Made in Ghana

Midterms are over! I don't know if it was senioritis or being ADD because I'm in Africa and haven't done any actual schoolwork yet this semester, but this time around was tough. Don't these professors know I came to Ghana to play with lion cubs and ride elephants?? A seven page paper on this historical impacts of Accra almost killed me... or maybe it was the terrible instant coffee that we have here. I've been dreaming about Starbucks.... aaah urbanization really can bring miracles. If only I could be graded on my blog; I'd much rather have pulled an all-nighter working on this sucker.

Anyways, let's catch up on my awesome life. Last weekend, NYU did it again and sent us on an amazing trek up to Kumasi. In my mind, Kumasi is sort of like the Chicago of Ghana; awesome little city that's overshadowed by it's big sister on the coast. I've started to really appreciate long car rides. We left Accra at 5am, and most of us passed out as soon as we got on the bus. I'd be going in and out of sleep and I'd watch the scenery change outside. We drove out of the death valley like climate that is Accra up into the mountains and through real African jungles. I got to watch the sunrise and the mist roll of the mountains and it made me not as irritated that I'd have to sit on a bus for 5 hours. It was also hilarious to watch people watch us as we drove by; I got really good at reading lips, at least when they're shouting "Obruni!" and pointing. I'm sure a huge tour bus full of obruni's in various positions passed out sleeping is a ridiculous sight, right up there with a circus.

Speaking of the circus, I'm reading a book about the circus right now, Water for Elephants. Highly recommended. I wonder if circuses in Africa have lions, tigers and elephants (oh... no, not quite), or if it's like squirrels and moose.

We finally got to Kumasi and stopped for lunch at an arts center. Kind of touristy, but I got to see a man actualy arving a drum! Like, he took a log, started hacking at it until it was a rough drum shape, then carved it. In my obruni excitement I took some pictures that now make me feel like a schmuck, but whatever. They're memories people; I can't always be a respectable and polite American overcompensating for her country's terrible image.

Lunch, as always, was traditional Ghanian food; rice, slightly mysterious meat stew, fried plantains. I've been eating this stuff for like 2 months, and gained 10 pounds from the excessive carb intake. My big plan is to get a parasite two weeks before I leave, lose all the jollof rice weight and tribute my fabulous physique to my African starvation diet. I lived like the Africans for 4 months yes, but no one needs to know that included fried plantains, french fries and a mountain of rice at every meal.

After lunch, we hopped back on the safari bus to visit the Asante king's palace. I wish I could say I met the king or had some clandestine encounter with royalty, but our museum tour just about made up for that in sheer ridiculousness. Turns out we were visiting the OLD palace and the real king lives next door. NYU it seems isn't as influential in Ghana as we thought (give it some time) and we couldn't get an audience with him. Our tour guide told us he was changing his name to Obama, and then proceeded to lead us around the palace. Palace my ass, this place looked like a bungalow. Obama also felt the need to point out every single household item and furniture proclaiming "THIS was the king's chess set, and THIS is the king's brandy glass",
after which he would say "if there any questions, you have every right to ask". Yes Mr Museum Guide Obama, I'm just dying to see the king's toilet.

Our next stop on our itinerary was to the "stool village". Ashante stools are these ornately carved wooden stools that replicate the gold stool the king uses. They look like this, but that one's way overpriced so don't buy it. This "village" was more a collection of souvenir huts selling anything and everything carved from a piece of wood, and accompanied by flocks of souvenir hawkers that descended upon us and surrounded our safari bus before the engine was turned off. I'm not very good at bargaining, and walking around this place was like shoppers hell. After about 2 stalls, everything looks the same and I can't tell the difference between the neverending carved masks, drums, and salad tongs (yeah, no joke. The handle was an elephant silhouette). OH! and if we had the persistent Ghanian sovenir salesmen running Wall street, we wouldn't even know what the word "recession" meant.

