Saturday, 11 June 2011—Accra, Kakum, Elmina, Cape Coast (Part Two)

Saturday, 11 June 2011—Accra, Kakum, Elmina, Cape Coast (Part Two)

Leaving Kakum and heading south towards the coast, we take a cut off from the road we’d traveled to Kakum to head toward Elmina.  Along the way, the mystery of why the numerous potholes in the road have been filled in with the red soil from the roadside for a couple short stretches is solved—two young boys stand with shovels in their hands, hoping for tips from passers-by for smoothing the way.  We pass a prison, and adjoining it an entire small village made up of two-story barracks style housing for the prison staff. 

Elmina, from the Portugese for “the mine,” in reference to the gold obtained there, sits on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea.  Though a relatively small town oriented around the fishing industry (as well as tourism) today, during the most important periods of its history, Elmina played key parts in the West African gold and later slave trades.  The historic heart of the town is St. George’s Castle, the oldest surviving European colonial structure in Sub-Saharan Africa.  That alone makes this a truly historic place, without even considering what was done here.  The original structure, though much altered and expanded since, was constructed in 1482, so this building is older than the entire history of the continuous presence of Europeans in the Americas, which began ten years later with the first voyage of Christopher Columbus. 

Elmina remained under Portugese control until 1647 when it was captured by the Dutch during the fighting among European countries that also included Britain, Denmark, and Sweden, over who would control trade along this stretch of the West African coast.  The earliest trade between Europeans and Africans involved gold and ivory brought from the African interior and exchanged for European goods such as tobacco and gunpowder at one of the over fifty castles that were eventually built along the coast, of which seventeen remain.  The importance of the gold trade is clear from the name given by the Europeans to the region that would eventually become modern Ghana—the Gold Coast—the name by which it was known during the period of British colonial control up until Ghana gained its independence in 1957, the first former sub-Saharan African colony to do so.  In addition to gold and ivory, the trade included from the very early Portuguese period on the purchase by Europeans of enslaved Africans, an element that grew over time to comprise an increasing portion of the overall trade.  By the time that the castle passed from Dutch to British hands in 1872, however, slavery and the slave trade had been widely outlawed, and the British used Elmina to consolidate their hold on their colonial territories along the coast and during their campaigns to pacify the powerful Asante (Ashanti) kingdom to the north around the region of Kumasi in modern Ghana.

St. George’s Castle and the other fifty or so forts built along the coast provided places for trade, bastions against attacks by other European powers or by the African groups with whom they were allied, and later as holding areas for slaves brought from the interior before they could be loaded onto ships for the voyage to the Americas or other destinations and eventual sale.  Unlike Kakum, which is a place that you can truly say you enjoy visiting, I am not sure that that term can be applied here.  I think you can “be glad” that you visited, or find it interesting and historical, but it just doesn’t seem to be right to use the term “enjoy” when speaking about a place that was involved in the slave trade as the castle at Elmina was.  The castle sits on a spit of land that is separated from the rest of the coast by a lagoon and a river.  Roughly rectangular in shape, the landward side is protected by a moat and drawbridge, over which we entered.  The interior courtyard is surrounded by buildings up to four stories tall, the upper stories of which would have been occupied by the governor and other high ranking Europeans residing in the castle.  At one end of this courtyard sits a building that was originally a Roman Catholic church built by the Portuguese church, but which now houses a museum with informational displays about the castle, Elmina in general, and also the surrounding regions which were linked to this place by the economic and political ties forged through trade.  The Dutch, being Protestants, converted this structure to commercial uses after taking over, and built their own church in another part of the castle.

It is impressive the way the girls go right to taking notes from the various displays.  In my time here so far this stands out as a hallmark of the AGISS students, and from them I infer of Ghanaian students in general—they take lots of notes.  In fact, at times in the classroom I have had to work to keep them from writing things down when what I want them to do is be thinking or talking about what I have written. 

Our tour of St. George’s Castle begins in one of the male slave dungeons, located right off the central courtyard.  This barrel-vaulted chamber perhaps twenty feet wide and one hundred fifty feet long would have held 200 men, chained to the walls.  Up to 600 at a time would have been held in the castle as a whole, along with up to 400 women.  The only amenities of the chamber would have been several large containers in the corners for use instead of toilets.  Some of the captives, by the time they had reached the castle, after up to a two month forced march from the interior, would have been past the point of caring, and not have made the effort to reach these containers.  The heat, the smell, the noise of men crying out in pain and frustration, and the sounds of many different languages of the captives mixed together would have been terrible to witness, though this was apparently tolerated by their captors. 

Adjacent to this dungeon are two small (15 foot square) cells that were used as jail cells.  One, with ventilation and light that could come in from both the door and a high window, was used to detain European soldiers stationed at the port for various offenses such as slipping off into town without permission—the soldiers might be detained here for periods ranging from a few hours to a few days, depending on the nature of their offense.  Next to it was a similarly sized cell, but with minimal ventilation or access for light.  Into this cell were thrown any of the enslaved Africans who saw fit to fight back against their captors.  Those thrown into this cell, with its skull above the door, were generally left there without food or water until all that remained to remove were dead bodies.  Our entire class of fifty students crowds into this room and the guide closes the door for a minute to give us a brief taste of the darkness, heat and crowding that would have been suffered by those put there in the past.

Exiting the cell, we cross the courtyard and proceed down a low tunnel to enter the female dungeon, centered around another smaller courtyard open to the sky.  These rooms were originally warehouses, before the primary goods moving through the castle shifted to human beings from other types of items.  Three stories above, a balcony allowed the governor, whose rooms were on that level, to look down into the courtyard.  The women would have experienced similar conditions to the men, but with the additional trauma of being subject to sexual predation from the European soldiers.  Even today, Elmina has a distinct mulatto population as evidence of the sexual relations between the soldiers and the African women.  It is little consolation to know that the women at least were not subjected to branding with a hot iron as the male captives were in a small room off of one of the male dungeons.  Like the men, though, the women had no sanitation facilities other than containers in the corners of the dungeons.  They were fed and some ate, but after being marched to the coast from the north, and after up to three months spent in the dungeons of Elmina Castle waiting for a slaving ship to come, some simply preferred to die.  In the middle of the courtyard sits a cannonball that could be attached with chains as punishment for a female who misbehaved. 

Entering another one of the dungeons used to hold enslaved males, at the far end we come to a low short tunnel that requires me to bend over sharply as I pass through.  Standing up at the other end I find myself in a small room with a steep rough stone stair leading down from the women’s dungeon above  that we had visited earlier, and a small door in the outer wall through which I can glimpse the sea.  This is St. George’s Castle’s “Door of No Return,” the exit through which all those who had been captured, sold, and brought here were taken out of the castle, and away from Africa forever.  Today, due to shifts in the currents, the ocean has receded and a wide sand spit lies outside the wall, but in the days of the slave trade, steps would have lead right down to a jetty, whence boats would have carried the captives in small groups to the ocean-going ships anchored offshore in the harbor.  Those slaves taken from Elmina by the Portuguese, I am told later, were taken to Suriname, Brazil, and Guyana, while the Dutch transported their captives to Indonesia and the West Indies.  Some, though I am not sure from what time period, were also taken to Great Britain, and particularly to Bristol and Liverpool.  Ironically, the harbor-front street of Elmina from which one turns into the castle grounds is named Liverpool Street.  Two wreaths in the room have been left by past visitors, members of the African diaspora, descendants of those who had passed through this Door of No Return or some other like it.

It is important for the sake of historical accuracy to note here that while those working in the slave trade in the fort and aboard the ships were Europeans, Africans also played active roles in the slave trade as middlemen who bought slaves at markets in the hinterlands from still other Africans who had captured the victims in the first place.  One of the things I have learned here, and particularly from my preparations for the lesson on the slave trade, is the complexity of the history of slave trading networks in the region of Ghana.  Many Americans do not know that many African societies practiced slavery among themselves long before the coming of Europeans to the continent.  Captives from warfare were commonly enslaved as might be those who could not pay their debts.  Traditional kings or leaders in some African societies also had the power to enslave their subjects, a practice that may have been rare originally, but which seems to have increased in frequency after the integration of Europeans into the slavery and slave trading systems of the region.  Prior to the coming of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British and other Europeans, while the precise status of slaves within African societies depended on the group involved, and while slaves in all societies were subject to the control of others, in some African societies slaves could rise to positions of substantial power and influence.  In certain regions, female slaves especially might actually be incorporated into existing lineages through marriage so that their children became not slaves but members of the society in question.

The issue of the role of Africans in the slave trade is a touchy one in the United States, with some accusing those who raise the issue of wishing to divert attention from the cruelty of the European dominated trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved human beings.  In Ghana, the fact of the African role in the slave trade, both before and after the coming of the Europeans is undeniable and is accepted without argument, being cited as it is in the national text for high school history classes.  One of the sources I have read suggests, however, that while this has always been common knowledge, public  acknowledgement and discussion are things of the relatively recent past for the most part.

