To all of the followers and readers of my blog, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I tahank you all for your continued interest in my life here in Ghana. And I give you my most sincere appreciation for your continuedf love, support, and prayers. They have helped me navigate and push through some of the challenges that I have faced here in Ghana, and they have helped make my first four months in Ghana some of the most rewarding months of my life. For all of my readers, I hope and pray that 2010 is as fruitful as you wish it to be and that God may bless each of you and be with you in all of your endeavors.
I apologize if these last four blog posts are replete with typos, word omissions, or awkward phrases. I have been very busy and was trying to get as many of my thoughts down as possible before I leave Accra for Kumasi, and unfortunately that may have caused me to compromise the neatness and sharpness of some of my writing. Nevertheless, that is no excuse. My inability to update my blog frequently and consistently is a travesty and embarrassing, and I am sorry. I am not promised much access to the internet for the next five months, and I can only realistically expect to have access to an internet cafe about once or twice a month over the next five months. Nevertheless, I promise to update my blog when it is possible, and I will try to continue to add pictures.
Thank you all - family, friends, and loyal supporters - again for your continued interest in my Ghanian adventures. I can never guaranttee eloquence or neatness with my writing. Nevertheless, I think everyone can appreciate my honesty in relaying the ins-and-outs of my time here. I hope this blog is as interesting to read as it is rewarding for me to type. Again, may God bless each one of you, and Happy New Year! Or as they say here in Ghana: "Afenhyia Pa ! ! !"
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Golf, A Love Never Dies!
My time in Accra is fast approaching its end. As I type this post, I have less than twenty-four hours left in this city I have grown to love. Before coming to Ghana I was sent a large packet by World Learning, Princeton's partner organization in Ghana for the Bridge Year, that was to aid in my preparation for my Bridge Year. Inside the packet was a packing list. The packing list included nearly everything you can imagine: mosquito nets, bug spray, all the necessary toiletries, suggestions of the most practical wardrobe, etc.. The list was several pages long. However, despite the breadth of this list, there was one item that was not on there that was an integral part of my life in America, my golf clubs. Me being the golf enthusiast that I am, I went on the internet to see if there were any golf courses in Ghana. Much to my chagrin the results were not very promising. However, there is one golf course in Accra, Achimota Golf Club! At orientation I joked with Yaw, my program director here in Ghana, about how it would be neat to golf in Ghana. However, I never really expected this wish to come to fruition. By signing up for the Bridge Year I had already come to terms with the fact that I would be giving up my sleek steel shafts and flawless titanium heads for a while. I accepted this because I knew that I was not coming to Ghana to play golf.
A few weeks ago I was talking to Cole, one of my cohorts and the only other male on the sojourn with me, and explaining to him how much I missed golf. I missed the freshly cut grass in the morning and the smell of the morning's fresh dew on the ground. I missed the simple things about the game: the sensation that you feel go up your arms when you hit a crisp wedge shot or a three-hundred yard drive; and the adrenaline rush after sinking a fifteen foot left-to-right putt on the eighteenth hole to beat your buddies. Cole sympathized with me, and although he is by no means in love with the game he saw that I am. He could see how much joy golf brings me by the way I was describing my nostalgia, and he wanted to be a part of this fun with me. Being the ingenious man that he is, Cole suggested that we orchestrate a way to play a round of golf one afternoon over the holiday break at the Achimota Golf Club. The prospect excited me; although, I did not get my hopes up because I understand that we are busy people and I did not even bring my golf clubs with me. Nevertheless, the stars aligned, and this past Sunday we were able to make it out to the golf course. Charles, Cole, and I took a tro-tro to Achimota and we alighted at the Golf Club for what would prove to be a most fulfilling and memorable afternoon.
We arrived at the golf club late, around 3:45 PM. We would have liked to arrive earlier; however the weekly five hour church service prevented this from happening. But that was no problem. I was simply happy to be at a golf course. So we paid our greens fees, retreived our set or rental clubs, and set off for the first tee around 4 PM. The sun sets around 6 PM so we were only allotted two hours of daylight to get our golf fixing. And what a fun two hours it was. The first hole is a 175 yard par 3. The teebox is directly below the veranda of the clubhouse, an area which men and ladies can sit and socialize over an ice cool beer following their round of golf. All the eyes on the veranda were on Cole and me. People expected us to be good because we are 'Oburoni.' However, despite the glares and anxious eyes, I did not feel the least but nervous. My excitement and eagerness left me immune to all other emotions for the time being. I asked my caddy for the 8-iron, so he grabbed the classic 'Ping Eye 2' steel beauty and handed it to me. Much to my own surprise, I managed to make contact with my first swing and ended up landing just off of the left fringe of the green. My touched proved to be just as poor and rusty as I expected it to be. So I three-putted, bent over, and picked the ball out of the cup for the first time in over four months, and I was off!
Everything about the afternoon was cathartic and brought back so many fond memories. I was walking the sweet fairways of God's green earth with my two best friends, Cole and Charles. We sweated under the hot African sun together, reminisced and exchanged stories about our time in Accra together, and laughed at ourselves when we bladed, hooked, and yes, even shanked the occasional 4-iron. The skill may be hard to find; my touch may be nearly all gone at this moment; but the love and bliss I experience on the golf course is still there. I still watch each of my drives with intent and curious eyes to see where they land. And felt just as sweet on Sunday when I sunk a twenty-foot anake of a putt to save par on the eighth hole to save par. Granted, on this afternoon, the putt was to keep me at five over par instead of even par - a score I can hope to challenge again next summer upon returning to the States! The passage of a few months has not caused my love for golf, nor for Arnold Palmers, to subside. Following our round of golf, I treated Cole and Charles to Arnold Palmers. For those of you who do not know. An 'Arnold Palmer' is an historic golfer's drink, and it is made by mixing lemonade and sweet tea - or at least it is sweet tea if you are from the South! This was the first time that Cole's and Charles' taste buds were privelaged enough to receive the deluctably refreshing sensation that an Arnold Palmer gives each man who drinks one. It is encouraging that while I am in a culture very different from my own I can still find joy and stasis playing the game I love. The fairways are just as pretty; the fellowship with my buds is just as rewarding; and the Arnold Palmers are just as sweet...
A few weeks ago I was talking to Cole, one of my cohorts and the only other male on the sojourn with me, and explaining to him how much I missed golf. I missed the freshly cut grass in the morning and the smell of the morning's fresh dew on the ground. I missed the simple things about the game: the sensation that you feel go up your arms when you hit a crisp wedge shot or a three-hundred yard drive; and the adrenaline rush after sinking a fifteen foot left-to-right putt on the eighteenth hole to beat your buddies. Cole sympathized with me, and although he is by no means in love with the game he saw that I am. He could see how much joy golf brings me by the way I was describing my nostalgia, and he wanted to be a part of this fun with me. Being the ingenious man that he is, Cole suggested that we orchestrate a way to play a round of golf one afternoon over the holiday break at the Achimota Golf Club. The prospect excited me; although, I did not get my hopes up because I understand that we are busy people and I did not even bring my golf clubs with me. Nevertheless, the stars aligned, and this past Sunday we were able to make it out to the golf course. Charles, Cole, and I took a tro-tro to Achimota and we alighted at the Golf Club for what would prove to be a most fulfilling and memorable afternoon.
We arrived at the golf club late, around 3:45 PM. We would have liked to arrive earlier; however the weekly five hour church service prevented this from happening. But that was no problem. I was simply happy to be at a golf course. So we paid our greens fees, retreived our set or rental clubs, and set off for the first tee around 4 PM. The sun sets around 6 PM so we were only allotted two hours of daylight to get our golf fixing. And what a fun two hours it was. The first hole is a 175 yard par 3. The teebox is directly below the veranda of the clubhouse, an area which men and ladies can sit and socialize over an ice cool beer following their round of golf. All the eyes on the veranda were on Cole and me. People expected us to be good because we are 'Oburoni.' However, despite the glares and anxious eyes, I did not feel the least but nervous. My excitement and eagerness left me immune to all other emotions for the time being. I asked my caddy for the 8-iron, so he grabbed the classic 'Ping Eye 2' steel beauty and handed it to me. Much to my own surprise, I managed to make contact with my first swing and ended up landing just off of the left fringe of the green. My touched proved to be just as poor and rusty as I expected it to be. So I three-putted, bent over, and picked the ball out of the cup for the first time in over four months, and I was off!
Everything about the afternoon was cathartic and brought back so many fond memories. I was walking the sweet fairways of God's green earth with my two best friends, Cole and Charles. We sweated under the hot African sun together, reminisced and exchanged stories about our time in Accra together, and laughed at ourselves when we bladed, hooked, and yes, even shanked the occasional 4-iron. The skill may be hard to find; my touch may be nearly all gone at this moment; but the love and bliss I experience on the golf course is still there. I still watch each of my drives with intent and curious eyes to see where they land. And felt just as sweet on Sunday when I sunk a twenty-foot anake of a putt to save par on the eighth hole to save par. Granted, on this afternoon, the putt was to keep me at five over par instead of even par - a score I can hope to challenge again next summer upon returning to the States! The passage of a few months has not caused my love for golf, nor for Arnold Palmers, to subside. Following our round of golf, I treated Cole and Charles to Arnold Palmers. For those of you who do not know. An 'Arnold Palmer' is an historic golfer's drink, and it is made by mixing lemonade and sweet tea - or at least it is sweet tea if you are from the South! This was the first time that Cole's and Charles' taste buds were privelaged enough to receive the deluctably refreshing sensation that an Arnold Palmer gives each man who drinks one. It is encouraging that while I am in a culture very different from my own I can still find joy and stasis playing the game I love. The fairways are just as pretty; the fellowship with my buds is just as rewarding; and the Arnold Palmers are just as sweet...
Giving Back to Maamobi Prisons No. 1 JHS
My Bridge Year began in the last week of August 2009 in Princeton, New Jersey with a one week orientation that was designed to help prepare me for the physical, emotional, and mental challenges of my nine months ahead. During one of the orientation sessions, John Luria, Director of the Bridge Year Program, led a discussion on the psychology of the traveler. He told us what to expect upon arrival. He dubbed it “The Honeymoon Phase.” We would be away from home, free to explore our new surroundings, and free to make our own choices and do as we please with our free time. This newly found freedom and the novelty of a new country were things to welcome. However, following this “honeymoon period,” we could expect to experience what is often called “The Crash.” During this period of time we could our emotions to come back down to earth. We would realize that there are certain things about this new culture that we may come to find difficult to adjust to: the food, the language, the pace of life, etc.. We would realize that we are not on a vacation, and that we will not see our loved ones for a long time. And the thought that turns a fleeting thought of gloominess into a “Crash” is the realization that my discomfort, my uneasiness, and my nostalgia are not temporary. I am here to stay – for nine months at least – and I will not go home for a long while.
I experienced my “crash” a bit late in my stay in Ghana. It happened in early November. However, my crash was not brought about by illness, different foods, a trouble in grasping the local language, or even homesickness. I quickly realized that any illness was to be expected as my body was adapting to new air, new weather, new bacteria, and a new time zone. As far as food, I knew that would be different, and I quickly adapted to eating more yams and cassava. The language I knew would take time and so I did not put an enormous amount of pressure on myself in this area. And homesickness is simply natural, so I did not panic when I began to miss my family and friends. After all, I am Latino. And although I am not one to believe in stereotypes, this one holds true: All Latin boys are mama’s boys. So I was not alarmed when I began to crave sizzling chorizo sausage with homemade tortillas, or when I began to miss the refreshing smell of Clorox that permeates our home after my mom has cleaned the whole house. Rather what caused my “crash” was the self-realization that I was becoming complacent. I was going to work everyday, but I was not fully giving my whole self to the job. I found the apathy of some of the teachers discouraging. And instead of being the change I wished to see, I was quickly becoming a victim of my environment and becoming apathetic myself. Apathetic is a harsh word; I suppose it would be more accurate to say that I just became immune to the idleness around me. I was becoming more and more complacent and thus short-siding my teaching potential and cheating my students. I would grudgingly agree to cover a class for a teacher instead of simply doing the job I was asked to do to the best of my abilities. And I was discouraged because I had been teaching for two months, and had only a month and a half left, and I questioned whether I was making a meaningful contribution on the students and school. Would the students and teachers of Maamobi Prisons No. 1 JSS remember me after I left?
