Part Eight: Ghana: "I Can See Africa From My Bedroom"

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arriving to Africa at 6am

It is hard to talk about this port, so bear with me. The  pictures really tell the story. But here is a shot at words:

Driving out of the docks for the first time was one of my favorite parts of the trip. As we pulled out of the port I saw a landscape that was both familiar and astonishing. I was riveted and glued to my window just taking in the sights as they passed in the blink of an eye. One moment, a woman with an infant strapped to her back carrying 40 lbs of water on her head, the next, a goat sleeping next to a burning tree. There were train tracks covered in grass that people use as roads and countless naked children who would chase the bus, trying to sell us everything from water to q-tips. I could do nothing but silently say the word for it all over and over in my head: Ghana, Ghana, Ghana. Our hotel was a resort but by US standards it was a cheap hostel. The bed had no blanket, the shower was a faucet and a bucket and only one appliance (either the light, the fan, or the fridge –which was full of old fish-) could be on at a time. We ate dinner under the most amazing sunset I have ever seen. The sky was blood red. After dinner we went to the University and asked and answered questions and then got to listen to their choir and dance with them to drumming. I had a moment of pure joy when I was dancing in a circle of Africans. None of my usual self-consciousness was present and I felt like I was at home somehow. It was the beat of the music that really got me. It felt like it was in sync with my heartbeat and the people all were pulsing to it. I found myself chanting with them even though I did not know the words. I ended the night at a bar where we had gone to see the Superbowl. There was a huge screen set up and we got there just in time to hearing the opening song.

Shortly after arriving another girl and I needed to use the restroom, which turned out to be a trek into the trees and was actually an enclosed cement slab with a drain in the middle and hose to wash the ground with. It was too much to take so we decided to go in the woods. Just as we pulled our skirts down a car drove up 10 feet away. We tried to run away but these three men caught up with us. One of them grabbed my hand in greeting and didn’t let go for a solid 45 minutes as we talked. The other girl had gone and I was feeling uncomfortable even though the man seemed genuinely nice. I convinced him to come back to the bar with me so I could ask him questions about Ghana for my classes. After about an hour he told me that he’d fallen in love with me and that it was always been his dream to marry a white woman. He asked me if I would marry him and thinking he was mostly kidding, I laughed. He was very sober and told me that marriage in not a joke. I told him that where I come from I am too young to be married which was strange to him as most women my age here have children. I did take a moment to consider his offer before I ruled it out. He was one of the friendliest people I have met and actually seemed quite smart. Not to mention, it has always been a dream of mine to marry an African man.  I tried to let him down as easily as I could but he was insistent. He took my email and phone number and kept telling me he loved me. His friend, who was sitting near us, took that moment to show my what he had in his pocket. It was handcuffs. I decided it was time to leave. That man, Papa was the name he gave me, taught me a lot. He told me Africans look up to “white men” because they are fast and sharp. I told him that, the people I know at least, look up to Africans because they seem to have such knowledge of joy and how to live. He was genuinely surprised and thrilled to hear that. We talked about Barack Obama and mosquitoes and the differences between life here and life in the United States. Even though he made me uncomfortable in the end, I was glad to have met him. Our conversation that night will remain a highlight of my trip. 

The next day we went back to the University for more drumming and dancing and hung out with some students. All of them wanted our names, emails, and phone numbers and wanted to give us theirs. They took us to a fish market where I felt very odd. I wanted to take pictures of everything but didn’t want to take my camera out. Not only did it feel weird to be holding something the cost of which could cover them for a year, but because I didn’t want to be a tourist. I didn’t want to be that person who came to Africa to collect photos like charms for a charm bracelet. I wanted to be here to honor them by being as engaged as possible. They live so in the moment, day to day, that it is hard to not be fully present. One woman got mad at me when I wouldn’t buy her fish, and I had to tell another women ‘no’ when she asked if her baby could have my water. That encounter still haunts me. A smile in any person’s direction was enough to start a conversation, though the people in this market mostly spoke Twi. I again found myself dancing to a rhythm that I suddenly have with a group of women cheering me on, laughing and clapping. I thanked them with my one Twi word “med-ahh-say.” After lunch we got to meet an important political figure and I was chosen to thank him on behalf of the students. The ride back was long, the buses have no air-conditioning and I was squished up front next to a large lady. We talked the whole way back. She is a counselor at a school in Winneba and I asked her everything I could think of about Ghana. I learned a great deal from her too. I learned that in Ghanaian culture the men give birth, not the women. There was no arguing with her about that. The men name the children, although sometimes they name them after the mother. Adultery is abundant, and suicide rates are high. I thought about what we learned in class, that in Africa there is one psychologist for every 3000 people, even in the populous places. The communities are small, and all day from sun-up to bedtime is spent working. I saw people sleeping on the ground or in chairs outside their shops by the road. All of the shops sell the same things; I don’t know how anyone makes money. The shops have the funniest names too. Things like “Jesus is Lord Barber Shop” and “God is Real Grocery Store.” 

I felt a lot like I was in a fish tank this week. We really stand out. The big tour busses don’t help, although they do protect us from being pulled out of windows, which we encountered on the local busses. People literally stop what they are doing as we pass and stare at us and often smile and wave. Some people however, glare at us, and I feel like I am being judged down to the depths of my soul. When they are not trying to sell you things, Ghanaian people are the nicest people I have ever encountered. After being in Brazil, where you are literally chased by people trying to sell things to “rich Americans” Ghanaians were a breath of fresh air. After being off the ship for 5 minutes, Ilana and I were approached by a man from his roadside stand. “Hello sisters!” he said. “We don’t have any money.” We replied automatically. “Who said anything about money?” He said, “Welcome to Ghana!” He proceeded to insist that I take one of his key chains for free, saying we would meet again and I could pay him then. I argued my best because I knew I wouldn’t be back but I did end up going home with the keychain. People on the street stop you to ask your name and usually want to give you their email addresses. They do the thing where they say, “You are from the US? I have a cousin in Milwaukee, do you know her?” They can also be very manipulative. They know who we are and expect money from us, either in exchange for merchandise or otherwise. Some of them ask your name, and then a day later call out to you and show you the shell they have painted with your name on it and tell you can have it for a small price. Our inter-port student told us not to buy anything at full price. Usually try to get it 75% lower. I had a hard time with that. I don’t know what things are worth and I really don’t want to underpay. It’s hard to do conversions in your head so I usually end up overpaying but at the end of the day, they do need the money.

me and the chief elders

an african child took this one

Our second day in port I went to visit a village and participated in a naming ceremony where they gave me an African name. It is Yaa Mansa.  It was a lot like a baptism and I got a certificate to keep. There was a little girl no more than 2 walking around collecting the cups we were drinking water out of. I had lost mine so I gave her my world keychain from my backpack instead. I saw her some hours later. She was still holding it. Being in that village was another major highlight. We met the chief and visited a school. There was already a group from SAS that had been there overnight and they were teaching classes. The kids were incredible. The village is made up of clay huts and there is no running water. There are maybe 200 children running around on the schoolyard, some can afford uniforms, others cannot. They were so curious about us and not at all shy. They would come up and touch us and climb on us and ask us for food and water and the clothes off our back. One girl asked my friend for her bra. I gave them my Captain Crunch, which was maybe a mistake because they fought like crazy over it. Seeing the SAS students interact with them was amazing. They were dancing with them, holding them, giving them cameras to play with, drawing them maps of the United States on the chalkboards, playing handclapping games etc. It was nearly impossible to leave them. They were so eager to play with us and they chased our bus out of their village waving and jumping. We drove 10 minutes to a resort for lunch where they had a spread that looked like a wedding reception. It was a difficult transition, all I could think about was taking the food back to the village and how happy the kids would be to have it. 