The coming of the Europeans and their entry into the slave trade in Ghana and throughout Africa, transformed the trade and with it the African societies that were involved in the trade, whether as victims or as perpetrators.  The destructive effects on African societies of having large numbers of their young and most able-bodied individuals stolen away can easily be imagined, and many of the problems facing Ghana and neighboring countries today are arguably rooted in these effects.  However, while well known in Ghana, it is little known to the best of my knowledge in the United States that the slave trade also greatly benefited some African societies and groups.  In Ghana, one of the primary groups benefiting was the Asante (Ashanti), who through their control of the slave routes from the interior to the coast became wealthy and powerful, developing a highly centralized society.  Within Asante society, the wealthy and powerful gained the most from the slave trade, largely because they were in the best positions to invest in and profit from the trade in such a valuable commodity.  The Asante, however, were not the only African group within Ghana to benefit in this way—another was the Fante.  As the expansions of these groups brought them into contact, and conflict, with each other, they formed alliances with different European powers, the Asante with the Dutch and the Fante with the British.  The withdrawal of the Dutch from West Africa in the late 19^th century left their former allies the Asante in a precarious position, leading shortly thereafter to warfare between the weakened Asante and the British.  When the British won this war, they imprisoned the Asantehene, the traditional leader of the Asante, in St. George’s Castle for over twenty years. 

Leaving the castle, which in 1979 was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site (along with adjoining St. Jago (St. James) Castle that sits just across the Elmina lagoon, and Cape Coast Castle some fifteen miles east along the coast), we head for the more light-hearted atmosphere of the adjacent beach, where a recent storm out at sea has the water roiling as the waves break in on shore, sending barefoot AGISS students running laughing and shrieking out of the waves’ reach.  Looking down the length of the beach, the incoming waves, some easily ten feet tall as they begin to curl and break, have thrown enough spray into the air that the view is shrouded in mist.  As at a couple of prime locations within the castle, such as out on the top level with the various cannon still pointing out at sea, this photogenic spot brings out the shutterbugs, with lots of requests for photos of me with one or a group of the girls.  We are accompanied on this trip by a photographer who is apparently regularly hired by the school for such purposes.  He must have a very large capacity memory card because he takes scores of such pictures in which I am featured, in addition to a seemingly endless stream of photographs of the girls, who will later be able to purchase copies.  Partway through our tour, the memory card in my camera fills up, and then, after deleting some easily replaceable shots of the AGISS grounds to make room for more pictures of our excursion, my camera battery gives out.  I expect, however, that when I get around to appealing to the students for this purpose, I will be able to get some pictures of the shots that I have missed.

This is an excellent chance to get to talk individually or in small groups with students who approach me with questions.  One of the most common is “Are you on Facebook?,” to which I answer “Yes,” but with the warning that even after I return to the U.S. it may be late summer before I can respond to messages I receive.  When I mention that my girls at home have asked me to bring them some shells from the ocean, a handful of students heads off to comb the beach, coming up to me somewhat later with a handful of much nicer specimens of shells than the shards I had found on my own.  Near our group, on the rocks that mark the rise from the beach and on the adjacent land above outside the castle entrance, congregate a collection of food and drink vendors, souvenir sellers, and somewhat questionable young men who purport to be raising funds for their soccer club and asking for contributions.  The latter display perhaps overly worn subscription sheets showing the names and amounts given by past “donors.”  There are a number of takers among our students for the snacks and souvenirs, but the “soccer club” members know it is pointless to approach our students for money, and so as we head to reboard the bus, I see that they have refocused their attention instead on two young white women who have just arrived, and who have been engaged in conversation by a couple of these characters.  I know that these two have probably read in their travel guidebooks or received verbal warnings from friends about such touts in places like this, but knowing about them and being able to extricate oneself from their persistent appeals are two different things.

Elmina is a small town, so we are soon outside of it and proceeding along the coastal highway just a couple hundred meters or so from the beach, with its collection of palm trees and beached fishing boats.  The harbor at Elmina was filled with these colorful and brightly painted boats, and I regret that I was unable to take any pictures of the site from my vantage point atop the castle.  On the spit of land that has developed just outside the castle walls several boats were under construction, their hulls being constructed from large rough wood planks.  These vessels are long and narrow and upon first sight to unfamiliar eyes, their appearance would make it easy to incorrectly assume that they were created by hollowing out a single massive tree trunk.  The largest of the vessels seemed when viewed from above at the castle to be perhaps six or seven feet wide and fifty or sixty feet in length.  I could not see the motors on the few vessels that were moving on the choppy water near the fort earlier, but they must be fairly powerful to move such substantial vessels, with their crews and their loads of fishing nets and, hopefully, fish.  Just outside the castle along the harbor, everywhere in Elmina as we passed through, and now sporadically along the coast are huge piles of these nets, some being repaired or reattached to their lines by fishermen, some merely sitting—large piles of aqua-green mesh with styrofoam floats waiting to be put to use.  A number of the beached boats that we see along this stretch, however, will clearly never put out to sea again, their faded broken sides and exposed rotted hulls revealing them as derelicts, left to rest among the coconut palms and to provide shelter, perhaps, for the chickens, goats, and one solitary pig that I see foraging.

On the inland side of the highway, we pass the University of Cape Coast, Osman’s alma mater and one of the largest and best universities in Ghana.  More interesting to the girls is St. Byzantine’s College, a boys’ high school, which elicits a cheer as we pass the school grounds and the boys who are out playing football (remember that in Ghana this means soccer) on a field adjacent to the highway.  The seaward side of the road is punctuated by beach resorts of various calibers, their walls, fences and gates providing brief glimpses of accommodations that range from well-worn, thatch-roofed bungalows to modern three-story white-washed blocks of rooms bristling with air-conditioning units, satellite dishes, and uniformed valets standing at the entries.  There seems to be something for every taste, and every budget, although the latter half of this statement is clearly untrue as I think about it, since there are many Ghanaians for whom even the least expensive of these accommodations will be forever out of reach, concerned as they must be just with making enough money to meet their daily needs.

This need to make enough money just to be able to buy some food for the day, let alone to pay for housing, clothing, taxi or tro-tro rides, or to meet the costs of school fees or emergencies, underlies the seemingly ceaseless economic activity on the streets here.  Even young school-aged children can be found attempting to sell small items to passers-by.  I saw on the news a day or two ago a quick note that the government is trying to eliminate child labor, but it is hard for me to see how this will be possible given Ghana’s overall level of economic development at present.

As we arrive in Cape Coast and pull up at the castle, it is already past 4:30 and Osman announces that we will make a brief stop here, but not enter the castle.  Although from the outside, this appears to be a somewhat larger structure than that at Elmina, much of the information inside is similar, though oriented here towards the British role along the coast, since Cape Coast was a British fort, built to contest control of the region with the Portuguese and later Dutch stationed at Elmina to the west.  As we arrive, I am able to squeeze one more picture out of my dying camera battery, and am very happy to be able to do so because it is of workmen whitewashing the exterior walls of Cape Coast castle.  This practice has raised vocal criticisms in recent years from some diaspora Africans in the United States, who hold that “beautifying” the castle in this way, in their minds for the purpose of promoting tourism, represents in effect an attempt to whitewash not merely the walls, but the castle’s history and the terrible events that took place here as well. 

This is another particularly sensitive issue related to the history of slavery in West Africa.  While I recognize the deep feelings that many descendants of enslaved Africans may have on the topic, I think that these criticisms reflect at least in part a willingness to ignore certain aspects of the historical record and historical practices here that may not fit neatly into twenty-first century perceptions and representations of the slave trade.  The fact is that the castles of the coast would have been whitewashed during the time of their use.  This was a method to maintain the integrity of the forts’ exterior surfaces in a tropical environment where rain, moisture and the ensuing growth of fungi, molds, and plants on walls and other building surfaces requires ongoing maintenance of this kind in order to avoid their deterioration.  A shabbier appearing building with walls of mottled browns and grays may accord more closely with the feelings that people have about the slave trade than does a structure the neat white appearance of which belies the dark nature of the events that took place there, but it is nevertheless wrong to consciously bend the historical record in such a way to serve the purposes of the present, no matter how sincere and lofty these may be.

We take a brief walk around from the landward side of the castle to that facing the sea.  Cape Coast castle is built on a promontory atop rock bluffs that rise steeply above the water.  The surf coming ashore here is large and powerful, and as the waves crash against the base of bluffs below, they send towering plumes of spray onto the rocks above.  This must be a ceaseless phenomenon, for the rocks are coated with seaweed, and shellfish grow in small tidal pools that drain slowly down the face of the bluff between incoming waves that soak them anew.  At one point, as I am standing atop the bluffs posing for a picture with a small group of students with our backs to the sea, a wave sends its water surging all the way up the rocks to where we stand, perhaps ten meters above the ocean’s level, soaking the lower legs of my pants and sending the girls scurrying.  As we walk a little more, a group of Ghanaians who has also been exploring the seaward side of the castle walls is similarly posed on the highest point of the bluffs, at least fifteen meters above the sea, when a massive wave crashing into the base sends a towering spray of water rising up at least another three meters above their heads before crashing down, as we watch, to soak all in the group but the photographer who was poised to take the picture.  I certainly hope that he got the shot, because it would have been memorable.

