Greetings! I have just returned to Kumasi for 2 days to type up the first half of my fieldwork before heading to another rural village for the last 2 weeks of my Independent Study Project! Then it's one week of presentations and goodbyes with my friends, and then back home... I don't think I'm ready! There's too much to write about these first 2 weeks, but I can say that they were some of the most beautiful and the most challenging weeks I have had here in Ghana. Fending for ourselves in a very rural village, interviewing all day long, walking miles in the excruciatingly hot sun between different villages for interviews, food, and charcoal for cooking, millions of bug bites (not just mosquitoes... stinging bugs as well!), heat rashes...but all worth it!
I have met some of the most incredible people during this fieldwork, and in particular, I realized that the homestay family I stayed with during my last time in the rural village neighboring the one we were just in is one of the most beautiful families I have ever met, I cannot even explain. I would walk to their village (called Ntinanko) almost every other day, both to do interviews and to spend time with them. Each time, they would smile, hug me so many times, give us cold drinks and bananas, and talk with us until the sun went down. They would not allow me to ever pay for the taxi ride home (at night taxi rides are the safest option) even though I found out that my homestay Dad recently sold his only car in order to pay for his 5 childrens' education. My homestay father is a quiet man who sacrifices everything for his children (but doesn't tell a soul... I just found this information out from his son Wise), and who works on his cocoa farm all day long. My homestay Mom smiles and laughs more than anybody I know, and whenever I see her I get a billion hugs. She works in processing palm nuts into palm oil. Somehow with these two jobs, my homestay parents can afford for their two eldest sons to go to University, and for their three daughters to go to school as well. My homestay Dad also built their house himself. They told me that if I ever needed a place to stay anytime between now and when I go back to the US, I have a family and a home with them. When I gave them parting gifts, the response was unreal; I got a shiny new bag for my homestay Mom, and she paraded around her family, laughing and crying, showing off her new bag. My homestay Dad gave me a triple weaved Kente cloth which he got when he went to his home village between the weeks I was not in the village; he said he knew I would be back, and that is why he got it for me. My homestay sister knitted me a purse. This family is beautiful, and I will miss them so much.
I will explain my fieldwork at a later date, but as of Tuesday I am off to another village called Krobo-Odumase to experience Dipo, one of the last traditional puberty rites practiced in Ghana! I love and miss you all... less than 4 more weeks until I am back in the states!
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
Back to Accra!
I am so sorry for not posting for a long time, but I have not had computer access for weeks. It has actually been extremely liberating, not being connected to anything that is not in front of me. It has allowed me to be so present, I am completely enveloped in the experiences I am having and the environment in which I am having these experiences. I cannot believe that in 3 days, my friends and I will be off to our separate parts of the country for our Independent Study Projects. They have become my family, I cannot believe we will leave each other in just 5 weeks time. I have never felt closer to such a large group of people who operate in this way, just laughing all of the time, dancing, completely enveloped in this life in Ghana.
After Tamale (the city in which I was sick with malaria), we headed to Cape Coast. I am beyond grateful that I completely recovered for Cape Coast, because it felt like our African spring break. We all stayed in a hostel together, visited the beach every day, celebrated two of our friends birthdays (danced and had the time of our lives), went skinny dipping in the ocean at night, experienced the music and dance of this part of Ghana, ate TOFU at a vegetarian restaurant! We also had some incredibly intense experiences visiting two slave forts here, going into the tiny chambers in which thousands of slaves at a time were forced to live for at least six months with barely any light, air, room to move, room to even breathe... one meal a day, nowhere to go to the bathroom. I cannot fully describe the unimaginable things that occurred in these places.
After Cape Coast, we went to Volta Region where tradition has been kept alive. We learned to make pottery which women here use to carry water on their heads, and we learned each and every part of the process of making pottery (from fetching the clay in the desert-like bush, to creating the pots, to firing them, etc.) We also saw some of the most incredible traditional dancing and drumming I have seen here in Ghana, one from the only all woman's traditional dancing and drumming group in Ghana, and one from a group of men and girls who presented war danced to us that were absolutely amazing!
We recently left Odumase, a small town an hour and a half from Accra where tradition has been maintained more closely than anywhere we have been in Ghana. Here, bead-making is extremely common, and everyone wears beads to symbolize different phases and aspects of life that they may be facing. We learned how to make our own beads, which are made out of recycled materials such as recycled glass. These beads are particularly worn in great quantities during a female rite of passage called Depo, which I will be studying during my Independent Study Project. Depo is one of the only traditional rites of passage in Ghana that is still practiced by an entire community, and it is a rite that is done by girls starting at the age of 12. Girls are taught how to become women during this time, and traditionally (before formal education was introduced) girls would go through this rite for a few years. Now, the majority of girls in this community attend school, and perform Depo rites of passage on the Easter break from school. It is interesting because the school and the church place a taboo on this rite of passage because the education system in Ghana is based on the British colonial system and both the schools and the church do not promote traditional cultural practices. However, the majority of girls in this community still perform this rite of passage. I think you could call this both the best balance of modernization and tradition, and the most terrifying clash of modernization and tradition, because it is not certain whether this delicate balance will hold and the tradition will remain.
