Advice for Future Travelers to Ghana

Reverse Culture Shock
Being back in America is definitely different. The first shower I took shocked me a bit with the hot water and high pressure. No more buckets! Pineapples don't taste as good here and I do miss Ghana (and speaking Twi and Ikpana), but I can finally eat cereal for breakfast again and I'm happy to be home.

I've graduated with a B.A. in Linguistics and Honors in Multimedia Scholarship from the University of Southern California and am now looking for the next step (hopefully involving a job and then graduate school). Ending my undergraduate career abroad in Ghana seems like it was a good decision. I'm happy I did it.

Advice
I've had some people ask for recommendations for students who will be studying abroad in Ghana in the future. The most important piece of advice I could give is this: 

Go with an open mind! Before you leave and while you are there, if you have expectations they will only be disappointed, but if you are willing to accept new challenges and opportunities you will definitely have an amazing experience. It truly is what you make of it.

There are, however, a couple things you should know before you leave.

1) Bring large denominations of US currency if you want to exchange money over there. You get a much higher exchange rate for a $20 bill or a $100 bill than for a $1 bill (it is not even worth exchanging $1 bills, as you will lose money).

2) I'm not a doctor, so take my advice for what it is, but from what I was told by doctors in Ghana, Doxycycline is not the best malaria prophylaxis. It is an antibiotic which will reduce the effects of malaria on you should you get it, and it apparently helps slightly in preventing malaria, but I think that the majority of the people on both my study abroad program and the CIEE study abroad program who got malaria were taking doxycyline. Use a mosquito net/tent, and don't forget to take your malaria prophylaxis, whatever it is!

That's all. There's lots I could say, but I really believe that if you have the right attitude you will do fine, and learning the rest for yourself is part of the experience.

"Enjoy your life!" - Papa Attah

Blog
I will continue this blog, most likely with updates on my research plans and adventures. I've tagged all of the posts from this semester abroad as "Ghana" so they can be easily organized/found by clicking on the label "Ghana."

Feel free to check back in the near future! I've begun work on a potential project with some local Native American groups... I'm excited!

Photos

Unansanango (Paramount Ruler of Logba Traditional Area), Dela (his daughter), me, and his wife. Their son just got married today! This photo was taken right after they adopted me into the royal family and asked me to return to continue my research. They gave me the beads around my neck. I'm wearing the Essien football (soccer) jersey that Claire gave me.

Nat playing a kpanlogo at the Kotoka airport in Accra when she saw us off.

Paco at London Heathrow airport sporting the beads he made using the traditional Krobo method and the shirt he had sewn out of the batik fabric he made. Ismatu's foot is making a cameo.

Rachel being excited at London Heathrow airport. We had just watched her favorite movie, the Addyeboat video (of Claire's drunken basket-weaving instructor, Addyeboateng - o ha dwene! "He is trouble!"), which will be uploaded onto the Internet eventually...

Ismatu and I at London Heathrow Airport. Ismatu is rockin' her batik hoodie (yeah, I'm kinda jealous).

Growing Up In Africa

Leaving today!

I definitely have mixed feelings. I am completely drained. I managed to get sick with a persistent cough, probably from spending 9-11 hours every day in a cold computer lab then going outside into the heat, not sleeping much, and stressing about this independent study project. And here I thought that I was leaving all those fun habits back in LA. Thankfully, that wasn't characteristic of my entire time here - just the last two-three weeks. Overall, not bad!

However, the last two weeks I was pretty busy working on my research project, which instead of being a simple 30-page paper ended up being 111 pages (including the appendix, which was single spaced, but included over 50 pictures). Oi. But....it's all done now. Printed (the pictures didn't print so well), bound, and handed in. And we all presented. It was definitely really interesting to hear about all the things everybody else had learned about during their research time. One of my advisors came to my presentation, and then about an hour after I'd finished Unansanango (the paramount chief of the Logba traditional area) showed up, too. That was so cool!

I'd gone to speak with him earlier in the week about the project and he welcomed me warmly. He runs an NGO in Ghana which promotes the use of traditional medicine and educates herbalists about safe practices (for the people and for the environment) and his daughter got her degree in traditional medicine. They were very interested in my project, which was all about the names and uses of plants (the majority of the uses that people told me about were medicinal). Although my focus was more on the linguistic aspects of the plant names (especially how they relate to language loss), I gathered a good amount of information that's relevant to the community and put it all in my appendix. After explaining the purpose of the project and everything I had done and would be doing, he told me that although I called my project "small" it was very important to them. He seems to understand pretty well the issue of the children not being able to learn in their own language at school and told me that the names of plants weren't being taught to children in their own language, so having a resource like what my appendix now is will contribute to the development of teaching materials for Logba chilrden... in Ikpana (Logba). He is encouraging me to return and continue the project, since it's very much a preliminary study as it is.

