Maybe Westerners shouldn't come to Ghana

Last I left you was right before our African Dance performance; I think about three whole weeks ago.

The performance went swimmingly. Some of us (myself included) decided to pound some whiskey before the dance and everyone said I'd never danced better and was all beaming, sweaty smiles; which was good to hear since dancing has never been and still is not my strong suit. I really loved the African dancing though and whether it's contra in Burlington, swing, more African, or just in my Ghanaian moo-moo at Phish festivals- I want to try and dance more.

I spent the last 2 weeks in a village of about 1,500 people in Poano; about an hour and a half north of Kumasi. Our group of 18 was split up into groups of 6 into three different villages. The village I was placed in was the largest of the three. Poano is a community that almost entirely is made up of subsistence farmers, so I decided to study subsistence farming for my mini independent study project while I was there. I am not sure if it was because of the larger size of the village; or just how much all of us Brunis stand out- but it seemed like we never really were fully accepted into the Poano village and because of this; along with the entire group getting sick, the stay was by far the most challenging part of being in Ghana thus far.

There are two antichrists in Ghana:
1. The radio.
2. The roosters.

In Poano, the radio is never off. Seriously. And this is not your normal radio; it's the loudest gospel, static, poor reception, repeated commercials constantly. From morning through the night; sometimes the music would be shut off for maybe an hour or two at 3 AM, but that was it. So sleeping, even with earplugs, even with headphones, just didn't really happen for 2 weeks. Oh, and lucky for us, Poano on top of the excessive radio use (which is actually viewed as a status symbol) had a loudspeaker system that would rant biblical jargain starting at 4:37 every morning. But even without the radio or the town loudspeakers; you really would wake up (if you'd fallen asleep at all) at about 4:30 AM since that's when everyone (and I mean everyone) in the entire town is awake, sweeping and clanging pots and pans and being loud as all get out. I have to laugh when I think about tiptoeing around my apartment in the mornings in Burlington making sure I don't wake anyone if I'm up early....that concept doesn't exist here. We all assumed village life would be much more peaceful than the cities of Accra and Kumasi; and we were mistaken. I found that all I craved for two weeks was peace and quiet and really never got it.

As for the roosters, I cannot describe to you the noises that come out of these creatures.

We all lost our minds in the village.

We could not go anywhere without being hassled by children, adults, or anyone in the Poano village. I would have a crowd of 10 wide-eyed faces staring at me when I'd be brushing my teeth in the morning. When I'd be walking to buy a juicebox or to visit a house next door, every single person that crossed my path would yell,
"BRUNI, BRUNI, BRUNI, HOW ARE YOU? WHAT IS YOUR NAME? HELLO! GOOD MORNING! WHAT IS YOUR NAME! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!"
I tried everything to make this stop, to try and interact more with the community. I told children that no, my name is not Bruni, and I prefer to be called Erica; which I was laughed at for suggesting. If I answered these questions in Twi, I got more, or a crowd of 20 would follow me afterwards. Finally, on our last day in the village I started yelling HELLO! HELLO! GOOD MORNING! GOOD AFTERNOON! WHAT IS YOUR NAME! HELLO! Just as deliberately as I'd been yelled at the past two weeks and the kids ran away. If only I'd known I just had to give 'em a taste of their own medicine earlier.....

But all of the hassling made us go crazy to the point that we did not want to leave the compound that was considered our 'SIT Headquarters' where we made our food (and I slept in the courtyard each night). One afternoon when we could not take the attention any more, we decided we were going into the jungle, 'the bush' as it's referred to here. We brought our journals and just left. We thought we'd found  a nice space where we could just meditate and forget about all of the noise for a little amidst the banana leaves.

We hadn't been there more than 20 minutes when we were found. I don't know how they did it; but we did a head count and over 40 children had surrounded our circle and refused to leave until we did. It probably didn't help that the teachers went on strike when we were in the village, so there were just too many kids around with nothing to do. We just accepted that peace and quit was unattainable in the village, and we will never fully be viewed as a part of the community; we came as outsiders in Poano and unfortunately and not by our choice, we left as outsiders, too.

*will add here that we found even our SIT house was not truly child-proof and safe when a group of drummers and dancers from the middle school in town performed for us and we saw the heads of Ghanaian children peering out over a 20 ft tall gate....literally a hundred kids tried to cram their way into our courtyard as if it were the hottest night club in all of New York city.*
Aside from all of this attention, the gender structure in the village life especially was the most painstaking for me. The culmination of the way women are viewed here largely as just not as capable beings all came to the surface with a game of cards.

In Ghana there is one card game: Spar. ('Spar' actually means cards in Twi, go figure).