What was most disheartening, and what really brought about the “crash,” was the fact that all of my negative feelings, my complacency, and my begrudging feelings towards some of the teachers were brought about by myself. I had lost sight of who I was responsible for and who I was affecting; I was responsible for myself, my actions only, and my attitude – positive or negative – was affecting the students I was responsible for teaching. I was not responsible for other teachers, and if I was discouraged in the job I was doing I had only myself to blame. Regrets come about only when we do neither what we ought to do nor what we like. In all honesty, I suppose to call my emotional trough a “crash” would be a bit of a misnomer. Simply because I did not suffer a traumatic experience that spiraled me into a state of depression, and my emotional decline was not sudden. Rather, I had been sliding down a gentle slope of laziness and apathy for a while. My slide did not have any road signs; it was a gradual one. As I stated earlier: I had become the part of my environment that I criticized the most instead of being the change I wished to see. It did not take me long to snap myself out of my state of self-pity. I reflected on how blessed I was to be in Ghana, and how I was fortunate to be given this Bridge Year opportunity. I soon realized that I did not want to look back on my time in Accra and feel as though I could have done more if I had worked a little harder and cared a little more. It is in this spirit that I began to work to fulfill my real mission for being here: to leave Maamobi Prisons No. 1 JSS better than I found it.
My plan, or goal if you wish to call it that, to accomplish my aforementioned mission was twofold. It was not uncommon for me to have a bit of free time at the end of certain school days if I had finished marking all of my assignments and if I was not scheduled to teach an afternoon class. On such days I could often be found reading at my desk, and I would never read without my pocket-size Oxford Mini Dictionary & Thesaurus by my side. On more than a few occasions, various students came up to me and asked me what purpose the small book I periodically looked through served. I would tell them that I prefer reading with a dictionary close by whenever possible so that if I come across a word I do not know I can look it up. I encouraged the students to take a look through the dictionary, and each time one looked through it he or she would then ask me if I could give mine to him or her. My first initiative would be to try to raise enough money to buy each of my students his or her very own Oxford Mini Dictionary & Thesaurus. This way each student could have a dictionary that he could call his own, and he could then use the invaluable and necessary tool anytime he pleased in order to improve his English. My second initiative was more geared to aiding the teachers and to creating a more efficient and clean environment conducive to effective teaching and sound learning. To do this I wanted to remove the old, crusty (please excuse the informal language, but this is a fairly accurate description of the boards) chalkboards and install brand-new, dry-erase whiteboards. All of the chalkboards had cracks in them. One – the chalkboard in the form 2 classroom – even had a gaping hole in the middle of it. The teacher would begin writing a sentence on the left-hand side of the board and midway through the sentence would have to jump three feet to the right-hand side of the board and continue writing the same sentence on a different section of the board. Also, teachers and students alike complain each time the board has to be erased as chalk dust fills the air and causes a lot of people to cough. Additionally, the chalk dirties the clothes of the teachers who are using it. I figured whiteboards would be easier to clean, easier to manage, and the writing would appear clearer on them than on the chalkboards.
In order to support my efforts, in late November I sent out letters soliciting the help of my family, friends, and the Charlotte Princeton Alumni network. I did not want to burden anyone, so I only sought out people who had made it known to me that they wanted to contribute to aiding the teachers and students I am serving and working alongside with here in Ghana. Each group of people showed incredible generosity, selflessness, and benevolence by making significant contributions to my efforts. The donations were enough to pay for ninety Oxford Mini Dictionaries & Thesauruses – enough to give to each of my students and to each teacher – and to cover the cost for acquiring the materials to build and install one ‘4 x 12’ whiteboard in each classroom (three whiteboards total). To build the whiteboards we bought three ‘4 x 12’ pieces of ¾ inch thick plywood, Formica (the glossy, white surface that you actually write one), lots of carpenters glue (a few liters), blocks and nails to mount the boards into the wall permanently, and plastic border to make the boards aesthetically appealing. Contributions also went towards buying the teachers a bountiful amount of dry-erase markers and erasers so they do not have to worry about buying those on their own. My host father, a professional carpenter, and I all worked together to build and install the whiteboards into each of the classrooms. I hope to upload some pictures of the construction and installation process; they would include pictures of the old chalkboards, the bare classroom walls (after we tore down the chalkboards), and the newly installed whiteboards.
It is not good that I came to a point where I was embarrassed of the effort, or lack there of, that I was putting into my work here in Ghana. I acknowledge that any feelings or questions I may have regarding the “difference or impact” I am making on the people I am serving are unfounded. And they are in large part rooted in an ego-oriented, misguided perception of my work, which is wrong. My work is meaningful, and I am only to be ashamed if I do not give each job my best effort. And I now recognize, and in the blog post below will talk about, that when I become complacent and give less than my best I am not only shortchanging myself. I am cheating more people. My time is not simply my own, and I cannot simply do with it as I please. And that is what I want to devote the next post to: Let’s talk about “Time”…
I experienced my “crash” a bit late in my stay in Ghana. It happened in early November. However, my crash was not brought about by illness, different foods, a trouble in grasping the local language, or even homesickness. I quickly realized that any illness was to be expected as my body was adapting to new air, new weather, new bacteria, and a new time zone. As far as food, I knew that would be different, and I quickly adapted to eating more yams and cassava. The language I knew would take time and so I did not put an enormous amount of pressure on myself in this area. And homesickness is simply natural, so I did not panic when I began to miss my family and friends. After all, I am Latino. And although I am not one to believe in stereotypes, this one holds true: All Latin boys are mama’s boys. So I was not alarmed when I began to crave sizzling chorizo sausage with homemade tortillas, or when I began to miss the refreshing smell of Clorox that permeates our home after my mom has cleaned the whole house. Rather what caused my “crash” was the self-realization that I was becoming complacent. I was going to work everyday, but I was not fully giving my whole self to the job. I found the apathy of some of the teachers discouraging. And instead of being the change I wished to see, I was quickly becoming a victim of my environment and becoming apathetic myself. Apathetic is a harsh word; I suppose it would be more accurate to say that I just became immune to the idleness around me. I was becoming more and more complacent and thus short-siding my teaching potential and cheating my students. I would grudgingly agree to cover a class for a teacher instead of simply doing the job I was asked to do to the best of my abilities. And I was discouraged because I had been teaching for two months, and had only a month and a half left, and I questioned whether I was making a meaningful contribution on the students and school. Would the students and teachers of Maamobi Prisons No. 1 JSS remember me after I left?
What was most disheartening, and what really brought about the “crash,” was the fact that all of my negative feelings, my complacency, and my begrudging feelings towards some of the teachers were brought about by myself. I had lost sight of who I was responsible for and who I was affecting; I was responsible for myself, my actions only, and my attitude – positive or negative – was affecting the students I was responsible for teaching. I was not responsible for other teachers, and if I was discouraged in the job I was doing I had only myself to blame. Regrets come about only when we do neither what we ought to do nor what we like. In all honesty, I suppose to call my emotional trough a “crash” would be a bit of a misnomer. Simply because I did not suffer a traumatic experience that spiraled me into a state of depression, and my emotional decline was not sudden. Rather, I had been sliding down a gentle slope of laziness and apathy for a while. My slide did not have any road signs; it was a gradual one. As I stated earlier: I had become the part of my environment that I criticized the most instead of being the change I wished to see. It did not take me long to snap myself out of my state of self-pity. I reflected on how blessed I was to be in Ghana, and how I was fortunate to be given this Bridge Year opportunity. I soon realized that I did not want to look back on my time in Accra and feel as though I could have done more if I had worked a little harder and cared a little more. It is in this spirit that I began to work to fulfill my real mission for being here: to leave Maamobi Prisons No. 1 JSS better than I found it.
My plan, or goal if you wish to call it that, to accomplish my aforementioned mission was twofold. It was not uncommon for me to have a bit of free time at the end of certain school days if I had finished marking all of my assignments and if I was not scheduled to teach an afternoon class. On such days I could often be found reading at my desk, and I would never read without my pocket-size Oxford Mini Dictionary & Thesaurus by my side. On more than a few occasions, various students came up to me and asked me what purpose the small book I periodically looked through served. I would tell them that I prefer reading with a dictionary close by whenever possible so that if I come across a word I do not know I can look it up. I encouraged the students to take a look through the dictionary, and each time one looked through it he or she would then ask me if I could give mine to him or her. My first initiative would be to try to raise enough money to buy each of my students his or her very own Oxford Mini Dictionary & Thesaurus. This way each student could have a dictionary that he could call his own, and he could then use the invaluable and necessary tool anytime he pleased in order to improve his English. My second initiative was more geared to aiding the teachers and to creating a more efficient and clean environment conducive to effective teaching and sound learning. To do this I wanted to remove the old, crusty (please excuse the informal language, but this is a fairly accurate description of the boards) chalkboards and install brand-new, dry-erase whiteboards. All of the chalkboards had cracks in them. One – the chalkboard in the form 2 classroom – even had a gaping hole in the middle of it. The teacher would begin writing a sentence on the left-hand side of the board and midway through the sentence would have to jump three feet to the right-hand side of the board and continue writing the same sentence on a different section of the board. Also, teachers and students alike complain each time the board has to be erased as chalk dust fills the air and causes a lot of people to cough. Additionally, the chalk dirties the clothes of the teachers who are using it. I figured whiteboards would be easier to clean, easier to manage, and the writing would appear clearer on them than on the chalkboards.
In order to support my efforts, in late November I sent out letters soliciting the help of my family, friends, and the Charlotte Princeton Alumni network. I did not want to burden anyone, so I only sought out people who had made it known to me that they wanted to contribute to aiding the teachers and students I am serving and working alongside with here in Ghana. Each group of people showed incredible generosity, selflessness, and benevolence by making significant contributions to my efforts. The donations were enough to pay for ninety Oxford Mini Dictionaries & Thesauruses – enough to give to each of my students and to each teacher – and to cover the cost for acquiring the materials to build and install one ‘4 x 12’ whiteboard in each classroom (three whiteboards total). To build the whiteboards we bought three ‘4 x 12’ pieces of ¾ inch thick plywood, Formica (the glossy, white surface that you actually write one), lots of carpenters glue (a few liters), blocks and nails to mount the boards into the wall permanently, and plastic border to make the boards aesthetically appealing. Contributions also went towards buying the teachers a bountiful amount of dry-erase markers and erasers so they do not have to worry about buying those on their own. My host father, a professional carpenter, and I all worked together to build and install the whiteboards into each of the classrooms. I hope to upload some pictures of the construction and installation process; they would include pictures of the old chalkboards, the bare classroom walls (after we tore down the chalkboards), and the newly installed whiteboards.
It is not good that I came to a point where I was embarrassed of the effort, or lack there of, that I was putting into my work here in Ghana. I acknowledge that any feelings or questions I may have regarding the “difference or impact” I am making on the people I am serving are unfounded. And they are in large part rooted in an ego-oriented, misguided perception of my work, which is wrong. My work is meaningful, and I am only to be ashamed if I do not give each job my best effort. And I now recognize, and in the blog post below will talk about, that when I become complacent and give less than my best I am not only shortchanging myself. I am cheating more people. My time is not simply my own, and I cannot simply do with it as I please. And that is what I want to devote the next post to: Let’s talk about “Time”…
My Time Is Not My Own
Upon committing to deferring matriculation for a year and opting to take a Bridge Year, many people asked me why I made the decision I made. They did not ask me because they necessarily agreed or disagreed with my decision. They simply asked, and I am still asked, because they wanted to know what motivated my decision. The truth is it was a whole host of reasons, and it would be unnecessary and irrelevant to this blog to go into all of them. However, there is one reason that I chose to take a Bridge Year abroad that I want to elaborate on because I feel like it is worth explaining.