After our discussion, he seemed very pleased. His daughter came out with a beautiful necklace of Krobo beads and put it around my neck as Unansanango declared me a part of the royal family of Logba and adopted me as his daughter. I was touched. And I really would like to come back and continue the project in the future. I have hundreds of ideas for research here. As one of my advisors, Prof. Dakubu, told me, the nice thing about doing research in a place like Ghana is that you will never run out of topics or new things to study. It's so true.

However, today is Sunday: the day most of us leave. Two people are staying longer and two already left. Sunday is my least favorite day of the week in Ghana. Nothing is open. Nothing happens. It's hard to find food... It's the worst. It probably wouldn't be so bad if I prepared in advance on Saturday and stocked up on food, but I usually forget and then spend most of Sunday morning wandering around with a sad, hungry look on my face trying to find any place that's open. It's tragic, haha.

Will I ever eat fufu again? That lovely blob of pounded cassava and plantain that takes 30-40 minutes of pounding to prepare. After it's been pounded that much, you actually don't need to chew it, so you just pinch off a little blob of it in your fingers, dunk it into your soup, and swallow it.

And kenkey? My regular lunch-time meal of slightly fermented corn dough. It's a big ball of dough wrapped up in leaves (corn husks or banana leaves). You pinch off a bit (carefuly - it stays super hot and I've definitely burned my fingers before), dunk it in stew (tomato sauce palm oil, with onions, pepper, and maybe some other vegetables), and eat it. Yes, with your hands. Everything is eaten with your hands. Salad, too. I've actually decided that kenkey is kind of like the Ghanaian equivalent of pizza. You've got the dough, the tomato sauce, the vegetables, and you can kind of count the palm oil as cheese (which doesn't really exist in Ghana). Anyway, I'm a fan.

There are plenty of other dough-like things to eat here. Banku, kafa, akple... it goes on and on. They're all a little bit different, but all are kind of the Ghana equivalent of bread. Carbs. We bake ours, they pound theirs.

I'll miss it. I'm definitely going to miss the readily available, cheap, fresh fruits, too. Less than 50 cents for a fresh coconut. I spent about $1.50 on five little pineapples yesterday that were deliciously sweet. Huge, juicy oranges for about ten cents or less. The oranges are green, and they cut off the outside skin with a knife so that the bitterness from the skin doesn't make the orange less sweet when you eat it. Except you don't eat it. You drink it. They cut the top off and you squeeze the orange and suck all the juice out. Then, if you want, you can split it open and chew out the remaining pulp. Kind of fun.

I bought a drum - a kpanlogo. Natalie (who is actually good at drums - and gave an awesome presentation from her research - ask her about it) has been teaching me kpanlogo rhythms to play on it, which I'm sure our neighbors really appreciate. Haha.

Last night we got to play drums while the other students danced, one last time. We had our going away party and were presented with beautiful kente stoles made by Kwakuche, one of the staff members who is also a kente weaver. My homestay family showed up to say good bye, which made me really happy. I hadn't gotten to see them since I left Accra back at the beginning of the program, because when we came back we pretty much all ended up staying in a hostel near campus because it was much more convenient to be close to campus than to have to commute for over an hour each way. I came back to visit once, but only my uncle was there so I didn't get to see my auntie and cousin.

I told a Ghanaian, "I wish I'd grown up in Africa, then I would know six or seven languages like you do." He responded, "Oh! You are still young. There is plenty of time to grow up in Africa! Stay. You will learn." He kind of has a point. When I first arrived in Ghana I didn't speak the languages (and I couldn't understand Ghanaian English), I couldn't find my way around, I felt really lost and uncomfortable most of the time, and I wasn't sure how to interact with Ghanaians in culturally appropriate ways (e.g. learning how to respond to marriage proposals and being called obruni). I was essentially a child. But, discomfort leads to growth. And I've tried to spend the last three and a half months "growing up in Africa."

My perspective has definitely changed, which makes me glad, since that was one of my goals in coming to Ghana. I've learned about therich cultural and artistic beauty that fills Ghana. I've learned to have an appreciation for "no rush." I've experienced a bit of the satisfaction (and frustration) that comes from doing everything by hand (pounding fufu, carrying water on your head, doing wash in a bucket or a sink) and hearing, "You have done well!" right after the encouraging, "Oh! You are trying!"  I've seen new places, had new experiences, met new friends, partially learned new languages, tried new foods, and found all sorts of inspiration for future research while being here.

