Third attempt: the one with pictures got booted for too long... There is no “there,” there.
Teaching first. Trivial matters. The accumulating loss of sleep hours has been difficult. Another hour lost this morning, another to come before we reach South Africa…it wears on a person. It’s difficult to teach well or learn well when you are constantly tired. The constant sway…never standing still. At first it was a challenge to overcome, but now it is just getting annoying…or maybe I am annoyed because I’m tired. Who knows. But having to keep one’s balance all the time is definitely tiring. At least I’m not over-eating and gaining weight any longer to compensate. Have I mentioned how good the food is? But more importantly we just left Ghana. It was rather heart-breaking and frustrating at the same time. As we arrive in each port the Institute for Shipboard Education (ISE), which runs the semester-at-sea program arranges with local tour operators to develop tours of the countries we are in. In Brazil they were responsible for getting those students who wanted to go to Rio, to get there and back safely and in a timely fashion, in Ghana they organized the trips to the slave dungeons and castles, in India it will be everything from a cooking tour (I’m doing that one!) to a trip to the Taj Mahal (I am not doing that one). So in Ghana, first of all we were greeted by a drummers and dancers. Marvelous. After passing immigration, which typically takes a couple of hours after we dock, I took a city tour, something I’ve been trying to do in each city, so at least I hit the most noteworthy sights. So we got on the bus (All the busses smelled very strongly of mothballs and my purse and bag still smell of mothballs!) and started up and around the port the area was all shanty shacks. But I didn’t think too much of this as in every port we’ve been in so far the area surrounding the port has been the poorest area. The market at the port was the usual crowded market as in each port. Really, ports are not nice places to be in general—although I understand that if we get to dock in the main port in Cape Town it will be quite nice—but then again we probably won’t because we are a little ship on budget and the slip fees are huge, so if there is a large cruise ship that can pay more, they will get the good slips and we will be relegated to the commercial port but that’s OK and who other discussion. Back on topic…we get on the bus and we get out past the port—more shanties but spread more far apart…we drive along, more shanties and few sporadic buildings. But that’s OK, it’s a poor country and we are driving towards the city center of Accra, the capital of Ghana. Soon we will see houses, arranged on streets, in recognizable neighborhoods, right? Wrong. There are no “neighborhoods” as we know it. There are no neatly arranged houses, or even shanties, on neatly arranged streets. There are few buildings other than about 8 foot by 8 foot square cement-covered cinderblock buildings arranged around mud buildings, arranged around wooden construction, arranged around shanties—none of which have “windows” or “doors.” I mean, the opening are there, but there is nothing in the openings, they are just, open. There is one “washroom” per every many houses, one area of running water, MAYBE, and that’s a BIG MAYBE one electrical outlet; but as people kept telling me, they all prefer the running water to the electricity. I mean, there just was no “there,” we just never got “there” in the sense of a city. Yes, there were areas of Accra where there were more buildings, and yes there were a few main streets where buildings and shacks lined up alongside them, but these were not the streets we think of back home. I know I had seen this on TV, but I always thought to myself that these were areas outside the cities, as we know them. I was naively deluded. This was such an epiphany. I returned to Accra everyday that I was in Ghana, to a different area, and everyday it was the same. Yes, there are some large buildings, yes, you can find some hotels with modern facilities but every time you find something like that, it is sandwiched between the poverty, people trying to scrape out a living out of nothing. Oh, and you never, ever have to go shopping in Ghana, because if you have a car, and drive, everything comes to you. The traffic is horrific and on a typical day we, the rich white Americans, had a police escort to get us through traffic in the busiest sections of Tema (where we were docked—I understand that the port in Takoradi is a bit nicer) and Accra. Otherwise it would have taken about 1-2 hours to drive the 10 miles from Tema to Accra. Well, why don’t you have to shop in Accra? Because everything comes to you while you are stopped in traffic. It is mostly women, who carry everything on their heads so they can free their hands, selling everything under the sun, while wrapping their babies to their backs. Honestly, everything from every food stuff imaginable to clothing items, underwear, shoes, glasses, and even tummy twisters to slim your waist! No flowers. I don’t know why