I was in Westerville’s Public Library to pick up some books last week. On some shelving located at the exit were flyers announcing upcoming events for the city. One of those events was called "Explore the Underground Railroad" which, of course, will focus on the Underground Railroad (a series of homes and hide-away places, special routes, and communication styles that assisted enslaved blacks in America to escape). Ohio is special in that many escaping bonded blacks headed to Ohio for freedom at went to various parts of northern United States and Canada. During these few days of activities, elementary aged children would have "hands-on" activities such as mailing themselves like Henry Box Brown (a true story of a man who mailed himself to Pennsylvania, a free state), complete "slave" chores, sing "slave" songs and dress of as escaping "slaves." This is possibly in the same vein as Westerville organizers who were in charge of the “Freedom Trail” event earlier this year which involved “actors leading groups by foot and horse-drawn wagon to simulate the experience of fleeing slaves,” along with some of the attendees being "sold" as an element of the program.
In the art education reading for my research class, the author discusses connecting the “head, heart, and hand” in order to “shape a kind of community that is responsive to many different communities in different places and in different times and one that open’s many ways forward”. Stringer states that one of the challenges for teachers is to “accommodate the diversity that exists in their classrooms”. More specifically “Pride: Feelings of personal growth”, “Dignity: Feelings of competence”, “Identity: Acknowledging the worth of social identities” and “Place: Feelings of having a legitimate place in the social context.”
I am wondering how those Westerville events can be executed with the “head, heart, and hand” in mind? I’m on the fence about it. Somewhere between curious of how the events could be executed, wondering the motivation, and being a bit disturbed. From my understanding Westerville in a majority white population. Therefore, that would be their target audience. How would or could these activities instill pride, dignity, identity, and place in white children? How can this have a negative effect? Again, what’s the intent behind the project? What are African American or African children supposed to feel when then leave these events? Pride? In what? How was this event going to instill pride in them? Dignity? How so? Identity? An identity grounded in oppression? Place? How does teaching children that they are simply the descendants of slaves help them become better people, critical thinkers? I think the most disappointing thing in American school system is how African American history is always being grounded in one aspect of slavery or the supposed black experience. The narrative is usually, Africans were forced to come to the US, they came, worked (it was sad), they escaped thanks to Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln officially free-ed the Negros, Martin Luther King Jr. helped them get their civil rights, now all is well in the US of A. But the narrative is much more “muddy,” if you will, and I have yet to see teachers trouble that narrative. If the organizers did this to promote relationships, communication, participation, and inclusion how can educators work to ask “what types of relationships are we trying to form and with whom?” “Who are we trying to communicate with and what are we trying to communicate?” “Who will be the participants and who will be excluded and why?” How can we create an arts-based curriculum that challenges notions of the standard African American narrative and challenge well-meaning teachers’ archaic approach?
How could we talk about the "slave" dress or redesign it? How could we dissect the "slave" songs? How could we discuss the feelings of Henry Box Brown and the politics behind the book written about his experience? How could we juxtapose the experiences of blacks who didn't come to the US as slaves but as indentured servants? Was freedom really free?
Now, I'm not opposed to or for any of the events. And I'm not saying we should avoid talking about slavery. But what about other perspectives? What were Africans (that remained in Africa) thinking? How does that/did that shape the way many Africans see African Americans?) Also, why do we keep using the word “slave”? The majority of captured Africans went to Brazil, then Caribbean and the least amount went to US. But most people don't associate those places with slavery. Often times people think (mostly or only) of the culture in the Caribbean and Brazil (music, food etc). Why is that? We don’t call Reggae “slave music”. We don’t call Afro-Brazilain music “slave music”, but we call songs like “Follow the Drinking Gourd” “slave songs”? Why not call it early African American gospel? Or simply an early African American music genre? Staples in Caribbean dishes are rice and beans. We then find that then are also in a variety of Latino/a - Hispanic dishes as well. That is directly connected to their living conditions during times of bondage and what they had access to. Is that “slave” food? The same for African Americans which we might call “soul food” (e.g. how my grandparents still eat chitlins’ (chitterlings or pig intestines) and pigs feet.) How can we discuss how history helped form a culture many embrace or people don’t even realize they embrace? Why does African Americans' history have to so tightly connected to slavery all reinforced by education and educational opportunities such as “be a slave for a day” activities? What happens when we start saying “displaced African” instead of slaves? What we do then, is show that they came from somewhere. And they are not labeled with an occupation forced upon them. That tells or implied to students that they not only came from somewhere but that they must have also brought something (knowledge/understandings/life perspectives etc) here with them.
For example, the French contained a number of their bonded people on the island of Haiti. It was because those enslaved came from a variety of nations and spoke a variety of languages thus they created what we know today as Haitian Creole (a hybrid of a variety of African languages and French also can be heard in the French quarter of Louisiana) in order to communicate behind the enslavers' backs. This created dialect so enabled them to conquer the French for their “freedom.” Where they speaking is calling Haitian Creole “slave language” really doing that history justice? There was nowhere to run. No Underground Railroad. They were on an island. It was France’s connection to Louisiana that brought that culture to the US. What we know now as Mardi Gras (a bit tainted by “Girls Gone Wild” series… an interesting feminist angle to possibly discuss) and Jazz Funerals. When many think of New Orleans most people don’t think of slavery yet it was the “slaves” that brought that culture. (A reason why Hurricane Katrina was historically and socially tragic, especially now with the gentrification that is happening) Can’t we do this differently? How can we blend the past and the present?
Since so many Black American runaways went to Canada, why not discuss how blacks influenced Canadian culture? What about comparing the communication styles between “displaced African’s" songs, “displaced African’s" quilts and Haitian Creole? Or talk about how the connection between West African oral tradition with stories and music created what we know today as hip hop?
Now, this proposed slave auction was a bit much for me to ponder. I see it similar to re-enacting the Holocaust. I don't think people would be too fond of that. People would find it highly problematic if children dressed up as if they were in concentration camps and instead of re-enacting a march to the auction block, re-enacted a march to gas chambers or the trains that led them to Auschwitz. I think the difference maybe, that we have video of concentration camps and personal testimonies on tape that has been widely dispersed and can give people a different understanding. Now there was the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) that collect narratives of formerly enslaved African Americans in the 1930s, but arguably those have not been widely dispersed and are not a part of the mainstream educational system. (I personally didn’t know about them until I was in graduate school). But regardless, those visuals are not available…. video of life on a plantation in the 1700s. But I'm wondering, if we compared the Holocaust and US slavery (even though arguably, they aren't equivalent) I wonder if making the Jewish discriminatory experience apart of US educational system gives US citizens a better understanding (presented with substantially more gravity) and a higher respect for Jewish tragedy than that of US slavery? For example, most students’ have to read Anne Frank's journal in middle school as opposed to Olaudah Equiano's narrative. What would happen if, instead of re-enacting Anne Frank in her cellar/basement hiding from the KGB (as many schools do as their school play), students re-enacted Equiano being forced in the hull of a slave ship? How would that work or not work? How would we teach that in a theater class and present it as a school play? Why or why not?
More thinking to do…. Your thoughts???
Monday, November 9, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Ghanaology: Its so deep, in so many ways... working through frustration
I was told that I left on the 100th birthday of Kwame Nkrumah. It was stained with an airport employee cheating me and the other employees laughing about it as I was infuriated. Nkrumah would have shaken his head in disappointment I’m sure. I met a man who studied under him, a member of SNCC, a friend of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), and was given the name Seku, the name of the first African president of New Guinea Seku Ture. But my airport incident would have been just a small story in the list of stories me and others have about being in Ghana. I told them “You should care about how people see your country. You shouldn’t treat people like this.” I was so angry I almost cried out of frustration. It was a bit of a build up that I’m not sure I knew I had. When I went to the market the day before to get gifts for my family the store keeper said to me, “You must be leaving today or tomorrow.” I said, “Tomorrow, how did you know?” He replied, “I can tell you are ready to go home.” He was right.
I was told that it’s going to take me a while to process my experiences in Ghana. So I’m sure more posts will be coming soon. I wasn’t a tourist this time. I was living with Ghanaians. Interacting with people. Working to establish relationships. I didn’t want to think of people get scammed, hurt, violated, and/or taken advantage of. I didn’t want to believe it happened EVERYDAY. I continued to be told, “You are entering into a VERY complex society.” I’m still processing. “Your work has to be bigger than how they treat you,” I was told. I’m still working through that. Being a tourist with my study abroad group last year, you are disconnected in a way. You are living with other Americans. Living in hotels. Eating hotel food etc. But I didn’t want that this time. As I said in my last post. I wasn’t expecting some romanticized idea of Africa. To be embraced as some long lost child. But I did expect to be treated, by most people, with dignity and respect. This may be my most personal post. My feelings were hurt. I was blessed to have some really great conversations with people that understood what I was feeling. Why I was confused. And they shared their stories. I have too many things to process, but I will discuss a few.
I went to Ghana this summer to work for an organization. I met the executive director last year. We hung out briefly in the US, so I went to Ghana believing he, of all people, would be my ally. I worked to raise over 900 books for his school. Even though I am a student and single mother, somehow many Ghanaians I talk to feel like I have so much money. But it took a lot of people to help. I was planning a fundraiser and was talking to people that I know that ship 4x4’s to Ghana to find out how his organization could get one because he was having trouble gaining access to rural communities. I came to help where ever I was needed. This guy then begins to tell me how in love with me he was. It felt odd, because we didn’t know each other THAT well, but I didn’t want to be rude because he might have been being honest. No one had ever said that to me before out of the blue. And there was nothing, nothing prior to that statement that implied that he was interested in me. I came to work for him, I walked into his home, the volunteer house, as I did almost everyday, and he grabbed my face to kiss me. I backed away, was surprised and didn’t know where it was coming from. After numerous times of telling him, maybe we should be friends, he continued to say, “Don’t think like that, I really want this to work.” It was so odd. He said that we should work out a plan where he is able to come to the US to see me, but I would need to help him with his ticket. That gave me great pause. To be worried about a ticket before you spend a great deal of time with me. I continued to feel like something wasn’t right. Then I get an email from someone saying how he is dating someone else, saying that I am bothering him, and he doesn’t want anything to do with me. Now, this would have been really hurtful if I had been comfortable with the situation and decided to be something with him. What was hurtful is that he lied. And when I confronted him about it he didn’t want to talk about it and said he never wanted to talk to me again. I was dumb founded. I was like, “Damn what just happened?” Why did he even attempt this? Why lay it on so thick unnecessarily? In my last post I talked about how last summer I had a ton of marriage proposals and requests to go to America from Ghanaians. But only ones from a low-income class, and I usually played it off as a joke. I went to Ghana, by myself, thinking this is the person that I know; this is the person I can trust. I was wrong. Its not fun being in a foreign country by yourself and not feeling as if you have any allies. (that's worth re-reading)
The executive director asked me, “What if I get you pregnant?” Whoa. I took a HUGE pause. This was odd. I felt like if I was in the US I could have handled this with ease. Knew exactly how to act. But I was thinking, “Is he serious?” I told him we really need to talk about this and get on the same page. I didn’t think I did anything misleading. I wanted us to talk and agree. We never really did. It was as if, he saw that I wasn't really going for the “I love you, I miss you stuff”, so he turned to someone else. Which again, is not the really issue. Its about people being opportunists and me not being able to trust while I was there. Of his friends that I met, one of them propositioned me to marry him for money. He said he was paying $7,000 for a 5-year visa (which sounds really odd and probably illegal) but, instead, would give me the money if I would marry him and went on to inform me that it is a “big business.” Again uncomfortable. And I new this because a Ghanaian woman that I know said that I could make a lot of money by marrying and divorcing Ghanaians so they can get their papers. I politely told her not thanks. I don’t play with the US government. The US government and black people do not have a good history (I was reminded when I watched a special on J. Edgar Hoover that I had been wanting to see). Three of the director’s friends have married Americans they met over the internet and they never met until they got married. And I know of others. I have heard I way too many stories of the men requesting a divorce, interestingly, after his papers go through. When I said that it appears that he and his friends were opportunists, they were offended. Then I said maybe I was wrong. I thought maybe I shouldn’t have said that. I felt kinda bad about it. Then I found out the guy that proposition me and asked that I take some romantic rendezvous with him to another city, has a girlfriend of eight years. I didn’t go, but the fact that he asked. This was after he told me that he doesn’t like Ghanaian women.
My friend put me on to this US embassy website http://ghana.usembassy.gov/romance_scam.html
“United States citizens should be alert to attempts at fraud by persons claiming to live in Ghana who profess friendship or romantic interest over the Internet. Correspondents who quickly move to discussion of intimate matters could well be the inventions of scammers. If they are after your money, eventually they will ask for it.
Before you send any money to Ghana, please take the time to be very well informed. Start by considering the fact that scams are common enough to warrant this warning. Next, look over this partial list of indicators. If any of them sound familiar, you are likely the victim of an internet scam.
• You met a friend/fiancé online
• You've never met face to face
• Your correspondent professed love at warp speed
• Your friend/fiancé is plagued with medical problems requiring loans from you
• You are promised repayment upon the inheritance of alluvial gold or gems
• You've sent large sums for visas or plane tickets but the person cannot seem to make it out of Ghana
• When your friend does try to leave the country, h/she is detained by immigration officials demanding payment or bribes
• Your correspondent consistently uses lower case "i's" and/or grammar not in-keeping with their supposed life station or education level
Cases bearing these and other hallmarks have all proven to be scams intended to separate sympathetic people from their money. We advise Americans not to send money to people they have never actually met. In the event you do lose money ,be warned that your chances of getting it back are almost nil. This type of crime is not a priority for local police, even if they had the resources to tackle it. The Embassy can offer a sympathetic ear but, often, little else.”
But I didn’t meet them over the internet. I was already there in their country. Sooo, you are falling in love with me now? It seems so obvious as I write it, but to be in the thick of it, its just… odd and uncomfortable. Its like a movie. I just got frustrated. I’m like, “This cant really be happening.” For the random men I met who asked me to marry them, it was obvious what their motives were. But this was weird. I wanted to trust this man. At least as a friend. So odd.
I left on an early flight when I left Ghana so I needed a hotel room. In the documents he gave me, it stated that the fee I paid included a hotel stay. He said there was no more money, so I had to sleep on the floor, at his friends house. In the US, I would have demanded that I get that room because I paid for it. But, this is Ghana. I thought it was very possible that money was running low. So I didn’t say anything. But it was odd. I was later told that what he said was, and I quote “a bunch of bullshit.”
After I got home cooled down after finding so much stuff about the director I traveled to work for, I talked to a few people. “Its going to take you a while to process this. It takes me at least six months after I come back,” I was told. I didn’t understand why was I treated this way. From the cab drivers that I got in shouting matches with because they double the price before I got to my destination and I refused to pay any other amount than the one we agreed upon, to wanting to build a working friendship with someone that I really wanted to help and so treated poorly. I didn’t understand. I’m thinking. “What did I do to you? Except come to help?” And not on some paternalistic, I’m American I have all the answers type deal. But really reading asking questions and saying “tell me what you need me to do, and I will do my best to do it. Both here and in the US.”
When talking about this, a smart woman told me, “Poverty makes you do things. People are evil out of necessity.” I never have, and I pray to never fully feel what it means to be hungry. Staying two months in the most impoverished region in the country. Seeing a lady one day and she being dead only a few weeks later. Its serious. But what I didn’t fully understand, was the depth at which people will go to try to ensure some form of economic stability. But wouldn’t I do the same? What people will do to eat… I was told, “You have to show people that your money is not theirs and that takes a much longer time especially if they are hungry.” And I would add, or when they are trying to feed someone else. Too often I felt as if relationships were insincere. Like something wasn’t right, but I didn’t want to believe that. I said since undergrad that I wanted duel citizenship: US and Ghana. First, I found out that you have to denounce your US citizenship if you want that (but if you are Ghanaian you can have both…interesting) and another great quote “I will not be a second class citizen in a third world country.” And that’s EXACTLY what I felt like. People not being honest, not doing what they say they were going to do, and people ready to take advantage of you and I felt bad at first for thinking this. Ghanaian women are already discriminated against, so to be a forgien women makes it complicated. But after talking to both African Americans AND Africans I am, by no means, the only person who feels that way. And I purposefully said African Americans. The whole time I was there, I said black Americans knowing many Africans see a disconnect between blacks in the US, Caribbean and South American and themselves. Even though so many mimick stereotypical African American mannerism, jargon, and music. But my ancestors DID come from Africa. The Africans that went through the “Doors of No Returns” of over 400 dungeons that are just in Ghana (not counting the ones along the West coast of Africa) were NOT supposed to return. And here we are coming back and expecting a warm welcome? The Cape Coast Castle is not a castle at all. Its an dungeon, and was built to be so. Unlike Elmina. People need to know that.