Leaving Cape Coast, the older part of the city near the castle is characterized by large thick walled buildings of from two to four stories, while as we move away from the water, the architecture changes to the contemporary Ghanaian mix of buildings.  Sometimes the names on signs or shops along the way beg for further investigation, such as the “Holy Cities Academy Masquerade Society.”  Others of particular note include the “God’s Grace Spraying (spray-painting) Shop” and the “Don’t Mind Your Wife Chop” house (“chop” here is a term that refers to prepared meals).  It is difficult to tell if some of these signs are actually as old as they appear with many perhaps all that remains of now otherwise forgotten businesses and events, or if their advanced states of disrepair simply indicate the rapid weathering caused by the tropical climate and proximity to the ocean.  At the traffic circle where we rejoin the main Cape Coast-Accra highway, I see a large billboard displaying pictures of Ghanaian president Atta Mills and American President Barack Obama, with the slogan “Mills-Obama: Leadership We Can Trust.”  Shortly after another proclaims “Graphix Salutes Ghana at 50,” dating it to 2007.

We are in and out of rain on the entire trip back from Cape Coast.  During one such downburst, I see a girl sheltering herself under the large metal bowl she must usually use when carrying items on her head.  Rain here creates rust red puddles wherever there is a depression in the red, iron-rich African soil.  There is surprisingly little mud, though, since much of the soil is sandy and as I have noticed at the school, within just a short time after the rain has stopped, most of the water drains away.  Even in the rain, when we pull over just outside of Cape Coast to allow the girls to buy kenkey to eat after our late return to AGISS, the vendors come running to the bus, recognizing a large sale when they see it.

Re-entering Greater Accra, we drop several students off at various points along the way, beginning with some who live quite far from the school.  I am told that it might take two hours each, morning and evening, for the girls from these areas to make their way to and return home from AGISS.  More surprising to me than their willingness to travel these distances, however, is the fact that we are dropping them off as we are, along one of the main roads that makes up our route, then leaving it to them to make their own way home from this point.  This indicates a very different way of looking at who is responsible for students and their welfare in Ghana as compared with the U.S.  It is incomprehensible that what we are doing could be done in the U.S., where I, for example, am legally responsible to supervise my students throughout the full course of school activities like today’s excursion.

Our full round trip, when I inquire later of Isaac, covers a distance of 168 miles, including our inland loop to Kakum.  This makes the distance between Accra and Cape Coast about sixty miles.  Distances in Ghana, however, tend to be expressed in terms of time spent traveling rather than the miles between two places, and with good reason.  On this busy Saturday evening we were basically caught in a sixty mile long traffic jam, departing Cape Coast just after 5:00 PM, but not arriving back at AGISS until around 9:30. 

  

Sunday, 12 June 2011-Accra

Sunday, 12 June 2011--Accra

I am back at my rooms after lunch—fufu and thin soup with kenkey, courtesy of the ladies in the dining hall kitchen once again.  Getting up at 7:00 AM this morning felt like sleeping in a bit by the standards of the schedule I have been keeping.  I managed to do so despite the busy day yesterday and working on notes/blog until close to 12:00 again last night.  I had time to organize things in my rooms, type a little, and get ready for Osman sometime after 9:00.  When he arrived, it was raining, so we stayed here and talked about the coming week’s lessons.  First and second forms are well underway in current lessons that will be finished before moving on.  For third form I need to have them finish the Spread of Islam, but after that they (and the other two groups as well) will be moving on to the Slave Trade lesson.  Actually the second form is midway through the introductory part of this already.  We’ll just keep the third form introductory  activity to one day, so that we can move on and begin using some of our experiences from Elmina and Cape Coast in class this coming week.  The question of an assessment still remains—that is one area that Osman and I did not get to discuss this morning. 

We looked at some of the primary sources that I have stored on the computer and talked about how to adapt the general lesson outline on the Slave Trade that we had been developing before I arrived to classroom conditions here  Ordinarily in the U.S. I’d conduct the research portion of an inquiry exercise like this by having students work simultaneously in small groups with a variety of primary and secondary sources arranged at a number of different “stations” in the classroom.  Factors here that make this method difficult include the fact that we cannot make multiple copies of the different resources for students to use at each station as I would at my school.  Nor, given the number of students in the class, is it possible for us to have them move from station to station to work.  Instead, we’ll hold class in the classroom with the computer projector where we can show everyone each resource all at the same time.  They’ll still work in their small groups, but we’ll avoid having to physically move either the students or the resources.  Today and tomorrow, I’ll have to cull through the primary and secondary sources on the slave trade I collected before coming and get these into a form that allows them to be projected for the students to use.  I think we should have a nice variety of sources, which will tie back in to Osman’s (and my) teachings about the methods of history.  These could include statistics, oral traditions, secondary analyses such as BayoHolsey’sRoutes of Remembrance, traders and ex-slaves’ accounts, maps, and pictures.  We need to bring in material on the castles we viewed yesterday—Osman suggested that information from and about the castles will probably point well to some of the economic effects, to which it just occurred to me we could add political effects/ effects on power structures and relationships within and between communities in the vicinities of the castle.

While I may submit one of the other lessons I’ve used here to fulfill my IREX requirements, the Slave Trade lesson is the one that is going to be the most original coming out of my experience here and my work with Osman.  I’ve convinced Osman that a good article that addresses the effects on the African side of the Transatlantic Slave Trade would be quite unique, and probably could be published (NCSS’s Social Education?), as well as forming the basis for conference presentations.  We might have to think about pairing it up with a similarly structured analysis of the effects of the slave trade on American society, depending on how it shapes up as we work on it.  This is still in the developmental stages—the latter idea, for example, is one that just came to us as we were talking this morning.  

Almost exactly as I am writing this, now at 2:52 on Sunday afternoon, I have been in Ghana for one week.  It seems like I just got here, but it also seems like I have been here a long time because of how busy I’ve been and how much I’ve learned.   Osman keeps lining up great experiences for me, both large such as yesterday’s excursion, and small, like this morning’s activities.  For every one thing I learn, though, two more questions seem to pop up that I want to ask about.  This morning I made a long list of questions about AGISS and about education in Ghana in general that I want to ask about in the next few days, as well as thinking about some of the things I want to do and see and look for in my remaining two weeks.  We actually got on to a couple of the educational topics as Osman and I talked this morning.

AGISS has other student associations connected to each of the disciplines taught—science, geography, etc.  Few, though are as active as that of the history students.  AGHISSA students actually also form the Pan-African club.  The AGHISSA polo shirts were created to identify the students when they attend competitions such as that at the Dubois Center.  The group of students going there this Friday will be composed of students from all three forms—if we go.  The competition was delayed once from the 10^th to the 17^th, but Osman has heard from a separate source that it may be pushed back for still another week.  If son, it is not clear that AGISS participate as it may run into exams and revision week (kind of like a review week).   Next weekend marks mid-terms here.  In the U.S., the term “mid-terms” generally denotes a test given halfway through a grading period.  In Ghana, “mid-terms” refers to the break that students get at that time.  Osman says that Madame will post the schedule for mid-terms on Monday, and that it is likely to include next Saturday and Sunday, with students returning to the school on Monday evening.  This kind of flexible (aka last minute?) scheduling differentiates Ghana and the U.S., where school year calendars are set well in advance, and last minute changes/decisions about dates for events are rare.  Most girls go home for mid terms—there is no staff to provide food at the school during the break.  Some from distant regions stay for the three days with relatives here in Accra.  The exception to the rule of all students leaving applies to fourth form students during the final term, who are allowed to stay at school in order to continue studying for their West African exams.

The academic year here starts in September and is divided into three terms (though prep schools like Patience work on a four term calendar).  The time off between terms varies, slightly less than a month between the first and second terms for the Holy Days (what we call Winter Break or Christmas Break), around 3-4 weeks between terms two and three, and about a month and a half in August and September after the third term is finished.  The second half of each term includes a Revision Week, when students write revisions to their work (I need to follow up with more questions about this) and two weeks to write exams (another need for follow up).  Thus the second half of each term only allows about three weeks of additional teaching.  Exams count for 70 marks (70% of the final grade), while continuing assessment counts for 30 marks.  The latter can include homework, quizzes, classwork, and even class participation.                                                                                               

Our drive through Nima this morning produced a number of interesting experiences and observations, as well as lots of questions that I asked, as usual, of Osman, but also of Ibrahim, a young teacher at Patience Prep and Jr. High whom we picked up.  He lives in the Nima neighborhood and Osman had invited him to join us in able to be able to tell me more about the area.  We picked up Ibrahim right along Nima-Mamobi Road--=the construction that had made getting around the area so difficult last week has been completed and the road now has a brand new asphalt surface.  However, we managed to encounter a new series of obstructions this morning, causing Osman to have to perform several of his back and forth mid-street turnarounds as we were blocked by the presence of large temporary tents set up in the middle of different streets for marriage ceremonies.  These Sunday events each mark the end of a three day celebration, Ibrahim explained.  Friday and Saturday are for spent by the family and friends of the couple with refreshments and food.  On Sunday, the actual ceremony takes place.  The woman’s family brings the dowry and the father of the bride and the father of the groom come together to agree that the dowry is correct and that the girl is to be given to the groom and his family.  The women of the bride’s family bring her to the mosque around 6:00 PM, where the ceremony takes place.  Men marry at an average age of about 30, and women in their young 20s.  In addition to the portable tent, the standard accoutrements seemed to feature a large bank of speakers blasting music, and scores of plastic chairs for the guests, who were uniformly dressed up for the festivities.

