Retreat in (to?) Nkawkaw

So my past couple of blogs have focused on my time in the village. I wanted to just give a brief update about this past week - our retreat in Nkawkaw. Our time has been spent for the most part with Monsigner Paul, who has been giving us really interesting lessons on African Traditional Religion and the Influence of Christianity and the West on African Religion and Culture. He's a fantastic teacher and extremely funny - it's also been kind of comforting to be in a "classroom" setting. It feels familiar after so many new situations and experiences. On Thursday we also went to Boti Falls - this beautiful waterfall in the mountains where we had a picnic with the Fathers. It was so gorgeous; misty, cool, lush and felt really secluded since we had to go down a flight of stairs to get there and there weren't too many other people there. It was really nice to just hang out and think and to kind of take a break from interacting with people outside the group. Even the long drive there and back, crowded as it was, was kind of nice downtime. Introvert that I am, sometimes I need to take time away from being surrounded by people, especially when so many of them want to talk to us.

It's also been really nice to have internet, and to be able to blog and e-mail and call home. It's crazy to think that the next chunk of time is going to be 4 full weeks - from Monday to December 19th. Then we have travel time, and will be going up to Tamale to volunteer with an organization that provides a free Christmas dinner to the community. Not sure where else we'll decide to go during that chunk of time, but the truth is, this might be the last blog I post for quite some time :(    In mid January I'll start my work placement in Accra, and should have semi-regular internet access again. Thanks for reading!!

Love,
Jacqueline

White Girl's Burden

So, two weeks ago I guess, on my second full day in the village, I was taken to a wedding in Kumasi. My host father had mentioned he was going to his eldest sons wedding, but didn't make it clear that I would be going with him - ohhh, communication. So Saturday morning, 5:30am I was trying to figure out what the heck I was supposed to wear to a wedding - considering I had packed for life on the farm. I also hadn't realized that my pink blouse - my "nice" top, was considered too red for a wedding (red is for funerals in Ghana). So out I trotted, no make up, my hair in a school marm bun, wearing a wrinkly green button up, a brown tie dye skirt and those fanciest of shoes - birkenstocks. I looked ridiculous. Especially compared to everyone else, who were dressed to the nines in gorgeous fabrics and super high heels. It made me think about a lot of things - which I had time for given the 2.5 hour drive there, the ceremony which was in Twi and I didn't understand, and then the 2.5 hour ride back. On one hand, I was humiliated just to be there, some stranger and this couple's wedding, who had met the groom's father two days before. Then there was my outfit, which I wouldn't have been caught dead in at a Canadian bar, never mind a wedding. On top of that was my realization that I had thought the clothes I brought were good enough for life with a Ghanaian family in a village. Even my church clothes were not that fancy, because I though; well, it's not important, they're poor right? (I mean, not so brashly...but that was the underlying assumption). Here I am, this liberal thinking, International Development student, and I felt like a jerk for not realizing that even African peasants have nice clothes and take pride in their appearance. I did appreciate the irony of realizing that, among the wedding attendees, if I had to pick the poorest person based solely on appearance I would have picked me. Good lesson in humility, if nothing else.

So, that's hard. It's hard to realize you've assumed certain things about people and places. It's hard too to feel so little control over your appearance when you're so noticeable - which white people are in Ghana, just because there are not that many. I guess I should preface this section by saying....I know that whatever racism or racialism I experience in Ghana, it is nothing compared to what so, so many other people have experienced here, and all over the world. I'm acutely aware that a lot of my issues with race are frustrations which, when I return to Canada, will all but disappear. So I don't claim to know what it's like to live day in and day out your whole life with the colour of your skin being the first thing people see - I don't. But I do want to share a little bit about what it's been like for me, and how I have become a lot more aware of my racial identity since coming to a place where I am not longer a part of the racial "majority". I don't think it's something you can really understand until you've experienced it - I know I didn't. For all I've studied about race theory, and for all the research I've done on representations of race and racial performativity I never really knew what it was to truly identify with a racial identity. Yes, I knew I was white, obviously, and I knew what that meant - mostly it meant a guilty feeling; also closely linked to my identity as an ID student - one of the great inheritors of colonialism. But it's easy in Canada to forget that you're white. It's not easy to forget that in Ghana. As we walk down the street, children's and even adults will shout "Obruni!" (white man) sometimes followed by requests for money, a nonsense song, or declarations of love and friendship. I've been pet - literally pet by children, who tend to follow me around like I'm the pied piper. It's amazing how a word like that - a word that doesn't have malevolent connotations, and is for the most part called playfully rather than maliciously - can still really start to get to you. I'm already so tired of being addressed as "Obruni" rather than "Jacqueline"; feeling as though my entire identity here is based upon my being white. It's amazing too the surge of connection I feel when I see another white person on the street or at an internet cafe - sometimes we'll call Obruni, or they will and we'll smile...or I'll look away awkwardly and ignore them, feeling an immediate sense of guilt that I want to speak to these people, to know them just because they're white. It's ridiculous. But there it is.