I passed a group of about 10 middle aged men playing cards and so I sat down and asked if I could play with them. One of the men, maybe about 46, told me I could not play; it was a game for men. I asked him why that was and he told me that women wouldn't be able to understand a game of cards. I told him if he taught me I could play. He responded by saying that if I came back to his room with him he'd teach me. All of the men laughed at this. I asked him if every guy sitting around learned how to play cards in his room, then, too? No one said anything and I got up to leave. The 46 yr old asked me where I was going and when he'd see me again; just like most of the Ghanaian men I've met here ask. I left, went back to the SIT house and learned how to play Spar- which is a game easy enough for even one of the dying roosters to play, so take that.

Then everyone got sick. Really sick.

Sara came to the village with malaria and got over it within 4 days, but it was painful to watch her go through. Giselle was the next to contract malaria; and we saw her bed stricken (well- sleeping mat stricken) in the heat for about 4 days as well until she was better. Jake had a fever with no other symptoms that did not let up for 3 days. Rachel and I were having what seemed to be mini emotional break downs, but she ended up actually getting sick with a bacterial infection (the same one I have now, more than likely). The worst, however, was the night Jamie was more or less unconcious and had to be carried into a taxi and hospitalized overnight for severe malaria. We all came here knowing the health risks; but the reality is that you really do not fully understand what having malaria means until you get it and hospitals here, although they treat malaria and bacterial infections extremely well, are really different from hospitals in the US and it's scary.

After telling my parents an abridged version of my village stay...which I guess they know more about now (PLEASE DAD, DO NOT CALL THE GHANA CHIEF OF POLICE, WE ARE OK!), my dad over the phone kept saying 'you know, we can get you out of there, really, if you want to come home you can.' Surprisingly, I don't want to go home and despite everything and all of the complaining, I love Ghana and the person all of these experiences is shaping me into. I don't know if my dad will believe me or understand this, but it's true. The joke of the trip, however, has turned into people passing me notes during class or in the middle of the hottest point of the day saying, 'all right, Erica, call Ed, we're ready to go home.'

-----please note, dad, we are joking still and as of right now we don't really want to go home yet; but not going to lie this could change.-----------

I guess what will take me years to try and understand is how an outside entity, like myself and our group, with the best intentions can try and do some sort of good for the community or be more accepted. When I first got to the village and was assessing what type of project or study I wanted to do more my independent study project while I was there, I suggested to one of the school teachers doing a garden project with some of the plastic water sachets; since I saw a system set up doing this in Poano. I was laughed at for this suggestion. And it was obvious that this community could care less about a garden or the garbage; for some of these people they are choosing between eating plain rice and sending their kids to school. If this was a two-week mini training on the Peace Corps, I'm really going to have to think long and hard about that committment and if I have it in me to do.
The day we left Poano, we headed back to Kumasi for an overnight stay at our favorite hotel. It's our favorite because the rooms have air conditioning. After I'd dropped my backpacking pack off in the room, I went with the others to get food downtown. When I got there; I realized that 1. I wasn't sweating and 2. I wasn't hungry. When I told this to Dan and Jake they both agreed I must be really, really sick.

They were right. I ended up having a 101.8 fever; so not really sick at all for Ghana standards, but fever means hospital for potential malaria so that's where I went. Everything went fine, the hospital was actually pretty nice, but I had to insist upon the doctor testing me for malaria. Then, when my fever went up, the doctor was no where to be found (there was only one doctor there) and I just had to wait along with the others for him to get back. The big fiasco was my thermometer was in fahrenheit whereas the nurses and doctors only know celsius, so instead of retaking my temperature with their celsius thermometers, they brought out a book from maybe the 1800s that you could look up temperatures to convert into celsius. Awesome. I ended up getting seriously 15 plus different pills I have to take everyday that will try and treat whatever infection I have. I know as of now it's not malaria and is a bacterial infection of sorts, but the fever's gone and I'm feeling much better.

And now we are up north in Tamale, the most poverty stricken part of all of Ghana. There are also the most NGOs here, which means lots of white Brunis like us, so we are not hassled or followed like we have become so fond of. So even though Tamale is hotter than the hottest of heats you could ever fathom, we love it here. Our hostel is pretty touristy and serves pancakes in the mornings and has air conditioning and fans...so we are ecstacic and feel like we have died and gone to heaven. We even found  a restaurant around the corner from a guidebook that has American, Chinese, and Indian food; for some more cedi than jollof and cow intestines on the street of course, but we were all willing to drop as much cedi as was necessary for some food we found to be more to our liking; or just more edible than the excessive amounts of yams we'd been consuming.

Tomorrow we will be spending the night at Mole National Park where I will meet my first African elephant. I hope maybe she has heard through the banana leaves about my Thai elephant, Pang Boon Me, and can tell me how she's doing. Not sure if African and Asian elephants really know too much about the one another, but a gal can dream.