Driving through the Mongo (sp?) area, which seems to be a sub-neighborhood of Nima, I noticed a numbered of uniformed school children.  Knowing this area, like the others with which it is contiguous, to be heavily Muslim, I asked if in such neighborhoods school ran Sunday through Thursday instead of Monday through Friday to accommodate the juma (Friday) prayers.  Ibrahim said that the students were actually heading to a Makaranda, a religious school for weekend instruction in Arabic and about the Koran, the holy book of Islam, and the Hadith, the sayings of the prophet Muhammad.  We saw one group of students heading to a school that is a part of one of the mosques in the area, and another group, whom it turned out were some of Ibrahim’s students, heading to the Al Shaihidiyah school where he teaches.  This Saturday and Sunday teaching is in addition to his weekday job at Patience Prep and Junior High, where he teaches math and science.  Instruction in Arabic may begin as early as age three, and although I did not see any student quite that young, almost all seemed to be younger than ten, some by several years.  I met several of the teachers and was invited to take some pictures of the school and students.  Lessons on the boards at the time included the Arabic alphabet, the names of the five daily prayers, and two others that I can’t recall at the moment.  The students, as students everywhere are, were eager to have their pictures taken.  All of the young girls had their heads covered, many with fuller scarves than I have seen on most women.  One of the scarves worn by a young girl was the stars and stripes, which should make a very striking picture.

Leaving Al Shaihidiyah, we went looking for a Forex (currency exchange office) as I have now spent most of the cedis I acquired at the airport on my first day.  Pulling up in front of the location of the place that Osman had used before traveling to the U.S., we found it closed, but a man in brown tunic and kofi jumped up from a seat in front of the building and came hustling over the car to try talking to me.  Osman ignored him, and taking his cue, I did no more than say “Hello” as we pulled back into traffic and away.  It turns out that he was a black market (unlicensed) money exchanger.  I didn’t really see why this would be the case, since the government does not regulate currency exchanges, so there is no official rate to try to better, but Osman and Ibrahim explained that he can give a slightly better rate because he doesn’t pay license fees.  Of course, he probably makes much more by passing off counterfeit notes, or by taking advantage of the ignorance of someone like me to pass off inflation-ravished old cedi notes, which were exchanged at a rate of 1000 old cedis for 1new cedi several years ago.  The Forex we did use was fast and efficient (and air-conditioned) with a rate of 1.45 cedis to the dollar, lower than the 1.5 rate because I exchanged small bills (twenties) instead of benjamins like the one that adorned the office’s sign outside.

Quick miscellaneous notes from the day:

·         There is no government aid of any kind in Ghana for the unemployed, or even the disabled.  This accounts in part for the sense of economic vitality, albeit small scale, on the streets—everyone has to work at something if they want to survive.  One of the major imams in Ghana is sponsoring some students school fees for tertiary education.

·         I just heard a plane taking off from the airport 2-3 miles away, as I have done several evenings around this time (10:30) while typing away.  If things run true to form, another will follow in a half hour or so.  I expect that one of these is UA 991, that I will take on my return to the U.S.

·         Passing through what Ibrahim identified as the Los Angeles sub-neighborhood, I spied a purple and gold wall with the word “Lakers” painted across it.

·         Religion-related notes:  At some point, as we were talking about Muslims and Christians and the similarities between them, I asked about Jews in Ghana.  Neither of the guys had ever heard of any Jews here.  We did pass Kizati (sp.) Roman Catholic Church, easily distinguishable by the statue of Mary on one exterior wall.  When I mentioned to Rejoice today how much I enjoyed the girls’ singing, but that I did not recognize the hymns, she explained that they are from the Methodist hymnal.

·         Seeing tro-tros parked on the streets of more residential areas, I asked who owns and operates them.  It turns out that there are two possibilities: some are owned and operated by private individuals, while others are parts of fleets owned by someone but with drivers who are merely hired and may drive a different vehicle and route each day.  I have not yet done enough walking around in areas with many of these vehicles, as well as taxis, to begin my project of photographing the slogans on their back windows in Arabic, English and Akan(?).

·         Question:  How many Ghanaians does it take to buy a shoelace?  Answer:  Apparently four, at least if you count me as a Ghanaian and if today is any example.  After the Forex bureau, we headed through New Town.  This was actually one of the last areas we came through yesterday evening on our way home, with the main road coming out just the next major intersection with Achimota Road beyond the Nima-Mamobi Road.  The area, as I’d noticed last night, and Ibrahim mentioned as we were entering it today, contains a concentration of printing, computer, cell phone and related businesses.  Today being Sunday, a number of them are not open, with Ibrahim noting that this is because many of those who operate the businesses end up being off at a wedding like those we had seen earlier.  We picked up another acquaintance of Osman’s along the road, and he lead us off to an area near the (?) circle as a light rain began.  We had to walk a little ways and Osman grabbed the umbrella he keeps handy in the car for me, but given that nobody else was using one, I was content to get a little damp as everyone else was doing.  We entered a small area of narrow walks beneath the circle that was lined with stalls on both sides composed mostly of shoe dealers.  Among them they had every style of shoe imaginable and it took just a few minutes to find someone who had brown shoelaces to replace the ones I have broken on my dress shoes.  Two laces = ₵1. 

·         We made a quick stop to buy pineapple, cassava and plantains.  Cassava + plantains?  I smell fufu for dinner. Pineapples - ₵1 each.  Cassava - ₵3 for a bag.  Plantains -₵1for three or ₵2 for five.  “Huh?” I thought.  It seemed like a rather screwy,or perhaps just mathematically challenged, pricing structure, though the latter seemed unlikely given the business abilities of all the traders here.  I had to look again to notice that the pile of three plantains that Osman and Ibrahim were negotiating for consisted of smaller plantains and the pile of five was made of large specimens.  I’m not sure if one variety or the other is better somehow for different uses.

Dropping off Ibrahim, we dropped the food at Osman’s—he had me stay in the car and told me he’d fetch Amina to come get it from the boot.  I wondered at first if this somehow fell under the heading of one of her domestic duties, even though he had done the shopping,  but I think he just wanted to keep me dry and have her come greet me instead of the other way around, as he did help her carry the bags back to the house.  Another of Osman’s friends who has heard of me previously wanted to meet me, so we headed into the same bar that I had visited earlier in the week near Paul’s home.  Making my way through the available offerings, I tried Osman’s favorite--Guiness Extra—which proved to somewhat darker and my least favorite so far.  Osman’s friend is a security driver for the University of Ghana, commonly known as Legon for the neighborhood in which it is located.  Paul came in a little later and the owner also joined in our conversation.  Osman and his friend were discussing a mutual acquaintance, who apparently tends to borrow money and favors, but not to return them.  This prompted a discussion of how we all tend to want to associate with people that we can rely on, which causes us to be selective in our friendships.  Osman’s friend asked me about the differences between life in my neighborhood and life in the neighborhood here.  I said that one of the main differences is in the differences between how much of what goes on in the two locations is public and how much is private.  Here, where one lives in a courtyard that is shared by other families, one sees people bathing and what clothes they hang out to dry.  One  smells what they are cooking for dinner, and can’t help but overhear their conversations.  In the U.S., much less is known of the intimate details of even our closest friends’ and neighbors’ lives.  Part of this is due to the climate, which requires that we have houses that can be shut up tightly, but part is also due to the nature of American personalities, which I think have been shaped by having great amount of space, and the resources to separate ourselves from others.  Paul, I think very accurately summarized my points by describing life in the United States as being more self-contained.  Ironically, perhaps, this is probably less the case in African-American communities such as those from which my students come.  I am both enjoying and getting a great deal of benefit from such conversations like this, as they force me to develop and clarify some of the ideas that I have emerging about comparisons between Ghana and U.S.  I made this point in a way to all the others by noting that while I am a teacher here in Ghana when I am at AGISS, when I am in other places here, I am also a student, making every one of them my teacher, and not only mine, but through me the teachers of my family, friends and students back in the U.S. with whom I am sharing and will continue share their information and views.  In speaking with the owner before leaving, I explained that Linda is an art teacher and that she would appreciate it if he could collect some of his bottle caps for me, something that he will be happy to do as they usually just get swept up into the trash otherwise. 