Getting back to the wedding...there I was, pretty much mortified by my presence and my appearance...and then my host father tells me I'm going to have my picture taken with the happy couple. So I'm in some of their wedding pictures - again, even though going up to get them taken was the first time I was introduced to them. At a certain point I was also called up to be part of the wedding table for the brief reception and passing around of cake. I tried to ignore it for a bit while they were calling, pretending I didn't realize "Sister Jacqueline" was me...until an usher came and escorted me up to my seat. Again, there was just so much discomfort around being there and standing out, and being treated like some kind of honoured guest.  I was also embarrassed because I felt like a big deal was being made of me being there by other people...and I didn't want anyone else - anyone who saw white people differently perhaps, to think that I thought I deserved to be made such a fuss of. And again, it's a constant debate in my head - is this because everyone was trying to make me feel like a welcome part of the family? Then why were none of the groom's real siblings given the same treatment? Is this really just because I'm white, or from the west?

So those are some of my thoughts on race so far - and I realize they may seem offensive, or weird, or overly sensitive and I feel odd just posting this. But it's a big part of my experience so far so I feel like it's important to share. It's a struggle to make sense of it all, so I hope you all realize that. A lot of frustration comes simply from being identified as "obruni", and also not being able to communicate with a lot of the people in the village who call me that. This adds to the feelings of identity loss and isolation which also  simply come from being in a new community - where I can't communicate  very well and therefore have very little control over how I'm seen. It's tough too to sit somewhere and hear others talking....only understanding one world..."obruni"...and knowing it's about you...but not knowing what's being said. Despite being put on a pedestal, I often also feel like a running joke; someone who gets talked about, and laughed at when I try to speak. It's time's like these I wish I had a perception filter, so I could just escape notice, the way I usually do. It's also times like this I realize no matter how big my celebrity crushes, I never want to marry Daniel Radcliffe - the attention would just be too much.

With all these thoughts running through my head, I've also been thinking a lot about "the gaze"; how those who look have power over those who are looked at. I have never felt so looked at, and yet also such a lack of control over how those people looking at me are seeing me. It's another way in which this experience is helping me understand academic work I've done in the past. I've also been thinking about gender a lot  - gender roles, yes; but also about my own gender. I'm constantly referred to as a "white man" and to be honest, the first couple of times I was confused as to who people were referring to (you know, because I'm a woman). Add to this my scruffy clothes, my lack of make up....and yes, even the fact that my period has been irregular. I feel like Maureen Smalls; struggling with how to reconcile my whiteness and my femininity and figure out just how I'm supposed to perform both when I've been dropped into a foreign culture. On one hand, it's very freeing - not to worry so much about being beautiful, being attractive. Even after the wedding, I told myself and others told me "it doesn't matter, you're white, they'll like you anyway". How awful is that? But a lot of the time it's true. I've never had so many marriage proposals, and I also feel I've never looked frumpier. So. Yeah. I don't know how to wrap this up. Basically, gender and race are confusing. And maybe, no matter how much we think we know about it, until our circumstances change we don't realize to what extent how we perceive  race and gender are based on our own cultural and social contexts. It's a struggle too because these are things that - whether we like to admit it or not - form a large part of our identities. I'm saying our a lot, and I should say my. I think in the long run this awareness is important and will do me good. These feelings and struggles are part of the reason this trip is so important to me.

