Kumasi Trip

Our program went up to Kumasi this weekend(sorry for the belated post). While we were up there, we saw an adinkra work shop, a kente work shop, swam at a crater lake and had fun at a pool. It was a while ago and most of the stories are mixed in with the photos that I took, so, I will largely be glossing over the details on this blog post.

Kumasi is the cultural capitol of Ghana. It is home to the Ashanti people. They are Ghana's largest ethnic group and live in the center of the country. Their language, Twi, is the most widespread language in the country. This is significant because it is more popular then English, dispute English being the country's official language. There has long been a debate about changing the national language to fit the reality on the ground. Some argue that Twi will boost national unity, because nearly everyone already speaks it and it would thus be an easy transition for the country to make. Opponents say that switching to Twi will give preference to the Ashanti people at the xpense of the rest of the tribes. Those who want to keep English argue that it is an internationally recognized language spoken through out the world and will give Ghana a step up when it comes to international issues, plus, due to its foreign origins, it would have no affect on intertribal relations. Opponents of English point out that nations develop fastest when their people are able to be educated in their mother tongues. Hardly anyone speaks English in their homes... Twi is by far more popular and its popularity would only increase if it became the national language.

Another interesting thing about the Ashanti is the power they held during the pre-colonial era. Ashanti were the dominant group. They were the only tribe that was able to challenge the European powers and went to war defending their lands. Those wars lasted many decades and because the British were never truly able to suppress them, the Ashanti kingdom marked the norhtern limit of their colony. So when someone goes farther up to a city like Tamale, they will see very little European influence.

The Ashanti were also the domestic group that benefited most from the transatlantic slave trade. Due to their dominance, they forced many of the other tribes to pay them tribute. Those tributes often came in in the form of slaves. And since the Ashanti could only use so many slaves, they sold the rest to Europeans and profited handsomely. In the process they destroyed what would later become the Northern and Southern portion of their country. Either way, Kumasi and the surrounding region is very wealthy. Their king layers himself in gold any time he goes out. His jewels are quite heavy, luckily he conserves energy by being carried everywhere he goes.

We went to the King palace and took a tour of a museum devoted to the history behind the kingdom.

We also went to a few workshops that made local crafts. I took a lot of pictures so check those out.

My Brother's Getting Married!

Ty(my actual/biological) brother back home has decided to get married to his, now, fiance Cimone. Just wanted to say CONGRATULATIONS! to the happy couple. I wish you the best. I think you'll be great. Rock it! Just remember that you have to work your entire lives to keep the love fresh and strong. If you get comfortable and ever going that extra mile for each other, problems will inevitably bubble to the surface. But, that's just a problem that all couples face... other than that you both shouldn't have any problems because I your great for each other. Welcome to the family Cimone. Hope your warming up to our traditions(The Simpsons, 'int', made you are, and all the rest). Much love and I send my warmest across the net.

Trip to Cape Coast

This weekend, my group took a trip to Cape Coast. Its probably the third largest city in Ghana and used to be its capital(back during the colonial era) because it was the country's center of commerce and (almost) in the middle of the country's coastline. During the trip we visited Slave River, Elmina Castle and Kakoom national park.

Slave river was the final resting place for captives of the Transatlantic slave trade before they were sold and boarded the ship that brought them to the Americas. The path that led down the river held so many foot prints that it was noticeably lower than the rest of the terrain. The grove made by their feet was probably about three feet deeper. We were given a tour of the area and told about how Ghana is trying to welcome back Africans in the diaspora. Some examples of this were the graves of people who had their families send their remains back to Africa and a wall the park constructed for diasporans to write their names on. I would have written mine, but the park was charging $100 for the honor of doing so. And that explains why the wall is empty.

The castle we went to is called Elmina. It is the oldest European structure outside of Europe. It was built by the Portuguese during the 1400's(i think). Since then, it has been owned by the Dutch, British and now Ghana. I can see why they chose to build it on that part of the coast. It is gorgeous. Right on the ocean line with a great view and the castle itself is beautiful. Inland, up the adjacent hill is a fort that was built to protect the castle. The castle was originally built as a trading post for ivory, gold and food stuffs that were needed to refill whips as they sailed on to southern Africa. Gold was so prevalent in Ghana that the colonial powers named it the 'Gold Coast'. Elmina actually earned its name because of the Portuguese term for 'the mine'.

