Today was a great day because it was a nice mix of busy and
relaxed. We spent the morning doing a little bit of research on surveys that
have been done to assess the extent of teens’ knowledge of reproductive and
sexual health. The questions that we were able to find, we used as a starting
place to create preliminary questions that we could use on a survey that could
be paired with future medical brigades here in the Ekumfi district to gather
data to show how we can best educate teens about these topics.
After we finished, we spent a couple hours entering data
informatics. We had the rest of the afternoon off, and I took the time to catch
up on some work that I’ve haven’t yet done. While I was working, one of the
interns came running into the room exclaiming that there was a goat in the
courtyard, and she couldn’t get it to leave.
I thought at the time that the highlight of the day came
right after dinner, when all the interns gathered in the girls’ room. We were
calmly minding our own business when one of the maintenance men, Ebenezer, came
in to hand back the laundry of some of us. We thought that would be it, but
then he started a 40-minute soap box speech that unintentionally had us all
trying to keep straight faces so we would not offend him. He, apparently, had
walked in on one of the ladies resting during the afternoon, and he was
incredibly apologetic that he did not knock because he saw the rest of us
outside working. Throughout the 40 minutes, he got on his knee at least 4 times
to apologize to her, and we kept asking him to get up but he clearly worked on
his own schedule. That took him on to an extensive rant about how Ghanaians
behave before they enter a room. They knock twice and say, “Ahh may!” and if
the person inside wants to allow the knocker to enter, they respond, “Ahh go!”
If they don’t, they keep quiet. Even though we understood this concept and had
used it during family profiling in the first few days that we were in country,
he felt the need to demonstrate this to us several times with the door we had
that led to the hallway.
He also talked to us about the fact that our air
conditioning has been dripping, because he said that he has called the mechanic
person to come fix it for tomorrow. That being said, he kept asking us how we
liked living here and wouldn’t take our nods of approval as how we truly felt.
He said that Americans were blessed because they give so much, and implied that
air conditioners don’t break in America when we told him that it’s nothing we
haven’t seen before. It was hard not to laugh at that but we all seemed to hold
it together alright. He raved about how American leaders are good at delegating
the tasks that they don’t know how to do, and whereas African leaders just try
to solve the problems themselves and don’t cooperate. While that may be true to
an extent, he accounted for American and European ingenuity and power to that.
All I have to ask about that is whether he knows the history of colonialism and
the history of Western exploitation of Africa, from exporting raw materials to
slaves to the drawing of arbitrary country lines because the British wanted to
break up tribes and create factions to weaken resistance. I wonder what he’d
say if he truly understood that history. He also rolled his eyes at us when we
talked about how beds in America also break, considering we’d seen one break
here in our lodge. He repeated over and over that, “God bless you!” and our
families, and our children, and our grandchildren, and our grandparents, and our
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-etc. grandchildren, and something
about that reminded him to talk to us about religion.
I know that religion is incredibly important to the people
of Ghana, and even more so than the Southern United States. The emphasis on
belief runs to the core of the culture and lifestyle here to an extent that I’m
not sure I could ever understand, and I think it was the same way for Ebenezer.
He went around the room to the 11 of us that were here and asked each of us to
share our religious beliefs, nodding at all the Christians. We have one Jewish
guy, to which Ebenezer said, “Oh yeah, so you’re Christian too!” To the five of
us who were non-religious (no religion, but not necessarily atheist), he
stopped everything and told us to repeat after him. I could see immediately
where he was going with it and didn’t follow his lead, especially when he
started saying things like, “From this day forward I take Jesus Christ as my
Lord and Savior” and other religious words that are said in such a ceremony. He
looked extremely pleased with himself after he had us say it (even though
afterwards, those of us he was trying to convert all just thought it was
completely hilarious) and promptly declared us all Christians. He kept telling
us about how God made the heavens and the earth and how he was going to bless
us into eternity. He also apparently really likes that “In God We Trust” is
printed on all our money because he repeated it over and over and had us chant
it along with him regardless of our beliefs. As if I’m not reminded that there
is a distinct lack of church-state separation by everyday life in the States
already.
His fascination with the United States ran even deeper than
that because he started talking about Obama, whose campaign slogan was, “Yes,
We Can!” Equipped with “Yes, We Can!” and “In God We Trust,” he had a great
time getting us to repeat after him over and over, and I couldn’t help but grin
at the ridiculousness of all of it, the best part being that he was completely
lost in this dialogue with himself.
Randomly during the conversation, he also asked each of us
whether we had half- or step-brothers and sisters. When he found out that two
of us did, he immediately started talking about his own experience with his
half/step siblings, saying that it caused many problems in his family and
others like his; the kids were put in the middle, and whichever parent had more
money would try to bribe the children to come with them (it sounded like he was
talking more about divorce than the sibling relationship). He kept implying
that all families had these problems when that isn’t necessarily the case. When
we tried to contradict his statement in the most polite way possible, he just
brushed it off as a result of having enough money for all the kids. To be
honest, this was the most depressing part of his soapbox speech.
After he eventually left, we had only a couple minutes to
laugh it out a little until we had a short debriefing with Deanna again. We
were able to see some of the final presentations that the previous interns had
so we could have an idea of what we would need to do in the week before we
leave. After she gave us all the relevant information we needed (along with the
reminder that we are working on latrine building over the next 3 days!), she
casually asked us how we were.
That was like opening the floodgates, because after we told
her all about our encounter with Ebenezer and how much we wanted to laugh about
it, we had laughed a lot and started down that giggly path (it’s a dangerous
one!). We then started to tell all the funny stories we had over the past two
weeks, which turned out to actually be quite a bit. The next thing I knew, we
had been laughing for a little over an hour, and it was still going on. There
were times when I’d laughed until I cried, and I can’t remember the last time
I’d laughed that hard for that long. I’m sure I’ve done it during the school
year and over the summer with the Orientation Advisors, but each time you laugh
like that, it feels like you’re being reenergized and starting fresh again. It’s
a good feeling.
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