The week that I have been waiting for since coming here has come and gone with some good and some bad. I finally got to meet my counterpart (the person that will help me transition into my new site and a member of the TMT) and supervisor. They gave me a Ghanaian name, so my name here is Ama (I have been using this name at homestay as well, but it basically means that I’m a Saturday born baby) Boatemaa (means captures victory, but I think I was given this name because my supervisors name is Boate so the female version is Boatemaa) Sakina (means brighter one, and my counterpart Adams is a Muslim so Sakina is name that I will use in the Muslim community in Ntonso).
Ok, so visiting my site (where I will be living at for the next two years) made me realize how spoiled I am at my homestay… and also, how much I’m going to miss living in Kukurantumi. I guess with all things in life, we must move on and deal. So my site is Ntonso which is about half hour tro ride from Kumasi, the second biggest city. The community of Ntonso is huge... the biggest of all communities that I’ve visited thus far. I live in a compound, similar to the one that I’m currently living in but the common area is a lot smaller. On the positive side, I have a bigger room… that might be the only positive that I see right now, but I’m sure it will all be positive in the end. On the negative side (where should I begin?!) I don’t have electricity (so I eat dinner by candlelight, its quite romantic), I have to use a latrine to take a poop/shishi, I don’t have a water hole in my compound at my disposal (they have a hole, but it wasn’t dug correctly so all they do now is put their trash in it), and I don’t live with people my age. I mean, my standards here have changed so much while being here (today, we ate off a “friends” plate because we were hungry… I say “friend” because we only met him once before, but we were hungry and waiting for our food to come and of course, no food here gets wasted, so we were just helping out.) but I feel like being able to poop comfortably and friends at home have helped me a lot with this whole transition. I’m sure much of this feeling is from me finally feeling super comfortable in one place and having to go through the whole process again in another place. Anyways, a retired teacher owns the compound that I’m living in and he lives there with his children, grandchildren and a few other people. His daughter is a bread baker so she has a huge clay oven which I was told I could use whenever she wasn’t making bread… so I might try to make some pizza or banana bread.
My site had a visitor center built about a year ago and it looks so out of place in the town. It was put up by the Ministry of Tourism and it has so much potential. It has a cafĂ that serves cold drinks (soon they are going to start serving alcohol), a clean bathroom, a little gift shop, and a museum. They are planning on extending it so that they can start serving food and make their own adrinka demonstration station. Basically right now when tourist come to visit they take a tour of the town, so they can see some of the cultural/historical places in the community and then see artisans at work, but sometimes this has been a challenge for tour guides because the artisans cause decide not to work when tourist come to visit. For instance, I was suppose to go on the tour of my attraction, but the morning of, the person that we were going to told us to come later on in the day so we waited around and then when that time finally came, they said that they weren’t working anymore. So basically the TMT wants to form their own demonstration center so that they don’t have to rely on the artisans who can be very flaky.
Speaking of flaky, I was suppose to meet the TMT, but just so happens that the day of our meeting there was a couple of funerals in town so no one came to the meeting. Funerals here in Ghana are huge, they remind me of wedding celebrations in the US. Loud music, everyone decked out in black cloth, (which is a huge plus for my site because the adrinka cloth is used for funerals and there is a high demand for it since there will always be funerals.) and a bunch of drinking. I actually hate when there is funerals in town because they have like 14 funerals at one time so there is a whole bunch of people and most of them end up pretty drunk and more obnoxious than normal.
While in Ntonso, I met a whole smorgasbord of people… it was quite crazy and I basically remembered no ones name. I went to visit the District Assembly, the Regional Manager for the Ghana Tourist Board, had some minerals with the sub chiefs of my community (there has been a chieftaincy dispute for the past 20 years, but I was told during my visit that they were finally going to have a chief by the time I get back to site), and met with most members of the TMT.
Then I did what I absolutely love to do on the weekends… I went to churches! Yes, churches… as in not just one. On Saturday I went with Prince (my supervisor) to his church, the 7th day Adventist. So I spent pretty much all day Saturday there! I left the house at about 9 am and went to the first church and met the pastors and introduced myself to the whole congregation and sat through some singing and prayers and then attended a little bible study session. After that we went to the new site of his church and took a tour of the new girls school and sat through some more singing, prayers, and what not. I guess the most painful part about churches here is that I don’t understand a thing of what is being said since all of it is spoken in twi, they have multiple collections being made throughout the service (on time at the Pentecostal church I swear they collected donations like 5 times), its usually uberly hot and uncomfortable, and did I mention that it last like at least 3 hours plus?! Anyways, church is big here, so its uber important to visit the leaders of the church & meet the members… so on Sunday, I went to more! I visited with the Roman Catholic, Methodist, and Assembly of God. I’m just happy that I don’t have a church nearby my house because sometimes they have all night masses where they use loud speakers and blast their music and sermon for all those to hear within a couple of miles.
I also got to attend two wedding ceremonies, actually I went to their receptions and not the actual ceremony… but it reminds me of a huge outdoor gathering with a gazillion kids around dancing and playing. One of them was outside in the middle of a street where they set up a couple of huge tents and the other was at their community center a bit like Manoa pavilion minus the roof and a bigger area. They also do the money dance here because they have the bride dancing in the middle of the tents with all different people and they stick money on her forehead, and then the groom comes out and they do the same. Then outside of the tents there was like a 2304802398 kids out and about playing and dancing, which sometimes created huge dust storms. It was pure mayhem. Its funny though because once the kids create a big storm, the security of the wedding would get a stick and start whipping it at the kids and they would scatter so fast! (okay, maybe not that funny at all) The other one was basically the same minus the dust storms because it was on concrete.
So I think that’s basically all that I did while on site visit… I can say that my visit was interesting and I’m getting more comfortable thinking of Ntonso as my new home… I mean, worse things can happen… like getting malaria. We had our first malaria victim… and from hearing his story, more than world peace I wish for no malaria.
xoxo.
twi word of the day: mepe baabi adwonso (i want someplace to urinate.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment