Happy Thanksgiving! (I am safely back from another awesome adventure)

Our lovely American Holiday is quite foreign in this Ghana, but Happy Thanksgiving to everyone anyway :)

I'm thankful for:

- running water

- a room with a light, chairs, a fan, and a decent bed

- internet

- kenkey (type of Ghanaian food, kind of a corn dough)

- learning new languages all the time
- learning so much all the time!
- having found an advisor who could help me do a research project in my field of study
- coming home in less than three weeks (although I won't be back in WW until a couple days after I get into Seattle)
- over 100 bananas?? read on below...

N.B. All italics are in the Ikpana language. Parentheticals are the phrases everyone else uses.

I'm back in Accra now and will be for the rest of the trip, but for the last almost two weeks I was living in the Volta Region in Abuda (Logba Alakpeti), meaning "under the mountain," one of the townships of the Akpanawo (Logba people) who speak the Ghana Togo Mountain language Ikpana (Logba). There are approximately 7,500 people living in the Logba cities/towns/villages (from now on just referred to as "Logba") altogether. Abuda, where I was, is considered the commercial center and has a major market day running on a five-day rotation (today is a market day). Ewe, the major language of the Volta Region, is used in the schools and churches, and most people who live in Logba speak Ewe as a second language. Ikpana (note: there should be a high tone marker on the final 'a') is used at home and in "traditional" domains (ceremonies, council meetings, etc.). The area is mountainous and the largest city, Ayotu (Logba Tota), meaning "above Aya (another town, called Akusame by others)," is at the top of the mountain, about 7 km away. Between Abuda and Ayotu is Klikpo, the capital.

This is a photograph of Abuda (Logba Alakpeti, left) and Aya (Logba Akusame, right) from the footpath between Abuda and Ayotu (Logba Tota).

I stayed with the catechist of the Evangelical (formerly, Ewe) Presbyterian Church and his wife and two-year-old granddaughter. I had my own room with a bed, a chair, a table/desk, a light, and electricity- everything I needed. My new co-advisor, Prof. Kofi Dorvlo, drove up with me to Logba, introduced me to people and explained my project and its purpose to people. He left his water heater and some tea with me as well, so I was really quite set.

This is my home stay family, Margaret, me, Etonam (sp?), and Nelson. The photographer was the only person standing around right then and warned me that he did not know how to work a camera before he took the photo. The second photo he took was worse and right after he took it my trotro back to Accra arrived, so this is what we get. I think it has character. The beads around my neck were given to me the night before by my research assistant to remember him by. The matching bracelet is hidden by the two-year-old, who, it seems, can touch her toes.

The drive up takes about three-four hours normally, but for us it took about 9. Prof. Dorvlo believes in "No rush!" We stopped to get gas, to use the bathroom, to look at the people fishing in Kpong and to buy some fish, to take tea at his house in Ho (I got green tea for I think the first time ever in Ghana! It was heavenly), to eat lunch, to visit with some people, to get his car checked, to buy some coconuts and drink/eat them, and then we finally arrived in Logba. We spent the rest of the day going around and meeting with people. There is no internet out there, and several of the towns have no cell reception (which is otherwise quite good everywhere in Ghana) due to the mountains, so arranging things with people ahead o ftime is quite important and must usually be done in person. We stayed at a hotel there and the next day continued making arrangements for my research: housing, food, assistants, etc. Everything went fine and by afternoon I was on my own in a new place.

Luckily, I wasn't really on my own at all. My research assistant, Mawuli, speaks English, Ewe, and Ikpana (his mother tongue), and also knows a great deal about plants, which was one of the major aspects of my project. My home stay family was wonderful and the kid even warmed up to me about halfway through the trip and would come over to my room calling "Ago!" (what people say when they arrive at your door - response: "Ame!"). I would let her in and teach her English while practicing my Ikpana with her.

The second day I was there was Sunday and my home stay dad being the catechist, I decided it would be wise to attend church with them. They welcomed me in church and afterwards church members brought me over forty bananas. Yes, forty. Over the course of my time there, I was definitely given well over 100 bananas by the people living there, and I turned down several bunches more. They also brought me peya (avocado), omboe (orange, note that the "o" should be the backwards "c" kind of "o" but I don't have that on my keyboard), avi (groundnuts/peanuts), bafunuba (pawpaw/papaya), atoto (I have no idea what this fruit is in English - I didn't particularly like it. Both "o"s should be the other kind of "o"), and yavu avi (again, no idea what this is, but it's a type of nut from inside a big weird-looking fruit that grows in the forest - the name literally means "whiteperson's nut," which Mawuli suggested was maybe because the meat of the nut is white. Who knows? But I think it tastes pretty good.). I also got to try all kinds of different spices and another kind of fruit called onya, which is small and yellow when ripe and tastes yummy.

