Ghana Day 7 031912 Gets You Thinking

Ghana Day 7 031912 Gets You Thinking

I wanted to share a few topics with you that I'd have to put in the category of cultural "priority shifts." In trying to adapt to any new place, we take what we know to be true, our values and priorities and experience, and we try to integrate new information with the stable and time honored things that we know to be true.  In Ghana, and particularly in our local community, many underlying beliefs are different than the ones that I carried over her on my flight.  Until one understands the whole belief package that supports the decisions that our Ghanaian friends are making, very little makes sense. Here is my attempt to quantify some of these alternate cultural assumptions, that work just perfectly here, but that are quite different than our own.

Human Interaction. In Ghana, everyone is warmly greeted. Things run on "Ghana Time", meaning that ther are no appointments set in stone.  One the way to anywhere, especially since most are walking, you will pass and stop and greet people in the street.  Not to do so would be highly insulting, and in doing so, you will take longer doing everything than you anticipated and you will be late.  Fortunately, those that you are meeting will also be late, and it all works out.  But the underlying premise seems to be that there is great value placed on human contact.  I remember having to learn to "look away" from people on the Ny subway or streets, lest they lock eyes with you and mark you for harassment.  There, it seemed best to ignore.  In Ghana, the people that you pass are enriched by a quick word of greeting, Good Morning, Hello, and both parties move on from the brief interaction elevated, and smiling for having made the connection.  Those of you who have seen some of my other writings know that I value "making everyday moments holy", adding a bit of consciousness to the mundane and ordinary to raise it to a memorable experience.  Acknowledging the people around us, and returning a greeting and a smile accomplishes this.  It is probably a more difficult task nack home, to bypass our natural pull toward human contact, and to "learn" to ignore those around us.  So, Rule One, Human contact has a higher value than most anything else.

White Money. Even in the medium sized city close to us, called Kosoa, it is uncommon to see a white skinned person, and we are oddities.  In this beautiful, richly dark skinned country, adorned with festive and bright fabrics, we stand out quite a bit.  The economy here operates at a different level, and Westerners just plain have more buying power than Ghanaians do.  As well intentioned as they might be, it is extremely difficult to un-link the association that these strange looking white folk are clumsily transporting large amounts of currency, and using it unwisely.  Americans don't do well in the bargaining game in a country where locals know the inherent value of items with no posted prices.  Even in local trading, there is some flexibility in lowering the price depending on quantity.  There were only three instances where there seemed to be a fixed price, the familiar taxi ride to town, the tro-tro vans between town, and the hourly fee at the Internet Cafe (remember, minus the food).  Although I am not a driver here, the cost of fuel is also fixed at the pump (sold by the liter, at approximately $9 per gallon).  Every thing else is negotiable.  Either you know what you should be paying, or you do a lot of extra paying.  

The 140 Cedi ($80) leather handbag was negotiated down to a purchase price of about $9.  I was asked to pay about 1 Cedi (60 cents) for a pint of water, where the street vendor price is 10 for that price, and the marketplace is 20 for the same price.  There is this kind of tug of war in the mind of the locals, when seeing an "abruni" white person, that is genuinely friendly but also feeling like they don't want to pass up making a day's wage selling you a pencil or a hat or a coconut.  So we make friends local friends who we can send in to beat the jackpot mentality back down to reality, and slowly we learn the inherent value of goods.  But it is difficult and frustrating because the next vendor or store keeper will try again to overcharge.  We're marked people, and we just need to convey that, although we look different, we aren't stupid. And then some Western tourist comes buy and gladly overpays and undoes all of our effort. So, the next rule is that everything has a pretty common value, but it is not posted, and up to the purchaser to know.  Caviat Emptor, Buyer beware.

