I work for an international nongovernmental organization (INGO) that brings foreigners (about 80% Americans) to Ghana, India, Thailand, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Nepal and Ecuador to serve communities in the health, community development and education sectors while living with host families and learning about the country's culture. I am the Project Coordinator for our site in Cape Coast, Ghana. Besides locating and cultivating partnerships with Ghanaians and their nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and developing work plans for foreign volunteers and interns, I also end up doing a lot of the volunteer coordinating. Additionally, I update our media outlets and teach a biweekly cross-cultural training seminar to the volunteers. I live with my boss. I work on weekends, sometimes. I live in a compound connected to our volunteer house. I'm "on call" for the volunteers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. What I do is not a job - it is a lifestyle.
During the summer my job requires a shift in focus. One, I become a glorified camp counselor - a shepherd, if you will. Don't get me wrong - we get some cool volunteers - I even consider a few my friends. But when I'm working with them, I am a shepherd. A "bosslady." My boss Kirsty identifies herself as the Mama of the volunteers and me as the fun older sister. I'm okay with that.
Two, I orchestrate the preparations for the projects for both the volunteers and their project partners. This is my second summer working for this INGO. Last June, there were five volunteers on-site. This June? Twenty-three volunteers and interns are working at 12 different projects. As for July, 10 of the June participants will be staying through the month, overlapping with 18 new arrivals who will be spread out on nine projects, not to mention a group of 15 university students on five projects. Where do I come in? I'm responsible for checking in with everyone throughout their programs to make sure both the volunteers and their partners are satisfied (mending the inevitable communication problems). I am also managing the project money for all the partners and each of their volunteers.
And three, I specialize in Damage Control. Project and Volunteer Damage Control.
One of my favorite damage control stories is from this May. It involves a volunteer who served as an assistant teacher for an elementary school (called "primary school" in Ghana). The Ghana education system allows canes to be used by the teachers to discipline the students. The foreign volunteers who spend time in the schools are deeply disturbed by this, especially when students are caned for reasons such as getting an answer wrong, not leaving enough space between each letter when they write, or for jumping out of their seat with excitement when answering a question. Caning is so ingrained in Ghanaian culture that even when this particular school's headmaster instructed the teachers to cease the caning, the students' parents complained.
When volunteers sign up for the education projects, we warn them before their arrival that caning is the culture's preferred method of punishment. They still have difficulty witnessing it. One of the girl volunteers asked to be caned by a teacher to see how it felt. Others stepped out of the classroom when they felt uncomfortable or upset about it. Until this May, no one had tried to "fix it."
During our organization's orientation and through the cross-cultural training courses I teach, we encourage our volunteers to know their place within the country they are serving while also maintaining a positive outlook on their roles within their NGOs' projects. We explain at length that it is neither acceptable nor worthwhile to try to change an aspect of a culture by imposing one's own culture on theirs. Some then may think, Well, then why should we volunteer at all? Westernized solutions for X-country's problems will never work. Moreover, it can possibly offend the locals. Attempting to impose one's culture on another's is culturally insensitive, arrogent, naïve and distinctly "American." (Sorry to say it.) However, say for instance a volunteer wants to teach community members about the importance of recycling rubbish. There's no harm in that, as it is a solution suitable for a Ghanaian problem.
However, *Bob was determined to change the minds of the 11 teachers at his school during his three-week program. When he told me he was going to try to "fix things," I got nervous. Then he admitted he knew he couldn't banish caning from Ghana's education system, but he hoped to at least influence the teachers at his school as much as possible during his three-week program. During his first few days at the school he asked for a meeting with the 11 teachers and headmaster and provided examples of less painful methods of punishment. Wall sits was his main suggestion. From what I had gathered from my sporadic informal check-ins with him throughout his first week, Bob was going to continue to educate the teachers on alternative ways to discipline the students and hope for the best.
One afternoon Bob came to our volunteer house after working at the school. A university group was staying at our volunteer house, and many of them were hanging out in the dining room. Bob had been in Ghana maybe a week before the group arrived. He strode into the house, put his backpack on the floor, pulled out a broken cane and triumphantly raised it over his head. He announced to the room, beaming, "Ten more to go!"