A Ghanaian volunteer went to the dungeon. And she told me. “You know slavery was bad in the US but it didn’t compare to what we had to deal with here. My mother can tell stories.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was thinking, but didn't say. “Do you really know what you are saying?” First of all no one’s mother can get a personal account of slavery. It ended in the 19th century. What your mother remembers in colonization which is the same thing at the post reconstruction, black codes, Jim Crow, US. I told her that is NOT talking about Brazil who received the MOST west Africans to be sold as slaves and who slavery lasted the longest out of anyone’s. And that’s not mentioning what happened in the Caribbean. I thought You want stories? Do you really want to compare stories? And even if we did, what will that do? Africans were caned, Africans in the US were whipped. Africans were hung on plantations in the Congo just like blacks in Alabama. As African arms were being chopped off, Africans in the US were begin burned alive. I didn't say that, but thought it. I simply said, "Its a little more complicated than that." I tell my students, there are two types of ignorance. There is an ignorance that you don’t know. And then there is the ignorance that you don’t care to know. I dealt with an ignorance in Ghana that I didn’t expect. And for her (and others) to say it was such certainty. To not even question it. I asked her, “Have you read anything about slavery?” Her response, “I don’t have to read anything, I have what my mother seen her herself.” Again, I thought, that’s not slavery. And even still, you have NO idea what the rest of the dispersed Africans had to deal with in their respective places. Its so disheartening. I’m thinking “Really? You really believe that?”
Independent Ghana is a little over 50 years old. We should wonder what African American was doing 50 years after their “liberation” in 1863. By 1912 the Klu Klux Klan is formed (and there have been plenty of active members in the contemporary government). W.E.B. Du Bois writes Souls of Black Folks (who interestingly repatriated to Ghana and has house that stands in Accra as a museum). Brown vs. Board of Education, which determined separate but equal racially divided facilities. NAACP is formed. Numerous race riots in Illinois, Texas, and Georgia. And over 700 African Americans were lynched… I can tell you the stories of my great grandmother who was a sharecropper. My great grandfather who could never read or write. I can talk about hangings in my family but that is not the point! We are more alike than they think. I am where I am because MY ancestors have fought against European/Eurocentric powers for over 400 years. And have been fighting for equal rights since emancipation. Technically African Americans were officially Americans in the 1965 civil rights act. So, by law, have only been full citizens for 49 years. It was/is a long a hard fight. Compare stories? For almost 150 years WE have been fighting. You want to believe we have it easy? And even if you believe that we do (and if you read you will find out that everything the glitters ain’t gold in the US) then it came with a VERY expensive price tag. I got in to a discussion with a Ghanaian who thought he could tell me what to and what not to say. I told him “I wasn’t raised to sit back in a corner. I can say what I want to say.” The pervasive patriarchy is another challenge there. Women have different experiences. Don’t think you can talk to me any kind of way because you are a man. It’s not going to happen. I don’t work like that. Never will. Too many Africans really don’t understand the courage of African Americans especially African American women. It was left to women fight for our families. Whether it was seeing your children sold away never to be seen again, sons and husbands getting drafted in the World Wars to fight for a country that treated them as second class citizens, being lynched by mobs or being denied the right to vote whether its in the 1960s of the 2000 election, or how the rapists of African American rape victims get little to no punishment in comparison to white women who are raped. Black women everywhere are strong for a reason. Whether its Yaa Asantewa or Harriet Tubman. We have to know this we have to believe this.
What I am seeing is what colonialism has done to the spirit of too many Africans. It’s serious. Cheating and bribery is a common and accepted way of life. Exploitation is not uncommon. And it not just exploitation of foreigners but of other Ghanaians, other Africans. And its not that American don’t exploit people. But this. Its on another level. Landownership is a HUGE issue. Once I told people I was buying land, the warnings came in. And not just of double selling. But people protecting their land from people building on it and being murdered in the process. Murdered. Too many stories. People loosing 100s of thousands of dollars to help build and it being taken and squandered by locals. So many stories. It made me rethink my desire to build a school. I have already purchased part of the land…
I was told numerous times by different people, “Your purpose has to be bigger than them. You have to believe in the dream of Nkrumah even when Ghanaians don’t.” It’s a hard road to take. Trying to help people who you worry will take advantage of you only when you are trying to help. I was told, “You have to be like Harriet Tubman. She led the underground railroad with a bible and I gun. She carried the bible for those who needed God to help them through and a gun for the others. You have to do the same. You have to build that school.” If we don’t build bridges. If we all don’t attempt to be citizens of the world, Africa will continue to remain in neo-colonization and will remain a developing country. My ancestors left in chains and have to back with guns. Weapons of cleverness, awareness, a keen mind, and discernment. They don’t want you here but you have to be. We have to work together. If they only understood our oppressor are the same people. Those who control the means of production. The director I worked with could have kept it simple and we could have formed a great friendship and business partnership. But instead, he chose to create an enemy unnecessarily. I was angry because he lied and scammed for no reason. I was angry, perplexed, and just annoyed. I was told “Even the people that abuse you, you have to love… The goal to uplift people around the globe, around Africa, it has to happen.” It’s a hard pill to swallow. But its Christian principle. As a Christian I believe it, but it doesn’t make it easy.
Christianity in Ghana is another thing that I have not figured out yet, outside of the white Jesus’ everywhere and people believing traditional religion is the antithesis of Christianity. I was eating with a Ghanaian. I said a prayer before I ate. He said “Is that something you picked up here?” I thought it was an odd question. “No, I was raised to say my prayer before I eat.” He looked surprised. He said, “Christianity in Ghana is more based in poverty. People don’t have much and have fewer opportunities so they seek something outside of themselves. They seek God. So when I see an American, some one who isn’t poor praying, I know they are a real Christian.” I didn’t know what to say to that… One time when a taxi driver got loud with me to tell me I needed to add more money after we decided on a price I was so angry. I said, “Are you serious! All this Christianity around here with your I Love Jesus Tire Shops and everything, you all still want to cheat people! You are playing gospel music as we speak! You know we decided this before I got in the car. If you didn’t want to take the offer you should have left.” I just didn’t get it. But, if the Ghanaian I talked to is correct, the need for opportunities, needing to eat can supersedes morals. The spirit of Africa, the continent where life began, universities were established, where Christianity was BEFORE European missionaries came and spoon-fed/force-fed Africans a disjointed belief system is troubled. It’s more than troubled. It’s a word that I don’t think is even in the English language. The indigenous spirit of Africa has been reduced to a hustle. Whether its government officials asking money for developing their country and taking money from it, the police asking for a bribes, to the irate taxi driver who thought he could rattle me by yelling at me (who clearly didn’t know who he was dealing with) to the director telling me I couldn’t get the hotel room I paid for, its all a hustle. And we have to do better. We have to hold people accountable. A place where the bribery system is stronger than the legality system, what do you do? How do you manage? There is an accepted level of corruption in order to survive that permeates every class level. There is corruption everywhere on some level. People are dying over land, looking at the news with people’s arms being chopped off because they followed the “wrong” political party, people acting as if they are embracing you and then stab you in the back. I have experienced enough and heard of too many stories. Even of Ghanaians who don’t ever want to go back to Ghana. I would love to form a sincere relationship with a Ghanaian. Not romantic just a true friendship were no one is expecting or asking for anything. And I hope I have done so with my host family. Dear God I hope so. Because I feel like they are so motivated by my project. And I have helped them with a business opportunity. My host father feels so sincere to me that I want to believe him. For now I do. I hope that doesn’t change. They have been the most straight up people I have met. They told me the things they wanted my help with, I told them things I could do, and they are helping me. Just being honest and direct. I didn’t think that was too much to ask for.
As for the director, maybe he is corrupt by necessity. But karma is real. And I don’t think people have to wait for karma to come around to get them, too many people in countries where corruption in normal, just continue to hurt themselves. Severing bridges that didn’t need to be. I said I am in revolutionary hesitation mode. I have dream to build my arts-based political activist schools in the US, Brazil in Ghana. Each place has its own set of challenges. I’m just realizing it may be a little more difficult than I imagined. But it will happen. My goals are bigger than this. So I’m not mad anymore. The African American repatriate told me its not something to get used to, it something you have learn how to react to. Dont be so reactionary he said. I know I can be...
African Americans are not who you think we are. My pride runs deep. Who can go through coffles, slave dungeons, the middle passage, auction blocks, rapes, children sold, escapes to freedom, slave rebellions, eugenics, science experiments, wars and survive? My ancestors. African Americans. And maybe. Just maybe, if you ask, I can tell you a story or two.
Some sites to look at:
http://www.brandeis.edu/projects/fse/slavery/slav-us/slav-us-lit/slav-us-lit-hine.html
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/resources/wpa.html
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=8161&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://countrystudies.us/caribbean-islands/8.htm
http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/
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I was told that it’s going to take me a while to process my experiences in Ghana. So I’m sure more posts will be coming soon. I wasn’t a tourist this time. I was living with Ghanaians. Interacting with people. Working to establish relationships. I didn’t want to think of people get scammed, hurt, violated, and/or taken advantage of. I didn’t want to believe it happened EVERYDAY. I continued to be told, “You are entering into a VERY complex society.” I’m still processing. “Your work has to be bigger than how they treat you,” I was told. I’m still working through that. Being a tourist with my study abroad group last year, you are disconnected in a way. You are living with other Americans. Living in hotels. Eating hotel food etc. But I didn’t want that this time. As I said in my last post. I wasn’t expecting some romanticized idea of Africa. To be embraced as some long lost child. But I did expect to be treated, by most people, with dignity and respect. This may be my most personal post. My feelings were hurt. I was blessed to have some really great conversations with people that understood what I was feeling. Why I was confused. And they shared their stories. I have too many things to process, but I will discuss a few.
I went to Ghana this summer to work for an organization. I met the executive director last year. We hung out briefly in the US, so I went to Ghana believing he, of all people, would be my ally. I worked to raise over 900 books for his school. Even though I am a student and single mother, somehow many Ghanaians I talk to feel like I have so much money. But it took a lot of people to help. I was planning a fundraiser and was talking to people that I know that ship 4x4’s to Ghana to find out how his organization could get one because he was having trouble gaining access to rural communities. I came to help where ever I was needed. This guy then begins to tell me how in love with me he was. It felt odd, because we didn’t know each other THAT well, but I didn’t want to be rude because he might have been being honest. No one had ever said that to me before out of the blue. And there was nothing, nothing prior to that statement that implied that he was interested in me. I came to work for him, I walked into his home, the volunteer house, as I did almost everyday, and he grabbed my face to kiss me. I backed away, was surprised and didn’t know where it was coming from. After numerous times of telling him, maybe we should be friends, he continued to say, “Don’t think like that, I really want this to work.” It was so odd. He said that we should work out a plan where he is able to come to the US to see me, but I would need to help him with his ticket. That gave me great pause. To be worried about a ticket before you spend a great deal of time with me. I continued to feel like something wasn’t right. Then I get an email from someone saying how he is dating someone else, saying that I am bothering him, and he doesn’t want anything to do with me. Now, this would have been really hurtful if I had been comfortable with the situation and decided to be something with him. What was hurtful is that he lied. And when I confronted him about it he didn’t want to talk about it and said he never wanted to talk to me again. I was dumb founded. I was like, “Damn what just happened?” Why did he even attempt this? Why lay it on so thick unnecessarily? In my last post I talked about how last summer I had a ton of marriage proposals and requests to go to America from Ghanaians. But only ones from a low-income class, and I usually played it off as a joke. I went to Ghana, by myself, thinking this is the person that I know; this is the person I can trust. I was wrong. Its not fun being in a foreign country by yourself and not feeling as if you have any allies. (that's worth re-reading)
The executive director asked me, “What if I get you pregnant?” Whoa. I took a HUGE pause. This was odd. I felt like if I was in the US I could have handled this with ease. Knew exactly how to act. But I was thinking, “Is he serious?” I told him we really need to talk about this and get on the same page. I didn’t think I did anything misleading. I wanted us to talk and agree. We never really did. It was as if, he saw that I wasn't really going for the “I love you, I miss you stuff”, so he turned to someone else. Which again, is not the really issue. Its about people being opportunists and me not being able to trust while I was there. Of his friends that I met, one of them propositioned me to marry him for money. He said he was paying $7,000 for a 5-year visa (which sounds really odd and probably illegal) but, instead, would give me the money if I would marry him and went on to inform me that it is a “big business.” Again uncomfortable. And I new this because a Ghanaian woman that I know said that I could make a lot of money by marrying and divorcing Ghanaians so they can get their papers. I politely told her not thanks. I don’t play with the US government. The US government and black people do not have a good history (I was reminded when I watched a special on J. Edgar Hoover that I had been wanting to see). Three of the director’s friends have married Americans they met over the internet and they never met until they got married. And I know of others. I have heard I way too many stories of the men requesting a divorce, interestingly, after his papers go through. When I said that it appears that he and his friends were opportunists, they were offended. Then I said maybe I was wrong. I thought maybe I shouldn’t have said that. I felt kinda bad about it. Then I found out the guy that proposition me and asked that I take some romantic rendezvous with him to another city, has a girlfriend of eight years. I didn’t go, but the fact that he asked. This was after he told me that he doesn’t like Ghanaian women.
My friend put me on to this US embassy website http://ghana.usembassy.gov/romance_scam.html
“United States citizens should be alert to attempts at fraud by persons claiming to live in Ghana who profess friendship or romantic interest over the Internet. Correspondents who quickly move to discussion of intimate matters could well be the inventions of scammers. If they are after your money, eventually they will ask for it.
Before you send any money to Ghana, please take the time to be very well informed. Start by considering the fact that scams are common enough to warrant this warning. Next, look over this partial list of indicators. If any of them sound familiar, you are likely the victim of an internet scam.
• You met a friend/fiancé online
• You've never met face to face
• Your correspondent professed love at warp speed
• Your friend/fiancé is plagued with medical problems requiring loans from you
• You are promised repayment upon the inheritance of alluvial gold or gems
• You've sent large sums for visas or plane tickets but the person cannot seem to make it out of Ghana
• When your friend does try to leave the country, h/she is detained by immigration officials demanding payment or bribes
• Your correspondent consistently uses lower case "i's" and/or grammar not in-keeping with their supposed life station or education level
Cases bearing these and other hallmarks have all proven to be scams intended to separate sympathetic people from their money. We advise Americans not to send money to people they have never actually met. In the event you do lose money ,be warned that your chances of getting it back are almost nil. This type of crime is not a priority for local police, even if they had the resources to tackle it. The Embassy can offer a sympathetic ear but, often, little else.”
But I didn’t meet them over the internet. I was already there in their country. Sooo, you are falling in love with me now? It seems so obvious as I write it, but to be in the thick of it, its just… odd and uncomfortable. Its like a movie. I just got frustrated. I’m like, “This cant really be happening.” For the random men I met who asked me to marry them, it was obvious what their motives were. But this was weird. I wanted to trust this man. At least as a friend. So odd.
I left on an early flight when I left Ghana so I needed a hotel room. In the documents he gave me, it stated that the fee I paid included a hotel stay. He said there was no more money, so I had to sleep on the floor, at his friends house. In the US, I would have demanded that I get that room because I paid for it. But, this is Ghana. I thought it was very possible that money was running low. So I didn’t say anything. But it was odd. I was later told that what he said was, and I quote “a bunch of bullshit.”
After I got home cooled down after finding so much stuff about the director I traveled to work for, I talked to a few people. “Its going to take you a while to process this. It takes me at least six months after I come back,” I was told. I didn’t understand why was I treated this way. From the cab drivers that I got in shouting matches with because they double the price before I got to my destination and I refused to pay any other amount than the one we agreed upon, to wanting to build a working friendship with someone that I really wanted to help and so treated poorly. I didn’t understand. I’m thinking. “What did I do to you? Except come to help?” And not on some paternalistic, I’m American I have all the answers type deal. But really reading asking questions and saying “tell me what you need me to do, and I will do my best to do it. Both here and in the US.”
