Checkpoint – Month 4: November in Review

Photo snapped of me doing my favorite thing in the shop - planing a coffin, so satisfying

There’s a pocket of peace within the persistent activity and noise that is Teshie, Ghana. In the moments when I’m not drenched in sweat, sanding a coffin, or surrounded by my host family as I try my hardest to speak the bits of Ga I’ve learned, you can find me on the red couch in the “show room”. The showroom is above the shop, open on all four sides, and contains fully done coffins built for display. From its elevated position, I can sit and turn to the left to watch the busy road and the happenings of Teshie, Ghana, or turn to my right and watch my family exist down below in their compound of homes.

On the couch, it’s quietly loud. The air is constantly filled with beeping Tro-Tros, dance music, screams of children playing, and political campaign cars blasting the accomplishments of their chosen candidate. There’s a car that passes by my window like clockwork at 5:00 am that blasts a song, “Sankofa Doctor,” about one of the candidates for parliament, and I think it will be permanently etched into my brain by the time I leave. The thing about Teshie is something is always happening, and from our perch in the showroom we are privy to it all. I love watching my brothers sprint to its edge when they hear a loud car or motorcycle revving, everyone craning to get a look at the source of the noise. The constant sound provides wonderment for all of us, especially when it turns into something big, like the other day when hundreds of National Democratic Congress party constituents ran and danced through the streets waving flags and singing or when a random fire was lit and blazed for an hour on the road. There’s always something to watch, and I’m quite content to take it all in. Especially because from this nest, the wind buffets off the water, and it’s the ONLY place that distracts from the consistency of the 90•F weather. My skin can dry up here, a rare change from its terminally slick state as of late; sometimes I feel more water than human, but my urge for cleanliness has slowly eroded over the past month.

The shock of how fast months have gone by this year has started to slowly become more commonplace. Somehow, we’ve reached the end of November, and I’m just a few weeks away from leaving Ghana for South Africa, a new addition to my travels. As I reflect on November, I can safely say that this month, I’ve overcome obstacles that would have once caused me to curl into a fetal position. I’ve learned the difference between feeling safe and comfortable, I’ve whittled down what my necessities are, I’ve learned an entirely new skill that I truly never thought would be part of my repertoire, and I’ve asserted myself as a solo women traveler in an unfamiliar, extremely male-dominated space. This month, I am full of gratitude, pride, and exhaustion all at once.

When I first arrived, I felt slightly like I was drinking from a fire hose, but because of the “newness” of it all, every obstacle felt like a moment of awe in its own right. There was the strangeness of being told my nails were “not beautiful” the very first day and being taken (dragged) to a chair on the street where a woman started picking out polish for me (they went with red and white stripes- not my usual taste but when in Ghana?). Or the embarrassment as I stumbled over the Ga my brothers tried to teach me, but the satisfaction that came when I saw how excited they were that I was trying. At work, my brothers put tools in my hand I’ve never held and expected me to just begin. So I did, with lots of corrections, until my arms felt like they might leave my body. Then, as the novelty began to wear off, I could feel comfort setting in. Lounging on half-made coffins (my choice is usually the antelope) became normal and not taboo. I was more comfortable eating with my hands despite the lack of a sink or the ability to clean before and after. My stomach slowly hardened itself to spices and kenkey and banku and whatever was available that day that I ate with my host brothers because otherwise, I would not be eating. My sleep schedule adjusted to waking up around 5:30 am when Ghana would wake up loudly around me; I’ve even gotten slightly better at sleeping when the rolling blackouts come through multiple times a week, and the little fan that circulates air in my room can’t function. I’ve gotten used to brushing my teeth with a water bottle over the toilet, the little black drain worms in my hose shower, and my clothes and body being coated in dirt and wood shavings. I even survived an infestation of bugs in my bed, which ordinarily would’ve been a tipping point.

