Buduburam update

Yoomornino!

Unless you've been to the murky depths of South Carolina when the electricity shuts off or there isn't a fan for miles, you've never experienced the tropics. If you have, you'll know that it isn't a good idea to do much walking, talking, or thinking, and it certainly isn't good to wear uncomfortably sticky clothes.

Anyway, the point is that I have been at the Liberian refugee camp for the past few days, and I am starting to go a little crazy. However, I spent 2 hours at the internet cafe today and regained some of my sanity. It's bizarre, how important contact with the "outside world" is for my happiness. That alone makes me wonder how well I will be able to live in a foreign country. I definitely can no longer see myself living in the bush for my whole life... electricity is a fairly important comodity to my "essentials" (which include my cell phone phone, iPod, and fan). Of course, I can get by without them. I have definitely learned over the course of this semester that I do not need as many things to get by (like hot water, air conditioning, a personal computer, etc).

Anyway, these are semantics. Let me tell you about life at Buduburam.

People wake up very early, with the sun. Extended famiiles usually live close to each other and they all eat at one central house. For example, at the house where I am staying , 3 to 5 people sleep there (2 are nephews whose parents are dead. They rotate houses), but 9-11 people eat there. This saves the cost of stoves, cooking equipment, etc, and also allows them to share labor and money without much fuss. People are employed doing small trading and selling. Many sell bagged water. Others go to Accra to buy used clothes and sell them at the camp. It is very hard for a Liberian to get a work permit in Ghana, so many people depend on relatives outside of Africa to send money.

The English that they speak here is very different. It is a kind of pidgen which blends words and skips some altogether. Often, I cannot understand older people the first time that they say a phrase, but younger people are easier to understand.

The electricity is out because the transformer broke, and UNHCR has phased out its support, so they have to find another way to fix it. They hope it will be back on my Christmas.



I have 2 more minutes on the computer, so I have to go. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow.

15 days left in Ghana!

It seems like these posts keep getting fewer and further between. The time is drawing nigh, though, and soon I will be at home, enjoying Christmas in Virginia. That seems strange… that Christmas is almost here. I am used to cold and late-fall frosts as precursors to Christmas. Instead, I have soft red dust underneath my feet and tropical heat at the end of November.
Things are happening so fast here that it’s hard to keep up. My parents came to visit me last week, and we had an amazing time. We went to Kakum National Forest and walked on a tree-to-tree rope bridge across the rainforest canopy, we stayed at a hotel that had crocodiles in a pond underneath the restaurant, we went to Green Turtle Lodge and basked on the sunny beach, and we saw a rural school, where the kids were practicing balancing sand on their heads for gym class! I think that they enjoyed themselves and got to see a lot of the reasons why I love Ghana.
Today is my last day of class, and then tomorrow I embark on my next journey. Many of you know that I have a strange and remarkable interest in social science research (surveys and statistics and the like), and that I have been going to the Liberian refugee camp while I’ve been in Ghana. For my one week travel break, I am going to stay at Buduburam (the camp) and conduct a research study about child sexual abuse. Apparently, incidence of children being raped is on the rise, and there is very little empirical information about how the community responds to it, other than the obvious horror-struck reaction. I want to find out about the community’s attitudes and beliefs about child sexual abuse, and then investigate some of the community’s responses, and the resources that they have to deal with it as a social phenomenon. I will be conducting focus groups with citizens and doing interviews with community leaders for 7 days.
I am going to stay at the camp with one of the women who works at Center for Youth Empowerment (the organization through which I’m doing this study), but coming back to campus for a few days in the middle for personal debrief and a rest period for myself. Please pray that things go smoothly and that I would have access to all of the resources that I need. I think that this will be hard and somewhat stressful, but important. Very little research exists about cross-cultural community beliefs about child sexual abuse, and this is a new and important area of study. It would be a perfect master’s thesis topic, too.
So anyway, please keep me in your prayers. I’ll let you know how it’s going.

15 days left in Ghana!

It seems like these posts keep getting fewer and further between. The time is drawing nigh, though, and soon I will be at home, enjoying Christmas in Virginia. That seems strange… that Christmas is almost here. I am used to cold and late-fall frosts as precursors to Christmas. Instead, I have soft red dust underneath my feet and tropical heat at the end of November.
Things are happening so fast here that it’s hard to keep up. My parents came to visit me last week, and we had an amazing time. We went to Kakum National Forest and walked on a tree-to-tree rope bridge across the rainforest canopy, we stayed at a hotel that had crocodiles in a pond underneath the restaurant, we went to Green Turtle Lodge and basked on the sunny beach, and we saw a rural school, where the kids were practicing balancing sand on their heads for gym class! I think that they enjoyed themselves and got to see a lot of the reasons why I love Ghana.
Today is my last day of class, and then tomorrow I embark on my next journey. Many of you know that I have a strange and remarkable interest in social science research (surveys and statistics and the like), and that I have been going to the Liberian refugee camp while I’ve been in Ghana. For my one week travel break, I am going to stay at Buduburam (the camp) and conduct a research study about child sexual abuse. Apparently, incidence of children being raped is on the rise, and there is very little empirical information about how the community responds to it, other than the obvious horror-struck reaction. I want to find out about the community’s attitudes and beliefs about child sexual abuse, and then investigate some of the community’s responses, and the resources that they have to deal with it as a social phenomenon. I will be conducting focus groups with citizens and doing interviews with community leaders for 7 days.
I am going to stay at the camp with one of the women who works at Center for Youth Empowerment (the organization through which I’m doing this study), but coming back to campus for a few days in the middle for personal debrief and a rest period for myself. Please pray that things go smoothly and that I would have access to all of the resources that I need. I think that this will be hard and somewhat stressful, but important. Very little research exists about cross-cultural community beliefs about child sexual abuse, and this is a new and important area of study. It would be a perfect master’s thesis topic, too.
So anyway, please keep me in your prayers. I’ll let you know how it’s going.

