ma,
i've begun working on my independent study which is about the influence of American hip-hop on new Ghanaian hip life, which is basically the hip hop equivalent. i read two other projects on similar themes from past SIT students and they were all mostly the same, so I decided to look for a hook to make my paper more interesting and more original. That night I went to a spot in my neighborhood where they have live bands every Sunday. It was Easter Sunday so the place was filled to the gills with people of all ages and a three or four other white folks. I sat down alone and waited for someone to invite me (very often you'll find someone eating rice or smoking a joint and their first response to your having noticed them is "you're invited"). Shortly thereafter a fat man wearing a bright polo and a gucci multi-pocketed fanny pack beckoned me to his table where he gave me a seat next to the stage where i could watch all of the musicians.
I sat for a while watching the band and eventually began looking through the crowd. I noticed that the fat man in the fanny pack was sniffing or blowing his nose in his hand and the thought crossed my mind that he might be snorting cocaine, which I quickly acknowledged was a foolish thought. Moments later he burst up from the table, snuck into a corner to blow his nose into a hanky shrieking a little each blow, and then walked on stage and started dancing with the lead singer. I looked at the spot on the table where he had been sitting and noticed a formidable character sitting in the seat next to his vacant one wth a small round tin, half open with white dust around it on the table. I was laughing so far, and continued laugh harder after I saw all this, beginning to question just what kind of Easter party I had stumbled in on.
When I first came to Madina Estates three days after arriving in the country I was so in this midst of culture shock that I had no basis of comparison for my attempts to understand something about my surroundings. I had an inkling that we were in middle class homes but didn't really know what that meant. After doing the entire program and returning to Madina, I realized just how wealthy of an area it was.
While I was at the Easter party I really started to understand what was going on. I started to feel like I'd been to a place like this before, and I realized I was living in some sort of Ghanaian Beverly Hills. Everyone there was wearing expensive jewelry and accessories, the more the better. It dawned on me that the musicians also must have been fairly wealthy because of all of the fine equipment that they were using.
I was thinking about how American hip-hop artists don't normally get respect from fans unless they've risen from the slums to success and immense wealth. The story is fundamentally one about rags to riches and the flash and bling is about showing what a success they've made. In Ghana and Nigeria, artists are extremely influenced by American hip-hop and r&b and they make music videos that mimic the American style. You'll see a Ghanaian artists with an entourage of mostly beautiful barely clad women in the back of their mansion with a swimming pool, smoking cigars, drinking champagne, with dozens of bentleys and diamonds all over their necks, wrists and fingers. The difference here is that this is wealth that the artists were born with. Ghanaian musicians are all extremely wealthy, educated men who have spent considerable time abroad, often for university. Getting a Western education is by far the most important indicator of status and wealth. Their story has nothing to do with coming up from nothing, it's about flaunting everything God has blessed you with. After talking with my advisor Dr. Collins this morning he compared this theme in hip life with the nature of the born again Christian church in Ghana which sees poverty as a curse and wealth as blessing. The idea is extremely entrenched, even in the poor who idolize and praise the rich elites. Ghanaian hip life artists have essentially taken the ideas that started hip hop and turned them completely inside out.
Coming to this idea made me much more excited about writing my paper and I'm picking up information everywhere from almost everyone I meet.
by the way,
Dylan sent this along in an email. Interesting stuff:
"It has been observable for a number of centuries how in the general consciousness the thought of death has declined in omnipresence and vividness. In its last stages this process is accelerated. And in the course of the nineteenth century bourgeois society has, by means of hygienic and social, private and public institutions, realized a secondary effect which may have been its subconscious main purpose: to make it possible for people to avoid the sight of the dying. Dying was once a public process in the life of the individual and a most exemplary one; think of the medieval pictures in which the deathbed has turned into a throne toward which the people press through the wide-open doors of the death house. In the course of modern time dying has been pushed further and further out of the perceptual world of the living. There used to be no house, hardly a room, in which someone had not once died ... Today people live in rooms that have never been touched by death, dry dwellers of eternity, and when their end approaches they are stowed away in sanatoria or hospitals by their heirs. It is, however, characteristic that not only a man's knowledge or wisdom, but above all his real life - and this is the stuff that stories are made of - first assumes transmissible form at the moment of his death. Just as a sequence of images is set in motion inside a man as his life comes to an end - unfolding the views of himself under which he has encountered himself without being aware of it - suddenly in his expressions and looks the unforgettable emerges and imparts to everything that concerned him that authority which even the poorest wretch in dying possesses for the living around him. This authority is at the very source of the story." (Walter Benjamin)
2009-04-22
2009-04-12
mama,
i got to speak to nuschka and roy and young gabe yesterday. it was wonderful to talk to them. roy had lots of questions about the program itself so i figured i'd put it in the next blog.
the first two weeks we spent in accra attending the university of ghana legon. it's one of the most prestigious universities in west africa and kofi annan is currently the chancellor. we had usually two or three lectures everyday after lessons in twi - the language of akan people. akan is a larger name for several ethnic groups who all speak variations of twi: asante, fante, akwapim, denkyira, brono, akyem, etc. the lectures ranged from topics like ghanas economy to the history of ghanaian pop music.
after leaving accra we moved to kumasi - the capital city of the old asante confederacy. it's the second largest city in the country and is almost only made up of asantes who speak the dialect of twi that we've been learning. we spent two weeks continuing and intensifying our study of twi and taking more lectures for the first week only. the second week we spent the afternoons learning a traditional dance of the asantes called adowa, pronounced adjuwa. six of us learned the drumming and the rest of the group learned the dance. i got to be the master drummer and the dancers had to take their cues from the changes in my rhythms, which was very difficult. we performed the dance for all of our homestay families on the last night in town. after kumasi we moved to three separate asante villages in the effi-duasi district: senchi, ogua, and okinkrom.
in the village we were allowed to choose a small independent project to research for a 10 page paper. as i told you before i studied the distillation of palm wine into the local gin, apatese. the village was the most fun i've had so far as the lifestyle is so intensely relaxed and options of what to do are so few that you walk back and forth around the two blocks that made up the town. i should note that the village i stayed in was the largest of the three and our way of figuring that out was the number of bars in town.
after leaving the village we went to tamale, the capital of the northern region where most people are muslim dagombas. they don't speak twi and the city is very different. it's also much hotter there and the vegetation is savannah rather than forest. after tamale we went on the educational tours where we did 2-5 day stops in four regions doing workshops and lessons throughout. first we went to krobo dumase which is the bead making capital of ghana and we learned how to make beads from broken up coke bottles. the krobo area is mountainous and very beautiful. after krobo we went to the eastern volta region on the border of togo where we learned a very difficult and tiring dance at a cultural center/hostel where we stayed. after that we went to the western volta region where we learned how to make pottery. after that we went to cape coast where we saw the slave castles and met the rabbi.
that was mostly for roy.
i am in accra right now and tomorrow i'm going to visit two friends who are doing their projects in cape coast and from there i'll be visiting several friends, american and ghanaian in kumasi. if i could have done my project in kumasi i would have, it's an awesome city. but all of the good producers, studios, musicians, and live music events are generally in accra so it makes most sense for me to be here. for the last three days in between friends leaving and my week of visiting i've taken some much needed relaxation time. the program can be very, very exhausting sometimes.
the food here is a subject i'm dying to explain in great detail as it doesn't cease in frustrating me. i have learned to enjoy some of the local foods sometimes, but mostly i seek out restaurants that serve some type of western dish because the choices here a almost impossible. first, almost every eating establishment serves the same two or three foods only. these foods are generally just fufu and banku. fufu is made from mashed plantains and yams, mixed with boiling water and pounded with a large mortar and pestle. for 30 minutes. the final result is a sticky beige ball of mush which you eat with your choice of soup. the banku is generally the exact same thing except without plantains and with cornmeal instead, which gives it a sour taste. though mostly you don't taste the starch and use the soup for the taste. fufu is served with the ball already in the soup while banku leaves the ball on a separate plate where you take some to dip in the soup. the two factors that make both of these dishes hard to eat is (1) you eat it with your hand only (2) you don't chew, you only swallow. it is nice that almost every eating spot has a bowl of water and soap for cleaning your hand before and after, but the process itself can be sometimes pleasurable and other times nauseating. i can't really stand the sour after taste of banku or the taste that comes with the burps that follow, while fufu has become a meal that i can enjoy on a daily basis if i have to. the problem is that some fufu is good and some is bad. also, sometimes fufu is hot and sometimes it's not. when it's not hot, it's almost impossible to eat any of it. both dishes are always served with a meat, but the meat is usually so boney and tough that i usually get them without meat. the various soups you can choose are light soup (which is my personal favorite, don't ask me whats in it, i don't want to know), peanut soup, palm nut soup, okra soup and others that i haven't encountered. almost all of the dishes in the entire country work in this formula, not just fufu and banku. some others are kenkey, rice balls, plain yams, red red, and many others.