I was mortified.
I asked him to come over to where I was sitting. I asked what he had done and why he did it. I reminded him (informed him?) that he had taken and broken someone else's property and such an action could have severed the relationship between him and the school and perhaps the school and our organization. Then came the excuses: "Well, it wasn't that good of a cane anyway," and "...the teacher can just get a new one." I told him what he had done had gone against our organization's ideals, against everything our staff had told the volunteers about keeping our own culture to ourselves.
What Bob did made me think of all the examples in America's history of self-imposing, both recent and in the textbooks. For some reason, this situation triggered a major disappointment in my home country. I don't know when this hostility toward the U.S. started exactly, and I'm not sure if it's just the U.S. who is guilty of this, but something deep inside me scoffs at people's impulse to "help." What qualifies as "help?" What qualifies as an "improvement?" Every culture, every person has a different perception of what it means to "help" and to "improve." In order for change to occur within a society, the society must be ready for change. Going back to the recycling initiative in Ghana, Ghanaians are ready for an improvement on their waste management system. They want help, they want guidance on how to improve their environment. That's why projects focusing on recycling in Ghana have been working.
Eventually Bob seemed to understand what he did was wrong and the potential ramifications of his actions. He apologized and said he wouldn't break anymore canes.
There are definitely some drawbacks to having a job that becomes your lifestyle, but many many positives too. On a scale from 1 to "nooo way, I can't believe that" in terms of damage control tales, this job has delighted me with quite the range. And in hindsight, long after the initial drama, who doesn't love a good story?
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Conversations Over Street Food: Religion, Virginity and Love
I set the alarm on my phone for 2:30 a.m. I would have to recruit a taxi driver from the roadside to pick me up at 3 a.m. from my guesthouse. Hopefully I wouldn’t oversleep and hopefully he wouldn’t be late – I didn’t want to miss the bus to Tamale and be stuck in Kumasi another day.
It was almost 4 p.m. With strained effort I got up from the guesthouse’s soft mattress. My body and mind ached for a nap but I knew I should find some dinner instead and head to bed soon after that.
I left the guesthouse and wandered down the street. Bantama is a suburb of Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana. This street and the ones branching off it were laden with men. Staring and talking at me in Twi, then laughing to each other about it. I was used to friendlier strangers and felt more like a zoo animal rather than a celebrity, a status I had grown accustomed to (but was still skeptical about) in the past 10 months. From the way they were acting I could’ve assumed I had suddenly grown a ghastly tumor on my face.
I turned right at an intersection in hope of finding Ghanaians who wouldn’t stare, jeer, laugh and point at the obroni. And to find a taxi driver for tomorrow morning. And to buy juice – I was feeling fruit-deprived.
Shortly after the turn I found myself on Bantama’s main drag. Loud music blared from every fifth shop, trinkets from the outdoor market crept from the building to the sidewalk, leaving a walkway wide enough for only two people to pass each other. I maneuvered around the neatly stacked displays of shoes, jewelry, purses, black wigs, fabrics, football (soccer) gear and clothes. I turned into a corner shop and bought a box of pineapple juice.
Then I stood on the side of the road and waved an empty taxi car to my side. Without a word, I got inside. I greeted him and and told him I needed a driver to “pick me” from my guesthouse at 3 a.m. I asked if he would do it and he agreed.
“Where to?”
“Metro Mass Station.”
“You mean the station this way or this way?” he asked, pointing forward and then behind him.
“This way. Metro Mass Station,” I said, pointing behind us. I felt a surge of gratefulness for Isaac, the taxi driver who drove me from the Metro Mass Station to the guesthouse and showed me how close it was.
“Oh, ok,” he said. “And please, where is the guesthouse?”
“I will show you. Drive forward and pass right here.”
I directed him to the guesthouse which was around the corner from where I had gotten into his car. We negotiated a price for the morning fare. He tried charging me 10 cedis but I knew the distance was more deserving of three. He laughed when I called him out on it and agreed to three cedis. We took each other’s names and numbers and parted ways.
Now back at the front of my guesthouse, I continued down the street again in search of a rice stand. I found one past the intersection that initially I had turned onto. Spacious enough for two to work inside, the stall had countertops on each side and plastic windows to keep the flies out.
