We had our first Twi class this morning, and the professor is really cool. He’s pretty famous here, and almost everyone I’ve mentioned him to talks about how he speaks beautiful Twi, even those for whom it’s not a first language. It’ll be great to learn it from him. He’s known for translating New York Times editorials into Twi on Ghanaian radio, and ends quite a high percentage of sentences with “Hallelujah, praise the Lord,” usually praising how much easier his language is to learn then English. Which is an entirely valid point. Learning the mechanics of another language puts into perspective just how retarded English is. I feel for anyone who has to learn it as a second or third language.
After Twi, I finally got to go into the city by myself. It was glorious. I went in to meet my drum teacher’s nephew, Fuseini, and son, Rafik. Fuseini moved to Accra a few years ago and Rafik drives a (huge) truck between Tamale and Accra every few weeks to deliver and receive market goods.
Sooo…tro-tros. Tro-tros, I believe, are unique to West Africa, if not Ghana alone, and form a chaotic but oddly functional transportation system. And they’re ridiculously cheap. Tro-tros are modified vans that fit a lot more people in them then they appear to be able to from the outside. Each one has a mate, who yells the tro-tros ultimate destination out the window, opens the door for people getting on and off, and collects the money. There are places where they seem to congregate, but from what I saw you can get on and off almost anywhere you want. Anyways, I took a tro-tro into the city, which wa exciting as it was my first time on them by myself. I planned on getting a taxi from the circle I’d gone to the rest of the way, but apparently the taxis wouldn’t go to the street I wanted because it’s one-way and annoying to get to from where we were, so I had to find another tro-tro that went in the right general direction and walk, then have Fuseini meet me where I was going. Afterwards I found out that he was a far walk from there, and that I could have taken a cab to somewhere else closer, and if I’d really wanted to make things simple for myself, could have a taken a different tro-tro originally and gone straight to where I needed to go. Oh well. Next time.
While I was waiting for Fuseini to meet me, I met four Ghanaian girls on a lunch-break who were all obsessed with America, and kept talking about how it was their favorite country even though they’d never been. They got a kick out my attempts the speak Twi. Once Fuseini showed up we walked towards where he lives, which is in a market near CMB, whatever that stands for. The women on the street by his market also went nuts when I answered them in Twi. All I said was “how are you” and the whole corner started yelling. It was awesome.
Fuseini and Rafik are Dagombas, an ethnic group that comes from Northern Ghana, and it seems that many of the people in the market where they live/work are Dagomba as well, which meant that I had to learn a whole new set of greetings. But the people there reacted just as well to my attempts at their language, this time Dagbani, and it was a lot of fun to get cheers every five seconds for saying ‘good evening.’ I also was named something by this group of Dagomba guys but I have no idea what it was or what it means. I have a feeling I don’t really want to know.
After watching Westlife (yes, the British boy-band) sing-along DVDs at Fuseini’s for a while, which are apparently big here, even among 20-something year old guys, Rafik went to work on his truck and I walked with Fuseini around the Central District of Accra, Okaishie Market, and Rawlings Square. There were women walking around there with boxes stacked 5 high on their head. Big boxes. It was amazing. After that they came back to campus for dinner. I got to ride shot-gun in the tro-tro on the way back, and the driving seems even crazier from there. Ghanaian driving….