I noticed the no flowers. Well, I do know why: farming land is precious and watering the land is hard physical work because you have to carry heavy buckets from the one spigot somewhere over there. Flowers would be a luxury for that kind of back breaking work. I think I was immeasurably saddened by all of this. But the people of Ghana are the nicest people we have met so far. They were mostly as honest as the day is long. When my husband tried to tip they ran after him with his “change” and they were all friendly and “touchy.” Sometimes a bit too “touchy” for my American sensibilities. In the markets they literally grab at you from all sides. I had someone holding my right arm trying to sell me something, someone holding my left, someone waving shirts in my face and someone pulling me backwards into his stall, all at the same time. It was chaos in the market place and I felt like we bought too much too fast. And you must bargain and haggle. You never pay the first price they quote you. The rule we were given by our cultural delegation (another story, there is always a cultural delegation on board from the next country to board in the previous country—just as we left the Amazon a famous Ghanaian musician and another man joined us for the voyage across the Atlantic to teach about Ghana; and the kitchen served a Ghanaian meal to get us used to the food choices) was to counter with one third of the asking price and go with about half of what they ask, knowing that we will be paying much, much more anyway, than a local person because (a) we can afford it and (b) they cannot. So this is their only opportunity to make any money is when visitors come through the markets. I mean the open air, higgledy-piggledy market stalls where they all know which spot of dirt belongs to whom. To me, chaos, to them, VERY orderly. And always happy people, and always grateful and DEEPY, DEEPLY religious. Very DEEPLY religious. Another story. So many other stories. On my last full day I went to the City of Hope Refuge. I sent an email to a colleague of mine from USD about the day. Here is that email, in its entirety; it repeats much of what I’ve already said, but that’s OK. I just can’t bring myself to retype this: Ghana was surprising. Our reality is not the planet's reality. And I know that, and I can say that, but until I saw it I never really understood it. We went on a city and later I was on the bus all over the southern edge of Ghana for the next five days, going here and there. There are no words to express what I saw. I have many pictures, I will try to attach. As the bus started out from the port the abject poverty of people living in shanties was everywhere, and everyone was trying to scrape together a living from nothing--working VERY hard but going nowhere fast. As we got into town I kept expecting to see the shanties drop away and some neighborhoods or at least some shops to spring up. NOTHING. NOT ANYWHERE. There are two grocery stores in Accra, the capital city, that cater to ex-pats but they are just located amidst shanties, monuments to some other type of life style, but built in a very Ghanaian style, with cinder block construction covered over with concrete for a stucco-like appearance but raggedly and in some places always peeling away. There is no, 'are we there yet?' in all of this. There is no "there," "here." Many people just sleep where ever they get tired. Many people, but mostly men, just pee where ever they get the urge. I must have seen a hundred men just whipping it out anywhere they were at. It's not the nudity, the lack of privacy for what in our culture is a private event, etc., it's the total unsanitariness of it all that hit me. There are few designated 'wash rooms' anywhere, except for us tourists. That said, the food was phenomenal, but spicy, and I had tonsillitis almost the whole time. Fortunately I went shopping with the “girls” (which also involved an hour-long bus ride to go 10 miles--but we had an air-conditioned bus, which a police escort to get us through traffic jams--I'll say more later) and we got to go out to eat and it was heavenly. I had spinach stew, which is so thick it's not a stew like we think of it. So we went to an orphanage yesterday. What wonderful, sweet children! Their reality makes them so happy and made me so sad. Most get one meal a day--the one at the school--and it is always the same, some type of boiled grain with rice and boiled eggs and "sweet potatoes" (I wish you could hear me say it with the Ghanaian accent!)