9/28 – Tamale and the second trip to the Dagbe Center

It’s been a long time, but to use the age old excuse, modified for my generation and location of course, power outages and internet servers ate my blog. I’ve been away and out of the dorm a lot in the past two weeks, and whenever I have been in the dorm the electricity has been out and/or the server in the internet cafe was down. Mepaakyew piiiii (which in this context translates to I’m very sorry, in Twi).

On that note, the power outages are becoming a lot more common, both the scheduled and unscheduled ones, and they seem to follow me even when I’m traveling. I actually don’t mind it all that much, but it’s taking time to adjust to having a flashlight become one of the items necessary for night-time trips to the bathroom. At 3 in the morning it’s really inconvenient to have to find a flashlight, toilet paper and keys in the darkness, and then have to fumble with lock before making that mad, still half-sleeping dash for the bathroom. And at my teacher’s house in Tamale, it involved fumbling with the lock on the door to my room and then with the lock on the bathroom door as well. Actually though, I’m learning to appreciate the presence of anything that resembles a toilet, regardless of its lighting situation (bonus points if it flushes). They’re irritatingly hard to find in this country.

On to more pleasant topics…
Two weekends ago we went back to the Dagbe Center in Kopeyia, Volta Region. There isn’t all that much to add this time around, we did a lot more of the same. Which is not to say I didn’t have a great time, there just isn’t much new of interest to say. I managed to avoid dancing and got to drum the whole weekend, which of course I was thrilled about. A bunch of the kids remembered my name, and the hand game I taught them. Saturday night they put on a performance which was really cool because I’ve never seen some of the pieces they performed danced in full by Ghanaians, nor had I heard them with singing in the background. A lot of people who live in the village showed up, even those who weren’t performing, and there happened to happened to be no electricity that evening so there was only a gas-lit torch for light, which created a really cool effect. We went to the beach again, which was great but left a load of sand in my braids, and I don’t think it’s coming out until the braids do.

This past weekend I finally got up to Tamale. Tamale is the capital of the Northern region, and it was quite a bus-ride to get up there. ~14 hours up, a little under 12 to get back down. But since I left on Wednesday, for a really long weekend, it was worth it. I’m definitely happy that I ended up going this weekend and not two weekends ago.

While I was in Tamale, I stayed with a drummer who comes to Tufts at the end of the spring semester every year to teach the drum class that I’ve been taking the past two years. He’s a drum chief, and the patriarch of quite an extended family. His house, or one could say compound, housed at least twenty something people of varying degrees of relationship to him. What we would call the “nuclear” family consists of four wives and their kids, and those older children who aren’t yet married. In addition to this number are a lot of grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. And the family horse, Pumaya. Four days was nowhere near long enough for me to try to decipher who was who’s child, or even which younger kids were my teachers children and which were his grandchildren, because a lot of their ages overlapped. In fact, this might be the first place I’ve been to where you can’t really use age at all as a clue to familial relationships. Age is absolutely no indication of anything. Also, only a few of the kids knew English, and I don’t yet know enough Dagbani to ask questions like who is your sister or mother or something.

Another thing that complicates trying to figure out familial relationships was that in their culture, in addition to the person who supplied the biological matter for your creation, your father’s brothers, distant cousins who are your around fathers age, or someone who was one of your teachers are called your “father”. It also looked like your father’s other wives are called your mother, and basically any other kid around is called your brother or sister. As one of my friends from down here explained it, if someone is a Dagomba and a Muslim, then they’re his brother/sister. In Tamale, where Dagombas are the predominant group and where almost everyone is Muslim, that doesn’t tell you much. I’ve gotten used to asking “same mother, same father?” after every time someone uses the words brother or sister to describe someone.

Anyways, the “house” itself was pretty cool. Basically there was a main courtyard surrounded by rooms made in both a traditional and more modern style, with a main gate as the only way in. My teacher had his own room and living room, and each of the wives gets their own room where they and their children, and sometimes grandchildren, live. Two of the older sons had their own rooms as well. There’s also a seperate guest “hut,” which is where, surprise surprise, visitors stay. When I got into the room I commented, in response to the drum hanging on the wall, that only in Dagbon (the historical kingdom of the Dagombas) would a guest room come with its own drum. The house had had running water for a something like a few months, but something happened with the pipes, so they went back to using a big “well” in the middle of the courtyard for water that you’ve got to scoop out with a bucket. They also have electricity but it goes off all the time and doesn’t come back on until 6am the next morning. Bathrooms were kept under lock and key and were basically immovable portapotties made out of cement. But, there was toilet paper, which is more than I can say for most of the bathrooms in Ghana. It’s a humbling moment the first time you’re excited about the fact that there’s TP in a bathroom.

I got really lucky this trip because my first day there happened to be the third funeral of my teacher’s senior brother’s wife. Funerals here mean drumming, which of course I’m happy about. After the prayer time, most of which I spent fielding marriage proposals in broken English and unbroken Dagbani, the group moved into the next courtyard and started dancing and drumming. They way it seemed to work was that the lead drummer would go over to a someone he wanted to see dance, call them out with his drum, the dancer would pick a song, and they’d go. It was really cool, and the song that most of the dancers chose, called Nakohiwa (which is how I’ve seen it spelled, but it seems to be pronounced something mrore like Nak-wo-wa), I had just learned how to play the week before. Of course, being the only white person there, they had to make me dance. The whole crowd went nuts. Later, my teacher, who had been sitting with the chiefs in the next section over, mentioned that when they heard all the screaming they were wondering amongst themselves who could be dancing, but then they figured it was probably me.

A lot of the rest of the time I spent going around to meet various family members of people I knew before I came and some I’ve met here, and my teacher’s recently married daughter and her new husband had me over for lunch twice. After lunch, he and my friend who came up with me took me on le Tour de Tamale on the back of their mopeds. I got to see most of the city in a short time (not that it’s all that big) and some stuff that you can’t really access conveniently with a car. Mopeds can go through muddy, potholed fields, in case you were wondering. The husband, from what I gathered, works for some kind of media company, so he took me to meet a bunch of his musician friends and important people around town with whom he went to school. All in all, not a bad way to spend the afternoon.

Everyone says it, but I’d like to say my piece about how different Tamale is from almost all of the places I’ve been in southern Ghana. Things are a lot more laid back. The people are nowhere near as pushy, there’s absolutely no traffic, and the roads are in good condition and have two wide lanes, with wide “sidewalks” on the sides and in the middle of the road. I didn’t realize how accustomed I’d become to being under a constant onslaught of attention until I walked around Tamale a little. I’m not sure if it’s because English isn’t nearly as widely spoken as in the south, or it has to do with the Muslim influence, but whatever it was, it was definitely a nice respite from getting yelled at every few seconds walking down the street. Even when I greeted people on the street in Dagbani, they just answered, had a little chuckle, and we both continued on our merry ways. Only once or twice did it result in the near hysteria you get down here, even though I’d imagine white people who can speak basic Twi are a lot more common than those who can speak any Dagbani. And Tamale was a lot less dusty and a lot more green than I’d been led to expect by some people I’ve spoken to and almost all the guidebooks. It’s a great place, and I’m definitely looking forward to spending some quality time there at the end of the semester.

I’ve got more to say about Tamale, but I think I’ll save it for when I’m up there for longer and get a better gauge of things before I go running my mouth off on the internet. And I don’t think anyone wants to read more than this.

Anyways, this weekend I’ll be going to a Dzodze, a town in the Volta Region, which is actually pretty close to the Dagbe center, for their Palm Festival. A big group from the university is going, and there should be ridiculous amounts of drumming and of course, palm wine.