Threatening dark clouds yesterday afternoon never produced any rain here at the school, but the humidity is very high today, and we had a little mist and a few hard drops fall as Osman was dropping me off here. Last night, I went to bed early, but listened to singing coming from a group right outside the campus wall behind my rooms. Bed is a foam mattress that I have slept very well on, though angled from corner to corner to accommodate my full length. Along with the microwave delivered yesterday, I now have an ironing board and iron, hooks hung by the school carpenter into the concrete walls of the bedroom (no easy task) with hangers for my clothes, and an emergency back-up lantern.
This morning Osman picked me up for morning assembly, which he attends each day even though he doesn’t have a class until later, and often returns home in the interval. The schedule for Ghanaian teachers is much more flexible than for American teachers. I am obligated to be at work, in the Berkeley Middle School building from 6:50 until 3:20 each day, and often start 30 minutes earlier and stay an hour and a half or more later. Here, teachers may leave campus when not teaching. Apparently, as long as a teacher is doing what s/he must in the classroom, that is sufficient. One of the teachers noted to me that because teachers’ pay is quite low (higher in some private schools than in the state institutions like AGISS) teachers often have to be doing other things as well to make money. In that case, the flexibility during the day makes perfect sense.
It’s a little strange to be working here in Ghana this summer. The strangeness may actually come more from its being teaching during the summer than from teaching in Ghana, as summertime teaching is something I’ve always managed to avoid. For whatever the reason I find myself here working, I am working quite hard. I want to be certain that my lessons are of very high quality, so I’m spending most of my free time planning and preparing. I’ve begun to think that in some ways American teachers do have to work harder than their Ghanaian counterparts. Since so much of instruction here consists of lecture, and since the texts used have not changed for a couple decades, once a teacher has down the facts from the text and can convey them accurately to the students, there is not a lot of outside research or additional preparation of materials required. Of course, that could be the case with some American teachers as well, who repeat the exact same lesson year after year after year and so do not have much to do to be ready for class each day. However, as a teacher who is always turning up new materials and attempting to present information in a variety of different ways, I spend large amounts of time during the school year trying to develop new and better lesson materials for my students, even in the case of topics that I know well and have taught effectively in the past. This takes a lot of time to do well, just as it is taking a good deal of time to do here. One key distinction to be made regarding the above is that American teachers who teach the exact same lessons year after year probably do so by choice, while Ghanaian teachers do so for reasons that are generally beyond their control—a mandated national curriculum/text, lack of additional resources, the number of students per class, the nature of teacher training programs here, and probably some inertia from the fact that that is just the way it seems to have been done here for a long time. Mind you, some of the results I see from this method of teaching here are very impressive—students have a great command of factual material learned.
This is just a quick entry after finishing my preparations for today’s classes, and before heading back up to the classroom buildings—I’ll be teaching the Bantu Migrations lesson to the second form students today, while with the third form, we’ll conclude the Bantu Migrations, then move on to the Expansion of Islam in Africa. Tomorrow will be the tricky day—we have it down to do the African Slave Trade lesson with the second form, but I can’t see how this will work in the form that Osman and I had considered—we simply don’t have the different resources available—maps, accounts, statistics, etc.—that would be needed to do the lesson as we had discussed. I’d be willing to go run them off somewhere, if that is possible, but we need to figure this out as soon as we are finished with today’s classes, so I can know what to be working on this afternoon and evening.
I am continuing Wednesday’s notes after lunch. This is an intense experience—it occurred to me today that I may be learning more about another culture in a short amount of time here in Ghana than I have in any previous foreign travel experience, and that’s saying a lot. I think this is the case for a several reasons: First, I have to be an active and productive element in my experience here. I am not just acting like a sponge, as I sometimes describe such experiences to people, using all my time to absorb as much as I can of the culture. Here I have to turn those experiences around and use them to produce lessons that are consistent with, but which will also influence and become a part of Ghanaian culture. The few words of Twi (not to mention the pronunciation corrections that the students have helped me with) have immediately been put back into the lessons I am teaching. This morning, when I met the third form students, they greeted me using the Swahili they had learned from me yesterday. Second, when I work with the China in Missouri teachers each year to help them think about how to get the most out of their China experiences through the experiences, photographs, and artifacts that they collect, I encourage them to get outside of the protective cultural bubble that surrounds them at every opportunity. Many of my most memorable experiences from China, from Turkey, and from other places I have traveled have come when I’ve done just that—gone as far outside the bubble as my knowledge, resources, and sense of personal safety have allowed. Here, however, there is no bubble—I am fully enveloped within Ghanaian culture. Part of this has to do with the fact that I am the only American here for this program, and that sets this international professional development experience apart from other (group) experiences that I have had. I am surrounded by and interacting in meaningful ways with literally hundreds of Ghanaians here at the school—students, faculty, staff and administrators. Admittedly, the school community represents just one small group within broader Ghanaian society, but it is a very real aspect of that society. Anthropologists know well that you have to work from a single starting point, a smaller group of some kind, as the means for beginning to develop broader understandings of a society, and that is very much what I am doing. My anthropological training is standing me in good stead upon my return to Africa here in Ghana.
