Thanksgiving and Funerals

I have so much to tell you about this time. I wrote this post last Thursday, actually, but I haven't had reliable internet to post it since then. Another update of this past weekend will be coming soon :)

I guess I should start with last Saturday, when my friend Sarah and I went to a funeral with my host family in the Eastern Region.

Now, you would think that this would be a sad thing, and a somber event, but in fact it was quite the opposite. Funerals are typically held about forty days after a person has died, and in the morning it is kind of sad. Very early in the morning, the close friends and family view the body and prayers are said, and it more or less resembles the funerals that we have at home.

After this, however, the fun begins.

We got up and got dressed in the appropriate black and red clothing and took a taxi to the main junction in our neighborhood with my host mom and dad, where we caught the first trotro that got us out of Accra, and it took about an hour and a half. We changed cars somewhere outside Accra, though I don’t exactly know where, and made our way to the town of the deceased, all in all about a three hour trip. We got to the little town where the funeral was being held, and frankly, I don’t think that people there had seen a white person in months. We were definitely the only Obrunis in the whole village, and we really stood out, especially at the funeral. It was held in a field just off the main road, and there were tents set up in a square shape, with plastic chairs underneath them in rows, with a kind of courtyard in the middle where the casket and the preacher were. He was speaking into a microphone hooked up to a speaker bank in one corner that looked comparable to what a lot of people in Canada might rent for a wedding reception or a good school dance.

There was some praying, mostly in Twi so I didn’t follow, and then various groups of people went up to see the body. The woman who had died had been a yam seller, so there was a part where her sisters and sisters in law kind of acted out a scene of buying yams (this was explained to me by my host father. I had no idea what they were doing, or why there were yams being exchanged in front of the casket).

Most of this would not be too weird to see at a funeral in Canada, except that here, so one seemed terribly sad. People were smiling and chatting (and largely not paying attention to what was going on in the courtyard, though it seemed to be the “main event”) and there were people selling peanuts and pure-water (clean drinking water in 500mL bags).

After a little while, all 500 of us or so got up and walked in the blazing noonday equatorial sun down the street to the cemetery to see where the casket would be buried. On the way I got a few marriage proposals, and a few drunk people asked me to take them to America, so pretty much par for the course. We then walked back to the main road and went to the house of some of our extended host family where we were fed, and we hung out for a while, just talking and relaxing. The family was almost embarrassingly hospitable, going out of their way to make sure that Sarah and I had food and water and juice or pop, and making sure we had somewhere to sit, and that we weren’t sitting in the sun. It would have made me uncomfortable, except that they seemed to be giving almost the same attention to our host parents (with the exception of minding whether or not they were in the sun). A young man about my age gave me a little plastic packet, a lot like a pure-water sachet, only much smaller, that was labeled “ginger-gin.” I accepted it, because it was given to me, but my host mother wouldn’t let me drink it. While I was reading it, she kept trying to explain that I shouldn’t drink it because it’s alcohol, and I would get drunk. I’m not sure she realized I knew what alcohol was. Here in Ghana, women who drink alcohol are kind of stigmatized. It’s not something that anyone would prevent me from doing (except my mom, obviously) but it carries associations of promiscuity and lavishness. So I didn’t get to try Ghanaian alcohol that day, but I didn’t push the issue. She told me not to drink it but, not as one would forbid a child from doing something wrong. It was more like she was advising me against it because she thought I didn’t know it was bad for me, or something. Like telling me not to take too much of something spicy. Anyway, I decided it was better to just follow the norms in that instance, and try exciting Ghanaian ginger-gin another time.

 We went back to the funeral site after a couple of hours, and there was a live brass band and a DJ that alternated providing musical entertainment. On the way here we met even more drunk people, and one man (who was holding what I can only describe as a baby goblet of a murky alcoholic substance) put his arms around me, and before I knew what was happening, planted a wet and very alcoholic kiss on my cheek. I kind of grimaced and tried to push him away without starting a fight, and my host parents noticed. I have never seen my host father angry before, but he came over with my host mother, and scolded him so hard I thought he might cry. My whole host family, including my Auntie Amma (who is actually my host mother’s cousin) scolded him and muttered about him, before telling me not to pay him any attention because “He drinks the alcohol, so…you don’t mind him.” I was very upset for a moment or two, though I’m not sure how much of that showed on my face. I was very embarrassed that I was put in that situation, and that my host parents felt they needed to intervene, though I’m glad they did. Still, by the time we got back to the tent area, I was feeling better. All of us danced, and it was a lot of fun. People of all ages were dancing, and it reminded me of dancing as a child. Not because people were uncoordinated and mostly just jumping, like children dancing. The styles of dancing were varied and interesting. It reminded me of childhood because people all seemed to be happy-dancing. They all seemed to be moving out of simple happiness, and the feeling of being on stage on the dancefloor/courtyard in broad daylight just didn’t exist. Some young men came over and tried to dance with Sarah and I, but mostly it was older men and women dancing. It all just had a family vibe to it, because even the young men who tried to dance with me (a little too closely for my comfort) then went to dance with my host family, and a group of ladies who were old enough to be their grandmothers. It was a really cool experience.