I want to come back. I've barely even scratched the surface and it's been an intense past three and a half months. So, in spite of being sick and tired and missing home, I am definitely a little bit sad to leave. I hope that I've brought with me to Ghana (aside from the obvious economic benefits) a positive image of "obruni" (Westerner) as someone who is curious and friendly more than cold and aloof, and that I've brought a little bit of hope to the Ikpana/Logba language situation. I think that I'm taking with me (aside from the drum and the beautiful cloth) a better idea of what it means to me to be an American (it's much easier to appreciate the benefits after leaving the country), a bit of an understanding of this little part of Africa, and also a connection to Ghana, through the people I've worked with and the time I've spent here.

Language Shift Gets Personal

As I write my final Independent Study Project report (which is not nearly as fun as gathering the data was, let me tell you), I occasionally have access to outside sources to back up the things I make up out of my head (not easy with limited Internet and no ability to check out any books). After reading a little more about language shift, I've realized that it doesn't just apply to indigenous languages being pressured by dominant languages. It actually also applies to immigrant families who move into an area with a dominant language, and the language shift which occurs with their children, grandchildren, etc.

In fact, it actually applies to me. And maybe even most Americans within surprisingly recent generations.

I was always a little bit sad when Grandma told me how she tried to learn Italian as a young girl from her uncle, who died before she could finish learning the language (Dad and Grandma, feel free to add more details - my memory is not so good). Her parents came from Italy and Ireland, making her half Italian and me (at least) 1/8th. It's entirely possible that if she had learned it, and taught it to my dad, he could have passed it on to me as well, and then I would know Italian, hurrah! Didn't happen, though, and the closest we got was my grandmother being able to understand "English with a really heavy Italian accent" (or so she jokes - I believe I've actually seen her translate letters written to her in Italian by relatives or other genealogical researchers in her quest to uncover the deepest roots of our family tree).

It's hard to say what all of the factors affecting a family's decision not to pass on the language to their children are, but for many immigrant families coming to a "land of opportunity" there are several major reasons. One, to get a good job in the US of A you usually have to speak English. Two, there is a widespread (and incorrect) belief that speaking another language limits a child's ability to learn English (which, as mentioned above, is number one priority). Three, there often is a lot of pressure put on immigrant families by their new neighbors not to speak their first language - this can be due to some sort of stigma attached to the language, or just unhealthy fears/paranoia that people often have when they can't understand what's being spoken around them. In this case, a  foreign language is somehow seen as threatening. Four, there may simply not be enough other people to talk to in the language. It's one thing for a child's parents to be able to speak to her/him in the language, but who is the kid going to talk to at school? The other children probably don't understand the language and are fairly likely to laugh and make fun of what they don't understand. Then, not only does the child not have anyone to speak to (other than Mom and Dad, but we all know kids go through phases of not really wanting to talk to them), but she/he also just got made fun of for trying to speak to her/his peers. Lack of domain plus negative stigma. Is there any hope?

Well, yes.

In Los Angeles, for example, Korean is actually making a pretty good effort, in my opinion, at fighting all of the above. There is a large enough population of Korean-Americans that the domain for language use exists (physically embodied in the form of Korea Town) and it is perfectly possible for a Korean immigrant to live her/his entire life without needing to learn English. However, the children of these families are still facing all the above pressures, and many grow up understanding Korean but not fluently speaking it. At some point, many of them (possibly at the insistence of their parents or grandparents) decide that they want to get more familiar with the language of their heritage and either take a class in it at school (that was the story of almost all of my classmates when I took Korean I and Korean II at USC) or at the Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles (KCCLA).

Personally, I think the KCCLA is amazing. I took part of the 8-week Korean language class they offer there this summer (it was cut short by me moving back to Walla Walla), which symbolizes to me the great community effort to share their culture, not just with Korean-Americans, but with anybody who's interested in it. When I took the class, it was $50 for eight, two-hour language sessions, including free parking, free food (if you got there early enough), and free teaching materials. The instructors are great (and there are many different levels offered, so you will definitely be placed in a challenging but not too-challenging section) and the homework isn't stressful (you're graded, but unless your university is somehow offering you credit, it really doesn't matter, does it?).

Is it working? I can't say for sure, but it certainly is a valiant effort and I really wouldn't be surprised if 4th or 5th generation Korean-Americans in the future are able to fluently speak Korean with their friends, family, and random people like me who are trying to learn Korean, too.

As for Italian, I'm still looking for the ICCWW (Italian Cultural Center, Walla Walla). Any suggestions?

