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.