Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Africa needs FEMINISM!!!
That's about all I have to say about that, but I suppose I could, and should, elaborate at a later date.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Paradise, Kumasi, and big summer plans!
Hello all! On the weekend of March 4th I traveled with 6 other friends to Ada Foah, a little peninsula where the Volta river flows into the Atlantic ocean. If I could describe this place in one word, it would be "Paradise". We drove just under two hours east of Accra to Ada Foah, where we had to take a boat on the Volta to get to our isolated beach resort. We stayed one night in a hut with sand floors right on the beach for 10 Ghana cedis a night per person. This was the weekend of Ghana's independence day so it was a big beach weekend for Ghanaian families who all brought quite the party to the peaceful beach. It was absolutely beautiful and very relaxing. A few things that threw me off: (1)Ghanaian (and Indian!) men taking pictures of us white women in our bikinis with their camera phones, without asking us. (2) Later finding out that swimming in the Volta is not healthy because it's fresh water and there are parasites that go through your skin and live in your liver. But we spoke to our travel doctors and they said to wait and see if we have symptoms of worms, and if we do to just take a deworming pill. Lovely.
Right when I got home from Ada I accidentally deleted all of my amazing pictures from this beautiful place. But I'll be sure to steal the photos my friends took to show you all.
This past weekend I went on our CIEE trip to Kumasi, one of the other major cities in Ghana. It was a 5-hour bus ride away. The first day we went to a traditional Ashanti village and saw the home of a very important woman Ashanti warrior. Then we went to the Kente Weaving village and I got hassled into buying some authentic Kente cloth. I think it will make great gifts and serve as a wonderful souvenir. We also got the chance to stamp our own Kente with Ashanti symbols that mean things like unity, peace, family, and wisdom. That was pretty cool. The next day we went to the Manhyia Palace (pronounced Man-chyeah) museum where the Ashanti kings have lived, followed by the Kejetia Market, which is the biggest (and probably smelliest) open market in all of West Africa. We went there for two hours, wandering through a labyrinth of beads and cloth and shoes and pig heads and cow legs and pretty much anything else you can think of. It was surprisingly less "grabby" than I expected. The vendors were all actually very nice and just happy to see us and try to speak Twi with us. I didn't buy anything at this market because I was really overwhelmed, and if you know me as a shopper- I tend to get easily overwhelmed in Kohl's, let alone a bustling African market place. Needless to say, it was an awesome cultural experience and probably one of the coolest places I've ever seen.
That night we were taken to a "fancy" Chinese restaurant that was very overpriced, but CIEE had given us each 15 cedis which pretty much covered my meal (of the least delicious chinese food i've eaten in a while). Though it didn't cover the 38 Cedi ($25) bottle of South African Cabernet Sauvingon that Kelsey and I split. It was worth it. We had a free morning until noon on Sunday so instead of rushing back to the market, Kelsey and I walked around the neighborhood of our hotel, and spoke with children walking to church in the villages nearby. I also chased some baby goats, which I find as cute and exciting as little puppies or kittens. I'm also sorry to say that I've probably accidentally eaten goat once or twice here when I thought it was beef.
My final point in this entry is to announce my summer plans. I had been applying to some internships and jobs back in Worcester for the summer, but at the same time I applied to a program through Indiana University to participate in an Ethnographic Field School in Belize. I was accepted to the IU program and have decided to go! I will be working with a professor and a few other students to research food anthropology in the Mayan region of Belize, and also research the tourist restaurant industry. So i have three weeks in a village home stay cooking and seeing what the farmers grow, and then three weeks in a rented house with other students on the main strip of the tourist district conducting interviews of tourists and restaurant owners. It was really hard for me to make the decision to be abroad for ANOTHER 7 weeks this summer. But I realized that I won't have many other good times in my life to take up an opportunity like this, and I will also get some amazing research experience in food anthropology, which I am really interested in! I will also have all of August to come home, decompress, and process the past seven months outside of the US before I start my senior year of college. I will be home from May 29 to June 11 before I leave for Central America, so I hope in those two weeks that I can see as many of you wonderful people as possible.
Right when I got home from Ada I accidentally deleted all of my amazing pictures from this beautiful place. But I'll be sure to steal the photos my friends took to show you all.