When talking about this, a smart woman told me, “Poverty makes you do things. People are evil out of necessity.” I never have, and I pray to never fully feel what it means to be hungry. Staying two months in the most impoverished region in the country. Seeing a lady one day and she being dead only a few weeks later. Its serious. But what I didn’t fully understand, was the depth at which people will go to try to ensure some form of economic stability. But wouldn’t I do the same? What people will do to eat… I was told, “You have to show people that your money is not theirs and that takes a much longer time especially if they are hungry.” And I would add, or when they are trying to feed someone else. Too often I felt as if relationships were insincere. Like something wasn’t right, but I didn’t want to believe that. I said since undergrad that I wanted duel citizenship: US and Ghana. First, I found out that you have to denounce your US citizenship if you want that (but if you are Ghanaian you can have both…interesting) and another great quote “I will not be a second class citizen in a third world country.” And that’s EXACTLY what I felt like. People not being honest, not doing what they say they were going to do, and people ready to take advantage of you and I felt bad at first for thinking this. Ghanaian women are already discriminated against, so to be a forgien women makes it complicated. But after talking to both African Americans AND Africans I am, by no means, the only person who feels that way. And I purposefully said African Americans. The whole time I was there, I said black Americans knowing many Africans see a disconnect between blacks in the US, Caribbean and South American and themselves. Even though so many mimick stereotypical African American mannerism, jargon, and music. But my ancestors DID come from Africa. The Africans that went through the “Doors of No Returns” of over 400 dungeons that are just in Ghana (not counting the ones along the West coast of Africa) were NOT supposed to return. And here we are coming back and expecting a warm welcome? The Cape Coast Castle is not a castle at all. Its an dungeon, and was built to be so. Unlike Elmina. People need to know that.
A Ghanaian volunteer went to the dungeon. And she told me. “You know slavery was bad in the US but it didn’t compare to what we had to deal with here. My mother can tell stories.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was thinking, but didn't say. “Do you really know what you are saying?” First of all no one’s mother can get a personal account of slavery. It ended in the 19th century. What your mother remembers in colonization which is the same thing at the post reconstruction, black codes, Jim Crow, US. I told her that is NOT talking about Brazil who received the MOST west Africans to be sold as slaves and who slavery lasted the longest out of anyone’s. And that’s not mentioning what happened in the Caribbean. I thought You want stories? Do you really want to compare stories? And even if we did, what will that do? Africans were caned, Africans in the US were whipped. Africans were hung on plantations in the Congo just like blacks in Alabama. As African arms were being chopped off, Africans in the US were begin burned alive. I didn't say that, but thought it. I simply said, "Its a little more complicated than that." I tell my students, there are two types of ignorance. There is an ignorance that you don’t know. And then there is the ignorance that you don’t care to know. I dealt with an ignorance in Ghana that I didn’t expect. And for her (and others) to say it was such certainty. To not even question it. I asked her, “Have you read anything about slavery?” Her response, “I don’t have to read anything, I have what my mother seen her herself.” Again, I thought, that’s not slavery. And even still, you have NO idea what the rest of the dispersed Africans had to deal with in their respective places. Its so disheartening. I’m thinking “Really? You really believe that?”
Independent Ghana is a little over 50 years old. We should wonder what African American was doing 50 years after their “liberation” in 1863. By 1912 the Klu Klux Klan is formed (and there have been plenty of active members in the contemporary government). W.E.B. Du Bois writes Souls of Black Folks (who interestingly repatriated to Ghana and has house that stands in Accra as a museum). Brown vs. Board of Education, which determined separate but equal racially divided facilities. NAACP is formed. Numerous race riots in Illinois, Texas, and Georgia. And over 700 African Americans were lynched… I can tell you the stories of my great grandmother who was a sharecropper. My great grandfather who could never read or write. I can talk about hangings in my family but that is not the point! We are more alike than they think. I am where I am because MY ancestors have fought against European/Eurocentric powers for over 400 years. And have been fighting for equal rights since emancipation. Technically African Americans were officially Americans in the 1965 civil rights act. So, by law, have only been full citizens for 49 years. It was/is a long a hard fight. Compare stories? For almost 150 years WE have been fighting. You want to believe we have it easy? And even if you believe that we do (and if you read you will find out that everything the glitters ain’t gold in the US) then it came with a VERY expensive price tag. I got in to a discussion with a Ghanaian who thought he could tell me what to and what not to say. I told him “I wasn’t raised to sit back in a corner. I can say what I want to say.” The pervasive patriarchy is another challenge there. Women have different experiences. Don’t think you can talk to me any kind of way because you are a man. It’s not going to happen. I don’t work like that. Never will. Too many Africans really don’t understand the courage of African Americans especially African American women. It was left to women fight for our families. Whether it was seeing your children sold away never to be seen again, sons and husbands getting drafted in the World Wars to fight for a country that treated them as second class citizens, being lynched by mobs or being denied the right to vote whether its in the 1960s of the 2000 election, or how the rapists of African American rape victims get little to no punishment in comparison to white women who are raped. Black women everywhere are strong for a reason. Whether its Yaa Asantewa or Harriet Tubman. We have to know this we have to believe this.
What I am seeing is what colonialism has done to the spirit of too many Africans. It’s serious. Cheating and bribery is a common and accepted way of life. Exploitation is not uncommon. And it not just exploitation of foreigners but of other Ghanaians, other Africans. And its not that American don’t exploit people. But this. Its on another level. Landownership is a HUGE issue. Once I told people I was buying land, the warnings came in. And not just of double selling. But people protecting their land from people building on it and being murdered in the process. Murdered. Too many stories. People loosing 100s of thousands of dollars to help build and it being taken and squandered by locals. So many stories. It made me rethink my desire to build a school. I have already purchased part of the land…
I was told numerous times by different people, “Your purpose has to be bigger than them. You have to believe in the dream of Nkrumah even when Ghanaians don’t.” It’s a hard road to take. Trying to help people who you worry will take advantage of you only when you are trying to help. I was told, “You have to be like Harriet Tubman. She led the underground railroad with a bible and I gun. She carried the bible for those who needed God to help them through and a gun for the others. You have to do the same. You have to build that school.” If we don’t build bridges. If we all don’t attempt to be citizens of the world, Africa will continue to remain in neo-colonization and will remain a developing country. My ancestors left in chains and have to back with guns. Weapons of cleverness, awareness, a keen mind, and discernment. They don’t want you here but you have to be. We have to work together. If they only understood our oppressor are the same people. Those who control the means of production. The director I worked with could have kept it simple and we could have formed a great friendship and business partnership. But instead, he chose to create an enemy unnecessarily. I was angry because he lied and scammed for no reason. I was angry, perplexed, and just annoyed. I was told “Even the people that abuse you, you have to love… The goal to uplift people around the globe, around Africa, it has to happen.” It’s a hard pill to swallow. But its Christian principle. As a Christian I believe it, but it doesn’t make it easy.
Christianity in Ghana is another thing that I have not figured out yet, outside of the white Jesus’ everywhere and people believing traditional religion is the antithesis of Christianity. I was eating with a Ghanaian. I said a prayer before I ate. He said “Is that something you picked up here?” I thought it was an odd question. “No, I was raised to say my prayer before I eat.” He looked surprised. He said, “Christianity in Ghana is more based in poverty. People don’t have much and have fewer opportunities so they seek something outside of themselves. They seek God. So when I see an American, some one who isn’t poor praying, I know they are a real Christian.” I didn’t know what to say to that… One time when a taxi driver got loud with me to tell me I needed to add more money after we decided on a price I was so angry. I said, “Are you serious! All this Christianity around here with your I Love Jesus Tire Shops and everything, you all still want to cheat people! You are playing gospel music as we speak! You know we decided this before I got in the car. If you didn’t want to take the offer you should have left.” I just didn’t get it. But, if the Ghanaian I talked to is correct, the need for opportunities, needing to eat can supersedes morals. The spirit of Africa, the continent where life began, universities were established, where Christianity was BEFORE European missionaries came and spoon-fed/force-fed Africans a disjointed belief system is troubled. It’s more than troubled. It’s a word that I don’t think is even in the English language. The indigenous spirit of Africa has been reduced to a hustle. Whether its government officials asking money for developing their country and taking money from it, the police asking for a bribes, to the irate taxi driver who thought he could rattle me by yelling at me (who clearly didn’t know who he was dealing with) to the director telling me I couldn’t get the hotel room I paid for, its all a hustle. And we have to do better. We have to hold people accountable. A place where the bribery system is stronger than the legality system, what do you do? How do you manage? There is an accepted level of corruption in order to survive that permeates every class level. There is corruption everywhere on some level. People are dying over land, looking at the news with people’s arms being chopped off because they followed the “wrong” political party, people acting as if they are embracing you and then stab you in the back. I have experienced enough and heard of too many stories. Even of Ghanaians who don’t ever want to go back to Ghana. I would love to form a sincere relationship with a Ghanaian. Not romantic just a true friendship were no one is expecting or asking for anything. And I hope I have done so with my host family. Dear God I hope so. Because I feel like they are so motivated by my project. And I have helped them with a business opportunity. My host father feels so sincere to me that I want to believe him. For now I do. I hope that doesn’t change. They have been the most straight up people I have met. They told me the things they wanted my help with, I told them things I could do, and they are helping me. Just being honest and direct. I didn’t think that was too much to ask for.
As for the director, maybe he is corrupt by necessity. But karma is real. And I don’t think people have to wait for karma to come around to get them, too many people in countries where corruption in normal, just continue to hurt themselves. Severing bridges that didn’t need to be. I said I am in revolutionary hesitation mode. I have dream to build my arts-based political activist schools in the US, Brazil in Ghana. Each place has its own set of challenges. I’m just realizing it may be a little more difficult than I imagined. But it will happen. My goals are bigger than this. So I’m not mad anymore. The African American repatriate told me its not something to get used to, it something you have learn how to react to. Dont be so reactionary he said. I know I can be...
African Americans are not who you think we are. My pride runs deep. Who can go through coffles, slave dungeons, the middle passage, auction blocks, rapes, children sold, escapes to freedom, slave rebellions, eugenics, science experiments, wars and survive? My ancestors. African Americans. And maybe. Just maybe, if you ask, I can tell you a story or two.
Some sites to look at:
http://www.brandeis.edu/projects/fse/slavery/slav-us/slav-us-lit/slav-us-lit-hine.html
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/resources/wpa.html
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=8161&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://countrystudies.us/caribbean-islands/8.htm
http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/
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Thursday, August 20, 2009
Day 37
August 20th
I pounded fufu today. Fufu is a staple carbohydrate in Ghana made from cassava (which is kind of like large oblong potatoes) and unripened plantains. I can’t eat too much of it. The diet here is heavily based in carbs, and it feels so heavy in my stomach. Good but whew, I need a salad, lol. After we cut the cassava and plantains, and boiled them we went to pound the items. My host family doesn’t have the tools to pound it so we had to walk to another neighborhood to pound it. First one woman came and said, “Aye! The oburoni is pounding fufu!” I got a small crowd of woman and children. The women kept telling the children to leave. But they didn’t. Just moved to a safe distance. They asked me how I was doing in Fante, I responded and asked the same in Twi. They were all surprise and laughed. It didn’t take as long as I thought. I have a war wound. A blister. And I need a nap, lol.
SIDE NOTE Random funny conversations:
1) Pastor’s wife, pastor, the house helps, and friends are in the living room. I enter and sit down. Everyone is laughing about something.
Pastor’s wife says to one of the house helps, “Aww fuck you!”
My eyes get really big. “Wow.”
Pastor laughing,“What? We heard it on the American movie.”
Me chuckling, “Oh. Well… in the US people would be very surprised to hear a pastor or a pastor’s wife say that word.”
Pastor’s wife, “Oh we don’t know what it means.” She walks over to me laughing, “Tell me what it means in my ear.”
Me, lost for words on how to define the “f” word. “I don’t know. Its like saying ‘your mother’ or something it’s a curse or something.”
Pastor’s wife no longer whispering, “So what should I say? ‘No fuck you.’ ‘Please no fuck you.’ ‘Don’t fuck you.’ ‘Don’t be a fuck.”
Me, feeling something weird between behind slightly offended and wanting to laugh “No, it’s the word it’s not how you say it.”
Pastor’s wife, “So, no fuck you?”
Me, “No, it’s the word, it not…ok.” LOL.
2) Me to one of the house helps, “Would you like some juice?”
House help, “Ohhhh noooo.” Shaking her head.
Me, “Oh, you don’t like juice?”
House help, “Yes.”
Me, “So you do like juice?”
“No.”
“Ok you don’t like juice.”
“Yes.”
“So…ok” LOL.
I pounded fufu today. Fufu is a staple carbohydrate in Ghana made from cassava (which is kind of like large oblong potatoes) and unripened plantains. I can’t eat too much of it. The diet here is heavily based in carbs, and it feels so heavy in my stomach. Good but whew, I need a salad, lol. After we cut the cassava and plantains, and boiled them we went to pound the items. My host family doesn’t have the tools to pound it so we had to walk to another neighborhood to pound it. First one woman came and said, “Aye! The oburoni is pounding fufu!” I got a small crowd of woman and children. The women kept telling the children to leave. But they didn’t. Just moved to a safe distance. They asked me how I was doing in Fante, I responded and asked the same in Twi. They were all surprise and laughed. It didn’t take as long as I thought. I have a war wound. A blister. And I need a nap, lol.
SIDE NOTE Random funny conversations:
1) Pastor’s wife, pastor, the house helps, and friends are in the living room. I enter and sit down. Everyone is laughing about something.
Pastor’s wife says to one of the house helps, “Aww fuck you!”
My eyes get really big. “Wow.”
Pastor laughing,“What? We heard it on the American movie.”
Me chuckling, “Oh. Well… in the US people would be very surprised to hear a pastor or a pastor’s wife say that word.”
Pastor’s wife, “Oh we don’t know what it means.” She walks over to me laughing, “Tell me what it means in my ear.”
Me, lost for words on how to define the “f” word. “I don’t know. Its like saying ‘your mother’ or something it’s a curse or something.”
Pastor’s wife no longer whispering, “So what should I say? ‘No fuck you.’ ‘Please no fuck you.’ ‘Don’t fuck you.’ ‘Don’t be a fuck.”
Me, feeling something weird between behind slightly offended and wanting to laugh “No, it’s the word it’s not how you say it.”
Pastor’s wife, “So, no fuck you?”
Me, “No, it’s the word, it not…ok.” LOL.
2) Me to one of the house helps, “Would you like some juice?”
House help, “Ohhhh noooo.” Shaking her head.
Me, “Oh, you don’t like juice?”
House help, “Yes.”
Me, “So you do like juice?”
“No.”
“Ok you don’t like juice.”
“Yes.”
“So…ok” LOL.
Day 36
August 19, 2009
Some more volunteers from the U.S. came on Tuesday. We all went to town to go to the market and the girls wanted to go to the Cape Coast slave dungeon which, oddly, people call “the castle.” I went there last summer. We walked inside and there is a little courtyard where people are selling items. My chest hurt. My heart started beating fast. I couldn’t walk inside the courtyard. Something happened in that place. I got that same heaviness in my chest. This feel was compounded by the fact that Ghanaians were selling items in building that was build to sell Ghanaians. In a dungeon, build, specifically, to tourcher, rape, and sell black bodies, the volunteers wanted to take a happy group picture. My chest still hurt. I didn’t join them. It like I wanted to say, “Don’t you know where you are? How can you be happy in this place?” It was weird and uncomfortable. We ended up leaving because the charge was too high. Even paying to enter into a place where people sold is just... so discomforting. We walked outside and there were vendors right outside the dungeon. They walked up to us, wanting to talk, sell things. The volunteers went over to buy things. I couldn’t stand there. I passed the vendors and walked towards the ocean. I felt this odd mixture of being solemnly stiff. Not sure how else to explain it. One of the Ghanaian volunteers asked what was wrong. I said, “This place makes me feel uncomfortable.”
