Culture stress

I seem to be popular with Ghanaian men. My Twi professor included. Ugh. I sit next to him in class (we're in a conference room) and today he said "I'll sit here next to my wife today." I replied straight out "I am not your wife. I did not consent to that. I am not anybody's wife."

Culture stress is popping up all over the place. I am starting to become disillusioned and frustrated with a lot of things, but this mostly manifests itself in my critique of gender relations. I am often super resentful of the patriarchal climate here, and I take out the culture stress by getting mad at the guys in my group. They've been really good about it, but it's troubling to me that I have such resentment of my host culture.

On Saturday night we went out to a jazz club in town. We went by tro-tro, so it wasn’t direct, and we had to walk a little way (a few blocks). It was a very nice neighborhood with compound walls and beautiful houses and a gorgeously decorated mosque. But naturally, a group of 7 Americans walking at night might feel nervous and unsettled. After we got back, my friend Matt (who was the only male in the group of 7) said that he, as a male, felt responsible for the group of girls, and that it made him very uncomfortable to be walking around at night.

I completely understood this sentiment but didn't like it. To me, hearing that a man felt he had to take care of me because I was a woman was clearly unfair, wrong, misogynist, and any other number of frustrating things. It gives the impression that I will never ever be whole in and of myself. What about when I'm 30 years old? Will I have to take a man everywhere I go? In some countries, I would. Grown women need their husband's or their brother's or even their infant son's permission to travel. I think about that and want to cry. I understand the social pressure to take care and assume responsibility based on gender, but I don’t like it. More so, I don’t like the broader cultural climate that so devalues women that they cannot stand up for themselves and feel safe. Maybe I should organize a Take Back The Night march in Ghana. That would go over well, I’m sure.

Later, reflecting on this, I realized that I was so frustrated because my leadership and confidence doesn’t matter much in this situation, and that comes as a shock to me. I realized that, had something happened, no one would have asked “was Audrey with them?” They would have asked “was there a boy in the group?” and Matt would have borne all the ideological blame for any unfortunate events that transpired. For him, this is an unfair and distinctly bittersweet responsibility, one which I do not wish as an automatic role for anyone, but a burden which I believe everyone should bear collectively.

I guess I have been spoiled for a very long time. Living with extremely supportive parents who are both very strong people in and of themselves, I was raised with the assumption that I could do anything that I determined to (within reason), and that this had nothing to do with my gender, but rather with my own personal attributes. My mother does the bills because my father hates dealing with money. She mows the lawn and he does the gardening. They both cook and wash the dishes. She wakes up early and he wakes up late. These are things that my parents do- not things that women and men do.

In Ghana, though, gender roles are so differentiated that it comes as a sort of slap in the face. On one of our first days in Ghana, we had a lecture in which a woman told us “if you don’t make sure everything is right in the home, that it is clean and your husband and children are well taken care of, then you are not a good woman.” Although some gender-differentiated tasks are changing (boys, for example, sweep and cook when they are young), the broader schema is set up in a way that is hard for me to swallow.

And yet, to add to the mess, West Africa has a long history of women who are involved in economic endevors (the markets, for example), and the Queen Mother has a formal political role in nominating and approving Asante/Akan chiefs. Oh, it's all convoluted and confusing. Anyway, I'm going to try to talk about something other than gender in my next blog post. I'm sure that my 21-year-old feminist rants are not the most interesting reading material on the market.

Next time: the adventures of Richard the Rasta?