This past weekend I went on our CIEE trip to Kumasi, one of the other major cities in Ghana. It was a 5-hour bus ride away. The first day we went to a traditional Ashanti village and saw the home of a very important woman Ashanti warrior. Then we went to the Kente Weaving village and I got hassled into buying some authentic Kente cloth. I think it will make great gifts and serve as a wonderful souvenir. We also got the chance to stamp our own Kente with Ashanti symbols that mean things like unity, peace, family, and wisdom. That was pretty cool. The next day we went to the Manhyia Palace (pronounced Man-chyeah) museum where the Ashanti kings have lived, followed by the Kejetia Market, which is the biggest (and probably smelliest) open market in all of West Africa. We went there for two hours, wandering through a labyrinth of beads and cloth and shoes and pig heads and cow legs and pretty much anything else you can think of. It was surprisingly less "grabby" than I expected. The vendors were all actually very nice and just happy to see us and try to speak Twi with us. I didn't buy anything at this market because I was really overwhelmed, and if you know me as a shopper- I tend to get easily overwhelmed in Kohl's, let alone a bustling African market place. Needless to say, it was an awesome cultural experience and probably one of the coolest places I've ever seen.
That night we were taken to a "fancy" Chinese restaurant that was very overpriced, but CIEE had given us each 15 cedis which pretty much covered my meal (of the least delicious chinese food i've eaten in a while). Though it didn't cover the 38 Cedi ($25) bottle of South African Cabernet Sauvingon that Kelsey and I split. It was worth it. We had a free morning until noon on Sunday so instead of rushing back to the market, Kelsey and I walked around the neighborhood of our hotel, and spoke with children walking to church in the villages nearby. I also chased some baby goats, which I find as cute and exciting as little puppies or kittens. I'm also sorry to say that I've probably accidentally eaten goat once or twice here when I thought it was beef.
My final point in this entry is to announce my summer plans. I had been applying to some internships and jobs back in Worcester for the summer, but at the same time I applied to a program through Indiana University to participate in an Ethnographic Field School in Belize. I was accepted to the IU program and have decided to go! I will be working with a professor and a few other students to research food anthropology in the Mayan region of Belize, and also research the tourist restaurant industry. So i have three weeks in a village home stay cooking and seeing what the farmers grow, and then three weeks in a rented house with other students on the main strip of the tourist district conducting interviews of tourists and restaurant owners. It was really hard for me to make the decision to be abroad for ANOTHER 7 weeks this summer. But I realized that I won't have many other good times in my life to take up an opportunity like this, and I will also get some amazing research experience in food anthropology, which I am really interested in! I will also have all of August to come home, decompress, and process the past seven months outside of the US before I start my senior year of college. I will be home from May 29 to June 11 before I leave for Central America, so I hope in those two weeks that I can see as many of you wonderful people as possible.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Simple daily life and a rude awakening at the internship
I think I'd like to start this post with a summary of my ridiculous Mefloquine-induced dreams from last night. First, I was back in the states and meeting my boyfriend's parents, who turned out to be Barack and Michelle Obama. I remember being pretty excited that I was finally 21 and enjoying the open bar in the White House. In my dream I even finished Barack's white wine because I thought it was mine and Michelle called me out on it. I was also told that they would grill me on my plans for the future and I wasn't even nervous telling the president that I had great plans and expectations for myself.
-My second strange dream was about my wedding, taking place a few years in the future. And I guess I was having this wedding as a pre-planned event, like I had no say in how any of it was unfolding. It was at a venue I had never seen before, with music from a random playlist on my iTunes, the photographer was doing everything all wrong and I hated all the decorations and food. I remember being really angry and selfish in the dream and mad that nothing was right. I never saw who my fiance or husband would be in that dream. But all of my close friends and family were there. And my best friends and sister were wearing bright differently colored dresses in the wedding party. One thing I remember though is telling the DJ to play the song that I actually have picked out (in real life) for the dance with my father at the reception. That's about the only thing I've thought about for my real wedding actually, so it's kind of cool that that came out in my dream wedding that was all crazy and malfunctioning.
Okay, back to reality now. And this week I got quite a few reality checks. The first was on Tuesday when the electricity was very shifty on campus and in my dorm, and the running water was out for about 24 hours. I took my first bucket bath since being in Ghana, which I actually really enjoyed. It saved so much water as opposed to sitting under a running shower for fifteen minutes a day. It's something I might try to do more at home. That day I also decided to do laundry by hand, as I've been doing the whole time here, but my Ghanaian roommate said that I wasn't doing it right so she showed me the correct way and ended up doing all my laundry for me even though I insisted that I could take over. It was really sweet of her and we had some good conversation while she washed my sweat and dust-stained clothes. They also came out to be the cleanest that my clothes have been since I've been here.
After that she showed me how to make stew! It was delicious- and spicy- but really easy and I'm definitely going to cook it back home. She made a lot and we split the ingredients so it's been in our fridge and we eat it over yams or rice throughout the week.
