My colleagues and I are
currently on a work-trip, staying at the most of snazzy hotels Moduk Royal
Hotel, Pepease in the middle of frikken nowhere. We are doing research in the
middle of nowhere, a rural setting : Birim North, New Abiram, Eastern Region,
Ghana. (hope that clarifies everything!) However, our hotel is a mere one hour
from the rural setting in question, which makes it extra-rural. Its all lovely
however, although it does seem to be taking a while for my colleagues to warm
up to me, and some of the other newbies. This should be a good bonding
experience however. This being said, I am beginning to question the
interpretation of bonding in Ghana. In my house here, we (the foreign volunteer
types) eat by ourselves, we have still not discovered when our Director eats,
or the woman who cooks for us (although we did manage to go out for ice cream
and an adventure with her). But I had thought that that was just awkward
program management avoidance of interpersonal relations with program interns or
something….But something is amiss. There seems to be the biggest of divides between
‘obruni’s’ i.e white people in Ghana,
or non-Ghanaians and the actual Ghanaians. Not only do we seem to go off for
lunch to different places, but we also seem to eat separately when we are in
the same restaurant! And considering
that I get unfriendly un-embracive vibes from some of the obruni’s, i.e the Australian interns, I was excitied to get to know
the Ghanain staff on this trip (as I don’t see them much in the office because
most of them are in the long-term office, not the intern office). But not only
was the room-pairing done seemingly according to quasy-racial classification,
but the Ghanains always sit on one section of the bus and the Obrunis on the
other. And then at lunch today, the obruni’s
sat outside, and ate with spoons, whilst the Ghanains sat inside and ate in the
normal manner, with bare fingers, right hand. Me and my South African found the
only space to be outside with the obruni’s,
but we ate with our fingers. South Africans hey, always stuck somewhere in the
middle. But it was then I learned that I couldn’t really live here. The divide
is too great. There is no antagonism, no hostility, only friendliness and
politeness between both sides of the divide. There is no superiority/
inferiority, no ambivalence but the difference between the people, is somehow
there. Visible only on the surface, as it is only skin-deep, but after 3 weeks
of being smiled at, waved at, pointed at, because I am white (it doesn’t seem
to matter where I come from, not the slightest bit) I figured that in a country
where race is so out there, I cannot truly be. Because it is impossible to be
accepted as part of a community if you are always going to be seen as
different. Not just foreign, not even strange, not rude, or sweet, or
attractive, or not, but something out of the ordinary, something that is a
temporary attraction, that can not belong.
Day 3 of the trip. Actually, the day after this previous
post. We went out in the town for din-dins, on the street. After a lovely
spree, finding weird and wonderful street food and engaging in a well needed
intense discussion, we returned to the bus-area. There I saw the Ghanaians
going onto the bus, although many of the obruni’s remained near the food
stalls, making party-plans and other such jovial activities. I boarded the
stationary bus, after the Ghanaians. My mission for the day was to befriend my
colleagues, and I had been trying with the Ausies unsuccessfully for days. The
lone Canadian and the Dutchman have both responded well, but the Ausies, not so
much. And this time I had some questions for my Ghanaian colleagues. After
fantastically easy chit chat (I’m noting this because for some reason it
previously had not been easy… All chit-chat with any of my colleagues, seems to
require intense amount of effort, misunderstanding and lost humour.) The funny
thing was that it started as a gossipsession about my Director!!( As he had
gone to school with the friendlier of the two Ghanaian ladies). When the other Obrunie’s came back from their extended dinner, with plans to go
out on the town and party it up, the locals declined and planned to stay in the
bus. After I demanded a reason they urged me to go party too, but I resisted
the urge to feel unwelcomed and continued to engage in conversation with them.
And eventually, as happens with me, the conversation turned in the direction I
wanted it… The separation issues. Here are the fascinating points of the
discussion:
·
They are well aware of the separation
·
Definite Them and Us complex, enough to make
light hearted jokes about it
·
Feel it’s a result of the language barrier
·
i.e they separate themselves so that they can
talk vanac (which would be Twi here)
without making anyone feel like they’re being gossiped about or left out or
something
·
its more comfortable ofcourse to be with ‘ones
own people’ and talk ones own language
·
With the back of the bus thing, its because the
other people started it; they’de put their bags on the seats and thus there
were no empty seats at the beginning
·
Apparently the reason I can get it, and also the
girl I’m rooming with who is Korean/American, who the friendly Ghanaian girl
gets along with; is because we come from a place where we are aware of the
language thing, that people can simply change between languages to be more
expressive etc etc.
·
However they did feel that I was incredibly
observant. (which weirded me out, as it’s all very obvious)
·
We also talked about the way that the Ausies
cant pronounce things, like the name Kofi which they continue to pronounce ‘coffee’
even though its pretty clear to all ears that this is not correct. Apparently when
one is not exposed to other languages their tongues cannot fathom that things
could be pronounced differently…
The people came back from their party, and we quickly
stopped talking. Depressed, I drifted to sleep thoughtfully against the window
on the journey home..
Highlights of the week as a whole included; the soccer
match, males vs. females and the laughs it brought; getting what I called ‘the
party room’, i.e the big cottage where eventually the friendlier of the other
volunteers, both local and foreign would come chill in the interim periods;
visiting the rural schools and and making the children, who had been so carefully
caned and disciplined all their lives, go crazy for a day and teaching them
about social activism and diversity (through a presentation on South Africa)
and Times Square (the America’s presentation); being out of Accra and in the
cool and beautiful Eastern Region was pretty legit too.
We came back to find our roommates, new light fittings, and
a broken door handle on the toilet. Every night I am awoken by screaming from a
housemate to let them out.
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