tamale (no, not the food)

Me and my friend Nassit at the widows village (read on, my friends...)

Tamale was AMAZING.

I guess I should preface this blog with a little description of what Tamale (no, not the food you Texans) is. It’s a city in Northern Ghana, about 14 hours north of Accra. Tamale is pronounced Tom-Uh-Lay, not Tuh-Mall-Ee. This trip was one planned by NYU. About 30 students went, and Gillian’s mom!

Because it was is so far away, we left EARLY on Thursday. I’m talking 4 a.m. early. But the bus ride went really smoothly and we got there around 5 p.m. We stayed at this place called the Tamale Institute of Cross Cultural Studies (TICCS). TICCS does lots of academic tours around Tamale, and they took care of us the entire weekend. They also have motel-esque accommodations, so that’s where some stayed (others had to stay at another motel-type place called Catholic Guest House). Anyway, after a long day’s travel, we ate dinner and went to sleep.

Friday morning we had breakfast around 7 and left TICCS with our tour guides to explore Tamale. But first, we had an hour long lecture on Northern Ghana (NG), where we learned some very cool things: NG takes up 41% of Ghana’s total land mass, though it only has ¼ of the Ghana’s population. Tamale’s population is about 800,000. Their society is patrilineal, meaning one inherits his/her ethnic identity from the father. (This is not the case in Akan society, where inheritance is matrilineal and inheritance is passed down from your mother’s brother.) The North took much longer to become developed, and did not establish formalized education until the 1930s, some hundred years after it was established in the southern part (Accra and such) of Ghana. The north has very few tourist attractions, and is not a metropolis like Accra. On this point, it was quite clear how “underdeveloped” NG is from Accra. On just the drive up alone, we would see the scenery change from buildings to arid land, with nothing around for miles. There are far fewer commercial transactions that happen in Tamale, though it is a surprisingly big city. The temperature was over 100 degrees every single day (much hotter than in Accra), though there was about the same amount of humidity. The people were SO much friendlier than in Accra, but we will get to that in a bit. Anyway, the north and south are basically total opposites. But back to the fun facts:

Farming and livestock raising are their two primary economic activities. I think I talked about this in a previous blog, but paying a bride wealth is a really big deal here, and especially in the north where everything is much more traditional and less modernized. Thus, cattle are raised for a dowry and bride price. If for whatever reason a man cannot pay the bride price, he cannot technically call his future children his own. Interesting stuff. As far as religion goes, there’s Christianity, Islam, and Traditional Religions (through the use of diviners—which I’ll get to, too). Our tour guide said “Africans are very additive- they take what is good and add on, though they never throw away.” He said this to mean that oftentimes Christians (and Muslims) will incorporate traditional African religious practices (like sacrifices and divination) into their own religious beliefs. This was especially evident up north. The guide also said, educationally speaking, in the north it is better to skip university because afterwards, a job isn’t guaranteed. However, farmers will definitely make money, and the job is secure and steady.

Anyway, so that’s my little Northern Ghana cultural lesson for you all. But back to what we actually did in Tamale. So on Saturday, after the lecture, we visited a local mosque. Northern Ghana has many more Muslims than the southern part of the country, so it was cool to see women wearing more conservative, modest clothing. The mosque was large and open, with a large round center. Many different colored mats lined the floors, and a Muslim showed us how they pray (always facing east, towards Mecca, always 5 times a day). It was interesting to find out that the men and women worship (pray) separately. There is a dividing wall between where the men pray and where the women pray, and it was explained to us that this is so there are no distractions or unclean thoughts during prayer. There is always a prayer leader who is in charge of leading the corporate prayers at the designated worship times. This person is never a woman. The women aren’t allowed to go to the upper levels of the mosque; however they made an exception and let our whole group go. We got to look down at all the mats and get a cool perspective.

After the mosque we drove around Tamale a bit and visited their market. It’s much smaller than either Makola or Kaneshi, but it is just as active. The walkways are narrower, and the people speak less English (obviously), so it was rather difficult to make transactions, but we managed. Of course I couldn’t stay away from the fabrics, and managed to buy a few more types of material for myself (AND for others!). I’ve found that the majority of the fabric patterns are pretty similar wherever you go in Ghana. The north had some designs that Accra doesn’t have, but typically, you see the same patterns wherever you are in the country. As we were leaving the market, we passed a gorgeous little baby eating fufu (a local yam-like dish). At first she was a little skeptical of us obrunis but she quickly warmed up to us and started smiling from ear to ear. (See picture below.)