I took a nap this afternoon, the first I’ve taken since I’ve been here.  When Osman came later, he said he had done the same, even though he had taken some “small sleep” on the bus and praised me for not dozing at all.  I told him that that is just because I am afraid that if I doze I will miss something.

We stopped at Connie’s corner for a beer and conversation.  These are indeed opportunities for cultural research.  I think that we are both really beginning to realize that we have been very fortunate in our assigned collaborators for the TEA program.  Osman is very smart and very perceptive.  Sitting and drinking as we were, and I have only encountered males in these contexts, I asked him if he would be able to do the same things he has been doing with me if his American teacher was a female, thinking about Elizabeth and her time to come soon with Rafael.  Osman’s reply was that he thinks it probably depends most on the personality of the person and not whether they are a man or a woman.  It is more about how open they are and how interested they are in interacting with other people.  In that sense, with my anthropological background, or perhaps just my personal approach to new experiences, I am well-positioned to enjoy every opportunity that he has presented to me.  I will not write about it in the blog, but Osman thinks, and I agree, that Dave’s experience of Ghana, however varied and interesting, must have been limited somewhat by his accommodations in a hotel in Cape Coast away from WGSHS.  From what we saw of the school’s location yesterday (it is on the road leading to Kakum and thus directly away from the center of Cape Coast where any hotel that Dave is likely to have stayed at must be located), he must necessarily have been more isolated from the school and its activities than I am.

Amina’s dinner for us was fufu and thin soup with fruit juice and pineapple and watermelon.  I actually correctly identified the fufu without any hints.  Ibrahim joined us—I told Osman that I enjoy the fact that so many of the people that I meet through him during the day are also his guests at dinner, giving me more of an opportunity to speak with them.  We spoke about school fees—₵2 per month at El Shaidiyah—and much about

School admissions system—Basic Education Certificate Exam (BECE) given to finishing Jr. High students—national exam just like the West Africa Certificate Examination (WACE) given at the end of fourth form.  BECE is the exam that Osman supervised, and has been supervising, at AGISS earlier this spring.  This is truly high stakes testing—students test in six subject areas (=??????), hoping to get a first, or the highest mark of one on each.  Secondary schools are ranked into Class A, Class B, Class C, and Class D (?), and the school to which one is admitted is based on BECE scores.  First class schools like AGISS require a BECE score of no higher than 9.  Ibrahim estimated that there are over 10,000 students who take the exam each year.  Once these have been scored, students are assigned by computer to one of the secondary schools in the Class that is consistent with their test marks.

Most students stay in school up through at least 8^th level, but the BECE is a sorting device, and those who do not score sufficiently well for one of the available slots in the various classes of schools must then leave school.  They do have the option of re-writing the BECE, but in order to do so they must repeat all three levels of Jr. High.  I cannot imagine that many do so, both because of being so much older than the rest of the students, and because of the expense.  I did not ask if there are private tuition-based tutoring options or if there is any other shortcut to speed up the process of re-writing the exam.  The WACE exams operate in similar fashion with regard to university admissions.  I will have to ask about how many students are admitted each year, but I seem to recall that there are not more than about 5-6,000 university level students in the entire country.  This may or may not include non-Ghanaian nationals attending Legon and other universities.  The non-Ghanaians seem to fall into two categories—nationals from other West African countries who may wish to attend the school and whose WACE exams (which are indeed given across West Africa in either French or English) are high enough to secure them admission, and European and American nationals, perhaps just attending Legon for a year.  Osman’s friend from the university this afternoon said that many of these are centered in the African Studies Department at the school. 

Who is a Ghanaian and who is not can get very complicated very quickly in the Zongos.  (I’ve now learned that Zongo is not just a term that applies to Mamobi and Nima, but to any area throughout Accra where people who have come from other regions of the country, or from other countries in West Africa, have settled, including New Town and Madinah, which is apparently the next neighborhood over beyond New Town and comes close to the area of Legon.)  At least one of the teachers I met today at Al Shaidiyah is from Niger, for example, and spoke French with me for a minute.  The mix of languages that are used here, and that one would have to learn to be able to communicate with everyone, could be truly daunting to try and learn.  On the other hand, with so much interaction, I expect that many people know, and mix together in their conversation as I have heard Osman and others do, words and phrases from a variety of the spoken languages here.  After just yesterday learning, for example, that obroni means “white man” in Akan, today Ibrahim taught me that in Hausa the corresponding word is “baturi,” which is what I heard some of what turned to out to be his students saying to me as I approached the school.

Ibrahim was very informative both this morning and this evening.  I mentioned that one of the things that I’m having to work at figuring out is how to greet different people in different contexts.  I think the safest overall approach is to be reserved and as universally polite as possible, but the specifics can be elusive.  In addition to the variations in handshakes that I have described previously, there is also the issue of what to do with the left hand, and what happens after.  I have received several salutes upon their entering a room from younger men, including one at Osman’s this evening.  Yesterday, as Karim greeted me, while shaking hands with our right hands, he gripped his right forearm from below with his left hand.  On greeting one of the Islamic teachers today, after shaking hands, he raised his right hand to his chest, palm inward.  I am nothing if not adaptable, so I was able to remember to do the same when we shook hands upon leaving.  I guess I’ll just continue trying to follow the lead of those around me in such situations. 

Ibrahim noted after I’d mentioned a couple of these examples that because everyone recognizes that I am not a Ghanaian, they are generally going to be very understanding about any mistakes I make.  Osman added that something that he might do that would be construed as disrespectful, if coming from him, would merely be understood as a sign of my ignorance of the proper way to do it.  He and Ibrahim explained that, for example, in Ghana and their communities, it is impolite for a younger person to greet an older person with anything more than a “Good morning” or the like.  They should not ask the older person how they are or anything else.  As a sign of respect, it is for the older person to first ask the younger such questions.  Interestingly, this is just the opposite of what I experienced in East Africa, where a younger person, in the most respectful way of greeting an mzee, or older adult, in Swahili should speak first, saying “Shikamoo,” to which the older replies “Marahaba.” 

My knowledge of Swahili and my ability to apply my previous African experience in ways like this has been invaluable here in many ways.  My use of Swahili in the classroom, in addition to adding a valuable element to the lesson on the Bantu Migrations, has also served as an important social connection with my students.  Outside the classroom, the language has helped me to understand various words I see and here in signs and conversations—Ibrahim’s use of “juma” (Saturday) and “dunia” (world) today, for example.  Meanwhile, stories I have told of my previous experiences in Africa have helped me to develop a better rapport with a number of people I have met.Each day continues to add to my understanding of Ghanaians and their culture, and in particular the educational system.  I am starting to feel that by the time we get to the radio program, I will be able to speak with at least some level of understanding about the Ghanaian educational system as well as the American system.

Saturday, 11 June 2011--Accra, Kakum, Elmina, Cape Coast-Part One

Saturday, 11 June 2011—Accra, Kakum, Elmina, Cape Coast (Part One)

It is a struggle to keep up with my notes and blog entries because of the volume of material that I want to record.  This is going in on Sunday morning, while waiting for Osman to come by.  All the writing, of course, is on top of the ongoing lesson planning that I need to do and the fact that I have to be finalizing my preparations for the workshop on Friday.  I learned yesterday that in addition to the social science teachers, Ms. Akapame and the chairs of all the other academic departments will also be attending the workshop.

I was up at 4:30 on Saturday in order to get up to the entry by 5:00 and help Osman with loading onto the AGISS bus for our excursion to Cape Coast.  Over the next half hour, students slowly came wandering up towards the bus from their rooms at the school, or entering through the front gate.   Osman and I headed down to check with Isaac, the school driver, who lives here on the school grounds.  His building is much like mine, but the verandah has been ½ walled, ½ screened in, which gives a little more enclosed space.  I am proud to be wearing my Accra Girls History Students Association polo shirt with the school crest on the front and a picture of the Big Six (the founding fathers of Ghana) on the back.  I only know Kwame Nkrumah, and need to learn about the rest so that I can explain who they are when people ask about it as I wear the shirt back in the U.S.  The girls wear their AGHISSA shirts atop their regular school uniforms, but the dark blue polos give them a very different appearance today.  The girls’ names are printed across the bottom on the back of the shirt.  This will certainly help me some today as I am speaking with them, though I may have to ask them to perform a pirouette in the middle of our conversation to get a peek at the back of their shirt.

The officers of AGHISSA are responsible for much of the arrangements today.  They have lists of the students to check off, have to get the food from the kitchen that is being taken along for the students (two large plastic baskets with Styrofoam take-away containers), and are in charge of the money that is paid for admissions and toll fees on the highway as we move from Accra region to Central region in which Cape Coast is located, and must record all these costs.

High seats on the bus will be excellent for observing the scenery as we pass, and will give me a different perspective than the view afoot or from Osman’s car.  I will also see much that is different because of the early and the new areas we will be passing through. I am sitting in the front window seat, probably my favorite for this situation, and so I will have views both ahead and to the side.  I will have to be fast with my camera, though, in order to take pictures of passing scenes. 