For my Independent Study Project, I will be looking at both formal and informal education for females in Ghana. I will be spending 2 weeks in the rural village a little over an hour outside of Kumasi with 3 of my friends, a cook from the SIT staff who we love, and a traslator who we have worked with for much of the trip and who we love as well. I will be working at a school in the rural village, and I will be interviewing females of all ages to talk about formal education and how the informal education of "becoming a woman" is introduced without the presence of rites of passage (the rites of passage have dissappeared in Akan villages such as these). I have a feeling that the reality of many girls not going to school past a certain age in these villages may have to do with the lack of a rite of passage that creates an atmosphere where the girls can learn this informal education together during a distinct period of time, not during school days. These rites of passage also teach girls about sex and sexual health, and the lack of these rites may lead to the current situation that many girls are in in much of Ghana of getting pregnant at a young age because of their lack of access to sexual education. Today when we finally returned to Accra, two of my friends and I met with our advisor at University of Ghana named Dr. Delali Badasu who is an amazing woman. She gave us so many books and resources for our projects, and I will meet with her Monday morning before I leave for Afrancie (the rural village in which I will be staying!)
That is an update on everything that has been going on for the past few weeks, and I after Monday I will most likely have little Internet access for the next four weeks until I return to Accra to type up and present my Independent Study Project. So if you don't hear from me for a little while, don't worry, I am dancing and laughing through life here and do not want this experience to end!
After Tamale (the city in which I was sick with malaria), we headed to Cape Coast. I am beyond grateful that I completely recovered for Cape Coast, because it felt like our African spring break. We all stayed in a hostel together, visited the beach every day, celebrated two of our friends birthdays (danced and had the time of our lives), went skinny dipping in the ocean at night, experienced the music and dance of this part of Ghana, ate TOFU at a vegetarian restaurant! We also had some incredibly intense experiences visiting two slave forts here, going into the tiny chambers in which thousands of slaves at a time were forced to live for at least six months with barely any light, air, room to move, room to even breathe... one meal a day, nowhere to go to the bathroom. I cannot fully describe the unimaginable things that occurred in these places.
After Cape Coast, we went to Volta Region where tradition has been kept alive. We learned to make pottery which women here use to carry water on their heads, and we learned each and every part of the process of making pottery (from fetching the clay in the desert-like bush, to creating the pots, to firing them, etc.) We also saw some of the most incredible traditional dancing and drumming I have seen here in Ghana, one from the only all woman's traditional dancing and drumming group in Ghana, and one from a group of men and girls who presented war danced to us that were absolutely amazing!
We recently left Odumase, a small town an hour and a half from Accra where tradition has been maintained more closely than anywhere we have been in Ghana. Here, bead-making is extremely common, and everyone wears beads to symbolize different phases and aspects of life that they may be facing. We learned how to make our own beads, which are made out of recycled materials such as recycled glass. These beads are particularly worn in great quantities during a female rite of passage called Depo, which I will be studying during my Independent Study Project. Depo is one of the only traditional rites of passage in Ghana that is still practiced by an entire community, and it is a rite that is done by girls starting at the age of 12. Girls are taught how to become women during this time, and traditionally (before formal education was introduced) girls would go through this rite for a few years. Now, the majority of girls in this community attend school, and perform Depo rites of passage on the Easter break from school. It is interesting because the school and the church place a taboo on this rite of passage because the education system in Ghana is based on the British colonial system and both the schools and the church do not promote traditional cultural practices. However, the majority of girls in this community still perform this rite of passage. I think you could call this both the best balance of modernization and tradition, and the most terrifying clash of modernization and tradition, because it is not certain whether this delicate balance will hold and the tradition will remain.
For my Independent Study Project, I will be looking at both formal and informal education for females in Ghana. I will be spending 2 weeks in the rural village a little over an hour outside of Kumasi with 3 of my friends, a cook from the SIT staff who we love, and a traslator who we have worked with for much of the trip and who we love as well. I will be working at a school in the rural village, and I will be interviewing females of all ages to talk about formal education and how the informal education of "becoming a woman" is introduced without the presence of rites of passage (the rites of passage have dissappeared in Akan villages such as these). I have a feeling that the reality of many girls not going to school past a certain age in these villages may have to do with the lack of a rite of passage that creates an atmosphere where the girls can learn this informal education together during a distinct period of time, not during school days. These rites of passage also teach girls about sex and sexual health, and the lack of these rites may lead to the current situation that many girls are in in much of Ghana of getting pregnant at a young age because of their lack of access to sexual education. Today when we finally returned to Accra, two of my friends and I met with our advisor at University of Ghana named Dr. Delali Badasu who is an amazing woman. She gave us so many books and resources for our projects, and I will meet with her Monday morning before I leave for Afrancie (the rural village in which I will be staying!)
That is an update on everything that has been going on for the past few weeks, and I after Monday I will most likely have little Internet access for the next four weeks until I return to Accra to type up and present my Independent Study Project. So if you don't hear from me for a little while, don't worry, I am dancing and laughing through life here and do not want this experience to end!
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