I’ve realized, though, that some things transcend adjustment, things that I don’t think I’ll be able to fully understand or work through for many months and years to come. As I am staying in a small town outside of the main city of Accra, I am the only white person, outside of a single missionary at a local Mormon church, that I have seen in the month I have been here. I was able to get used to the calls of “Obruni (white person)” from little children and the attention easily enough. Over time even, I became overjoyed to see that the shouts of “white” or obruni had faded to “apprentice!” as they recognized I am temporarily a part of the community. What has not faded is the significance that my whiteness imparts; it is a very prominent signal of privilege. There’s an assumption that, as a white person, my resources are unlimited. In many ways, this is not wrong; a Ghanaian cedi is about .06 of the US dollars, which means even my budgeted Watson funds can travel further here. But I am also a student with no real money of my own, on a fellowship budget. I’ve been asked to buy phones for people, pay people’s rent, or simply ask for money. I find it extremely difficult to articulate my emotions at these requests and the selfishness I feel at not fulfilling them. I’ve found it nearly impossible to correctly translate what the Watson is and that the money I have is not my own to give freely, knowing it has to last the year, here I am seen as having the utmost luxury. I’ve tried to give when I can in ways that aren’t “anti-Watson”; I was able to take almost all 15 of my host brothers on a trip to Cape Coast and Kakum National Park, which we would all be seeing for the first time. The adventure was made even more worthwhile because we were all able to experience it together, but it still didn’t resolve this internal struggle I felt between doing “enough,” the purpose of my travels, and the precarious position of my privilege. To complicate matters further, Ghanaian culture has an extreme emphasis on hospitality. My host family has gone above and beyond to aid me during this time, from helping me wash my clothes to helping organize transportation. Most importantly, they are insistent that I am always fed at least two times a day, if not all three times. Ghana’s food network is complex; while I wouldn’t say there is food scarcity, there is certainly inconsistency. There is no such thing as groceries or keeping food in the home. Instead, locals know which houses cook what; around the corner from our house is where you can get fish pies for breakfast, while at night, it will become a jollof hut sometimes or a millet porridge on weekends. Sometimes, we will walk to get a certain food only to find that the women of that house decided not to make anything that day. What’s available one day might not be the next. Price, however, is the biggest issue. With very little cooking consistently done outside of for young children, each meal must be purchased if you want to eat. I’ve experienced extreme trouble with navigating the guilt associated with this, with sitting down with my food and realizing that only a few of my host brothers were able to get anything that evening. I always “invite them” – as is the Ghana way of asking someone to eat with you – but as their guest, they rarely take me up on it. Moreover, a few times, my brothers have tried to pay for my food and drink, almost tackling me when I try to shove my money forward instead. It is the ultimate act of selflessness and a battle I rarely win. I don’t think I’ve ever truly seen this type of altruism in action, to live outside of your means and often at your detriment. It makes me feel almost ill when I then find myself doing my “budgeting” on Sundays and having little bouts of anxiety as I plan for what I need to “save for” in my upcoming journeys. I am truly awed at the unconditional love my new family shows me and conflicted with how my earnest attempts at reciprocation seem to pale in comparison.

My brothers and I at the canopy walk within Kakum National Park

Moreover, I have felt heavily what it means to be a white person in Ghana specifically. Ghana, once known as the Gold Coast, was once the main hub for the transatlantic slave. Before arriving in Ghana, I read a lot about the colonial history of this country (PLEASE go read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, a must-read for all Americans). When my brothers and I planned to go to Cape Coast and to Elmira Castle, one of the main slave castles that held Ghanaians and other Africans before they were brought to America or Europe, I began to feel emotional and anxious. I was nervous about how they might perceive me after we went to the castle, I was nervous about how I would perceive myself and my history as a white person in this space. The night before, I sat with one of my brothers, Okoe, and told him that the castle’s history made me both sad and mad. He looked at me with a lot of confusion before finally saying that for Ghanaians, it’s important to keep the past in the past, that they can’t live in sadness or hate for others for what was done to their ancestors. I was awed by this answer but also found it complex; how could I explain to him that the past and present seem to be comingling currently in America, that in many ways, that hate he speaks of is still alive and well in a place like my home. It was one of those moments I felt immense shame to be from my home country.

