Aburi, Classes, and Village Life II

This weekend I went to Aburi national park. This was a really cool park that CIEE brought us to. We all loaded up in buses and trekked out there. Through tiny villages and mountain roads, we arrived first at a wood carver's village. The sad thing was that non of us really remembered that we would be going there. We were all just thinking that we were going to the park and that would be it. So when the bus pulled over into a random parking lot that had no botanical sights in view, we were very confused. At first we were convinced that it was nothing more than a bathroom trip. But Abena(one of the CIEE folk) herded us into a corner where 4 men were carving wood. It was at that point that we realized where we were. One of the men gave us a history and introduction to wood carvingm, then were left to wander the shops. If we remembered that we were going to stop there we all would have brought a lot more money. Instead, we all wandered around amazed at how nice the stuff was(at least by a tourist's stand point) while trying to find someone to borrow money from. Since I didn't have enough, I figured the best thing to buy there would be a drum for Ty. I was looking aroung and was dismayed by the first few prices that I heard. The first guy offered me a drum for $65. Which is rediculous over here and I was terrified that we were stuck in a horrible tourist trap where everything is two to three times more expensive then it should be. But I kept looking around and I eventually found the same type of drum for $24. Since, I had lent some money to a friend, I had to go borrow from a different guy to buy my drum. But in the end it worked out and I was so happy. I felt kinda weird being so pumped about a drum that wasn't even for me. BUt if you bought the same drum in the US, it would have cost $150-$200. So I felt great and Ty should love banging it around campus. So enjoy, bro(a few months from now, that is).

After that we went to the garden and it was nice too. Our group(we split up) started in the royal garden. That's where dignitaries go and plant flora when they visit Ghana. All of the trees, bushes and flowers there were planted by Kings, Queens, Presidents, Prime Ministers, etc. For example, Queen Elizabeth planted a tree there. Other cool things were these trees that were enormously dense forests in and of them selves. There was so much life packed onto their branches that it looked like the tree was giving birth to other plants(ferns, mosses, smaller trees, etc.). Those ones got me really excited to go see a real ghanain forest. I couldn't wait to hike through one. My other favorite plant there was this canibal tree. Its starts like an invasive vine wrapping around and parasitically sucking the life out of its host. As it grows it takes on the form of the traditional tree(roots, trunk, branshes) as it engulfs its meal. Then, it replaces its host and dissolves it into nothing. So in the end, the tree looks like any other one out there, but with a hollow core(because the original tree once stood within).

I'll post again soon. I love you all. I'm off to Twi language classes.

peace

Aburi, Classes, and Village Life

So with my last post I put up pictures from my trip. I hope you all liked them. You don't kn0ow how much trouble it was to get them online. It took me hours, which turned into days. Most of the time while searching for internet cafes on campus, they are just down. Either the power has turned off or they can't get the network running. The most reliable place on campus is the international student lab, but because its filled with obrunies(and were all addicted to the internet), the place is constantly filled and while I have a ton of time in Ghana to do nothing, I don't have time to wait for hours to sit infront of a computer with a slow internet connection. And while i love this lab, I wasn't able to upload anything from any of the computers I tried. I tried all the photo sharing tools I could think of(facebook, picasa, picasa we albums, emailing them through gmail, etc) and nothign could work. In the end my neighbor lent me her laptop and I uploaded my pics to that and then went to a cafe in my neighborhood that costs $1 an hour. That cafe(they call 'internet cafes' simply 'cafes' and for those of you who don't know they are rooms filled with internet ready computers that customers come in and use by the hour or half hour... but i digress) is a really nice place. Their computers are responsive enough and their connection is fast. Plus, while they had the typical Ghanain power outage(twice during the three or so hours I was there), the power came back quickly because they have back up generators just for the lab. And my obruni sister, Rihana, also told me I can use her laptop any time I want to upload pictures in the future. So, that should make the process a lot easier.

If you haven't check them yet, do so. Another post is soon to come.

I Finally Uploaded Some Pictures

What you all have been waiting for....
Pictures!

I know, it took a while, this is Africa. The people here(Ghana) make $500 a year, so its hard to find a decent internet connection and computer to upload photos with.