Outside the school, I have only met Amina and Shaida and Osman’s mother, along with Ernest and Kwami. I have not yet had a chance to venture off the school grounds on my own, and that is a significant departure from my usual modus operandi of hitting the ground and exploring as soon as I’ve set my bags down. As I noted this morning, I’ve simply been kept too busy during preparing lesson and doing what I’m doing right now—recording observations and experiences as soon as possible so that they won’t be forgotten. I certainly hope that I’ll be able to get a working internet connection soon so I can begin sharing what I’m seeing and learning. Not having been outside the school, and especially with the way that everyone is looking out for me here (after my second form class today, Osman drove by the Home Economics building where Rejoice and the three other teachers had a lunch for me—gari and (?)—currently getting cold while I get this written, but that is what the microwave Rejoice brought me yesterday for my kitchen is to be used for, I guess) I guess I am still within a kind of a cultural bubble here, one that is delineated quite neatly by the physical walls that surround the school grounds. However, if it is a bubble, it’s a big one, and I am ready as usual to try and stretch it further whenever I have the chance.
Both classes went extremely well this morning—third form finished the Bantu Migrations and got all the key points. Some needed a little extra help in understanding the thinking involved in creating the chart of the pluses and minuses of different landforms as potential homes for the Bantu herders and farmers. I’m not sure that charting and organizing information as we do so frequently using graphic organizers and the like in the U.S. is something they do much of in schools in Ghana.( Although I prefer to be cautious about making general statements like this in most cases, in the case of education here in Ghana I am probably justified in doing so. With the unitary system of education here, everything comes down from the Ministry of Education at the top, and what is passed down from there applies to every school in the country. Every school follows the same curriculum, uses the same texts, and due to the kinds of constraints I mentioned wrote about above, every school’s teachers probably rely on much the same teaching methods, predominantly lecture.) We then moved on to the Spread of Islam lesson, though we did not finish and so will return to it next week. The linguistic connection between the two lessons they’ve seen was good as it tied things together. Also, since they were already familiar with the process of drawing a map using the grid system, this step of the lesson went by fairly efficiently the second time through.
The second form students managed to do a good job on the Bantu lesson, even with 90 students and ongoing construction of scaffolding for the new classroom building next door going on right outside our classroom windows. Some dawdled a bit on the chart, and with so many students it was difficult to get around to check on all of them. Indeed, it was impossible to get up the center aisle at all due to the number of extra chairs that students had brought in to sit on. We did get further than yesterday’s third form class on the lesson, so the streamlining process that goes with repeating a lesson appears to be equally valid for me while teaching in Ghana as it is when I am teaching at home. Especially with so large a group, and in using some methods that are new to the students, it is important to spend time going over the process and signals for shifting phases of the activity when doing something like a pair-share. Also, with 90 students, I simply don’t have enough resources—twelve or so ethnographic maps to be shared among groups, but only eight markers for the transparency sheets—to move through at optimum speed, since students have to do more sharing.The students have been good about sharing, though, and they also did a very good job of working in larger groups than I use at Berkeley Middle, sometimes up to six or eight crowded around one map and transparency. The students in both classes seemed to appreciate the importance of treating the resources gently so that they can be reused again and again, and I received everything back in excellent condition.
Some miscellaneous educational observations:
· Orderliness of students—most of the girls walk to and from their class with what seems to me a distinctly Ghanaian/African gait—slowly and calmly, with head held high and shoulders back, arms hanging loosely. It struck me while watching the passing time after my 2nd form class today, that the whole body language of the students in the way they move is sharply different from that of my BMS students—who, run, bounce, shout and hit their ways down the hall more often than not. Part of this, of course, is the age difference between the high-schoolers here and my middle school students, but more of it, I think, is cultural. I drew a lot of laughs from my second form students when I shared this observation with them, and contrasted their movements with a demonstration of the rolling walk of some of our young men, punctuated at every other step by the sideways drop of one shoulder.
