Weekly Report

On Saturday I went with three of my older students to a day trip in Ada Foah, a beach located about 40 minute drive from Sega and that is known for the beautiful spot at the end of the beach where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Volta river, which is to Ghana perhaps what the Nile is to Egypt. This was amazingly beautiful and the weather during the day was perfect. Unfortunately, due to lack of judgment on my behalf, the day ended with second degree sun burns on both my feet – the only part on my body which I forgot to apply sunscreen on. So now I am sitting in the house, unable to wear shoes and walking to school and teaching barefoot, with the inevitable and occasional crumbs of cow and goat excrete being attached to my feet.

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A few days ago I finally got a local name. I was passing through the village on my way to the school’s boarding house, where I help some of my students with homework in the evenings and was stopped by a family as I was walking through their yard. “Do you already have a name in Ada?” a woman asked me, and when I replied “no” they all were running through their heads possible names for me. Finally, the woman asked: “Were you born first or last?” and when I replied that I was born third she suggested the name Teye (pronounced like the English word “ten” without the nasal “n” at the end, or the last syllable in the Hebrew word “me-fa-te”), which was to my liking and which means “born third”. All the names given in the local language refer to the day of the week the child was born on or to the number of siblings who succeeded him. So you will find names such as “born on Sunday”, “first born”, “born on Tuesday” or “Seventh born”.

I also forget mentioning that I am familiar with a few basic phrases in the local language. The language spoken here in Sega is Ada (or Dangme) and is one of innumerable languages spoken in Ghana. The languages spoken in Ghana are divided to basic languages and dialects of those, and I really have no clue as to what that amounts. So far I know how to ask “how are you?” and reply, ask “where are you going?”, “where are you coming from?”, “where are you from in origion?” and reply to those, and also say fat person – “obulo”, white man – “balfuno”, and black man “nomliyumo” – a word which I usually use to call back at the children after they refer to me as a balfuno.

One thing that I find very funny about the English spoken in Ghana, and that apparently was noticed by many others as well, is the indiscriminate use of the phrase “I am coming” in every possible context. Now, as far as I know, “I am coming” indicates that a person is literally about to come somewhere, but here in Ghana this seems to be interpreted metaphorically. I will give a few examples. When I played scrabble with a Ghanaian friend and urged him to put his letters down since he was thinking for too long, he simply said “I am coming” (that is, give me a few more seconds). When I wrote something on the board in class and asked a student to take her notebook out and copy it what she said was – “I am coming” (as in, I am just about to take it out), when Godwin asked the cook when the food will be ready she replied “I am coming” (that is, the food will be ready shortly) and there are many other examples. Another common phrase is “I go and come back” – which means that a person is going now and will come back anytime between two minutes from now and a few days.

Another interesting aspect about Ghana is the genuine tolerance that people have toward another’s religion. Apparently, there is no tension in the country on the basis of religious grounds, and in the school we have children who prescribe to the Christian, Muslim and ATR (African Traditional Religion) faiths. In Ghana people truly don’t judge you or classify you on the basis of your faith and show a frank interest in your religious traditions. This is in stark contrast to many other countries in the world where people are tolerant to other religions because they where taught that intolerance is a sign of ignorance. I ascribe this openness perhaps to the fact that countries in Africa have long and significant traditions of polytheism, that is, of practicing religions that are based on a multiplicity of gods. The monotheistic notion that there is only one god and only one way to worship him is a relatively late idea to be introduced in the African continent, and is perhaps constantly contested by the long lasting polytheistic tradition. A sign of this is that most children in Sega believe both that there is only one god and that there are many spirits. These rather contesting beliefs coexist here in Sega, without anyone thinking that the explicit theological problem should cause one to dispense with one of these beliefs, or the other. The only questionable religious incident that occurred here should be fully ascribed to my Jewish instinct of suspicion. I was asked by a student of mine, shortly after it rained one day, “Would you like to be baptized?” and before I had sufficient time to consider if this was offensive or not, he simply shook the branches of the tree I was standing under and I was washed by the water that clung to the leaves. “Baptizing” here is not a name of a missionary act but of a children’s game common in this rainy equatorial turf.

Mom and dad asked me to talk a little bit about the family structure in Ghana, or at least in Sega, and to be frank, after spending here an entire month, I really cannot give a good answer. I have questioned almost all my students about their family structure – where do they live, how many siblings they have, who performs what duty in the house and unfortunately I see no pattern emerge. Yesterday, for instance, I was helping a student of mine that I believe has a learning disability and asked him about his family – he has 9 other siblings and his father lives with his grandmother. I don’t know where his mother lives. Although I asked him to repeat his family story several times, I still couldn’t grasp what was really going on there.

This problem is intensified by the fact that almost all the people here refer to one another as “brother” and “sister” – even though they might only have marginal familial links. A few days ago Godwin constantly referred to a woman who came over as his “sister” and only later I discovered she would be more appropriately defined as a second cousin or something of that sort. People here are also related to one another by virtue of belonging to the same tribe, that Ada tribe, which also complicates matters.

The only things I can say for sure is that families usually have between 7-10 children, that there are many orphans and that those live with their grandparents, that some men have more than one wife, and that since this community sustains itself on the basis of agriculture – all members of the family work just as hard in their farms, with an obvious extra work given to the women who clean and cook on top of their regular work. There are also many “broken” families, that is, single-mother households. In these cases, the oldest son assumes a great role in caring and providing for the family – one of my students for instance, who lives in such a family, wakes up at about 4:30 am every morning and goes with his little brother to fetch water 40 minutes away from his house because the water in the closer well costs about 5 cents for a huge bucket of water which was so heavy I couldn’t even lift it. After school, he goes and harvests his farm, plants new seeds our weeds around it. When it is finally dark, he goes to a friend’s house that has electricity to finish his homework.

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