I am a notorious procrastinator. If you talk to anyone who knows me well they will attest to this. My parents and brother can attest to it because they have been kept awake by my bedroom light deep into the night because I was up late studying for a test that I had known about for weeks. My high school classmates can attest to it because many of them received phone calls in the middle of the night from me asking for help. And if they ever needed help they never failed to call me. Not because they were confident that I would be able to help them, but because they knew that I would most certainly be up cramming to finish my assignment the night before it was due. Though I have never set foot on a college campus as an enrolled freshman, something I know about entering college is that one enters a drastically different environment (most of the time, unless one went to a boarding school) from the one he was accustomed to in high school. An individual no longer lives at home; he takes less classes; he has more free time and new freedoms. One of the things I feared about going straight into college was that in a new environment I would try to maintain the behaviors I was accustomed to and comfortable with in high school, behaviors and habits that I felt had worked fine for me the previous eighteen years of my existence. This would only be natural: to simply behave the way I have always behaved. However, this Bridge Year has allowed me the time and practice ground to examine my habits and behaviors and refine them to better suit a free, independent lifestyle. And the behavior that I have come to deplore, and must work on the most, is my shameful propensity to procrastinate. More broadly, my whole perception of time and my time-management has changed, and that is the topic of this blog: How Ghana has changed my perception of my time.
A part of Ghanaian culture that I have come to love and appreciate is the laid-back nature of people. People, for the most part, are very relaxed. There are not too many high-strung individuals, and it is not often that you will find someone growing overly worked up over an inconvenience or quagmire. In an earlier blog post I talked a bit about the collective, brotherly nature of Ghanaian society, and this holds true in leisure. People enjoy relaxing and having a good time with the people they love the most. For example, I can step out my front door in East Legon, Accra and will never have any trouble finding a game or Rummy to join. There are always men sitting in front of their houses either playing cards, chatting, or listening to the radio, and they welcome a companion to join them in their leisure. This is to be admired. However, too much of most things are usually not good, and the laid-back attitude and indulgence in leisure is no different. People are sometime easygoing to a fault. The free-spirit lifestyle that most people choose to live by can often lead to over-indulgence in leisure. Sometimes people are even idle and seemingly basic, menial tasks may take hours or days to get done depending on the job. Many people joke about “African Time.” “African Time” is the name people, locals included, use refer to Africans’ propensity to always be running late. I have found it nearly impossible to schedule meetings in Ghana. Most Ghanaians cannot give you a set time of their arrival, much less suggest a time when a meeting should commence.
For example, last week I wanted to meet a Ghanaian friend of mine, George, for dinner. I suggested 7:00 PM on Tuesday. He said, “Of course Nick. That’s fine. 7:00, 7:30 sounds good to me.” I knew that when he said that he was hinting to me that there was a slim chance he would meet me at 7:00 PM, and there was a good chance that he would arrive after 7:30 PM – likely closer to 8:00 PM. Here is another example…In America, when one receives a wedding invitation that says, “The wedding ceremony will commence at 6:30 PM on Saturday evening” he can be sure that if he shows up at 7:00 PM the Church doors will most likely be closed, he will have to embarrassingly walk into the chapel and sit down (likely a conspicuous spectacle), and he will have missed the start of the wedding. However, in Ghana it is different. My host auntie and host sister attended a wedding three Sundays ago. The wedding was scheduled to begin at 10:00 AM. The bride did not show up until 12:30 PM! And the guests and attendees had to wait and sing hymnals to pass the time as they waited two and a half hours for the bride to show up to her own wedding.
Here is one last example. In the previous blog (above) I talked about the donation, building, and installation of the whiteboards in the school I teach at. However, I did not mention the debacle that nearly thwarted all of our efforts. I bought the three ‘4 x 12’ pieces of ¾ inch thick plywood a week and a half before we actually installed the boards. We kept the three pieces of plywood just outside the side door of our house. We figured this would be fine because we live in a compound. The area is gated and an eight and a half foot cement wall encompasses the whole compound. This is a fairly common setup in Ghana, and such compounds are rarely robbed. However, the night before we were set to install the whiteboards was different. I woke up to check and make sure that we had all of the necessary tools and supplies to build the whiteboards before we loaded the truck to meet the headmaster at the school at 8:30 AM on the morning of December 21, 2009. However, the boards were gone and were nowhere to be found. Mr. Kodji, the headmaster, was scheduled to meet us at the school because he had keys to each of the classrooms so that we could enter each classroom and install the whiteboards. We had to call him and ask him if we could meet later because Charles (my host father) and I had to go to town to buy three new ‘4 x 12’ pieces of ¾ inch thick plywood before we could meet the Mr. Kodji at the school. I asked Charles what time he thought we would be finished making our necessary rounds so that I could give the headmaster a new time to meet us at the school. Charles told me to not give him a time and to tell him that we would call him when we were ready. I could not believe this. It was the holidays and I wanted to be considerate of Mr. Kodji’s time and not leave him waiting around for us to call him when he could be taking care of other responsibilities of his. Charles did not seem to mind, and interestingly enough neither did Mr. Kodji when I called to tell him to wait for us to call him before he went to the school. That is just the way things run in Ghana. To me it is at times frustrating, but I have learned to become more patient, understanding, and respectful of other people’s time. Just to finish the anecdote, we did end up calling Mr. Kodji eventually that day. However, by the time we went to town and returned, it was too late to meet him so we ended up meeti8ng the next day. Nevertheless, setbacks aside, we installed the boards the next day.
These are three classic examples of time trials (no hyphen) in Africa. So what has this taught me? It has taught me to be selfless, practical, wise, and understanding with my time. I have been a procrastinator all of my life, but I am determined to change this cancerous habit. I used to justify my procrastination by saying that, “My time is my own.” My mom would always implore me to use my time wisely. I would always tell her to not worry and that I would get my work done before the deadline so she should not worry. This was always true, but as I reflect I realize that it was a poor way of justifying my behavior. I would tell her that I wanted to enjoy my free time, so instead of taking advantage of my free time to get my work done ahead to time so I would not have to procrastinate I would relax and be idle. This would leave me cramming at the last minute to get my work done, and I often lost hours of sleep because of it. However, I was okay with this. Because I viewed my time as just that, MINE. So I could do with it as I pleased so long as I did get my responsibilities done in the end, and on time. After seeing how time is valued here in Ghana, and after genuine reflection and critique of my own time management, I now realize how selfish this perception is.
The fact is: My time is not my own. Or at least, it does not solely belong to me. In fact, no man can, in the most literal sense of the word, ‘own’ time. As C.S. Lewis so eloquently put it in his novel The Screwtape Letters: “The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels.” This convicted me when I read it. No man tells the sun when to rise, or when to set. No man can give another man more time on this earth than he is already destined to have. And no man can manipulate time to suit his own schedule. The clock will always move at a rate of sixty seconds per minute. And the future is a place reached by everyone at the rate of twenty-four hours in a day, seven days a week, and three hundred and sixty-five days a year, no matter who you are. And because we are only given a finite number of time on this earth as a ‘pure gift,’ we should cherish it and make the most of each second. This sense of entitlement that my time is MINE is selfish and is rooted in unfounded pride. Because if I am honest, if we are all honest with ourselves, my time is not my own, and neither is my body, or my soul. It is a gift that is to be used prudently to carry out the work it was sent to carry out, and to glorify the One who gave me them as ‘pure gifts.’
I talked about my “Crash” that was precipitated by a sense of complacency. I became complacent because I grew very comfortable with the Ghanaian lifestyle and my life here. I persuaded myself that the future – or at least my time here – was going to be agreeable so I did not need to worry about the future or what to do with my time. I later realized how self-absorbed this is. And this is one of the thoughts that motivated me in putting together the initiatives to help Maamobi Prisons No. 1 JSS. As I have said before, I do feel morally obligated to give back because I am so blessed. I have a responsibility to make the most of the finite amount of time I have been given. I should spend my life giving myself patiently and generously to each moment for the good of posterity. There is something to be admired in the easygoing spirit of Ghanaians. And leisure and relaxation are healthy, even necessary, in leading a sane and fulfilling existence – but only to a point. I am starting to find out what works best for me, and everyone is different. We all manage our time differently, and different people do marvelously for themselves by managing their time in the way that works best for them. I have learned that the key is to find what works best for me and to stay true to that. I am not perfect, and I will continue to struggle with time management. My time is not my own. And I can rest my head in peace at night if I can look back on the prior day and say that I pulled all I could out of each second – each ‘pure gift’ – I was given.
I am a notorious procrastinator. If you talk to anyone who knows me well they will attest to this. My parents and brother can attest to it because they have been kept awake by my bedroom light deep into the night because I was up late studying for a test that I had known about for weeks. My high school classmates can attest to it because many of them received phone calls in the middle of the night from me asking for help. And if they ever needed help they never failed to call me. Not because they were confident that I would be able to help them, but because they knew that I would most certainly be up cramming to finish my assignment the night before it was due. Though I have never set foot on a college campus as an enrolled freshman, something I know about entering college is that one enters a drastically different environment (most of the time, unless one went to a boarding school) from the one he was accustomed to in high school. An individual no longer lives at home; he takes less classes; he has more free time and new freedoms. One of the things I feared about going straight into college was that in a new environment I would try to maintain the behaviors I was accustomed to and comfortable with in high school, behaviors and habits that I felt had worked fine for me the previous eighteen years of my existence. This would only be natural: to simply behave the way I have always behaved. However, this Bridge Year has allowed me the time and practice ground to examine my habits and behaviors and refine them to better suit a free, independent lifestyle. And the behavior that I have come to deplore, and must work on the most, is my shameful propensity to procrastinate. More broadly, my whole perception of time and my time-management has changed, and that is the topic of this blog: How Ghana has changed my perception of my time.
A part of Ghanaian culture that I have come to love and appreciate is the laid-back nature of people. People, for the most part, are very relaxed. There are not too many high-strung individuals, and it is not often that you will find someone growing overly worked up over an inconvenience or quagmire. In an earlier blog post I talked a bit about the collective, brotherly nature of Ghanaian society, and this holds true in leisure. People enjoy relaxing and having a good time with the people they love the most. For example, I can step out my front door in East Legon, Accra and will never have any trouble finding a game or Rummy to join. There are always men sitting in front of their houses either playing cards, chatting, or listening to the radio, and they welcome a companion to join them in their leisure. This is to be admired. However, too much of most things are usually not good, and the laid-back attitude and indulgence in leisure is no different. People are sometime easygoing to a fault. The free-spirit lifestyle that most people choose to live by can often lead to over-indulgence in leisure. Sometimes people are even idle and seemingly basic, menial tasks may take hours or days to get done depending on the job. Many people joke about “African Time.” “African Time” is the name people, locals included, use refer to Africans’ propensity to always be running late. I have found it nearly impossible to schedule meetings in Ghana. Most Ghanaians cannot give you a set time of their arrival, much less suggest a time when a meeting should commence.
For example, last week I wanted to meet a Ghanaian friend of mine, George, for dinner. I suggested 7:00 PM on Tuesday. He said, “Of course Nick. That’s fine. 7:00, 7:30 sounds good to me.” I knew that when he said that he was hinting to me that there was a slim chance he would meet me at 7:00 PM, and there was a good chance that he would arrive after 7:30 PM – likely closer to 8:00 PM. Here is another example…In America, when one receives a wedding invitation that says, “The wedding ceremony will commence at 6:30 PM on Saturday evening” he can be sure that if he shows up at 7:00 PM the Church doors will most likely be closed, he will have to embarrassingly walk into the chapel and sit down (likely a conspicuous spectacle), and he will have missed the start of the wedding. However, in Ghana it is different. My host auntie and host sister attended a wedding three Sundays ago. The wedding was scheduled to begin at 10:00 AM. The bride did not show up until 12:30 PM! And the guests and attendees had to wait and sing hymnals to pass the time as they waited two and a half hours for the bride to show up to her own wedding.