Daily Rhythm.  In this land of two or three power interuptions each day, there is no certainty that your home will be lit beyond dusk.  Sometimes, yes, sometimes no, but planning on electricity is a bad plan, subjecting one to repeated disappointment.  Perhaps for this reason, people are up with the sun.  Actually, given the number of roosters walking the neighborhood, and the certainty of the morning Moslem blaring call to worship at 5am, it is just easier to get up around 5:30, and maybe call it a day at 8:30 or 9pm when you get tired of reading my flashlight.  There are other distractions.  In our host family's "hood" there is a small 10x10 ft "barbershop" that has two six foot speaker enclosures aimed down the road at us that blares the local Reggae station beyond distortion levels starting at around 6am, until around 10pm. No one seems to mind.  There is a funeral tradition to play 24 continuous hours of music in the neighborhood, celebrating the persons life.  (When the time comes, you could do that for me and I would be honored).  My point is that this is a vibrant (noisy) place and with it not being wise to lay odds on the evening power, it is easier to rise and sleep with the sun. 

Personal Hygiene.  Ghanaians are extremely clean and fastidious about their dress.  That said, it is also 95 degree Fahrenheit and humid 24/7, so this is not the land of excessive makeup and feeling your driest.   We met a young volunteer who had been here for a few months, and had her backpack ripped off.  When we were consoling her, she said that it mostly contained makeup from home (Idaho) that she had no use for.  Deodorant is a good thing, and showers 9sometimes multiple times a day) are welcome, but there is just a certain amount of honest sweat that one needs to tolerate.   No one really seems to smell bad.  Unlike other cultures where garlic or curry seem to leach out in perspiration, these foods are basic, tasty and satisfying.  There is no air conditioning and there are no sweaters or jackets or turtlenecks.  Everyone is hot and sweaty and that is ok.

Water is a valuable commodity in a hot climate like this, and it comes in one temperature, lukewarm.  There is not hot water (sometimes people have black solar heating tanks to imitate this).  That means that the sterilizing idea of running something through the dishwasher doesn't exist.  Showering, laundry and dishwashing are all cold water sports.  The latter two involve multiple buckets and lots of bar soap, manually scrubbing and moving from bucket to bucket in a gradient from dirty to increasingly clean water.  It works perfectly, but one is more "in touch" with laundry and dishwashing activities when you find yourself face to face with hand washing.  

For our volunteer work, we assist with the serving and cleaning up of 125 lunches each day at the orphanage/school.  There are only about 50 bowls and spoons, so the younger kids eat first and their utensils and dishes are washed quickly for the next hungry group.  A popular cooking ingredient is the locally grown red palm oil, that seems largely soap and dishwashing resistant, leaving a greasy red film on things, kind of like leaving spaghetti sauce in a Tupperware container too long, when that red never really comes out.  On our first day here, we walked into this lunch cleanup, and (bringing our Western lysol mentality) were frustrated that soap and cold water weren't leaving everything squeaky clean.  Did I mention the flies?  There are small houseflies everywhere, thousands of them, and in the end, they do their own thing in their own airspace, we try our best to keep them from landing in hot pots of porridge or beans, and life goes on.  Worst case, a bit of free protein.  We did the best that we could, on the premise that this was an orphanage and low budget.  Weren't we surprised when we each were offered a large bowlful of the rice, beans and palm oil dish that was being served from the dishes that had just benefited from our own handiwork.  Everyone wanted the "abruni" to taste the local dish.  Bottom line, immune systems grow strongest when challenged, and this began our journey, now in its seventh day.  Our host offered to do our laundry, which came as clean from hand washing as any that I've ever seen come out of a washer.  The kids stand in the dish bowls to get their showers each day, then they get soaped down well for "kitchen use" We continue to drink bottled/bagged filtered water, but the cold water hand washing of dishes, with a little added sand and dust, has just become a normal part of the experience, "the way things are."  No one has gotten sick, and I'm sure that we are somehow strengthening our immune system.  It makes me think what a silly marketing driven idea the Lysol chlorine clean society we have been sold.  Clean is important and necessary.  There just isn't much more than a bar of soap that we really need to accomplish that. With the 34 resident kids in the orphanage, most are perfectly healthy.  A few runny noses and coughs,  but that seems to resolve in a day or two., and these kids have nothing.  I'm thinking that humans are really naturally much healthier and resilient and resistant to disease than the medical world has led us to believe.