“Why?” she said.
“Because it’s a dungeon.”
I felt like, maybe being the only black American in the group that what I was feeling wouldn’t make any sense to them. And who knows if I said something, it might be misinterpreted as some attack on Ghanaians, when it wouldn’t be, and I wasn’t in the mood for all of that.
I went to sit down to wait for the other volunteers a little ways down, away from the dungeon. One other volunteer and I started walking past the castle to wait for the others. As I walked by the right side of the castle to the left, my heart got heavy again. Something happened in the particular space. It the same area were the shops were located inside. I don’t know what.
I went to check what I wrote last year when I first entered the dungeon. Its interesting that I wrote this before reading “Ain’t I a Woman” by Deborah Gray White who discusses the various ways African women who were enslaved in the US, resisted slavery (in some ways through their children). Here is what I wrote:
Day 10: June 22nd 2008
The minute I looked at Cape Coast Castle two things happened simultaneously: Weight and noise. I felt the same heaviness I felt at Elmina. Like someone. Some people sat on me. Not on my external body but on my insides. Like a cannonball was placed inside of my rib cage. And there was a noise. Not audible though, but I heard it. It was like when you watch a scary movie and the camera turns to something that is suppose to incite fear in the viewer and there is a loud “boom” to accompany the jolt your body is suppose to perform. I watched the castle as we traveled the road towards it. It feels so weird that it is right in the middle of the city. When I stepped in the castle the heaviness got heavier. Not unbearable but noticeable. I got used to it. Somebody was trying to get my attention. Make me pay attention.
Cape Coast Castle felt more like a dungeon. It was made to be a slave dungeon where Elmina wasn’t. The men’s dungeon was so scary. Huge. Six or more of my apartments could fit in there. Dark. Even in the middle of the day with the couple of light bulbs in the dungeon it felt like night. The Cape Coast builders felt the need to make the space more accommodating but creating corners in the rooms so that the body fluids had a designated area. For the fluids that didn’t get in the corners areas for when they over-flooded the builders created a crevasse in the floor so that the fluids would flow down through the rooms and collect at the room at the end of the slight slope. I asked where the fluids went after it went into the room because there wasn’t a hole or opening that went outside. Apparently the fluids traveled through the now closed off tunnel that led to the women’s dungeon. That means the women had their own fecal matter, urine, blood, and vomit to sleep in as well as the men’s. The tour guide really looked over the living conditions. He didn’t really try to paint a picture for us. I didn’t care for him too much.
The women’s dungeon was significantly smaller. They had a little more ventilation but it was still very dark. Were the children scared? Yes, but did they eventually lose their fear of the dark with such limited chances to be in the day light? How did the lack of sunlight affect the captives? Black people must get their vitamin D from the sun. How did that affect living conditions? Lack of sunlight also means lack of serotonin. Serotonin combats depression. How many slaves committed suicide in the dark? How many died and others didn’t know because they could see? I know more slaves die in the coffles and in the dungeons than during the middle passage, but did less die in the coffles and more in the dungeons because of the mental effects of being held captive? How many babies were born here? How many women killed their babies in here? Did they hold the babies until a solider grabbed it from them and threw it in the ocean? How did she feel afterwards? Happy that the child wouldn’t have her same fate? Sad because the child that she was once happy to carry now meant something else? What did she say to herself?
They won’t make any money off of my son! The only way I can prevent my child from dying a mental death I must send him home, to ancestors, to Nyame. Nyame knows I have to do this. He has to know.
Did the other women try to convince her not to? Did they watch, turn their heads? Pray? Help? Was it easier because it was dark? Couldn’t watch your son die as you convince yourself it is in his best interest. Did she regret it after she had to hold his lifeless body for days?
I became emotional at the door of no return. The doors were huge. Not small like the one at Elmina. With the female dungeon to my right I could imagine standing there in a line with other women awaiting our fate. Wondering where our husbands, father, uncles, and nephews were.
We can’t see them enter or exit the death chamber because it was too far away from the female dungeon. Could only hear screams of those going in. They all began to sound the same. Didn’t know who they were. After some days, we could hear the door open again. Silence this time. Bodies being removed. Maybe, if I listened closely I could hear bodies being thrown into the ocean, but the crying children, mourning women, and the sounds of my own thoughts and fears drowned out most of those sounds. Sounds I didn’t want to hear anyway.
The tour guide began to open the “door of no return” where the captives would be led onto a slave ship. I started to breathe heavy. Needing to cry but not wanting to. Holding it in. Heaviness still there.
He opened the door.
I was snapped back into the present. I saw little children playing on the beach and people fishing. Anti-climatically. Not sure what I expected since I knew this was going to happen. Caught up in the moment. In the heaviness. Or whoever put the heaviness there.
Some more volunteers from the U.S. came on Tuesday. We all went to town to go to the market and the girls wanted to go to the Cape Coast slave dungeon which, oddly, people call “the castle.” I went there last summer. We walked inside and there is a little courtyard where people are selling items. My chest hurt. My heart started beating fast. I couldn’t walk inside the courtyard. Something happened in that place. I got that same heaviness in my chest. This feel was compounded by the fact that Ghanaians were selling items in building that was build to sell Ghanaians. In a dungeon, build, specifically, to tourcher, rape, and sell black bodies, the volunteers wanted to take a happy group picture. My chest still hurt. I didn’t join them. It like I wanted to say, “Don’t you know where you are? How can you be happy in this place?” It was weird and uncomfortable. We ended up leaving because the charge was too high. Even paying to enter into a place where people sold is just... so discomforting. We walked outside and there were vendors right outside the dungeon. They walked up to us, wanting to talk, sell things. The volunteers went over to buy things. I couldn’t stand there. I passed the vendors and walked towards the ocean. I felt this odd mixture of being solemnly stiff. Not sure how else to explain it. One of the Ghanaian volunteers asked what was wrong. I said, “This place makes me feel uncomfortable.”
“Why?” she said.
“Because it’s a dungeon.”
I felt like, maybe being the only black American in the group that what I was feeling wouldn’t make any sense to them. And who knows if I said something, it might be misinterpreted as some attack on Ghanaians, when it wouldn’t be, and I wasn’t in the mood for all of that.
I went to sit down to wait for the other volunteers a little ways down, away from the dungeon. One other volunteer and I started walking past the castle to wait for the others. As I walked by the right side of the castle to the left, my heart got heavy again. Something happened in the particular space. It the same area were the shops were located inside. I don’t know what.
I went to check what I wrote last year when I first entered the dungeon. Its interesting that I wrote this before reading “Ain’t I a Woman” by Deborah Gray White who discusses the various ways African women who were enslaved in the US, resisted slavery (in some ways through their children). Here is what I wrote:
Day 10: June 22nd 2008
The minute I looked at Cape Coast Castle two things happened simultaneously: Weight and noise. I felt the same heaviness I felt at Elmina. Like someone. Some people sat on me. Not on my external body but on my insides. Like a cannonball was placed inside of my rib cage. And there was a noise. Not audible though, but I heard it. It was like when you watch a scary movie and the camera turns to something that is suppose to incite fear in the viewer and there is a loud “boom” to accompany the jolt your body is suppose to perform. I watched the castle as we traveled the road towards it. It feels so weird that it is right in the middle of the city. When I stepped in the castle the heaviness got heavier. Not unbearable but noticeable. I got used to it. Somebody was trying to get my attention. Make me pay attention.
Cape Coast Castle felt more like a dungeon. It was made to be a slave dungeon where Elmina wasn’t. The men’s dungeon was so scary. Huge. Six or more of my apartments could fit in there. Dark. Even in the middle of the day with the couple of light bulbs in the dungeon it felt like night. The Cape Coast builders felt the need to make the space more accommodating but creating corners in the rooms so that the body fluids had a designated area. For the fluids that didn’t get in the corners areas for when they over-flooded the builders created a crevasse in the floor so that the fluids would flow down through the rooms and collect at the room at the end of the slight slope. I asked where the fluids went after it went into the room because there wasn’t a hole or opening that went outside. Apparently the fluids traveled through the now closed off tunnel that led to the women’s dungeon. That means the women had their own fecal matter, urine, blood, and vomit to sleep in as well as the men’s. The tour guide really looked over the living conditions. He didn’t really try to paint a picture for us. I didn’t care for him too much.
The women’s dungeon was significantly smaller. They had a little more ventilation but it was still very dark. Were the children scared? Yes, but did they eventually lose their fear of the dark with such limited chances to be in the day light? How did the lack of sunlight affect the captives? Black people must get their vitamin D from the sun. How did that affect living conditions? Lack of sunlight also means lack of serotonin. Serotonin combats depression. How many slaves committed suicide in the dark? How many died and others didn’t know because they could see? I know more slaves die in the coffles and in the dungeons than during the middle passage, but did less die in the coffles and more in the dungeons because of the mental effects of being held captive? How many babies were born here? How many women killed their babies in here? Did they hold the babies until a solider grabbed it from them and threw it in the ocean? How did she feel afterwards? Happy that the child wouldn’t have her same fate? Sad because the child that she was once happy to carry now meant something else? What did she say to herself?
They won’t make any money off of my son! The only way I can prevent my child from dying a mental death I must send him home, to ancestors, to Nyame. Nyame knows I have to do this. He has to know.
Did the other women try to convince her not to? Did they watch, turn their heads? Pray? Help? Was it easier because it was dark? Couldn’t watch your son die as you convince yourself it is in his best interest. Did she regret it after she had to hold his lifeless body for days?
I became emotional at the door of no return. The doors were huge. Not small like the one at Elmina. With the female dungeon to my right I could imagine standing there in a line with other women awaiting our fate. Wondering where our husbands, father, uncles, and nephews were.
We can’t see them enter or exit the death chamber because it was too far away from the female dungeon. Could only hear screams of those going in. They all began to sound the same. Didn’t know who they were. After some days, we could hear the door open again. Silence this time. Bodies being removed. Maybe, if I listened closely I could hear bodies being thrown into the ocean, but the crying children, mourning women, and the sounds of my own thoughts and fears drowned out most of those sounds. Sounds I didn’t want to hear anyway.
The tour guide began to open the “door of no return” where the captives would be led onto a slave ship. I started to breathe heavy. Needing to cry but not wanting to. Holding it in. Heaviness still there.
He opened the door.
I was snapped back into the present. I saw little children playing on the beach and people fishing. Anti-climatically. Not sure what I expected since I knew this was going to happen. Caught up in the moment. In the heaviness. Or whoever put the heaviness there.
Day 35
August 18, 2009
So many great and interesting responses to my facebook note. So many things to say…
Maybe I should begin with this. I am not having a bad time in Ghana LOL. I’m actually having a great time contrary to some beliefs. I have a couple of blogs and I have kept a journal since I was in the 2nd grade. Writing for me is cathartic and I usually only write when something is bothering me, I have some interesting thoughts that I don’t want to lose, or I need to think through something that I find complex. Usually good things or things that make me happy aren’t complex, aren’t intellectually stimulating, and don’t take much energy to think through. All my thoughts don’t get to make it to the computer or paper. Most things I simply contemplate them and they stay in the back (or front) of my mind. I can talk about how the house-helps and I at my host family’s house talk to each other like we are in the over dramatic soap opera-like African movies. How I have taught virtually every kid in the neighborhood I live in my name and its soo cute to hear them scream it at the top of their lungs when they see me. I can talk about how the kids in the orphanage learned some new English words and how to construct some new sentences because of a matching game them inspired me to create. Or how random locals quiz me on my Fante or how my host mother insists on talking to me in Twi so I can remember and the family listens to me pronounce the words incorrectly just so we can all laugh. I can talk about how the other volunteers and I went out to a quiet bar, requested dancehall and hip life and turned it into a club (and by accident turned a funeral into a club but the attendees didn’t seem to mind, lol.) Or how I wish I can take all of Ghana’s pineapples home with me that I love so much and eat every day. On the contrary, I could mention other no so great incidences that I just didn’t feel like writing about: issues with getting my phone fixed, sporadic phone network, food preparation, and power outages. But none of these are not that big of a deal. Not complex and don’t require much thought or contemplation. Sooo many things to write about, but my journals aren’t usually meant for those things. I would need to make special effort to remember to write about all the little anecdotes. Some do stick out in my mind but not all. The ones that do, I write about. But the question is, “Am I writing for me or for other people’s desires?” Or, even if I write about the funny things will I then get criticism about how the funny stories should outweigh the not so funny ones? Or will people get offended by what I thought was funny and what wasn’t? What I can’t promise is that everyone will always love what I write and that is each person’s prerogative. What I am always willing to do is listen. I am always interested in people’s thoughts and perspective. Everyone has something to learn from anyone. As a smart person once said, “nobody is a nobody.”
The one thing I would tell (and have cautioned) any black American or any black person in the Diaspora is be careful not to romanticize Africa. Don’t come here excepting to go back in time and experience some firsthand account of indigenous people who you see as some displaced ancestors you never met. You wouldn’t go to China, expecting the nation to stuck in time. Europe, the Caribbean, Australia or any other place. Come to listen, watch and learn. Not only learn from other people, but learn more about yourself. I thought I came to Ghana with absolutely no romanticization at all. But I was mistaken. I came to listen watch and learn but, unconsciously, came in the name of panafricanism and unknowingly, secretly assuming people would interact with me with the same interest. Assuming that bridges could be made and understanding from both sides could happen. Sigh, in this instance, I was sadly mistaken. There feelings, and interactions that I want to get off my chest. Especially when there is such an obvious interest in what is assumed to be the black American life style. But when some of my experiences are explained, whether verbally or written the miscommunication is still present. Even when it is clear and in print, my thoughts are still seen as if there is an attack on them. On Ghanaians. I’ve decided that for some people it’s a lost cause and a waste of energy. But what is still sooo interesting is that I can’t talk about my experience because they find what I say offensive, but they can judge and stereotype black Americans all day long and except me to be ok with it? Interesting. I had a long discussion with a Ghanaian who took offensive at what I wrote, but in the same conversation proceeded to talk about how black Americans are all about hip hop, sports and don’t care about school because of “the system” etc etc. As my grandma would say, “look at the pot calling the kettle black.” In my writing I talked about very specific incidences at specific times and even gave approximate percentages yet the Ghanaian openly generalized my people. I said, “you are doing exactly what you accused me of doing and I wasn’t even doing that.” They put words in my mouth and ASSUMED that I was talking about all Ghanaians and I wasn’t. How could I when I gave SPECIFIC examples about incidences that directly contradicted the bad ones? But, interestingly, those went unnoticed. Just like the example of my interaction with the South African consulate in the US. No questions about that. They didn’t address their bias and beliefs of black American stereotypes. Interesting. I am HERE in YOUR country, learning, asking, listening, reading, watching the news, pay attention, all to LEARN about where YOU come from, yet you come to me with stereotypes based on scant evidence that you have applied to an entire nation of people?! Yes, Americans do it all the time. PEOPLE, do it all the time. But we are supposed to be better than that. We are in the business of helping people. We are suppose to be more informed, more willing to understand, educate and be educated instead of erecting mental road blocks that hinder in trans-Atlantic, multicultural, even global progress. Someone said, on my facebook page, we have a lot of work to do. It makes me wonder who is the “us” that needs to do the work if some refuse to listen, read, and understand? Of all places, Ghana, where leaders and advocates of panafricanism resided (Nkrumah, Du Bois and others black American intellectual expatriates), some Ghanaians are still only worried about how they are perceived and choose not to concern themselves with others.
I think that was my romantization. I wonder if panafricanism is merely a dream for blacks in the diaspora. We shall see.