it's overwhelmingly irritating at times when i don't want to spent 5 to 7 cedis on a meal when i can get a bowl of fufu for less than 1. but the chances of finding inedible fufu, or cold soup, are so large that i often give up and choose to splurge just to know that i'm going to enjoy eating. i should also add that i've gotten used to finding strange items inside of my food and forcing myself not to think about it. almost every meal i eat has either a small fish bone or several hairs in it. sometimes it's worse. twice i've found small bugs in my food and once i found several pieces of cloth. my good buddy dane was eating pizza earlier this week and found a sewing needle sticking out of the crust just before he bit into it. luckily the point was missing, but that doesn't mean that he hadn't already eaten it. facts such as these make getting typhoid fever after being vaccinated not so suprising at all. luckily, my homestay will be making my breakfast for the rest of my time here, but every time i have to think about eating lunch or dinner i stress myself thinking about the money i'll have to spend, the distance i'll have to go and whether or not the food will taste remotely good. after learning how to cook for myself in ways that i like in the fall semester, i'm so frustrated not having that opportunity, or even any of the ingredients with which to do so.
also, there's no cheese here at all. there are cows all over the fucking place, but no real milk, no real butter and no real cheese. we've got carnation milk, non-dairy creamer, margarine, etc. no motherfucking cheese! every day i think about cheese. mmm, brie, muenster, cheddar, jarlsberg, swiss, my god. i'm worried that the first cheese i eat when i get home is going to make me sick, so i'll have to restrain myself and taper back on slowly.
had a great long conversation with jim a few days ago. we spoke for more than an hour and shared a lot of thoughts and experiences and plans for the summer, next year and the future. i'm missing my friends more than i have so far and it's been wonderful hearing from some of them. i always say "it's great to hear your voice" but it really is so comforting just to hear the sound of someone when you haven't for so long.
anyway, traveling this week will be a lot of fun especially with no structure at all. when i get back, i'll begin working every day on my project and the time will begin to fly again. i read two project papers of students on past semesters who have worked with the same people i will be working with and wrote about very similar themes to the ones that i intend to study, and i hope my work can be both a continuation of what they've done and something original as well. call me soon, i'll look forward to hearing from you. and to clarify previous entries, i'm doing great!! i only want to write about the hard parts now so i don't have to talk about them too much when i get home.
love, jules
i got to speak to nuschka and roy and young gabe yesterday. it was wonderful to talk to them. roy had lots of questions about the program itself so i figured i'd put it in the next blog.
the first two weeks we spent in accra attending the university of ghana legon. it's one of the most prestigious universities in west africa and kofi annan is currently the chancellor. we had usually two or three lectures everyday after lessons in twi - the language of akan people. akan is a larger name for several ethnic groups who all speak variations of twi: asante, fante, akwapim, denkyira, brono, akyem, etc. the lectures ranged from topics like ghanas economy to the history of ghanaian pop music.
after leaving accra we moved to kumasi - the capital city of the old asante confederacy. it's the second largest city in the country and is almost only made up of asantes who speak the dialect of twi that we've been learning. we spent two weeks continuing and intensifying our study of twi and taking more lectures for the first week only. the second week we spent the afternoons learning a traditional dance of the asantes called adowa, pronounced adjuwa. six of us learned the drumming and the rest of the group learned the dance. i got to be the master drummer and the dancers had to take their cues from the changes in my rhythms, which was very difficult. we performed the dance for all of our homestay families on the last night in town. after kumasi we moved to three separate asante villages in the effi-duasi district: senchi, ogua, and okinkrom.
in the village we were allowed to choose a small independent project to research for a 10 page paper. as i told you before i studied the distillation of palm wine into the local gin, apatese. the village was the most fun i've had so far as the lifestyle is so intensely relaxed and options of what to do are so few that you walk back and forth around the two blocks that made up the town. i should note that the village i stayed in was the largest of the three and our way of figuring that out was the number of bars in town.
after leaving the village we went to tamale, the capital of the northern region where most people are muslim dagombas. they don't speak twi and the city is very different. it's also much hotter there and the vegetation is savannah rather than forest. after tamale we went on the educational tours where we did 2-5 day stops in four regions doing workshops and lessons throughout. first we went to krobo dumase which is the bead making capital of ghana and we learned how to make beads from broken up coke bottles. the krobo area is mountainous and very beautiful. after krobo we went to the eastern volta region on the border of togo where we learned a very difficult and tiring dance at a cultural center/hostel where we stayed. after that we went to the western volta region where we learned how to make pottery. after that we went to cape coast where we saw the slave castles and met the rabbi.
that was mostly for roy.
i am in accra right now and tomorrow i'm going to visit two friends who are doing their projects in cape coast and from there i'll be visiting several friends, american and ghanaian in kumasi. if i could have done my project in kumasi i would have, it's an awesome city. but all of the good producers, studios, musicians, and live music events are generally in accra so it makes most sense for me to be here. for the last three days in between friends leaving and my week of visiting i've taken some much needed relaxation time. the program can be very, very exhausting sometimes.
the food here is a subject i'm dying to explain in great detail as it doesn't cease in frustrating me. i have learned to enjoy some of the local foods sometimes, but mostly i seek out restaurants that serve some type of western dish because the choices here a almost impossible. first, almost every eating establishment serves the same two or three foods only. these foods are generally just fufu and banku. fufu is made from mashed plantains and yams, mixed with boiling water and pounded with a large mortar and pestle. for 30 minutes. the final result is a sticky beige ball of mush which you eat with your choice of soup. the banku is generally the exact same thing except without plantains and with cornmeal instead, which gives it a sour taste. though mostly you don't taste the starch and use the soup for the taste. fufu is served with the ball already in the soup while banku leaves the ball on a separate plate where you take some to dip in the soup. the two factors that make both of these dishes hard to eat is (1) you eat it with your hand only (2) you don't chew, you only swallow. it is nice that almost every eating spot has a bowl of water and soap for cleaning your hand before and after, but the process itself can be sometimes pleasurable and other times nauseating. i can't really stand the sour after taste of banku or the taste that comes with the burps that follow, while fufu has become a meal that i can enjoy on a daily basis if i have to. the problem is that some fufu is good and some is bad. also, sometimes fufu is hot and sometimes it's not. when it's not hot, it's almost impossible to eat any of it. both dishes are always served with a meat, but the meat is usually so boney and tough that i usually get them without meat. the various soups you can choose are light soup (which is my personal favorite, don't ask me whats in it, i don't want to know), peanut soup, palm nut soup, okra soup and others that i haven't encountered. almost all of the dishes in the entire country work in this formula, not just fufu and banku. some others are kenkey, rice balls, plain yams, red red, and many others.
it's overwhelmingly irritating at times when i don't want to spent 5 to 7 cedis on a meal when i can get a bowl of fufu for less than 1. but the chances of finding inedible fufu, or cold soup, are so large that i often give up and choose to splurge just to know that i'm going to enjoy eating. i should also add that i've gotten used to finding strange items inside of my food and forcing myself not to think about it. almost every meal i eat has either a small fish bone or several hairs in it. sometimes it's worse. twice i've found small bugs in my food and once i found several pieces of cloth. my good buddy dane was eating pizza earlier this week and found a sewing needle sticking out of the crust just before he bit into it. luckily the point was missing, but that doesn't mean that he hadn't already eaten it. facts such as these make getting typhoid fever after being vaccinated not so suprising at all. luckily, my homestay will be making my breakfast for the rest of my time here, but every time i have to think about eating lunch or dinner i stress myself thinking about the money i'll have to spend, the distance i'll have to go and whether or not the food will taste remotely good. after learning how to cook for myself in ways that i like in the fall semester, i'm so frustrated not having that opportunity, or even any of the ingredients with which to do so.
also, there's no cheese here at all. there are cows all over the fucking place, but no real milk, no real butter and no real cheese. we've got carnation milk, non-dairy creamer, margarine, etc. no motherfucking cheese! every day i think about cheese. mmm, brie, muenster, cheddar, jarlsberg, swiss, my god. i'm worried that the first cheese i eat when i get home is going to make me sick, so i'll have to restrain myself and taper back on slowly.
had a great long conversation with jim a few days ago. we spoke for more than an hour and shared a lot of thoughts and experiences and plans for the summer, next year and the future. i'm missing my friends more than i have so far and it's been wonderful hearing from some of them. i always say "it's great to hear your voice" but it really is so comforting just to hear the sound of someone when you haven't for so long.
anyway, traveling this week will be a lot of fun especially with no structure at all. when i get back, i'll begin working every day on my project and the time will begin to fly again. i read two project papers of students on past semesters who have worked with the same people i will be working with and wrote about very similar themes to the ones that i intend to study, and i hope my work can be both a continuation of what they've done and something original as well. call me soon, i'll look forward to hearing from you. and to clarify previous entries, i'm doing great!! i only want to write about the hard parts now so i don't have to talk about them too much when i get home.
love, jules
2009-04-02
cape coast
mama,
i am in cape coast now, we arrived yesterday - it is our last stop on the educational tour section of the program. next week i'll begin my independent study where i'll be working with John Collins, a british ghanaian dual citizen, high life musician and scholar of the transatlantic feedback loop of musical influence into and out of africa since the days of the slave trade. every day i look forward to my independent study more than the day before. it will be an unbelievable experience (john collins was best friends with fela kuti and brian eno stayed at his house in accra?!?!) since the village we spend one week in the third largest city, tamale, and then we departed on the excursion/educational tour section. in the last two weeks we've been to the eastern region, the volta region and the central region where cape coast is, and i've visited 7 of the 10 regions in the country. it is sometimes startling how much we've seen - much more than many ghanaians.