Language vs. Dialect

There's a widespread misunderstanding in Ghana about what is a language and what is a dialect.

Linguists like to define languages as being mutually unintelligible, i.e. a speaker of A cannot understand a speaker of B and vice versa. Dialects, on the other hand, are mutually intellible varieties of the same language, i.e. speaker of A can understand speaker of B, although there may be some tricky differences (lorry vs. truck), and speaker of B can understand speaker of A. There are obviously some complications with this definition, as dialects often run along a continuum of sorts, where speakers of A and B can understand each other and speakers of B and C can as well, but A and C are just too far apart for there to be mutual intelligibility beyond a very minimum. Then there's also the difficulty of what political bodies define as a "language" and what they define as a "dialect," and those definitions may not line up with a linguist's definitions at all. It gets complicated.

But while I was in Logba, I had people come up to me (usually Ewe neighbors of the Logba) and say, "Oh! You are learning the dialect!" I would say, "I'm trying to learn the language, yes. I think it's very beautiful." To which they would respond, "Ah, yes, the dialect. The way they speak here is very different."

It was really frustrating to me, and I usually just ended up saying, "Well, linguistically it's defined as a separate language, not a dialect at all." But now that I've had some time to think about it I think I probably should have just said, "Menagu?" ("Where are you coming from?") or some other appropriate phrase for the situation, like "Ta awa" or "Abo?" perhaps ("Good morning [said to one person, literally: I give you the breaking, i.e. of the dawn/morning]" or "How are you? [I haven't figured out the literal meaning of this yet]"). From what I know of Ewe, the phrases would probably be completely opaque (correct me if I'm wrong, non-Logba, Ewe-speakers).

Hypothetical better ending to above conversations:
"It's a dialect."
"Menagu?"
"What?"
"You don't understand? I thought you said you spoke Ewe. I was just speaking the dialect..."

Lots of work left to do on my paper. But today is a nice day of rest. I'm enjoying it.

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.

Logba - a new ISP topic!

I am leaving at 5 am tomorrow morning to go to the mountain village, Logba, to study the endangered language of the same name (although they call themselves and their language Ikpana). The language is being pressured by Ewe, mainly, but also to some extent Akan and English. I will be there for about 10 days, then I am headed to Cape Coast to celebrate Thanksgiving with the other students. Afterwards, I will head back to Accra to analyze my data and finish writing my paper.

I'm excited! I finally get to work on an endangered language after all. I also have an enthusiastic new advisor/co-advisor (Prof. Kofi Dorvlo) who seems to be quite happy to let me work on a language he has been studying for the last five years or so. "There is plenty left to study! You will find something. No trouble," he said, when I pointed out what little time I had to find something relevant to research. "If you want to study an endangered language then you will not leave my office without having the opportunity to do so." He gave me a pdf of the grammatical description of the language he wrote. Another student let me borrow her computer to read it and I couldn't put it down. I spent four or five hours going through it, and only stopped because the computer was overheating and all of my roommates had gone to bed.

Prof. Dorvlo is going to drive me and another student up to the village tomorrow morning (we're leaving super early to beat the traffic of Accra). He will introduce me to the people I will be working with, arrange for me to have a place to live (homestay), and show me around a little bit. Then he'll leave the next day and I'll do my research there (I'm back to plant names and uses, which I find interesting, hasn't been studied too much, and could be an indicator of the level of pressure that other languages are putting on the language depending on how many borrowed terms exist in the language). I'll be using my video camera (and possibly machete) a lot, and then when I come back to Accra I'll be able to analyze my data and hopefully have time to type it up into Toolbox or something to add to the corpus of lexical entries for the language. The research will be useful for the community, especially if the language loss becomes so severe in the future that the younger generation no longer remembers some of the terms that their grandparents knew. It will also potentially be quite useful for academics, either in Linguistics or in Botany, and maybe even Chemistry, according to Prof. Dorvlo, since a lot of the plants are useful as medicine and their chemical composition might be interesting to analyze. This is just the kind of project I've been looking for.

Hopefully the community will be accepting of a new student coming in to work with them on their language, and hopefully a week and a half is long enough to get everything done. If not, at least I've heard its beautiful there - there are supposedly caves and waterfalls and lots of fruit! Plus, it's on a mountain, so I can have all kinds of adventures exploring and hiking around.

Oh, and of course, I get to learn a new language! Suh-weet!

I wish I had a laptop, though. Then I could work on the analysis much more easily while I'm out in the field. But, oh well. I have a topic!

I have to go make dinner, pack, and write a new ISP proposal to give to the SIT staffmembers. I called Papa Attah today and told him I had changed my topic and location. He exclaimed, "WHY?!" in much the same way my homestay Auntie in Kumasi responded to me having shaved my head. Once I had explained it more he said, "Oh. That is okay."

