2nd Prize – “Untitled”
by Sinead Byrne
Bard College at Simon’s Rock
This piece attempts to show the struggle I faced in becoming part of the community consciousness of a rural Ghanaian village during a study aboard internship & homestay, and how the relationship I developed with my host family tied into this.
Sinead is finishing her senior year as a theatre major at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. She traveled to Ghana for her spring semester abroad last year with Global Routes. Sinead writes about her experience as an only child, raised in a liberal state, living abroad in the communal world of a large Ghanian family.
It’s been seven months and I still haven’t called my family. They’ve called me many times, especially in the first few days I was home. Most of the calls were received when my cell phone was turned off; my voicemail filled with recordings of rooster and goat noises, and occasionally a man’s voice saying, “Hello?…. hello!…. hello?” The one time I actually answered one of these calls from across the Atlantic Ocean, it was my friend Buduwa. “Shee-ned,” she said, pronouncing my English name as best she knew how. “You call me back!” I can’t, Buduwa, I tried to tell her, knowing very well that she couldn’t understand my English. Not yet, I don’t have a calling card yet. Soon, I told her trying to enunciate and infuse this word with meaning. Soon. That was six months ago. I’ve long since purchased an international calling card – there have been ample opportunities to call and let them know I’m alive and thinking of them – but something in me balks at the prospect of making that call…
I’m an only child; a thirst for independence and solitude is practically programmed into my genes. I’ve always felt comfortable being alone, and this preference for isolation has only grown more pronounced in the last few years. Growing up in the United States has done nothing to deter these personal tendencies. In American culture a great emphasis is placed on originality, personal space and ownership, and the liberal expression of one’s thoughts and ideas. These principles were such a natural part of my life that before my three month teaching internship/ homestay in the small, Ghanaian farming village of Buranamoa I had never considered the flip-side of these values; a culture in which community was of the utmost importance, and where the concept of the singular was almost non-existent.
Walk through any crowded area in the Fante-speaking regions of Ghana, call out “Kwame,” and you’re guaranteed to have at least 20 men and boys turn to you expectantly. This is because Kwame means “Male born on Saturday,” and it is one of the seven possible Fante names a man can be born into. There are feminine derivatives of each of the seven names for women. This means that everyone in Buranamoa, population 400, had one of fourteen names. Now, this sounds a bit crazier than it really is, because in reality Ghanaians have multiple first names, and only about half of the people I encountered identified themselves by their Fante week-day name. Nevertheless, it seems an obvious testament to the unity of Ghanaian culture that their names – the very labels of the self – are drawn from so concentrated a pool.
I knew within my first few days in Buranamoa that it would not be difficult for me to adjust to the lack of plumbing or electricity, or sleeping on a concrete floor. No, the thing I would have the most trouble coping with was the strong group mentality that pervaded everyone’s thoughts and actions. No one seemed to do anything alone; every task was made into a social event, and people hated to be singled out. The only person I repeatedly noticed in solitude was the elderly uncle who lived next door to me. With no wife or family, he was nearly always drunk, and he was ridiculed by children and adults alike. Most nights, as the animals and villagers settled into silence, I would fall asleep to the somewhat disconcerting sound of him talking to himself. Just as my isolated uncle was rejected, the whole idea of solitary pursuits seemed to be widely disapproved of. People simply did not understand my need to go for a walk alone; the idea of alone time was a truly alien concept to them.
I was transplanted into a seven person family: two parents, a grandmother, and four younger brothers aged 12, 7, 3, and 1½. My papa spoke the best English of anyone in Buranamoa because he had worked as a miner and lived in a city for many years. My mama, 20 years his junior, was a tough woman with a great sense of humor, although she was often too concerned with my physical and emotional well-being to laugh with/at me. My grandmother was a wrinkled piece of artwork; she wrapped her spindly body and great drooping breasts in magnificently colored cloths, and possessed a quality of graceful beauty that my camera could never quite capture. She became very sick while I was there and might be dead now, for all I know.
Then there were the boys. Abay was the youngest, and at 1½ he was very much a baby. I was the first white person he’d ever seen and he was terrified of me at first, but I eventually won him over by letting him hit me with things and swinging him around in circles until his feet lifted off the ground. It helped, of course, that he saw his older brothers’ acceptance of me. Ata, the second youngest, became not only my favorite sibling, but also one of my favorite people in the entire world. He was born a twin, but his other half died in infancy, and I have a suspicion that all his twin’s energy and life force passed on to Ata, because he is definitely the wildest child I have ever encountered. I once watched him, for no apparent reason, run in circles around the house, chanting something in Fante for twenty minutes straight until every pore of his body was spewing forth a fountain of sweat. He liked to hold things in his mouth such as: pieces of string he found in the dirt, batteries, and small pieces of broken glass. Despite the awful things he put in his mouth, his teeth were pearly white, and he regularly flashed the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.