· Students carry teachers’ satchels or papers without being asked, erase the board, stand aside on the stairs. If I pause on the way to class, one of my students passing by will take my bag from my hands and carry it into the classroom for me.
Some miscellaneous cultural observations—
· When someone has a dirty hand and cannot shake, they will present their arm with the fist closed and facing down. The response is to grasp them around the wrist with one’s right hand. Rejoice is a great source of information for me on this and other aspects of how to behave in proper Ghanaian fashion.
· When greeting a group to shake hands, one should begin from the rightmost person.
· In shaking hands, the most elaborate pattern is normalhandshake, shake up with thumbs intertwined, normal handshake, slide out. For some, especially for other and especially younger men, this seems to end with the middle fingers catching and snapping back into the palm as the hands are sliding apart at the end, while for others, especially women, the end of the greeting is a bare curling of the ends of the fingers as they slide on out of the handshake. Most commonly the first two parts are omitted, so that one begins with just the normal handshake. Hands may be held for a number of seconds or even minutes while sharing greetings and inquiries.
I’m back after a slight interruption. Just as I thought I was about finished with thisand would get the chance to eat, I heard a car door slam and looked outside to find Osman walking up with Raphael and Dave Bosso, a couple of other TEA program participants. Dave has been doing his teaching at Raphael’s school, Wesley Girls Senior High, in Cape Coast. They’re in Accra for a couple of days before Dave heads back to the U.S., here to see some of the sights and sites. It sounds as if we’re going to possibly get together tomorrow. Dave and I will also have a chance to compare experiences in August in Washington at the TEA follow-up conference. Unfortunately, it sounds as if Dave didn’t get to do much teaching, as the students at WSHS were writing exams. He did get to observe some of Raphael’s lessons and was lucky enough to do a workshop not just for his school, but also for Christian’s (another Ghanaian TEA participant) school in Takoradi, further west on the coast. Elizabeth, the third of us Americans in the program coming to Ghana this year, will also be at Raphael’s school, and will arrive sometime late next week, meaning that her time and mine will also overlap a little. I am not sure where Elizabeth will be staying, but I had heard from Osman that Raphael’s school did not have facilities to house Dave, so he was staying at a hotel in Cape Coast. As is evident from my comments just above now, I am extremely grateful for the good fortune of being able to stay here at AGISS and for the way that that has enabled me to more fully immersed in the Ghanaian experience.
8:00 PM—I just returned from dinner at Osman’s with Jonny present as well. I did eventually get to eat some of the meal that Rejoice and the other home economics teachers had prepared for me. It was delicious—one of the dishes resembled red-red from my first meal here, and another was a corn dish baked in leaves—coarser grained than banku, along with a piece of fish. I was careful not to eat too much so that I would have room for Amina’s dinner—I didn’t want to repeat the mistake of Monday. Fufu is served as a large rounded mound in a plate with the thin soup—tomato and spices prominent—served around it along with fish that has been cooked in the soup. I enjoyed this as I have all the food I’ve had. We had grape juice for drink and pineapple and watermelon after. Jonny doesn’t care for fufu very much –he says it is too starchy. It was not common where he grew up and he prefers banku. At this point, I am not able to distinguish a lot between the two-banku being made with corn, and fufu with cassava and plantains. Osman says that in the north where cassava and plantains do not grow as readily, yam is used for fufu. The cassava roots have to be pounded into a pulp, which must be quite a task, and then pressed and strained to extract some bitter chemicals before it can be cooked.
Before dinner, after finishing my late lunch and washing dishes, I spent a little time thinking about tomorrow’s lesson for third form. Osman and I had decided to begin addressing the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, but we still hadn’t settled on specifics. This was the lesson I had put the most effort into planning before leaving (the others being ones that I was more familiar with, had taught similar lessons on in the past, and could get by through modifying them rather than starting from scratch). Osman and I have worked on a couple drafts of the Slave Trade lesson, but I am still stuck on the point of how we are going to make an adequate number of relevant historical resources available to the students for them to do their work. Osman has a poster that shows a good image of one of the coastal castles (Cape Coast?), and the one printed selection I brought with me could be split into two or three pages of different sources. In addition, we can use the statistics that I can display on the computer. However, we still need to find a way to get more of the primary sources that I have stored up on the computer printed up for the students to use. All that being said, once I began looking at the lesson plan I’d put together already, I realized that there was enough there with the question of thinking about the effects of a substantial population loss on a community and the introduction and use of the PERMS organizer to categorize the different effects, that we should have plenty to do with the students tomorrow. This is especially true as we still have to finish up the Spread of Islam lesson before moving on to the Slave Trade.
