Day 53 and 54: Takoradi, Ghana

I woke up to the sound of drums. Really distant. It took me a while to realize that it was drums that I was hearing and that only meant one thing: we were in Ghana. 

I took my time to get ready. It was going to take a while for us to clear customs. I had a field program at 1 o'clock and by the time the ship cleared it wouldn’t be worth getting off and doing anything before I would have to come back to the ship. So I had a leisurely morning where I just got to listen to the various 'bing-bong' announcements about groups leaving and passports. 

By the time the ship cleared I was deep in The Dark Knight Rises. I had just gotten it from someone and randomly decided to watch it. I brought it with me up to lunch and enjoyed the movie while eating. 

At 12:45 I got off the ship and met at the bus for the Drumming and Dance workshop.  

I forgot to tell you in my last blog but before the logistical pre-port I went to a explorers seminar that was also a drumming workshop. It was put on by the music teacher on the ship and it was a lot of fun. 

I was really glad that I went to it because this drumming and dance workshop was less of a workshop and more of a jam session. They taught us the rhythms but they didn’t really teach us the technique. 

But here is some of what I learned: 

There are three different ways to hit the drum: tone, base and mute. Tone is where you hit the edge of the drum with your fingers and bounce back off. Base is where you hit the middle of the drum with your whole hand and bounce back off. The harder you hit the drum in base the softer it will be. And mute is where you hit the drum anywhere and don't bounce back off. 

When you play a piece on the drums there is always a bell involved as well. Ironically, it is the bell that keeps the beat. And it always used the same beat, which is three slow tones followed by two quick ones. Tone, tone, tone, tone-tone. 

There are three different drum parts that are played, two supporting and one lead. I am not going to try to explain to you what they sound like because that would be complicated. But they work in unison to make the melody, with some fitting into the silence of others. 

Wow, explaining drumming in writing is hard. Hopefully you understood that. 

The end result is awesome, especially if you can play it quickly like the guys could. The kind of music we were playing was Kpanlogo. The k is silent. It is specific to the tribe of that area. 

Ghana is made up of many different tribes and villages, most of which broke off from a town at one point or another. Their official language is English but there are 46 different African languages and dialects spoken throughout Ghana. 

What the drumming and dance workshop taught me is that Ghana is very informal. Their dances were choreographed but didn’t really have an ending. They just stopped when they felt like being done. And the workshop was held right off the beach. The way I pictured it was indoors in a hall with some structure. Nope. We were outside under a thatched roof hut with no sides and people would come and go. People on the beach would come up and watch us and there were other people there doing other, completely unrelated things. 

They taught us how to play and we rotated playing the different parts. Then another guy taught us some simple dance moves and we did them as the drummers played. Then we all soloed in the circle. Why do I always have to go first during these things? Serious Morocco flashbacks. 

Actually, I was having Morocco flashbacks the whole time. The drumming and dance that we participated in the first night in Ouarzazate was so amazing that I just kept comparing this to that. And they are completely incomparable things. But because I was comparing them I was completely unimpressed by this experience. And I really wanted to buy the drum that I had learned to drum on but I didn’t have any money. And they were really expensive. They had SAS carved into the side though, and it came with a cool case, and I had played on it so I was really disappointed. 

There were other guys all around our hut that were selling things. Again, I didn’t have any money, so that was upsetting. But I knew that there would be other opportunities to buy things. 

It was then that I was hit on. By two different guys. The one guy told me that I was extremely beautiful and that he would like to know me better. He kept asking when I was coming back to Ghana. He kept asking for my contact information or my Facebook. I told them that they could find us all through Semester At Sea on Facebook. Fake emails are my new favorite thing. And he gave me his contact information, which I now look at and laugh. 

And right after that guy another one tried the same thing on me. He even brushed my hair back, talk about uncomfortable. I told him that his friend had my "contact" information. 

I wasn't all that sad to leave that beach. I was unimpressed by the workshop, had no drum to show for myself, and got weirdly hit on. 

When we got back to the port I decided to look at the market that had been set up right by the ship. Oh, they were ready for us. It was a huge market, and they all followed us to Tema. At least they were smart and knew where the business was.