Currently, my biggest complaint about Ghana (besides the constant awkwardness I encounter being obruni) is food. NO MORE RICE! Dinner in Kumasi was on our own, and a gaggle of us found an American cusine restaurant to soothe our displaced American souls with cheeseburgers and milkshakes. Best meal I've had in Ghana, which says a lot about how sick of Ghanaian food I am because I've seen pieces of charcoal that were more rare than my burger. It tasted like freedom and the all-American dream, and I still treasure the memory of that meal when I'm at Tante Marie 3 times a week eating rice and stew.

After a delightful sleep with a full tummy, we ventured out on a bus tour of KNUST. As an NYU student, I have a special place in my heart for acronyms. Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology is a public university, like University of Ghana Legon and a few others in the country. The only fees are books and housing, so the option of a college education seems to be pretty accessible in Ghana. As a student who pays an obscene amount of money for a college education (granted I go to a private school), I'm very curious how Ghana, a developing nation, can manage to educate students for free, and the US can't even make college affordable for the middle class. I worked hard in high school to go to a ridiculously expensive school hoping that the extra money my parents graciously forked over will get me a degree that gives me an edge over State U graduate. What about my sister though? She can work just as hard to do the same as me but because she's an upper middle class white girl, there won't be any serious acknowledgment that her parent's don't have any savings because they all put it towards another education. Most of this thought was spurred by an episode of the West Wing where Sam, Josh and Toby push to make college tuition tax-deductible, but it could be worse; I could be forming my opinions by watching Fox News.

After touring acronym-riffic KNUST, we made it to our ultimate destination: The Kejetia market, the biggest market in West Africa. We stopped briefly at a cobbler to see how shoe's are made. He gave us a quick demonstration on how to build a shoe, in case any of are aspiring shoemakers. It was wholly unimpressive until another student pointed out that all his shoes say "Made in Italy". Massive confusion struck; were we really in Italy, eating delicious pasta every night without a grain of rice in sight? No, he explained if they say "Made in Italy", they'll sell better. Christa our director went off in all her classy fair tradeness "but we love Ghana! It should say Made in Ghana!". Eh, I personally think it's pretty ingenius. It's not like those shoes are ever leaving Ghana unless there on the feet of a tourist. Sell them for a little bit more because they're fake Gucci knockoffs, no harm no foul. Again, Ghanaian's know business.

Kejetia Market was organized chaos. I almost got dragged into a tro-tro by some man who would not let go of me as we dodged traffic.Thank God I stuck close to our CRA's, two of which are KNUST alums and therefor seasoned Kejetia pros. We stayed single file behind them, tell them "we want jewelry/kente cloth/fabric" and they'd guide us through the endless maze of stalls to get our desired purchases. I got some sweet gifts (one of them might be yours!), but the market was sensory overload. I passed giant vats of peanut butter being stirred, rows of candy stalls that would have made Willy Wonka jealous, piles of dried peppers and fish. Oh the fish. Smelly, disgusting, dried and smoked fish of all sizes and types lying on the ground in huge piles that we had to walk through to get out of the market. Sorry Dad, but after my fish experiences in Ghana, it's going to take a lot to get me to eat another piece of walleye.
As usual, everyone stared and pointed at the silly obruni while we tried to navigate the narrow dirt paths and vastness of the market, laughing at us as we went when we couldn't understand what they were yelling at us in Twi. I'm awkward to begin with, but being in Ghana really has done nothing to normalize my behavior. I've perfected the vacant stare, and I've been catching myself lately using uncomfortably long and strangely worded English sentences in attempts to communicate. This wouldn't be such a problem except I need to shake this habit by next semester when I start interviewing for real world jobs. Saying "Please, would you be able to bring me a cup of coffee with milk and sugar if you have it?" is not going to fly at the Astor place Starbucks on Monday morning.

Kumasi was beautiful and a nice escape from Accra. I'll be traveling to Togo this week for fall break to beach around, visit a voodoo fetish market (shrunken head souvenir anyone?), hike with some butterflies. Leaving the country also renews my Ghanaian visa for another sixty day for cheaper than doing it at the embassy. Ha, my laziness was finally trumped by my cheapness.

Quick congrats to KpsiD for an awesome Greek Night. It better have been considering all those damn emails about it that kept going over the listserv. I was cheering for you girlies in Africa.