I said "good afternoon" to one of the two women working inside the stall, the woman nearest to the front cage screen. She looked up from scooping rice into a plastic bag for another customer's takeaway and smiled. She spoke in Twi to the other woman but maintained eye contact with me. All I understood was “obroni” and then they both laughed.
She scooped red spicy sauce called "gravy" or "stew" into a plastic bag, then scooped the rice on top of the sauce. I asked for 30 pesewas of salad (coleslaw), an egg (available at rice stands in hardboiled form) and stew (spicy and sometimes fishy reddish brown sauce). She added those bits, wrapped the plastic bag in newspaper and put it inside another black plastic bag. I paid and left before remembering to ask for a plate and utensils. I was in a hurry to leave - I felt unwanted and disrespected as a foreigner there, with the woman talking about me, at me but in another language which she knew I didn't understand, to everyone around.
About 20 paces down the street back toward the guesthouse, I approached a teenage girl as she was walking through the side door of a rice stand. We exchanged greetings. I asked if I could use a plate and utensils. She shook her head quickly and said, “No.”
The next business that was open was another rice stand a few meters from the entrance of my guesthouse. I had walked by earlier but no one was around except a woman sprawled on a bench behind the stand sleeping. As I walked by again I saw she was still laying on the bench but was awake and staring at me. I went over to her behind the stall, greeted her and asked if I could use a plate.
“O, yes, come,” she said, sitting up abruptly. “What food is it?” she asked, moving into the stall. Her hand hesitated between a bowl and a plate.
I told her it was rice and she looked a little disappointed. I explained I had come by her rice stand earlier but she was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her.
“O! It is fine!” she replied. She rinsed a bowl in a tub of water, shook the water droplets off and handed it to me. I removed my food from the outer bag and newspaper, pulled apart the plastic and dumped the food into the bowl.
“Will you eat with a spoon or your hands?” the woman asked.
“Normally I would eat with my hands but I don’t want to today.” I wanted her to know that I do like to learn and practice her culture.
She washed a spoon and handed it to me. She sat on the bench next to me and leaned back against the white wall. We talked about our Ghanaian names, our ages, why I’m in Ghana, where I’m from, who she knows in the states, if I go to church, what religion I practice, which church, etc. Her name is Adjowa, she is 37 years and she has four children ages six to 13. She is married. She met her husband in their church's choir practices. She is a Baptist. Her rice stand has been on this street corner for five years and she is from this town, Bantama.
“So, do you want me to be your pal?” Adjowa asked.
“Yes, of course!”
“I will be your senior sister, and you will be my junior sister.”
“I would like that very much.”
“Do you have a driver for tomorrow when you leave early in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know him?”
I knew his name, his number and that he’s a driver in Kumasi. “Yes.”
“Is he a good driver?”
“He is.”
“So will you wait for him here?” Adjowa pointed around me to the front entrance of the guesthouse, where I had told her I was staying.
“Yes.”
“Ok,” Adjowa nodded. Her eyes moved left to right over the street. “Where do you live? Does your place of work have a living quarters?”
“No, I live in a different part of town than where my office is.”
“Do you rent space?”
“Yes, the organization I work for rents it for me and my roommate.”
“How many rooms? Do you have three rooms?”
“Yes!”
“Do you have a hallway?”
“No, we have three separate rooms, each with doors. We have a self-contained kitchen, and it is connected to another room that has our shower and toilet,” I responded.
“Are you a virgin?”
WOW...did she seriously just ask that? I stifled a laugh. I nodded slowly and said "yes," remembering from our conversation earlier that she is a very religious woman. The judgmental type, I suspected. A woman who goes to church Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays – sometimes twice a day – would not like hearing that I wasn’t a virgin if I am not married. But, wait a minute. How is my sex life related to where I live?!
“Thank God!” Adjowa exclaimed. Please, laughter, stay inside. “Thank God you have kept yourself. Because men will take you and then dump you, you know that?”
“Yes,” I responded solemnly.
I was more a spectator in this conversation than an active participant. I could’ve shared what I really thought, but I didn’t want disharmony – especially not while I was eating.
