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!
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