basketball hoop

elmina slave castle

The following day I had off so I went with a group of people to see the castles and slave dungeons, which I’d heard, were not to miss. We took a local bus there, which was an experience in and of itself. We were solicited the whole way and even when we closed the windows they opened them from the outside to try and sell us stuff, including transportation. The bus driver then tried to charge us extra for the air conditioning, which wasn’t even on. The dungeons were horrifying. They take you down a rocky path in the darkness to the cells and turn off the lights and teach you about the slave trade and the lives of the captives. It wasn’t like being in the castles in Europe. These are authentic to the point where you can feel the suffering. One of the girls I was with broke down and ran out to throw up. We walked through the Door of No Return, which now leads to a fishing beach, and then got to return though it. The most interesting thing I learned is that Africans don’t blame the whites any more than they blame themselves. It was Africans who were rounding up each other and selling them to the buyers, so they have to heal from it just as much as we do. It was especially difficult for me to see the images of the ships the slaves were transported on. They were so crowded and viewed next to our luxury ship my mind was boggled. It was especially eerie because the trip that we had just made from Brazil was literally the reverse “Atlantic crossing.” To unwind we sat on the rocks by the beach and looked at the castle from the outside. 

this is also Ghana

what is on the other side of the door of no return now

For our last day I had signed up for a Drumming and Dace Workshop. We saw some amazing performances by dancers, drummers, acrobats and contortionists and then after lunch we got to learn songs and dances. The drumming came naturally to me; the dancing was harder but fun. All the people from the street stopped to watch us in the courtyard and after school hours a group of kids joined us. The children are definitely my favorite part of Ghana. 

My overall experience is hard to describe. Before coming here I thought about Africa a lot and I have always wanted to visit. I went up to the front of the 8^th deck the morning we arrived to see the sunrise over the continent as we pulled into port. As soon as the Gold Coast came into view I was overwhelmingly happy. I was worried that my experience would be something less than my expectations. It wasn’t, it was so much more, but at the end of some of the greatest days of my life, I felt a sadness that I could not shake. I had a long deep talk with Jason about it and he said something very interesting. He said that our job here is just to Feel. We are not expected to come up with answers to the problems we encounter like world poverty and we are not responsible to learn every aspect of the cultures we try to participate in. He said that years down the line our life choices will reflect what we saw on this trip and how it made us feel, and he and I wondered together if that is enough.

the storm that we left right before it arrived

jason and i after castles

Part Six: A Philosophy Minute

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Some Random Thoughts…

By the way, I know 6 comes before 7, so don't worry.

Anyway, every day we have a "Geology Minute" where we spend the first part of class talking about where in the world we are and what that means in relation to everything else. Ill spare you the science and leave you with the few thoughts I've collected from being at sea for the past week. Enjoy my "philosophy minute":

Yesterday I sitting out in the sun and said to Alec, “I really wish I had my sunglasses, I should go get them. They’re just so far away!” Alec said, “You know what’s really far away? Land.” We then got to talking about how the closest land to us, is actually beneath us. We are literally thousands of miles from any continent, which isn’t freaking me out as much as it could be.

My list of places I want to visit keeps getting longer instead of shorter. The other day I was walking down the stairs and I thought to myself, “I want to see Croatia.” The ship goes there and many other amazing places on its other trips and I was trying to figure out how I could come back for another go round.

I realized the other day that within 6 months time I have traveled to both the highest and lowest places on Earth. When I was in Israel we went to the Dead Sea, which is the farthest from the sun a person can be. Even though I haven’t climbed any tall mountains our trip down the Amazon was literally right along the equator, the part of the Earth that sticks out the farthest towards the sun. Pretty weird.

crossing 0/0 the prime meridian

Last night we broke up into small groups to discuss our Brazil experience. It was wild hearing about some of the situations other people found themselves in. It was inspirational, it made me want to take more risks and spend more nights away from the ship. One boy found himself barefoot and shirtless walking through the pitch-black amazon at night for hours to deliver food with a guide who had only been employed for a week. His group slept in hammocks up a tree and monkeys stole from them. We discussed how the way children live here would probably be considered illegal in the US. The kids are often pulled out of school (the schools are a 2.5 hour boat trip away by the way) to work 8 hours a day at home. They carry heavy buckets of water and work with knives and go hunting. Here, not only is that not considered child labor, but it is necessary for survival. The families need every set of hands they can get. One group of SASers visited a village that had never had foreign visitors before. Ever. Those Americans were the first that had ever gone there. How crazy is that? Many of the places we visited, including the village I want to after dolphins, just recently got electricity. It’s not all good. The leisure time the men have from not needing to fish every day because they have refrigerators is spent drinking. Technology is bringing problems even as it solves them.

