A day in a village
It’s been a while since I last found a chance to update — we’ve been so busy I just haven’t had time, so my apologies. The measles campaign is nearing it’s pre-launch phase and our schedule has been getting more and more packed. The good news is that we have tons of stuff to film (too much, actually!), so blogging falls by the wayside.
We are getting ready to go to NY on Tuesday morning, which means we have to leave for Accra (where the int’l airport is) tomorrow by 3 (the last bus). So today and yesterday we tried to balance a lot of stuff we wanted to shoot with getting prepped for our trip. Immediately upon our return from NY will be the pre-campaign officialdom and there will be no time to shoot various little human interest pieces, we will strictly be trying to cover the relatively well-oiled machine that is the Ghanaian Health Services ramping up to vaccinate 4 million kids in a 4 day period.
Auntie Molly (of the juice bar / cafe) talked to the chief in the marginalized village and he invited us to have an audience with him. We brought him a bottle of Dutch Schnapps (I have no idea why this is the customary gift to every chief in Ghana, but it is) and a ‘token’ bit of cash in an envelope. He thanked us for what we were doing and welcomed us to shoot in his village. The whole ‘chief’ situation seems very much similar to, well, any political paradigm I’ve encountered — just change “chief” to “mayor” the idea of having to wine-and-dine a little to get the access you want doesn’t seem so alien. A film permit for a two day shoot inside my own house in LA was over $500, so I guess we got off easy with a bottle of booze here.
The gifts proved to be totally worth it, as the chief’s interpreter showed us around the village. He’s a kid named Kennedy, maybe 18, and his English was fantastic. He interpreted for us, and this really helped to convey to people what we were doing. Without him we would have found several situations to be much more sticky (e.g. an old fella with half his teeth came up to us essentially asking for a “gift,” and our interpreter explained in Fante our gift is in the form of vaccinations for all of his relations who are under five).
People in the village were very receptive to our presence and happily let us “snap” them (as they say) while making kenkey or banku, and so on. Miranda’s Fante is improving rapidly thanks to lessons from the girls we are living with (they are 7 and 9) and she impressed many of the people in the village with her counting and other nouns. We also learned (from Kennedy) how to say “we thank you,” which is “yeh-daah-say” instead of the normal ‘medaase.’ Those are actually both Twi — in fante medaase becomes medawaase, but most people who speak Fante can recognize Twi (not usually the other way around, however). Et teh sen (“how are you” in Twi) becomes oh teh den in Fante, for those who like trivia.
We also got some good kid interactions early on, before we were eventually mobbed by little kids. 
I think we will have to go back and spend a few days living in the village before the kids can (en masse) really get used to us being there and calm down.
As far as poverty, it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected to see, but definitely the only electricity we encountered was at the chief’s house. Elsewhere were simply mud stucco structures with no amenities. Plumbing is generally more rare than electricity here, so it’s a safe assumption if you don’t see lightbulbs that you won’t find running water either.
This will probably be the last update for a week or so. Tomorrow I have to pick up a dress shirt I am having made by the tailor on our street (so I will look snazzy at the United Nations), figure out how to box up some gifts for our donors (so they will survive the plane flight to NY), purchase a cheap piece carryon luggage (as I am leaving my giant pack in Ghana since this trip is so short), and then catch the 3pm bus to Accra. We’ll be back on the 25th.
I also have one ethnographic thing I’ve been meaning to write about. We have talked at length with Dom about the ‘power structure’ that exists in the school systems here, and that seems to carry over to general employment. Basically people in positions of authority assert themselves by being nearly hyperbolic in their expressions of authority. Bosses openly yell at their employees, and so forth.
I am witness all the time to little expressions of this — a bus driver yelling at the baggage handler at the STC station, a yelling so intense and degrading that in the States he’d find himself quickly without employees (at best) or perhaps punched in the mouth. What interests me is the contrast of this situation against niceties here.
Ghanaians are very fond of their greetings and niceties. If you are going to ask a random Ghanaian for directions, you always greet them first. “Hello, good morning, how are you? (brief pause) Can you tell me where the Ministry of …” Miranda actually had a Ghanaian chastise her, “Greet first!” one time when she asked someone point blank if we were in the right place. So for me this is a very interesting reversal of what you may see in the States most times.
That is to say, I would never insist simply out of a sense of self-importance that my employees carry my bags or fetch my water or what-have-you, but I also wouldn’t care much if someone walked up to me and just asked “do you know where the Space Needle is?” No need to ask me how my day is going. As with my other ethnographic comments (if this wasn’t clear), I am not intending this as a judgment of “right and wrong.” Normativity is a tricky thing, and it is well beyond my position in life to judge what is normal or good, and what is not; I simply wish to comment on the contrast I see. As with most places I have been, Ghana is a jumble of new behaviors and customs, some I like more than my own culture’s and some I like less.