Yet, out of desire for more amusement, I blurted a Ghanaian phrase that took the middle road between my polite answers catered for strangers and my real thoughts. “But it’s hard-o.”
“Yes, but thank God you have kept yourself.” Adjowa continued, “You said you are not married and do not have a fiancé – do you have someone in mind?”
“For me, there is almost always someone in mind. I never start that serious though.”
“Then is your fiancé white or black?”
“I don’t have a fiancé.”
“You said you have someone you want to marry.”
I wanted to explain that crushing is different than dating, dating for fun is different than dating someone you could marry, and most people who are in a relationship don't know for at least a year or two and sometimes longer if they want to marry that person.
Instead I said, “Oh, I don’t want to marry anyone right now. In the states, usually being attracted to someone just makes you want to get to know the other person. Then, if you become friends, you might want to date more seriously and eventually become fiancés. Those feelings take time to grow.”
I noticed Adjowa had stopped listening and was staring intently at my bare arms beaded in sweat. “Where is your handkerchief?” she asked. I pointed to my bag. “You are too wet! I will get your handkerchief for you.”
I laughed. “Yes, I am always wet in Ghana. Eating hot food makes me even more wet.” In Ghana people say "hot" when they mean "spicy."
Adjowa reached into my bag and placed my purple and orange plaid handkerchief in my lap next to my half-eaten bowl of rice. “Finish your food. Keep the houseflies away and then you can use your handkerchief.”
I smiled to myself as I spooned more bites into my mouth.
“Do you want a white or black husband?” Adjowa asked.
“You can’t choose who you fall in love with.”
Adjowa was clearly fishing for a juicier answer. “Do you want to marry a rich man? Or…would you rather marry a rich man or a God-fearing man?”
I paused. “Neither. I want to marry someone I’m compatible with and who loves me for who I am and who challenges me to be a better person.”
Blank stare and silence.
“But you wouldn’t want to marry a God-fearing man?” she pressed. “You wouldn’t want to marry a man who fears God?”
“No.”
Adjowa’s jaw dropped. I continued, “I don’t like the word ‘fear’ in this context. I would rather have him embrace God, however he understands God.”
I finished my water sachet in silence and glanced sideways at her. Her stare was fixed on the street where half a dozen children were playing tag.
“I must go,” I told her. “I need to sleep.”
We both stood. “You won’t bathe before you sleep?” she asked with concern.
“Oh, you’re right. I should bathe tonight.”
I handed Adjowa my dish, uttered medaase and hiked my bag over my shoulder.
Adjowa grabbed my shoulders and squared them so I was facing her. "You said you are Christian," she said gravely. "Are you a good one?"
"Sometimes. I try."
"You must try harder."
"I will," I assured her.
Adjowa smiled and squeezed my shoulders and stroked my arms. “Safe journey to Tamale tomorrow.”
“Thank you, medaase. We will meet again, Adjowa.”
“Yoo, goodbye, sistah Ekua.”
I walked through the children’s game to my guesthouse, marginally oblivious to their obroni calls, wishing I could've shared that conversation and experience with a friend.
It was almost 4 p.m. With strained effort I got up from the guesthouse’s soft mattress. My body and mind ached for a nap but I knew I should find some dinner instead and head to bed soon after that.
I left the guesthouse and wandered down the street. Bantama is a suburb of Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana. This street and the ones branching off it were laden with men. Staring and talking at me in Twi, then laughing to each other about it. I was used to friendlier strangers and felt more like a zoo animal rather than a celebrity, a status I had grown accustomed to (but was still skeptical about) in the past 10 months. From the way they were acting I could’ve assumed I had suddenly grown a ghastly tumor on my face.
I turned right at an intersection in hope of finding Ghanaians who wouldn’t stare, jeer, laugh and point at the obroni. And to find a taxi driver for tomorrow morning. And to buy juice – I was feeling fruit-deprived.
Shortly after the turn I found myself on Bantama’s main drag. Loud music blared from every fifth shop, trinkets from the outdoor market crept from the building to the sidewalk, leaving a walkway wide enough for only two people to pass each other. I maneuvered around the neatly stacked displays of shoes, jewelry, purses, black wigs, fabrics, football (soccer) gear and clothes. I turned into a corner shop and bought a box of pineapple juice.