Here is one last example. In the previous blog (above) I talked about the donation, building, and installation of the whiteboards in the school I teach at. However, I did not mention the debacle that nearly thwarted all of our efforts. I bought the three ‘4 x 12’ pieces of ¾ inch thick plywood a week and a half before we actually installed the boards. We kept the three pieces of plywood just outside the side door of our house. We figured this would be fine because we live in a compound. The area is gated and an eight and a half foot cement wall encompasses the whole compound. This is a fairly common setup in Ghana, and such compounds are rarely robbed. However, the night before we were set to install the whiteboards was different. I woke up to check and make sure that we had all of the necessary tools and supplies to build the whiteboards before we loaded the truck to meet the headmaster at the school at 8:30 AM on the morning of December 21, 2009. However, the boards were gone and were nowhere to be found. Mr. Kodji, the headmaster, was scheduled to meet us at the school because he had keys to each of the classrooms so that we could enter each classroom and install the whiteboards. We had to call him and ask him if we could meet later because Charles (my host father) and I had to go to town to buy three new ‘4 x 12’ pieces of ¾ inch thick plywood before we could meet the Mr. Kodji at the school. I asked Charles what time he thought we would be finished making our necessary rounds so that I could give the headmaster a new time to meet us at the school. Charles told me to not give him a time and to tell him that we would call him when we were ready. I could not believe this. It was the holidays and I wanted to be considerate of Mr. Kodji’s time and not leave him waiting around for us to call him when he could be taking care of other responsibilities of his. Charles did not seem to mind, and interestingly enough neither did Mr. Kodji when I called to tell him to wait for us to call him before he went to the school. That is just the way things run in Ghana. To me it is at times frustrating, but I have learned to become more patient, understanding, and respectful of other people’s time. Just to finish the anecdote, we did end up calling Mr. Kodji eventually that day. However, by the time we went to town and returned, it was too late to meet him so we ended up meeti8ng the next day. Nevertheless, setbacks aside, we installed the boards the next day.
These are three classic examples of time trials (no hyphen) in Africa. So what has this taught me? It has taught me to be selfless, practical, wise, and understanding with my time. I have been a procrastinator all of my life, but I am determined to change this cancerous habit. I used to justify my procrastination by saying that, “My time is my own.” My mom would always implore me to use my time wisely. I would always tell her to not worry and that I would get my work done before the deadline so she should not worry. This was always true, but as I reflect I realize that it was a poor way of justifying my behavior. I would tell her that I wanted to enjoy my free time, so instead of taking advantage of my free time to get my work done ahead to time so I would not have to procrastinate I would relax and be idle. This would leave me cramming at the last minute to get my work done, and I often lost hours of sleep because of it. However, I was okay with this. Because I viewed my time as just that, MINE. So I could do with it as I pleased so long as I did get my responsibilities done in the end, and on time. After seeing how time is valued here in Ghana, and after genuine reflection and critique of my own time management, I now realize how selfish this perception is.
The fact is: My time is not my own. Or at least, it does not solely belong to me. In fact, no man can, in the most literal sense of the word, ‘own’ time. As C.S. Lewis so eloquently put it in his novel The Screwtape Letters: “The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels.” This convicted me when I read it. No man tells the sun when to rise, or when to set. No man can give another man more time on this earth than he is already destined to have. And no man can manipulate time to suit his own schedule. The clock will always move at a rate of sixty seconds per minute. And the future is a place reached by everyone at the rate of twenty-four hours in a day, seven days a week, and three hundred and sixty-five days a year, no matter who you are. And because we are only given a finite number of time on this earth as a ‘pure gift,’ we should cherish it and make the most of each second. This sense of entitlement that my time is MINE is selfish and is rooted in unfounded pride. Because if I am honest, if we are all honest with ourselves, my time is not my own, and neither is my body, or my soul. It is a gift that is to be used prudently to carry out the work it was sent to carry out, and to glorify the One who gave me them as ‘pure gifts.’
I talked about my “Crash” that was precipitated by a sense of complacency. I became complacent because I grew very comfortable with the Ghanaian lifestyle and my life here. I persuaded myself that the future – or at least my time here – was going to be agreeable so I did not need to worry about the future or what to do with my time. I later realized how self-absorbed this is. And this is one of the thoughts that motivated me in putting together the initiatives to help Maamobi Prisons No. 1 JSS. As I have said before, I do feel morally obligated to give back because I am so blessed. I have a responsibility to make the most of the finite amount of time I have been given. I should spend my life giving myself patiently and generously to each moment for the good of posterity. There is something to be admired in the easygoing spirit of Ghanaians. And leisure and relaxation are healthy, even necessary, in leading a sane and fulfilling existence – but only to a point. I am starting to find out what works best for me, and everyone is different. We all manage our time differently, and different people do marvelously for themselves by managing their time in the way that works best for them. I have learned that the key is to find what works best for me and to stay true to that. I am not perfect, and I will continue to struggle with time management. My time is not my own. And I can rest my head in peace at night if I can look back on the prior day and say that I pulled all I could out of each second – each ‘pure gift’ – I was given.
Friday, November 13, 2009
"Mepaakyew, Eye sen?"
Something that is standard in Ghanaian culture, and something that I will miss greatly, is the practice and art of bargaining. With the exception of foreign, manufactured goods nearly everything is open to bargaining. One must bargain for a taxi, clothes, fruits, vegetables, jewelry, food at a chop bar, and if you feel you are being cheated by the mate, you can even bargain for your tro-tro fare. I am a young man of modest travel experience. But in my short time in Ghana I have already come to realize that you will only get out of the culture as much as you want. And no matter how much you want, you will only be able to get as much as you can understand. If you do not know the language, no matter how much studying you do, you will be limited. You will be limited in the depth of your conversations and interactions with locals. You will be limited as to what you can read on the signs and billboards. You will be helpless when you know that people are talking about you, sometimes in a slanderous manner, but you have no idea what they are saying, nor can you do anything about it. And quite frankly, if you do not know the language, you will be limited in your bargaining potential. Whether I like it or not, Ghanaian’s, and most people in developing countries for that matter, view white people as rich. Whether I am trying to catch a taxi, or inquiring about the price of six yards of fabric in the market, I can expect to be overcharged. So it is imperative, and the culture demands, that I be able to bargain. I believe that the best way to illustrate the bargaining experience is through a personal anecdote. The anecdote takes place at Makola, Accra’s largest market located in the central of the city. Traders there sell everything and anything. It is quieter than it used to be as stall holders are no longer allowed to set up in the streets around the market. Nevertheless, the rabbit warren of aisles inside the market still holds plenty to see…
The markets are split into sections. There are no signs that say, “This is the fabric section,” or “This is the produce section.” However, with a few trips to the market and some time an patience, one will gain a grasp of where everything is located. Two Saturdays ago I went to Makola Market with my host father, Charles. Charles and I have quickly become best of friends so I was happy that he could join me on my trip to the market. But more than that, I was extremely fortunate. It is always wise for a foreigner to go to the market with a local. Locals have a sound grasp of the language, the prices, the lay of the land, and appropriate bargaining techniques, so I was thankful that Charles came along. As I made clear in my first blog post in Ghana, I am a man after my mom’s own heart. As is the case, I become insatiably excited by the prospect of shopping. The swarms of people crowding the walkways, the diversity of goods, and the personalities one meets at the market all energize me. On this particular Saturday Charles and I went both “pleasure shopping” and “necessity shopping.” We finished our pleasure shopping first, and then had to go buy oranges and pineapple so that my auntie and I could make our own juice at home. We needed enough oranges and pineapple for two batches of juice, and we wanted to have enough so that there would be leftovers to eat should we please. We found a lady who was selling both oranges and pineapple, and we approached her stand.
“Mepaakyew, Ankaa wura ete sen?" (Excuse me, orange seller how are you?) I said. As has become the standard reaction whenever I open my mouth and speak Twi, the woman looked at me with an illuminated face of surprise and yelled, “Oburoni ote Twi” (White man understands Twi). We continued conversing. She asked me what my name was, both my real name and my Ghanaian name. She asked me where I was from, about my family, and what had brought me to Ghana. In order to effectively bargain, especially as a foreigner, it is important that one first establishes a relationship with the seller. This makes for a comfortable, easy-flowing exchange, and it insures that you don’t come across as a flippant and ignorant tourist. People are much more open to negotiating with customers if they feel like they are gaining a friend and loyal customer in the process. After introductions and some small talk, I explained to Ese (I came to know her name) that I wanted to buy some oranges and pineapple. “Mapaakyew, meto ankaa ne aborobe” (Please, I will buy some oranges and pineapple). “Wope ahe?” (How much do you want?) she said. I told her that I wanted forty oranges and six pineapples. Ese told me that forty oranges would cost four Ghana Cedi (roughly $2.74) – ten Pesawas per orange. Pineapple varies in cost depending on the size. Ese told me that the ones I wanted would cost one Ghana Cedi each. Six would be six Ghana cedi. Ese was a nice vendor; she was not trying to rip me off. We agreed on the price. Usually when buying food, it is customary for the buyer to ask for what is referred to as a “dash,” or a little extra. I was about to ask Ese for a dash since I had was buying so much fruit. “Mepaakyew, to so kakra,” (Please add a bit) I was going to say. However, before I could ask, benevolent Ese beat me to it. She told me that because I spoke Twi with her she would give me ten extra oranges and an extra pineapple free of charge. This was very generous of her, and I thanked her for her generosity. She told me that I should come by her stand whenever I return to the market. I happily agreed. “Yebehyia bio,” (We will meet again) I said. “Yoo, mate,” (All right, I hear you) she said.
My story recounts an experience I had in bargaining for fruit. That was not the only bargaining I did that day. Prior to that, I bought two football jerseys. Nicer clothing items such as this require more shrewd, patient, and skilled bargaining. Charles spoke significantly more in this encounter as my Twi skills are too novice at this point to be able to engage in a fifteen minute bargaining battle. He did marvelously and showed me how to operate with patience, kindness, and sternness. The seller initially wanted thirty-five Ghana Cedi for one jersey, but we ended up getting two for twenty Ghana Cedi. I could never have gotten this good of a price on my own. To be honest, I probably would have given in too soon. But I am learning by experience. After all, as goes the Akan maxim: “Culture is caught, not taught.” You must be nice so that the seller finds favor with you; however, you must also have the willpower to commit to a price and not allow any efforts of man to change your mind. It is understood that when buying luxury items (such as football jerseys) the seller will mention a really high price. If you pay it, then it is his lucky day and you are a softy. It is expected that the buyer then returns with a very low offer and through patience, time, and some witty banter a “fair deal” is met. Goods sold in the markets and along the sides of the street do not usually have fixed prices. One is therefore expected to bargain with the seller. However, the prices of goods in shops are fixed, so one does not normally bargain in shops. Occasionally, especially if it is a small shop, a customer may ask for a discount or a reduction of the price. Fruit and vegetable sellers usually add a few of the items they are selling as a gift, especially if the customer buys a sizable quantity. Ese was kind enough to do this for Charles and me. We walked away content with our jerseys, fifty oranges, and seven pineapples. I plan on returning to Makola and bargaining with Ese and vendors like her some day soon.
The markets are split into sections. There are no signs that say, “This is the fabric section,” or “This is the produce section.” However, with a few trips to the market and some time an patience, one will gain a grasp of where everything is located. Two Saturdays ago I went to Makola Market with my host father, Charles. Charles and I have quickly become best of friends so I was happy that he could join me on my trip to the market. But more than that, I was extremely fortunate. It is always wise for a foreigner to go to the market with a local. Locals have a sound grasp of the language, the prices, the lay of the land, and appropriate bargaining techniques, so I was thankful that Charles came along. As I made clear in my first blog post in Ghana, I am a man after my mom’s own heart. As is the case, I become insatiably excited by the prospect of shopping. The swarms of people crowding the walkways, the diversity of goods, and the personalities one meets at the market all energize me. On this particular Saturday Charles and I went both “pleasure shopping” and “necessity shopping.” We finished our pleasure shopping first, and then had to go buy oranges and pineapple so that my auntie and I could make our own juice at home. We needed enough oranges and pineapple for two batches of juice, and we wanted to have enough so that there would be leftovers to eat should we please. We found a lady who was selling both oranges and pineapple, and we approached her stand.
