Ghana Get Going

The neighbor kids just informed me that my cat battled a snake while I was gone. She won. So proud! :)

I’ve been holed up in my bungalow for three days now with a mild fever & a few other minor health issues trying to sleep it all off.  With all this idle time on my hands, I managed to get some computer work done for my Peace Corps projects, but also to sit down & fiddle with all the fancy new technology I received as gifts during my Xmas & Bday seasons.  A new BlackBerry, which I love, has been the most trying piece of electronics until I sat down today to link my Twitter, Facebook & Tumblr pages.  So really, this is all just a test to see if this post gets through to the other two.  Here’s to hoping!

Just had my first experience of someone making me feel dumb for being in Africa where everything is harder to accomplish.  Let me put it this way: the power has been out from 8am to 8pm every day for the last four days & if I have power, my spotty network coverage means I get bumped off my modem at home at least once every half hour.  I can always take a sweaty, dusty, smelly tro ride for a half hour into town where I pay a quarter of my daily salary for an hour at the internet cafe where the network & electricty are a bit more reliable.  I would love to just call someone, but I can’t afford to call any technical help lines in the U.S. & no one here has any idea how to help me fix anything.  So yah, sometimes I get frustrated being on my own in a foreign country with few avenues to solve problems in the manner I would in the U.S.  But thanks for your help.

So I have been completely neglecting my Tumblr blog for the ease & instant gratification of Facebook posting.  (Gasp)  I know.  I am still alive, still in Ghana and have some great blogs rolling around in my head just waiting to get out.  Just a little teaser of upcoming blog titles: “Yes, You Can Enjoy a Beer on a Church Revival Date,” “Akpeteshie: Harbinger of Cleanliness & Doom,” and “Kitten: The Other, Other White Meat.”  Can’t wait, can ya?

I want to believe.  I want to believe that I can still make a difference.  Not just a difference in the life of one person, one community or one country, but a difference in the reality of what the world can be.  I want my belief in a better world, a belief I feel with every fiber of my being, to mean something.  I want it to mean something to someone other than myself.

I am not ready to give up and give in.  I still believe I can have a life with meaning even as I fight the seeping possibility that everything is just as it is and my actions, my efforts and my dreams of a better world are just a naive attempt to stave off growing up, growing old and accepting that I couldn’t possibly make the world I see in my heart a reality.  I cannot surrender now.  If I do, the world will undoubtedly be the one I fear is real.  As long as I believe, the possibility of a world of hope is not dead.

I used to got to Peace Corps meeting just to be among other people who believed.  I went to remind myself that there were others who also saw the possibility in the world; that there were other people who refused to take the world as they found it.  These are people who are of the same heart of my heart; people willing to sacrifice just to have the chance to fight for the survival of the dream they have of what the world can be; of the world that would be if only enough people believed in it.

The world can change.  All you have to do is believe.

Today I officially announced to the Master Weavers my wish to become a weaving apprentice.  They now will consult the “old man” and inform him of my desire to learn their traditional ways.  I must acquire two bottles of schnapps and around 50 cedis to give to the house (the weaving group) as an offering.  We will then have a ceremony, which includes shots of schnapps for all, to solidify my standing as the newest member of the weaving brotherhood and worthy of help and guidance from all the other weavers.  Why brotherhood, you ask?  Because I will be the only chick in a weaving shed of 26.

Traditionally, women were not allowed to weave.  Being a weaver was akin to being a priest or preacher as God spoke through you and into the cloth you wove.  A women was made unclean by her menses and was not allowed to touch her husband or the loom whenever “Aunt Flo” was in town.  The loom was considered sacred space and not an appropriate place for a woman.

Today, women are free to weave, but still few do.  Most women prefer to participate in the tradition of kente weaving by performing tasks that provide the raw materials necessary to create the cloth.  Many women spin threads in the traditional manner as well as use local plants to dye threads as was done many years ago.  The skill of these women is amazing and I hope to learn their trade from them as well.

Just realized you have no idea why I am learning to weave kente.  Peace Corps has placed me in Kpetoe, Volta Region, Ghana, West Africa which is an area rich in traditional kente weaving.  My job for the next two years is to promote eco-tourism of the kente weavers and create an online store for kente export.  Sounds easy when you put it all in one sentence, but I am wondering if two years will be enough.  It is going to be a long road with plenty of hard work to be done, but I couldn’t be more excited or more certain that I am exactly the person for the job.  Wonderfully scary, really.  :)

Please, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them as I know I have been MIA for a few months and have left gaping holes of information.  Pictures are on the way!

It has been amazingly crazy here in Ghana while simutaneously being incredibly boring.  Hard to explain.  I promise I will pull myself together & get some blogging done.  Or at least post a pic or two.  :)  Until then…