Highlights for the week of September 19
Thursday night I got to speak to the class that I am supposed to be taking as a student. It’s a first-year class called the cultural impact of tourism. The professor, who is a graduate assistant, asked me a few weeks back if I would be willing to talk about my experiences here so I prepared an entire lecture for the class. I shared for about an hour and then took questions. I told the students about some of my initial experiences, which were mostly of some of the stark differences that I had to figure out when I got here. I also was able to tell them about some of my favorite things about Ghana as well as some of my growth opportunities from my time here (at this point I’ve been here almost 2 months). I think they were quite interested because after I was finished sharing, I had several students ask really interesting follow-up questions. Some of them included: Because of the bad Wi-Fi and bad roads are you discouraging people from coming to Ghana? I said absolutely not and told them about my friends and colleagues who plan to come visit while I’m here and the plans I have to come back and bring other colleagues. Another student asked about funerals here in the United States. Interesting, since I didn’t talk about that. But I told him how our funerals go and how people get flowers. And the teacher laughed and said, “Here, people don’t want flowers. Give us money. That’s what we need, and that’s what happens at funerals in Ghana.” I shared with them how far one US dollar goes here and how the Ghanaian cedi compares to it. A student asked what I thought about that – like if I thought the Ghanaian cedi should be worth more than it is. I said absolutely. I would love to see the cedi increase in value, and I would be fine with the US dollar being a bit more comparable to it, because it would help individuals here out a lot, if they could get more for their money. I did say that I feel like that was a huge privilege that I had: living here yet having access to American dollars. They do go really far here. Those are just a few of the questions that students asked which I thought were quite interesting. After class I talked to the professor and we came up with the idea that we should have students all send in a few questions they would like answered, and I can prepare a presentation based on some additional things they’d like to know about. I think it’s really interesting what they asked about and I would like to be able to share more with them if they want to hear more.
Another interesting thing was that school was canceled on Wednesday because it was a national holiday. It was Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Day. September 21 is celebrated as a Founder’s Day public holiday to remember Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, as the founder of modern-day Ghana – he was the first president when Ghana gained independence from the British in 1957. (An aside: Ghana was the first African country to gain independence from European colonialism.) I wasn’t sure whether or not we were having classes or not because the announcement wasn’t supposed to come out until like two days before the national holiday. Here’s the reason why: Nkrumah was of one political party, but the current party is not his party and does not support that party. So, the current party in power decides whether or not we are going to have a national holiday to celebrate him. I was really glad to get the day off because that happens to be my heaviest teaching day. I was super productive otherwise, which felt good.
I also had another incredible opportunity this week: I was able to conduct interviews with eight of the members of DrumGhana on Friday night. Antoinette graciously allowed us to use her house so I could come over and interview each of the members. She also allowed me to utilize the services of her grandchildren’s homeschool teacher to translate the interviews. I interviewed two people at a time, one dancer and one drummer each. And the translator whose name is Emmanuel translated for each set of four interviews. It took quite a while, but wow, what an amazing experience to be able to sit down and talk with each group member and hear their experiences! What’s my research, you ask? The research I’m doing is narrative research where I want to hear perspectives of the musicians themselves and share their voices about what playing traditional Ghanaian drumming music means to them. There’s not been much research sharing the personal stories of the musicians themselves. Most research that people do is on the “how to play the music” as well as information about the different ethnic groups who create the different songs. But I am more interested in the human aspect so it was very cool to ask them questions and hear what they had to say. Kind of excited to read the transcripts of their stories and start working on data analysis, although I have more work to gather. I’m going to interview Antoinette next week and I’m also going to take pictures and videos of some of the rehearsals and performances as part of data gathering.
The interviews took about 2 1/2 hours to interview everyone, and then we took some pictures and they sang and played a song that I video recorded.
After the interviews, I thanked them profusely for their time and willingness to share and they expressed thanks to me for interviewing them as well. All of the group members left pretty quickly after that, and then Antoinette invited me to stay and have dinner and watch the Ghana versus Brazil football game (Ghana lost). It was so nice! She had cooked a fish soup as well as another stew with cabbage and carrots and fish, served with yam chips and plantains. I was so grateful that she invited me to stay and eat dinner and hang out with her and her grandkids. I was actually really interested in the game, to my own surprise. It was nice to just sit and chill with them. After the game ended, I called Mele (my taxi driver who drives me around a lot – he came at the suggestion of Antoinette shortly after I got here) and he took me home I got home around 9 PM. What an interesting evening!
One thing I do miss is having DrumGhana practice. I haven’t been able to go in about three weeks. I’m really hoping that next week I’ll get to go back because I miss practicing with them!
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