“Mepaakyew, Ankaa wura ete sen?" (Excuse me, orange seller how are you?) I said. As has become the standard reaction whenever I open my mouth and speak Twi, the woman looked at me with an illuminated face of surprise and yelled, “Oburoni ote Twi” (White man understands Twi). We continued conversing. She asked me what my name was, both my real name and my Ghanaian name. She asked me where I was from, about my family, and what had brought me to Ghana. In order to effectively bargain, especially as a foreigner, it is important that one first establishes a relationship with the seller. This makes for a comfortable, easy-flowing exchange, and it insures that you don’t come across as a flippant and ignorant tourist. People are much more open to negotiating with customers if they feel like they are gaining a friend and loyal customer in the process. After introductions and some small talk, I explained to Ese (I came to know her name) that I wanted to buy some oranges and pineapple. “Mapaakyew, meto ankaa ne aborobe” (Please, I will buy some oranges and pineapple). “Wope ahe?” (How much do you want?) she said. I told her that I wanted forty oranges and six pineapples. Ese told me that forty oranges would cost four Ghana Cedi (roughly $2.74) – ten Pesawas per orange. Pineapple varies in cost depending on the size. Ese told me that the ones I wanted would cost one Ghana Cedi each. Six would be six Ghana cedi. Ese was a nice vendor; she was not trying to rip me off. We agreed on the price. Usually when buying food, it is customary for the buyer to ask for what is referred to as a “dash,” or a little extra. I was about to ask Ese for a dash since I had was buying so much fruit. “Mepaakyew, to so kakra,” (Please add a bit) I was going to say. However, before I could ask, benevolent Ese beat me to it. She told me that because I spoke Twi with her she would give me ten extra oranges and an extra pineapple free of charge. This was very generous of her, and I thanked her for her generosity. She told me that I should come by her stand whenever I return to the market. I happily agreed. “Yebehyia bio,” (We will meet again) I said. “Yoo, mate,” (All right, I hear you) she said.
My story recounts an experience I had in bargaining for fruit. That was not the only bargaining I did that day. Prior to that, I bought two football jerseys. Nicer clothing items such as this require more shrewd, patient, and skilled bargaining. Charles spoke significantly more in this encounter as my Twi skills are too novice at this point to be able to engage in a fifteen minute bargaining battle. He did marvelously and showed me how to operate with patience, kindness, and sternness. The seller initially wanted thirty-five Ghana Cedi for one jersey, but we ended up getting two for twenty Ghana Cedi. I could never have gotten this good of a price on my own. To be honest, I probably would have given in too soon. But I am learning by experience. After all, as goes the Akan maxim: “Culture is caught, not taught.” You must be nice so that the seller finds favor with you; however, you must also have the willpower to commit to a price and not allow any efforts of man to change your mind. It is understood that when buying luxury items (such as football jerseys) the seller will mention a really high price. If you pay it, then it is his lucky day and you are a softy. It is expected that the buyer then returns with a very low offer and through patience, time, and some witty banter a “fair deal” is met. Goods sold in the markets and along the sides of the street do not usually have fixed prices. One is therefore expected to bargain with the seller. However, the prices of goods in shops are fixed, so one does not normally bargain in shops. Occasionally, especially if it is a small shop, a customer may ask for a discount or a reduction of the price. Fruit and vegetable sellers usually add a few of the items they are selling as a gift, especially if the customer buys a sizable quantity. Ese was kind enough to do this for Charles and me. We walked away content with our jerseys, fifty oranges, and seven pineapples. I plan on returning to Makola and bargaining with Ese and vendors like her some day soon.
A Little Nugget of Ghanaian Cultural Values
Over the past three weeks my comrades and I have attended a few introductory lectures at the University of Ghana. These lectures have been surveys of Ghanaian culture in the areas of Ghana’s economy, cultural values, and classes and tribalism in Ghana. This blog post is devoted to the blending of the latter two. There are many cultural values within a society. In addition to humanity and brotherhood, there are religious values, communal and individualistic values, moral values, family values, economic values, political (and in some cases chiefship) values, and aesthetic values such as art and artistic symbolism to name a few. However, for the sake of brevity and practicality, I will devote this blog entry to only two: humanity and brotherhood. This blog entry is a more educational piece. I feel that it is both an appropriate and necessary time to try to relay some of the observations I have made on Ghanaian culture through two months of living in the country. My blog posts up to this point have in large part been self-focused. I have told about my experiences, my challenges, and the lessons that I am beginning to learn. This makes sense because I was a newcomer to Ghana – ignorant to the language, religious practices, social norms, and standard living conditions. I was hardly ready or capable of drawing any accurate conclusions from the things I saw. And even now I still find myself in this weird transitory state. I have been in Ghana for two months. I am no longer a tourist, but I am by no means a local. I learn something new about Ghanaian life everyday, and this post, instead of being about me, is about my surroundings – surroundings that have proven to be both intricate and complex. Specifically, I will try to explain how the “cultural values” of humanity and brotherhood are able to be ever present in a society with such great ethnic diversity. I will draw on both my notes from the lectures I attended, and from my own impressions from the two months that have come to pas since I have been in Ghana.
Ghana gained its independence from British rule in 1957. Though Ghana is now an independent nation with definitive political boundaries, its people have retained allegiance and pride in their tribal roots that date back to pre-colonial days. There are about forty-one ethnic groups (i.e. nationalities) in Ghana. The major ones are the Akan, the Ewe, the Dagomba, Ga-Adangbe, the Mamprusi, Gonja and Kokomba. Most of the nationalities have sub-units. For instance, Asante, Fante, Akwapim, Ahafo, Brong, Kwahu etc, are sub-units of the Akan while Anlo, Some, Tonu, Avenor, Ewedome are sub-divisions of the Ewe. Each ethnic group thinks that it is the best in Ghana. It is not uncommon for certain ethnic groups to attribute a certain set of negative qualities to every other group and to each sub-unit of the latter. Even within one and the same ethnic group, each sub-division has a set of fixed prejudices and stereotypes about every other sub-unit. Thus, it is common to hear platitudes like: Members of nationality A are lazy, corrupt, pretentious, money-minded, trabalistic, flamboyant, boastful; those of nationality B are nepotic, tribalistic, wicked, blood-thirsty, inward looking; while those of C are unreliable, opportunistic, cowardly, vicious, impulsive; and those of D are lazy, primitive, backward, sensitive, hot-tempered etc.
In fact, each ethnic group thinks it is the best in Ghana. In many ways this has become a “Catch 22.” It is always good for one to have great pride associated with his roots. However, in some sever cases, such as in areas in the north of Ghana, the few virtues that each ethnic group reluctantly sees in the other nationalities are heavily outweighed by the negative traits it attributes to them. This and other dimensions of tribal ill-feeling frustrate nation-building and national development in Ghana today. Individuals or groups of people are discriminated against by people in authority on the basis of their ethnic origins as regards employment, promotion, retrenchment of workers, selection for football and other sports teams, allocation of contracts, credit facilities, etc. Thus, often times, many a square peg is found in many a round hole, misfits in jobs or playing roles for which they are unskilled.
These are a few facts regarding the ethnic diversity in Ghana and some of the symptoms of tribalism. I mentioned these symptoms in an effort to be fair and objective in my analysis of Ghanaian culture. It would be unfair to say that the ethnic diversity of Ghana has only resulted in feelings of dissonance, contempt, and racialism. Just as it would be inaccurate to say that despite the ethnic diversity, each nationality is able to live in complete harmony with the other. However, through my brief stay in Ghana, I have come to believe that the latter assertion is a more accurate representation on the whole of Ghanaians. I suppose this is true for a variety of reasons, one of the chief ones being the pervasive role of religion in Ghanaian society – the centrality of God and other supernatural beings. Religion is a large topic, and so I will devote a separate blog post to that. However, in order to be able to effectively understand the concept of brotherhood in Ghanaian society, one must first acknowledge and have a brief understanding of the role that religion plays in the equation.
Ghanaians recognize the dignity of the human being and, in consequence, hold a deep and unrelenting concern for human welfare and happiness. This can be seen in many traditional Ghanaian maxims (proverbs) and prayers that pay particular attention to life, fertility, and the birth of many children. The thoughts, actions, art, and institutions of the Ghanaian people are replete with expressions of concern for human welfare and the importance of the human being. Recognition of the value of humanity is intrinsically linked with recognition of the unity of all people, whether or not they are biologically related. This deep appreciation for humanity is reflected in such communal social structures as the clan, the extended family, and complex networks of social relationships and the Ghanaian (and African for that matter) custom of opening’s one door to strangers and showing them acts of generosity and hospitality. The Ghanaian view of humanity and the value that is attached to it probably derives from the belief that humanity is a creation of God. As an Akan maxim expresses it:
"All human beings are children of God; no one is a child of the earth."
The insistent claim made in this maxim is based on the belief that there must be something intrinsically valuable in God: the human being, considered a child of God, presumably by reason of having been created by God and having in his or her nature some aspect of God, ought also to be held as of intrinsic value, worthy of dignity and respect. Indeed, because the average Ghanaian believes that we are all children of God, we are all inherently brothers, related by virtue of having the same Lord and Creator. A new friend of mine called me his brother the first time we met. He then proceeded to ask me if I understood why he called me his brother just after meeting him for the first time. He told me, “Nick, we are all brothers, no matter what your skin color or tribe. If you cut me you, I bleed red blood. If you cut yourself, you will also bleed red blood. We may be different in appearance, but that is superficial. When you get down to our cores, we are all human beings worshiping one awesome God and bleeding the same blood.”
I believe that one personal anecdote of a seemingly insignificant gesture best illustrates the Ghanaian’s devotion to humanity. In Ghanaian society, human relationships are highly valued. Greeting people one meets is an important element in enhancing human relations and in making people feels good about themselves. The greeting is considered a way of acknowledging the other person as a fellow human being. And a person may feel deeply hurt if you pass him by without greeting him. The failure to greet him would be regarded as a failure on your part to recognize that he shares your humanity. The recognition of individuals by the social act of greeting is therefore a social as well as a moral obligation.
I buy water from the same woman everyday at work. Her name is Abenaa, and she sells cooled 500 mL sachets of water in her home across from my school. I greet her everyday on my way to school, about three times during school when I walk over at various times to buy a sachet of water, and I again bid her farewell when I am leaving work at the end of each day. However, last Monday on my way to work I failed to greet Abenaa. She looked to be reprimanding her young son for something that he had done wrong, and I did not want to interfere or bother her, so I walked by without greeting her. When I came back to her home about an hour later to buy my first sachet of water she had a hurt look on her face. She asked me why I had failed to greet her in the morning. She told me that she was hurt, and that I walking by her without acknowledging her presence made her feel like I did not take our friendship seriously. Initially I felt that she was overreacting, but I apologized nonetheless. “Mepa wo kyew, fa kye me” (“Please, forgive me”), I said. “Yoo, me fa kye wo,” (“Yes, I forgive you”) she responded.
The great value placed on human beings is also demonstrated by the response to the death of a member of the community. The death affects not just the specific group or clan to which the deceased belonged but the entire village or community. All normal economic and other activities are stopped, usually at great cost; but the values of the Ghanaian people are not in terms of economic production and the maximum use of one’s time. For them, as an Akan maxim says, “it is the human being that counts.”
Another, but certainly not the last, way in which the Ghanaian concept of brotherhood is illustrated is in the various languages. In almost all Ghanaian languages there is really no word for “race.” There are instead, the words “person,” “human being,” and “people.” So that, where others would say, “the black race” or “the white race,” Ghanaians would say, “black people,” “white people,” and so on. And instead of “people with mixed race,” they would say, “people of mixed blood.” This expression is vague, however, since “people of mixed blood” also describes people of dual ethnic parentage in Ghanaian/African societies. But, for the Ghanaian, the important point is that the offspring of any “blood mixing” is a human being – a child of God – and therefore belongs to the one human race of which we are all a part. That is all. European colonialism – the venture for economic exploitation of other peoples that started in the eighteenth century – introduced racial categories or distinctions and racialism into Africa.
