I had plans to write a variety of observations of the last four weeks in this week of blogging before I leave for the village: food, gender roles, pro-natalist quotes, funny signs, the incredibly intense experience of personally consulting a possessed priestess (parts 1 and 2), and don’t worry all of that is still coming. (If I don’t get it all this week, I’ll handwrite during the village and type it in in a couple of weeks). But events of the last couple of days have left me with some thoughts I’d like to share.
Immersed in this life, there needs to be a certain level of desensitization towards all the poverty around. For all practical purposes of life, one is Ghanaian. You eat the same food, fight for the same trɔ trɔ, trek the same way to fetch water, and scrub just as hard to clean your clothes. There is no time or space to really see it all in an ‘American’ perspective. Yes, in the big picture, it is silly to fight over 3 or 5 American cents when overcharged, but it’s the principle of not wanting to be taken advantage of as a foreigner. And doing so is part of surviving in another culture, you have to shed the goggles in which you see it all, and try to embrace it from within. Only after you’ve been able to do that to the best of your ability, can you really comment and try to understand what it really means in the big picture.
However, when I found myself arguing with a water girl over 5 pesawas (about 3 cents) the other day, it took a completely unrelated comment from a peer and several pages of journaling before I realized how far I’ve come to desensitize myself here. Anyone that knows me knows the heart I have for poverty, many the times I have broken down and cried in the middle of Chicago seeing a homeless person searching for food in a dumpster or lying on the frozen ground with nothing more than a hoodie on. Or the weird looks and comments I’ve received for going into “the projects” or bringing a homeless person into a restaurant and having a meal with them. […or being rejected dinner by a deaf homeless man that thought I looked like a terrorist…story for another time. It’s a funny one]. If there is something the homeless community has to offer in Chicago is some really good stories, especially the veterans.
But here I was fighting with a little girl (whose name I now know is Adisa) who isn’t more than 10 or 11*, who obviously can’t afford to go to school and spends all day every day selling water sachets in the street, for 3 cents. Not only was I the one in the wrong, (this week there was a nationwide doubling of the price of water sachets), I was the one that was ridiculously rude. She very politely informed me that it was 10 pesawas each when I grabbed two and only payed for one. The group of us argued that she was overcharging, and in her minimal English she would only say the price was 10, until I did the very very insulting thing of returning one with my left hand**
Thankfully, I was able to make some amends as that wasn’t the last I saw of Adisa (unlike most of the hundreds of water children one encounters every day). Adisa is a clever girl and hangs around our dance classes. Not only does she get front row of the ‘obruni show’, she knows that 18 obrunis dancing for 2 hours in the afternoon heat are gonna be drinking lots and lots of water.
After having this epiphany on the poverty issue, it was somewhat difficult to go back to regular life, but you just have to. I spent a couple of days looking around and just wanting to break down. As if all of a sudden, I realized just how poor every one I encounter daily really is, how little I pay for every trɔ trɔ ride, piece of fruit and even entire meals. I wanted to pay extra for everything and buy every snack sold by little children at a ridiculously measly price. But you just can’t. This is a very different kind of poverty, than simply looking at it as I have money and they don’t. This is life here, paying 80 cents for lunch may seem crazy in America, but that is what it costs. Those 80 cents will feed a family, and trying to give anything more is only insulting. You can’t feel guilty for every little thing one doesn’t buy, simply because I believe it’s outrageously underpriced compared to my life in America.
I had an amazing conversation yesterday with our trɔ trɔ driver, Isaac. He spoke remarkable English, and little did I know that this guy who has driven us around to so many outings would actually be the most insightful conversation I’ve had in Ghana so far. We covered all kinds of things in our two hour conversation: family, food, driving, soccer, children, skin color, I even taught him some basic Spanish. But one of the most poignant moments for me was discussing money. Isaac explained that money here is not your own, it’s all for your family, the more it is, the farther it gets spread out throughout the extended family. Having only been married six years, he shared his distress in wanting to one day be able to buy his own home, but knowing that that may never be possible. He told me how much he admired the American or European way; because all the money you work for is your own, and you can save and move up the ladder and even have experiences like traveling. When I explained to him that because of that we have so much greed in our society, so much disparity that there are people that live on the streets and go hungry right next to people that pay $35 for a steak, he was shocked, and truly wondered how people could ever live with themselves like that. [I’ll be putting up my observations on Ghanaian homeless, or lack thereof, in later post. Interesting stuff].
Everything always seems better somewhere else, its human nature- but to be able to see each other beyond our money and truly connect, is something that takes a part of us we all need work on. I’ll keep paying 80 cents for my lunch; it’s all I really can do amidst a country of millions of “poor” people by my standards. But I will try much harder to open myself to the many many many, like Isaac, that approach me every waking minute wanting to talk to me, touch me, laugh at me or even marry me (seriously, my marriage proposal count is in the 30s). It’s a challenge, but doing so is the only way to really face the poverty in myself and the immense wealth Ghana has to offer me.
*Few people actually know how old they are here, the day of the week you were born is important, but few people actually know their date of birth. Birthdays aren’t something really celebrated, especially if you’re very poor.
**Using your left hand for anything is considered extremely rude throughout much of Africa. You should never receive, give, eat, point, or do anything with your left hand. It comes from the history of the left hand being the “dirty” hand used for the toilet, and just a bad side in general. It may sound strange, but you’d be surprised how much of this exists in Western cultures too. The latin word for ‘left’ is sinister, and what does that mean in English? When someone is correct we say they are ‘right’. Even Jesus himself is at the right hand of the Father, and said that on Judgement day those destined for hell would be on the left, and those for heaven on the right (Matthew 25).- Food for thought-
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