I think the best way to describe this weekend’s trip to Kumasi is ill-fated. We had quite a string of bad luck on a few fronts, but it wasn’t a total loss. I did some maddd shopping.
We left later then we originally planned so that we’d have time to cash our stipend checks (which couldn’t happen before Sep. 1st, the day we left). We hit a lot of traffic on the road, which turned what was supposed to be a 4 hour drive into one that lasted 7. When we did get there, we went to a restaurant that took around 3 hours to serve us our food, and halfway through the meal found out the the original hotel where we were supposed to stay lost our reservation (even though it had been re-confirmed two days before). That part wasn’t all bad though, because we ended up staying at a better hotel. Then, Friday night, it took us half an hour to pay for drinks at the hotel bar because they tried to pad the bill. We got them to take it off in the end, but it wasn’t easy. So, we basically spent a whole day in the car, eating at one hotel, going to another hotel, going for a ride to the National Cultural Center which usually has things going on at night but of course, didn’t that night, then going back to the hotel to eat again and sleep.
Our second day in Kumasi started out rainy. After breakfast, we went back to the National Cultural Center, and were supposed to see what I think was a museum or something but the woman with the keys didn’t get there before we had to go, and so we basically just went shopping in the rain. I got some really cool beads from this lady who them in every imaginable color.
From there we went to a section of the city known for it’s wood-carving, and walked around the market there. The workmanship on a lot of the pieces there was incredible. I ended up buying a bunch of it, and for decent prices. Originally I hadn’t even planned on getting anything here, but I somehow ended up with four pieces. And I got a sweet piece of batik cloth that’s going to make a great sweatshirt-ish type thing. Most importantly, I think I finally got the hang of bargaining this weekend.
After this, we went to a small village on the outskirts of Kumasi called Ntonso, which has an Adinkra cloth place. Adinkra symbols are an art form of the Akan people, and they use the symbols on a lot of their wares, such as cloth, etched and carved into chief’s stools, and some are even shaved into the hair of people in the chief’s court. We stuck to stamping cloth. The guy who showed us how to do it was kind of amazing to watch. His stamping was practically flawless, and he went really fast. It was cool to try, but I picked a shape that was a bit out of my league and had sloppy edges. I ended up buying this HUGE piece of royal blue cloth stamped with Adinkra symbols to use as a wall hanging. Returning to the laundry list of bad luck, one of the girls in my group had her wallet snatched while she was stamping.
Next, we went to Bonwire, the village known for its weaving of Kente cloth. Authentic Kente cloth is hand-woven on looms, and uses bold colored thread to weave geometric patterns. The shapes and arrangements all have cultural meanings. I promised myself I would only get a small sash, but there was this one piece with all my favorite colors, and of course I broke down and bought the big one. But I got the guy to throw in a cool bag, so it was OK. Bonwire might have had the most intense hawkers I think I’ve experienced since I’ve been here. They were relentless. After I turned out my pockets and bag to demonstrate that I literally had no more money to spend, they still wouldn’t leave me alone. As I was leaving, they stuffed my bag with their addresses so that I could find them when I came back.
After Bonwire, we went back to the Adinkra village, Ntonso, to see if they had caught the kid who took my friend’s wallet. Some crazy drama ensued, but more on that later. We ate dinner at some random hotel, where I had some of the most amazing pasta of my life. Yes, better than Italy.
The last day we visited Lake Bosomtwe and one of the villages on its edge, called Abono. The lake was about a half hour drive outside of Kumasi. Bosomtwe means ‘antelope spirit’, and there is a whole legend about how the lake was named, but the details presently escape me. The lake and surrounding area was really pretty, and the village we visited looked pretty chill. The fisherman there use these really weird shaped wooden contraptions as boats, which seem to work, but I don’t understand how they can float given their shape. As usual, there was a gaggle of local kids following us around. We ate lunch at this really nice hotel on the lake’s shore near the village. There were a bunch of kittens running around the patio, and I saw a dog successfully go fishing, which was pretty damn cool. We left, and, going with the bad luck theme, one of the our vans started to seriously leak oil, which had to be fixed before the 7+ hour ride home.
Whew. That’s a a lot. Sorry. Now for the analysis. My first comment is that I remember reading in one of the Ghanaian guide books that the amount of begging one encounters seems to be a function not of how poor people are in a given area, but how much that area is frequented by tourists. This trip definitely supported that notion. In many of the places we visited, which were all on the tourist track, the kids were pretty direct about asking for things. Many cut straight to the chase and came right out with “Obruni, give me money.” Not that I’m that much of a position to judge, but I’ve seen kids in other places that were noticably poorer, for instance at the Dagbe center, and even after hours of interaction, none of them asked any of us for anything, not once the entire weekend. This is the first time that I’ve had a kid come right out and say “give me something.”
Back to the kid who stole the wallet. Let me preface this by saying that theft is considered one of the worst possible crimes here. It’s a huge deal that affects not only the thief, but potentially his family, both immediate and extended, and their community. When my friend first noticed that her wallet was gone, someone mentioned that they noticed a kid looking suspicious and running off suddenly, and another local girl who was watching us said she knew him. They sent someone to go find him and get the wallet back, and told us to come back later. When we came back, they had the wallet, but it was missing more then half the money that had been in there, plus a university ID card. So the kid, who was 15, was dragged out, naked, into a huge circle of villagers, all yelling. All the villagers took turns yelling at the kid, who for a while maintained that he hadn’t seen the other money, etc. Then, when he did admit it, he led the group around to a bunch of random places saying that’s where he’d put the money but there was nothing there. I watched this from the van, so I don’t have the details, but the kid was hit, hard, across the face by a full-grown man. Hard enough to knock him to the ground. He continued to be yelled at scolded, berated, etc. for a long time, and whenever they went anywhere he was handled pretty roughly.