in tamale, in the northern region, the people are mostly muslim dagombas and we arrived there during the week of the largest festival of the year surrounding the birthday of the prophet muhammed. after two days there i grew ill with typhoid fever and was bed-ridden for most of the week. typhoid wasn't as bad as i expected, in fact it wasn't much. just weakness and fever, but fever is almost impossible to detect in the intense heat of the north. in addition to the typhoid, my health in general is questionable and i often think look forward to returning just to regulate my body. i've probably lost upwards of 10 pounds here, and having not seen me in 3 months i may appear emaciated but i beg you not to worry as i have given up worrying myself. i eat a lot, and i eat what i want but the scheduled meals and the lack of snack has taken effect. not to mention, i probably have mad worms up in me right now -- everyone here takes dewormer every 3 months and i certainly will before leaving.
my ear has been another health issue that is constantly in my thoughts. having ruptured my ear drum 3 weeks into a program that i chose for music, i feel like my left ear has become my cross to bear in ghana. there are times when it is very irritating listening to loud drumming because it resounds deeper in my right ear and the unbalanced feeling forces me to stuff my ears with tissues at many musical events. the affliction has tested my love for music though. there are many other projects here that i've been interested in and thought about doing, and they're still very tempting but i always try to remember that my ear will heal eventually and i pray that it's not infected. i have passed the test and i know that music remains my greatest love among many interests.
one of the projects i thought about doing was to work with a black american professor living in cape coast named rabbi kohain levi -- a jew, obviously. in the last three or four weeks i've become increasingly obsessed with being jewish, often at the expense of irritating my friends. i brought along the yiddish language cards and i've been learning as much as i can hoping to incorporate yiddish into my speech when i return home. i'm hoping the effects of ghana on my english will dissipate quickly when i get home because i've become very accustomed to speaking over-clearly and omitting most "a's" "to's" "are's" etc. when i speak english here i often comes out, "we go beach," or "i take beer and pay tomorrow, is ok?"
when i first arrived i was thinking about the slave trade and the african diaspora very regularly, but it faded in the middle and has now reemerged in my thoughts. it's changed though because whenever i think about i only think of grampa, and usually of his confessional tape. i can't think of the two separately when i'm here because i feel somehow more connected to my own culture through being in this place. i always hear him saying 'i see pictures of starving children in ethiopia and i see myself.' his spirit is with me on a daily basis, and when i'm not joking with friends or enjoying a beer on the beach listening to the sounds of music from any random distance, i feel like i am with him in my thoughts. i feel his presence in me as i continue to idolize him more and more. yesterday we took a walk around the outside of the cape coast castle which functioned as a slave dungeon and headquarters of the british and dutch colonial governance from 1660 ish until the end of the slave trade -- a discomforting concept when i think of all the slaves that continue to be trafficked around the globe. when we walked there i looked out into the ocean and all i could see was huge ships coming and going. when i uttered the image aloud, my friend crystal who is a black american said that she pictured people jumping overboard. i started to remember grampa describing how he ceased to feel like a human being and submitted to only the most basic animal needs letting his mind become numb to his torture the brutality that nearly swallowed him.
today we went on the tour of the inside of the castle and saw the dungeons and the cells and punishing rooms as well as the governors parlor and bedroom. before the tour we went through a small museum dedicated to the transatlantic slave trade and ghanaian forts and castles, of which there are many. in one room there a pictures of many prominent figures of the black diaspora including harriet tubman, toussaint l'oeverture, angela davis, marcus garvey, web dubois, duke ellington, billie holiday, frederick douglass, malcolm x and martin luther king. i couldn't say a word during the entire museum walk and the castle tour and i felt mostly without words for a period afterwards. i stood and stared at malcolm and martin and i remembered smiley in spike lee's do the right thing who tries to sell photographs of these two men holding hands and laughing together. one with a dream, the other with a mission; it became unclear which one was which, the dreamer and the militant, the longer i stared and stopped understanding the difference between peaceful agitation and violent revolution. more than understanding the difference, i no longer understood the point of differentiating between the two. dreams and missions, violence and peace, etc. i kept hearing smiley with his palsy stutter: "m-m-m-m-m-malcolm and m-m-m-m-martin"
we went to the dungeons and they showed us the line on the wall where the wading pool of feces, urine, vomit and other mess came to, and i felt almost nothing except silence and the presence of god. i thought about the smell for a moment and then i remembered what grampa said and i realized that the smell would become irrelevant long before the pool reached it's nearly 3 feet of depth. when we walked in between the chambers that separated the weak men from the strong men i couldn't understand how grampa survived, so sure that in such a situation i would almost definitely be deemed unfit for sale and would likely have been corralled with the weak. when we walked out of the dungeon i felt like i could smell death and hear the sounds of death and it smelled like nothing and sounded like the crashing waves of the eastern atlantic in front of me. i looked over the edge of the wall and pictured my own dead body being thrown over the edge in a bi-weekly effort to clean out the corpses.
all the time i think to myself, "what am i doing here?" and at the castle i felt like i was nowhere except planet earth.
i feel god's presence in the brutality and in the ecstasy, in the dread and the pleasure
and i accept the terrible and the terrific as god's commentary on the world as it happens to be
neil young says don't let it bring you down, and i don't.
i came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
i see my light come shining from the west down to the east. any day now i shall be released.
when you ask me how my trip was, i will say it was wonderful and i probably won't elaborate too much except for an occasional funny story.
there is no way to describe this place and to make it real.
i am in cape coast now, we arrived yesterday - it is our last stop on the educational tour section of the program. next week i'll begin my independent study where i'll be working with John Collins, a british ghanaian dual citizen, high life musician and scholar of the transatlantic feedback loop of musical influence into and out of africa since the days of the slave trade. every day i look forward to my independent study more than the day before. it will be an unbelievable experience (john collins was best friends with fela kuti and brian eno stayed at his house in accra?!?!) since the village we spend one week in the third largest city, tamale, and then we departed on the excursion/educational tour section. in the last two weeks we've been to the eastern region, the volta region and the central region where cape coast is, and i've visited 7 of the 10 regions in the country. it is sometimes startling how much we've seen - much more than many ghanaians.
in tamale, in the northern region, the people are mostly muslim dagombas and we arrived there during the week of the largest festival of the year surrounding the birthday of the prophet muhammed. after two days there i grew ill with typhoid fever and was bed-ridden for most of the week. typhoid wasn't as bad as i expected, in fact it wasn't much. just weakness and fever, but fever is almost impossible to detect in the intense heat of the north. in addition to the typhoid, my health in general is questionable and i often think look forward to returning just to regulate my body. i've probably lost upwards of 10 pounds here, and having not seen me in 3 months i may appear emaciated but i beg you not to worry as i have given up worrying myself. i eat a lot, and i eat what i want but the scheduled meals and the lack of snack has taken effect. not to mention, i probably have mad worms up in me right now -- everyone here takes dewormer every 3 months and i certainly will before leaving.
my ear has been another health issue that is constantly in my thoughts. having ruptured my ear drum 3 weeks into a program that i chose for music, i feel like my left ear has become my cross to bear in ghana. there are times when it is very irritating listening to loud drumming because it resounds deeper in my right ear and the unbalanced feeling forces me to stuff my ears with tissues at many musical events. the affliction has tested my love for music though. there are many other projects here that i've been interested in and thought about doing, and they're still very tempting but i always try to remember that my ear will heal eventually and i pray that it's not infected. i have passed the test and i know that music remains my greatest love among many interests.
one of the projects i thought about doing was to work with a black american professor living in cape coast named rabbi kohain levi -- a jew, obviously. in the last three or four weeks i've become increasingly obsessed with being jewish, often at the expense of irritating my friends. i brought along the yiddish language cards and i've been learning as much as i can hoping to incorporate yiddish into my speech when i return home. i'm hoping the effects of ghana on my english will dissipate quickly when i get home because i've become very accustomed to speaking over-clearly and omitting most "a's" "to's" "are's" etc. when i speak english here i often comes out, "we go beach," or "i take beer and pay tomorrow, is ok?"
when i first arrived i was thinking about the slave trade and the african diaspora very regularly, but it faded in the middle and has now reemerged in my thoughts. it's changed though because whenever i think about i only think of grampa, and usually of his confessional tape. i can't think of the two separately when i'm here because i feel somehow more connected to my own culture through being in this place. i always hear him saying 'i see pictures of starving children in ethiopia and i see myself.' his spirit is with me on a daily basis, and when i'm not joking with friends or enjoying a beer on the beach listening to the sounds of music from any random distance, i feel like i am with him in my thoughts. i feel his presence in me as i continue to idolize him more and more. yesterday we took a walk around the outside of the cape coast castle which functioned as a slave dungeon and headquarters of the british and dutch colonial governance from 1660 ish until the end of the slave trade -- a discomforting concept when i think of all the slaves that continue to be trafficked around the globe. when we walked there i looked out into the ocean and all i could see was huge ships coming and going. when i uttered the image aloud, my friend crystal who is a black american said that she pictured people jumping overboard. i started to remember grampa describing how he ceased to feel like a human being and submitted to only the most basic animal needs letting his mind become numb to his torture the brutality that nearly swallowed him.