don't we look alike? this is ana, my friend from venezuela

One of the most surprising things about Brazil was how dirty it was, and the norm seemed to be to drop trash on the street instead of into trashcans. I watched at the end of the day how the street cleaners would sweep the piles of trash into the gutter, which presumably leads to the river. As we pulled away from the dock, we could see an enormous amount of trash floating in the water. During our discussion we talked about how “green living” is a luxury of the privileged. Taking care of the environment is low on the list of problems in South America. It doesn’t matter that they live on one of the most ecologically important places on Earth, to them other things must take precedence. They do not see the link between clean water and health, maybe if they did that would motivate them to think about drinking from a bottle instead of from the river that is also their toilet.

Every night that I can I go to sign language class on the smokers deck after dinner. Terril, the interpreter, holds very informal classes there every night we are at sea. A group of us stand around with her and Cherie, the deaf student, and try to learn words and sentences in sign language while simultaneously try to avoid being dive bombed by the huge beetles that live there. They fly into our clothes and our hair and make loud buzzing sounds when they are stuck. Yesterday was Cherie’s birthday and I proudly “sang” to her in ASL.

cherie and tarril

Funny story, everyday there are three sets of announcements that happen. One in the morning, one at lunch, and one at dinner that remind us to take our malaria pills, get our forms in, tell us what is going on that day etc…we call the giver of these announcements “the voice.” Today, the voice was replaced by the captain who was giving instructions to the crew who were running an evacuation drill. The captain has a fabulously classic British accent. He said, “Will all crew please simulate the evacuation of passengers to their muster stations. Please report in when all of your passengers are mustered.” The whole ship starting laughing. I’m still laughing.

Now that it is calm, I’m finally appreciating the beauty of the ocean. At dinner last night, we saw schools of flying fish. Huge schools of several hundred foot-long silver fish jumping around on the top of the water in unison. That water too, at certain times of the day from certain angles, looks silver. It’s like a giant pot of sloshing liquid metal. After the Amazon our water de-salinizer/purifier thing broke, and we had two days of water that tasted like chlorinated salt liquid. It was so bad I couldn’t even brush my teeth. Its back to normal now but my water bottle still smells.

I learned that with the invention of doors, spousal and child abuse was born. Before then, no one was surreptitiously violent because everyone else in the community would know about it and intervene. With the invention of doors came the invention of privacy. I’m not sure if it’s categorically true, but it’s interesting to think about.

The Voice called a huge group of people down to the medical clinic the other day because it turns out that one of the monkeys they played with in Brazil (and got bitten and scratched by) had rabies. I was talking to Sarah about the ship and how there must be a jail somewhere. Sarah said, “There IS a jail, there is also a morgue.”

I’m finding that I like best the things that upset me. I feel like I want to see the worst parts of the places we are going. I want to go to the red light districts, I want to tour the favelas, I want to get lost and get into trouble and be scared. I want to have stories to tell, I want my life to change every day. I feel completely comfortable with controversy. I like it when classes or movies make me angry, any and everything else just feels like a waste of time.  

I spend a lot of time looking at the water and thinking. I do my homework next to this floor to ceiling window and watch the horizon rise and fall. I found myself thinking about what it must have been like to be sailing out with no destination in mind, just looking for new land, not even knowing if it exists. And I think about what it would be like to be in steerage for weeks on end on a ship with no stabilizers and how I’m here because of those voyages. I think about how excited I get when we see land or reach a port and how magnified that would be if it were the statue of liberty on the horizon.

A professor the other day called what we are doing on this trip “poverty tourism.” This particular professor has traveled to over 100 countries and taken groups of students all around the world. He gave us some advice, but made it seem as though he wasn’t. He said, “Although I appreciate the doctor’s warning on foods to avoid, I hope that when you get off the boat in San Diego you have more to say than ‘I didn’t get sick.’”