They had some cool stuff. Most of which they passed off as having made themselves; such a lie. But it was cool stuff and would be great souvenirs. They loved to try anything to get you into their shop. Mostly they would just stand in front of you in an attempt to redirect your path into their tent. It was a good tactic. 

The first thing I bought were these bracelets that are made out of string. They can personalize them with your name. The guys name was Cappuccino, like the drink. He agreed to make me four bracelets for 15 cedi, which is about 7 dollars. He had the infamous Ghana pants hanging in his tent so while he was making the bracelets I looked at them. I ended up buying 6 pairs, because they make great gifts (get ready friends), and then I couldn’t leave the shop. They just kept coming up to me. I was holding money in my hand in preparation to pay Cappuccino, when Steven came up to me with gold bracelets. Actually, he didn’t immediately push his merchandise in my face. He walked up to me and asked if he could ask me a question. I said yes and he said, "Why do you have….one, two, three, four, five, earrings in your ear. They are very beautiful, but why?" I replied that I thought they were beautiful too. 

Then he wouldn’t leave me alone, he kept telling me that I was the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. He asked what we did on the ship and I told him it was school. He told me about he is going to school to be a lawyer, who knows if that is true, but awesome for him. I told him the countries we went to. And he just kept telling me I was beautiful. Eventually he brought the bracelets into it. They were gold bangles that were inscribed with different symbols. He told me what each of the symbols meant and he put one on my wrist. I told him that I didn’t have any more money to buy anything. He then told me he wanted to take me out. I told him I didn’t have any time, I had a full schedule. He said that it didn’t sound like I was doing anything tonight and I said that I had to do homework. He said he understood that but that he only needed three hours to take me out. 

It was then that he told me something about his crotch that I really didn’t need to know. It was at that point that I said, "Ok, you're done." And went around him to talk to Cappuccino about the money I still needed to pay him. 

In the middle of all of that another guy came up to me and tried to sell me a keychain. I told him I didn’t have anymore money and he told me to just keep it and then walked away. Ok, sure. 

As I tried to pay Cappuccino, Steven still wouldn’t leave me alone. He apologized for the inappropriate comment and still kept telling me that I was beautiful. I again told him that I didn’t have any money. He said that it was ok, that I could keep it. Yeah, right. What's the catch. Ah right, my contact information. Fake email, you are awesome. 

So I got a free keychain and a free gold bracelet all for being female and for making pretty good conversation with these boys. I had fun, it was the highlight of my day. I felt so much better bartering here than I did in Morocco. 

The rest of my evening was really chill. I immediately showered. Ghana is hot, I have never sweat so much in my life. I finished The Dark Knight Rises while eating dinner and then read my book until 9:00. 

At 9:00 Shaleen met me in the piano lounge and taught me how to play the guitar! Or, started teaching me how to play the guitar. Guitar hurts. The tips of my fingers were sore for a few days. He taught me a bunch for cords: C, A minor, D, E minor, and E major. I am bad at isolating the strings. The pads of my fingers hit the other strings slightly and make them sound awful. 

Meh. 

Shaleen was on the ship because he had dock time and eventually a bunch of other people who had dock time joined us in the piano lounge and I went to get Cards Against Humanity. 

I couldn’t believe people were actually going out in Ghana. That sounded like a terrible idea. I got hit on so much in the day time that I didn’t know what would happen to me if I tried to walk around at night. People are crazy. I curled up on the ship and settled in. 

We played cards for a while but eventually people departed to go to bed. I had a early field program in the morning, so I followed suit quickly. 

I had to meet at the bus at 7:45 for my village visit. The village we were going to was called Atonkwa. When we got there we all piled off the bus and went into a large cement building. There the elders were waiting for us. We greeted the two men sitting there with handshakes. They were wearing robes that exposed one shoulder and were wrapped elegantly around them. We then took our seats among the large selection of plastic chairs. As we were taking our seats a lot more people joined us. More men in robes joined them. One of them was holding as staff with a hand in a fist sticking out of the top of it. Some women and children were there as well. There were more plastic chairs set up on the opposite side of the room from where we were sitting. A lot of people sat there, looking at us just as much as we were looking at them. 