today we went on the tour of the inside of the castle and saw the dungeons and the cells and punishing rooms as well as the governors parlor and bedroom. before the tour we went through a small museum dedicated to the transatlantic slave trade and ghanaian forts and castles, of which there are many. in one room there a pictures of many prominent figures of the black diaspora including harriet tubman, toussaint l'oeverture, angela davis, marcus garvey, web dubois, duke ellington, billie holiday, frederick douglass, malcolm x and martin luther king. i couldn't say a word during the entire museum walk and the castle tour and i felt mostly without words for a period afterwards. i stood and stared at malcolm and martin and i remembered smiley in spike lee's do the right thing who tries to sell photographs of these two men holding hands and laughing together. one with a dream, the other with a mission; it became unclear which one was which, the dreamer and the militant, the longer i stared and stopped understanding the difference between peaceful agitation and violent revolution. more than understanding the difference, i no longer understood the point of differentiating between the two. dreams and missions, violence and peace, etc. i kept hearing smiley with his palsy stutter: "m-m-m-m-m-malcolm and m-m-m-m-martin"
we went to the dungeons and they showed us the line on the wall where the wading pool of feces, urine, vomit and other mess came to, and i felt almost nothing except silence and the presence of god. i thought about the smell for a moment and then i remembered what grampa said and i realized that the smell would become irrelevant long before the pool reached it's nearly 3 feet of depth. when we walked in between the chambers that separated the weak men from the strong men i couldn't understand how grampa survived, so sure that in such a situation i would almost definitely be deemed unfit for sale and would likely have been corralled with the weak. when we walked out of the dungeon i felt like i could smell death and hear the sounds of death and it smelled like nothing and sounded like the crashing waves of the eastern atlantic in front of me. i looked over the edge of the wall and pictured my own dead body being thrown over the edge in a bi-weekly effort to clean out the corpses.
all the time i think to myself, "what am i doing here?" and at the castle i felt like i was nowhere except planet earth.
i feel god's presence in the brutality and in the ecstasy, in the dread and the pleasure
and i accept the terrible and the terrific as god's commentary on the world as it happens to be
neil young says don't let it bring you down, and i don't.
i came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
i see my light come shining from the west down to the east. any day now i shall be released.
when you ask me how my trip was, i will say it was wonderful and i probably won't elaborate too much except for an occasional funny story.
there is no way to describe this place and to make it real.
2009-03-14
KUMASI & SENCHI VILLAGE
mama,
i've waiting long to write this all down and i want to preface what i say by explaining that i have no regrets, have no great feelings of despair, little to no discontent even. daily, i enjoy myself thoroughly and have had only brief passing moments when i feel homesick. the experience i'm having, though questionable in its effect on my personality has had a much larger influence on my ability to find pleasure in any surroundings. it's a talent i can only wish i had at the outset of college, but i contently lie in the bed i've made for myself. though even here i fantasize about the many advantages i would have had now and in the future had i attended rutgers in newark from freshmen year. regardless, let me report what i intend to convey, especially to those who might imagine me dancing in colorful kentes, taking the dirt in my hands as i enthrall in the motherland and what she has to offer mentally, socially, experiencially. i rather hope to provide a bleaker picture in order to ground myself, and explain some aspects of being in this place. this is why i preface by explaining the ecstacy i feel regularly -- as not to worry my friends and family who might see my descriptions as unfortunate and disdainful.
almost every morning during the two week homestay in kumasi, i was awakened by the stench of burning plastic. pure water comes primarily in plastic satchets for 5 cents, and the finished bag is generally discarded anywhere. waste removal is a small industry here as most trash is discarded in the bush or in the gutters. however, most homeowners simply save their trash until they take the lot and burn it outside their compounds. in fact, i've seen some families use the plastic as kindling in a fire used to boil water.
taking public transportation involves using tro-tros or lorries, as they used to be called, which seem to be all imported from the netherlands or other scandinavian countries. being inside a tro-tro in the hot hours of the day (12-6) increases the body's temperature by at least 5 degrees, and the only consolation is if you have a window seat. though it feels temporarily satisfying to have the wind blow in from the window, the fumes of the traffic, the dirty petrol and the age-old engines makes breathing very difficult.
two friends in my group took a taxi to their homes and found the driver speeding so dangerously down a main road that he hit a woman walking across the street. while getting his bearings and coming to a halt some 100 yards away, my friends decided to get out of the car to check the woman's condition. they saw many people gathering, running from all sides to help her and my friends did not know what to do. the man driving their taxi went close enough to see that the woman was very badly if not fatally injured and ran back to his car to flee the scene. before panicking, my friends found another driver went immediately home. the next morning our advisor told us that if the driver had stayed with the crowd, his car would be set on fire, and in certain bad neighborhoods, he could easily have been stoned to death. he did add that most taxi drivers in that situation would flee in order to report the matter directly to the police.
in kumasi i found my closest friends on the program and the connection i have with them is necessary for me. my ability to bounce my thoughts off of theirs and to share my experiences good and bad makes life pleasant, simple and i appreciate them greatly. especially for their tolerance of my sometimes short temper with the other students in the program.
though i was very intimidated by life in the village, both leading up to our departure and during our first few hours in senchi. however, by the end of the first day, i felt blissful in the laid back lifestyle of the rural community. senchi was in the center between the other two villages that our group were housed in. each village 6 students, 3 villages, 18 students total. though we asked to be placed together, the three males in the group were separated, one in each village. my group was mostly to my liking and my attempts to find friends based in similarities in the larger group, being in the smaller group forced me to have friends based on having put aside all differences.
living in the village was more what one might imagine when they picture americans abroad in africa. there are children everywhere and they run towards you, call you from dozens of yards away, fight for your attention and your acknowledgement. some choose to ask you for money immediately, others wait until you've greeted them several times and other just want to slap your hand and say your name. in addition, adults don't allow you to pass without greeting and a greeting involves not nearly just a wave and the contact of eyes. rather, greetings go something like this:
obroni, ma a kye o! (white man, good morning)
yaa ena, wo ho te sen? (yes ma'am, how is your health?)
oyname adum, me ho ye, ne wo nsue? (god's grace, i'm strong, and you?)
ho ye pa, onyame ase (feeling very strong, we thank god)
yoo, ye be hyia o! (good, we shall meet again)
in the ten minute walk from my compound to the site where the students met for meals and activities, i did this exchange multiple times.
our project in the village was to find a local art or industry and to master and study it. i chose to study the distillation of palm wine into the local gin, apatese -- a narcotic of a drink with a pungent stench, made only to placate a man who drank too much the night previous and wishes himself drunker to start the day before him. in fact, in the village the women do most of the work and most of the men are drunks. if they're not morning regulars at one of the four local distributors of apatese -- two beer bars, two bars who only push the local drink -- they are town elders who complete every community ritual with the ceremonial taking of shnapps after pouring libations for the ancestor's blessing. i worked with the man who taps the palm tree for juice for three days and learned how the distillation worked and followed up my experience interviewing three alcoholics and three distributors. i look forward to the completion of my paper, and i feel that my information is interesting and provacative.
my greatest issue with village life, however was less with the behavior of the locals, child and adult, but rather the behavior of the girls in my group. no less than three of them went everywhere with their cameras searching for group and candid photos of the children who idolized them and adored them as they walked down the road. the blind and unbridled love for whites among the children is very discomforting to me but easily understandable as they see our presence as holding vast opportunities for them both in the moment and in the future. they stare and call out with such regularity and repetitiveness that at certain moments i couldn't be bothered to give a glance. in fact, sometimes i was so frustrated that i responded to their calls with a loud "ko fie!" meaning "go home." but i harbored no resentment for them or for their parents who encouraged them to ask us for money and whom i saw regularly showing blatant disregard for their children's whereabouts or well being. while these facts may have startled and surprised me, i hold not even distaste or disrespect for their style of parenthood and child rearing.
one girl in my group studied education and came to meals each day exasperated and flabbergasted at the behavior of parents who put no investment in their children's education and the inability of the schools to address or interest the students, let alone get them to learn. while i understood her frustration, i found her ideas narcisistic and obtuse if not obviously disrespectful. while the children are not receiving an education at the standards of which we are accustomed, children get educated whether or not it's in school. in skills alone, farming skills, carrying skills, cooking skills, etc, the children learn more in their first five years than american children learn in their first fifteen. i don't even include the education they get from the culture and the community about their own history, the history of the asante people and the history of their spiritual leaders, their beliefs, their proverbs, and their customs. these are forms of education that are relevant to the lives they will grow to lead -- much more so than subject verb agreement in the english language.