I have a lot of free time on Tuesdays before my classes so this was all a great way to spend the morning and a good bonding time for me and Naa (whose real name is actually Gifty, I learned- a common female Ghanaian name). After my three classes on Tuesday, my friend Darou from Togo invited me to hang out so I drank togolese apple-flavored soda (ew) in his room and danced while watching music videos from Nigeria and Togo. He's such a positive energy and genuinely cares about his friends. I really value his friendship, and he even treated me to go see a play on campus and I learned a lot about African culture through watching this theater production.
I also spent my morning making my lesson plan for my internship which really discouraged me. I struggle with it because I don't know the best learning style for these kids, and I don't even have the material in front of me so a lot of times I feel like I'm preparing blindly. But despite being discouraged by this, I was really uplifted my Naa and Darou this week. Naa told me I've hit a new level in my African-ness with the bucket bath, handwashing, and cooking all in one day. This week she also gave me two bracelets of African beads after I said I wanted to visit a bead market. They are beautiful and I will cherish them. We've started to get very close and her friendship really means a lot to me as well.
The biggest shock and reality check came for me on Thursday though, when I went to my internship. I was feeling pretty confident about my lesson plan because Wednesday had gone so well there. But at the beginning of class Pascal asked a few students to stand at the front, asked them why they didn't do their homework and proceeded to lash them with a stick in front of the whole class. This is how they discipline students in schools here, and it's really not uncommon. I knew that the stick was for intimidation, but I didn't know that he would actually use it. This made me sick and really through me off for the whole lesson afterwards. When I gave the kids some exercises for practice, none got more than 3 out of 5 correct. Those who got 0 or 1 correct were assigned to sweep the classroom that day. But when we went next door and I taught the same lesson with the same exercises, he separated them according to their scores and the students who got 0 correct got two lashes and the students who got 1 correct got one lash. The rest were "home free", but about half the class got hit that day with this wooden stick on their bottoms. I couldn't watch him do it, but I watched the kids run back to their seats and put their heads on their desk to hide in embarrassment that they might have been crying as well. They also looked at me to gauge my reaction, which obviously was of shock and sadness.
I began to tear up and left right after this class to go home, because it occurred to me that I had given them these exercises for practice. I gave them problems that were challenging but doable because I knew that they had the skills and knowledge, it just took some application. But I thought, "If I had only given them five problems that they could do perfectly, these children wouldn't have been hit." There was no way for me to know that these were the consequences. But it now makes me question my teaching style. Do I give them more challenging questions so that they learn and gain more out of it- with the risk that they'll be lashed for getting it wrong- or do I give them simple problems that I know they can solve so that they won't get hit that day. It's a conflict that I'm struggling with. And I just do not support this type of education. How is a child learning from his academic mistakes by being hit? But I am in no position to challenge the doctrines of the school. I talked to my roommate and African friends, they said they all got hit in school. It's just the culture, but something I don't think I'll every adjust to.
One thing I have pretty much adjusted to is the stares and being hassled to buy things just because we're white. Of course we have money, we can afford a plane ticket from America to Africa. They know this, and I've gotten pretty good at avoiding eye contact and walking straight past the nagging vendors. One thing I haven't ignored though is the day to day struggles of people here. Today we went into town, and I admit I splurged on a great lunch and snacks. On the tro tro back, I sat next to a 10 year old girl and her 6 year old brother going home from school. The girl asked me if I could pay for them, and my initial reaction was to say I didn't have enough money. In the states I'm all too used to passing by people begging me for spare change. But who am I kidding, why should I be greedy about paying their fare equal to 50 cents when these children need every "dime" they have. This wasn't the first time I paid someone's fare on the trotro who asked me to. When it seems hard to part with 50 pesewas, I think about how they can barely afford to get to where they're going, even though getting there is probably for work to support their livelihood.
I'm sure I could think of more to write about, but those were the major events of my week I suppose. Sunday is Independence Day and I can't wait to see how an African country celebrates its 54th year free of colonial rule!
-My second strange dream was about my wedding, taking place a few years in the future. And I guess I was having this wedding as a pre-planned event, like I had no say in how any of it was unfolding. It was at a venue I had never seen before, with music from a random playlist on my iTunes, the photographer was doing everything all wrong and I hated all the decorations and food. I remember being really angry and selfish in the dream and mad that nothing was right. I never saw who my fiance or husband would be in that dream. But all of my close friends and family were there. And my best friends and sister were wearing bright differently colored dresses in the wedding party. One thing I remember though is telling the DJ to play the song that I actually have picked out (in real life) for the dance with my father at the reception. That's about the only thing I've thought about for my real wedding actually, so it's kind of cool that that came out in my dream wedding that was all crazy and malfunctioning.
