It’s the joy, though.

The first two full days in Ve-Koloenu have been an experience. Currently, I sit in my guest house without power in the majority of the guest house, which means no AC and no fan. Our matron is at her Sunday services, the sounds of which echo throughout the town, so I have no idea when power may be restored. The guest houses do not provide towels, so that would have been nice to know ahead of time, and I do not have access to hot water for showers (which is actually okay since I am always pretty hot). The majority of the people in this community are subsistence farmers, although many share their surplus with the community at the market. There is always chicken, goat, and fish at the market too. I see sheep running around everywhere, but lamb is rarely on the menu. There are no restaurants here, not even a chop bar, so the only way to eat is to nosh on street foods sitting out in the sun all day, or to be lucky enough to have someone make a meal for us. I’ve been surviving on AG1, powedered broth, and some nutrition bars I brought from the States knowing this could happen. The majority of this community also still cooks food over a fire, so the constant smell of burning wood is in the air. The homes still have dirt floors and only a few rooms, and many do not have running water or sanitation. Folks, many times children, can be seen carrying water from the local creeks in jugs upon their heads. This water is used for cooking and washing in the homes. Clothes, once cleaned, are hung out to dry. To even the most culturally aware American, the lack of modern conveniences is stunning. Most folks have phones of some kind, and many of these modest homes have electrical lines attached to them, but the phone service is 3G at best, so using the phones for more than messages, talking, and light browsing puts too much of a strain on the broadband. I know that most of my compatriots and I would struggle to find joy in this life…

And yet. Everyone here is JOYFUL. Every person we meet says “You are welcome!”, with a giant smile and an outstretched hand. Their handshakes are light and lingering, so I have had to scale back my more aggressive American handshake significantly. The language spoken here is Ewe, named for the people who speak it. The Ewe are an ancient people, my host used the term indigenous which gave me permission to do the same, who live in present-day eastern Ghana, Togo, Benin, and western Nigeria. Thanks to colonialism, they are separated by arbitrary boarders, and lingua francas (English or French), but this does not seem to bother them. Obed, my host said that people come back and forth from Togo all the time, but one would not know the difference since they speak Ewe and carry with them the same traditions. It’s that joy, again. The idea that even if awful white people separated them once, they are always united, so why sweat it now? We witnessed parts of a chief’s funeral yesterday. Everyone was dressed in red to celebrate his life, and even though there was great sorrow, there was still that underpinning of joy knowing that life will move on, and that he will be remembered. As I type this, the sounds of multiple churches around town can be heard. People singing non-stop for hours, drumming, calling to God for salvation and peace. For HOURS now, they have been joyful.

Our host, Obed, spent months in the US on an exchange ten years ago. He was at Arizona State University, and got to do some teaching in the Phoenix Public Schools, so he is more familiar with our customs and norms than his peers here who have never ventured far from where they were born. In fact, Obed showed us the house where he was born, since it is only a few towns away, where many in his family still live. Because he is a senior resident advisor, he now gets to live on campus with his family in a duplex that provides many more modern conveniences (although we experienced power outage there too), but it is clear his heart is still in that house. He is very proud of it because it is painted a pretty red color, and had a bit of a courtyard were laundry can be dried, and gatherings can be had. It’s a modest home, but Obed is filled with joy when he tells us stories from his youth. Again, it’s that joy that creeps in and warms his face and his voice, so much so that I cannot help but smile at the memories too. When my travel partner, Sarah, asked Obed straight out why he thinks there is so much joy here, even without the conveniences he also enjoyed in the States, and why Americans just don’t have any, he said, “Could it maybe be Americans’ need to always be occupied?”. It took him 3 months in the States to see that we cannot ever just “be”, cannot ever live in the present, cannot ever be satisfied with what we have, what we possess.