Eventually the castle was converted into a center for the slave trade. They took out the inventory and converted the stores down below the castle into cells for slaves. Slaves were much more profitable then gold, so the trade of most other goods nearly collapsed and they turned their attention to trading people. Elmina, and the neighboring Cape Coast Castle, were home to Ghana's largest slave market. Or at least that's what people from the South will tell you. Northerners claim their Salaga market was the center of Ghana's slave trade.

We were given a guided tour of the castle. Our guides were very knowledgeably and we learned a lot. There were two parts of the trip that stood out to me. The first was the 'ripe' smell of the female dungeons. All the slaves in the castle had to relieve themselves inside their cells because no attention was paid to their sanitation. But for women, it was especially bad because they were given no way to clean up their menstruation and even 150-200 years after the last slave left the castle, it still holds a disgustingly pungent smell. The other notable was a view from the 'door of no return'. This was the door through which slaves were brought to ships waiting to transport them across the Atlantic. Today it is a cold dark cell with a broken steel gate. When you look out the gate, you see a picturesque beach and a bright beach umbrella. Looking out there, I just imagine what slaves would have thought if they were starving to death in there and looked out to find a family of tourist building a sand castle on the beach below.

After the castle we walked down the beach to the town's other castle, Cape Coast castle. Words really cannot do this beach justice, it is a beautiful sight to behold. and the sand is so soft, the water so warm. I kind of wish I lived there. I walked the beach with a few friends from my program, one of whom, had been visited my he farther. I talked to him because he's from Oregon(he grew up in Hood River) and everyone knows how much I love my Oregonians. MY camera was full so I don't have many pictures from this weekend, but I will upload the ones Rihana took with her camera.

The next day we went to Kakoom park for a canopy walk. I was afraid it would be as disappointing as the one we did in Costa Rica. I was afraid it would be a dinky little foot bridge connecting a few low trees. But that wasn't the case at all. We were really high up. I'm not all that afraid of heights(having gone bungee jumping and sky diving) but I did have trouble catching my breath at a few spots. At the highest, we were 150 ft up, looking over the forest. There was one guy, Micheal, who was mortified during the walk. He was shaking the entire time. It was a really good experience and our group, took a lot of pictures. Whenever I get my hands on them, I'll post them with the rest.

peace out - tamu

My First Published Article

As promised, here is a copy of the first article that I published over at the Statesmen Newspaper. If you click on the images it should bring you to a larger version of them... one that's actually readable. Enjoy. This article was the peak of my very short career as a journalist. Oh, and I plan to keep this post here for only a week or two. After that, I'll be sending it back to the posts of April, since that is when it was published.

Morning At Dance Class

I'm in a dance class. It is called Introduction to Traditional African Dance. We meet twice a week, Wednesday evenings for two hours and Friday mornings for one hour. The class has a live band that plays music for us. Two or three drummers, a cow bell, sometimes one other instrument. Sometimes they teach us songs, as well. I think by the end of the class we will need to sing and dance at the same time. I'm dreading that because I can dance, and I can sing, but I can't do both at the same time. It just doesn't work for me. I get so off beat, it looks as if I'm dancing to a different song that only I can hear.

Since its Friday, I went to dance. the class started as usual. We did a warm up. This generally involves following along with what ever one of our teachers does(similar to an aerobics class). We use that time to practice the various moves. Nothing too difficult. There's just this one teacher who enjoys watching us go crazy. Well, this teacher will tell the drummers to go at double speed. On top of that, he switches between the various dance moves at double speed. So the class is left frantically trying to figure out which move to do and as soon as we have, he's moved onto the next move. Despite feeling the urge to collapse afterwards, I really enjoy it.

After the warm up, we'll do a run through of our dance routine. This includes one practice round, then they split us up into groups so they can see how well we actually know it. Following the routine, we'll generally learn something new.