At the end of the funeral, it’s customary for everyone present to donate a few cidies to help support the family of the deceased, so after we did that, and the family came over to thank us for our support, we headed out. We stopped at the village market along the way, because it was a market day, and my host family bought some food items that are cheaper in the Eastern Region than they are in Accra, including “aburo-buro” or snails about the size of my fist. I’ve tried them, and I’m not a huge fan. Like the tiny snails that are popularly baked in garlic butter and cheese at home, they don’t have much of a taste on their own, they mostly just taste like whatever they’re cooked in. The two times that I’ve had them, however, they were extremely chewy, like very overdone squid, so it was not exactly a pleasant experience. Still, I’m glad I tried them.

By the time we got down to the trotro and share taxi stand on the main street, it was starting to rain. We tried to get onto the appropriate trotro, but there were too many other people trying to get on it. We ended up hiding out under the awning of this unidentified shack for a while, but then the wind started to pick up. We started getting soaked even under the awning. Now, this shack had a heap of sand spilling out from a doorway. Mostly the doorway was blocked by the sand, but the part that wasn’t was closed off by a piece of corrugated metal. As the storm got really bad, my host father pulled back the strip of metal, and we spent the duration of the rainstorm in this rather dodgy room half filled up with sand (on a diagonal, spilling out the door) with a few others hiding from the rain, including a chicken and about a million spiders. It was not the best moment of my life, but Sarah and I took some pictures to pass the time, and talked, and even sang a little bit. Of course we both had Toto’s “Africa” stuck in our heads from the moment it started precipitating, but we also had a short cheesy burst of “This Little Light of Mine” because it was the only song we could think of that our host family might also know.

Eventually we caught a tro back home, and by the time we got there we were very tired, but it was a good day. On the way home, the windows were open on the trotro once it stopped raining, and it actually started cooling off significantly once the sun went down. Sarah’s dress didn’t have sleeves, so she was getting pretty chilly. My host mother was wearing a black dress with a piece of red cloth tied around the waist (this tying of a sarong-like cloth around the waist on top of a fancy dress is pretty common practice here; I’m not sure why) and when she saw that Sarah was shivering she took off the red cloth and wrapped it around Sarah’s shoulders. It was very sweet, and adorable. It was pretty late by the time we got home, and I almost fell asleep in my dinner, but I slept very well that night.

Sunday was largely uneventful, though I was proud of myself for cleaning my room and doing my laundry almost entirely on my own. My host mother still helped me with my whites, making sure I got all the dust out of them, but I mostly did it myself.

Then on Monday we had our Thanksgiving Dinner. It was held at the Yiri Lodge: the nice guesthouse that we stayed at during our orientation week. There was live music, and it was a lot of fun. The dinner was delicious, even though it wasn’t exactly traditional Thanksgiving food. They did roast a few chickens with herbs that tasted similar to Thanksgiving turkey, and to my delight there were mashed potatoes. They may have come out of a box, I’m not sure, but they were buttery and delicious. There was also cranberry sauce for the turkey-style-chicken, which I wasn’t expecting, but was very good. There was salad, too, which was exciting, because it’s usually not safe to eat salad in places where you can’t drink the water, but because it was catered by the institute, and Rachel (our non-academic coordinator) arranged the whole thing, I was pretty sure it was safe. I didn’t get sick, and it was delicious. There was also jollof rice (fried rice that is fried again in red palm oil with spices and chicken or fish) and plain rice, and more Ghanaian-style chicken for the Ghanaian students and faculty who were there, and might not be feeling particularly adventurous.

It was a lot of fun explaining the concept of Thanksgiving to the Ghanaian students in the program, and they seemed to enjoy the dinner. Hawawu kept asking me if it “tasted just like home” which I thought was sweet of her. They all really liked the mashed potatoes, which made me happy. For dessert, sadly, but as expected, there was no pie. There was, however, delicious real vanilla ice cream with bits of tropical fruit. All in all, it was very good, and lots of fun.

This weekend, after all my essays are done, a bunch of us are celebrating by going to an eco-lodge called Green Turtle in the Western Region. Hopefully we will see baby sea turtles hatching on the beach. The lady we spoke to at the lodge said it was the season for sea turtles to hatch, but she also said that the season lasted from September until March, so I don’t know how much luck we’ll have. Still, it will be a fun beach vacation, and I’ll get to feel good about myself because the whole place is sustainable and environmentally friendly. I’ll let you know how that goes! (And, of course, I’ll keep you posted :P)