My reflection on this point is two-fold. First, I want to really think about why that’s true for me. What can I do to live more in the moment, and to be more grateful for what I have? The constant striving is as exhausting as it is joy-sucking. Also, what can I do to get my students to see how lucky they are? The school here has no Wi-Fi, two computers that occasionally work, and one LCD projector. They have a hotspot for teacher use only that connects to MTM phone service here (I’m using it right now, in fact). Meanwhile, my students have ViewSonics in every rooms, Wi-Fi access (although we do lose it more frequently than we should in the US), and Chromebooks in hand. But they are so amazingly ungrateful. They are so entitled, and again, so joyles. Everything with them is a giant trauma, a major problem that causes strife. How can I impart to them these beautiful feeling of contentment? I do not have an answer, but maybe I will… The second point is that I do not want to bring my American burdens here. For example, when I was discussing with a student her ideas for a project about teen pregnancy and what she could do to make it more targeted and effective, I had to pull back a little. I could feel myself pushing her to create some massive project that would bring recognition to her and the school. She said she wants it to be good so it looks good on her transcript, so at least that’s an idea here too, but I still felt myself leaning in to “Make it bigger, make it better, be the BEST!””, when I told her she should utilize social media to make the local government representatives take notice of the conditions in this community. Yikes. What works fo one culture may not work for another. Upon reflection, I rarely fine joy in these projects I facilitate with my students. They become a lot of work, and because the kids do not have the stamina, I wind up engaging with the projects too. Honestly, it wears me down. So, my goal for this week (and this was always my goal, but I think I have a reason to dig in more now), is to observe, listen, and meet the students and teachers here where they are in the hope that I can bring a little of that attitude back with me to the States.

We did manage to find a little joy yesterday. I enjoyed watching the funeral, seeing the pomp and circumstance. We then drove to Amedzofe, the highest human settlement in Ghana, to hike to the top of Mt. Gemi, the 2nd-highest peak in the country. The views were beautiful, and the guide was informative. He said the people around the mountain, living in 7 communities all visible from the top, are called the Avatime peoples (our driver, Fred, comes from one of the towns), and they called the mountain, Mt. Gayito. When German missionaries arrived after the last Ashanti War, they could not pronounce Gayito (?? Not that hard, Germans), so they changed the name to an acronym: German Evangelical Missions Institute (GEMI) and it stuck. I asked the guide if the native people wanted to change it back now that the Germans were gone, but he said they just do not really care what it’s called, so they leave it alone. The Germans also built the teacher training center in the town (one of our co-hosts, El, attended). We drive through it and saw amazingly racist depictions of Africans on the walls, left by the Germans, that had just never been painted over. The ambivalence towards colonialism here is fascinating, and something I look forward to exploring more as I begin week 2 tomorrow.

After the mountain, we hit the canopy walk and Ote Falls, which was beautiful and offered a respite from the heat. It’s cooler here than in Savannah, but the hikes were arduous and in a rain forest, so still pretty hot. Meanwhile, we were constantly asked if we were German, since this is apparently still a tourist destination for Germans all here years later. Quite a few people had never seen a white person before, so they wanted to take pictures with us. The roads around here are REALLY challenging, but the road up to the mountain was actually paved almost the entire way, so this winds up being a pretty hot tourist destination here. We met a group from Accra during our canopy walk, and they had also never been there, so it was fun to sweat it out with them.

Afterwards, we visited the regional capital, Ho, which is a legit town with restaurants and shops, and an ATM!!! We picked up the Jack Daniel’s we will need to give the chiefs at the ceremony at a “mall”, which is like a Wal-Mart with the variety of goods sold, and then we took our hosts to KFC since we honestly just wanted to eat one meal that was not of questionable origin. I’m not a fan of KFC or their awful practices, but the restaurant was clean and requires workers to adhere to safety standards more like what we see in the States, so there was something comforting in that knowledge. Plus, Obed fell in love with French fries when he was in the States, so he was happy to have his son (who joined us) taste them for the first time. Sarah also treated Obed’s son to his first ice cream, and he learned quickly how to eat a soft-serve cone. In that moment, all around, there was joy.

The view from Mt. Gemi

Scenes from a Chief’s funeral

Canopy Walk at Ote Falls

From Mt. Gemi, we could see the Volta River and the branch we crossed to get here. We could also see the range to the east where Ghana’s highest peak is located, but it was shrou dead in clouds. Just on the other side of that range is Togo.