So many great and interesting responses to my facebook note. So many things to say…
Maybe I should begin with this. I am not having a bad time in Ghana LOL. I’m actually having a great time contrary to some beliefs. I have a couple of blogs and I have kept a journal since I was in the 2nd grade. Writing for me is cathartic and I usually only write when something is bothering me, I have some interesting thoughts that I don’t want to lose, or I need to think through something that I find complex. Usually good things or things that make me happy aren’t complex, aren’t intellectually stimulating, and don’t take much energy to think through. All my thoughts don’t get to make it to the computer or paper. Most things I simply contemplate them and they stay in the back (or front) of my mind. I can talk about how the house-helps and I at my host family’s house talk to each other like we are in the over dramatic soap opera-like African movies. How I have taught virtually every kid in the neighborhood I live in my name and its soo cute to hear them scream it at the top of their lungs when they see me. I can talk about how the kids in the orphanage learned some new English words and how to construct some new sentences because of a matching game them inspired me to create. Or how random locals quiz me on my Fante or how my host mother insists on talking to me in Twi so I can remember and the family listens to me pronounce the words incorrectly just so we can all laugh. I can talk about how the other volunteers and I went out to a quiet bar, requested dancehall and hip life and turned it into a club (and by accident turned a funeral into a club but the attendees didn’t seem to mind, lol.) Or how I wish I can take all of Ghana’s pineapples home with me that I love so much and eat every day. On the contrary, I could mention other no so great incidences that I just didn’t feel like writing about: issues with getting my phone fixed, sporadic phone network, food preparation, and power outages. But none of these are not that big of a deal. Not complex and don’t require much thought or contemplation. Sooo many things to write about, but my journals aren’t usually meant for those things. I would need to make special effort to remember to write about all the little anecdotes. Some do stick out in my mind but not all. The ones that do, I write about. But the question is, “Am I writing for me or for other people’s desires?” Or, even if I write about the funny things will I then get criticism about how the funny stories should outweigh the not so funny ones? Or will people get offended by what I thought was funny and what wasn’t? What I can’t promise is that everyone will always love what I write and that is each person’s prerogative. What I am always willing to do is listen. I am always interested in people’s thoughts and perspective. Everyone has something to learn from anyone. As a smart person once said, “nobody is a nobody.”
The one thing I would tell (and have cautioned) any black American or any black person in the Diaspora is be careful not to romanticize Africa. Don’t come here excepting to go back in time and experience some firsthand account of indigenous people who you see as some displaced ancestors you never met. You wouldn’t go to China, expecting the nation to stuck in time. Europe, the Caribbean, Australia or any other place. Come to listen, watch and learn. Not only learn from other people, but learn more about yourself. I thought I came to Ghana with absolutely no romanticization at all. But I was mistaken. I came to listen watch and learn but, unconsciously, came in the name of panafricanism and unknowingly, secretly assuming people would interact with me with the same interest. Assuming that bridges could be made and understanding from both sides could happen. Sigh, in this instance, I was sadly mistaken. There feelings, and interactions that I want to get off my chest. Especially when there is such an obvious interest in what is assumed to be the black American life style. But when some of my experiences are explained, whether verbally or written the miscommunication is still present. Even when it is clear and in print, my thoughts are still seen as if there is an attack on them. On Ghanaians. I’ve decided that for some people it’s a lost cause and a waste of energy. But what is still sooo interesting is that I can’t talk about my experience because they find what I say offensive, but they can judge and stereotype black Americans all day long and except me to be ok with it? Interesting. I had a long discussion with a Ghanaian who took offensive at what I wrote, but in the same conversation proceeded to talk about how black Americans are all about hip hop, sports and don’t care about school because of “the system” etc etc. As my grandma would say, “look at the pot calling the kettle black.” In my writing I talked about very specific incidences at specific times and even gave approximate percentages yet the Ghanaian openly generalized my people. I said, “you are doing exactly what you accused me of doing and I wasn’t even doing that.” They put words in my mouth and ASSUMED that I was talking about all Ghanaians and I wasn’t. How could I when I gave SPECIFIC examples about incidences that directly contradicted the bad ones? But, interestingly, those went unnoticed. Just like the example of my interaction with the South African consulate in the US. No questions about that. They didn’t address their bias and beliefs of black American stereotypes. Interesting. I am HERE in YOUR country, learning, asking, listening, reading, watching the news, pay attention, all to LEARN about where YOU come from, yet you come to me with stereotypes based on scant evidence that you have applied to an entire nation of people?! Yes, Americans do it all the time. PEOPLE, do it all the time. But we are supposed to be better than that. We are in the business of helping people. We are suppose to be more informed, more willing to understand, educate and be educated instead of erecting mental road blocks that hinder in trans-Atlantic, multicultural, even global progress. Someone said, on my facebook page, we have a lot of work to do. It makes me wonder who is the “us” that needs to do the work if some refuse to listen, read, and understand? Of all places, Ghana, where leaders and advocates of panafricanism resided (Nkrumah, Du Bois and others black American intellectual expatriates), some Ghanaians are still only worried about how they are perceived and choose not to concern themselves with others.
I think that was my romantization. I wonder if panafricanism is merely a dream for blacks in the diaspora. We shall see.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Day 33
A friend of mine (a black American who travels to Ghana frequently) wrote this to me:
“You know you are really in the TRUE Ghana now. It took time for me to realize the depth of disconnect between our cultures. And the absolutely fascinating means and measures some will go to ‘engage’ and endear themselves to you for their eventual ‘unfair’ gain. You are in a very complex society. We are much simpler in our traditions and social rules. One point, Ghanaians are for Ghanaians. And many are traditionally truly down for their ‘tribe’. You are not a part of that family. You are to be used for gain. That does not mean your work and purpose should cease. Like we say here… don’t hate the player hate the game, and that game over there is soul draining. So your purpose has to be that much bigger than that game. Can you develop real relationships? Or just arrangements? The jury is out on that for me. You can begin to see a very interesting thing maybe…being both desired and despised.”
This really got my head spinning in some interesting ways. So this post may be a bit disjointed at some points so bare with me.
It’s an odd feeling being here. Like the new kid on the block. The new kid in school that everyone looks at, points at, and wants to know more about. But the thing is, in school, the newness dies down after awhile. The new kid isn’t so new anymore. You become like everyone else at one point or at least not so noticeable. It’s not so odd anymore. But odd isn’t an all-encompassing word for how I feel here. It’s odd, fantastic, frustrating, intriguing, educational, and yes… odd. I had been wanting to come to Ghana since I took Akan Twi in undergrad. Then I became an African American and African Studies master’s student. Studied. Came last summer and now I’m here again. I came to learn, help, and immerse myself in ways that I wasn’t able to when I came last summer with my study abroad program. But this immersion has having its drawbacks. Rather, the things that I experienced before are intensified possibly because I’m here longer and I’m getting more and closer interactions. I knew, before I came last summer, that I will always get the, what I call, “oburini price” (spelling uncertain) anytime I want to purchase goods or services. Meaning, because I am an American (or a foreigner) my taxi fares and any other purchases will always be offered at a higher price. Although that may be normal here (meaning even if you are an African from another place you may get a higher price but I doubt not it’s as high as American or European prices), I can’t help but always wonder if I’m being cheated because of the way I look. Its like being black and being discriminated against by blacks in a land full of black people. As a black American and a Black Studies major, it’s so ironic and disheartening. It’s like some sort of neo/intra-racism or something. Blacks in the US were and still are discriminated against because of the way we look. Ideas that laid the foundation for colonization were based on racist enlightenment ideas that said all Africans and their descendants are and will always be subhuman and in need of white people’s guidance (white paternalism). US and Caribbean slavery and colonization were systems guided by phenotypic discrimination and monetary gain. Is not the “oburini price” system simply another form of exploitation on a smaller scale? Maybe so, but what happens when we look at the global picture. For hundreds of years African agricultural, human, and other resources have been used to fill the coffers and banks or Americans and Europeans: legitimate trade, market boards, structural adjustment programs, 48% and higher interest loans, illegal shipment of guns into war-torn countries, contamination of water and other resources etc. etc. etc. So, is “oburni price” a form of retribution or simply a hustle that helps people survive? Can either be justified? ….There is something to be said about ambiguity in the US. From very young you are taught, in a variety of ways (whether it be through school, media, family, what have you), that there are different people in the world. People who look different, sound different. And even if you aren’t formally taught that, you can see it on daily basis. (I would argue, for MOST Americans). So, if I am walking down the street in, let’s say D.C. or even my small hometown Ocala, everybody will not be staring at me. And if they do, they will at least speak. Say hi. There isn’t a day that goes by without someone staring me down or yelling oburni. In pockets I don’t have a problem with it. Its not like I have never be stared at in the US. But not by so many people so often. But I knew before I came that I would stick out like a sore thumb. I will always be looked at as the new kid on the block. I don’t have a problem with that. What I am having trouble with, is all that seems to come with that territory. Last summer about one-third of my conversations with Ghanaian men went something like this:
“Whats you name?”
“Where are you from?”
“Are you married?”
“Do you have any kids?”
“We should get married.”
This happened at least 20 times from the biggest city to the smallest. Every time I had fun with it and usually said something like, “I’m free tomorrow around 1.” We were told that they are only asking to marry you so they can get a green card. And, given many US norms, many Americans who argue that people don’t normally ask someone to marry them the same day they meet them. They are either joking or they want something from you. I took it as most of them were joking, but some continued to talk about how they need to go to US and how I should help them etc etc. Sometimes it stopped being fun and it became something else. A pleading of sorts. Desperation. It made me uncomfortable. But I found that only certain men approached me in those ways. I met a substantial amount of young rich Ghanaians driving Hummers, BMWs, Mercedes, etc. They took us out, showed us a good time, drove us around and didn’t ask anything from us. Not a number, email, nothing. No mention of US or any of those things. Just wanted to hang out and I had some great times. So it began to feel like only some low-income men consistently talked about marriage and getting to the US. But its wasn’t all. We had just as much fun with the waiters at the hotel and they didn’t worry us with hopes and dreams about the US and how they needed us to get them there. But it still feels odd. Regardless, it always felt like we were getting unnecessary attention. So that brings me to my friend’s statement. “…And the absolutely fascinating means and measures some will go to ‘engage’ and endear themselves to you for their eventual ‘unfair’ gain.” This sparked a thought. Could it be that we, Americans (maybe more so black Americans) already have a heightened sense of “otherness” in the US and that “otherness” feeling is ironically tripled when we are in Africa. The heightened concern of whether or not you are being taken advantage of on a daily basis (from the tro tro fare to fabric) could it be that those who obviously want something from us are also affecting our perception of those who don’t? I have realized that this heightened concern is mentally draining and I wondering in the back of my mind if I’m getting unfair treatment (whether someone is giving me an exorbitant price or treating me extra nice to the dismay of a Ghanaian in my same position). I wonder if that heightened sense will ever go away. I miss the land of set prices where if I get screwed that meant everyone else did too. Or if I got a good price everyone had the same opportunity to get the same.
The friend also said, “Ghanaians are for Ghanaians. And many are traditionally truly down for their ‘tribe’. You are not a part of that family. You are to be used for gain.” This stings a little. But I find truth in it in ways. For example, I have had discussions with Ghanaians and have done research on intra-racism/inter-ethnic biases in Ghana where some ethnic groups look down upon or are warned not to marry other ethnic groups. These biases don’t just happen in Ghana but also happen all over the world, but being entrenched in it and to possibly be affected by it is something else. I have a friend doing research in a rural city in India. We were discussing the progress of our trips the other day. He jokingly told me that there is a secret mission to get him married before he leaves since in their culture, to be 24 and not have a wife and kids is odd. But he told me that marriage where he is, is not so much about love but about strengthening families. You marry up or laterally. Not down. So marriage can be a great avenue for opportunist. But its not that different in the US. Women and men with little to no education or skills, marries someone with money. I don’t know if its just more obvious where my friend is, if we are paying more attention to it because we are foreigners or if it really is that different. It’s hard to not be ethnocentric. There is no such thing as a tabula rasa. I can’t NOT be who I am. And I can’t NOT see things from a perceptive informed by where I come from. It’s difficult.
Here comes the disjointed thoughts:
• So the heightened sense of concern for oburini treatment can make forming serious relationships a little difficult. It’s an odd feeling to walk around as if you have a spotlight on you and wondering if the person is paying attention to you because of the spotlight and the assumption that come with that spotlight or not. I just want to turn the spotlight off. In the Indian community where my friend is researching, virtually no one has seen a black person before. So they call him “gora cola” (spelling also uncertain) which means “black, white person.” Similarly here, Ghanaians call me “oburini”, a term often used for a white person. The difference here is that most Ghanaians have seen black Americans before, whether it is as visitors or on television and movies. Regardless, I am grouped with any and all Americans. (Which brings up and an interesting lack of understanding or care of race dynamics around the world but I digress until maybe another time.) All over the world, Americans are perceived as rich. I had a very long discussion with a black South African consulate and she said to me, “America is a great advertiser. I came here thinking the best of the best was here. Everyone lives comfortable lives, everything is clean… I was sadly mistaken.” But this grouping of black and white Americans and the idea of begin wealthy begins to clash with the stereotypes of black Americans seen through movies and hip hop. I continue to battle stereotypes of black Americans with whites and, unfortunately, with Africans from all over the continent. The South African also said, “I’m surprised at how much you know about Africa, given how ignorant most black Americans are.” I paused. Made an effort not to get angry and then I said, “Remember, America is a great advertiser. There are a lot of things America wants you to believe. You must remember who is giving you the information and what they have gain from you believing it.” She paused and gave a contemplative nod. What was most aggravating is that I met her at a movie premiere of a documentary on Hospice care of HIV/AIDS patients in South Africa. Since my research focuses on perceptions of blacks in media in an open forum, I had a discussion with the director and the producer about how the movie is not about upliftment, rather is perpetuates stereotypic ideas of Africa and does not successfully add a new body of knowledge to Americans lack understanding of the happenings in Africa. I am fighting against the stereotypes in her country yet she comes to me, an international figure, with stereotypes. So disheartening. I’m not just grouped with Americans. Its not just that I’m American. I’m a black American which carries a whole other set of beliefs and assumptions that become compounded when I travel abroad. Like the odd clash of cultures when I greet a Ghanaian with the local language “Maakye” and they greet me with “What’s up.” It’s as if we greet each other with what we think is appropriate. Or when people think I live and act a certain way because I’m a black American. But they get upset when Americans perceive them a certain way and want to get mad about it, while I attempt to make it a learning experience because I have to deal with it all the time. An interesting conundrum. Lack of/miscommunication.
I wonder if Africans think of how they think of us instead of being so focused on how we perceive them. There are perceptions on both sides but rarely do both get addressed.
• Hip hop and hiplife are vibrant here in Ghana. But how many listeners and artists here know and understand where hip hop came from? Do they understand how disenfranchisement, discrimination were the driving forces of so much black music? Thus, going back to the “n” word conversation (see previous posts).
• I have two favorite classes I love to teach as a graduate teaching assistant in African American and African Studies. First is Bebop to Hip hop is a class were students learn the direct connections between west African rhythm patterns and those in African American music from ragtime and blues to rock n roll (created by black Americans…little known fact, see Chuck Berry among others) and hip hop. It seems that, at times, black Americans want to find a deeper connection to Africa. Not all, but some. But so many Africans don’t identify in that way. I think many black Americans want a deeper connection because the history we are given about blacks in the US and Africans is wretched. It’s either grounded in slavery or the supposed backwardness of African civilizations. Many times black Americans go to Africa and expect to be embraced as some sort of long lost brother or sister (Ghana has began this Joseph Project which I have some serious mixed feelings about…maybe more thoughts on that later). But they aren’t. And I don’t see that as a problem on the side of the Africans, but I do think it is unfortunate that some black Americans don’t search to find or understand how identity is constructed in most of Africa. Identity is based on familial clans (your family name) and ethnicity/language (whether you are Ga, Ewe, Fante, Asante, Yoruba, Hausa, Ebo, Khoi Khoi, etc). Race doesn’t matter. Everyone is the same race. (Probably because race is a fictitious concept created by Europeans but I digress...)As black Americans, most of us can’t identify in those terms because the indigenous names of our ancestors were stripped from them and most of us don’t know where our ancestors originated from. Not to mention that since many areas like the Caribbean shipped Africans from various communities, even if we did know, we would still have ancestors from multiple ethnicities and families. But there are other black Americans, who find a great deal of pride in the US legacy black Americans have and simply find Africa to be an intriguing and educational place. For example, there is a phenomenon called African retentions. There is a belief that many black Americans psychologically retain various traits in West African culture that they may not know they have retained. Often times, these traits are retained in the Caribbean where many transported Africans had a greater deal of autonomy to retain many cultural traits and southern parts of the US were many black Americans live. For the US arguably, this is so, because in the Deep South, many Africans could not escape slavery because they were too far away from the closest Free State. So some of the West African norms stayed. One thing that I found interesting were the funerals Ghanaians call a “Home Call” and what my people back home say is a “Home Going”. A Home Going is a celebration. There is music, food, excitement and of course, sadness, but you are happy that the person lived their life and is now in a better place. I remember when I was in high school and I was on the dance team. My teammate’s father died. A white girl. The team went to the funeral to support her. I remember the atmosphere being so sad and quite. Very solemn. I didn’t understand why everyone was so sad. I remember asking my dance teacher why everyone was so sad and her reply was, “its a funeral.” I went to a funeral here in Ghana. Interestingly, it was just like a Home Going. People were dancing, shouting, crying, and praising. There was energy in the place. If this is an African retention, along with the musical traditions, then these are just a small examples of how black Americans are not so distant from west Africans, but there is still a disconnect. We are seen as Americans first.