Thoughts on Ghana in 2007

Yesterday was the four weeks mark until we leave Ghana, and it passed without much fanfare. We are all ending this semester with mixed feelings- towards Ghana, towards Calvin College, towards development, and especially towards living as part of a group. I came into this semester with a fairly idealistic picture of what life in community with 16 other people would be like. I’m leaving with the consensus that I cannot and should not expect to thrive within randomly delegated community, and especially that I cannot and should not expect that all of my opportunities will fall into my lap. I have had meaningful and valuable experiences here, but they are in no way automatically afforded to me. I had some strange notion that my life in Ghana would be profoundly different from my life in America, but it has been profoundly similar. I spend time watching movies with my friends, listening to music, talking with people, and reading. I have electricity and running water, access to the internet, clothes, food, and even a laundry service one floor down from my room.

This is not to say that Ghana is exactly like America. There are girls who work at the market right outside of my hostel who do not know how to read, who sleep at their market stall at night. There are people all over who live in abject poverty and who have access to minimal resources. My roommate’s parents completed only elementary and some junior high school education, and yet they have an upper-middle class standard of living. I encounter people every day who do not speak the national language of their country. All the while, my own life is not intrinsically affected by this disparity. Instead, I go out at night and eat good food, travel all over the country with ease, and get to observe Ghana’s neat little cultural quirks.

This may have been a pointless rambling, but it says some important things. I am learning that people in the developing world can and do do things for themselves, that they desire more for their lives, and that they recognize the disparities that exist in the world. They also have hope. All of the migrants from the Northern region come to Accra for the same reason that actors go to New York- they want to make it big. That might mean that they end up selling water by the side of the road, that they become street kids or that they do not get a formal education, but they are active in their pursuit of something better and bigger than life in a rural village. It is important that we recognize this distinction of choice and agency when we do development work, because often it gets neglected. Africa is not, nor has it ever been static. In ten years, Accra will have a totally different look, just as it looks completely different now than it did ten years ago. It is both exciting and terrifying to be in a place that is changing so rapidly.

My perceptions of Africa have changed so much during this trip. No longer is it a place waiting for me to save it and all its people, or a wild bushland waiting for cultural observation. It is new and growing and ready to do for itself what it wants. After 50 years of independence, I think it's time.

Update during the rainstorm

Some wonderful things are happening in my life:

• I just got stuck in the most amazing rainstorm. It started with purple clouds rolling in and wind tossing leaves up and down gutters. All of a sudden, drops of rain splattered to the earth, jumping up to bite my legs. It reminded me of the second day I was in Ghana, when I got caught in the rain and was soaking wet. A man called across the road (in a Ghanaian accent, which I did not yet fully understand): “Africa has blessed you!” I am updating my blog while I wait out the storm.
  

• When my parents come, we are going to stay at the Green Turtle Lodge, an Eco-Tourism project about 3-4 hours away from Accra. 17 days until they come!

• I am helping to facilitate a workshop concerning gender-based and sexual violence among Liberian women living at the Buduburam Refugee Camp. THis will be a two-day affair with thirty women. I am working with Center for Youth Empowerment, a grassroots NGO that is run entirely by Liberians. They are doing some neat things in their community. The workshop will take place in two weeks. I need to do some serious research about the specific ways that GBV comes up in that particular community. I'm used to thinking about it from an American perspective, but the norms will be completely different, and ways of addressing topics will be challenging. I think that I will learn a LOT from the women.

• I'm going to a bead-making village this weekend! Jemima, the receptionist at the Center for African Studies, is going to bring me, Sarah, and Pearl.

• My dresses are ready! I have two "traditional" African dresses (long skirts and fancy shirts) and one wrap-dress made from batik fabric. I am extremely happy with the results.
  

• I dressed up as a snail for halloween yesterday. I made the shell from my laundry bag- I sewed it into a shell shape, stuffed it with my pillow, and then sewed circles on the sides. I was pretty proud of it. I'll never get too old to dress up.

Some sad things are happening in my life:

• Lydia Brown, one of the girls who came on this trip from Calvin, has been sick for 5 weeks with a debilitating stomach cramping and nausea. The doctors have no idea what it is, and condescend to her (the nursing major) as though she doesn't know her body. She hasn't been able to go to classes or travel, and she's pretty miserable, so she is going home early next week. I am going to miss her so much. Hopefully she will get well soon.