everyday i heard her complain about her wish to be helping people and to be doing community service, without attending to the thought that she came here to study culture, not to impose upon it. her desire to help and save, while i applaud its optimism, is foolish and imagines herself living in a reality that does not exist. while i would have also loved the feeling i got from building a church or digging a site for a landfill, i would be working to cater to my own desire to feel good about myself, rather than observing how others find joy and find ways to feel good about themselves in the face of poverty and underdevelopment. what i believe that the girl ignored is that these people often seem much happier, congenial and ready to laugh and engage with friends and strangers than any westerner i've met. could she not see that their situation was not to be pitied, but rather respected for its resilience and more so respected indifferently in seeing that the people are still people, and not just "africans?" her only attempts to make friends in the community were with the cutest, smallest, blackest 2 year old child she could find to put on her lap and take pictures of. i found it deplorable.
in every new setting i am faced more and more with the reality of my own meaninglessness, and also the stark contrasts between my own reasons for coming here and the reasons of my companions. though it makes it harder to socialize in the larger group, it provides much material for my thoughts: the place i have learned to keep my opinions as a struggle to keep my mouth shut around certain collegues. this is partly why i make such effort to commed my close friends for their sympathy and empathy with my need to let out aggressions while not in the presence of certain others.
i emphasize again in closing how much i do enjoy myself, as the picture painted is bleak i admit. i also apologize for my grammar and spelling in my previous entry and for any further errors in this entry. needing to pay for time spent surfing web, i chose not to proofread.
much love, jules
i've waiting long to write this all down and i want to preface what i say by explaining that i have no regrets, have no great feelings of despair, little to no discontent even. daily, i enjoy myself thoroughly and have had only brief passing moments when i feel homesick. the experience i'm having, though questionable in its effect on my personality has had a much larger influence on my ability to find pleasure in any surroundings. it's a talent i can only wish i had at the outset of college, but i contently lie in the bed i've made for myself. though even here i fantasize about the many advantages i would have had now and in the future had i attended rutgers in newark from freshmen year. regardless, let me report what i intend to convey, especially to those who might imagine me dancing in colorful kentes, taking the dirt in my hands as i enthrall in the motherland and what she has to offer mentally, socially, experiencially. i rather hope to provide a bleaker picture in order to ground myself, and explain some aspects of being in this place. this is why i preface by explaining the ecstacy i feel regularly -- as not to worry my friends and family who might see my descriptions as unfortunate and disdainful.
almost every morning during the two week homestay in kumasi, i was awakened by the stench of burning plastic. pure water comes primarily in plastic satchets for 5 cents, and the finished bag is generally discarded anywhere. waste removal is a small industry here as most trash is discarded in the bush or in the gutters. however, most homeowners simply save their trash until they take the lot and burn it outside their compounds. in fact, i've seen some families use the plastic as kindling in a fire used to boil water.
taking public transportation involves using tro-tros or lorries, as they used to be called, which seem to be all imported from the netherlands or other scandinavian countries. being inside a tro-tro in the hot hours of the day (12-6) increases the body's temperature by at least 5 degrees, and the only consolation is if you have a window seat. though it feels temporarily satisfying to have the wind blow in from the window, the fumes of the traffic, the dirty petrol and the age-old engines makes breathing very difficult.
two friends in my group took a taxi to their homes and found the driver speeding so dangerously down a main road that he hit a woman walking across the street. while getting his bearings and coming to a halt some 100 yards away, my friends decided to get out of the car to check the woman's condition. they saw many people gathering, running from all sides to help her and my friends did not know what to do. the man driving their taxi went close enough to see that the woman was very badly if not fatally injured and ran back to his car to flee the scene. before panicking, my friends found another driver went immediately home. the next morning our advisor told us that if the driver had stayed with the crowd, his car would be set on fire, and in certain bad neighborhoods, he could easily have been stoned to death. he did add that most taxi drivers in that situation would flee in order to report the matter directly to the police.
in kumasi i found my closest friends on the program and the connection i have with them is necessary for me. my ability to bounce my thoughts off of theirs and to share my experiences good and bad makes life pleasant, simple and i appreciate them greatly. especially for their tolerance of my sometimes short temper with the other students in the program.
though i was very intimidated by life in the village, both leading up to our departure and during our first few hours in senchi. however, by the end of the first day, i felt blissful in the laid back lifestyle of the rural community. senchi was in the center between the other two villages that our group were housed in. each village 6 students, 3 villages, 18 students total. though we asked to be placed together, the three males in the group were separated, one in each village. my group was mostly to my liking and my attempts to find friends based in similarities in the larger group, being in the smaller group forced me to have friends based on having put aside all differences.
living in the village was more what one might imagine when they picture americans abroad in africa. there are children everywhere and they run towards you, call you from dozens of yards away, fight for your attention and your acknowledgement. some choose to ask you for money immediately, others wait until you've greeted them several times and other just want to slap your hand and say your name. in addition, adults don't allow you to pass without greeting and a greeting involves not nearly just a wave and the contact of eyes. rather, greetings go something like this:
obroni, ma a kye o! (white man, good morning)
yaa ena, wo ho te sen? (yes ma'am, how is your health?)
oyname adum, me ho ye, ne wo nsue? (god's grace, i'm strong, and you?)
ho ye pa, onyame ase (feeling very strong, we thank god)
yoo, ye be hyia o! (good, we shall meet again)
in the ten minute walk from my compound to the site where the students met for meals and activities, i did this exchange multiple times.
our project in the village was to find a local art or industry and to master and study it. i chose to study the distillation of palm wine into the local gin, apatese -- a narcotic of a drink with a pungent stench, made only to placate a man who drank too much the night previous and wishes himself drunker to start the day before him. in fact, in the village the women do most of the work and most of the men are drunks. if they're not morning regulars at one of the four local distributors of apatese -- two beer bars, two bars who only push the local drink -- they are town elders who complete every community ritual with the ceremonial taking of shnapps after pouring libations for the ancestor's blessing. i worked with the man who taps the palm tree for juice for three days and learned how the distillation worked and followed up my experience interviewing three alcoholics and three distributors. i look forward to the completion of my paper, and i feel that my information is interesting and provacative.
my greatest issue with village life, however was less with the behavior of the locals, child and adult, but rather the behavior of the girls in my group. no less than three of them went everywhere with their cameras searching for group and candid photos of the children who idolized them and adored them as they walked down the road. the blind and unbridled love for whites among the children is very discomforting to me but easily understandable as they see our presence as holding vast opportunities for them both in the moment and in the future. they stare and call out with such regularity and repetitiveness that at certain moments i couldn't be bothered to give a glance. in fact, sometimes i was so frustrated that i responded to their calls with a loud "ko fie!" meaning "go home." but i harbored no resentment for them or for their parents who encouraged them to ask us for money and whom i saw regularly showing blatant disregard for their children's whereabouts or well being. while these facts may have startled and surprised me, i hold not even distaste or disrespect for their style of parenthood and child rearing.
one girl in my group studied education and came to meals each day exasperated and flabbergasted at the behavior of parents who put no investment in their children's education and the inability of the schools to address or interest the students, let alone get them to learn. while i understood her frustration, i found her ideas narcisistic and obtuse if not obviously disrespectful. while the children are not receiving an education at the standards of which we are accustomed, children get educated whether or not it's in school. in skills alone, farming skills, carrying skills, cooking skills, etc, the children learn more in their first five years than american children learn in their first fifteen. i don't even include the education they get from the culture and the community about their own history, the history of the asante people and the history of their spiritual leaders, their beliefs, their proverbs, and their customs. these are forms of education that are relevant to the lives they will grow to lead -- much more so than subject verb agreement in the english language.
everyday i heard her complain about her wish to be helping people and to be doing community service, without attending to the thought that she came here to study culture, not to impose upon it. her desire to help and save, while i applaud its optimism, is foolish and imagines herself living in a reality that does not exist. while i would have also loved the feeling i got from building a church or digging a site for a landfill, i would be working to cater to my own desire to feel good about myself, rather than observing how others find joy and find ways to feel good about themselves in the face of poverty and underdevelopment. what i believe that the girl ignored is that these people often seem much happier, congenial and ready to laugh and engage with friends and strangers than any westerner i've met. could she not see that their situation was not to be pitied, but rather respected for its resilience and more so respected indifferently in seeing that the people are still people, and not just "africans?" her only attempts to make friends in the community were with the cutest, smallest, blackest 2 year old child she could find to put on her lap and take pictures of. i found it deplorable.
in every new setting i am faced more and more with the reality of my own meaninglessness, and also the stark contrasts between my own reasons for coming here and the reasons of my companions. though it makes it harder to socialize in the larger group, it provides much material for my thoughts: the place i have learned to keep my opinions as a struggle to keep my mouth shut around certain collegues. this is partly why i make such effort to commed my close friends for their sympathy and empathy with my need to let out aggressions while not in the presence of certain others.
i emphasize again in closing how much i do enjoy myself, as the picture painted is bleak i admit. i also apologize for my grammar and spelling in my previous entry and for any further errors in this entry. needing to pay for time spent surfing web, i chose not to proofread.
much love, jules
2009-02-10
ACCRA
FROM ACCRA, GHANA
The following entry is an email i sent my mother. I think I'll do it this way during my time here because I often feel most comfortable talking and writing to her about my thoughts, experiences, ideas. I invite anyone to be party to our correspondences on this blog, both to minimize my time writing and to keep a log of my time in Africa.