It was fairly loud in the room, on one end some more men in robes were playing the drums as we were coming. Eventually some young boys came in and danced to the drumming. And my danced I mean more acrobatics and break dancing. On a concrete floor. A older boy joined them and they did acrobatics together. This included flips and the younger boys standing on his shoulders. On a concrete floor. 

When they finished, which was very anticlimactic and unplanned, just like I mentioned before, one of the elders spoke to us. He pulled a bottle out of a box, opened it, and poured the liquid onto the cement floor periodically as he spoke. It was a prayer welcoming us to the village, the liquid was gin.  

Gin is used to let a person know the truths. It is used in the naming ceremony and other ceremonies. They will give children gin mixed with water to symbolize being able to distinguish what is true and what is not. 

They then gave us bottles of water. It is traditional in Ghana to give water as a gift when someone visits your home. You should never reject water if it is offered to you. 

They then did the naming ceremony on one person. We weren't going to be able to have it done on all of us because it would take to much time. This is what I wrote in my journal as it was happening: 

'It seems they collectively chant the name while one guy feeds you gin with a leaf. Or water with a leaf? And you can keep the leaf.'

I think they normally use gin but they didn’t give it to us. We got water. I feel like Dave, the one who actually had it done, was fed gin with the leaf because they gave him water to drink after. And coke. We drank coke too. 

They passed out cups and we poured some water into it. We then drank it at the same time. Then they came around and gave us a little coke and we drank that collectively as well. And we were given leafs. But we didn’t use them to feed ourselves water. 

They then passed out certificates with our names on them. They are based off of the day of the week that we were born on. There are different ones for male and female but besides that everyone had the same name. Except the pre-fix. That is determined differently. I know that the pre-fix Nee means that you are from royalty. My name is Ekua Conduaba. So Conduaba is female for Wednesday. And I don't know what the significance of Ekua is. 

After our naming "ceremony" we were supposed to walk to the school to play with the kids. But while we were sitting there it started to rain. And by rain I mean monsoon. We tired to wait it out and as we sat there the three boys came out again and did more random dancing. 

I got really antsy sitting there. The naming ceremony was really unfulfilling. It was done with soda and they didn’t even tell us what our names meant. We hadn't seen any of the village and watched random boys so random acrobatics while we sat there. 

You know, I did have a thought while I was sitting there watching these random boys do acrobatics. I thought about what they must have done to prepare for us coming. I thought about what my friends and I, or my coworkers and I get like when we are preparing for an event. Those boys must have been really excited. Maybe they were chosen to perform. They probably worked really hard on their dances and stunts. They had costumes and face paint. I wonder how long they talked about what they were going to wear and do. There were tons of people from the village gathered around to watch. I wonder how long they anticipated our visit. 

We ended up having to cut out the visit to the school. It was an executive decision made by our trip liaison because getting there required walking up a hill that someone had already fell down. 

That was disappointed. We didn’t end up seeing any of the village. We just ran back to the bus, which resulted in being drenched, and headed to lunch. By the time we got to lunch it had stopped raining, go figure. Driving on the roads around the village was interesting because they were all dirt roads, which come with a lot of pot holes, and then it became muddy. 

I did learn somethings about Chiefs from our tour guide on the bus ride to lunch. Most villages broke off from towns at one point or another in the past. The chiefs were the men who were in charge during the split. People now become chiefs if they are a descendant from the current chief. But they don't necessarily go in order of the first born to the last born. They look for specific qualities in the people that become chiefs. So just because you are related doesn't mean you will be chief. Apparently chiefs like to steal other peoples women. They used to have more than one wife but that trend has started to fade. Each village has a queen mother and a chief but they are not married, they just work together. They may even be from different families. This is so that they have a balance of power. Now a days chiefs are highly educated. 

The place we ate lunch was a weird contrast. As we were driving there we were passing some pretty crusty looking places and we started to grow concerned about where our food was going to be cooked. But then we made a few turns and were all of a sudden at this beautiful beach resort. Coconut Grove Beach Resort was the name of it. It was absolutely gorgeous compared to everything else we had seen. It was right on a very sandy beach. The place that we ate was right next to the beach under some huts. It was set up buffet style. They handed out drinks and then we went to get our food. 