The other class is African history colonial and post colonial. In this class, I really love to discuss neocolonialism, the issues with “world powers,” the UN, the World Bank, the World Court and underdevelopment of countries and how all of these entities assist in keeping “third world” countries in the third world and how developing countries somehow never get developed. It’s interesting to get students who have so many negative thoughts about Africa and then show them how US (and maybe even their individual actions) assist in maintaining those negative perceptions whether it’s through policy, media, consumerism or what have you.
• I never felt more American than I do here. And I was never particularly proud of being an American. To be black, yes. To be American… ummm. Kind of like the way James Baldwin put it, “But America is the house of bondage for the Negro, and no country can rescue him.” Or as Michelle Obama said, she, for once, was proud to be an America. Not too many Americans of color wondered why it took her so long. Hmm, maybe more thoughts to come.
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“You know you are really in the TRUE Ghana now. It took time for me to realize the depth of disconnect between our cultures. And the absolutely fascinating means and measures some will go to ‘engage’ and endear themselves to you for their eventual ‘unfair’ gain. You are in a very complex society. We are much simpler in our traditions and social rules. One point, Ghanaians are for Ghanaians. And many are traditionally truly down for their ‘tribe’. You are not a part of that family. You are to be used for gain. That does not mean your work and purpose should cease. Like we say here… don’t hate the player hate the game, and that game over there is soul draining. So your purpose has to be that much bigger than that game. Can you develop real relationships? Or just arrangements? The jury is out on that for me. You can begin to see a very interesting thing maybe…being both desired and despised.”
This really got my head spinning in some interesting ways. So this post may be a bit disjointed at some points so bare with me.
It’s an odd feeling being here. Like the new kid on the block. The new kid in school that everyone looks at, points at, and wants to know more about. But the thing is, in school, the newness dies down after awhile. The new kid isn’t so new anymore. You become like everyone else at one point or at least not so noticeable. It’s not so odd anymore. But odd isn’t an all-encompassing word for how I feel here. It’s odd, fantastic, frustrating, intriguing, educational, and yes… odd. I had been wanting to come to Ghana since I took Akan Twi in undergrad. Then I became an African American and African Studies master’s student. Studied. Came last summer and now I’m here again. I came to learn, help, and immerse myself in ways that I wasn’t able to when I came last summer with my study abroad program. But this immersion has having its drawbacks. Rather, the things that I experienced before are intensified possibly because I’m here longer and I’m getting more and closer interactions. I knew, before I came last summer, that I will always get the, what I call, “oburini price” (spelling uncertain) anytime I want to purchase goods or services. Meaning, because I am an American (or a foreigner) my taxi fares and any other purchases will always be offered at a higher price. Although that may be normal here (meaning even if you are an African from another place you may get a higher price but I doubt not it’s as high as American or European prices), I can’t help but always wonder if I’m being cheated because of the way I look. Its like being black and being discriminated against by blacks in a land full of black people. As a black American and a Black Studies major, it’s so ironic and disheartening. It’s like some sort of neo/intra-racism or something. Blacks in the US were and still are discriminated against because of the way we look. Ideas that laid the foundation for colonization were based on racist enlightenment ideas that said all Africans and their descendants are and will always be subhuman and in need of white people’s guidance (white paternalism). US and Caribbean slavery and colonization were systems guided by phenotypic discrimination and monetary gain. Is not the “oburini price” system simply another form of exploitation on a smaller scale? Maybe so, but what happens when we look at the global picture. For hundreds of years African agricultural, human, and other resources have been used to fill the coffers and banks or Americans and Europeans: legitimate trade, market boards, structural adjustment programs, 48% and higher interest loans, illegal shipment of guns into war-torn countries, contamination of water and other resources etc. etc. etc. So, is “oburni price” a form of retribution or simply a hustle that helps people survive? Can either be justified? ….There is something to be said about ambiguity in the US. From very young you are taught, in a variety of ways (whether it be through school, media, family, what have you), that there are different people in the world. People who look different, sound different. And even if you aren’t formally taught that, you can see it on daily basis. (I would argue, for MOST Americans). So, if I am walking down the street in, let’s say D.C. or even my small hometown Ocala, everybody will not be staring at me. And if they do, they will at least speak. Say hi. There isn’t a day that goes by without someone staring me down or yelling oburni. In pockets I don’t have a problem with it. Its not like I have never be stared at in the US. But not by so many people so often. But I knew before I came that I would stick out like a sore thumb. I will always be looked at as the new kid on the block. I don’t have a problem with that. What I am having trouble with, is all that seems to come with that territory. Last summer about one-third of my conversations with Ghanaian men went something like this:
“Whats you name?”
“Where are you from?”
“Are you married?”
“Do you have any kids?”
“We should get married.”
This happened at least 20 times from the biggest city to the smallest. Every time I had fun with it and usually said something like, “I’m free tomorrow around 1.” We were told that they are only asking to marry you so they can get a green card. And, given many US norms, many Americans who argue that people don’t normally ask someone to marry them the same day they meet them. They are either joking or they want something from you. I took it as most of them were joking, but some continued to talk about how they need to go to US and how I should help them etc etc. Sometimes it stopped being fun and it became something else. A pleading of sorts. Desperation. It made me uncomfortable. But I found that only certain men approached me in those ways. I met a substantial amount of young rich Ghanaians driving Hummers, BMWs, Mercedes, etc. They took us out, showed us a good time, drove us around and didn’t ask anything from us. Not a number, email, nothing. No mention of US or any of those things. Just wanted to hang out and I had some great times. So it began to feel like only some low-income men consistently talked about marriage and getting to the US. But its wasn’t all. We had just as much fun with the waiters at the hotel and they didn’t worry us with hopes and dreams about the US and how they needed us to get them there. But it still feels odd. Regardless, it always felt like we were getting unnecessary attention. So that brings me to my friend’s statement. “…And the absolutely fascinating means and measures some will go to ‘engage’ and endear themselves to you for their eventual ‘unfair’ gain.” This sparked a thought. Could it be that we, Americans (maybe more so black Americans) already have a heightened sense of “otherness” in the US and that “otherness” feeling is ironically tripled when we are in Africa. The heightened concern of whether or not you are being taken advantage of on a daily basis (from the tro tro fare to fabric) could it be that those who obviously want something from us are also affecting our perception of those who don’t? I have realized that this heightened concern is mentally draining and I wondering in the back of my mind if I’m getting unfair treatment (whether someone is giving me an exorbitant price or treating me extra nice to the dismay of a Ghanaian in my same position). I wonder if that heightened sense will ever go away. I miss the land of set prices where if I get screwed that meant everyone else did too. Or if I got a good price everyone had the same opportunity to get the same.
The friend also said, “Ghanaians are for Ghanaians. And many are traditionally truly down for their ‘tribe’. You are not a part of that family. You are to be used for gain.” This stings a little. But I find truth in it in ways. For example, I have had discussions with Ghanaians and have done research on intra-racism/inter-ethnic biases in Ghana where some ethnic groups look down upon or are warned not to marry other ethnic groups. These biases don’t just happen in Ghana but also happen all over the world, but being entrenched in it and to possibly be affected by it is something else. I have a friend doing research in a rural city in India. We were discussing the progress of our trips the other day. He jokingly told me that there is a secret mission to get him married before he leaves since in their culture, to be 24 and not have a wife and kids is odd. But he told me that marriage where he is, is not so much about love but about strengthening families. You marry up or laterally. Not down. So marriage can be a great avenue for opportunist. But its not that different in the US. Women and men with little to no education or skills, marries someone with money. I don’t know if its just more obvious where my friend is, if we are paying more attention to it because we are foreigners or if it really is that different. It’s hard to not be ethnocentric. There is no such thing as a tabula rasa. I can’t NOT be who I am. And I can’t NOT see things from a perceptive informed by where I come from. It’s difficult.
Here comes the disjointed thoughts:
• So the heightened sense of concern for oburini treatment can make forming serious relationships a little difficult. It’s an odd feeling to walk around as if you have a spotlight on you and wondering if the person is paying attention to you because of the spotlight and the assumption that come with that spotlight or not. I just want to turn the spotlight off. In the Indian community where my friend is researching, virtually no one has seen a black person before. So they call him “gora cola” (spelling also uncertain) which means “black, white person.” Similarly here, Ghanaians call me “oburini”, a term often used for a white person. The difference here is that most Ghanaians have seen black Americans before, whether it is as visitors or on television and movies. Regardless, I am grouped with any and all Americans. (Which brings up and an interesting lack of understanding or care of race dynamics around the world but I digress until maybe another time.) All over the world, Americans are perceived as rich. I had a very long discussion with a black South African consulate and she said to me, “America is a great advertiser. I came here thinking the best of the best was here. Everyone lives comfortable lives, everything is clean… I was sadly mistaken.” But this grouping of black and white Americans and the idea of begin wealthy begins to clash with the stereotypes of black Americans seen through movies and hip hop. I continue to battle stereotypes of black Americans with whites and, unfortunately, with Africans from all over the continent. The South African also said, “I’m surprised at how much you know about Africa, given how ignorant most black Americans are.” I paused. Made an effort not to get angry and then I said, “Remember, America is a great advertiser. There are a lot of things America wants you to believe. You must remember who is giving you the information and what they have gain from you believing it.” She paused and gave a contemplative nod. What was most aggravating is that I met her at a movie premiere of a documentary on Hospice care of HIV/AIDS patients in South Africa. Since my research focuses on perceptions of blacks in media in an open forum, I had a discussion with the director and the producer about how the movie is not about upliftment, rather is perpetuates stereotypic ideas of Africa and does not successfully add a new body of knowledge to Americans lack understanding of the happenings in Africa. I am fighting against the stereotypes in her country yet she comes to me, an international figure, with stereotypes. So disheartening. I’m not just grouped with Americans. Its not just that I’m American. I’m a black American which carries a whole other set of beliefs and assumptions that become compounded when I travel abroad. Like the odd clash of cultures when I greet a Ghanaian with the local language “Maakye” and they greet me with “What’s up.” It’s as if we greet each other with what we think is appropriate. Or when people think I live and act a certain way because I’m a black American. But they get upset when Americans perceive them a certain way and want to get mad about it, while I attempt to make it a learning experience because I have to deal with it all the time. An interesting conundrum. Lack of/miscommunication.
I wonder if Africans think of how they think of us instead of being so focused on how we perceive them. There are perceptions on both sides but rarely do both get addressed.
• Hip hop and hiplife are vibrant here in Ghana. But how many listeners and artists here know and understand where hip hop came from? Do they understand how disenfranchisement, discrimination were the driving forces of so much black music? Thus, going back to the “n” word conversation (see previous posts).
• I have two favorite classes I love to teach as a graduate teaching assistant in African American and African Studies. First is Bebop to Hip hop is a class were students learn the direct connections between west African rhythm patterns and those in African American music from ragtime and blues to rock n roll (created by black Americans…little known fact, see Chuck Berry among others) and hip hop. It seems that, at times, black Americans want to find a deeper connection to Africa. Not all, but some. But so many Africans don’t identify in that way. I think many black Americans want a deeper connection because the history we are given about blacks in the US and Africans is wretched. It’s either grounded in slavery or the supposed backwardness of African civilizations. Many times black Americans go to Africa and expect to be embraced as some sort of long lost brother or sister (Ghana has began this Joseph Project which I have some serious mixed feelings about…maybe more thoughts on that later). But they aren’t. And I don’t see that as a problem on the side of the Africans, but I do think it is unfortunate that some black Americans don’t search to find or understand how identity is constructed in most of Africa. Identity is based on familial clans (your family name) and ethnicity/language (whether you are Ga, Ewe, Fante, Asante, Yoruba, Hausa, Ebo, Khoi Khoi, etc). Race doesn’t matter. Everyone is the same race. (Probably because race is a fictitious concept created by Europeans but I digress...)As black Americans, most of us can’t identify in those terms because the indigenous names of our ancestors were stripped from them and most of us don’t know where our ancestors originated from. Not to mention that since many areas like the Caribbean shipped Africans from various communities, even if we did know, we would still have ancestors from multiple ethnicities and families. But there are other black Americans, who find a great deal of pride in the US legacy black Americans have and simply find Africa to be an intriguing and educational place. For example, there is a phenomenon called African retentions. There is a belief that many black Americans psychologically retain various traits in West African culture that they may not know they have retained. Often times, these traits are retained in the Caribbean where many transported Africans had a greater deal of autonomy to retain many cultural traits and southern parts of the US were many black Americans live. For the US arguably, this is so, because in the Deep South, many Africans could not escape slavery because they were too far away from the closest Free State. So some of the West African norms stayed. One thing that I found interesting were the funerals Ghanaians call a “Home Call” and what my people back home say is a “Home Going”. A Home Going is a celebration. There is music, food, excitement and of course, sadness, but you are happy that the person lived their life and is now in a better place. I remember when I was in high school and I was on the dance team. My teammate’s father died. A white girl. The team went to the funeral to support her. I remember the atmosphere being so sad and quite. Very solemn. I didn’t understand why everyone was so sad. I remember asking my dance teacher why everyone was so sad and her reply was, “its a funeral.” I went to a funeral here in Ghana. Interestingly, it was just like a Home Going. People were dancing, shouting, crying, and praising. There was energy in the place. If this is an African retention, along with the musical traditions, then these are just a small examples of how black Americans are not so distant from west Africans, but there is still a disconnect. We are seen as Americans first.
The other class is African history colonial and post colonial. In this class, I really love to discuss neocolonialism, the issues with “world powers,” the UN, the World Bank, the World Court and underdevelopment of countries and how all of these entities assist in keeping “third world” countries in the third world and how developing countries somehow never get developed. It’s interesting to get students who have so many negative thoughts about Africa and then show them how US (and maybe even their individual actions) assist in maintaining those negative perceptions whether it’s through policy, media, consumerism or what have you.
• I never felt more American than I do here. And I was never particularly proud of being an American. To be black, yes. To be American… ummm. Kind of like the way James Baldwin put it, “But America is the house of bondage for the Negro, and no country can rescue him.” Or as Michelle Obama said, she, for once, was proud to be an America. Not too many Americans of color wondered why it took her so long. Hmm, maybe more thoughts to come.