As a quick anecdote before the email, my name, Jules, is difficult to say here as it comes through the back of the throat. The languages here come from the back of the tongue but not as far back as our more gutteral throat sounds. Therefore, my name has become Jones for the time being. My homestay father coined it (he calls my Canadian roommate name Erin, Irene) and the other students and teachers on my program have taken it up with much humor adding Mr. Jones, or the local familiar title Uncle Jones, and even jokingly the respectful Papa Jones. My American friends have taken it to other extremes: Sgt. Jones, Lt. Jones, Jonesy, etc. I have come to like it and I now introduce myself as Jones, or Kwame Jones -- Kwame means born on Saturday and most ghanaians go by their day of birth name: kofi-friday, akosua-sunday, etc.
Here is my email with Fran:
mama,
great to see that photo of you enjoying yourself! sorry the phone situation is so irritating, but the internet cafe is not so hard to deal with.
this past week i've spent two nights on the beach in accra, one for bob marleys birthday celebration which is a major event over here. in fact, the ghanaian rastas believe themselves to be the original. on the way to the beach i pass the newly built presidential palace which has cost an estimated 400 million dollars to build, mostly funded by the Indian government as the global interest in ghana's previously unknown oil resources grows. apparently there is still 20 or so million to spent on the inside. try to google image it -- it's an outstanding, ridiculous gargantuan asian-looking behemoth on the side of the motorway.
in case you didn't know, kofi annan is the chancellor of the university where i've been attending -- i just found out today! i have spent a good amount of time on my studies as well; i'm finished with two of the 3 books required for our first paper due on monday. maya angelou - gods children need traveling... and beautiful ones are not yet born which i came to love by the second half of the novel.
i have two ghanaian friends who i met at marley's b-day party; kwame and jahfar. kwame is a very down to earth, great guy who likes to talk about culture and music and smoke "wee" as it is called here, and jahfar is a straight up rasta who calls me everyday just to say one love and see you at cocobeach.
some of my fellow students are only just being hit viscerally by the surounding abject poverty and the difficulty of the lives of the people around us. while some choose to talk about it, i found the conversation irrelevant and unproductive. i have come to feel, in the presence of poverty, that my thoughts are best kept in my mind. there is no way for me to separate myself or detach myself from being complicit in the problems of life here, and neither can those who are subject to its hardship. today a lecturer on ghanaian politics explained that violations of human rights by politicians are more important to the elite in the country than they are to the people against whom these atrocities have been committed. the commonfolk here idolize and mythologize john rawlings who committed unforgivable offenses during his 20 years in power. these truths are difficult to swallow and give me much to think about, but i cannot participate in discussion on the issues as i feel the discussion superfluous. i am lucky to have you for a mother, and to be able to explain this to you in writing.
every day i experience three things at different points: at some point i feel on the brink of tears -- not from homesickness, that comes in different ways, but in the privacy of my thoughts. at least once a day i can feel a sob welling, but it doesn't come and i am glad. the second recurring feeling is the overwhelming length of my stay. my homesickness occurs during this moment of the day when the amount of time that i have been here is put into perspective by how much time i have left. however, at some points i feel like i have been here for a month and other times i feel like ive been here for an hour. so there is some balance. the third recurring experience is a huge belly laugh. i haven't spent one day without laughing hard and thick. whether it's a joke made by a friend, or witnessing an event that i find ridiculous, laughter here is common and infectious.
speaking of infectious, i made my first and hopefully only trip to the hospital for the least serious problem that i could have possibly needed medical attention for. my heat rash was getting worse everyday and though it did not itch at all, i got sick of worrying about it and got a couple scrips to help me kick the shit. within two days it was gone and thus, i trust the ghanaian hospitals to a great extent. you will be shocked when i describe the atmosphere of the hospital in person as its professionalism pails in comparison to the west, but its drugs are fucking effective.
anyway, i love you and miss you and i'm having a great experience. i think i'll copy and paste most of this email on my blog so i can minimize time and writing efforts. i will note ythat it is addressed to you. write me back or call me soon, looking forward to hearing from you.
love,
uncle jones
The following entry is an email i sent my mother. I think I'll do it this way during my time here because I often feel most comfortable talking and writing to her about my thoughts, experiences, ideas. I invite anyone to be party to our correspondences on this blog, both to minimize my time writing and to keep a log of my time in Africa.
As a quick anecdote before the email, my name, Jules, is difficult to say here as it comes through the back of the throat. The languages here come from the back of the tongue but not as far back as our more gutteral throat sounds. Therefore, my name has become Jones for the time being. My homestay father coined it (he calls my Canadian roommate name Erin, Irene) and the other students and teachers on my program have taken it up with much humor adding Mr. Jones, or the local familiar title Uncle Jones, and even jokingly the respectful Papa Jones. My American friends have taken it to other extremes: Sgt. Jones, Lt. Jones, Jonesy, etc. I have come to like it and I now introduce myself as Jones, or Kwame Jones -- Kwame means born on Saturday and most ghanaians go by their day of birth name: kofi-friday, akosua-sunday, etc.
Here is my email with Fran:
mama,
great to see that photo of you enjoying yourself! sorry the phone situation is so irritating, but the internet cafe is not so hard to deal with.
this past week i've spent two nights on the beach in accra, one for bob marleys birthday celebration which is a major event over here. in fact, the ghanaian rastas believe themselves to be the original. on the way to the beach i pass the newly built presidential palace which has cost an estimated 400 million dollars to build, mostly funded by the Indian government as the global interest in ghana's previously unknown oil resources grows. apparently there is still 20 or so million to spent on the inside. try to google image it -- it's an outstanding, ridiculous gargantuan asian-looking behemoth on the side of the motorway.
in case you didn't know, kofi annan is the chancellor of the university where i've been attending -- i just found out today! i have spent a good amount of time on my studies as well; i'm finished with two of the 3 books required for our first paper due on monday. maya angelou - gods children need traveling... and beautiful ones are not yet born which i came to love by the second half of the novel.
i have two ghanaian friends who i met at marley's b-day party; kwame and jahfar. kwame is a very down to earth, great guy who likes to talk about culture and music and smoke "wee" as it is called here, and jahfar is a straight up rasta who calls me everyday just to say one love and see you at cocobeach.
some of my fellow students are only just being hit viscerally by the surounding abject poverty and the difficulty of the lives of the people around us. while some choose to talk about it, i found the conversation irrelevant and unproductive. i have come to feel, in the presence of poverty, that my thoughts are best kept in my mind. there is no way for me to separate myself or detach myself from being complicit in the problems of life here, and neither can those who are subject to its hardship. today a lecturer on ghanaian politics explained that violations of human rights by politicians are more important to the elite in the country than they are to the people against whom these atrocities have been committed. the commonfolk here idolize and mythologize john rawlings who committed unforgivable offenses during his 20 years in power. these truths are difficult to swallow and give me much to think about, but i cannot participate in discussion on the issues as i feel the discussion superfluous. i am lucky to have you for a mother, and to be able to explain this to you in writing.
every day i experience three things at different points: at some point i feel on the brink of tears -- not from homesickness, that comes in different ways, but in the privacy of my thoughts. at least once a day i can feel a sob welling, but it doesn't come and i am glad. the second recurring feeling is the overwhelming length of my stay. my homesickness occurs during this moment of the day when the amount of time that i have been here is put into perspective by how much time i have left. however, at some points i feel like i have been here for a month and other times i feel like ive been here for an hour. so there is some balance. the third recurring experience is a huge belly laugh. i haven't spent one day without laughing hard and thick. whether it's a joke made by a friend, or witnessing an event that i find ridiculous, laughter here is common and infectious.
speaking of infectious, i made my first and hopefully only trip to the hospital for the least serious problem that i could have possibly needed medical attention for. my heat rash was getting worse everyday and though it did not itch at all, i got sick of worrying about it and got a couple scrips to help me kick the shit. within two days it was gone and thus, i trust the ghanaian hospitals to a great extent. you will be shocked when i describe the atmosphere of the hospital in person as its professionalism pails in comparison to the west, but its drugs are fucking effective.
anyway, i love you and miss you and i'm having a great experience. i think i'll copy and paste most of this email on my blog so i can minimize time and writing efforts. i will note ythat it is addressed to you. write me back or call me soon, looking forward to hearing from you.
love,
uncle jones
2008-07-24
WEEKS THREE AND FOUR
At the Liberty Science Center, I pointed out a man wearing a yamulke to the group of 4 students that I chaperoned that day. Keyanna was in my group and she asked me the day before if I would bring my yamulke to class again and I let her wear one of them during the field trip. When I pointed out the boy and his father with small discs bobby-pinned to their head, Ibn called out, "Are you from Jewish?!"
__________________________________________________
On Monday of the third week, Marla decided to have a pizza party for our homeroom class. We thought that we could use this to improve their behavior, by giving them points when they did something wrong, and the people with most points would not be allowed pizza. Marla, Eric and I have started spending more time with Gordon, one of the other teachers, and Gordon walked into the room as we were planning the pizza party.