After church, Mawuli and I went to the "Linguist" (not what I would call a linguist, but historically they are called that. Really they are the spokesperson for the leader of the community... I may elaborate more later, but they are supposed to be eloquent and know a lot) to ask who in the community would know a lot about plant names in Ikpana. He gave us four names, and we spent the rest of the day finding those people, introducing ourselves, describing the project, and asking them if they would be willing to meet with us tomorrow to be recorded. It went well.

The next day, we met with the first, who is also the senior fetish priest of the area. He poured a libation to the ancestors before we began work to ask them permission for him to share his knowledge with us. They seemed to approve. The whole day Mawuli and I walked around town recording knowledgeable people telling us about the various plants that grew around there and their medicinal and practical uses, all in Ikpana, which I did not understand at all (other than the word for banana, which is similar to kodiatsya, but with several letters in it that I can't type on this keyboard). It was awesome!

I should point out that throughout my stay I didn't understand 95-99% of what was being said around me, at all times. Everything was either in Ewe or Ikpana. Mawuli was a very patient teacher, though, and by the time I left I could walk down the street and go through the whole greeting conversation (it's long) with people at morning, afternoon, or evening, and probably knew about a total of 75-100 words/phrases, plus quite a few other terms related to plants and cures, and could even generate several different permutations of those phrases. I am faaaar from fluent, and my Twi is definitely better, but when I got back to Accra at first I couldn't think of anything other than Ikpana. It was really difficult to keep from responding to people in Ikpana, and I couldn't speak Twi at all. After sitting on the trotro back to Legon for a while I was able to remember how to say, "I will alight here," but when he repeated the question back to me, "You will alight here?" I responded, "Yeah." He (in a very kind and friendly way) gave me a little Twi lesson, kindly explaining that the word for "yes" in Twi is "aane." It's coming back to me, now, though. The lady who works at the chop bar (eating place) near where I stay patiently practices Twi with me and teaches me words I don't know, like "fork."

But back to Logba. Like I said, Ayotu is located at the top of the mountain. On day two of our data collection, Mawuli and I hiked the 7 km up to "The Hill City of Ghana" to meet with a senior herbalist there. Unfortunately, the person we had sent ahead of us the day before to tell the herbalist of our coming was tipsy.

The day before:
me: "Mawuli, he's drunk."
Mawuli: "Yes. He has just returned from a funeral, I believe."
me: "Will he remember...?"
Mawuli: "Oh yes. He will."

Apparently, he did not, as the person we were supposed to meet had no idea we were coming. But after several hours of us meeting with people and holding lengthy discussions with them (and by us I mean Mawuli, since he was basically my "Linguist"/spokesperson - as I said before, all conversations were in Ikpana or Ewe, and very rarely were translations deemed necessary. Honestly, they really weren't, especially once I got over my paranoia that things weren't going well when the discussions seemed to be going on for too long without anybody smiling or giving any other positive, extra-linguistic cues), we were able to arrange for the herbalist to stay and work with us, after he poured a libation to the ancestors, of course. He ended up being a wealth of knowledge, and also a very eloquent Ikpana speaker (according to others who heard him speak). He poured another libation to the ancestors to thank them for a successful day, after we had finished. But, after trekking through the bush all day in the hot sun with not quite enough water carrying a video camera and hiking over 14 kilometers for the day, I was pretty tired when I made it back home that evening. I stayed tired throughout most of the trip, even when I got almost 8 hours of sleep at night.

The next day we trekked around Klikpo, and on our walk back to Abuda we happened to have the great fortune of bumping into the chairman of the herbalist association of Ghana, who happily shared his knowledge with us to the point of me needing to pull out another tape to record everything on. By then we had almost three hours of footage, with way more plants than I had originally set out to record (recorded: 120, original plan: 50). The next two days, and Sunday we spent just going through the footage we hadn't yet gone through.

Saturday, however, we took a break from research (but it was actually impossible not to learn a huge amount that day) and climbed the mountain to go to the waterfall: Akpomu Falls.

 
Akpomu Falls

Mawuli and our guides (there are guide fees and a "development" charge per person to go to the falls, but they're worth it) couldn't swim, but I was able to swim across the pool with a flashlight (wrapped in a plastic bag) in my mouth, climb up onto the ledge, and go inside the cave there where there lives a huge colony of little bats and inside of which stalagmites have met stalactites and grown together into solid pillars of rock. There used to be a wooden walkway over there, but now you have to swim (they assured me that the "development" charge went towards things like building a new one, which I wasn't terribly excited about since I can swim). It felt great after the long hike (I hiked probably about 20-22 kilometers that day in total), and don't worry, Mom, the guidebook said that it was safe to swim there. I checked first.

Looking up to the water at Akpomu Falls. Sorry, Mom, I left the waterproof camera pouch back in Accra so I couldn't swim with that in my mouth over to the cave. I recommend everyone go see it for themselves, though - it's pretty cool.