As 5:30 nears, Isaac appears and opens the hood of the bus to check things before we set off.  While we are waiting, the girls milling around and talking excitedly, an entire lorry full of water sachets pulls in through the gate and heads off down the road towards the dining hall.  It is just before 6:00 AM when the girls queue up at the two doors to get on the bus, and then we are off, fifty students and four teachers, including Mr. Lah and Mr.Alogum (sp?)along with Osman and me.  Passing Zongo, from my higher perch the neighborhood appears as a patchwork of corrugated roofs in shades from gray through rust red, peppered with the tires, concrete blocks and other weighty objects that are used to help hold the roofs down.  The minarets of some of the smaller mosques only rise about another story above the expanse of roofs.  This view contrasts sharply with the constant colors and activity that characterize Zongo for me when we pass through at ground level in Osman’s car.Along the main road, people are out exercising and jogging at this coolest hour of the day, just before sunrise.  The shops where I see activity this early mostly seem to those where food will be sold, and the proprietors are starting fires and cutting up the items that will be cooked.  Trash fires are also burning at this hour, with smoke rising or drifting through the streets and among the houses.

We stop for petrol at a Shell station.  Here, attendants in matching blue vests pump the gas, though Osman must get out of the car to pay for it.  Gas (diesel) is about Gh₵1.50 per liter.  At the current exchange rate, which is about Gh₵1.50/U.S.$1.00, this comes out to around $3.60 per gallon, or just about what it is in the U.S.  For diesel, this may even be a little less than the U.S., as I am thinking of the U.S. price of regular gasoline and diesel seems to usually be a bit higher.  Of course, relatively speaking, petrol prices here are much higher than at home when one takes into account average incomes in the two countries.  I must remember to ask whether the price of fuel here seems to fluctuate in the same ways that it does at home.  The gas station is right next to the Accra YMCA and the Y’s national headquarters.  I wonder if they’d honor my membership as a guest?

Heading on, we come to the corner near Holy Spirit Cathedral, where we have curved (the Ghanaian term for a turn) to go to Osu in the past.  We pass a neighborhood of two story buildings of a style similar to that of the DuBois home, one dated 1923, mixed in with newer 4-5 story apartment buildings.  Older buildings have wooden shutters to admit the breeze, some of which are closed, some ajar.  The newer have glass windows and portable air conditioning units in the walls.  After weaving through the city on streets much like the larger, though by no means big in an absolute sense, main streets that cut through Zongo, we come to a wider boulevard with a median and two, now three lanes passing in each direction.  We cross a drainage/river, littered with debris and trash, as most such waterways seem to be here, but its banks serving as habitat for cows, and surely for other animals, though I do not see any as we pass by quickly on the bridge above. We cross a railroad track, no trains in sight, but with hundreds of people passing along the tracks.  Where there are this many people in Ghana, there are sure to be vendors to serve them, and indeed there are, both walking around with their wares atop their heads, and in small sheds set against the buildings that border the railroad’s right of way.

The boulevard, which Osman confirms is Accra’s Ring Road, brings us to a modern warehouse district with large buildings, including a Pepsi plant, then past what must be Accra’s automobile row, with dealerships for every imaginable maker—Kia, Nissan, Skoda, Nissan, Tata, Audi.  The buildings of the dealerships themselves, however, resemble more the three story warehouses we have just passed, though with glass windows across the first floor, much more than they do the designer showcases that are characteristic of many American auto dealers.  We come to a stop light, and passing through suddenly find ourselves in a massive traffic jam—at 6:15 in the morning on a Saturday.  Osman had set our early departure both because of the many activities planned for the day and to avoid as much as possible this kind of  heavy traffic.  Perhaps it would be more correct to say that he wanted to minimize the time we spend in such heavy traffic, since it doesn’t seem that there is any way to avoid it completely.

The slowed traffic is partly caused by the presence of a large market, both indoor and outdoor that sprawls on both sides of the roadside and is already busy.  Also nearby is a large bus depot with many vehicles and line of people waiting to board.  Invariably where the traffic slows as it does here, the jam is made more chaotic by the presence of vendors darting between the traffic to sell their wares to those in the slow-moving vehicles, nimble despite the loads of plantain chips, cell phone cases, watermelon slices, loaves of bread, and other goods they carry atop their heads.  I need to get a good series of pictures of what people carry in this way—it would be hard to fathom in the United States.  Meanwhile, I am writing down some of the larger and more interesting items in my field notebook, and will compile a list at a later point.   As we pass the Accra Academy for Boys, the girls send up a cheer, something that will be repeated each time we pass a boys’ secondary school along the way. 

There is a distinctive style of writing used on the signs that adorn the rear windows of the tro-tros and taxis—kind of wavy letters.  The signs themselves remind me of the names that people give to boats, but tend to be much more religiously themed.  The various slogans come in English, Arabic (most often transliterated into English), and what I assume to be Akan.  Many have some kind of a religious message or reference.  Business signs here also often have a religious connection to them—a distinctly Ghanaian way of naming the various furniture shops, food stores, and other and other businesses.  Examples of such names make up another list that I am compiling.

We pass a major construction project—a large modern divided highway overpass where the work is raising lots of dust.  It is just 6:30, but work is in full swing, which may help them manage to avoid the heat of midday.  I see engineers with transits, forms for concrete pillars, a yard full of rebar, and a large crane moving a load.  Just past the construction zone, traffic suddenly lifts, and Isaac has us cruising at 100 km/hr.  At this speed, sitting in the front near the hatch that covers the diesel engine, and with the windows open, it is quite noisy.

We pass through an area with many different types of residential construction materials, the equivalent of the concentration of home remodeling and hardware stores on Manchester Road west of I-270 in St. Louis.  I see concrete blocks and paving stones, large decorative iron gates for houses and schools, rebar, decorative columns.  These shops must supply the materials for the new homes, some quite substantial, that I see dotting the low hills which make up the landscape here in the Weija district.

Heading west out of Accra, we must stop at a toll booth.  Slowed vehicles means… yep, a variety of hawkers trying to complete transactions before vehicles and their occupants pass through the toll barriers and the signs that read “No Hawkers Beyond This Point.”  At the police checkpoint just beyond the toll booths, one car is pulled over in front of the tan and blue police buildings, but we are waved right on through.

I see a group of five or six donkeys chasing each other.  This is a first, but I’ve seen plenty of cows and goats, some of which graze outside the AGISS wall along Achimota Road in the mornings and evenings, along with chickens and their chicks, including near some of the staff housing at AGISS.  There are relatively few dogs—most are small mixed breeds—and even fewer cats.  Just as such animals can be seen foraging here and there both in Accra and in the more rural areas that we are now entering, so too there are various little gardens tucked away in the middle of areas of other activity—a few rows of maize growing along wall behind a home, or various other patches of plants that I cannot identify being tended or harvested.

There are numerous automobile, motorcycle, and especially tire dealers along the way.  All seem to sell used vehicles and parts with the exception of the one strip of dealers in Accra.  Many of the tires seen on vehicles are well-worn, so the availability of replacements, even used ones, is important, though it results in more than a few sets of mismatched treads.   Some of the cars in these places are up on blocks or resting with the undercarriage directly on the ground, sans tires and many of their other parts that have apparently been salvaged for other uses.  We regularly pass cars stopped on the side of the road, with occupants out peering under the hood, or with tires being examined, hazards inescapably associated with the older age and well-used condition of many vehicles.  Even in the smallest villages we pass, though, there are taxis, which along with the tro-tros that move along with us towards Cape Coast, are the main form of vehicular transportation for many Ghanaians, both for local travel and over longer distances such as we are travelling today.

There are many buildings under construction along our way just as there are in Accra.  Typically these seem to use poured concrete for the foundation, support pillars, and stairs, with concrete block filling in to form the walls.  I see several places where workers are trenching out a rectangular form that I assume will become the location of a future structure.  As with the student block near Ayree at AGISS, large bamboo poles—2-3 inches in diameter—are used to support the forms for pouring concrete for the second and subsequent floors.  Many buildings that are clearly occupied on lower floors appear to have been planned with future expansion in mind, as their tops are not actual roofs, but floors for a future second or third story, with long bunches of rebar extending up out of the existing pillars below.

We pass through Kasoa, a neighborhood with a large market underway near a roundabout.  Slowing traffic at this important intersection means an onslaught of hawkers again, and I am able to take some pictures.  Kasoa marks the boundary between Greater Accra and Central Region to its east.  “Central” seems to refer to the region’s position along the coast rather than within the country as a whole.  Moving out of Kasoa and into the countryside again, in addition to the coconut palms that are found even in Accra, I now see plantain groves.  Scattered among the vegetation are periodic termite mounds, pillars of red earth up to five and six feet tall.

We pass an (illustrated) sign showing “No Defecating,” then immediately after a public toilet facility, which I noticed first because of its unusual low light green-painted surrounding wall.  Through the entrance I glimpse a number of similarly painted concrete enclosures and an illustrated sign showing how to use the facilities.  There is a certain incongruity here in that there is not much else of anything else located right around this facility, so I wonder if this a kind of a travelers’ aid for those traveling the Accra-Cape Coast road.