Nana, the second oldest, was your typical seven-year-old in his fickle and whiney ways. He was at an awkward age for boys in Ghanaian culture – the age when you’re not little enough to be pampered and play with the babies, but not old enough to be of serious help with work and chores. However, he was the first person in the village to really engage with me, and for that I am immensely grateful. My oldest brother, Daijo, seemed more like a seventeen-year-old than a twelve-year-old. He was responsible, strong, and smart beyond his years. He spoke better English than almost anyone in the village except our papa and the teachers. Ma relied on him for help with all the serious work around the house, including fetching water from the village bore hole. Daijo pumped and carried home about 70-80 liters of water a day – quite a work out! Especially considering that most of our water was kept in 20 liter jugs, and he’d carry the jugs home atop his head! I can tell you from personal experience, this task requires no small amount of strength. Daijo developed a six-pack long before he was a teenager.
My relationship with these boys was probably the most meaningful thing that I took from this experience. I can’t express the pride I felt when Abay began to let me hold his hand to help him walk home, or when Ata first felt comfortable enough to rest his head on my lap while he slept, or when Daijo sat down and taught me every thing he’d learned in school that week. It didn’t matter that we didn’t speak the same language; we connected through games and songs, through work and the process of teaching one another about our different worlds. During one community gathering I surprised myself by starting to cry as I told the assembled village that for the first time in my life I knew what it felt like to have brothers. It was an uncharacteristic moment for me, and a part of me doubted the truth of what I was saying. In hindsight, however, I know those feelings were sincere, and I consider them an indicator that my sense of community was beginning to develop.
It turned out, however, that there was a negative side to the bond I was building with my family. I’d been warned during my in-country orientation that Ghanaians have no qualms about asking for things. They associate white skin with wealth, and there’s no explaining to them that you are a student and therefore can’t afford to give them money because you have no job and next year you’ll have to start paying back thousands of dollars in student loans. While I was there, people would often ask me for money, specific food or clothing items, trips to America, or my hand in marriage. These requests were frequent enough that I got pretty good at saying “no,” but they were still hard to handle when they came from people I was close with. The most startling of these requests came from my father, right before Easter time.
Easter is a cause for huge celebration in Ghana; our village rented a sound system (from which the same 10 songs blared for three straight days and nights), hired a brass band, brewed huge vats of palm wine, brought in crates of soda from the nearest town, and sold hand-printed t-shirts. There are parades through the towns and farms and people dance all through the night; everyone comes home for the holidays. A couple days before Easter, my papa explained to me that three of his grown children from a previous marriage would be coming to Buranamoa for the celebrations. He added that he was very excited for me to meet one of his sons in particular. This son was a gold salesman, he told me, and he would be bringing some gold with him to Buranamoa to give to me as a token of goodwill. In four or five years, papa told me, this son would move to New York and live with me and I would help him start his own gold business in America. He told me that when I got home, he would be speaking with me on the phone everyday to iron out the details of this plan. He wasn’t asking me if I would participate in these things, he was telling me how it was going to be.
“Oh,” was all I could think to say. “Oh.”
How many times have I held that calling card in one hand and that piece of notebook paper in the other, staring at my papa’s cell phone number, and then looking at my own cell phone for a long moment before putting the card and paper back in my drawer? It’s been over half a year since I climbed into that decrepit taxi cab and drove away from that dusty speck of a village, and I haven’t made any effort to contact those people who gave me so much. Is it out of worry that my father will attempt to make good on the plans for his gold-selling son? Is it wrong of me to refuse my assistance? I know that if I was ever back in Ghana, and needed a place to stay, they would put me up in an instant! Why can’t I do the same for them? Could it be that no matter how much appreciation I gained for the community spirit during my stay in Buranamoa I am still, at heart, an essentially solitary being, and the idea of being singularly responsible for someone else terrifies me? Despite all my worries and procrastination, I grow more nostalgic about my time there everyday, and there’s no doubting the impact this experience has had on me. I think about my brothers and wonder if they look any different, if they still sing the songs I taught them, if I ever cross their minds… and I know that sooner or later, it’ll be time to make that call.
RateYourStudyAbroad.com is an independent website for students to research and review study abroad programs, with over 4,000 programs and reviews added by thousands of students. It was founded by two study abroad students in 2008.
Rudy Maxa and Allan Comport judged the RateYourStudyAbroad.com Fall 2010 Travel Writing & Photography Contest. Rudy Maxa is the host of PBS‘s RudyMaxa’s World, a former Washington Post reporter and the former host of NPR‘s The Savvy Traveler. Allan Comport is a professor of art at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).
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