Okay, back to reality now. And this week I got quite a few reality checks. The first was on Tuesday when the electricity was very shifty on campus and in my dorm, and the running water was out for about 24 hours. I took my first bucket bath since being in Ghana, which I actually really enjoyed. It saved so much water as opposed to sitting under a running shower for fifteen minutes a day. It's something I might try to do more at home. That day I also decided to do laundry by hand, as I've been doing the whole time here, but my Ghanaian roommate said that I wasn't doing it right so she showed me the correct way and ended up doing all my laundry for me even though I insisted that I could take over. It was really sweet of her and we had some good conversation while she washed my sweat and dust-stained clothes. They also came out to be the cleanest that my clothes have been since I've been here.
After that she showed me how to make stew! It was delicious- and spicy- but really easy and I'm definitely going to cook it back home. She made a lot and we split the ingredients so it's been in our fridge and we eat it over yams or rice throughout the week.
I have a lot of free time on Tuesdays before my classes so this was all a great way to spend the morning and a good bonding time for me and Naa (whose real name is actually Gifty, I learned- a common female Ghanaian name). After my three classes on Tuesday, my friend Darou from Togo invited me to hang out so I drank togolese apple-flavored soda (ew) in his room and danced while watching music videos from Nigeria and Togo. He's such a positive energy and genuinely cares about his friends. I really value his friendship, and he even treated me to go see a play on campus and I learned a lot about African culture through watching this theater production.
I also spent my morning making my lesson plan for my internship which really discouraged me. I struggle with it because I don't know the best learning style for these kids, and I don't even have the material in front of me so a lot of times I feel like I'm preparing blindly. But despite being discouraged by this, I was really uplifted my Naa and Darou this week. Naa told me I've hit a new level in my African-ness with the bucket bath, handwashing, and cooking all in one day. This week she also gave me two bracelets of African beads after I said I wanted to visit a bead market. They are beautiful and I will cherish them. We've started to get very close and her friendship really means a lot to me as well.
The biggest shock and reality check came for me on Thursday though, when I went to my internship. I was feeling pretty confident about my lesson plan because Wednesday had gone so well there. But at the beginning of class Pascal asked a few students to stand at the front, asked them why they didn't do their homework and proceeded to lash them with a stick in front of the whole class. This is how they discipline students in schools here, and it's really not uncommon. I knew that the stick was for intimidation, but I didn't know that he would actually use it. This made me sick and really through me off for the whole lesson afterwards. When I gave the kids some exercises for practice, none got more than 3 out of 5 correct. Those who got 0 or 1 correct were assigned to sweep the classroom that day. But when we went next door and I taught the same lesson with the same exercises, he separated them according to their scores and the students who got 0 correct got two lashes and the students who got 1 correct got one lash. The rest were "home free", but about half the class got hit that day with this wooden stick on their bottoms. I couldn't watch him do it, but I watched the kids run back to their seats and put their heads on their desk to hide in embarrassment that they might have been crying as well. They also looked at me to gauge my reaction, which obviously was of shock and sadness.
I began to tear up and left right after this class to go home, because it occurred to me that I had given them these exercises for practice. I gave them problems that were challenging but doable because I knew that they had the skills and knowledge, it just took some application. But I thought, "If I had only given them five problems that they could do perfectly, these children wouldn't have been hit." There was no way for me to know that these were the consequences. But it now makes me question my teaching style. Do I give them more challenging questions so that they learn and gain more out of it- with the risk that they'll be lashed for getting it wrong- or do I give them simple problems that I know they can solve so that they won't get hit that day. It's a conflict that I'm struggling with. And I just do not support this type of education. How is a child learning from his academic mistakes by being hit? But I am in no position to challenge the doctrines of the school. I talked to my roommate and African friends, they said they all got hit in school. It's just the culture, but something I don't think I'll every adjust to.
One thing I have pretty much adjusted to is the stares and being hassled to buy things just because we're white. Of course we have money, we can afford a plane ticket from America to Africa. They know this, and I've gotten pretty good at avoiding eye contact and walking straight past the nagging vendors. One thing I haven't ignored though is the day to day struggles of people here. Today we went into town, and I admit I splurged on a great lunch and snacks. On the tro tro back, I sat next to a 10 year old girl and her 6 year old brother going home from school. The girl asked me if I could pay for them, and my initial reaction was to say I didn't have enough money. In the states I'm all too used to passing by people begging me for spare change. But who am I kidding, why should I be greedy about paying their fare equal to 50 cents when these children need every "dime" they have. This wasn't the first time I paid someone's fare on the trotro who asked me to. When it seems hard to part with 50 pesewas, I think about how they can barely afford to get to where they're going, even though getting there is probably for work to support their livelihood.
I'm sure I could think of more to write about, but those were the major events of my week I suppose. Sunday is Independence Day and I can't wait to see how an African country celebrates its 54th year free of colonial rule!
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