We pass GomoaDominas, a small rural village.  I have to wonder about some of the words I see and how they may have been borrowed from European languages into the various Ghanaian languages.  Near AGISS there is a shop sign with “Jehowa” in its name that Jonny confirmed does mean Jehovah, and I have to wonder if “Dominas” here is connected to the Latin “domini.”  Rural housing in this village is different—the buildings/houses nearest the road are constructed with adobe style mud walls, and thatched roofs.  There are a lot of buildings alI along the way even in the rural areas that are virtually identical in construction to those found in Accra, so I don’t know the significance of the difference in construction here.  It may well be a matter of economics—the building materials used in these particular structures must surely be less expensive than concrete, concrete blocks and rebar.  I also wonder if the location says something about the status of those who live in these buildings—are the places nearer to the road more or less desirable locations compared to other places within the same village that might be further from the exhaust fumes and the noise of passing traffic?  Or perhaps I’m just overthinking all of this?

Laughter and short shrieks come from the students inthe back of the bus as Isaac barrels over the low speed bumps that are placed three or four in a row across the road before any population center or tro-tro pull-off.

Near GomoaAdawukwaa, we cross what at first I take to be a marsh, before I notice a strong current indicating that it is actually a river flowing swiftly and well beyond its banks in flood.  The brown water swirls around the trunks, limbs and leaves of vegetation that at other drier times of the year must stand well above the river’s banks.  Wide flat areas allow the river to spread between the road and distant hills.  Atop the hills, the silhouettes of tall trees with high canopies, some partly obscured by mist or clouds instantly evoke for me images of similar scenes from the Uluguru Mountains of Tanzania and the Lutheran Language School outside Morogoro, where I studied Swahili in 1994 during my first stay in Africa..

We just passed another Mormon church, the third or fourth I have seen already today.easily identified by the identical nature of the signs in front of each.  Later I see a football (soccer) game in progress, even though it is drizzling slightly.  In just the few seconds of the game that I observe as we drive by, I can tell from one or two crisp passes in the few seconds of the game that I see just how much practice/skill/ball control players here must have, playing football and nothing but football the whole year round.  Near AGISS and in the adjoining neighborhoods, I have seen numerous games underway in the evenings on almost any open ground, no matter how small or irregularly shaped.  Down the hill and across the road at the bottom of the school grounds is what Osman has told me is a community center, with a regulation field, and uniformed teams running and practicing. 

We have to move partly into the opposite lane briefly to go around a large truck with barrels piled atop its cargo area that is stopped on the side of the road.  Its triangular red warning sign is placed behind it in the road as a warning, but the sign is also preceded by a dozen or so clumps of tall grass, pulled out from the roadside and placed on the pavement every 5 meters or so as further warning to oncoming vehicles.

It’s Saturday, so many towns we pass have markets in full swing.  Some of the cooking done by vendors here is in large two-foot diameter metal pots, (even larger ones are used in the AGISS dining hall kitchen) over three raised cones of earth or clay as supports.  Outside the towns and villages, there is no shortage of places to by snacks or beverages at the many thatch-roofed stalls along the roadside, which also seem to sell the fresh produce of the region—plantain, cassava, pineapples.  At one point a man dangles a kid goat by its hind legs towards passing cars, offering it for sale.  We pass the God With Us Carpentry shop, which sells…coffins.

Osman seems to have great confidence in my teaching at this point.  He frequently leaves me alone in the classroom for extended periods while he tends to other business.  He has mentioned how impressed he is with the lessons we are doing and tells me that there are many positive reports about my teaching from the students, reports which also are making their way to Ms. Akapame, the headmistress.  I am glad that my workshop is at the end of my stay because each day’s experiences  will allow me to better understandby that time both the constraints and the strengths that shape instruction in Ghanaian classrooms, both of which I will need to take account of if the methods I am presenting are to prove useable.

I get my first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean off to the left.  We pass the ruins of one small castle on a hill overlooking a beach, just before we come into the town of Anomabo.  Here Osman gets up to speak to the girls.  Anomabo, he tells them, was the site of the largest slave market used for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade (in Ghana or as a whole?)  He asks them to consider several questions today:  Why did the Portuguese begin to explore the West African coast starting in the fifteenth century?  If the slave trade began in the 16^th century, why did it increase in the 18^th century?  What were the domestic and international consequencesconsequences of the economic activity that took place here, that is the purchase and sale of human beings?  I see some fishing boats pulled up on the beach, and a few large fancy buildings, but for the most part Anomabotoday seems to consist mainly of a dense collection of small dwellings between the highway and the sea, the road through the town dotted with signs for some of the beach resorts that lie between Anomabo and Cape Coast.

Coming finally to Cape Coast itself, we pass around a roundabout where a road branches off towards the ocean and the  oldest part of the town where the Cape Coast castle is located.  A bulletin board prominently located at the turn off proclaims “Akwaaba,”the Akan for “welcome,” with pictures of President and Mrs. Obama.  This is a reminder of the visit they paid to Ghana and the Cape Coast castle in 2009.  We continue straight on for a short distance, then turn right (inland), heading towards Kakum National Park, our first destination for the day.  We pass through a marketing district and by Wesley Girls Senior High School, where Raphael teaches and where Dave Bosso was last week.  The market district sets me to thinking once again about the differences and similarities between economic activities in Ghana and in the U.S.  In Ghana, a person can get many of the same types of goods as in the U.S., but in most cases, each must be purchased at a different small store.  Here most people are entrepreneurs, the owners of their own businesses, while in the U.S., most are employees in larger establishments that sell a vast variety of goods.  Where most people walk instead of drive to take care of most of their business, as they do here, there is little advantage to having a huge store, since the area from which one draws customers is determined not so much by one’s selection of goods as by the distance that people must travel to get there.  Most people tend to frequent the businesses that are nearest to them, those within walking distance, for most goods.  A couple days ago, in response to my question about why he chooses to shop where he does among the many small stores selling similar goods in his neighborhood, Osman cited cost, and after this the trust that builds up with certain store owners so that he knows he will get good prices all the time.  Remember that in Ghana prices in most stores are not posted, so it is important to know the general range of prices for common goods and to know a seller who will be fair even in cases where you do not have good information about the price or quality of an item.

There is a police check point as we leave Cape Coast and set out on the road to Kakum National Park, which a sign states is 24 km. away, but again we are waved on through.  This road is much worse repair, and the jolting of the bus increases sharply, as does Isaac’s maneuvering to avoid the large pot holes that are suddenly commonplace.  The bumpiness of the road is evidenced clearly by the deterioration in the legibility of my writing as I try to record the passing cultural and natural scenery in my notebook.  I glance at my watch and it is now 9:00.  Time has passed quickly for me because there has been so much to see.

We pass a short, 100 yard section of chain link fence, the first I have seen anywhere in the country, protecting an area of large bamboo groves.  The bamboo grows in clumps of perhaps 20 feet in diameter, with individual canes splaying out to the sides easily 30 feet or more, and intertwining with neighboring clumps so that the entire ground between them is shaded and bare of any other vegetation.  The fence fades back into the undergrowth on either end and so seems designed either to be keeping something in or to be keeping something out, most likely the latter.  I see bamboo used here for a number of purposes—fencing, wattle/daub walls, and split for still other walls.  This is in addition to its use in construction as on the new student housing block near Ayree at school. 

Ghana, too has its roadside attractions, in this case one identified by a hand-painted billboard proclaiming the location of the “Monkey Forest Sancturary—Mrs. Dolittle” down a side road. I can’t imagine what that would be like.  A smaller, but more official-looking sign identifies the International Stingless Bee Center.  We pass through a small village with people dressed in black and red for a funeral.

We arrive at Kakum National Park, where we must all disembark from the bus to be counted for the ₵1 (thecedi is  Ghana’s unit of currency, currently worth about 67 U.S. cents) admission charge before re-boarding to drive on the short distance to the parking area for the visitor’s center. Just inside the park gates, I spy a six inch or so little lizard scuttling across the road.  I surprised a smaller, two-inch specimen of a similar type on the inside of my bathroom door yesterday, actually putting my fingers on it as I reached around to grasp the door when I opened it in the morning.  The ₵1 park entrance fee is very low and would hardly serve to pay for the salaries of the numerous park personnel I see as we get off the bus, or for the maintenance on the several very large and quite nice structures that we walk towards.  Nor does it have to cover these costs.  These are probably met many times over each day by the fees collected from visitors coming to enjoy Kakum’s signature attraction—the canopy walk.  The price of the walk for our students is ₵5 each, but for foreign tourists this jumps to ₵35 (or roughly $25), which is a good bit by any standard.  However, as a teacher for AGISS, and thus an honorary Ghanaian, my fee is slashed to ₵15.