A lot about this situation disturbed us on a few levels, and it’s still not something that I’ve completely come to terms with. In America, a lot of what was done to this kid would probably be considered illegal, and yet here it’s sanctioned, especially by the community. Theft is a huge deal here and considered extremely shameful, to both the perpetrator and those connected to him. In Ghana, when it comes to theft, the populace seems to take the administration of punishment into their own hands. In addition to the shaming aspects, it’s considered completely normal for the thief to be beaten. According to people I’ve spoken to here, the kid is lucky that he’s so young or he would have had the crap beat out of him. One or two hits was nothing.
Something I find interesting is that not even the person who’s been wronged has a say in how the thief is treated. The community deals with them as they see fit, whether or not the person who was stolen from forgives them or wants to let it go or whatever. Even the police don’t get involved. The village we were in also took the situation very seriously because it’s the first time they’ve had a villager steal from a tourist. In addition to the cultural taboo of theft, Ghana is desperate for tourism, and so they react very badly to people doing anything that would discourage tourists from coming.
This incident definitely served as a reminder that there are a lot of differences about life here that I have yet to realize, and came at a time when I was beginning to feel really comfortable here. Coming from such an individualistic culture, it’s hard for me to completely comprehend the repercussions of this kid’s actions for his siblings, parents, cousins, and community. According to people I’ve spoken to, this could follow him for the rest of his life. When he goes to ask a girl’s parents to marry their daughter, someone will be like “just so you know, this guy stole a wallet from a tourist when he was 15,” and when the same thing happens to his siblings, people will say that they have a thief in their family. It introduces another, darker, side of the whole issue of “community” here and how this is a much more communal society then the US. Everyone’s responsible for everyone else, and that seems to apply even to reputations.
Also, it’s sad that people have to take some of the law into their own hands here because of the inefficiency of the judicial system. It’s considered completely normal here for a person who’s considered a thief to be beaten, even killed. If someone snatches a mobile phone and the person who’s stolen from turns around and yells thief, the guy could literally get beaten to death, and it wouldn’t be considered out of the ordinary or unjustified. And no questions are asked, it’s just how things work here. My roommate said that recently a 16 year old was beaten and killed for stealing, but he wasn’t even the thief, and no one got in trouble for it. That’s scary. This even applies on the university campus. If someone steals on campus and gets caught, they’ll be beaten up, ponded, which involves a very public procession through campus with the words “I’m a thief” written across the person’s front, and “I stole ___” on their back, and potentially worse.
Another explanation I’ve heard is that people will take out all the frustrations they have about being stolen from on any thief who is caught, not necessarily one who stole from them. They just want to punish a thief. Any theif will do. Also, because robbery is on the rise here, they react especially forcefully to kids who steal, because they want to literally beat the habit out of the kid before they get older.
Whatever the explanations, having seen even a mild version of how they deal with thieves here was pretty damn disturbing, and I hope I’m not near anyone who gets caught here again. It’s hard to imagine that kind of shame and ruin done to a reputation over $30, and of course it was discomfiting to see a teenager hit, at what appeared to be full-force, by a very strong grown man. It’s also hard to imagine, coming from a society where people sue over some of the most trivial and idiotic things, that someone can hit another person, someone else’s child or someone else at all, and have it considered acceptable and/or normal. But many of the people here have lived under military regimes, and so hitting someone who’s committed such an offense as stealing must not seem so bad. It’s just hard to wrap my mind around coming from where I do.
Back to more mundane topics…
I had to go into town to get a new water-boiling jug (kettle?) for my friend because I broke hers, and I had to walk directly through the busiest market in town to get to the store. I thought that Ghanaians just went nuts when I used one of their languages when it was saying something they wanted to hear, like one of the greetings or “what’s your name, my name is X.” I literally had to spend every piece of currency I had on the kettle, and so when I was walking towards where my friend lives to borrow 50 cents to get home, I said to the people who were trying to sell me stuff, in Twi, “Please/sorry (it’s the same word here), I have no money.” Even though I was saying I’m not buying anything from you, they all still went nuts and loved it. At one point I had at least half a city block of people yelling “hey” and laughing because I said “I don’t have money.” It was pretty cool.
I was planning on going to Tamale, a city in the north, this weekend, but even though I went to the bus station two days in advance, the tickets sold out, so that didn’t work. And my friend who was going to go with me found out he was scheduled for some immigration test earlier then he’d originally thought, so he couldn’t have gone either way. I’m gonna try again in two weekends, which actually works out better, because I just found out about some stuff that will be going on around here, and because in two weeks it will be the start of Ramadan, which will be cool to see.
Friday night one of my drum teachers is performing in town, so I’m going to go see that, and then afterwards, the father of one of the guys in his performance group recently passed away, so they’re going to the Volta region for the funeral, and I got invited, so that should be awesome. Funerals here are huge celebrations, and there’s going to be a lot of drumming. One of the porters in my dorm also says his village is having a festival on Sunday, so hopefully I’ll be able to go to that too. Actually, I’m kinda glad Tamale didn’t work out this weekend, I would have missed a lot of cool shit down here.
