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/fiancĂ© online
• You've never met face to face
• Your correspondent professed love at warp speed
• Your friend/fiancĂ© 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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4 comments:

  1. You've said a lot here. and I can see a lot of "processing" going on as you spill your thoughts...i do not usually like telling people how to see things...what i do is i share with people how i see things...or just ram it down throats when I'm pissed off. your experiences are typical...in Ghana...I'll advise don't have good expectations they will surely be dashed. when you think: oooo i'm doing 100% good deeds and therefore people must respond with their natural 100% or even 20% appreciation and respect...that is exactly when you get the worst treatment of your life (as you've shared). The trick is to always expect the worst and then you are pleasantly surprised! But me I'm a realist. I never deceive myself and i always trust what my common sense tells me. You see Melissa,in Ghana remember this proverb: DON'T EXPECT THE LION NOT TO EAT YOU JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE A VEGETARIAN. Socially Ghanaians, if you meet us the good ones (:o))are really the friendliest and kindest and most generous people you will ever encounter. Some foreigners living here will tell you. But in the work world that's where THE EVIL LIES. GHANA'S WORK WORLD IS ALL ABOUT TAKING ADVANTAGE OF OTHERS. Emplyers take full advantage of employees and employees will cut up an employer at the least opportunity. Two forces generate this: POVERTY AND GREED from both the rich and the poor....and that is when people become callous and just seek to take advantage. My principle in Ghana is this i am friendly to those who are friendly and respectful to me and unfriendly and disrespectful to those who are not. I generally don't give a whoot how anyone sees me. I Live my life and i am happy. the past has had its effect on us Ghanaians, from identity crisis to low self esteem, to greed, to corruption, to education, to development to refinement, to having heart and soul. it's one complex big mix. you can never figure ghana out by just one experience. i am ghanaian. i have lived here all my life...travelling the world now and then...and i know....Ghana is Ghana. You can't figure it out; but you either love it passionately (like i do) or you hate it with equal passion or you remain eternally confused! All the things you've shared on this blog are true....BUT that is not the whole story Melissa. Ghana is bigger than this. Looking at your narration, you entered our world (which you brand 3rd world) like a (what i will call) 1st world person and I think you came through the opportunist crowd. That's the complexity of Ghana...you don't get it all in a year or even two...i've lived here all my life, i'm a 100% Ghanaian and I still haven't figured this wonderful country out even stranger ... everyone (both foreigners and Ghanaians, family included)wonder whether I am Ghanaian!

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  2. Fact is, nobody can place me. I see myself as a citizen of the world. i am a bit of what i like. the next time you decide to come to Ghana. get in touch with me and let's check out the other side. the side of genuine relationships, passion, warmth, heart and soul. cheers, girl!

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  3. And one more comment after a second look:you mad this statement in your write up... 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....I just want to focus on the second class citizen in a third world country bit....i can understand you holding up your dignity in stating that you will not be a second class citizen (and THAT no one should accept)... but to continue with the African self hatred by accepting the West's third world branding of Ghana(which could be you source of origin when traced)out of frustration is just like upholding your dignity by insulting yourself. I have heard white foreigners make this statement...see they insult us because they have always seen us as below them...no matter what...but when African Americans take this up...then the picture of hypocrisy it paints just make me sick. At the core...many African Americans have no respect for us Africans after they enter our environment and get to know us. And it's not because we also have bad people like every race in this world and poverty has made us callous and insensitive...it's because African Americans have decided it is their world view and no other...and THIS is my frustration with all the African Americans I have met...in addition to this fact: drop THE BLAME GAME...it does not solve any problem.

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  4. ok... the first post I read..really took me aback. On one hand because of it's raw unfiltered honesty.. I wanted to commiserate. .

    The further as I read.. I started to be transported back to the Caribbean where I am from ... I have lived most of my life here in the U.S and going back home , gives me somewhat of an outsider's perspective...and I am treated likewise no matter how much I "keep it real" or speak with what at least sounds to me like Patoi. That being said.. you have to maintain who you are at all times it is what matters ultimately. Wearing your heart on your sleeve makes you a target.. ANYWHERE.

    It is even more frustrating, as you found out, to have people see you as a "meal ticket" from the moment you arrive. I too have had to learned that poverty, as Ghandi put it .. "is the worst form of violence" . It is an ongoing violence that spills over unto anyone that comes within its reach... I will reflect more on what you've written down. There was soooo much there.. you've got a pandora's box on your hand..or as they put it.. you've been down the rabbit hole.

    I guess i'll have to work through the blog over the course of the next week or so maybe start at the beginning and see how it evolves.

    I like what you said.. "people have to be accountable". Honestly the African diapora doesn't time to continue this low level of behavior... yet it is not something that will be resolved over time or even in our own life time. That is the most difficult part but there were seeds sown centuries ago that have led our people to this point right now.. both good and bad.

    I have often reflected on the fact that "we" have been doing this even before slavery and colonialism. I remember a quote Van sertima said regarding africa being a "Fractured/shattered diamond" ..

    anyway mind is buzzing.. thanks for sharing.

    look forward to reading the rest of your blog. .. wish I had known about it earlier.
    http://www.columbuscaribbean.net
    "Everything Caribbean here and Beyond"

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