Then I stood on the side of the road and waved an empty taxi car to my side. Without a word, I got inside. I greeted him and and told him I needed a driver to “pick me” from my guesthouse at 3 a.m. I asked if he would do it and he agreed.
“Where to?”
“Metro Mass Station.”
“You mean the station this way or this way?” he asked, pointing forward and then behind him.
“This way. Metro Mass Station,” I said, pointing behind us. I felt a surge of gratefulness for Isaac, the taxi driver who drove me from the Metro Mass Station to the guesthouse and showed me how close it was.
“Oh, ok,” he said. “And please, where is the guesthouse?”
“I will show you. Drive forward and pass right here.”
I directed him to the guesthouse which was around the corner from where I had gotten into his car. We negotiated a price for the morning fare. He tried charging me 10 cedis but I knew the distance was more deserving of three. He laughed when I called him out on it and agreed to three cedis. We took each other’s names and numbers and parted ways.
Now back at the front of my guesthouse, I continued down the street again in search of a rice stand. I found one past the intersection that initially I had turned onto. Spacious enough for two to work inside, the stall had countertops on each side and plastic windows to keep the flies out.
I said "good afternoon" to one of the two women working inside the stall, the woman nearest to the front cage screen. She looked up from scooping rice into a plastic bag for another customer's takeaway and smiled. She spoke in Twi to the other woman but maintained eye contact with me. All I understood was “obroni” and then they both laughed.
She scooped red spicy sauce called "gravy" or "stew" into a plastic bag, then scooped the rice on top of the sauce. I asked for 30 pesewas of salad (coleslaw), an egg (available at rice stands in hardboiled form) and stew (spicy and sometimes fishy reddish brown sauce). She added those bits, wrapped the plastic bag in newspaper and put it inside another black plastic bag. I paid and left before remembering to ask for a plate and utensils. I was in a hurry to leave - I felt unwanted and disrespected as a foreigner there, with the woman talking about me, at me but in another language which she knew I didn't understand, to everyone around.
About 20 paces down the street back toward the guesthouse, I approached a teenage girl as she was walking through the side door of a rice stand. We exchanged greetings. I asked if I could use a plate and utensils. She shook her head quickly and said, “No.”
The next business that was open was another rice stand a few meters from the entrance of my guesthouse. I had walked by earlier but no one was around except a woman sprawled on a bench behind the stand sleeping. As I walked by again I saw she was still laying on the bench but was awake and staring at me. I went over to her behind the stall, greeted her and asked if I could use a plate.
“O, yes, come,” she said, sitting up abruptly. “What food is it?” she asked, moving into the stall. Her hand hesitated between a bowl and a plate.
I told her it was rice and she looked a little disappointed. I explained I had come by her rice stand earlier but she was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her.
“O! It is fine!” she replied. She rinsed a bowl in a tub of water, shook the water droplets off and handed it to me. I removed my food from the outer bag and newspaper, pulled apart the plastic and dumped the food into the bowl.
“Will you eat with a spoon or your hands?” the woman asked.
“Normally I would eat with my hands but I don’t want to today.” I wanted her to know that I do like to learn and practice her culture.
She washed a spoon and handed it to me. She sat on the bench next to me and leaned back against the white wall. We talked about our Ghanaian names, our ages, why I’m in Ghana, where I’m from, who she knows in the states, if I go to church, what religion I practice, which church, etc. Her name is Adjowa, she is 37 years and she has four children ages six to 13. She is married. She met her husband in their church's choir practices. She is a Baptist. Her rice stand has been on this street corner for five years and she is from this town, Bantama.
“So, do you want me to be your pal?” Adjowa asked.
“Yes, of course!”
“I will be your senior sister, and you will be my junior sister.”
“I would like that very much.”
“Do you have a driver for tomorrow when you leave early in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know him?”
I knew his name, his number and that he’s a driver in Kumasi. “Yes.”
“Is he a good driver?”
“He is.”
“So will you wait for him here?” Adjowa pointed around me to the front entrance of the guesthouse, where I had told her I was staying.
“Yes.”
“Ok,” Adjowa nodded. Her eyes moved left to right over the street. “Where do you live? Does your place of work have a living quarters?”