I just heard a few bursts of laughter and voices outside from the students returning to Ayree House in the rain after their evening studies. The night watchman has posted himself in his chair on my porch to avoid the wet. It had just begun to sprinkle as we were leaving Osman’s, but a short time later has now turned into a real tropical downpour, with plenty of lightning and thunder. Of course, the wide eaves and porches of the buildings here at the school keep the rain pouring off the roof well away from the windows, which stay open by necessity regardless of the weather.
This afternoon, after realizing that I was all set with the planning for tomorrow’s lesson (as most of Osman’s Thursday classes consisted of the now graduated fourth form students), I headed to the computer lab to try and get my blog entries uploaded. The lab had about half a dozen students in it, plus the lab teacher, and I got the chance to talk with several of them as well as with him. It is nice to have the opportunity to speak with students one on one, to be able to answer their questions, and to get to know a little about their lives. I met (and gave my card to) Lorinda, who is not one of my students, but who is planning to do an exchange visit to the U.S. next year. She wanted to know if we have ever considered hosting an AFS exchange student, which I said was something we probably should look into. I invited her to visit us next year if she gets to the U.S. and has a chance to travel. I also spoke with Fiona, one of my second form students, who asked about racism in the U.S., and with Georgina, whom the computer teacher pointed out as a regional level football player as well as a very high ranking student within her class. She told me about how difficult it is for her regional team to win in tournaments because the best players do not always make the team, pushed out by others who make their way on to the team through bribery.
I had a connection briefly and began checking e-mails, of which there were quite a number from all over in response to my blog notice. Unfortunately, in the end the connection dropped and so I still have not managed to get anything on the blog. I need to have a number of entries ready to go if access is going to be sporadic so that I can load them up whenever the opportunity presents itself. I want to get some entries ready tonight, but first have to tell about the rest of the evening.
Unfortunately, during the time I was getting the computer teacher to try and help me with the connectivity problems, I missed my appointment for Osman to pick me up at my rooms. I got back and waited for a while, then realized that I had a phone and his number and so was able to call him. I walked up towards the entry, saying hello to a number of the students, and speaking with one of my second form students who greeted me on the way about the dinner meals in the dining hall. She knew the weekly list of meals by heart and rattled them off for me in rapid succession. Kenkey was served several nights and I remember jollof rice and chicken was on Sunday’s menu.
Speaking of jollof rice, I guess that’s what I’ll be having on Sunday as well, as I have been invited to dinner at one of Osman’s friends and neighbors’ house. Paul is a retired Ghanaian navy chief petty officer, who had to retire last May after 27 years in the service under a regulation put in by the newly elected government that called for compulsory retirement for everyone with over 25 years’ service. I don’t know if forcing all of your most experienced personnel out at once is the best way to run a navy (or any other organization for that matter), but apparently it is not uncommon for new governments to make all sorts of changes in government policies and procedures. Osman’s work on the group that was reducing the national history curriculum from four years down to three is case in point.
Back to the evening’s activities: Upon entering Zongo, Osman turned left near the auto repair business, instead of taking the usual route to the right towards his home. He was heading to pick up some papers from someone and giving me a chance to see some more of the neighborhood at the same time. We got to a point, though, where traffic jammed up because the road had been blocked off some distance ahead, so we ended up backing up for a hundred yards or so (this particular street being far too narrow to consider turning around without sliding the cars wheels into one of the concrete drainage channels that line its sides. This being Zongo, the Muslim influence shows in diverse ways. I have been noticing, and need to take some photographs of, many religiously monikered businesses. Most have been variations on a Christian theme, such as the Amazing Grace Cold Shop (that sells frozenmeat) located just across from the path to Osman’s house. Today, however, I saw the “(obscured by a shirt thrown over part of the sign) Allah Photocopy” store. I also saw a sign for Dallas City (nature of the business unknown), with a subtitle,”No Justice, No Peace,” and an image of an American dollar bill with the face of a turbaned Muslim cleric in the place of Ben Franklin. I’d like another chance to see that—I had to stop trying to get a good picture after inadvertently shooting off the flash from mycamera in Osman’s face while trying to get a shot of the sign out through his open car window.