There was plain shell pasta, some kind of rice, chicken, a sauce with beef in it, and what I thought were sweet potato fries. I gobbles those up, they were delicious. They weren't sweet potato fries… they were plantains. I have always been firmly against plantains for some reason. I honestly can not tell you if it was a rational reason or not. I can't remember why I never wanted to eat them. They are delicious. They taste like sweet potatoes. At least they do when they are prepared like they were there. 

I enjoyed lunch, I thought it was delicious and it was so nice to be sitting outside by the beach. Right when we were done eating Lori goes, "Oh look, there's Cody." 

What. Cody. Where? Which Cody, my Cody? That means that the overnight is here. That means Molly is here!! 

It was really weird to be in country and not be with Molly and Cody. Mostly Molly. We had been together for every country since Paris. We literally spend all of our time together. The other day Molly went to the snack bar with Amanda and after the lady said hi to Molly she turned to Amanda and said, "Lauren?" 

Yeah… we spend too much time together. 

In Ghana Molly did an overnight that Cody was also on. So they were together without me and I had three best friend withdrawals. I put sticky notes on Molly's door with random things I needed to tell her throughout the four days. 

So when Lori said that she saw Cody it just made the whole terrible day better. I ran, found Molly, and gave her the biggest hug. The resort that we were eating lunch at was the resort that they were staying at for their overnight. I talked to Molly for a long time, we had free time before we had to go back. She was only struggling a little. Mostly because she hadn't eaten in a day because she didn’t like any of the food. She told me about the canoe ride, the stilt village, and the canopy walk. 

It made me really feel like I had missed out on a lot of things. I had heard of a lot of people who had gone to the national park and gone on the canopy walks and had gone to the slave dungeons, which Molly was doing the next day. I was not very happy at that point. My experience in Ghana felt really half ass and unfulfilling. 

When we got back to the ship I didn’t do much. So little that I can't even remember what I did. We had an on ship time of 6 because we were traveling to Tema overnight. 

Oh, I remember, I went and sat in the piano lounge and read my book. I remember because around 6 someone made a 'bing-bong' announcement for some girl to come to the reception desk. About five minutes later Rita came on and said they were still looking for the girl and asked if anyone who had seen her or talked to her in the last day could come to the reception desk immediately. As soon as she said that I could feel a tension. I was sitting completely alone in the piano lounge but could feel the air thicken with anticipation and curiosity. Where was this girl? Was she ok? 

About 10 minutes later Rita came back on and said that our shipboard community was complete, everyone was on board that was supposed to be. As soon as she said that I felt the ship wide release of breath. 

It was crazy that we all felt the same thing so strongly that I could feel it sitting alone in the middle of the ship. 

I went to bed early, or tried to. I did one of those things where you go to bed early, sleep for about an hour, wake up, and then can't go back to sleep. I ended up finishing my book. It was frustrating, I was exhausted. 

Actually, I had been completely drained after returning from both of my programs and I didn’t understand why. I had done way more and was considerable more active in other countries. Ghana was exhausting. When I brought it up the next day someone said that Ghana was more emotional than other countries and you might not even realize the effect it was having on you. I completely agree with that. Seeing the way that people lived was difficult to process. 

We were supposed to be in a city, but I didn’t see any city. What I did see was trash everywhere. Literally everywhere. It was shocking and sad. But that was their norm. They were living among trash. Why didn’t anyone clean it up? How did get so bad? I guess it is just a cultural thing but I could not imagine living in such a dirty place. How did they clean anything? Even their clothes looked dirty. The cleanest clothes I saw were school uniforms. They were pristine. It was clear how much they cared about education. But everything else just had a sense of filth about it. 

And I'm just talking about the village we visited. I am talking about everywhere. Everywhere we drove past and went to, with the exception of the resort we ate lunch at, there was trash, and dirt, and goats. 

So. Many. Goats. 

I saw probably 5 dogs total. But there were hundreds and hundreds of goats. Some were wild and some had owners but they just roamed around. 

It was really hard to process what I was seeing. And I think the exhaustion came from having to come to terms with being in such a different place. And it was only going to get more interesting.