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Monday, August 10, 2009
Day 22
August 5, 2009
It’s an odd feeling to always be concerned with whether or not people are trying to take advantage of you. Never knew how much people look to America for opportunities and identity. I’m feeling weird. Stressed. Like its challenging to make friends or be overly nice to people without them asking something from me. It’s not everyone. Usually low-income people. I don’t like it. For example, you virtually can’t go anywhere without being concerned whether or not you have been given an exorbitant price. Or being nice to someone or they see that you are nice and they ask for money or talk about how they want you to take them to the US, or they want your phone number and call you incessantly. Again, it isn’t everyone, but it makes you want to stick to a few people as friends. It makes everyone a suspect. But sometimes it’s an issue of power which Ghanaians that have money and/or resources. In extreme ways its men who want to show they are not the Africans that Americans see on TV. Living with animals in mud-huts and scantily clad. They pick you up in their BMW and buy you things, take you out, etc. It’s as if they want you to know that they don’t want or need anything from you simply because you an American. They can take care of themselves. But this odd power struggle has happened on a smaller level with the cousin of my house mother. It one of those minor things that isn’t something you can go complain to someone about, because it’s a small passive-aggressive move but you know, you sense, that its wasn’t done or said to be nice. She’s done three things thus far. First, I went out dancing a few weekends ago with some volunteers. My house father is a pastor so a had somewhat of a “talking to” about how people may perceive me or the people who live in his house who go to the club. It was actually kinda cute. Meaning, I didn’t take offense and he was really nice about it, but I told him, in so many words that I don’t have any hang-ups about going on dancing as a Christian, so if he feels that I could hinder his reputation then made I should move. He reassured me that a move wouldn’t be necessary and they want me to stay. I’m assuming that my house mother told her cousin about what happened. (Again, not a big deal). Her husband asked me how my night was. I told him I had fun and I love Ghanaian music. The cousin asked me, “So how were you dancing?” I looked at her with an odd look. “Umm I don’t know, I was just dancing.” It was as if she wanted to know how much of a hethen I was. LOL. Its funny but disturbing. The second time was when I went to church with the family for the second time, but this time most of the sermon was in Fante, the local language. I understand very little Fante so it kinda felt like a waste of time. After church, she came and asked me how I liked church. I told I didn’t understand most of it but it looked like everyone enjoyed it. And she says, “Aww, poor you.” In some kind of funny/patronizing/condescending tone. I just shrugged m shoulders and looked away. Informing her through body language that I didn’t think it was funny. Now today I asked one of the house girls to cut a pineapple a bought for lunch. The girl brought the cut pineapple on a plate and had a chunk in a bag on the side. I wasn’t sure why she did it that way but I took the plate and reached for the bag.
The house girl then said, “That not for you.” She looked like she didn’t want to bearer of the inform.
I said, “Why, it’s my pineapple?” The cousin, who was sitting on the couch sat up and said, “I told her to cut me a piece.” My first feeling was “Excuse me?” But I didn’t say that.
I waited a second and said jokingly, “You are supposed to ask me for my pineapple.” She said, “Oh sorry.” But she really wasn’t.
I then said, “It is normal for people here to not ask people for their things?”
She said, “No. People normally ask.”
“So what would make people not ask other people for their things?”
“Maybe if the person wasn’t there to ask, the person took it and then told the person when they came back.”
“So people normally ask?”
“Yes. If you take from someone it isn’t nice and its stealing.”
“So, if they don’t ask is it seen as rude?”
“Yes, it can. But it doesn’t happen often. People ask.”
“In the US if you take something that isn’t yours from someone, Its rude.”
Her body language changed. “Oh ok.” She laid back down and didn’t say anything else. As if she realized that either she just stole from me or was rude to me not just by US standards but also by her own. All of this is so unnecessary.
LOL come to find out she has been doing that to my host family and they have been just sitting angry and not saying anything. Once my host mother found out that the woman did that to me, she told me everything and how she is so annoyed with her. I told her that I think it’s a power struggle she used to be over her (her school mother which is something like a personal dean of pledges, lol). The woman’s husband has also been taking money from the church and they killed their chickens. A mess. Anyway, my host mother got the courage to finally say something to her, and when they when to church, she asked the woman to hold the baby and she told her to put him the floor. How you gonna be mad at someone because you crazy? Again all of this is so unnecessary.
It’s an odd feeling to always be concerned with whether or not people are trying to take advantage of you. Never knew how much people look to America for opportunities and identity. I’m feeling weird. Stressed. Like its challenging to make friends or be overly nice to people without them asking something from me. It’s not everyone. Usually low-income people. I don’t like it. For example, you virtually can’t go anywhere without being concerned whether or not you have been given an exorbitant price. Or being nice to someone or they see that you are nice and they ask for money or talk about how they want you to take them to the US, or they want your phone number and call you incessantly. Again, it isn’t everyone, but it makes you want to stick to a few people as friends. It makes everyone a suspect. But sometimes it’s an issue of power which Ghanaians that have money and/or resources. In extreme ways its men who want to show they are not the Africans that Americans see on TV. Living with animals in mud-huts and scantily clad. They pick you up in their BMW and buy you things, take you out, etc. It’s as if they want you to know that they don’t want or need anything from you simply because you an American. They can take care of themselves. But this odd power struggle has happened on a smaller level with the cousin of my house mother. It one of those minor things that isn’t something you can go complain to someone about, because it’s a small passive-aggressive move but you know, you sense, that its wasn’t done or said to be nice. She’s done three things thus far. First, I went out dancing a few weekends ago with some volunteers. My house father is a pastor so a had somewhat of a “talking to” about how people may perceive me or the people who live in his house who go to the club. It was actually kinda cute. Meaning, I didn’t take offense and he was really nice about it, but I told him, in so many words that I don’t have any hang-ups about going on dancing as a Christian, so if he feels that I could hinder his reputation then made I should move. He reassured me that a move wouldn’t be necessary and they want me to stay. I’m assuming that my house mother told her cousin about what happened. (Again, not a big deal). Her husband asked me how my night was. I told him I had fun and I love Ghanaian music. The cousin asked me, “So how were you dancing?” I looked at her with an odd look. “Umm I don’t know, I was just dancing.” It was as if she wanted to know how much of a hethen I was. LOL. Its funny but disturbing. The second time was when I went to church with the family for the second time, but this time most of the sermon was in Fante, the local language. I understand very little Fante so it kinda felt like a waste of time. After church, she came and asked me how I liked church. I told I didn’t understand most of it but it looked like everyone enjoyed it. And she says, “Aww, poor you.” In some kind of funny/patronizing/condescending tone. I just shrugged m shoulders and looked away. Informing her through body language that I didn’t think it was funny. Now today I asked one of the house girls to cut a pineapple a bought for lunch. The girl brought the cut pineapple on a plate and had a chunk in a bag on the side. I wasn’t sure why she did it that way but I took the plate and reached for the bag.
The house girl then said, “That not for you.” She looked like she didn’t want to bearer of the inform.
I said, “Why, it’s my pineapple?” The cousin, who was sitting on the couch sat up and said, “I told her to cut me a piece.” My first feeling was “Excuse me?” But I didn’t say that.
I waited a second and said jokingly, “You are supposed to ask me for my pineapple.” She said, “Oh sorry.” But she really wasn’t.
I then said, “It is normal for people here to not ask people for their things?”
She said, “No. People normally ask.”
“So what would make people not ask other people for their things?”
“Maybe if the person wasn’t there to ask, the person took it and then told the person when they came back.”
“So people normally ask?”
“Yes. If you take from someone it isn’t nice and its stealing.”
“So, if they don’t ask is it seen as rude?”
“Yes, it can. But it doesn’t happen often. People ask.”
“In the US if you take something that isn’t yours from someone, Its rude.”
Her body language changed. “Oh ok.” She laid back down and didn’t say anything else. As if she realized that either she just stole from me or was rude to me not just by US standards but also by her own. All of this is so unnecessary.
LOL come to find out she has been doing that to my host family and they have been just sitting angry and not saying anything. Once my host mother found out that the woman did that to me, she told me everything and how she is so annoyed with her. I told her that I think it’s a power struggle she used to be over her (her school mother which is something like a personal dean of pledges, lol). The woman’s husband has also been taking money from the church and they killed their chickens. A mess. Anyway, my host mother got the courage to finally say something to her, and when they when to church, she asked the woman to hold the baby and she told her to put him the floor. How you gonna be mad at someone because you crazy? Again all of this is so unnecessary.
Day 19
August 2, 2009
I needed a break, so I took a taxi to Coconut Grove, a resort in Elmina, close to
…the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, – a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder (9).
But what is interesting is that DuBois has been deemed the “go-to” person for black American sociology but he did not have the same personal experiences of racism that he discussed. He was disconnected. DuBois was raised in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and had the opportunity to achieve academically in ways not available to most African American in the last half of the 1800s after the end of slavery. His excellent academic performance may be the result of the different racial climate in the
[John] spoke slowly and methodically…A painful hush seized that crowded mass. Little had they understood of what he said, for he spoke an unknown tongue…Thne at last a low suppressed snarl came from the Amen corner, and an old bent man arose, walked over the seats, and climbed straight up into the pulpit…He seized the Bible with his rough, huge hands; twice he raised it inarticulate, and then fairly burst into words, with rude and awful eloquence. He quivered, swayed, and bent; then rose aloft in perfect majesty, till the people moaned and wept, wailed and shouted, and a wild shrieking arose from the corners where all the pent-up feeling of the hour gathered itself and rushed the air; John never knew clearly what the old man said; he only felt himself held up to scorn and scathing denunciation for trampling on the true Religion, and he realized with amazement that all unknowingly he had put rough, rude hands on something this little world held sacred (xxv).
The “little world” he was referring to was this southern black world he felt he encroached upon. He, John, a stand-in for DuBois. You then see DuBois inserting himself in the narrative. Making himself apart of the people that he looked at with confusion and pity. Not only does he often use the first person to align himself with his “subjects”, but he appears to show his readers (he targeted scholars and lay people) he understands the “little world” he never grew up in. His odd and somewhat oxymoronic placement as both a member of the black community and visitor is evident in his description of the “The Veil” and his use of the bible in his writings. Griffin writes that,
DuBois promises readers that he has ‘stepped within the veil’ and raised it to expose ‘deeper recesses.’ While he elsewhere claims to have lived behind the Veil throughout his life, here he positions himself as someone who dwells both within and just outside its cover –and, most important, as the investigator, the communicator, the native informant who can render the mysteries behind the Veil known (xvii).
It is a place he appears to have placed himself. Also, he sporadically alludes to the bible possibly as a way to show his connection to the artifact “the folk” hold dear. In the last sentence of DuBois’ forethought he asks the reader “And finally, need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil” (4)? His reference to Genesis 2:23 is a statement made by Adam to Eve after she was created from his rib. By using this verse, DuBois seems to be doing a few things. Although he poses a question to the reader, he seems to informing the reader of his placement in the black community. He addresses any doubt the reader may have about his racial identity… or he may be addressing the doubt he already has. “…need I add that I…of them that live in the Veil?” As if to say, no, he doesn’t need to ask, it should be obvious. And if it isn’t continue to read and become a believer. The verse not only is a method to connect him to the black community but makes him an inauthentic being. According to the bible, Eve was not created through independent means. Meaning she was not created from the earth as Adam was, she was created for and through Adam. Created as a companion to Adam by way of his rib. Wo-man, from the womb of man. Arguably without Adam, Eve would never have been created. DuBois positions himself as a product of the authentic southern black community. An Adam of black Americans. A community he was not privy to prior to his adult years. He could be saying, if it weren’t for his experiences among Southern blacks that his research wouldn’t have been possible, his placement as “the investigator, the communicator, the native informant” wouldn’t have been possible. Or it is simply him arresting any doubts the reader may have about his black identity. Regardless, the verse still removes him from being authentic as Adam. Its contradictory in ways. Instead DuBois is like Eve, created from other means. His outlook and scholar is by way of the rib, the bible, the black church his interactions, with southern black Americans, that he became who he was. His roots are not strictly from the earth (the black folk) like Adam. DuBois ideas came from special circumstances much like Adam. God saw that Adam needed a companion, so he created one for him. Possibly it is this unique position that makes DuBois an interesting liaison between the white world he says he left, and the black one he says he has joined (3). (Also implying that it is a world different from the world he is from.)
This brings me to Obama. Obama, hailed as the first African American president was not raised in a detrimental racial climate just as DuBois wasn’t. Obama has roots in Kansas where his mother originates but spent a considerable part of his life in Hawaii living with his white grandparents. Although Hawaii is not exempt from racism (especially of the ingenious people and US discriminatory on its sugar plantations) it is much like DuBois hometown in New England. Meaning, discrimination is not absent but cannot compare to the atrocities in the South. Obama, had little contact with his Kenyan father because they lacked interaction because of his father’s circumstances and because of his father’s early death. Although DuBois’ father left his family making his home one of a single mother, Obama’s father’s absence speaks to another way an which Obama did not grow up in a black community. But even if his father was present, his father was Kenyan. A highly educated Kenyan at that. Both of Obama’s parents had PhDs. But his father is not an African American and wasn’t a part of the black American community either. As an African, his is arguably as foreign to the plight of the black American community as his white mother. Interestingly, Obama’s mother received her PhD in anthropology studying social and economic disparities. Similar to DuBois. During his youth Obama rejected his African name Barak and insisted that people call him Barry. It wasn’t until he became interested in the Black Panther Party history and other black students in college in California that he was convinced to embraced his African heritage that he was distanced from. Much like DuBois who created a connection to the black community by scholastically placing himself inside of it. After attending Columbia, a prestigious school much like Fisk was a prestigious school in DuBois’ time, he attends Princeton and became the first African American to become president of the Princeton law association. He then followed his mother’s footsteps in addressing disparities in the US and worked to tackle social and economic issues as a community organizer. It is much like DuBois who assisted in the formation of the Niagara Movement from which the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed. Obama, his wife Michelle and two daughters attend a black church with the now infamous Rev. Wright whose sermons are reminiscent Civil Rights and Black Power movement rhetoric. Obama connects himself to the black church as DuBois did but differently. Obama is a member and appears to physically situate himself as an unquestionable member of the community as opposed to DuBois who seemed to switch back and forth as an ethnocentric ethnographer and a legitimate member during his young adulthood.
Neither Obama, on his campaign trail or DuBois seem to discuss their privileged background much. In Ghana, there are advertisements that say Obama is the son of a goat herded who rose to be the president of the most powerful country in the world. Mostly likely, Obama’s father never herded goats because he was highly educated. And since, often times, primary and secondary school is not free, his family must have had the means of paying for his schooling. Also, since Obama was not born in rural Kenya, he wouldn’t know the first thing about goat herding. But referring to him as the son of a goat herder is a way to connect Obama to the a common African. Also, many times Obama mentioned some humble situations during his life when his mother and her children had to use food stamps to survive before his mother married an Asian man. Although I don’t feel as if Obama abused this fact or incessantly used it to make his background appear more humble than it was, it did help in making people believe he understood them. That he can meet the common American on their ground. That he was not an outsider. Much like DuBois wanted inclusion. Another interesting parallel is that both DuBois and Obama allude to Christianity: DuBois in his writings and Obama in his speeches. Although Obama may have had to use this tactic more so because of the assumption that he was Muslim, he also referenced Martin Luther King’s speeches. It is somewhat of a backdoor method of connecting him to the black church (where many activists met during many civil rights organizing activities) and it’s a way to connect to the black American experience. An experience that he arguably had little experience with living in Kansas, Hawaii, and other neighborhoods with his mixed-raced family. Also, during Obama’s presidential campaign and during his presidency, people have labeled him a socialist. A principle that is not far from the Communist Marxist ideology DuBois adopted in 1934.
I wonder if coming from multi-raced background, with enough discrimination to realize they were different from the mainstream culture, allowed them to have a different insight. Some people can’t see the forest for the trees or so deep in the ditch that they cannot see or have access to the tools they need to remove themselves from the situation. Can being entrenched in a racial identity became a barrier and evolution? For change? They have a different perspective. DuBois was not the first person write about Black people. And Barak Obama is not the first black person to run for US presidency: Shirley Chisholm, Jessie Jackson (twice), Alan Keyes, Al Sharpton to name a few. But there is something about these men’s backgrounds that gave them a different insight.While in Hawaii, Obama had friends from Portugual, China, and India. He lived with white grandparents, had a white mother, and an Indonesia father after his mother and Kenyan father divorced. It wasn’t until he was on the main land of the US that he experienced the name-calling discrimination. Much like DuBois who didn’t experience heightened levels of discrimination until he traveled to the South. Both traveled outside of their comfort zones. DuBois requests and does work to prove himself to be a part of the black community. DuBois goes to the South, teaches in Atlanta and gets his hands dirty in the US racial disparities. Obama doesn’t request but inserts himself in the community via the church and through executing community organizing in urban Chicago areas. DuBois through scholarship and Obama through politics.
In 1945 DuBois meets with African leaders to discuss pan-Africanism. DuBois is concerned with issues of colonization and works to monitor political events in African and supports African liberation movements. In 1961 DuBois is invited by Ghana’s new President Kwame Nkrumah. Obama comes to Ghana in 2009 and Ghana’s current president campaigns for a union between him and Obama.
Hmm, I feel like there is more to this. Possibly, more to come.
