8/30 – Already?

As of this past Sunday, I’ve been in Ghana for one month. Wow. I feel like I should say something profound but nothing’s coming to me at the moment. However, it is kind of amazing to think I’ve already spent a month living in Africa. What’s weird is that after two weeks, I felt like I’d been here a month, and now, after a month, it feels like it’s been two weeks since I watched Jesse get yelled at by a crazy Slavic lady on the Customs line, met Mr. Bamfu and his three Joes, and got my very first marriage proposal from Kofi the baggage handler, all before leaving Kotoka Airport. Crazy. And I have yet to enter the second, I-hate-everything-about-this-country stage of culture shock. According to the chart, I’m still in stage one, the honeymoon phase. Nice.

Sunday was also exciting because my roommate finally moved in. Yayyy. Her name is Alithea, she’s from about an hour outside of Accra, she’s Ga, and she’s really cool. And she came with a really good boombox. Even better. It’s definitely a relief to finally know who’s gonna be on the other side of my room for the next few months, and to know that I like her.

My class schedule is slowly starting to take shape, and I’ve had most of the classes I think I’ll be taking at least once now. A few departments are still figuring stuff out, but it looks like I’ll have Wednesdays and Fridays free, with the lion’s share of my classes on Monday. And for about a month I’ll have one somewhat flexible class on Thursdays and no class until 12 on Mondays, which will make traveling a lot easier. Now I just have to get my visas worked out. It looks like I won’t be going to the Linguistics course because it conflicts with some drumming stuff I’d like to do, so le grand course list is as follows: Intro to Oceanography, Intro to Coastal Geomorphology, Rationalism, Traditional Ghanaian Social Institutions, Twi, and Dagbani, and some drumming classes.

What have I been doing the last few days since my last post, you ask? I went to visit Fuseini and Rafik in CMB a few times, and got to watch a “football” game between Ghana and South Africa in a room full of crazy Ghanaian guys yelling at the top of their lungs in languages I don’t understand. I had a few uncomfortably close calls with errant arms, but I escaped unscathed. Good times. And I got finally got my drum!! It’s huge, completely bad-ass, and everybody who sees it is like, “damn.” Even the guy who’s going to be giving me lessons in Legon was like, I wish I had a drum like this. I had a big crowd around me when I was taking it out of its bag, which was kinda fun, but it also meant that the first time that I played one of these drums since May had to be in front of 15+ oldish Dagomba men who know what this stuff is actually supposed to sound like. I think I did alright though, and either way they got a kick out of the siliminga (Dagbani for obruni) girl playing one of their drums.

For the Yids in the audience, I had a really weird experience on my to and after my first philosophy class. I was walking to class, wearing my IDF t-shirt, when a sociology grad student asked me if he could interview me for a paper he’s writing. After he was done, completely out of nowhere, he goes “I totally support Israel,” and proceeds to go on and on about how anti-semitism makes no sense and that Israel has a right to exist, etc. I really don’t recall ever hearing anything like that out of non-Jew. Then, 20 minutes later, some people who are in my philosophy class and I are standing outside the room waiting for the professor (who never ended up showing) when another Ghanaian walks up to me and asks, in an astonished voice, “are you JEWISH?” So I’m like, “ummm…yeah.” To this, he yells “OH MY GOD! I LOVE YOUR PEOPLE!” like he’s been waiting to meet a Jew his whole life, and then, starts to ramble about how amazing Jews are and how when he graduates he wants to join the Israeli army, and do I think they’ll let him join, and how does he sign up, and blahblah. This guy is completely serious, not a trace of irony or sarcasm in his voice at all. 19 years of being Jewish and I’ve never had anybody say anything even close to what these guys were saying. It was pretty cool and a little bit weird that these incidences were back to back, but I’m sure the shirt had something to do with it.

Otherwise, things seem to be settling in here. I have classes, a roommate, most of the student body has moved back in, and I’m starting to feel really comfortable in and with Ghana in general. This weekend we’ll be going to Kumasi, which is the second largest city in the country and the capital of the Ashanti region, and pretty damn cool from what I’ve been hearing. So next week I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say, and there will most likely be a major picture upload. Until then….