We are issued neck badges, as are the students from another school group that precedes us.  Our guide is Samuel Osowu, whom I later learn has worked at the park for 10 years.  He tells us that the entry area is about 200 feet above sea level and that this area of the park was previously farmed so that the vegetation we see has only grown up in the last 23 years since the park acquired the land.  Although the park and adjoining reserves cover several hundred square kilometers, the key part of the park is the 363 acres of protected old growth forest, to which the park would like to add.  Samuel describes the forest as both a supermarket and a pharmacy, noting however that because many people don’t know all these uses, they may cut down the plants and kill the animals, thus wasting these potential, if as yet unknown resources.  He cites the ways that bamboo from the region is cut heavily for uses ranging from cups to matting as an example of such destruction, and indeed, on our way to the park, I had seen what I now realize to be the burned stumps of several stands of bamboo in a recently cleared field along the road.

A student asks what animals are found in the forest, and Samuel lists leopard, elephant, antelope, bongo, birds, butterflies, monkeys and snakes.  He also notes that many of these animals are nocturnal and that our best chance to see any animals comes from walking quietly (there’s not much chance of that, I think, with the large group that we have here).  He says that there are no lions in this forest, at which several of our girls cross themselves.  We begin walking, passing from the area of the visitors’ center into the start of the forest itself, hiking along a path that quickly turns into a climb up a fairly steep hillside.  Some of the girls are soon huffing and puffing as we climb, and I laugh and tease them as I pass.

Almost immediately upon entering the forest, one’s senses of smell and hearing are affected.   The air has arich, organic, clean scent after the diesel fumes and smoke of Accra.  Sounds are deadened, and as I strain my ears for any noises that are not from our group or of the forest itself, at best I can detect a distant saw or motor of some sort, perhaps just imagined.  At any rate, I am not accustomed to such an absence of human-produced sounds and the relative silence is striking.  Vision is also affected as the dappled light making its way to the forest floor seems to highlight the objects that it falls on and drop the surrounding areas into even darker shadow.  I slowlyfall to the rear of our group and begin trailing some distance behind, the better to be able to peer about and take some pictures—a grove of the massive 3-4 inch diameter bamboo like that I had seen from the bus earlier, the buttressed bases of massive trees with their canopy foliage obscured by the other lower plants of the forest’s understory, a row of marching ants on the ground, painted signs illustrating and identifying some of the forest’s unseen animal species. 

As the climb levels off, Samuel gathers us around to tell more about the forest and about the canopy walk in particular.  This forest used to stretch across West Africa, but its extent is now much reduced due to human activity.  Active work in developing this park began in 1989 with a collaboration between the Ghanaian government and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that attempted to stop people from coming into the forest to hunt or to cut down trees for timber or to clear land for farming.  Samuel confirmed later that this remains a problem today, though much reduced and constantly combated by the park’s rangers. 

The canopy walk was initially the idea of an American researcher studying the park’s butterflies.  The walk, constructed over a six-month period and opened in 1995, consists of a 350 meter long wood and rope pathway that is suspended by cables strung between seven towering trees.  Viewing platforms built around the tree trunks serve as transit points between the different sections of the walk.  From the start of the walkway, the ground drops steeply away so that we soon found ourselves some 40 meters above the ground, with the unique perspective of looking down upon, and out across the forest.  The walkways are made up of a series of foot wide boards laid end-to-end lengthwise across a rope base, with webbed rope sides rising in a “V” to about four feet high as handrails, the whole suspended in a gentle arc from the wire cables that are anchored to the trees.  The walkway doesn’t seem to sway at all, but it does bounce gently under the combined weight of the visitors.  Even so, I found that by stepping carefully and slowly (and why would I want to rush?), I could easily maintain my balance and walk for the most part without even needing to hold onto the sides. 

The view is spectacular.  The ground continues to fall away towards the visitor center and beyond, where it is easy to discern areas that have previously been cut or are still now being farmed by the sharp drop off in the height of the vegetation.  The large trees to which the walkway is anchored rise dramatically, their perfectly straight round white trunks still measuring well over a meter in diameter at the platform height of 40 meters, and continuing to rise above the platforms in the same manner for some distance before spreading their branches and topping out their canopy at over 70 meters.   The white trunks of these giants stand out sharply against the verdant greens of the leaves of other shorter species of trees, both below us, and rising up the adjacent hill sides.  The shapes of these trees are sharply different from the familiar round and spreading oaks, maples and hickories of home, and to me, as when I saw some of them first silhouetted against the hills during the bus ride, these shapes are one of the memorable symbols of Africa. 

It is great fun to watch the others in our group as they traverse the sections of the walk ahead of me.  Some of the students are bold and move determinedly from one platform to the next.  A couple require some coaxing at the start, but Samuel is very good at this, doubtless having had plenty of experience with hesitant visitors, and I am proud to say that every one of the students gets out onto the walkway.  In one place, as I step down from a platform onto the walkway the board  bounces back up and knocks hard against the platform’s underside, startling the girls already moving across this section ahead of me, but for the most part even those who were moving very slowly at the outset become increasingly confident as they go on. 

At the end of the walk there is an abundance of nervous energy among the girls of the kind of the kind that comes from having done something new and exciting, and this energy spends itself in a frenzy of picture-taking, frequently with me at the center of the activity.  Coming across the last section, I cannot even get off the walkway for several minutes for all the girls who want to hop back onto the last stretch and have their pictures taken with me.  I may well be the most photographed person in Ghana today, but I am enjoying sharing in this experience with all of my students.  Eventually we have to halt the photographic orgy as Samuel needs to shepherd us back down the hill.

Walking back, I find myself again at the rear, this time with Samuel, and so am able to get him to tell me some more about the forest as we walk.  I was not sure if Kakum was a true rainforest, but he confirms that it is, even if it does not get quite as much rain as the 300 inches or more that falls in some areas further to the west in Liberia and Sierra Leone.  He shows me one massive rotting stump of a buttress, still seven or eight feet tall more than seventy years after the tree fell, and with a new tree of a different species, over a foot in diameter, growing from its remaining trunk cavity.  Nearby is a saw pit, partly filled with water, which had been dug beneath the fallen trunk of the first tree to allow men with massive two person handsaws to cut it up in order to cart it away.  Now trees that fall are allowed remain in the forest to continue the nutrient cycle.  From the walkway, I had seen the swath of vegetation flattened by one such fallen tree, allowing light down into the understory and as a result stimulating the more rapid growth of what tend to otherwise be sunlight-starved and consequently very slow-growing species.

In as forest such as this, sunlight is the rarest and most valuable commodity for growing plants.  There is rainfall aplenty, but one consequence of so much water is that minerals in the soil tend to leach out quickly.  This seems somewhat incongruous given the lush vegetation here—over 200 different species per hectare in some areas of Kakum—but the soil is quite thin.  Much of the organic matter is quickly recycled once it falls to the ground—many plants have great networks of roots very close to the surface of the soil in order to capture such nutrients.  This is part of what gives rise to the large buttresses that jut out from the bases of the tallest species of trees—rising to six or eight or more feet from the ground and extending out from the trunk in some cases for a dozen feet or more.  The other function of the buttresses is to help keep these giants  upright, given that they lack deep taproots to keep them anchored in the earth.

Coming down the hill, some of the girls have congregated midway at a refreshment spot.  A couple tell me that I should try the palm wine, and figuring that this is as good a place as any to do so,  I buy a small Volt water bottle full.  The palm wine has a somewhat sour taste to it, different but not unpleasant.  Heading down the rest of the way with the students, we pass a good sized group of what look and sound like Americans, most decked out in their “trekking clothes,” as I might call them.   Several give me a look, and I cannot help but wonder what they make of me, pony-tailed Caucasian that I am, but wearing a shirt that matches those worn by and who is walking along with a group of Ghanaian schoolgirls.

Back down at the Visitors’ Center, the girls eat their lunches near the bus and scan the souvenir shop.  I also briefly browse for gifts, but knowing that everything is likely to be much more expensive here where so many tourists come, and having this confirmed by a couple of the girls, I opt to leave my buying for another day and join Osman and Mr. Lahfor lunch at one of the tables under the large open pavilion housing the park’s restaurant.  We also eat boxed meals prepared by the school’s kitchen staff, and I finish most of my palm wine.  Osman informs me during lunch that the heads of the other departments at AGISS will be attending my workshop on Friday, along with the teachers of the various Social Science classes.  One of these is Mr. Lah, Osman’s good friend as well as colleague, who is the head of the Science Department, and whom Osman tells me at lunch has applied for next year’s TEA program.  He has already passed all the preliminary stages on the Ghanaian end, which is quite an accomplishment, and I congratulate him.  We talk about Osman’s experiences in the United States and what things might like for Mr. Lah if he is accepted into the program, before I excuse myself to go take a quick look at the museum/interpretive center.  The exhibits are very well done and reflect a clear message of conservation and ecological responsibility.  Several of the students are also wandering through the museum.  Soon, however, it is time to head to the parking lot, which has filled up with a number of other school and tour buses, load ourselves back on to the AGISS bus, and head on to our next destination, Elmina castle.