Part Seven: Friendly Competition: B-A-L, T-I-C Baltic, Baltic, Baltic Sea!!!

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The ship, which seemed like an enormous and impossible maze the first few days, has condensed down to a familiar city. We simulate reality. We simulate “going out to eat,” “shopping,” “going to the movies.” Most recently we simulated “physical competition.”

Today was the “Sea Olympics,” a half-day event that we spent “many minutes” preparing for, to quote our opening ceremonies speaker, our much beloved Dr. Bill. The events were things like basketball and volleyball also relays of many kinds, synchronized swimming, crab soccer, tug-o-war, and half a dozen others. We were split up by “seas,” which is the equivalent of the name of a dorm. Mine is called the Baltic Sea, and our next-door neighbors are the Caribbean and the Aegean. We ended up in third place overall, which we were very pleased with as there were 10 groups competing. The faculty and staff group was called the “Lunacy” which I thought was pretty funny. In years past they have been called the “Dead Sea.” My voice is gone from screaming chants all day but I couldn’t be happier. We had a barbeque up on the pool deck to celebrate. The winners (the Red Sea) get to disembark in San Diego first. We will disembark third.

our banner

opening ceremonies

syncro

we won

We just passed the 3-week mark and the closest land to us right now is Liberia. See you after Africa!

Part Five: Brazil: As Close to the Sun as We Will Ever Get

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Last night at pre-port we got the you-know-what scared out of us. Brazil is apparently a terrifying place. The doctors told us about parasites like tapeworms and all other sorts of stuff that enters through your skin or that you get from drinking water. On top of that, the expert slipped up and said, “when you get help up at knife point – I mean IF you get held up!” Ill spare you the statistics. I woke up this morning to find myself yet again in a strange and unfamiliar place. Its summer here and hot and humid. The sky is gray and it looks like rain. Large groups of people are headed off to the airport for their trip to Rio.

Brazil is the only place in the world where the poor live above the rich. They live in Faveleas, which are communities built willy nilly into the hill sides. They have spectacular views, but going into them is literally like entering a war zone. I saw a few favelas this week. From a distance, they are gorgeous. They look like brightly colored doll houses stacked up above the river. Upon closer inspection, it is clear that they are the slums. The entrance to the community is heavily guarded and tours through them have been known to be held for ransom. Many houses are on stilts and look unstable; some houses are missing walls.

favela

Our first day in the city I took a 5-hour walking tour with a guy and girl from the ship that I didn’t know. We went to the street market and found a little park and saw some weird stuff like a guy cooking a fish the size of a pillowcase on a grill on the street. Apparently the group that went out on the jungle tour saw even weirder stuff. They ate bug larvae and swung from vines and also ate fried piranha on a stick. The heat turns 8 hours of energy into 4 hours pretty fast so I took a nap on the deck in the afternoon.

Dominica spoiled us. No one here speaks English. If you are lucky, you can go into a hotel and try your best to remember your Spanish. It’s such a helpless feeling to be standing there with someone and not be able to talk to them. I ordered a hot dog from a street vender and tried to communicate that I wanted it plain. It took a crazy long time and at the end of the exchange I got really weird looks from the vendor and I knew she was talking to her friend about me because they kept staring, but I had no idea what they were saying. Portuguese is close enough to Spanish to be annoyingly just out of reach, but at the same time, it won’t really get you anywhere.

lots of trash

I know of four separate people who were robbed in broad daylight our first day. Three of them had their cameras cut off their wrists and didn’t even notice. One girl just plain old had it pulled out of her hand. At night in the bars people were pulling hands out their pockets every 15 minutes and I kept getting the feeling as I was walking around downtown that I was being followed a little too closely. I kept stepping over to the side of road and letting people pass me. Its not just the men, the women go for pockets and bags just as often.