But now that I have. My pictures will have a permanent slide show on the left side of this blog. Yep, over there. And if you click on the pictures it will take you to the album that holds them all. That way you can read the captions and see them in full screen/download them if you'd like.

Well, I'm off to produce said captions. See ya.

Host Family Continued

So, yes. I have a host family and I think that it is a really cool way to live while studying abroad. Those of us with hosts(6) get a leg up on learning about the culture/country because we are exposed to it on a much closer level.

In my host's home there are some 15 or so people. It is a compound of three houses and a lounge/bar/restaurant. None of the people who actually own the houses live there... all of them have moved to the UK or other cities in Ghana. For the time being the residents are just extended family members we have an aunt and uncle in one house with three boys. Only one of the boys is theirs. They also have a biological daughter, but she just left to go away to a technical university in Kumasi(second largest city/university in Ghana). In another house is a Grandma, aunt, two sons and a daughter. I'm not sure who's children they are, but the aunt there(auntie regina) has a heart of gold and takes care of everyone. At the same time she is one of those people who has a very hard time doing anything other then yell while communicating. I think its funny since have no idea what she's yelling about unless the person she's talking to will translate for me after the conversation is over. I think she's typically speaking in Twi(the language of the Ashanti tribe... the largest one in Ghana). What makes it so funny is that whoever she speaks with remains so calm while their being yelled at. I guess their just used to it. Oh and there used to be one other couple in our home. Anutie Bessy and her husbund. they aren't here any longer because they flew back to the UK this weekend. And I don't actually live in either of those houses. I live in the house that Aunti Bessy and husbund used to be in... but now its just all empty.

My Ghanaian brothers and sisters are as follow: Micky whose about to start college; his anonymous 'brother'(to be explained later) who may also be starting college soon; Fredrick who is 14; Bernard who is 13; Victoria who is 10 or 11; and Lexis who is 26; and Rihana who is studying abroad through my program aswell. The people I talk with most are Lexis and Fredrick. They are both cool people.

The restaurant also has a few people who work there. I really don't know who they are yet. I just recognize them by face. The only one i talk to in Israel.

my time is up and i've got to go.

peace and love

Ghanain Host Family

I love my Ghana family. They're great. I can't really pin down the demographics, because people keep moving in and out, but i can say that the home is more of a compound with three houses and a restaurant. There are different families living in each house but everyone is related and shares the space equally. There are aunts and uncles, children and grandma. Its really great that I get to live with them and experince life the way the ghanains do. I can't post more on that till later because i have class.... but I'll get back to them.


peace

My Cuffy Family Roots

I did do a little research about the Cuffy's... don't get to excited, this won't help anyone get any closer to finding any ancestors. At least its interesting, though.

So in Ghana, people name their children after the days of the week that they are born on. They also give the children real names(like Irene, Ty or Tamu), but the "friday = kofi = cuffy" thing will be added on as sort of an equivalent to the american middle name. Only the day-of-the-week name comes first. Our name is Cuffy... or Kofi(that's how they spell it here) and that just means that our grandfather was born on a Friday.

Think Kofi Annan(former U.N. secretary general). His name is not actually Kofi, nor is it his surname placed first, like they do in Japan(think "Schwoeffermann Tamu")... its just there because Friday was the day he was born on.

When Cuffy slaves switched over to the British naming system, they must have forgotten the old ways and confused Kofi for a surname. Perhaps because their slave masters decided it was too difficult to pernounce forefather Cuffy's actual name. But, since its just the name that children born on a Friday are given... one out of every 14 Ghanians has that name(one out of seven for the days of the week and double that because girls get a different -but related- name then boys).

A big part of being a member of the black community is having no idea where you came from. Blacks know where their parents and maybe grandparents were from but after a couple more generations farther than that the trail just leads to a slave ship that could have sailed from anywhere.

I have a cousin on my moms side who is searching for the roots of that side of the family. But it is really hard because no slave families where kept together and the masters often changed the names of their slaves to things that were easier to pronounce.