Take Your Obruni to Work Week

My host father, Anass, owns a cocoa farm, which is his main way of earning income. It's fairly big - I want to say 8 Acres, but I could be totally off on that....suffice to say it's huge. I went farming with him my second day in the village, and have been going with him almost every day that he's gone back - usually it's every week day, but it depends where things are in the cocoa producing schedule. That first day was a bit of a shock - I'm not sure what I expected a cocoa farm to look like....i knew there would be trees...yet somehow I was still surprised to find myself standing in what appeared to be a rain forest on the side of a mountain, teeming with insects, giant green and yellow cocoa pods hanging everywhere. That week was a harvesting week, so a picker was going around, cutting the pods from the tree using a large pole with a blade on the end of it. My host father then went around, using his machete to pick the pods off the ground and fling them into piles, with just a flick. He then has three women who he hires to come around and gather these smaller piles into bigger piles - three total. These women carry gigantic baskets of these cocoa pods on their head, down inclines, up inclines, through trees - they're amazing. It felt like hard work just following Anass around taking pictures and asking questions...granted, this is coming from a girl who's idea of physical labour is having her Fable character chop wood between quests, but I'm super impressed for the amount of work that goes into the harvesting process. This is all after a 35 minutes hike through the forest to the cocoa farm as well, so, keeping that all in mind. One thing that also struck me is that my host father, and host siblings when the come to help, all wear rubber boots, long pants and long sleeves to protect themselves from snakes (that can kill you) and from poisonous insects (which I don't think can kill you, but still suck). The women who work for him, however, wear shorts and either flip flops or bare feet. I'm not sure if this is by choice, or if it's because they can't afford them....my host father has told me that they are poor and they get 5 Ghana cedis a day for their work...which doesn't seem like a whole lot, especially considering one of the women has eleven children. A lot of the past couple of weeks has been like that; I'll notice things, and wonder, and sometimes ask indirect questions, but I'm still getting comfortable enough with my family and community to really ask about a lot of them. I'm intrigued, concerned, but also wary of making judgements or assumptions. And so the mystery of the footwear remains...

So that was Friday. We went back on Monday and Tuesday, doing the same kind of thing, but with my host sister Lydia helping as she was home from boarding school. On Tuesday my host father also gathered contombre leaves (leaves from the coco yams, which grow on the farm), and dug up some yams (which was an intense process) and Lydia made us yams and stew on a fire pit right there on the farm - and it was AMAZINGLY good. A lot of the food my family eats - yams, plantains, bananas, contombre - comes from the farm. I think it's really cool that the cash crop doesn't totally negate any form of subsistence  farming (though they definitely also buy a lot of food). Anyway, by that point, I was able to help pile the pods (not with a machete, just with my hands) and also to help the women fill their baskets. Not a huge help I'm sure, but small steps. Maybe one day I'll be able to carry a basket of them on my head...maybe.




Once most of the membranes were removed, Anass covered the piles in Banana leaves so they could ferment for a few days. That meant the next couple of days were breaks from farming. Monday they started bringing the beans to the compound to dry them out for another few days - but on Monday I left for retreat, so that's all I've seen so far.


Anass is super proud of his cocoa farm - it's size, and it's productivity. He's part of a coop type association which provides him with inputs - fertilizer, fungicide and pesticide on credit. He's been telling me all about these inputs, and their effect on the farm; pointing out black pod disease, and showing me the insects that eat the cocoa...even telling me how to cut the canopy so that the sun can get through, and which plants to keep on the farm and which ones to get rid of. In some ways I feel like I'm training to start my own plantation back in Canada - but again, what gets me is his pride in the amount of work he's put into his farm (started in 1985) and what he's gotten out of it. He also acts as a buyer for this association, so all day long local cocoa farmers come to weight and sell their cocoa - for which they get a fixed price, decided by the government. Since November's a huge harvest month, the house is full of bags of cocoa, waiting to be taken to Tema, and then, as Anass says "to Canada, to be made into chocolate bars and milo". I haven't told him that we don't have milo in Canada....but you get the idea.

So that's my cocoa farming experience so far. My first impressions are - it's hard work. Really hard work. And Anass seems to be really serious about working hard and improving his farm, which I really admire. He's also told me that cocoa farming is a particularly lucrative business - because unlike some other crops, you can harvest at least some of it all year round. It certainly seems more profitable than working as a farm labourer...which is usually the case. Walking around my village I recognize that my family is one of the wealthiest families - based on the size of their house, their clothes, their TV, and the fact that all the kids go to school (the ones who are old enough).

So, that's what I've seen so far. I know that there's a lot more to know, learn, see and uncover - and I hope this blog doesn't give false impressions. I'm acutely aware that as I take notes and pictures, and as I e-mail and blog, that I'm interpreting everything through my own perceptions and assumptions - through my western gaze. I'm doing my best to share my experience with you all - yet  I feel mildly uncomfortable about it - like I'm not able to do my family justice; nor my village; nor Ghana. Because how could I? So, this is just a disclaimer - I'm aware that these blogs are foll of bias, assumptions, filters and misinterpretations and it's important to keep that in mind. But there it is.

