My Time in Ghana

Hi family and friends!

My year of traveling has kept me very busy. I am only now processing what happened to me over the summer.

As most of you know I spent 3 weeks in Ghana, Africa during August. I attended a University of Massachusetts abroad class to study Ewe dancing and drumming. My whole trip was spent exploring Ghana's coastline, traveling from its boarder point with Togo all the way to its border with Cote-d'Ivoire. On the first day, we flew in Accra, Ghana's capital city. We recovered at a hotel next to the ocean and near Accra's famous Arts District, which is really a HUGE open area market where you can buy any craft, art piece or trinket you could imagine.

We as a group started to try all the Ghanaian food we could. Ghanaians like a large starch portion and an equally large sauce/stew portion as a meal. The starches ranged from steamed cassava to fried plantains to banku. Banku is not for the American faint of heart. It looks and feels like flour-colored play-dough and tastes like library paste. Banku is served with fish (like tilapia) or stew (like okra stew). Okra stew is also not for the faint of heart. It is goo-y and the liquid strings off your spoon after each bite. GROSS! My favorite meal was fried plantains (called kelewele) and curried black-eyed peas. I also loved fresh pineapple, which was usually white, not yellow. The group's favorite food was ice cream in a bag. Many things are bagged (in order to save space, since trash is just thrown on the ground), like water and ice cream. You just bite the corner off and suck out the contents.

After a few days in Accra, we were picked up in a huge van and carted off to Kopeyia, the village where we would be studying. Accra is the the center of Ghana's coastline; Kopeyia is all the way to the right, on the Togo boarder. At the village we spent hours practicing and "experiencing village life". We studied at the Dagbe Cultural Center. We spent 2 hours dancing in the morning, had a 2 hour break, then went into a 2 hour drum class. I also took Djembe lessons with a few other UMass students and our teacher's name was Odarte. We had no running water (the showers and outdoor toilets ran off of rain water and we washed our hands in a bucket). You cannot drink the water and it's a tropical climate so I was drinking close to 5 liters per day. The whole trip I had to take malaria medication. At the end of it we had a final performance of the 2 Ewe dances we had learned (Gahu and Achabecor). Because dancing and playing are not separated things to Africans, we performed both parts.

After the Dagbe center, we went to the other side of the country and stayed at the Green Turtle Lodge on the Cote-d'Ivoire boarder. Eco lodges are great ideas but in practice are really awful! Once again, no running water. But this time there was no electricity (beyond the 4 hours your solar panel gave you), and no RAID to keep the bugs away. Let's just say I've seen a lifetime's worth of cockroaches. On the drive we visited the Cape Coast (slave) Castle and Kakum National Park (a rainforest). We finished our trip going back to Accra, hanging out with the National Dance Ensemble, going to a highlife club, Bywell, and getting our handmade drums back home with us. The whole last week I was sick, first food poisoning and then I got my roommate's cold. The saving grace of the last week was the flight home. I got bumped to first class and had the stewardesses get me refills of peppermint tea the whole flight. I flew from Accra to JFK but because of a hurricane my flight to DC was canceled. So I rushed to the La Guardia airport. After 22 hours of traveling, I was picked up by my mom and dad.

I think my favorite parts of the trip were the performances. I drummed with the National Dance Ensemble. Luckily the piece we played was the same one I was learning when I was taught the Djembe at the Dagbe Center. I danced to "Take the A Train" in an Accra highlife outdoor club. I danced at a funeral near Kopeyia. I tried to dance (but mostly watched in awe) at a Ewe Vodoun shrine festival, where people had costumes and face paint on and were falling into trance. I drummed and danced 2 Ewe pieces (Gahu and Achebecor) with a bunch of other white Americans for an audience of our Ewe teachers and community members. Ghana is very different than America but enjoyable too!

Love, Ray

P.S. to Maggie: All the Coke (and the rest of the sodas) were served in glass bottles.