Backtracking towards Osman’s, I saw a sign for the neighborhood office of Chief(did not get the name), and asked Osman and Jonny about it. They said that many of Zongo’s people still have close connections to the north, and so the traditional leaders of the different groups continue exert influence over the people here, who regard the rulers as someone both to respect and to turn to for help. The distant rulers have no official power here, and can’t really know what is happening with the people from their ethnic groups, so someone locally is selected as a representative of the leader to handle matters and provide information about situations here back to the chief. I’d been asking questions of the two of them non-stop, when just after getting clarifications about this leadership matter, it occurred to me that the last few days constitute some of the most intensive anthropological fieldwork I’ve ever done. I have lots of willing informants and am an active participant-observer.
Things just continued to get more and more interesting when we got to Osman’s. Upon parking the car in the street across from the walkway to his house, we were greeted by his neighbor Paul, who has apparently heard much about my coming from Osman for quite a while. He was very happy to meet me, and took us back to where his house is located, again slipping down a narrow alley between two of the businesses fronting the street, then ending up in one small courtyard, where he introduced his wife, who may or may not run the small candy and sundries kiosk there. He lead us to another courtyard where he introduced me to the “chief.” Paul has lived in his house for 36 years and in that time has seen a lot of change and growth in Zongo. The chief has been his landlord for that whole time, being one of the longest term residents of the community. This is the actual source of his title, which is not indicative of a traditional inherited position, but rather is honorary, recognizing his longevity and status in the neighborhood. We were brought chairs to sit in, with me as the guest being asked to sit first by the chief. We met a woman who may be related to him, though probably a generation younger, and who tried to teach me some Hausa phrases. Both the chief and Paul are Hausa. I asked Osman about his ethnic group, which is Wali, also from the north. Paul introduced us as well to another still younger woman and her quadruplets (2-3 years old, 2 boys and 2 girls) who also share the courtyard. Heading out after our brief visit, we passed an entire large six by six foot pallet stacked perhaps 4 feet high with boxes full of the little water bags that are ubiquitous here, right next to the aforementioned kiosk. A number of boys were unloading the bags, though I’m not sure to where, and, now that I think of it, I’m not sure how anyone even managed to get that huge load in where it was. It certainly did not come in the way that we had, so the alley must open up wider in the other direction.
Two words for my friend Wendy before this next section—“cultural research.” On the way towards Paul’s house we’d popped into a small bar—beaded hangings in the entrance, slatted wood walls making the interior shadowy and cool feeling, and considering that we were in the heart of a predominantly Muslim neighborhood, a very well-stocked wall of bottles of liquor—to be introduced to another one of the neighbors who operates the place. Coming back out, the four of us popped into the same place again, with Paul pulling out chairs for us to have a seat. When asked what I wanted to drink, I tentatively ventured what I thought was a safe answer of “Malta Guiness,” the popular non-alcoholic drink I’ve had a couple of times now. Nobody said much, and I added, “or whatever else you think is good,” thinking that there might be some other sort of local beverage or soda that was preferred. I was a little surprised when the three of them began talking about what kind of beer I might like, but in the end beer it was, with the owner bringing out four different bottles and placing them on the table. I was asked if I would like a local beer or Heineken, and opting naturally for a Ghanaian product and mentioning that I had heard of Star, the bottle that had been placed right in front of me, it was agreed by the other three that Star was a good choice for my first Ghanaian beer. I was quite surprised when the owner popped open not just my Star, but the two different bottles of Stone sitting in front of Paul and Jonny, and also the GuinessExtra in front of Osman.
After a “Cheers” and my first quick sip of the Star, two things happened. First, I was hailed as now being truly a Ghanaian, and second, I had to ask the inevitable question about Muslims and alcohol. Jonny, as it turns out, is a Christian. I don’t know about Paul, though as a Hausa he is likely to be a Muslim, but I know that Osman is a Muslim. I explained that in the United States, in teaching about Islam, we tend to teach it as consisting of a certain very specific set of beliefs, one of which is a prohibition against the drinking of alcohol. Osman responded that beliefs about alcohol consumption really vary by sect. He and those of his sect believe that drunkenness and drunken behavior are wrong, but that drinking beer or alcohol in and of itself is not. In fact, as Paul was trying to work out with Osman a day to have us come to his home for dinner, he asked what else we would like to drink. He mentioned whiskey, one of the other two said wine, and I said that beer was fine for me. In light of the fact that all three of the Ghanaian beers came in 20-something ounce bottles, however, even sticking to beer may not be a sure way to ward off tipsiness.