• I think that's pretty much the only thing.
  

Elmina Castle (graphic and disturbing, but truthful)

I wrote this in my journal today after touring Elmina Castle, a historic slave dungeon that was controlled by the Portugese, Dutch, and English. This is a pretty emotional and sometimes graphic entry.

Ten minutes ago, I stepped out of the gates of hell. One hour ago, I walked into it. What more can I say about a slave castle- a place that stinks of shit and blood, fear and death? I understand now what it means to be a slave- the depth of the horror and victimization that humans can inflict on other humans. Wait. No. I don't understand at all. But I have seen a part of a history that always evaded me.

My ancestors owned other humans. For some part of my life, in a small and dusty corner of my mind, I was proud of that legacy- of the power and prestige that they won by taking advantage of other people. No matter how benevolent and paternal they saw themselves, I have no doubt that they whipped or had people whipped. They bought and sold human beings. They raped women- legacy of the racist masculinist system in which they lived. My ancestors gave their slaves names (not allowing them to name themselves and their children) and did not allow them to read or write, to play music using their African-style instruments, or to associate freely.

Another legacy of my ancestors are the darker-skinned cousins which I know I have. I know I have them, because slave masters were never without their mistresses, and plantations were never without their jealousy. My grandmothers had to compete with the women whose names I have read in my grandfathers' wills- women named Janey and Lucy. They threatened my grandmothers, Mrs. Sally Dumas and Mrs. Lily Dockery with their youth and sensuous darness. Because my grandfathers owned white people, too. Legally, Mrs. Oliver Hart Dockery and all of her property did not belong to herself, but to her husband.

Lucy and Janey and so many other African women weren't even "protected" by the regulatory laws of chivilry and the mobs and the Klan. They were beaten and killed, raped, forced to bear the children of hate and repression. At every turn, they were taken and picked at like so much livestock. The raiders, the governer, the soldiers, the captain, the sailors, the merchants, the masters, and the masters' sons (not to mention the terrible frustrated male slaves, themselves starved for masculinity and control). "Woman is the n-gg-r of the world" John and Yoko said. But black women? Theirs seems to be the worst fate of all.

Today when we went to the women's quarters, we learned that the governer would periodically have all the female slaves brought out into the courtyard (the only time that they would be allowed to see the light of day) for the governer to survey. He would pick out one particular woman who would be washed (they hadn't had baths in months) and fed and clothed, and then he would have her sent to his quarters, upstairs. When he was finished with her, she would be sent back downstairs to be finished off my the soldiers. Many times, they would rape her to death. Any women who resisted a soldier's advances would be chained to a cannonball in the courtyard for the entire day without food or water. They also cut off one of her ears.

My time is running out, so I can't say all that I can. This shook me deeply. It's been a very emotional day.

Northern region

This morning I skipped drumming class to go on the internet. I've been pretty happy with that decision so far.

I had a really great time in the North. My camera is messed up (it won't take pictures), so I've stolen all of these from Emily via Facebook. I'm sure she'll understand.

In Yendi, we visited a witchcraft village, where accused witches are sent. It's a really cruel system- there are over 700 men and women who are exiled from their homes after people accuse them of killing people with magic, making women infertile, or for causing weather problems. These are not usually diviners or shamans, who have traditional powers, but rather people who are wrongfully accused of social disasters. It's society's way of placing blame and shunning undesireables. These are some of the women:

We were flooded by children at that particular village. At one point, I was carrying one on my back and one on my front, while another was carrying my purse. The little girl on my right (left?) knee was really funny.

On Saturday, we went to Mole National Park. It’s a beautiful drive visually, but physically, it was one of the worst roads I’ve ever been on. It’s pot-holed dirt road for 3 hours. Anyway, we went on a walking safari in the morning, complete with gum boots. Here’s Erica, Kristen, and me in our “great white explorer” pose:

Since it has been raining lately, most of the animals are deeper in the forest. They come out around January, when it gets hot and the water dries up. We trudged around for about an hour and a half, seeing gazelles, baboons, and the occasional pack of warthogs, but these things are not as exotic as *elephants*, *zebras (which don’t even live in the park)* and *lions*. We were despairing of seeing any big animals, until we started hiking back to the lodge. Suddenly, our guide stopped and told us to be quiet. An elephant! It was in a clump of trees and we couldn’t really see it, but then the guide started throwing things at it. This probably is not the wisest move, or the most friendly to the animal, but it worked. He moved around for a while, trumpeted, and then started moving towards us. All of a sudden, our guide (pictured here):

said “Go! Go! Move that way! Run faster!” And the elephant started running (or maybe loping would be a better word) towards our general direction. We moved out of its way, and then it trampled a tree and charged a pack of warthogs.

All in all, it was an exciting trip.


Today we are going to Cape Coast. That was where many of Ghana's slaves were shipped from, so I suspect that it will be an emotional trip. I'll keep you updated.