"How're you doin,' Gordon?" Marla asked.
"Fat, Black and Blessed!" This is his usual answer and a fitting motto.
Gordon suggested that rather than punishing them when they do something wrong, we should reward those who do the right thing. After which, we explained to the kids that they would all have to reach 20 points or they would not be given any pizza. The change in theiry behavior was clear all week long. The idea made an impression on me, and I felt like I had learned something valuable about consequences.
On Friday of Week Two, I sat down with Omar, one of my problem students, while we were at Kids Camp and had a long conversation about why he acts so indignant whenever he doesn't get his way. He revealed that a teacher had slammed him on a desk when he was in 2nd Grade and he has had trouble with authority figures since that experience. At the time he was angry with Eric -- not a common occurrence as Omar clearly idolizes Eric and Eric has told me that he sees himself in Omar. During our conversation my brain was focused primarily on the bits of information I learned from orientation and my experience working at summer Camp. Get on his eye level - Let him speak - respect his opinion and his parents, etc. When we designated the Pizza Party Point system, Omar's behavior was completely different. The entire third week, Omar was one of our best students, and it reflected that fact that he had some of the highest test scores in class.
Discipline has been the hardest part of the job for me. This is not because I have trouble with how disciplining the kids feels, but rather because I feel like my consequences are either not enough, or too much. I felt like I was in an awkward position between Ms. Marla and Eric. Ms. Marla is the tough critic, the no-bullshit authority figure while Eric does their work with them, competes against them in class activities, etc. Since Eric and I are both Teacher's Assistants, I felt like I was ending up the bad cop to his good. I'm very fond of most of the kids and I know that they like me too, so I was reluctant to take on that role.
On Thursday of the third week, almost every student asked me if the pool at Kids Camp would be open. The pool was closed the first two weeks of school -- Week One, the water had not been cleaned -- Week Two, there was no water in the pool. I had heard different rumors all week that revealed the pool to be up and running. When we arrived at camp on Friday, the first piece of news from one of the camp directors was that the pool would once again be closed. She told us that the filter was broken. I learned 10 minutes later that there were no certified lifeguards among the staff. All of the kids hate going to Kids Camp because there are so many bugs, and generally they do the same thing every time they go. If I was a kid, I would probably hate it too, but the pool would be the redeeming feature of the whole situation. If I had known that the pool would be closed for the third week in a row, I would have told their parents to keep them at home. Eric and I gave up and left our group with the Camp counselor that we're encouraged to move around with all day.
We enjoyed a couched lounge in the main house with most of the other teacher's assistants. We found ourselves so bored that we were doing a capella sing-a-longs of "In the Jungle." I had become friendly with Tasha, one of the other teachers assistants, during the week. On Friday, when Eric told her that I smoked weed she was completely shocked. At the end of the day Eric, Tasha, Andy (another TA) and I made a plan to hang out in my backyard that evening. Everyone came over around 8 -- Andy brought a friend, I brought a friend and Tasha brought a friend. We had a great evening and decided to make sure to do it again as soon as we all could. The funniest story of the evening came from Tasha's classroom where the teacher, Ms. Carmen, is Puerto Rican, and the other TA, Ms. Anelle, is Dominican. Ms. Anelle thought it would be nice to do a short lesson on cultural diversity and used the idea that 'we're all immigrants' as a moral of the story. Meanwhile, Ms. Avonne, the principal who is very open about both sexuality and being a Black Nationalist, entered the room to observe the class. One of the students raised his hand and exclaims, "Ms. Avonne! We're all immigrants!"
"We are not immigrants! We never got the chance! We were kidnapped and brought here to work like dogs for no money! Our ancestors were slaughtered and..."
The kids erupted with laughter and noise and shouted back things like, "what is you talking about!? I was born in Newark!" or "No one in my family got kidnapped!" or "You crazy, Ms. Avonne!"
____________________________________________________________
On Monday of Week Four, we were scheduled to go on a field trip to the Weeqauhic Park sprinklers so the kids could do water fun stuff -- due the lack of a pool. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves, and it was a nice break from school. That was until our school bus was an hour late to retrieve our group. We finally got back 15 minutes after my time to leave for the day. I had not forgotten that our first field trip to the NJ Explorer's Museum in East Orange was cut an hour short by the same scheduling nonsense between Kids Corporation and the bus company. On Tuesday, we were scheduled to visit the Newark museum, but when I arrived at school Marla told me that our group had been kicked off of that trip due to a scheduling error. In a minor way, this was the straw that the camel's back. I turned on my Jewish complaining function and called the Kids Corp offices.
"I am waiting for you to protest, Jules!" Marla cackled, "You are a white, Jewish man! You can complain. If I complain they're gonna think, 'this bitch is lucky she got a damn job.'" Within a few hours of my phone call, we received news that we were accompanying another group to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, after lunch. During After-school, I was told that my class would be going to the African Art Museum in Tenafly. The same day my phone call paid off, the city of Newark asked me to pay up. When we got back from the Liberty Science Center, I found a $54 ticket on my car.
On Wednesday of this week, I came within inches of a brutal car accident on my way to work. As I was driving down Bloomfield Avenue, by the entrance to the Garden State Parkway, a woman with her children in the car pulled out of a gas station across the street and just barely missed hitting the section of my car just in front of the driver's seat. I got to school with no energy at all. By the end of the day, I felt like I was going through my worst week. Tuesday and Wednesday were extremely difficult in terms of my being awkwardly in between the styles of Marla and Eric. I spoke with Marla and she was very encouraging, but I woke up Thursday morning ready to take the day off. I was attempting to go back to sleep when I remembered that we were going to be doing a final draft of a paragraph they've been revising this week. I remembered, from the last time we did this, that they're final draft had to be so perfect that anything less than perfect would be crumpled up and thrown away immediately upon reading it. I felt like I had been sonned by the classroom, and this lesson plan felt like an opportunity to reverse that for myself. I tried to go back to sleep, until I had an idea about how to better attack the laziness factor and the problem with incomplete sentences. When I finally got out of bed, I got a text message from Marla saying that she would not be in today, and all of a sudden I had no choice in the matter, but I felt somehow ready and rejuvenated.
When I got to school I went straight to the classroom to give them a long assignment to do immediately when they entered the room. As soon as they were finished they had to begin their attempts at a final draft. Ibn finished on the first try, and used his time afterwards to write a story with the girl who finished hers next. I was proud to watch them enjoy writing so much, and he had actually written two full paragraphs while everyone else wrote as little as possible. The rest of the kids were seriously thrown by my attitude first thing in the morning. Normally I had been fairly laid back, but I was very clear about how much bullshit I was planning to allow. Omar was seriously upset with this, and he made that clear all day long. Our conversation from the second week had flown out the window and I had to find new ways to approach how oppositional he was being. Eric has a special talent as a leader and as a role model for these kids. They all look up to him and idolize him in a way that they will never feel with me for several reasons. I had to give up that idea and I had to commit to making sure that they learned something from me. I explained to Eric as soon as he got in this morning that I was taking a slightly different approach, and would need him to back me up. Often the trouble is that Omar will act up in front of me, and take solace with Eric who may or may not shower him with praise, or vice versa. After all, he is a smart kid. Omar and Nosa, two of the 4 boys in class, and the closest friends, can't help but compete for Eric's approval during his rehearsals of the step dance he has been working on with them for the last few weeks. Today I had to use that privilege against them, and was forced to watch them both carefully after they each separately caused trouble on the playground. As I watched Omar and Nosa threaten another boy, I called out, "first person to touch Desmond will be kicked out of the step dance!"
"Mind your business!" Omar squealed back.
__________________________________________________
On Monday of the third week, Marla decided to have a pizza party for our homeroom class. We thought that we could use this to improve their behavior, by giving them points when they did something wrong, and the people with most points would not be allowed pizza. Marla, Eric and I have started spending more time with Gordon, one of the other teachers, and Gordon walked into the room as we were planning the pizza party.
"How're you doin,' Gordon?" Marla asked.
"Fat, Black and Blessed!" This is his usual answer and a fitting motto.
Gordon suggested that rather than punishing them when they do something wrong, we should reward those who do the right thing. After which, we explained to the kids that they would all have to reach 20 points or they would not be given any pizza. The change in theiry behavior was clear all week long. The idea made an impression on me, and I felt like I had learned something valuable about consequences.
On Friday of Week Two, I sat down with Omar, one of my problem students, while we were at Kids Camp and had a long conversation about why he acts so indignant whenever he doesn't get his way. He revealed that a teacher had slammed him on a desk when he was in 2nd Grade and he has had trouble with authority figures since that experience. At the time he was angry with Eric -- not a common occurrence as Omar clearly idolizes Eric and Eric has told me that he sees himself in Omar. During our conversation my brain was focused primarily on the bits of information I learned from orientation and my experience working at summer Camp. Get on his eye level - Let him speak - respect his opinion and his parents, etc. When we designated the Pizza Party Point system, Omar's behavior was completely different. The entire third week, Omar was one of our best students, and it reflected that fact that he had some of the highest test scores in class.