But that didn't happen today. Class was ended early because the performing arts students were holding an and our teachers told us it would be great, so we all had to go. We did. It was a waste. No food, no dancing. All the Africans in our class skipped out. The one good thing... no great thing was the entertainment. They had this student come with a keyboard and they must have just instructed him to fill time because he had no routine, he sang no songs.

What he did do was sing about whatever thoughts popped into his head. My favorite songs were "to the lady in the front row drinking some sachet water... enjoy your sachet water" and "my phone is ringing now, someone must be calling my phone now. Mmmm, maybe I got a new text message." Those two songs were classics. The rest of his act was equally random and I laughed the whole time. But that still didn't really make it worth the stay. We were there for about 45 minutes and other then that wonderfully thoughtful serenade, nothing happened. At one point, a few of us tried to leave but a man at the gate guilted us into staying. It was reminiscent of the Simpsons episode where they all join the cult. The cult leaders gather the town together to watch a movie about their beliefs. Before the movie began everyone was told that they could leave at any time, if they didn't find the message to be pertinent or believable. Well, after a few minutes of the film someone decides they've had enough and want to leave. The moment he stands up, the movie is stopped, a spotlight is cast down on him and over the intercom, someone asks him if anything is wrong/embarrasses him into sitting back down. The movie continues and spot light goes out. Then, when any subsequent people tried to leave the same thing would happen and in the end everyone stays until they are all brainwashed into believers.

Luckily, my fellow classmates and I weren't subjected to the same fate. We escaped with our lives by sneaking out the back. That was on our second attempt. Actually, we almost didn't make it because on the way out we ran into our head dance teacher. The moment I saw her I ducked away from her disapproving glare and quickened my pace.... we had gone too far to let freedom slip out of our grasp.

When I returned home, it was laundry time. I always do laundry on Fridays. Its done by hand and takes forever, so Fridays are the only day when we(Rihana and I) both have enough time. Its not very hard work, it just takes a really long time. There is one casualty though... my cuticles. They bleed every laundry day. After a couple of hours of rubbing clothes together, they can't help it.

By the way, I love Fridays. Because after laundry is done, i have no more work for the the week and get to relax with my siblings and watch movies until Monday. Fridays are sweet.

Off to Court

This week I went into the field for The Statesman Newspaper. It was pretty cool. We(co-worker Gilbert and I) went to Ghana's Fast Track High Court. We also walked around the court grounds to catch a glimpse of some of their other courts. We saw the Commerce Court, Supreme Court, a Circuit Court, and some others. Accra is the capital of Ghana and thus the home of their Judiciary. The vast majority of the nations lawyers and judges and courts are in this city. So I basically was able to see where most decisions are made.

The case we were there to write about was concerning 23 Liberian refugees that were detained by Ghanaian police. The police never allowed them to be tried for their offenses or talk to lawyers. Only one of them had spoken to anyone since being arrested 1-2 months ago and a group of lawyers was arguing that the police needed to allow the refugees to seek legal council.

We arrived a little late and missed the trial, but the judge ruled in favor of the refugees. We gathered our information from a group of reporters who had been to the case and all huddled around each other to discus their notes.

An interesting thing about their court system is that are still completely basing it off of the British system... right down to those powder white wigs. There are seasons designated for wigs and gowns and some where you don't need them. In the ones where you do need to wear the costumes, those who don't are legally considered naked and risk being held in contempt.

I think that's crazy. But oh well. If they like tradition...

Volta Region

Hello Again,

Another week, another story. This week was pretty good. I wrote my first piece at the newspaper and CIEE group took trips. We split up into two groups (a big group of 30+ and a small group of 20). The big group went to the Central region, Cape Coast(third largest city in Ghana), Elmina Castle(an old slave trading post and fort Europeans used), and the Slave River(the place slaves being sold into the external trade went to take one last wash before being shipped to the Americas). My group was the smaller one. We went to the Volta Region, where we visited West Africa’s highest water fall, a mona monkey sanctuary, and I attempted to go on a really cool hike(more on that later).

