for them and they will never be good. They killed my uncle.”
- Last night, the boy our roommate has been talking to was chatting politics, and his opinion is that neither government is good, so he’s trying to make his vote strategic. He’s considering voting for the CPP (Convention People’s Party) and when I asked him why, wasn’t that like voting against the NPP (which he really doesn’t want) he responded “Yes, maybe. But I want to contribute to building up the CPP for future elections.”
- We have a friend who was coordinating a walk for peaceful elections event, and who helped make “Survive Elections 08” shirts. What a different frame of reference – in the US our shirts are about how ‘cool’ it is to vote, and here at least a few people are worried about making it through them as a peaceful country.
- On the radio today, I heard an announcement about the voter registration verification program that is going to help in the first week of October at all police stations. The announcer said that it was set up in an effort to correct the voter registration inaccuracies from August’s registration, and encouraged everyone to confirm that their name and photo were there correctly. Also, he warned that all minors and illegible voters could use this a grace period to cross their names off and avoid facing fines and punishment later. Finally, he instructed all families to remove their dead relatives from the registry.
Anyway, let us know if you have any specific on the ground questions about how things are going.
It’s hard to imagine that you’re at school and doing the ivy league thing while we’re roughing it in the back of tro tros and eating egg sandwiches and paw paw and, of course, still drinking those good old Stars.
I can’t believe that it’s been almost two months since you left -- we still comment when we pass your old hotel room or that smoothie place, and keep mentally jotting down election-related news and conversations for you. Speaking of, here’s a summary:
Basically, no one knows what will happen still, but everyone’s personal predictions are pretty interesting. Here are some of the extremes:
- We celebrated Eid ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, in Nima, a mainly Muslim urban slum community in Accra. After the main procession of chiefs and dancers passed, a throng of NDC supporters filled the street, decked out in red and green and white and sporting their umbrella-like logos.
[for everyone else, here's a summary of Ghanaian politics right now. The presidential elections are being held on December 7th, and there are two main parties competing for power. The first is the NPP, New Patriotic Party. They're the incumbent party and were the first democratially elected party to peacefully gain power in 2000. Since then, there's only been one other democratic election, in 2004, so this year is pretty historic. The other party, the NDC, or National Democratic Congress, began as a military party under the leadership of J. Rawlings. They were the party in control before the NPP was voted in. ]
Then one of the Parliamentary candidates and Vice Presidential candidate Alhaji Aliu Mahama drove by, waving at the impassioned crowds. It was the first time I’ve felt the power of a crowd like this… more than just being a political rally, this group of people were unified by another common identity – their religion. Maybe because of the stories I’ve heard about religion and politics from Mumbai, or for whatever other reason, I felt that there was a lot of latent power in this group because they were united by more than just politics. Or, politics had become about and a part of a larger identity. Which, I guess, can be true everywhere. It was just so tangible in this moment.
- Over dinner that night with my friend, we slipped into a conversation about the election. He said “if the NDC doesn’t win, then the NPP will have used tricks and there will be a civil war.” We asked him more about it, but he was adamant that the NPP couldn’t win legitimately (the registrar of voters is NPP, he claimed). He was equally confident in the succession of events, repeating that if the NPP won, there would be civil war. Just one perspective, but I do respect this man a lot, so it was interesting to hear this position from him.
- Another night, becks and I got a taxi ride home and had the back and forth Obama-McCain, Akufo-Addo Mills conversation. He said he was definitely for the NPP, and when we asked why, his answer was also suprising. “Because the NDC killed my family. I will never vote for them and they will never be good. They killed my uncle.”
- Last night, the boy our roommate has been talking to was chatting politics, and his opinion is that neither government is good, so he’s trying to make his vote strategic. He’s considering voting for the CPP (Convention People’s Party) and when I asked him why, wasn’t that like voting against the NPP (which he really doesn’t want) he responded “Yes, maybe. But I want to contribute to building up the CPP for future elections.”
- We have a friend who was coordinating a walk for peaceful elections event, and who helped make “Survive Elections 08” shirts. What a different frame of reference – in the US our shirts are about how ‘cool’ it is to vote, and here at least a few people are worried about making it through them as a peaceful country.
- On the radio today, I heard an announcement about the voter registration verification program that is going to help in the first week of October at all police stations. The announcer said that it was set up in an effort to correct the voter registration inaccuracies from August’s registration, and encouraged everyone to confirm that their name and photo were there correctly. Also, he warned that all minors and illegible voters could use this a grace period to cross their names off and avoid facing fines and punishment later. Finally, he instructed all families to remove their dead relatives from the registry.
Anyway, let us know if you have any specific on the ground questions about how things are going.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
To all my family, friends, and anyone interested
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,
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,
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)