Art Worlds in Ghana

My flight was delayed multiple times (I got to watch Picture This with Ashley Tisdale while I waited in the airport), but I am finally home safe and have been for a few days.

Sorry I’ve been so so terrible at updating this. Much belated blog posts to come soon. For now, here are a couple pictures of me with some of the kids from the play.

Andrews, Justice ("my husband"), Patricia, Diana, and Albert

Vic, Diana, Slim, James, Jennifer, Daniel, and that's David's head poking up at the bottom

It’s hard to believe it’s over. I’ve been amazed by my shower, sturdy buildings, organized streets that don’t smell like the sewers, and a clear subway system with a map and labeled stops. I miss Ghana though — music playing in the street, brightly painted houses, eating banku and stew with my hands, women selling pineapple off their heads, men with FanMilk carts of ice cream in plastic sachets, and stores with names like “Sure In Him Bakery” and “Blessed Spot.” I’m adjusting to people not staring at me, asking for my number, or calling out, “You are welcome,” or “Obruni, come!”

I’m happy to be home, but I miss my Ghanaian friends and family, and there’s so much more I wish I could do. And the prices, I miss the prices now I’m back in New York City. Yesterday I stopped by an upscale soda fountain near the Met museum. A milkshake cost $8.50, and I promptly left. You can get a whole meal off the street for 2 cedis in Ghana (about $1.50).

I just spoke to Kofi on the phone; he gave me a call to see how I was (my friend from the village/Gladys’s grandson who took care around the house). It was hard to understand him on the phone, but he said he misses me and can’t concentrate since I’ve left.

Last I saw him, he was wanted by the police for dating a girl who is 16 (he’s 23), except that he’s not actually dating her, they’re just friends, and her parents don’t know what they’re talking about. He couldn’t walk on the main road though because he might get arrested, so he had to come from behind the house. Oh, Kofi.

That evening, Gladys and I waited for Kofi to make his way through the brushes. When he arrived, he laid down on the bench across from us and rested his head on his hands. I saw that he was wearing two of my slim black hair bands on his wrists. They must have fallen out of my suitcase, and he’d found them in the room after I left for Accra. “But Kofi,” I said, “you don’t have any hair to tie with them.” He just looked at me and smiled.

Thursday, June 3

“One of the best-known rules throughout much of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia is avoidance of the use of the left hand. In Ghana, the left hand is used solely for holding one’s toilet paper, and nothing else… Never shake hands, point, gesture, eat, give, or receive with your left had.”

–Ghana, Culture Smart!, by Ian Utley

I went with Kelvin for my first meal in Ghana on the beautiful South La Beach (La short for Labadi), right around the corner for the JAC office. Kelvin was going to order me fried chicken and French fries, but I wanted to try something typically Ghanaian: tilapia and banku (a kind of sour ball of maize that you dip in stew or hot sauce. Unless, like me, you don’t like hot sauce).

Service in Ghana is often slow (things generally move more slowly here), but the food finally came: a glorious platter of a crisp brown tilapia fish, framed by a ball of doughy banku and a dollop of ketchup and hot sauce.

“Go ahead, eat,” Kelvin said.

“I’m just waiting for the waitress to bring silverware.”

Kelvin began to laugh. He explained that here, people eat with their hands.

“Oh, right! I read about that.” I looked down at the daunting whole fish and said to Kelvin, “You go first.”

He took a steaming bite of fish in his hands and showed me how it flaked off. He motioned for me to break off some of the maize.

I grabbed and bit and brought my fingers to my mouth, when Kelvin half-laughed, half-cried, “Not with your left hand!”

“Oh right, I read about that too! Sorry.” I quickly put the maize down.

I washed off my left hand in the bowl of water the waitress had brought. I ate the rest of the meal with my hand right hand only and kept my left on my lap.

Glad I made that first mistake with Kelvin and not someone else. Whoops.

Oh, and if you’re out to eat and the person you’re with pours a bit of their drink into their glass, swills it, then tosses it out onto the ground – it’s probably not a libation to the ancestors. They’re just cleaning their glass. (But they do offer libations sometimes! I’m not crazy.)

And if you exit the airport and men in suits and IDs ask you where you’re going, they’re not the taxi drivers who want to rip you off, they’re the officials who need to see your baggage stamp before you leave. The taxi drivers are over in the next room.

Also, don’t bother trying to buckle your seatbelt. Even if there’s a belt, there’s no buckle. (Mom, ignore this plz.)