Yemi (the Academic Director), as of yet, has no idea. He is traveling in Nigeria. But my original advisor, Prof. Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu, said she would e-mail him her full support of my decision if he had any doubts. Hurrah! Plus, by the time he comes back from Nigeria there won't be much he can do to stop me. I'll already be there.

Today I was readily accepted as a "true Ghanaian," because I was wearing a football (soccer) jersey Claire had bought, decided didn't fit, and given to me. Who knew it was so easy? The cover falls when they start asking me about it though: "So, you like Ghanaian sports?" "Who is your favorite player?" "What team do you follow?" I try to find a way out before they can get me to admit that I don't know, I don't watch t.v. and I definitely don't watch soccer. Sorry. But, for anyone planning on coming to Ghana in the future, I think it is a good investment to learn a bit about the teams and buy a jersey or something to show your Ghanaian spirit. I now have a Ghanaian flag ready in case I need to run through the streets in celebration of another major victory (did I ever admit to the fact that I slept through the final goal of the under-20 world cup? My roommates woke me up and we all ran out into the street to join the crowd of happy Ghanaians, where I pretended I had been watching the whole match).

Oh, and in reading the grammatical description of Logba I came across a proverb which I feel explains my time in Asaam, the Ashanti village I stayed in for two weeks: However distant the time is, we say it is tomorrow. Yes, yes you do.

Appreciate the beautiful, my friends, and create beauty wherever you go.

Adamorobe Sign Language

Update (later in the day): Please read comment by Annelies Kusters - it provides much more correct and updated information.  You can find more info on her blog: http://adamorobe-valley.blogspot.com/


After digging through the entire SIT library at the University of Ghana, Legon for an Independent Study Project (ISP) that another student supposedly once wrote about their experiences learning Twi in Ghana (which I never did find), I came across someone's ISP about Adamorobe Sign Language. I had never heard of it before. After reading the ISP about it, I almost wanted to cry. Or throw something.

Here's what I learned from the ISP (I haven't actually done this research myself and I definitely don't have the internet time to do so, so you'll just have to deal with my second-hand frustration based on what this other student found during her research). Adamarobe is a village near Mampong in Ghana, notable for its great farms and female chief (a very rare thing in Ghana). It is also notable for its sign language. Adamorobe Sign Language developed within the community, possibly as far back as the 17th century, independent of the introduction of American Sign Language (which developed into Ghanaian Sign Language) by an African-American missionary within the last fifty years or so. The community has a genetic propensity for deafness, and reportedly up to 60% of the population may have been deaf at one time. In 1961 it was reported to be 10%. Now it is less than 2% (with the majority of those who are deaf being over 40). Why?

In the early 1970s, a team of Ghanaian and European doctors and scientists went into the village and discovered that the high incidence of deafness in the community was caused by an "abnormal gene" and gave their expert advice ("genetic counsel") to not allow deaf people to marry other deaf people.

Previously, the entire community was one: deaf and hearing seamlessly joined. All deaf members of the community were just as productive and welcomed as the hearing members. It was accepted and not considered "abnormal." There was a school for deaf children within the community, even.

Now, there are less than five children who are deaf (or there were 7 years ago when this ISP was done). The school has closed. All the deaf children have to travel to Mampong to the deaf school there, where they must then learn an entirely new language: Ghanaian Sign Language in order to get their education. Eligible young deaf men have difficulty finding wives (hearing, as is the law), because there is a commonly held belief that they will only produce deaf offspring. Deaf women don't seem to have such difficulty, as they are believed to be able to produce hearing children just fine. There is now a strong stigma attached to being deaf as the community tries to rid itself of the label "deaf village," which it has had for so long, and now perceives as negative.

And the language? Well, what hope does it have if there is no longer going to be a need for it, as the community does what it thinks is best for itself and continues to eliminate deafness from its population? It's clearly endangered. It's also not even listed as a language of Ghana (at least not on ethnologue's map of "the languages of Ghana" that I printed up as a reference one day in Kumasi... it is hard not having the internet at my fingertips).

I'm most frustrated just by the fact that someone (some people) had the nerve to go into a community and tell them in their professional opinion that they weren't beautiful. That they were abnormal. That there was something wrong with them and they needed to do something drastic to change it. What?? And now, thirty years later, the damage has been done and probably is permanent. The entire community's attitude towards its deaf population has changed.

I have to go get lunch and finish my pre-ISP research at the library before I leave tomorrow morning. Ghana is still beautiful!