Onyame adom ne mo nsem! [Which, I think, is butchered Twi for “The grace of God be with you all!” My attempts at conversation are occasions for much laughter around here, but I figure that the important thing is to try, right?]

After my adventures at the airport, I arrived safe and sound after about a two-hour drive (only because we spent about a half hour snarled in a massive traffic jam at an intersection which apparently had no means for traffic direction, which was eventually cleared up by the arrival of camo-clad soldiers wielding automatic weapons). Our destination was Akropong: a smallish, but very important town up in the hill country above Accra. I was very briefly introduced to my room, and was in the process of putting away all my things and attempting to back up my hard drive when the power suddenly cut out. Welcome to Africa!

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a full week here. It has been a very full week indeed. Work is going well, I think. I got started with two interviews with students, spent a long time in the library reviewing many, many student theses, and began direct observation in a classroom this morning, which looks like it will be very interesting. However, I wanted to take the time to look at some of the less-cerebral elements of the Ghanaian experience:

Weather: tell me that this is the mildest part of Ghana, which makes me feel like a total wimp, but I can’t help it. The basic thermometer temperature is pretty much always fairly pleasant, but it’s amazing what a difference the humidity makes. I wake up sweating. I go to sleep sweating. I take three cold showers a day because that’s the closest thing to air conditioning on most of the campus. I will grant that it’s a vast improvement over the interminable mid-February grey in Cascadia, where you start to wonder if you will ever feel warm or see the sun again; nonetheless, I tell you that I have never really appreciated a cool breeze until I visited Ghana. It’s also interesting to note how fast the weather changes. Saturday, what started as a beautiful and sunny day turned into a torrential downpour by evening, and back to mostly clear skies at night.

Food: I have rapidly learned to appreciate Ghanaian food (particularly fresh pineapple, which is by far the best I’ve ever had), but it takes a bit of getting used to. Every breakfast is porridge and coffee. However, there’s no real milk, coffee, or butter. The former two is all powdered, and the latter is only available in the form of margarine. Further, I’m beginning well acquainted with the iodine taste of purified water. Lunch and dinner are pretty much always some variety of fried fish and rice in some sort of spicy tomato sauce, traditionally eaten with the hands. (Variations: chicken for fish; or fried rice, rice mash (fufu), or corn mash in the place of plain rice). Since this diet is quite low in fiber, there have been a few nights where I was concerned that some unruly bit of fufu was attempting to take up permanent residence in my colon.

Language: I was actually quite surprised at how much Twi—the local language—remains the dominant language of communication here. It’s really interesting: almost any written communication will be in English, and English is the language of classroom instruction, but almost all spoken communication will be Twi. This can have some interesting implications; on Tuesday, one of the guys from the school took me to get oriented around the town, and we sat in on part of a traditional arbitration at the chief’s palace. Although the proceedings were all conducted in Twi, the secretary would translate them into English for transcription. Thus, I decided that it would behoove me to try and learn as much Twi as I could within my five-week stay. Unfortunately, Twi is quite difficult (at least, for a westerner like me). It’s a tonal language (so that “papa” can mean three different things, depending on how you say it); it’s a very nasal language, so almost none of the vowels come out exactly like in English; and it has several sounds that have no English equivalent. I’ve gotten passable at the basic greetings, but that makes for a thirty-second conversation at most. Fortunately, my next-door neighbor (Douglas, a lecturer on African studies at a nearby university, who is trying to get away from distractions to finish his Ph.D.) took it upon himself to try and help my pronunciation. Still, my attempts remain occasion for much laughter among the local staff.

Infrastructure: After my introduction to the Ghanaian power grid the night of my arrival, I got a more extensive explanation: the national grid periodically cuts out, apparently without any regular pattern (except that it always seems to be when I am working on my computer, which has no battery; thank the merciful heavens for auto-save!) For these occasions, the school has a generator, which someone will turn on when necessary (unless the outage happens at night, in which case it’s an interesting trip back to the pre-industrial era). Similarly, transportation seems fairly hit-and-miss. On Sunday, I went with an ACI volunteer to church on a trotro, which I discovered is basically a van with as many people packed in as possible. However, as far as I can tell, it has no regular stops; if there is an empty seat and the driver sees someone standing beside the road, he will slow down, pull over, and repeatedly call out his destination (“AccraAccraAccra!) to see if they seem like they intend to get on. The way back was even more interesting. The church was about a half hour’s drive (about five towns away) from the institute. However, our return trip, we got one ride from a friend with a car to the following town, then caught a taxi to the next town, then got off to catch a cheaper taxi to our destination. Further, the taxis work like the trotros, in that if there’s an empty seat, they will try to fill it, so over the course of our return journey, I shared the backseat with multiple strangers who would get on, then get off, then others would take their place. Still, can’t complain about the price: two cedis (about one dollar US) each way.

Race: On a more serious note, it’s definitely an interesting experience being a minority. Walking down the street, I won’t make it very far before someone (usually a small child) will excitedly yell out Oburoni! (which is basically the Twi equivalent of “¡Gringo!”) For the most part, it’s a good “otherness”—I’m an interesting curiosity, not a hostile threat. Nonetheless, it’s strange not to be able to escape notice, and to be labeled instantly. It’s also hard to know what my relationship is with the people I meet. I’ve met many who will come up and greet me and say they want to be my friend; it’s hard to tell if it’s because it’s a genuinely friendly culture (which it is), or because I’m a white guy with presumptively deep pockets.

Spirituality: This is probably the biggest element of culture shock so far is how enmeshed in the spiritual African life is. What African scholars call the “Primal World View” sees no separation between the spiritual and the natural. It follows that virtually every physical effect has a spiritual component or cause. For example, the trial that I mentioned earlier had arisen because a man’s wife had died after he had accused her of stealing money and she had left him. Her family brought a suit against the man alleging that he had hired a witch to put a curse on her and this was the ultimate cause of her demise. Nor is it simply a matter of education; the students at ACI with master’s or Ph.D.s and experience in western institutions take things like witchcraft or demon possession very seriously; when I have asked them, they confirm it from their experience. They cannot deny what they have seen, they say. The flip side of this is that religion is not a closet affiliation in Ghana, as I think it often is in the west—something that you don’t mention in polite company. I think it would be fair to say that probably half of the shops or businesses I’ve past have been named things like “Jesus my redeemer hair salon,” “By Grace Alone meats,” and similar things in both English and Twi. (Interestingly, this is the only major example of written Twi that I’ve encountered).