“No, I live in a different part of town than where my office is.”
“Do you rent space?”
“Yes, the organization I work for rents it for me and my roommate.”
“How many rooms? Do you have three rooms?”
“Yes!”
“Do you have a hallway?”
“No, we have three separate rooms, each with doors. We have a self-contained kitchen, and it is connected to another room that has our shower and toilet,” I responded.
“Are you a virgin?”
WOW...did she seriously just ask that? I stifled a laugh. I nodded slowly and said "yes," remembering from our conversation earlier that she is a very religious woman. The judgmental type, I suspected. A woman who goes to church Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays – sometimes twice a day – would not like hearing that I wasn’t a virgin if I am not married. But, wait a minute. How is my sex life related to where I live?!
“Thank God!” Adjowa exclaimed. Please, laughter, stay inside. “Thank God you have kept yourself. Because men will take you and then dump you, you know that?”
“Yes,” I responded solemnly.
I was more a spectator in this conversation than an active participant. I could’ve shared what I really thought, but I didn’t want disharmony – especially not while I was eating.
Yet, out of desire for more amusement, I blurted a Ghanaian phrase that took the middle road between my polite answers catered for strangers and my real thoughts. “But it’s hard-o.”
“Yes, but thank God you have kept yourself.” Adjowa continued, “You said you are not married and do not have a fiancé – do you have someone in mind?”
“For me, there is almost always someone in mind. I never start that serious though.”
“Then is your fiancé white or black?”
“I don’t have a fiancé.”
“You said you have someone you want to marry.”
I wanted to explain that crushing is different than dating, dating for fun is different than dating someone you could marry, and most people who are in a relationship don't know for at least a year or two and sometimes longer if they want to marry that person.
Instead I said, “Oh, I don’t want to marry anyone right now. In the states, usually being attracted to someone just makes you want to get to know the other person. Then, if you become friends, you might want to date more seriously and eventually become fiancés. Those feelings take time to grow.”
I noticed Adjowa had stopped listening and was staring intently at my bare arms beaded in sweat. “Where is your handkerchief?” she asked. I pointed to my bag. “You are too wet! I will get your handkerchief for you.”
I laughed. “Yes, I am always wet in Ghana. Eating hot food makes me even more wet.” In Ghana people say "hot" when they mean "spicy."
Adjowa reached into my bag and placed my purple and orange plaid handkerchief in my lap next to my half-eaten bowl of rice. “Finish your food. Keep the houseflies away and then you can use your handkerchief.”
I smiled to myself as I spooned more bites into my mouth.
“Do you want a white or black husband?” Adjowa asked.
“You can’t choose who you fall in love with.”
Adjowa was clearly fishing for a juicier answer. “Do you want to marry a rich man? Or…would you rather marry a rich man or a God-fearing man?”
I paused. “Neither. I want to marry someone I’m compatible with and who loves me for who I am and who challenges me to be a better person.”
Blank stare and silence.
“But you wouldn’t want to marry a God-fearing man?” she pressed. “You wouldn’t want to marry a man who fears God?”
“No.”
Adjowa’s jaw dropped. I continued, “I don’t like the word ‘fear’ in this context. I would rather have him embrace God, however he understands God.”
I finished my water sachet in silence and glanced sideways at her. Her stare was fixed on the street where half a dozen children were playing tag.
“I must go,” I told her. “I need to sleep.”
We both stood. “You won’t bathe before you sleep?” she asked with concern.
“Oh, you’re right. I should bathe tonight.”
I handed Adjowa my dish, uttered medaase and hiked my bag over my shoulder.
Adjowa grabbed my shoulders and squared them so I was facing her. "You said you are Christian," she said gravely. "Are you a good one?"
"Sometimes. I try."
"You must try harder."
"I will," I assured her.
Adjowa smiled and squeezed my shoulders and stroked my arms. “Safe journey to Tamale tomorrow.”
“Thank you, medaase. We will meet again, Adjowa.”
“Yoo, goodbye, sistah Ekua.”
I walked through the children’s game to my guesthouse, marginally oblivious to their obroni calls, wishing I could've shared that conversation and experience with a friend.
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