The piece I wrote was an editorial about Ghana’s police mishandling evidence. The police had confiscated large amounts of cocaine from a bust in 2007. Then, in a recent internal investigation, they found a crate was missing. Plus in another crate, bags of cocaine were replaced by with bags of flour. It was a nice article to write, I enjoyed it. But sadly it wasn’t published. They say it was too short for what they were looking for and thus lacked details. The next day I saw they had a similar editorial that was clearly not written by me. Not used, but it still felt good to do something. Yesterday, I wrote another article, this one was about an insurance agency that was moving their head quarters. I have no idea if I did a good job on this article, so we’ll see if it gets published. Either way, I ‘m heading down the path towards becoming a real journalist. So, that’s cool.

On to my weekend trip…. It was a good one, a little rushed for my taste, yet the sights were still interesting. Our group hopped onto a bus at 6 am to travel to the part of the Ghana that lies to the east of the large man-made lake north of Accra. Our first destination took us on a 30 minute hike to a really beautiful waterfall. We swam around in it for a while and took a bunch of pictures. I tried to take some pictures of the bats, after I upload them, we’ll see if any came out well. Ghana has a lot of bats, these ones where living on the cliff side that the water was rushing down. I also took some pictures from inside the fall, which is really cool since I had bought this waterproof camera bag before the trip and finally had the chance to use it. The pool below the fall wasn’t very deep but it was cool and mist in the air was fantastic. It was a very hot day and we needed to cool off.

In Ghana, March is the peak of the dry season. It gets hotter and hotter, until I’m dripping uncontrollably with sweat everywhere I go, regardless of what I do. Then, just when its about to become unmanageably hot, clouds roll over head and the rainy season starts. Well, this weekend we got to experience those super hot days right and it was crazy. My shirt was soaking all weekend and I never really did anything to deserve it. Even thinking made me sweat. So I loved the chance to float around in some nice cool water (actually it was quite cold). Then, after the last person stepped out of the water, our CIEE organizer began herd us away to lunch. The meal was good. I enjoyed my first real French fries, since arrival and they also had a great salad. Ghanaians don’t really do the whole ‘vegetable’ thing (their meals consist of carbs, sauce and meat), so whenever our group gets together for an event everyone goes crazy over at the salad bowl.

After chow, it was off to the monkeys. This part of the trip was a little like a bubble. It kept inflating into a better and better experience… and suddenly it popped and vanished into thin air. I say this because we set off on another hike through the jungle. 5 minutes in, we encountered our first pod of monas. Setting out I was afraid we might not see them, because our guide told us they mainly come out during dusk and dawn (we were there at 4pm). But, there they were. And then they became really comfortable with us and crawled closer and closer (which I didn’t think would happen at all). Next thing I know, I’m reaching my arm out and feeding them bananas. Sweet stuff. I think nearly everyone in the group gave at least one banana to a monkey and if one holds on to the fruit firmly, the monkeys will peel it in your hand then either break off pieces or just do a face plant and gobble it up. I thought we would continue hiking around the area, checking out other groups of monkeys, but that didn’t happen. As soon as we ran out of bananas, our guides took us right back to the bus, so 15 minutes after we entered the sanctuary, we were gone. That sucked. But now I have nice, new monkey sanctuary t-shirt and pictures with African Monkeys. So how could I be sad? (sarcasm = we were such tools)

When we arrived at the hotel, I was tired. So I unpacked, ate and went to bed in front of the warm glowing stare of cable tv. The hotel had some 50 channels. To be fair, half of them were blacked, so we really only had 25. Then, to be honest those 25 channels were just rebroadcasts of the first 4 or 5 channels over and over again. Haha. Seriously. If you channel surfed the airwaves, you’d find one of the same five shows happening on which ever channel you stopped. Example: you could watch MSNBC Africa on channel 4, 6,7, 12,15, 21, 27, 36, etc. Well, I thought it was funny. I awoke in the morning and went for swim. Growing up on a swim team ha sort of ruined the whole pool experience. People just stand there, partially submerged and splash around. I don’t get it. When I go to a pool, the only way I can enjoy myself is if I’m swimming laps, teaching others how to properly swim (because that just rewarding) or maybe playing a variation of Water polo. Nothing else really does it for me. So, when my group hit the pool the night before, I hit the hay. I thought, if I were to wake up early enough, the pool would be empty, and I could get in a really good swim. I swam for about an hour and a half. Then at the end some girl joined me and started talking to me because she had mistook me for someone participating in the same program she was. In the course of our conversation, she recommended that I use my free time to go hiking at a mountain that’s just down the road. It sounded like a great idea and yesterday’s rushed monkey excursion, left me wanting for more. So, during breakfast I recruited some friends and we set off.