Whether it is in the celebration of life through funerals, the opening up of one’s home to a guest, or the simple greeting of friends, the value that Ghanaian’s place in humanity and brotherhood is evident in their hospitable, generous, and communal nature. Earlier I alluded to an anecdote of when I passed by my friend, Abenaa, and failed to greet her. She was deeply hurt. I mentioned how I initially felt that her reaction was melodramatic. We all make mistakes. Sometimes people are in a hurry and they simply do not see you. However, after further examination of cultural values, I have come to appreciate the fact that Abenaa took issue with my failure to acknowledge her. Whether it was intentional or inadvertent, it matters not. Abenaa was not even really condemning me. More, her dissatisfaction with my action shows me that she truly values our relationship, no matter how new it may be. She considers me her friend, her brother. She strives to make me feel at ease by making a concerted effort to speak to me in my language – English – even though I am in her country. She makes mistakes, and I correct her. I in turn speak to her in Twi – and make infinitely more mistakes – and she corrects me. She is a Ghanaian; I am an American. She is black, an “Obibini.” I am “Oburoni kokoo” (literally: “red colored white man,” what I am identified as because of my slightly darker complexion and tanned skin). I am a southern poindexter. She is an Akan; her husband is an Ewe. However, it does not matter what tribe she or her husband are from because their children will be a mixture of both, learning to speak both languages. Ghanaians are highly religious people. Seventy percent are Christian; twenty percent are Muslim; five percent practice some non-affiliated traditional religion; and the other five percent do not align themselves with a specific creed. In Ghana, it is better to at least believe something than to not believe in any God at all, and one is met with puzzled eyes if he says he is atheist. I do not believe that an individual must be religious in order to value humanity and take interest in the well-fair of his brother. However, I do suspect that in the case of the average Ghanaian, one’s religious beliefs heavily influence his treatment towards his fellow man, friend or stranger alike. The average Ghanaian believes in a supreme Being, that there is one giver of life, and we are all apart of His family. Despite our differing nationalities, skin colors, and languages, we are, above all else, human beings belonging to one race: humanity. Therefore, we are all brothers and sisters. The day I walked by Abenaa and failed to greet her, I failed to acknowledge this brotherhood. It is as the Akan maxim says:
“Man’s brother is man.”
Abenaa got married this past weekend. As such, she was not home selling water all last week because she was busy preparing for the wedding. Below is a condensed and fragmented recount (for spatial and practicality purposes) of my conversation with her this past Monday upon seeing her as I was walking home from school. We met less than two months ago. Nevertheless, by the playfulness in our speech and the kindness of her words, you can tell that that does not matter. She still refers to me as her friend.
Twi
Nick: Mepaakyew, merehwehwe Abenaa. Abenaa: “M’damfo! Mehuu wo akyi.” Nick: “Mewo ho. Ete sen?” Abenaa: “Onyame adom me ho ye. Na wo nse e?” Nick: “Me nso me ho ye” Abenaa: “Yeda Onyame ase. Woreko he?” Nick: “Mapon adwuma nti meko fie seesei. Nanso yebehyia okyena” Abenaa: “Yoo, mehwe w’anim. Nante yie”
English
Nick: Excuse me, I am looking for Abenaa (Playfully looking around as if I can’t see Abenaa).
Abenaa: My friend! It’s been a long time since I last saw you. Nick: I’ve been around. How are you? Abenaa: By God’s grace I am fine, and you? Nick: I also am well Abenaa: We give thanks to God. Where are you going?
Nick: I have finished work, and so I’m going home now. But we will meet tomorrow.
Abenaa: All right, I’ll expect you. Safe journey
Ghana gained its independence from British rule in 1957. Though Ghana is now an independent nation with definitive political boundaries, its people have retained allegiance and pride in their tribal roots that date back to pre-colonial days. There are about forty-one ethnic groups (i.e. nationalities) in Ghana. The major ones are the Akan, the Ewe, the Dagomba, Ga-Adangbe, the Mamprusi, Gonja and Kokomba. Most of the nationalities have sub-units. For instance, Asante, Fante, Akwapim, Ahafo, Brong, Kwahu etc, are sub-units of the Akan while Anlo, Some, Tonu, Avenor, Ewedome are sub-divisions of the Ewe. Each ethnic group thinks that it is the best in Ghana. It is not uncommon for certain ethnic groups to attribute a certain set of negative qualities to every other group and to each sub-unit of the latter. Even within one and the same ethnic group, each sub-division has a set of fixed prejudices and stereotypes about every other sub-unit. Thus, it is common to hear platitudes like: Members of nationality A are lazy, corrupt, pretentious, money-minded, trabalistic, flamboyant, boastful; those of nationality B are nepotic, tribalistic, wicked, blood-thirsty, inward looking; while those of C are unreliable, opportunistic, cowardly, vicious, impulsive; and those of D are lazy, primitive, backward, sensitive, hot-tempered etc.
In fact, each ethnic group thinks it is the best in Ghana. In many ways this has become a “Catch 22.” It is always good for one to have great pride associated with his roots. However, in some sever cases, such as in areas in the north of Ghana, the few virtues that each ethnic group reluctantly sees in the other nationalities are heavily outweighed by the negative traits it attributes to them. This and other dimensions of tribal ill-feeling frustrate nation-building and national development in Ghana today. Individuals or groups of people are discriminated against by people in authority on the basis of their ethnic origins as regards employment, promotion, retrenchment of workers, selection for football and other sports teams, allocation of contracts, credit facilities, etc. Thus, often times, many a square peg is found in many a round hole, misfits in jobs or playing roles for which they are unskilled.
These are a few facts regarding the ethnic diversity in Ghana and some of the symptoms of tribalism. I mentioned these symptoms in an effort to be fair and objective in my analysis of Ghanaian culture. It would be unfair to say that the ethnic diversity of Ghana has only resulted in feelings of dissonance, contempt, and racialism. Just as it would be inaccurate to say that despite the ethnic diversity, each nationality is able to live in complete harmony with the other. However, through my brief stay in Ghana, I have come to believe that the latter assertion is a more accurate representation on the whole of Ghanaians. I suppose this is true for a variety of reasons, one of the chief ones being the pervasive role of religion in Ghanaian society – the centrality of God and other supernatural beings. Religion is a large topic, and so I will devote a separate blog post to that. However, in order to be able to effectively understand the concept of brotherhood in Ghanaian society, one must first acknowledge and have a brief understanding of the role that religion plays in the equation.
Ghanaians recognize the dignity of the human being and, in consequence, hold a deep and unrelenting concern for human welfare and happiness. This can be seen in many traditional Ghanaian maxims (proverbs) and prayers that pay particular attention to life, fertility, and the birth of many children. The thoughts, actions, art, and institutions of the Ghanaian people are replete with expressions of concern for human welfare and the importance of the human being. Recognition of the value of humanity is intrinsically linked with recognition of the unity of all people, whether or not they are biologically related. This deep appreciation for humanity is reflected in such communal social structures as the clan, the extended family, and complex networks of social relationships and the Ghanaian (and African for that matter) custom of opening’s one door to strangers and showing them acts of generosity and hospitality. The Ghanaian view of humanity and the value that is attached to it probably derives from the belief that humanity is a creation of God. As an Akan maxim expresses it:
"All human beings are children of God; no one is a child of the earth."
The insistent claim made in this maxim is based on the belief that there must be something intrinsically valuable in God: the human being, considered a child of God, presumably by reason of having been created by God and having in his or her nature some aspect of God, ought also to be held as of intrinsic value, worthy of dignity and respect. Indeed, because the average Ghanaian believes that we are all children of God, we are all inherently brothers, related by virtue of having the same Lord and Creator. A new friend of mine called me his brother the first time we met. He then proceeded to ask me if I understood why he called me his brother just after meeting him for the first time. He told me, “Nick, we are all brothers, no matter what your skin color or tribe. If you cut me you, I bleed red blood. If you cut yourself, you will also bleed red blood. We may be different in appearance, but that is superficial. When you get down to our cores, we are all human beings worshiping one awesome God and bleeding the same blood.”
I believe that one personal anecdote of a seemingly insignificant gesture best illustrates the Ghanaian’s devotion to humanity. In Ghanaian society, human relationships are highly valued. Greeting people one meets is an important element in enhancing human relations and in making people feels good about themselves. The greeting is considered a way of acknowledging the other person as a fellow human being. And a person may feel deeply hurt if you pass him by without greeting him. The failure to greet him would be regarded as a failure on your part to recognize that he shares your humanity. The recognition of individuals by the social act of greeting is therefore a social as well as a moral obligation.
I buy water from the same woman everyday at work. Her name is Abenaa, and she sells cooled 500 mL sachets of water in her home across from my school. I greet her everyday on my way to school, about three times during school when I walk over at various times to buy a sachet of water, and I again bid her farewell when I am leaving work at the end of each day. However, last Monday on my way to work I failed to greet Abenaa. She looked to be reprimanding her young son for something that he had done wrong, and I did not want to interfere or bother her, so I walked by without greeting her. When I came back to her home about an hour later to buy my first sachet of water she had a hurt look on her face. She asked me why I had failed to greet her in the morning. She told me that she was hurt, and that I walking by her without acknowledging her presence made her feel like I did not take our friendship seriously. Initially I felt that she was overreacting, but I apologized nonetheless. “Mepa wo kyew, fa kye me” (“Please, forgive me”), I said. “Yoo, me fa kye wo,” (“Yes, I forgive you”) she responded.
The great value placed on human beings is also demonstrated by the response to the death of a member of the community. The death affects not just the specific group or clan to which the deceased belonged but the entire village or community. All normal economic and other activities are stopped, usually at great cost; but the values of the Ghanaian people are not in terms of economic production and the maximum use of one’s time. For them, as an Akan maxim says, “it is the human being that counts.”
Another, but certainly not the last, way in which the Ghanaian concept of brotherhood is illustrated is in the various languages. In almost all Ghanaian languages there is really no word for “race.” There are instead, the words “person,” “human being,” and “people.” So that, where others would say, “the black race” or “the white race,” Ghanaians would say, “black people,” “white people,” and so on. And instead of “people with mixed race,” they would say, “people of mixed blood.” This expression is vague, however, since “people of mixed blood” also describes people of dual ethnic parentage in Ghanaian/African societies. But, for the Ghanaian, the important point is that the offspring of any “blood mixing” is a human being – a child of God – and therefore belongs to the one human race of which we are all a part. That is all. European colonialism – the venture for economic exploitation of other peoples that started in the eighteenth century – introduced racial categories or distinctions and racialism into Africa.
Whether it is in the celebration of life through funerals, the opening up of one’s home to a guest, or the simple greeting of friends, the value that Ghanaian’s place in humanity and brotherhood is evident in their hospitable, generous, and communal nature. Earlier I alluded to an anecdote of when I passed by my friend, Abenaa, and failed to greet her. She was deeply hurt. I mentioned how I initially felt that her reaction was melodramatic. We all make mistakes. Sometimes people are in a hurry and they simply do not see you. However, after further examination of cultural values, I have come to appreciate the fact that Abenaa took issue with my failure to acknowledge her. Whether it was intentional or inadvertent, it matters not. Abenaa was not even really condemning me. More, her dissatisfaction with my action shows me that she truly values our relationship, no matter how new it may be. She considers me her friend, her brother. She strives to make me feel at ease by making a concerted effort to speak to me in my language – English – even though I am in her country. She makes mistakes, and I correct her. I in turn speak to her in Twi – and make infinitely more mistakes – and she corrects me. She is a Ghanaian; I am an American. She is black, an “Obibini.” I am “Oburoni kokoo” (literally: “red colored white man,” what I am identified as because of my slightly darker complexion and tanned skin). I am a southern poindexter. She is an Akan; her husband is an Ewe. However, it does not matter what tribe she or her husband are from because their children will be a mixture of both, learning to speak both languages. Ghanaians are highly religious people. Seventy percent are Christian; twenty percent are Muslim; five percent practice some non-affiliated traditional religion; and the other five percent do not align themselves with a specific creed. In Ghana, it is better to at least believe something than to not believe in any God at all, and one is met with puzzled eyes if he says he is atheist. I do not believe that an individual must be religious in order to value humanity and take interest in the well-fair of his brother. However, I do suspect that in the case of the average Ghanaian, one’s religious beliefs heavily influence his treatment towards his fellow man, friend or stranger alike. The average Ghanaian believes in a supreme Being, that there is one giver of life, and we are all apart of His family. Despite our differing nationalities, skin colors, and languages, we are, above all else, human beings belonging to one race: humanity. Therefore, we are all brothers and sisters. The day I walked by Abenaa and failed to greet her, I failed to acknowledge this brotherhood. It is as the Akan maxim says:
“Man’s brother is man.”