Tomorrow I'll put up pictures -  I have a lot of the cocoa farm! Also, stay tuned for more on "the gaze" and to hear about my experience attending a Ghanaian wedding! (In Birkenstocks no less).

Blog!

I've been putting this off because a) my internet time has been limited and b) I've been doing so much journaling and reflecting that I kind of needed a break! But I've been in Nkawkaw since Monday, and it's not Friday so time is running out! I plan to do three blog entries while I'm here...this first one is just a quick update; to be followed by 2 more in depth ones tonight, and tomorrow.

So, on Monday we travelled to Nkawkaw for our first retreat, after spending our first 10 days in the villages. My village is called Wisi Wisi and it's very small. It's fairly close to Nkawkaw, and also close to a larger village called Penkase where my family attends church.

My host father is named Emmanual Anso, and goes by Anass. He speaks english, is a cocoa farmer and is also very religious (Catholic). I also have a host mother, Diane who speaks very little english (it's still better than my Twi). She stays at home most of the time taking care of the kids, cooking and running the family store which is part of our compound. I also have nine sibling; though one I've only met a couple of times (the first time for his wedding - great story, but it has to wait for another post!). He's a teacher in Kumasi, which is about 2-3 hour trotro ride from Nkawkaw. I also forget his name. Then there's Eric, who's 23 and attends boarding school. He's been home though on his midterm break, and speaks english so we've hung out a bit. Next is Lydia, 21, who also attends boarding school and has also been home. She speaks english too, but is much shyer than Eric. We've talked a couple of times mostly at the cocoa farm where she comes to help out. Then Barbara, 14, and really sweet. I think she may have been somehow assigned to look after me since she helps me out a lot...maybe she's just nice though. She lives at home and attends school in Nkawkaw. Then Godfrey - age unknown who either doesn't speak English or is too shy to speak to me (very likely, and understandable). Then the twins, Theodora and I think the other is Deborah -they're seven and strike me as kinda mischievous...but hard to say, since they don't seem to know much English. Then my 3 year old host brother Sendra (or something like that) who mostly runs around in his underpants eating food from plastic bags or crying because a) he has to bath, which he seems to really hate or b) the twins are bugging him. Then little Gabrielle - just over a month. He mostly just lies about crying or giggling. Sometimes I my host mother randomly hands him to me and laughs then walks away...which is...fine. He did pee on me once though - seems to be of little concern to people so whatevs.

So! That's the fam! They live in a compound with the main house (living room and 2 bedrooms), an outhouse attached to the bath enclosure (no running water), a kitchen hut (small and smoky), an extra hut which maybe storage or a guest house, the shop out front and a lot of cocoa! I have my own room, off the patio which is nice and quite a luxury considering the house only has 2 other bedrooms, and one bed in the living room. The family seems well of relative to the village, and my host father has pretty much confirmed that he's considered middle class. The kids all go to school, and are decently well dressed and we get fed really well - in fact, amazingly well. It's all an adjustment - especially the work on the cocoa farm - a description of which will follow in my next installment.

I still have to say though, that the transition of going from the mission house, and from being pretty much constantly with the group to being dropped off in the middle of a Ghanaian family was quite a  shock to the system. Despite the amazingness of my host family, (who greeted me by picking me a basket of oranges from one of the compound trees), my first few days were marked by anxiety, loneliness and homesickness. It was tough to have to learn everything from scratch - things like using the bathroom and getting bath water; but also things like family dynamics and good manners. Not knowing the language has also been extremely isolating. I found myself surrounded by this large family, talking, laughing, eating, playing and I was unable to really participate. A particularly difficult moment was realizing that I wasn't to eat with the family - in fact, they don't eat together, but at separate tables depending on age and gender. It made me really homesick for my own family, and for our kitchen table and just that feeling of belonging and relaxing. I had a couple of days of deep panic in which I pretty much concluded that people as shy as myself should never leave the comfort of their own home. But I calmed down a bit, got some support from the group during our weekly meeting, and have been settling in a bit. It's definitely a challenging situation, but it gets easier every day. As I've said my host family is amazing, and they take amazing care of me so I'm extremely grateful for that. As I get my own needs and feelings under control, I know I'll be able to focus even more in immersing myself in Ghanaian life and to learn more and more about my family, my village and this new and exciting country!