Interesting facts: Obama’s Birthday August 4, 1961. DuBois Dies on August 27 1963 the day before Martin Luther King leads the March on Washington.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Day 10
July 24
I got my hair braided on Wednesday. A mix of cornrows and loose braids. She brought the wrong color, so I’m not a big fan of the blonde but literally every Ghanaian loves it. I get stopped in the streets. LOL. I still will probably get it re-done with a different color. It only cost $14 ($9 for the hair and $5 for braiding).
Yesterday, Elvis, the two Ghanaian volunteers and I, took some HIV clients to get insurance. A mother, her child, and two adult women. They are not the women I mentioned before. I’m seeing a trend with HIV infected women and not men. Maybe women are getting tested more often than men. I’m not sure. Elvis left to do some other errands. After we paid, the Ghanaian volunteers and I for their insurance, walked to get photocopies of the receipts. We found out that the last woman we met in the communities (the one that was nervous and we have to talk to in secret) came to the office to get insurance. We walked back to the insurance office to pay for hers as well. One down three to go. I was glad, but she was the one I was least concerned with. We then had to walk to the hospital to get a list of new cases. On our way back to the junction to catch a tro tro to meet Elvis in Cape Coast, we saw the woman and her child in the taxi on her way to the hospital (the one that believed that HIV is an evil spirit). I was over-joyed. We decided to walk back and meet her at the hospital. We met her and her daughter and walked to the insurance office to pay for her insurance. We walked her back to the hospital so that she could receive HIV counseling. The hospital needed to test the mother and the daughter’s white blood cell count so they will know what drugs to give them, but the lab tech was not in, so she has to come back on Monday. I hope she comes back. I told her that man and the boat story translated by one of the volunteers. She said she understood. The other volunteer bought the daughter two dresses, I gave them a snack, and the other gave them some money for transportation. The woman with AIDS didn’t come. Elvis says, if she doesn’t begin treatment in the next two to three weeks she will die. She may be dead before I leave.
I got my hair braided on Wednesday. A mix of cornrows and loose braids. She brought the wrong color, so I’m not a big fan of the blonde but literally every Ghanaian loves it. I get stopped in the streets. LOL. I still will probably get it re-done with a different color. It only cost $14 ($9 for the hair and $5 for braiding).
Yesterday, Elvis, the two Ghanaian volunteers and I, took some HIV clients to get insurance. A mother, her child, and two adult women. They are not the women I mentioned before. I’m seeing a trend with HIV infected women and not men. Maybe women are getting tested more often than men. I’m not sure. Elvis left to do some other errands. After we paid, the Ghanaian volunteers and I for their insurance, walked to get photocopies of the receipts. We found out that the last woman we met in the communities (the one that was nervous and we have to talk to in secret) came to the office to get insurance. We walked back to the insurance office to pay for hers as well. One down three to go. I was glad, but she was the one I was least concerned with. We then had to walk to the hospital to get a list of new cases. On our way back to the junction to catch a tro tro to meet Elvis in Cape Coast, we saw the woman and her child in the taxi on her way to the hospital (the one that believed that HIV is an evil spirit). I was over-joyed. We decided to walk back and meet her at the hospital. We met her and her daughter and walked to the insurance office to pay for her insurance. We walked her back to the hospital so that she could receive HIV counseling. The hospital needed to test the mother and the daughter’s white blood cell count so they will know what drugs to give them, but the lab tech was not in, so she has to come back on Monday. I hope she comes back. I told her that man and the boat story translated by one of the volunteers. She said she understood. The other volunteer bought the daughter two dresses, I gave them a snack, and the other gave them some money for transportation. The woman with AIDS didn’t come. Elvis says, if she doesn’t begin treatment in the next two to three weeks she will die. She may be dead before I leave.
Day 7
July 21, 2009
I realized today that I can’t date a Ghanaian. Probably no African. Probably no man that isn’t African American (Caribbean men are still ok, lol). If he is from another culture other than mine he must be conscious. He must be aware of and concerned with racial issues and their histories. Especially African Americans.’ I was in the car with Elvis and two other Ghanaian volunteers. He was on the phone with another man and said “Ok bye my nigga.” I said, “What did you say?” The volunteer in the back said “nigga.” My eye brows raised. I heard that some Africans use the term more so because they listen to American hip hop where is it used so freely.
Elvis said “what?”
I replied, “I’m surprised you used that word. Do you know the history behind that word?”
Elvis said, “When I was in the UK at the school I was in, when the whites called the blacks nigga they will always fight. I told them if someone calls you that don’t mind them or you will always be fighting.”
“Then maybe then they will stop calling them that.”
“But that doesn’t solve the problem.”
“And you using it causally will? If you know its a bad word, a word that causes fights, why use it?”
“We don’t know the history so it doesn’t matter to us.”
I paused. Disgusted. Maybe more so disappointed. The “N” word is a hot topic in the US which has not been resolved and probably never will be. The thing is, those who chose to use it have, even if, a minute understanding of the history and the discrimination associated with the word. But now it is spreading all over the world without the history attached to it. It’s like the word has been fetishized (in the Marxian context). Fetishized commodities are items, merchandise, that is sold from which the labor history has been erased. For example, you can buy a shirt from Wal-mart or any store and all you see is a design or cut that you like. You don’t see the international politics or discriminatory labor practices that may be associated with growing the materials to make the fabric or the hands that made it in a Chinese or Taiwanese sweat shop. This labor is used to benefit a business owner. The product is made under dubious circumstances to benefit someone else. The same thing can happen with words. Nigga or nigger (to me there is no real difference, although some argue that there is) assisted in creating a racial divide in the US that perpetuated political, economic, and social benefits for those who claimed whiteness (meaning US born whites, European immigrants, and even those who could pass as white). Some blacks began to take on that term and claim it as a term of endearment. This is most evident in the hip hop community. Some have said they have changed the meaning of the word, but I argue if you have successfully done so, then why are you angry when a white person calls you that name? That means the history still lingers. I said to the “Bebop to Hip Hop” class I TA’ed for last quarter, “Are there any other words that are derogatory slurs that the people who are being discriminated against, have adopted as something positive? Do Mexicans say ‘Hey that’s my spic!’ or do Jews say ‘Yo that’s my kike.’ No you don’t. So why is it that African Americans have done so? Is this a manifestation of internalized self-hatred?” I then showed them this quote:
"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his ‘proper place’ and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary." Dr. Carter G. Woodson, "The Miseducation of the Negro"
I showed them this quote because it is no longer socially appropriate to refer to blacks as niggas. But instead of blacks creating a term of endearment and no longer associating themselves with words that was suppose to put them in their “proper place”, many have taken it upon themselves to do it for the whites that aren’t. It would be something different if the history was erased. Meaning, anyone could use the term without consequence, but that is not the case, both in the US and in the UK. The class and I also talked about the word “bitch”. Women both white and black discussed how they will use that term to talk with their friends. They can use it with their friends but no man can call them that. I then asked them, “Is there such a term for men? Is there a word that man innocently use with each other that they wouldn’t ever want a woman to call them?” Interesting all over the world blacks and women are the ones most consistently discriminated against regardless of region or culture, and in the US they are the only ones that have negative terms attached to them that they have embraced. How backwards is that?
Now the “n” word has made its way to Africa and the history is lost. But not completely because it is understood that in some contexts (such as with whites and blacks in the UK) the term is so offensive, people become physically violent. I’m bothered. Maybe more thoughts to come...
_____
On another note, we went to meet some HIV clients in the rural communities today. It was interesting. They were all new cases and the goal was to find out what they need and how the organization can help. The first was a woman and child. She told us that she believes the disease is an evil spirit from the devil and if only she prays, God will remove the evil spirit. She and her child are showing signs of the beginning stages, frailty, the skins is toughening, and the hair is becoming discolored. To many, her explanation may sound absurd, but as I explained to the nurse that came with us, for a Christian it isn’t absurd. But what may need to happen is that mediator that is a pastor should come wit us for such cases. As a Christian, you believe that all that is in the bible is true and all the miracles that happened in the past can still happen today, because as the bible says, God is never changing. For example, in Mark (I believe) there is a story of a man whose body would randomly fall to the ground and became ridged. They called the apostles to remove the spirit from his body. Today we would call the man’s actions, epilepsy. But then, it was called a demon. An evil spirit. And according to the bible the man was healed. Just as the woman who had an “issue of blood” (what we would call today hemorrhaging because she had a blood clotting problem) touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and was healed. The HIV-infected woman’s thought process is not so far-fetched. If anything her faith is very strong. So strong she is willing to risk dying because of it. Which makes me think, can your faith kill you? I called my cousin to wish her a happy belated birthday and I told her about the woman. She reminded me of a story of have heard before.
There is was a man in the middle of the ocean treading water trying not to drown. A boat passed by and asked “Do you need any help?” The man said. “No, God will save me.” Another boat came and asked the same thing. “Do you need any help?” The man said “No, God will save me.” After the third boat came the man drowned. The man went to heaven and asked God, “God, why didn’t you save me?” And God said, “I sent you three boats.” The moral of the story being that Jesus isn’t here for God to heal us directly. So God uses people to work through and assist us. It can be anyone. But we have to be in-tuned enough to God to know when he has sent us a boat. The right boat. I wish I would have told her the story. I am afraid that she won’t come to get the insurance and the HIV drugs. Elvis said, that he will pay for the insurance and the drugs they just have to make it to the hospital. The second woman was in worst condition. She was literally on her death bed. She had full blown AIDS unlike the others who have HIV but have not progressed to AIDS. She was all bones. You can see her rib cage. She had boils all over her body which is why she said she cannot move. Her child already died earlier this year because she didn’t take the child to the doctor. I’m not sure why though. I don’t know if she has the same beliefs as the other woman. I have the least amount of confidence that she will come to the hospital. Not only because she still has not gone to the hospital even though she has been told that it is the HIV/AIDS disease that is making her sick and that killed her child, but also because it is very difficult for her to move so I don’t know how she is going to make it. The third woman looked very frightened. More so nervous when we met with her. We had to go off to the side in the front part of the community so no one would see us and question her about why she was meeting with us. I wonder about her as well.
I realized today that I can’t date a Ghanaian. Probably no African. Probably no man that isn’t African American (Caribbean men are still ok, lol). If he is from another culture other than mine he must be conscious. He must be aware of and concerned with racial issues and their histories. Especially African Americans.’ I was in the car with Elvis and two other Ghanaian volunteers. He was on the phone with another man and said “Ok bye my nigga.” I said, “What did you say?” The volunteer in the back said “nigga.” My eye brows raised. I heard that some Africans use the term more so because they listen to American hip hop where is it used so freely.
Elvis said “what?”
I replied, “I’m surprised you used that word. Do you know the history behind that word?”
Elvis said, “When I was in the UK at the school I was in, when the whites called the blacks nigga they will always fight. I told them if someone calls you that don’t mind them or you will always be fighting.”
“Then maybe then they will stop calling them that.”
“But that doesn’t solve the problem.”
“And you using it causally will? If you know its a bad word, a word that causes fights, why use it?”
“We don’t know the history so it doesn’t matter to us.”
I paused. Disgusted. Maybe more so disappointed. The “N” word is a hot topic in the US which has not been resolved and probably never will be. The thing is, those who chose to use it have, even if, a minute understanding of the history and the discrimination associated with the word. But now it is spreading all over the world without the history attached to it. It’s like the word has been fetishized (in the Marxian context). Fetishized commodities are items, merchandise, that is sold from which the labor history has been erased. For example, you can buy a shirt from Wal-mart or any store and all you see is a design or cut that you like. You don’t see the international politics or discriminatory labor practices that may be associated with growing the materials to make the fabric or the hands that made it in a Chinese or Taiwanese sweat shop. This labor is used to benefit a business owner. The product is made under dubious circumstances to benefit someone else. The same thing can happen with words. Nigga or nigger (to me there is no real difference, although some argue that there is) assisted in creating a racial divide in the US that perpetuated political, economic, and social benefits for those who claimed whiteness (meaning US born whites, European immigrants, and even those who could pass as white). Some blacks began to take on that term and claim it as a term of endearment. This is most evident in the hip hop community. Some have said they have changed the meaning of the word, but I argue if you have successfully done so, then why are you angry when a white person calls you that name? That means the history still lingers. I said to the “Bebop to Hip Hop” class I TA’ed for last quarter, “Are there any other words that are derogatory slurs that the people who are being discriminated against, have adopted as something positive? Do Mexicans say ‘Hey that’s my spic!’ or do Jews say ‘Yo that’s my kike.’ No you don’t. So why is it that African Americans have done so? Is this a manifestation of internalized self-hatred?” I then showed them this quote:
"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his ‘proper place’ and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary." Dr. Carter G. Woodson, "The Miseducation of the Negro"
I showed them this quote because it is no longer socially appropriate to refer to blacks as niggas. But instead of blacks creating a term of endearment and no longer associating themselves with words that was suppose to put them in their “proper place”, many have taken it upon themselves to do it for the whites that aren’t. It would be something different if the history was erased. Meaning, anyone could use the term without consequence, but that is not the case, both in the US and in the UK. The class and I also talked about the word “bitch”. Women both white and black discussed how they will use that term to talk with their friends. They can use it with their friends but no man can call them that. I then asked them, “Is there such a term for men? Is there a word that man innocently use with each other that they wouldn’t ever want a woman to call them?” Interesting all over the world blacks and women are the ones most consistently discriminated against regardless of region or culture, and in the US they are the only ones that have negative terms attached to them that they have embraced. How backwards is that?
Now the “n” word has made its way to Africa and the history is lost. But not completely because it is understood that in some contexts (such as with whites and blacks in the UK) the term is so offensive, people become physically violent. I’m bothered. Maybe more thoughts to come...
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On another note, we went to meet some HIV clients in the rural communities today. It was interesting. They were all new cases and the goal was to find out what they need and how the organization can help. The first was a woman and child. She told us that she believes the disease is an evil spirit from the devil and if only she prays, God will remove the evil spirit. She and her child are showing signs of the beginning stages, frailty, the skins is toughening, and the hair is becoming discolored. To many, her explanation may sound absurd, but as I explained to the nurse that came with us, for a Christian it isn’t absurd. But what may need to happen is that mediator that is a pastor should come wit us for such cases. As a Christian, you believe that all that is in the bible is true and all the miracles that happened in the past can still happen today, because as the bible says, God is never changing. For example, in Mark (I believe) there is a story of a man whose body would randomly fall to the ground and became ridged. They called the apostles to remove the spirit from his body. Today we would call the man’s actions, epilepsy. But then, it was called a demon. An evil spirit. And according to the bible the man was healed. Just as the woman who had an “issue of blood” (what we would call today hemorrhaging because she had a blood clotting problem) touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and was healed. The HIV-infected woman’s thought process is not so far-fetched. If anything her faith is very strong. So strong she is willing to risk dying because of it. Which makes me think, can your faith kill you? I called my cousin to wish her a happy belated birthday and I told her about the woman. She reminded me of a story of have heard before.
There is was a man in the middle of the ocean treading water trying not to drown. A boat passed by and asked “Do you need any help?” The man said. “No, God will save me.” Another boat came and asked the same thing. “Do you need any help?” The man said “No, God will save me.” After the third boat came the man drowned. The man went to heaven and asked God, “God, why didn’t you save me?” And God said, “I sent you three boats.” The moral of the story being that Jesus isn’t here for God to heal us directly. So God uses people to work through and assist us. It can be anyone. But we have to be in-tuned enough to God to know when he has sent us a boat. The right boat. I wish I would have told her the story. I am afraid that she won’t come to get the insurance and the HIV drugs. Elvis said, that he will pay for the insurance and the drugs they just have to make it to the hospital. The second woman was in worst condition. She was literally on her death bed. She had full blown AIDS unlike the others who have HIV but have not progressed to AIDS. She was all bones. You can see her rib cage. She had boils all over her body which is why she said she cannot move. Her child already died earlier this year because she didn’t take the child to the doctor. I’m not sure why though. I don’t know if she has the same beliefs as the other woman. I have the least amount of confidence that she will come to the hospital. Not only because she still has not gone to the hospital even though she has been told that it is the HIV/AIDS disease that is making her sick and that killed her child, but also because it is very difficult for her to move so I don’t know how she is going to make it. The third woman looked very frightened. More so nervous when we met with her. We had to go off to the side in the front part of the community so no one would see us and question her about why she was meeting with us. I wonder about her as well.
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