Abenaa got married this past weekend. As such, she was not home selling water all last week because she was busy preparing for the wedding. Below is a condensed and fragmented recount (for spatial and practicality purposes) of my conversation with her this past Monday upon seeing her as I was walking home from school. We met less than two months ago. Nevertheless, by the playfulness in our speech and the kindness of her words, you can tell that that does not matter. She still refers to me as her friend.
Twi
Nick: Mepaakyew, merehwehwe Abenaa. Abenaa: “M’damfo! Mehuu wo akyi.” Nick: “Mewo ho. Ete sen?” Abenaa: “Onyame adom me ho ye. Na wo nse e?” Nick: “Me nso me ho ye” Abenaa: “Yeda Onyame ase. Woreko he?” Nick: “Mapon adwuma nti meko fie seesei. Nanso yebehyia okyena” Abenaa: “Yoo, mehwe w’anim. Nante yie”
English
Nick: Excuse me, I am looking for Abenaa (Playfully looking around as if I can’t see Abenaa).
Abenaa: My friend! It’s been a long time since I last saw you. Nick: I’ve been around. How are you? Abenaa: By God’s grace I am fine, and you? Nick: I also am well Abenaa: We give thanks to God. Where are you going?
Nick: I have finished work, and so I’m going home now. But we will meet tomorrow.
Abenaa: All right, I’ll expect you. Safe journey
Friday, October 9, 2009
Reflections from Maamobi Prisons JHS No. 1
I have been teaching at Maamobi Prisons Junior High School No. 1 for three weeks now. At the beginning it was difficult. I did not know the neighborhood, the students, the teachers, or the school’s standard operating procedure. The slip-ups and growing pains were many, and I relished the small successes so as to keep my morale up. However, as each day passes and I continue to settle into my routine, I grow more comfortable. This confidence has come from experience and the awareness that sometimes you must just expect – or at least accept – the unexpected. I have shown up to work an hour late because my tro-tro got in an accident along the way. I have been forced to review the periodic table and ready myself to teach a lesson on the structure of an atom – with only thirty minutes notice – to thirty-two eighth graders because the science teacher called in sick and no other teacher was able or willing to cover for him. I have had to spend seventy minutes on a grammar lesson that was only designed to take thirty because the students did not grasp the new concept with ease and expedience. Each of these experiences has taught me to embrace the spontaneity, uncertainty, and forced learning that is inherent in the nature of a new job and in working in a culture different than my own. Although, it would be inaccurate of me to think that every challenge that comes my way will have a lily-white life-lesson on the other side of it. It would be haughty, naïve, and even foolish of me to approach my teaching in Ghana with an overly ambitious hope. To think that simply because I am an American I know it all and am an authority on how things should be done. And to think that because I am sent by Princeton, that I am automatically destined to succeed and be a force of long-term influence in Maamobi and in the lives of my pupils. An episode that I witnessed last week challenged my beliefs and, for the first time, really forced me to examine my core – to question myself on why I had come to Ghana, and what I hope to accomplish while I am here. I will explain the uneasiness that I felt last Friday; how I was forced to reorient my hopes and expectations of myself as a teacher; and the impressions from the situation that have shaped my thinking moving forward. Last Friday I arrived to school at 8 AM – as I do every morning. Only this morning, I was not greeted with a playful welcome: “Obroni, ete sen?” (“White man, how are you?”). As I rounded the street corner and looked at Maamobi Prisons JHS No. 1, I heard the shouts of my headmaster; I saw the hopelessness of an apathetic father; and I was filled with compassion as I watched Kwame Adu cry out in pain.
As I walked through the gate of Maamobi Prisons JHS, I was struck by how silent the school was. Every Friday morning the school congregates behind the main building for an assembly of dance and worship (I will speak to religion in Ghanaian society in a later blog). The assembly usually lasts for one hour – from eight to nine – and the singing of the school children can be heard from a mile away. However, this morning was different. I heard nothing as I alighted from the tro-tro and walked to the school. Upon arrival, I noticed that all of the students were quietly sitting in their classrooms, not singing and dancing in assembly. The headmaster and four teachers were meeting with Kwame Adu and his father. Kwame is a seventeen year old Form 3 (eighth grade) student and is in his fifth year at Maamobi Prisons JHS. He passed Form 1 and Form 2; yet he has failed to pass his junior high school examinations the past two years and so remains in Form 3. Kwame’s inability to pass his exams is not due to a lack of intellectual spar or lack of ability. He is fluent in four languages: Twi (his dad is an Ashanti and speaks Twi), Ga (the local language of Accra), French (his mom is from the Ivory Coast), and English. Clearly Kwame has the intellectual spar to complete the middle school curriculum and pass the pre-secondary school exams. However, ever since entering Form 3, Kwame has chosen to spend his weekdays selling provisions on the streets, rather than coming to school. If you have taken a moment to view the pictures on my slide show, you should have noticed a picture of “Obama Biscuits”. I bought these from Kwame. Kwame comes from a broken home and humble means. Once he reached the eighth grade, he felt that he would do both himself and his family more good by earning some extra money by selling biscuits, crackers, and snacks as a street vendor than by attending class everyday. As such, Kwame has only been coming to school an average of two to three days a week for the past two years. And when he does come to school, he is so exhausted from the prior day’s work – and so far behind on his assignments – that he sees trying to pay attention as futile, and sleeps through nearly every class.
School started on September fifteenth, and Kwame came three times in the first two weeks of school – the first day, and Thursday and Friday of last week. Last Thursday the headmaster asked Kwame – as he does everyday that Kwame decides to come to school – to come to school the next day. However, this time, he asked Kwame to bring his father with him. The three were to have a conference in which they were to discuss the scary realities and arduous challenges that Kwame faces as he enters Form 3 for the third year in a row. Kwame did come to school the next day, and his father accompanied him. The conference, which was supposed to only concern Kwame, his father, the headmaster, and one other teacher, soon grew into more of a skirmish that drew the attention of the entire school. The first part of the meeting had been conducted in the headmaster’s office. However, by the time I showed up to school, four teachers, the headmaster, Kwame, and Kwame’s father were in a circle standing outside the headmaster’s office. The school is only one open building, which consists of five rooms – the headmaster’s office, a teacher workroom, and three classrooms. As such, once the meeting left the headmaster’s office, the gathering was visible to all – students and teachers alike. I do not know how long the meeting had lasted, or what was discussed in the headmaster’s office. I can only account for the sequence of events that unfolded before my eyes following my arrival to school.
Kwame was standing next to his father, who was not wearing a shirt and looked like he had just rolled out of bed. I did not hear his father speak one word the entire time he was there. He had an apathetic look on his face and slouched posture, making it apparent that he was only at the school out of sheer obligation. The headmaster was shouting. His shouts started out as justified contempt for Kwame’s truancy; however, they soon grew to borderline abusive. The school is right next to a prison (thus the name: Maamobi Prisons JHS No. 1). And the headmaster laced his verbal attacks on Kwame with condescending remarks of the neighboring prison. “Kwame, do you want to sell biscuits on the street for your whole life? Do you want to end up working in the fields like the prisoners over there?!” There were four teachers that had joined the circle of condemnation and were voicing their input. Their remarks were just as abrasive and heartless as those of the headmaster. “You are seventeen years old Kwame,” said the one teacher. “That’s what I was when I graduated high school, and here you still haven’t graduated middle school.” Such remarks were abusive and highly inappropriate for any teacher – the supposed shaper of a child’s mind – to be saying. Following a good five minutes of tumultuous shouting, the headmaster commanded attention. He asked Kwame’s father if he minded if he [the headmaster] spanked Kwame in order to teach him a lesson. This may be foreign in American schools today, but it is not abnormal in Ghana. Ghana is a very traditional, old-fashioned society, and caning is standard punishment for most offenses. Kwame’s father neglected to answer the headmaster’s question with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and simply asked if he could leave the school. He then permitted the headmaster to do what he saw as best fit from there. As Kwame’s father was walking away, the headmaster began to yell at Kwame again. He told Kwame that he was going to cane him fifteen times. “Fifteen” because he said that that was the age Kwame should have been when he entered secondary school if he had stayed off the streets and not played truant. Kwame absorbed the first five spanks with visible discomfort, yet he was able to restrain himself from shouting in pain. However, by the eighth cane, Kwame could not hold in his pain anymore. He began to cry out in agony, and his shrieks grew louder with each subsequent whip. Kwame’s lesson was being made the spectacle of the entire school as teachers and students peered over one another’s shoulders and around doors to see the cause of all the raucous. After the fifteenth lash Kwame fell to his knees and, with a look of fear and embarrassment in his eyes, promised the headmaster that he would not skip school anymore.
I cannot believe – in fact I refused to believe – that this extreme, abusive action was necessary to teach Kwame the importance of coming to school and passing his classes. I am convinced that there is another way to get the message across. I was filled with compassion as I saw Kwame absorb the condemnation from his teachers and the lashes from the headmaster. I was also overcome with an equally strong sense of hopelessness as I watched Kwame’s father walk away and not even look back as his son shrieked as he was spanked by the headmaster. It has been a week, and I have yet to be able to completely wrap my mind around Kwame’s situation and the sequence of events that unfolded last Friday. I still find myself asking many questions, and in a state of uncertainty as to how I should approach answering them:
· Kwame seems to have genuinely learned his lesson. But he comes from a broken home and lives with his seemingly apathetic father. Who is to say that he will not again be tempted (which he most likely will be) to make the quick buck, and skip school again?
· How does an adolescent that is trying to do the right thing look past his father’s apathy and choose to walk a path that he has not been shown?
· What kind of measurable influence can I make when I only teach Kwame – and any given student – for an hour, three times a week?
· Each one of the students goes home everyday, leaves the protection of the school, and faces challenges and hardships that I have – not by my own right – been blessed enough to avoid. How could I even begin to relate to most of these kids?
· I am scheduled to live in Accra and teach at Maamobi Prisons JHS No. 1 for four months (one semester). Is that enough time to do enough in order to ensure that my efforts have a lasting impact after I leave?
· Is it even right to try to quantify or compare one’s impact/influence on a situation (especially when dealing with the lives of human beings)?
· Why did I choose to be a teacher? Was it simply so I could share my knowledge with my students? Or am I interested in forming personal, pupil-teacher relationships with them?
· Is it fair of me to even begin to think that I have the wisdom or answers to some of the life questions and trials that many of these kids face everyday?
These questions were evoked by what I witnessed a week ego. They require me to analyze my experiences and set new, more appropriate expectations for myself moving forward. They challenge my prior beliefs, even my belief in myself, and make me question how much of a difference I can truly expect to make. And perhaps most importantly, they cut to my core and force me to honestly reflect on why I chose to come to Ghana.