Our first problem was that I couldn’t remember the name of the mountain. We asked one of the hotel workers and he told us if we took a taxi to the village named Ho, we would be able to get there without problems. Easy enough; we continued on. The first taxi we stopped knew Ho, so while we were driving there we attempted to find out where the tourist information center was (my pool mate had told me to look for it). We zigzagged town and eventually found a sign for the ‘tourist board’… close enough. Only problem was that we hadn’t thought through our trip enough to realize that we were looking for an office on a Sunday morning. It was closed and the security guards weren’t any help. We found another taxi driver. This one knew the mountain and told us he could get us there for “two five”. We hopped in and were on our way. The taxi driver asked us if we wanted him to stay while we hiked. Because he told us that it would be easy to find another taxi at the base of the mountain, we told him he didn’t need to. Logistic problem number 2: we believed the driver, but really he was just driving us into a situation, where we would have to use him if we wanted to return. Then, 5-10 minutes into the drive the pavement disappeared and was replaced by a bumpy dirt road. Similarly, our taxi’s speed disappeared and was replaced by that of a brisk walk. 20 minutes into it and the mountain didn’t look any closer. We began scheduling our time, trying to figure out just how much hiking we could get in before our bus back at the hotel needed to leave. That was our next logistics failure. I thought we were leaving at 1pm, my friends informed me we were to check out at noon. One less hour for our fun adventure. Plus there was all the time it was taking to get there… so by the time we had arrived at our destination, it looked like we’d only have 20 minutes to walk around, before we needed to head back. We asked the driver if he could just wait for us while we explored the village for twenty minutes. This meant renegotiation of our bill. We told him we’d give him another ‘two five’ to drive us back(in addition to the ‘two five’ for the first half of the trip) and then an extra two cedi for him to wait the 20 minutes for us. At this point we were encountered with logistical problem number 4: lost in translation. Our driver had meant 25 cedi when he told us ‘two five’. We thought he meant 2 cedi, 50 peswas($2.50). So now we were screwed. We had told the man we’d pay him 70 cedi for the round trip, when we thought we would pay him 7 cedi. (by the way, Ghana just redenominated their currency in January, so price confusion is common) There was no way we could pay him 70 cedi, which was far too much and we didn’t even have that kind of money on us. We were trying to argue with him over the price, but he was holding all the chips, since (judging by the size of the village) we could see that there was no way we were going to find another taxi to drive us home. And at the same time we were trying to explain to our guide that we wouldn’t have enough time to go on the hike. Then… out of nowhere… an American woman shows up. She tells us she’s been living in the village for 7 years and her arrival adds one last peculiarity to the mix. Her and her friends join our fight against the taxi driver. Everyone agrees that he is expecting a ridiculously high price. For 70 cedi, we could easily charter a taxi to bring us all the way to Accra and back. (when I eventually returned home, I told my brother how much the taxi driver wanted to charge me, and his response was “where was he going to drive you to? America?) The locals in the village told us they normally pay 1 cedi each for a taxi ride from Ho. By that price, our offer of 15 cedi was twice what he should be paid and the guy still wouldn’t accept it. Eventually, with the help of the townspeople, we brought the price down to a disgruntled 20 cedi, said goodbye to our new village friends and were on our way

The whole event led me to a greater appreciation of meters. They’re great. When it comes to price of the trip, there’s no arguing, no bargaining; you just look up at the meter and pay whatever is on its display. If it has counted to high number, you pay a high price. If its number is low, so is your bill. It’s that simple. Beautifull, really.