After, we had a quick lunch at TICCS, and then headed to a clinic. Now this clinic was something else. It is run by a man named Dr. Abdulai, who for many years was a practicing private doctor in Accra (or some other big city, I forget). One day, he received a calling from God that he should help those who can’t help themselves—the lepers and the mentally sick and poor. In 1991, he moved back to Tamale, his hometown, and singlehandedly set up a clinic where they rely only on “divine providence” for funding. They do not charge any, ANY money for their services, and in fact, will only treat you if you can’t pay. If you can pay (and he says he can tell), then he asks you to visit a government hospital, as he wants his services to go to those who otherwise couldn’t get any. He relies on both monetary and medical donations, and said what they need most is antacids and pain medicine. He has a completely volunteered staff of 15 other doctors who have followed this same calling, and together they treat thousands of patients a year. They divvy out the donations to the patients according to need. One thing he said that really struck me was, “We believe in equity, not equality.” By this he meant that each patient will get the treatment and care and medicines that he or she needs, aka, the medicine may not be distributed completely equally among the patients. But this outlook, I think, is very indicative of how governments should run their own countries (and how the West should approach development). You do no one any good if you “distribute the wealth” without any sort of assessment of who needs what. Providing for specific needs is much more practical and, frankly, cost-effective, than giving everyone everything, even if they don’t need it.

Dr. Abdulai

They have made housing for lepers and other in-patients, as many of them were found on the street with no one to look after them (because there is so much stigma associated with any sort of sickness, let alone a sickness that is physically visible (leprosy)). Dr. Abdulai showed us around the facilities, and is the most joyful, funny, giving, selfless man. He was wearing a t-shirt and shorts the entire time, and would go up and greet every single one of his patience that he introduced us to. The lepers were so happy to have this man as a doctor and as a friend, and one had the biggest smile of anyone I’ve ever seen. Such joy in that place. That is what a heart for God and his people is supposed to look like. We presented Dr. Abdulai and the clinic with lots and lots of clothes and medicine that we NYU students had brought to Ghana and didn’t use. He went through each bag of stuff and told us where everything was going, making sure we knew how our donations (clothing and monetary) were being distributed. It was such a moving experience and one I will not soon forget. What a gracious and most humble man.

Some of the houses for the inpatients

After the clinic we broke into three groups of ten each and visited a diviner. A diviner is a spiritual leader who, according to African beliefs, can foresee the future. They’re almost like fortune-tellers in America, but much more legit and not hoaxie. Like I said earlier, many Christians, Muslims and traditionalists visit diviners for providence and warnings about the future. For instance, one may visit a diviner if he is about to take a long journey to make sure he will be safe. If the diviner (through using kola shells, sand, feathers, or other tools) sees that he will not be safe on the road, he will prescribe a remedy in order to avoid the bad fortune. Many Ghanaians, and West Africans, swear by these people. Generally, one visit costs 1 Cedi (though ours cost 2, Obruni special!). Anyway, so we met with the diviner first as a big group. He didn’t speak English, so we used a translator. The diviner told us he had been practicing divination since he was very young, and hopes to teach his children the skill. I asked if he had any other source of income, and he said he did some farming on the side. We all individually met wit him. Each person’s divination took about 10 minutes. Our diviner used kola shells to read our future, and mine is looking good. Here are a few highlights:

*I will live a long life and die a happy old lady
*I will have 2 boys and a girl
*My mom loves me very much
*I will travel for a few more years and then settle down in one place for a while
*I will come back to Ghana (and I will see him again…ehhh)
*There is a boy in my life and the diviner said he’s “the one”
*Oh, and one of us will buy a car soon (Mom?! ;))
*I am studying something involving music and talking (I guess you could count this if you stretched “communications” to literally mean “talking”)

Man, there were so many others, and I wrote them all down right after my session, and then proceeded to fold up the paper and put them in my pants pocket, which I washed the next night. Some things he said were definitely just not true, but others were pretty spot on. Either way, it was a cool cultural experience, AND while we were waiting for everyone else to go, we got to play with his daughters. He had some precious kids, and Gillian’s mom fell in love with them. She even tied a baby around her back like the locals do (I think this is an NYU in Ghana first, at least for this semester) and tried to balance a bowl on her head at the same time. We had a great time watching dusk go to pitch blackness, and watching his wife and her friends prepare dinner by firelight.