So, that leaves us here. We just learned that mom's family gets their last name from a day of the week. I think its similar to americans' astrological signs "Hi i'm Tamu, I'm a Taurus". Most people don't care what your astrological sign is... but we all still konw which one is ours and will occassionally read about it in the newspaper. Ghana's day-of-birth name is similar. There is a meaning to the day someone is born on, but, at least among the people I spoke to, no one seams to know what the meaning is... its just something thats done because of tradition.

So when my ancester come from africa they went by that useless name because they thought it was his surname and our whole family has been calling themselves by a family name that doesn't really exist.


peace - i'm gettin' tired from droppin' all hese bricks of truth
but no really, if you want to find out where we came from... get a genetics test. they work. really well.

Happy Valentine's Day

To all and especially to Vicky... I love you.

Kisses and Hugs.

I'm in Ghana Now

Hey All,

Sorry for not doing this earlier. Our leaders have a bad habit of going over things that aren't critical for hour after hour and glossing over the most important things as quickly as possible. For example, we talked about health in Ghana for two hours. That talk consisted of a long drawn out story of a guy who died because he did not take his medicine. We listened to this story for so long that we had to skip two other topics that day. Four total topics were ignored because we did not have enough time. He could have just told us to take our malaria pills or die... but instead he decided to skip topics like: where we were going to live, what classes we were to take(or how to register for them), what internships we would be doing, how to get money/bank account, how to get a phone, or how to travel around the city. Also, we have been scheduled since arrival, so I had no time to search for an internet cafe and type this stuff up. For the future, I should be blogging a lot more frequently because we have a free computer lab for international students. And they have USB ports, so i'll come back and put pictures on the blog.

Here are the travel basics: the flight was good, British Airlines are really awesome, but London's airport is not good if you need some rest between flights. I didn't sleep at all on the first flight because British Air is just too good. the food was so tasty and the choices for movies so good, that I decided to stay up all night and sleep when I got to the airport. Wrong decision. There was no way to sleep in that place. For some reason they chose to make it impossible for anyone to stretch out. And it was so loud. There speakers everywhere. And every few minutes there was a new announcement. It had this annoying "Du, Duh, Di" prior to each announcement that both drove us(the three NU students) crazy and made us burst out laughing. It was also hilarious because it sounded like the announcers were competing to make announcements. The kept cutting each other off and talking over the previous announcement. Finally, those little airport carts kept driving by(the ones the drive those with disabilities around). Well, London's have obnoxious "BEEP, BEEP, BEEP" accompanied with a fun police style set of blinding, whirling, lights. The second flight was great. I was so exhausted that I slept instantly. Plus the plane was filled with students going to the same program that I am(CIEE in Legon's University of Ghana). We all slowly discovered this as the flight went on. I watched two movies after the nap(Michael Clayton and Stardust). I love Stardust. Great movie.

When we arrived CIEE picked us up from the airport and took us to a hotel. We lived there for two nights and did orientation all day. They told us about the culture and how to get around, taboos(those sorts of basics). We drove around campus a lot, but took the most confusing routes. So that, at the end of orientation, I had no idea where anything was. It is a lot better now that we are on the ground and out of the buses... but more on that when we get to class registration.

Yesterday we moved into our residences. I am living with a family - a big family. They have a small compound with three houses on it and the family is spread out among the houses. The houses are all treated as one home, so I can freely move between all of them without problems. There are a few of us in this neighborhood. Most foreign students ('obrunies' as they are called here) live on campus in the dorms. I am one of the lucky few to live with families. At least that my opinion. A lot of people enjoy living on their own. I like my way because I think I will be exposed to real life more. For example, last night my family and i talked about ghanain life and world stuff for hours.

Today we are on campus to register for classes. But, no one is registering. We have been wandering around checking out which classes are available. We are not able to register for anything, since the class schedule is not really complete. It is up to each department to organize their own registrations so there no way to know when class lists will be finalized. Many of the departments told us to come back tomorrow or next week to check if class lists have been posted. The only department that had finalized their classes was Sociology. Classes start on Monday, by the way. Hopefully I can find some schedules by then, because I am excited to start the learning.

Got to go. I love you all.

Tamu's Haircut, Now he's on his way

I love you and i'll miss you.

I gave him this great haircut before he left.