Many of these children live in situations at home that I cannot relate to and that do not even exist in America. Sights such as what I saw last Friday touch my empathetic spirit and fill my heart with compassion. As I search for answers to some of my questions, I realize that I must begin my search at a logical starting point – my upbringing. I have lived a very comfortable, privileged life. I have not had to endure the loss of an immediate family member. I have been blessed with good health. In every endeavor I have ever set out upon, I have always had the full, unwavering support of my parents. I grew up in a safe, family-oriented neighborhood in south Charlotte. I have been afforded the privilege and opportunity to live in Ghana for nine months, and I will attend the school of my dreams next year. I am indeed blessed; however, it is by no right of my own. And because I am so very blessed, I am also morally obligated to give back to those who – by no fault of their own – have not been afforded the same opportunities. I did not come to Ghana to “save the World.” One Man already did that. I have merely come to Ghana, West Africa to “change the World.” Or I suppose a more appropriate wording would be “serve the world.” I have come to Ghana to serve. Maybe I make a difference in the life of one student because I teach him how to correctly address and format a personal letter, or because I pay 20 cents for his tro-tro ride home. Maybe I ease the workload of a teacher one day by grading her papers for her. Maybe I help tutor my host sister in Algebra and because of me she can now correctly simplify her fractions and find the “y-intercept” of a function. Or maybe I give my Harvard t-shirt to my eighteen year old neighbor who told me that it is his dream to make it to America and attend Harvard. Whatever it is, it matters, and it makes my time here worthwhile. It does not matter how tedious or simple the work or gesture may seem. If I can leave Ghana and one person can say that his/her life is a little better or a little easier because Nick Ricci passed through, then I have made a difference, and I have done well. I am a teacher by profession here in Ghana. But I have come to realize that we are all teachers to one another. Some of us are friends, parents, grandparents, guardians, bosses, or coaches, but we all can give a little. So we are all teachers, and we can all learn. Henry Adams, acclaimed historian and grandson of U.S. President John Quincy Adams, said it best: “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” This is so true. I was initially discouraged by the episode last Friday, and overwhelmed by the amount of seemingly unanswerable questions it raised. However, I have realized that it is okay to move forward without having the answers to all my questions. I have even realized that some of the questions are dangerous. For example, I wondered if I could honestly expect to be a force of quantifiably positive influence while in Ghana. This question misses the mark. It is selfish, narcissistic, and unproductive to spend my time trying to measure my influence. Because, as I cited earlier, one’s influence cannot every truly be measured. It is as Martin Luther King so eloquently put it, “You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.” This is what moves us to serve. The grace comes from God. He has shown each one of us His grace through the gift of his Son, and in each of our lives that are replete with blessings and good fortune that we did nothing to deserve. We all share a commonality, an inherent bond, as fellow human beings that says that “I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.” And because we are all humans, we all have the ability to empathize and feel compassion when we see injustices or maltreatment to our fellow man. The “soul generated by love” is within each of us. This is why we serve, and it is this is what has brought me to Ghana, West Africa.
As I walked through the gate of Maamobi Prisons JHS, I was struck by how silent the school was. Every Friday morning the school congregates behind the main building for an assembly of dance and worship (I will speak to religion in Ghanaian society in a later blog). The assembly usually lasts for one hour – from eight to nine – and the singing of the school children can be heard from a mile away. However, this morning was different. I heard nothing as I alighted from the tro-tro and walked to the school. Upon arrival, I noticed that all of the students were quietly sitting in their classrooms, not singing and dancing in assembly. The headmaster and four teachers were meeting with Kwame Adu and his father. Kwame is a seventeen year old Form 3 (eighth grade) student and is in his fifth year at Maamobi Prisons JHS. He passed Form 1 and Form 2; yet he has failed to pass his junior high school examinations the past two years and so remains in Form 3. Kwame’s inability to pass his exams is not due to a lack of intellectual spar or lack of ability. He is fluent in four languages: Twi (his dad is an Ashanti and speaks Twi), Ga (the local language of Accra), French (his mom is from the Ivory Coast), and English. Clearly Kwame has the intellectual spar to complete the middle school curriculum and pass the pre-secondary school exams. However, ever since entering Form 3, Kwame has chosen to spend his weekdays selling provisions on the streets, rather than coming to school. If you have taken a moment to view the pictures on my slide show, you should have noticed a picture of “Obama Biscuits”. I bought these from Kwame. Kwame comes from a broken home and humble means. Once he reached the eighth grade, he felt that he would do both himself and his family more good by earning some extra money by selling biscuits, crackers, and snacks as a street vendor than by attending class everyday. As such, Kwame has only been coming to school an average of two to three days a week for the past two years. And when he does come to school, he is so exhausted from the prior day’s work – and so far behind on his assignments – that he sees trying to pay attention as futile, and sleeps through nearly every class.
School started on September fifteenth, and Kwame came three times in the first two weeks of school – the first day, and Thursday and Friday of last week. Last Thursday the headmaster asked Kwame – as he does everyday that Kwame decides to come to school – to come to school the next day. However, this time, he asked Kwame to bring his father with him. The three were to have a conference in which they were to discuss the scary realities and arduous challenges that Kwame faces as he enters Form 3 for the third year in a row. Kwame did come to school the next day, and his father accompanied him. The conference, which was supposed to only concern Kwame, his father, the headmaster, and one other teacher, soon grew into more of a skirmish that drew the attention of the entire school. The first part of the meeting had been conducted in the headmaster’s office. However, by the time I showed up to school, four teachers, the headmaster, Kwame, and Kwame’s father were in a circle standing outside the headmaster’s office. The school is only one open building, which consists of five rooms – the headmaster’s office, a teacher workroom, and three classrooms. As such, once the meeting left the headmaster’s office, the gathering was visible to all – students and teachers alike. I do not know how long the meeting had lasted, or what was discussed in the headmaster’s office. I can only account for the sequence of events that unfolded before my eyes following my arrival to school.
Kwame was standing next to his father, who was not wearing a shirt and looked like he had just rolled out of bed. I did not hear his father speak one word the entire time he was there. He had an apathetic look on his face and slouched posture, making it apparent that he was only at the school out of sheer obligation. The headmaster was shouting. His shouts started out as justified contempt for Kwame’s truancy; however, they soon grew to borderline abusive. The school is right next to a prison (thus the name: Maamobi Prisons JHS No. 1). And the headmaster laced his verbal attacks on Kwame with condescending remarks of the neighboring prison. “Kwame, do you want to sell biscuits on the street for your whole life? Do you want to end up working in the fields like the prisoners over there?!” There were four teachers that had joined the circle of condemnation and were voicing their input. Their remarks were just as abrasive and heartless as those of the headmaster. “You are seventeen years old Kwame,” said the one teacher. “That’s what I was when I graduated high school, and here you still haven’t graduated middle school.” Such remarks were abusive and highly inappropriate for any teacher – the supposed shaper of a child’s mind – to be saying. Following a good five minutes of tumultuous shouting, the headmaster commanded attention. He asked Kwame’s father if he minded if he [the headmaster] spanked Kwame in order to teach him a lesson. This may be foreign in American schools today, but it is not abnormal in Ghana. Ghana is a very traditional, old-fashioned society, and caning is standard punishment for most offenses. Kwame’s father neglected to answer the headmaster’s question with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and simply asked if he could leave the school. He then permitted the headmaster to do what he saw as best fit from there. As Kwame’s father was walking away, the headmaster began to yell at Kwame again. He told Kwame that he was going to cane him fifteen times. “Fifteen” because he said that that was the age Kwame should have been when he entered secondary school if he had stayed off the streets and not played truant. Kwame absorbed the first five spanks with visible discomfort, yet he was able to restrain himself from shouting in pain. However, by the eighth cane, Kwame could not hold in his pain anymore. He began to cry out in agony, and his shrieks grew louder with each subsequent whip. Kwame’s lesson was being made the spectacle of the entire school as teachers and students peered over one another’s shoulders and around doors to see the cause of all the raucous. After the fifteenth lash Kwame fell to his knees and, with a look of fear and embarrassment in his eyes, promised the headmaster that he would not skip school anymore.
I cannot believe – in fact I refused to believe – that this extreme, abusive action was necessary to teach Kwame the importance of coming to school and passing his classes. I am convinced that there is another way to get the message across. I was filled with compassion as I saw Kwame absorb the condemnation from his teachers and the lashes from the headmaster. I was also overcome with an equally strong sense of hopelessness as I watched Kwame’s father walk away and not even look back as his son shrieked as he was spanked by the headmaster. It has been a week, and I have yet to be able to completely wrap my mind around Kwame’s situation and the sequence of events that unfolded last Friday. I still find myself asking many questions, and in a state of uncertainty as to how I should approach answering them:
· Kwame seems to have genuinely learned his lesson. But he comes from a broken home and lives with his seemingly apathetic father. Who is to say that he will not again be tempted (which he most likely will be) to make the quick buck, and skip school again?
· How does an adolescent that is trying to do the right thing look past his father’s apathy and choose to walk a path that he has not been shown?
· What kind of measurable influence can I make when I only teach Kwame – and any given student – for an hour, three times a week?
· Each one of the students goes home everyday, leaves the protection of the school, and faces challenges and hardships that I have – not by my own right – been blessed enough to avoid. How could I even begin to relate to most of these kids?
· I am scheduled to live in Accra and teach at Maamobi Prisons JHS No. 1 for four months (one semester). Is that enough time to do enough in order to ensure that my efforts have a lasting impact after I leave?
· Is it even right to try to quantify or compare one’s impact/influence on a situation (especially when dealing with the lives of human beings)?
· Why did I choose to be a teacher? Was it simply so I could share my knowledge with my students? Or am I interested in forming personal, pupil-teacher relationships with them?
· Is it fair of me to even begin to think that I have the wisdom or answers to some of the life questions and trials that many of these kids face everyday?
These questions were evoked by what I witnessed a week ego. They require me to analyze my experiences and set new, more appropriate expectations for myself moving forward. They challenge my prior beliefs, even my belief in myself, and make me question how much of a difference I can truly expect to make. And perhaps most importantly, they cut to my core and force me to honestly reflect on why I chose to come to Ghana.
Many of these children live in situations at home that I cannot relate to and that do not even exist in America. Sights such as what I saw last Friday touch my empathetic spirit and fill my heart with compassion. As I search for answers to some of my questions, I realize that I must begin my search at a logical starting point – my upbringing. I have lived a very comfortable, privileged life. I have not had to endure the loss of an immediate family member. I have been blessed with good health. In every endeavor I have ever set out upon, I have always had the full, unwavering support of my parents. I grew up in a safe, family-oriented neighborhood in south Charlotte. I have been afforded the privilege and opportunity to live in Ghana for nine months, and I will attend the school of my dreams next year. I am indeed blessed; however, it is by no right of my own. And because I am so very blessed, I am also morally obligated to give back to those who – by no fault of their own – have not been afforded the same opportunities. I did not come to Ghana to “save the World.” One Man already did that. I have merely come to Ghana, West Africa to “change the World.” Or I suppose a more appropriate wording would be “serve the world.” I have come to Ghana to serve. Maybe I make a difference in the life of one student because I teach him how to correctly address and format a personal letter, or because I pay 20 cents for his tro-tro ride home. Maybe I ease the workload of a teacher one day by grading her papers for her. Maybe I help tutor my host sister in Algebra and because of me she can now correctly simplify her fractions and find the “y-intercept” of a function. Or maybe I give my Harvard t-shirt to my eighteen year old neighbor who told me that it is his dream to make it to America and attend Harvard. Whatever it is, it matters, and it makes my time here worthwhile. It does not matter how tedious or simple the work or gesture may seem. If I can leave Ghana and one person can say that his/her life is a little better or a little easier because Nick Ricci passed through, then I have made a difference, and I have done well. I am a teacher by profession here in Ghana. But I have come to realize that we are all teachers to one another. Some of us are friends, parents, grandparents, guardians, bosses, or coaches, but we all can give a little. So we are all teachers, and we can all learn. Henry Adams, acclaimed historian and grandson of U.S. President John Quincy Adams, said it best: “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” This is so true. I was initially discouraged by the episode last Friday, and overwhelmed by the amount of seemingly unanswerable questions it raised. However, I have realized that it is okay to move forward without having the answers to all my questions. I have even realized that some of the questions are dangerous. For example, I wondered if I could honestly expect to be a force of quantifiably positive influence while in Ghana. This question misses the mark. It is selfish, narcissistic, and unproductive to spend my time trying to measure my influence. Because, as I cited earlier, one’s influence cannot every truly be measured. It is as Martin Luther King so eloquently put it, “You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.” This is what moves us to serve. The grace comes from God. He has shown each one of us His grace through the gift of his Son, and in each of our lives that are replete with blessings and good fortune that we did nothing to deserve. We all share a commonality, an inherent bond, as fellow human beings that says that “I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.” And because we are all humans, we all have the ability to empathize and feel compassion when we see injustices or maltreatment to our fellow man. The “soul generated by love” is within each of us. This is why we serve, and it is this is what has brought me to Ghana, West Africa.
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