Speaking of Gillian's mom, this picture was taken at her birthday dinner last Wednesday. Don't they look alike?!

Woooo do you think I’ve written enough yet???

One more day to go! Alright, so Saturday we drove 2 and a half hours northeast to a town called Paga. At Paga, we visited a former slave camp. Earlier in the semester I went to Cape Coast, where the slaves were kept in dungeons before being shipped across the Atlantic. Well this slave camp, called Pikoro, was much different. This is where the salves were actually collected and kept before making the WALK to Cape Coast. Now let me just remind you that it took us 15 hours to DRIVE to this place from Accra. Now imagine WALKING, chained at the ankles, for a month straight, barefoot, with no food or water to Cape Coast, where even if you had survived the long walk, you probably wouldn’t survive the castle. The camp kept 150-180 slaves at a time, coming from various villages. Sometimes, families would sell off one of their men to the slave camp in order to pay off a debt. The conditions were hot and terrible, as they had to labor all day in the heat. April isn’t even the hottest month, and when we were there it was 105 degrees outside. Now imagine that, with no shirt, no shoes, no water, laboring all day. And this is before ever making the walk to Cape Coast, which is before trying to survive the terrible conditions at Cape Coast, which is before trying to survive at sea, which is before making it to the West and having to labor under terrible conditions for nothing. Nice job, history. Anyway, I don’t want to get on another slave rant or anything, but it was an important thing to see and definitely shocking (maybe even more so than Cape Coast).

My CRA, Julia, and me at Pikoro

After the slave camp, we drove another half hour or so to Bolgatanga to visit a widows village where the widows sell beautiful baskets they make to earn a living. Here in Ghana, widows are treated terribly. Usually, widows are either blamed for the death of the husband (because they didn’t properly care for him), or accused of being a witch. Honestly. Widows are social outcasts and are not allowed to socialize with anyone for at least a year, if not longer. Now imagine going through the grief of losing your husband, magnified by the fact that you are ostracized and accused of such a tragedy. Widows will be taken into the town center and beaten and bathed, humiliated. So this village we went to is a safe haven for widows to live in a community with their children. So we pulled up to the village and immediately at least 60 kids came running towards our bus. I guess they knew why we had come, and greeted us sooo warmly. One little boy even ran straight into me, wrapping his arms around my legs and just hugging me. His name was Nassit, and he followed me around the entire day (he's the boy in the picture at the beginning). We brought them more clothing donations, as it was clear the kids were wearing whatever they could possibly find. Many of their clothes didn’t fit at all, or were so old and dingy that they’d probably be better off without them. The widows were so kind and so welcoming, too. We, again, had to use a translator, and they welcomed us and told us a little about what they do. They explained that basket-making was their source of income since their husbands had died. Before we started browsing through their baskets they did a traditional dance for us, accompanied by boys playing the drums. Their baskets were GORGEOUS, and of course, I bought a few (and some additional things). I found a really stupid/cool hat (see pictures below) that I just love, but will probably never wear in the states. Perhaps I’ll give it to my PaPa when I get back. Side note, but…I have NO idea how I’m going to get any of this stuff home. No idea. I have probably accumulated 50 pounds of souvenirs alone—far too much to take on a plane. I warned Gillian that the night before we leave I will probably have a nervous breakdown and freak out because I can’t get any of my stuff back (you’ve, too, now been forewarned). Oh well, it always works out, and if I have to leave some tank tops behind, oh well.

OH! and I got to learn how to basket weave!

Me and the rooms at the widows village

SO, that was my Tamale weekend. We left at 3 am on Sunday morning, and made it back to Accra by 3 pm. I spent Sunday night doing nothing, as per usual, and yesterday Gillian, her mom and I went to a pool for a few hours. I don’t think I got any tanner, but it was a lot of fun and nice to cool off and chat. I think her mom is staying til Friday, which is so exciting! We love having her here. Only 17 more days til I’m back in the states, guys!! I can’t believe it.

Alright, this thing is getting out of control long, so I’m gonna end it. But enjoy all the pictures. I will post a link to the full albums in my next entry.

you know, this may have something to do with why i love africa. (photo cred: gillian)

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