Before leaving for this year, I knew that my white privilege would be confronted more than once and in ways that would likely be challenging; what I was not yet aware of was the urge I would have to explain away the privilege, to try to make others understand the circumstances of my travel, to wish to be without and therefore more within the community I am occupying. Even when I have caught myself feeling more “within,” there is another pang of guilt that comes with the temporary nature of my induction into this community. Once, when the rolling blackouts hit in the early evening, we all remained outside, no one wanting to go into the boiling temperatures of our rooms. After hours, the lights flickered on, and we all cheered. There was a brief flash of comradery and glee I felt at being welcomed into this very Ghanaian moment, the joy of electricity returning. In almost the same instance, the guilt crept in as I realized I was celebrating something I only had to endure for the next 6 weeks, selfishly reveling that I would be able to fall asleep tonight because of the fan. I can safely say that by the time I leave Ghana, and quite possibly the time I leave Africa, I will not have resolved this inner turmoil. I can only explore further my discomfort at being seen as honored guests, white American, and budget traveler all rolled into one and continue trying to explore how, as an outsider, I can learn how to respectfully navigate having one foot in and one foot out of the spaces I occupy.

As I continued to build community here and fall in love with the people of this country and their resilience, there was a very real and unforeseen challenge I found myself facing. As I briefly spoke about in my election day blog post, my apprenticeship in the coffin shop means that I am solely with men for the majority of the day. Before arriving in Ghana, I had known this might be the case, but I had not imagined how it would separate me from the women, especially as I would be living with the entire family who owned the coffin business. I was extremely naïve. For the first few weeks, almost none of the women interacted with me. I couldn’t tell if it was distrust because of my whiteness because I was working in a man’s position, because I was not doing what all the other women were, or because I was doing something that they were never given the option to in working in the shop. Likely, it was a combination of all of those things, but I felt a mixture of guilt and longing. I tried to make myself as amenable to the women of the family as possible, offering to help them wrap the kenkey they sell or clean up around the compound. I’ve made a concerted effort to learn the children’s hand games that they play after school with their moms and sisters. I try to speak in the little Ga I know with the women especially. After a while, there was a thaw, but boundaries were still up. Even today, there are only a few women who will have private conversations with me or beckon me to join them. I don’t say this with any resentment; I am well aware that what I am doing here, as a white woman, is unorthodox and alienating. However, that doesn’t mean that the lack of consistent female presence hasn’t been one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced, mostly because I’ve had to weather male attention on my own. Previous to my adventures in Ghana, I had known that as a female traveler, I would have to be on “alert” and aware of my comfort level around men. Even so, I was entirely unprepared for the barrage of insistent marriage proposals, offers to have “Ghanaian children,” and overall pretty explicit comments made towards me. The consistent commentary, coupled with the “touchiness” of Ghanaian culture at first, made me freeze. It would take everything in me not to have an extreme emotional response when these comments were made or when, instead of asking me to go somewhere, my hand was held and taken. However, I repeated the mantra to myself that it was a cultural difference, and this brought me more into a place of trying to understand. As I did this exercise, I was able to separate the people and comments that were just that, merely cultural differences, from ones that rightfully made me feel unsafe or uncomfortable. It was in deciphering how I felt as a woman traveling alone that I began to realize there is a rather large gap between what I need to feel safe and what I need to feel comfortable.

The next step was harder still – knowing when it was appropriate to speak up for myself versus when it would be culturally incompetent to. I learned that with most of my host brothers, who cared deeply about whether they were “worrying me,” I was able to be a little more assertive, to rebuff being touched or spoken to in a certain way. Oftentimes, it was met with a refrain of “But you’re in Ghana, and you must do what we do in Ghana.” As an American woman, I could understand that my discomfort was foreign to them, and when I was able to stop, breathe, and explain, my brothers would always understand. With men I was more unfamiliar with or were outside the familial circle, I learned to pretend not to understand or to ignore completely, choosing instead to focus on my work or remove myself. I’ve gotten very used to saying that I’m engaged and, when asked where my ring is, telling them I didn’t want to lose it. It’s amazing what the mirage of marriage can do for a woman, which in some ways makes me resentful that as a solo traveler, I have to evoke some image of a man somewhere for others to leave me alone. Nevertheless, I’m thankful for the reprieve it has provided and for my “Paddy” home screen that always reinforces my storytelling. I’m immensely grateful for the safety network that is my host brothers, and knowing that I am safe with them has been a huge help during this time. I am also consistently surprised at my ability to steel myself against such discomfort and to be able to peel apart what my gut is telling me I’m not being safe versus what was slightly uncomfortable. I am positive that this will not be the last time I encounter such issues on my travels and such issues in my life; I am, in a weird way, glad for the chance to flex these muscles as a woman and have learned how to hold my own within a male-dominated, and culturally different, sphere.