I asked Paul a number of questions about his naval career and the Ghanaian armed forces. The navy consists of coastal patrol boats, the primary duty of which is to intercept and inspect if needed vessels coming primarily from the countries of Cote D’Ivoire to the west and Togo to the east. Main commercial ports in Ghana are Accra, of course, along with Takoradi in the west. Since Takoradi is near the site of Ghana’s recently opened oil drilling and refining facilities, it seems likely that it will become a much busier port as a result. (Two quick side notes: When in the headmistress’s office a couple days ago, I saw a stack of new books about oil industry terminology, indicative perhaps of how the government will be trying to educate students about this important new industry. Also, in the second form Q and A session yesterday, one of the questions was about American natural resources, with the student mentioning oil and gold as being the two most important for Ghana.)
Paul served in a number of U.N. Peace-Keeping missions in which Ghana has participated, including in Cote D’Ivoire and Sierra Leone, as well as Lebanon. I asked a little about the difficulties of coordinating such multinational forces, which may have different languages and ways of doing things, but apparently the matter is solved by assigning each nationality to patrol a different sector of the country in question, so that coordination is not a major problem.I also asked Paul and the others how Ghana’s military personnel are selected and explained the U.S. system of having a volunteer army while requiring all males to register for the draft when they reach eighteen in case of future need. In Ghana, the system is a bit different—the military places newspaper ads inviting men with specific types of skills, whether as drivers or electricians or cooks, to apply for those positions. I compared this to the U.S., where men and women with particular skills might be selected to serve in particular areas, but where, when you join, you have to accept whatever type of assignment is given to you.
Paul served as a cook, which lead me to point out the irony of the fact that while he was a cook by profession, as I understand Ghanaian culture he’d never be able to use those skills at home, since cooking is widely considered to be a woman’s job. Jonny thought this was quite funny, though we didn’t get to follow up with Paul about this point since we received a call from Amina to let us know we should come for dinner (which she, of course, had been cooking). Our discussion on this topic continued at dinner. I told Osman and Jonny about the division of tasks in our household, one that would be unlikely in Ghana in that I do most of the cooking. I asked what a single male does for food, and the answer was that most likely he will either get a girlfriend to cook for him or end up doing a lot of take-away (take-out). Since the latter can be expensive, however, some may try to do a little cooking. If it is found out that a man is doing so regularly, though, it can give him a sort of a strange reputation. An exception to this is the case of the various street vendors who cook meat, fish or other foods to sell to passers-by. The difference seems to be that in this case, cooking is a way of earning money, and not just a way of feeding oneself. I’ll have to do a little research by paying attention to who is preparing and selling what kinds of foods when I am out and about. I noted that in the U.S. many men do cook as I do, but that even in houses where women do much or most of the cooking, the one exception also seems to involve grilling meets—men frequently seem to do the barbecuing. Jonny did admit that he knows how took cook from having grown up the only boy in a family with six sisters, but he made it clear that he doesn’t like to do so. Being newly married, I don’t think that is much of a problem for him.
When Jonny mentioned following up the discussion with Paul on this point on Sunday, I had to confess that the point about the seeming tension in being a male who is a cook by profession but is unable to cook in his own home was not a completely original thought on my part. In fact, this afternoon, I had been reading a story entitled “For Whom Things Did Not Change” in No Sweetness Here, a collection of stories by the Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo, in which, coincidentally, that was the very situation faced by the principal character. The character, Zirigu, who has long cooked for whites/colonial officials, faces somewhat of a crisis of identity and status when a new occupant of the government house where he works asks to be served Ghanaian foods rather than the European “chop” that Zirigu is familiar and comfortable with cooking, meaning that Zirigu’s job becomes entangled with and threatened by that of his wife. Though the story sparked my remark later in the evening, Aidoo’s story is actually focused on a different issue of status, specifically how Zirigu and others should view him as he shifts from being a black Ghanaian who in the past cooked for whites, to being a black Ghanaian who now cooks for other blacks. Zirigu’s closing question in the story: “[W]hat does “Independence” mean?”
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