I went out in a riverboat on the Rio Negro (or the “Negro River” and I horrifyingly heard someone call it yesterday) at night to find alligators. They are actually camions, there are no alligators in the Amazon, but they look just like them. We took a motorboat way out into the darkness. There was no moon and the stars were spectacular.  From there we got into these little river boats that left us inches above the black water. We were so close to it that a fish actually flopped into the bottom of our boat. It was pretty big too, bigger than my water bottle. Our guide caught a camion with his bare hands and brought it to the center of the boat for us all to see. We each got to hold it, it was pretty calm and then they showed us their double eyelids, teeth, and how they fall asleep if turned upside down. It was a baby and we named it Steven. At first it was very cool but by the end of the night I was feeling so sorry for the animal that I didn’t want to be around it as it was passed around anymore. I kept thinking about what we had just learned in psych, that animals feel stress, and ours was just a baby.

me and an "alligator"

The next day was dolphin day. It was a three hour boat ride to place, which none of us knew, so it felt like it took a year to get there. When we did get there, we were so sketched out by the facility that I didn’t want to take my shoes off let alone get in the water. All it was was a floating dock with a shack on it and a bunch of shirtless Brazilians with buckets of dead fish. The water was crawling with bugs, including spiders, and all I could think about were the snakes that I know are in there too. Not to mention the water is black and when your legs go into it, you can’t see them. I’m proud to say that I did get in, which was the right choice because the experience was great. The dolphins are truly wild, they are attracted by the bloody fish that the guides dangle in the water. Unlike the dolphins from Nassau, these guys are hideous. They are pink and gray with fat heads and sharp noses and tiny, tiny eyes. We could feel them brushing by our legs and when they were jumping up to get the fish we could stroke them. They did a lot of thrashing around and were actually pretty scary. While we were in the water, the guides who spoke English thought it would be a good idea to tell us horror stories of the people who have had fish and worms enter their skin or swim inside them from this river. “Not to worry,” they told us, “it only happens about once a year.”

After our time in the water we got back in the boats and went to this nearby island community that just three weeks ago got electricity. It was “fixed up” by the Brazilian version of Extreme Makeover Home Edition and all of the houses were all freshly painted in bright colors. The population of the community: 40 persons. They had food prepared for us, some of the best fish I have ever eaten, and then we got a tour of the town. There was this adorable little girl that followed us around and some of us played with her while the others learned how to get rubber off of a rubber tree.

rio negro

The day after dolphin day I got lost going to the Opera House, which was worth seeing. It looks like it was taken out of France and plopped down in Manaus. The design on the inside was inspired by the Eiffel Tower. Our tour corresponded with a rehearsal so we got to see a bit of the show in progress. We had to put on these cloth booties over our shoes to walk on the floor of the display rooms. After the Opera, I took two dance classes: Brazilian Dance Fusion and African Tribal Dance. Both were great but the latter was the best. The woman who took us to the studio is going to be sailing with us to Ghana. She is excellent. She told us all about how dance is a necessary part of life and how every morning she wakes up happy just because she is alive. She has been to Haiti every three months since the earthquake to do dance with the children to help them cope. She studied dance as a survival mechanism and all throughout our classes she kept reminding us that it was supposed to be therapeutic. I wish I had more of the classes on tape. Parts of it are recorded, but not the best parts. My dance partner for Samba was a really attractive Brazilian man, but unfortunately I don’t think I have documentation of that. After dance I went out on a boat that a couple of SASers had rented for the night. It was essentially a house party on the boat but dancing was much more difficult because the boat was moving and slanted. Props to the girls in heels.

opera house

I’m not sure what I think of Brazil. I can definitely appreciate it for what it is, but I’m not sure I would want to come back. Its feels a little unsafe and its hotter and dirtier than any place I have ever seen. It has its own kind of beauty and I met a bunch of very nice people, but I didn’t really connect with it. Maybe it was the language barrier but I don’t think so. I enjoyed the time I spent out of the city the most, and by that I mean my time on the river. The dolphin experience was one of the wildest things I have ever done, getting in that water felt like enough thrill to last the whole trip and just breathing the air and knowing that it is coming from the trees of the rainforest, the lungs of the Earth, is wild in itself.