My dad has a shirt that says pain is weakness leaving the body. I think it’s a Marine’s quote or something like that which explains its unnecessary harshness. But recently, I’ve thought there’s some truth in it; we all experience pain or discomfort, but it’s up to us how we choose to view said experience. I like to think of pain as a really good reminder that we are human and fallible and, most importantly, living. I’ve had my fair share of discomfort this past month - monstrous bug bites, heat rash, sore muscles, digestive issues, and emotional moments. But all this is so temporary: my bug bites will scar or fade, my muscles will fall out of “coffin-building shape”, and my stomach will bounce back, albeit with a more friendly gut. My “Ghana marks,” as my host brothers say, will disappear, and what then will I have to show for this time but the strength and confidence that grew through challenges and obstacles and the love I know I share with a community and family halfway across the world from my own. I had to make a conscious choice this month, one I’ve never realized I was fully capable of and one that I often would find impossible: I had to lead with joy. There were so many moments where obstacles seemed insurmountable, discomfort seemed overwhelming, and my body felt like quitting. But I was inspired by the love of this community, awed by the beauty of this country, and taught every day by my second family the true meaning of living in the present and moving through the world with resilient joy.

And I would do it all again in a heartbeat because of all this joy. I celebrated two host brothers' birthdays, laughed along with them as they watched me fumble food with my hands, danced with Baby Walter to Chatta Wale in the workshop, witnessed the funeral of a Teshie warrior, and ran through the streets with the funeral procession. I received my Ghanaian name - Ajorkor (second born), Na (queen), Fio Fio (small small). Fio Fio was given to me because it’s how they taught me in the workshop - do it “small small,” they say, as I sawed and planed and sanded - but also because it’s their lesson to me for the rest of this year. Do it “small, small” and I’ll get where I’m supposed to be going. I remember after the bed bug sleepless night panic situation, which happened to be coupled with a stomach bug I was just getting over - I sat alone and stared at my ceiling, my skin crawling and my brain aching for something that felt normal. I let myself drift in thought to the coffin we would be working on that day and remembered we were to do the bedding of it. My hands, in a few hours, would literally be laying down someone’s last resting place. And just like that, bed bugs be damned, how lucky am I to be so intimately learning about death in a completely new way. Moreover, how lucky am I to be the most alive I’ve felt in years, passionately pursuing tangible change in end-of-life matters? How lucky am I to be alive, period? Ghana has taught me that we have a choice in all matters; when we are faced with a challenge, we can crumple and dwell, or we can take small small steps forward and lead with contagious happiness and zest for life.

Funeral Procession for a Teshie Warrior

So everything has been Fio Fio. Each obstacle is only a moment in time. There’s an internal panic or scream, a pause, a steadying, and then there are small small steps forward. I was always curious about why the previous Watson fellows I had spoken to or heard from never used the phrase “best year of my life.” They would say it was life-changing, it was indescribable, it was rewarding, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. At the time, I didn’t think twice about this careful choice of words, but now I am beginning to understand them more. Ghana has been, as I’m sure other places and moments will be going forward, the most rewarding and challenging experience of my life. Much like the heat rash that is carved in my skin, I love the way I can feel the pulse of Ghana in my veins now, my ears accustomed to the persistent life noise of Teshie. I hope this feeling never fades; I hope to keep my Ghana scars.

PS if you took the time to read this, you rock, this ended up being a soliloquy. Leave a comment or something please, when I use my 5 minutes of Wifi time, it’ll make me smile :)

November in Review

Songs of the Month: Accra – Shatta Wale, Where is the Love? – The Black Eyed Peas (my host brothers have declared this to be their favorite American song), Be Mine – David Gray

Poem of the Month: You Are Your Own State Department – Naomi Shihab Nye

What I’ve Read: (adding from October because I somehow forgot to do this?!) Inferno – Dante, Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi, the books in the Percy Jackson Heroes of Olympus series (don’t judge I never read the second series), Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Walk with the Weary – Dr. M.R. Rajagopal, The Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese, The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

In – cold Milo, Tom Brown porridge, Shatta wale, calling flip flops slippers, putty filler, planing wawa wood, workshop puppies, Sankofas, tuna pie, sachet water and most importantly Bel Cola

Out – hot Milo, WiFi connection, mystery meat pie, clean feet, heat rash, Ghanaian mosquitoes, normal hair in African heat, sweaty sleeps