--covered in a hot, spicy sauce. The children scarf it down in less than 2 minutes so they can go play but have to wash up their own dishes--the same tub of water to wash up all 100 plates that the children wash themselves (they are metal pie plate types dishes). They dry them all on the same wet cloth and stack them up to use tomorrow. Oh, and they each ate with a spoon. Some students who came independently earlier in the week to the Refuge actually ate with the students and said it was really tasty. We had boxed lunches from the ship with the usual American fare: white bread, mayo, mystery lunchmeat, cake, cookie bars, an apple, sugared, colored water in a plastic metal container that will never degrade, and an apple! haha. We had to hide them from the kids so that the kids wouldn't see us eating different food because there was not enough to go around. The children who live at the center, about 15, were all negotiated out of slavery. Yes, children are sold by mothers who have too many children to care for. Most go to work on fishing boats. A high percentage die within a couple of years because they have small fingers so they are sent into the waters to untangle nets, and often drown. Or they break their bones when they get caught up in the netting and try to free themselves before drowning. But no problem, the master just replaces them. The children tell awful stories of abuse and neglect. I want to cry as I type this but I'm in public in the dining room and don't want to do that here, but I certainly couldn't talk to anyone right now. If you saw their faces, you would know. They are so sweet and happy to look at. I took my polaroid camera and left them 30 pictures...but I have none to keep for myself although others took plenty of pictures. I'll get some. Well, I just lost the fight, here come the tears. It's so heart-breaking. I can see why there are TWO, (only two) Americans who gave up the life-style back home to live here and care for these kids. They came, saw, and made a commitment. So there are the 14 or so in the refuge and about 100 total in the school that they started, attached to the refuge. These children go home at the end of the day. But even these children go home to neglect and abuse. Almost all of the children here do; but the mothers all are very attached to their children, even if they care for them badly. The school's mission is to break that cycle. Their classrooms are open-air and "almost" finished, haha. They have no electricity but have running, local water. The children drink it just fine but we were not allowed to and it was HOT. I had my students work with the kids because the orphanage needed help with some other tasks and I wanted to free up my students for their field observations. So I got to dig sand in one spot, and carry it in buckets to another far away spot where they have a football (soccer) field. One guy was cutting grooves with a machete (with a broken handle and it was HOT; I know, I tried to pick it up and dropped it because it burned my fingers), and I was filling in the troughs with sand to make the markings. The field itself...well NEVER in America. It is pitted throughout. This is the dry season, but there is also a rainy season, and it leaves the ground scorched and scored. Children "could" easily trip and twist or break an ankle--but it won't happen--these kids are agile; well, it might happen, but there would be no medical care, so the kids just adapt--and they are extremely agile! You can read more about the refuge here: http://www.cityofrefugeoutreach.com/ Coming back we hit a traffic jam. Something I thought was staged for the movies! But it happens in real life everyday here. Well, first of all it was Friday, which is "funeral day". The Ghanaians are known for their fancy caskets. Friday is funeral day because they need the weekend to accomplish the mourning (and rejoicing). These are a DEEPLY, DEEPLY RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. You can easily see why there is such a propensity towards religious wars. Jesus Christ is their saviour and nothing else counts in life. Maybe religion allows them to cope with their horribly impoverished lives. Most people live here on less than a dollar a day--that's accounting for translating the value of a Cedi to a dollar. I mean they really and truly live on the equivalent in American life-style dollars on less than one a day. Anyway, Fridays...funerals, week-ends, we were in a single life of traffic that didn't move for 5 minutes; half an hour later we had moved 2 car lengths and there were eight make-shift lanes of traffic going in our direction, to a "circle" with only 2 lanes, so everyone had to get back down to 2 and it was about one car every 10 or so that were already jammed into the circle, from any one direction, because after you got out of the circle the traffic was jammed. So anyway, half an hour later, our bus driver called for back-up: we got a police escort through traffic to the ship. Otherwise we would have been there for literally many hours. There is so much to write about and so little time...I have to stop for how. I haven’t even touched on the slave dungeons—what a rich, but sad history this country has! This is too much for a tips posting. Sorry. Annette ps: we recently crossed zero degrees latitude and zero degrees longitude :) pps: was there a punch line to the Ulric Neisser story on not putting your valuables in the oven? Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor, Psychological Sciences University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=16143 or send a blank email to leave-16143-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