The water leading out of the pool at the base of the waterfall. We were definitely the only people there, but the guest book said that two people had come the day before and two had come a week or so before that. They say it's a pretty popular tourist place (meaning two-four people a week?).

I asked them what was above the waterfall. They thought for a minute and then told me that that was where the water came from. I thanked them for that helpful information (oh,Ghana) and asked what else was up there. They thought for a little bit longer and responded that there was a much bigger cave up there, that was of historical importance to the Logba people. I said, "Let's go!" And so we did.

The cave is called Bayenu Egbetsi, which means "The place underneath stone, near Baye."

Morpheme-by-morpheme breakdown for the Linguists out there:
Baye.nu Egbe.(e)tsi
Baye-in stone-under


Bayenu Egbetsi, from inside (note the big rocks on the floor and the large ferns growing on the walls)

It's the bedrock of the mountain, and you can hear the falls below it and see water trickling down the rock walls nearby on its way down to the falls. There are cool lichens and ferns and huge roots of trees coming out of the rocks. It's beautiful.

As we were about to leave, a man walking by on his way to his cocoa farm stopped and gave me a quick history lesson of the place (the guides were just to get us there). He said that historically the entire area was a fighting zone, and the Akpanawo (Logba people) took refuge in the caves, living there in safety while the warriors went off to fight. Once the area became peaceful (and as they said, "Civilization happened") they moved away and let the place go. He lamented the large boulders that had fallen down in the area, claiming that the roof of the cave had once reached out much farther, the floor was once clear and flat, and the area was kept very nice. I'm slightly concerned about how nice it would be to live in a place where boulders fall down from above, but perhaps they had some good way of dealing with them back then.

Another view from inside the cave, looking at the trail leading away from where we had come

I think it would be cool if there were some sort of Logba Historical Society set up or something to clarify the remembered history of the elders. I heard several different stories of where they came from, how long they had been there, and why they had left wherever they were before while I was there. One person told me they were living there maybe 400-500 years ago and went and brought their Ewe neighbors to the area so they could find shelter in the mountains as well, during the Notsie wars about 200 years ago. I'm not a historian and I don't know who to believe, but it's kind of interesting.

After our exhausting but really exciting hike on Saturday, we spent Sunday working (after church, where a lady gave me several ears of fresh corn - did I mention how good the corn there was? sweet and creamy and delicious.. yum) and Monday meeting with some of the leaders of the community to discuss some aspects of the project with them. The paramount chief was not in town (he's actually in Accra and I've arranged to meet with him tomorrow), so we met with the regent/stoolfather, the Togbe of Klikpo (Togbe, like Nana for the Akan speakers, is a title given to the ruler of a community, sometimes translated as chief. According to our professor, Rabbi Kohain, "chief" is kind of a demeaning term used by the British in Africa as part of their military psychology to take power from the people they were trying to control. He told us that Francis Bacon noticed a similar thing happening in America, with what were previously called "Nations" and "Kings" being reduced to "Tribes" and "Chiefs" as the US government tried to control the Native American nations), and an elder. Our meeting went really well, they seemed quite pleased with my research (hopefully the Paramount Chief, or Unansanango, thinks so, too), and afterwards we formed a small committee with several other members of the community to carefully go through the compiled list of the plant names we had recorded so far to check for all of the linguistic features I was analyzing. It took quite a while, but everyone treated it kind of like a puzzle and seemed to kind of enjoy the challenge, hopefully without getting too bored (boredom in informants can lead to very incorrect data, according to several horror stories I've heard from other field linguists).

Regent/stoolfather, me, Togbe, elder.

After that, Mawuli and I went around photographing 50 of the plants we had recorded and interviewing a couple more people we needed to speak to (including a nurse tutor, who told us the medical definitions of some of the colloquial sickness terms that had been mentioned in the recordings). Then I went to my last dinner with the Time Tells family, who prepared delicious vegetarian dinners for me every night (including fufu with a soup that had big, white, edible mushrooms that Mawuli had brought for me, garden egg [small, white eggplants grown locally], okra, onions, and lots of hot pepper. Yummy! It's impossible to get vegetarian soup around here to eat fufu with.) and whose daughter lives in London but is home for a 6-month-ish holiday (vacation). It was nice to end the day just relaxing with good food and hanging out with them for a little while after I'd eaten. Then I'd go home every day and write for a couple hours or read the grammatical description of the language that Prof. Dorvlo wrote.

There's lots more I could write about (thankfully, since I have to write 30+ pages of a research paper about it, due in about a week), but I've already spent over three hours at the internet cafe and blogger has crashed about 5 times on me. Suffice it to say, my research went perfectly, Logba was beautiful, the people were wonderful, the whole area is full of huge, lush vegetation (the soil is very fertile), and I got to learn quite a bit of an endangered language while doing original research that counts towards my degree. Awesome!

I'm very thankful for all of it, indeed.