Discipline has been the hardest part of the job for me. This is not because I have trouble with how disciplining the kids feels, but rather because I feel like my consequences are either not enough, or too much. I felt like I was in an awkward position between Ms. Marla and Eric. Ms. Marla is the tough critic, the no-bullshit authority figure while Eric does their work with them, competes against them in class activities, etc. Since Eric and I are both Teacher's Assistants, I felt like I was ending up the bad cop to his good. I'm very fond of most of the kids and I know that they like me too, so I was reluctant to take on that role.
On Thursday of the third week, almost every student asked me if the pool at Kids Camp would be open. The pool was closed the first two weeks of school -- Week One, the water had not been cleaned -- Week Two, there was no water in the pool. I had heard different rumors all week that revealed the pool to be up and running. When we arrived at camp on Friday, the first piece of news from one of the camp directors was that the pool would once again be closed. She told us that the filter was broken. I learned 10 minutes later that there were no certified lifeguards among the staff. All of the kids hate going to Kids Camp because there are so many bugs, and generally they do the same thing every time they go. If I was a kid, I would probably hate it too, but the pool would be the redeeming feature of the whole situation. If I had known that the pool would be closed for the third week in a row, I would have told their parents to keep them at home. Eric and I gave up and left our group with the Camp counselor that we're encouraged to move around with all day.
We enjoyed a couched lounge in the main house with most of the other teacher's assistants. We found ourselves so bored that we were doing a capella sing-a-longs of "In the Jungle." I had become friendly with Tasha, one of the other teachers assistants, during the week. On Friday, when Eric told her that I smoked weed she was completely shocked. At the end of the day Eric, Tasha, Andy (another TA) and I made a plan to hang out in my backyard that evening. Everyone came over around 8 -- Andy brought a friend, I brought a friend and Tasha brought a friend. We had a great evening and decided to make sure to do it again as soon as we all could. The funniest story of the evening came from Tasha's classroom where the teacher, Ms. Carmen, is Puerto Rican, and the other TA, Ms. Anelle, is Dominican. Ms. Anelle thought it would be nice to do a short lesson on cultural diversity and used the idea that 'we're all immigrants' as a moral of the story. Meanwhile, Ms. Avonne, the principal who is very open about both sexuality and being a Black Nationalist, entered the room to observe the class. One of the students raised his hand and exclaims, "Ms. Avonne! We're all immigrants!"
"We are not immigrants! We never got the chance! We were kidnapped and brought here to work like dogs for no money! Our ancestors were slaughtered and..."
The kids erupted with laughter and noise and shouted back things like, "what is you talking about!? I was born in Newark!" or "No one in my family got kidnapped!" or "You crazy, Ms. Avonne!"
____________________________________________________________
On Monday of Week Four, we were scheduled to go on a field trip to the Weeqauhic Park sprinklers so the kids could do water fun stuff -- due the lack of a pool. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves, and it was a nice break from school. That was until our school bus was an hour late to retrieve our group. We finally got back 15 minutes after my time to leave for the day. I had not forgotten that our first field trip to the NJ Explorer's Museum in East Orange was cut an hour short by the same scheduling nonsense between Kids Corporation and the bus company. On Tuesday, we were scheduled to visit the Newark museum, but when I arrived at school Marla told me that our group had been kicked off of that trip due to a scheduling error. In a minor way, this was the straw that the camel's back. I turned on my Jewish complaining function and called the Kids Corp offices.
"I am waiting for you to protest, Jules!" Marla cackled, "You are a white, Jewish man! You can complain. If I complain they're gonna think, 'this bitch is lucky she got a damn job.'" Within a few hours of my phone call, we received news that we were accompanying another group to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, after lunch. During After-school, I was told that my class would be going to the African Art Museum in Tenafly. The same day my phone call paid off, the city of Newark asked me to pay up. When we got back from the Liberty Science Center, I found a $54 ticket on my car.
On Wednesday of this week, I came within inches of a brutal car accident on my way to work. As I was driving down Bloomfield Avenue, by the entrance to the Garden State Parkway, a woman with her children in the car pulled out of a gas station across the street and just barely missed hitting the section of my car just in front of the driver's seat. I got to school with no energy at all. By the end of the day, I felt like I was going through my worst week. Tuesday and Wednesday were extremely difficult in terms of my being awkwardly in between the styles of Marla and Eric. I spoke with Marla and she was very encouraging, but I woke up Thursday morning ready to take the day off. I was attempting to go back to sleep when I remembered that we were going to be doing a final draft of a paragraph they've been revising this week. I remembered, from the last time we did this, that they're final draft had to be so perfect that anything less than perfect would be crumpled up and thrown away immediately upon reading it. I felt like I had been sonned by the classroom, and this lesson plan felt like an opportunity to reverse that for myself. I tried to go back to sleep, until I had an idea about how to better attack the laziness factor and the problem with incomplete sentences. When I finally got out of bed, I got a text message from Marla saying that she would not be in today, and all of a sudden I had no choice in the matter, but I felt somehow ready and rejuvenated.
When I got to school I went straight to the classroom to give them a long assignment to do immediately when they entered the room. As soon as they were finished they had to begin their attempts at a final draft. Ibn finished on the first try, and used his time afterwards to write a story with the girl who finished hers next. I was proud to watch them enjoy writing so much, and he had actually written two full paragraphs while everyone else wrote as little as possible. The rest of the kids were seriously thrown by my attitude first thing in the morning. Normally I had been fairly laid back, but I was very clear about how much bullshit I was planning to allow. Omar was seriously upset with this, and he made that clear all day long. Our conversation from the second week had flown out the window and I had to find new ways to approach how oppositional he was being. Eric has a special talent as a leader and as a role model for these kids. They all look up to him and idolize him in a way that they will never feel with me for several reasons. I had to give up that idea and I had to commit to making sure that they learned something from me. I explained to Eric as soon as he got in this morning that I was taking a slightly different approach, and would need him to back me up. Often the trouble is that Omar will act up in front of me, and take solace with Eric who may or may not shower him with praise, or vice versa. After all, he is a smart kid. Omar and Nosa, two of the 4 boys in class, and the closest friends, can't help but compete for Eric's approval during his rehearsals of the step dance he has been working on with them for the last few weeks. Today I had to use that privilege against them, and was forced to watch them both carefully after they each separately caused trouble on the playground. As I watched Omar and Nosa threaten another boy, I called out, "first person to touch Desmond will be kicked out of the step dance!"
"Mind your business!" Omar squealed back.
2008-07-14
WEEK TWO
"Mistah Jules!" Thandie waved me over to her desk with a toothy smile.
"Does ya' dookie come out white?!"
For the first week, we assumed that we could keep all of the classes on the same level, but when we tried to teach similes to the 3rd and 4th graders, we realized that it would not be a good idea. The 5th, 6th and 7th graders will continue to do poetic devices and persuasive writing, while the 3rd and 4th graders are going to learn basic grammar skills. This week we tried to teach sentence fragments and proper nouns to the younger classes, and even these lessons seemed to stump some of the kids.
My birthday was on Wednesday and it was the first day that I felt like a teacher. Up until Wednesday, the extent of my job was to augment the lessons while Marla led the class, and to walk around the classroom reading over shoulders. On Wednesday, Marla started the lesson on sentence fragments and I could sense that she was becoming more and more irritated by the lack of understanding in the room. But after 10 minutes of her building aggravation I took over the class and finished the lesson on fragments with our homeroom, and the other class of 4th graders. Marla is used to teaching kids a bit older, and her mood changed the moment the 5th graders entered the room.
The 5th graders didn't have much trouble with similes and metaphors, but were generally indifferent to the lesson. A few of the students would put on fake British accents as they read similes like, "Your eyes are as beautiful as a butterfly." In the class of 6th and 7th graders, we experienced a surprising reaction. Eric and I ran the lesson on metaphors with this class, and found that a few of the boys were more than excited to be going over the concept again. Eric and I both saw this as an opportunity to use lines from popular hip-hop songs to explain the different types of metaphors and similes.
Reggie is in 7th grade and he usually answers every question we ask the class without raising his hand. He almost always answers correctly but no one gets a chance to answer questions when he's in the room. When we asked for an example of a simile on Monday, he shouted, "my bike is as fast as, uh," he paused, "as a runaway slave!" I laughed and replied, "I was expecting a cheetah, or a Lamborghini." Every day he asks when we're going to do a lesson on onomatopoeia. On Thursday, Eric and I brought in several examples of similes and metaphors from the new Lil Wayne album and the hardest part of the lesson was calming Reggie down. As soon as we mentioned the album's name, he started telling the class which songs he knew all the words to. Then, he started reciting verses until Marla demanded quiet and told him that if he couldn't control himself we wouldn't do any more fun lessons. We gave that class an assignment to write an 8-line poem with at least one metaphor and one simile.
Later that day, I opened one of their journals randomly, and read the poem. There were too many spelling mistakes for a 7th grader and I couldn't stop myself correcting the spelling and writing a short note at the bottom of the page. I didn't think it was fair to do one, so I sat down and did the same thing to all of the other poems. This was another part of the day that made me feel like a real teacher. My hands were cramped, but I felt like I was having this private correspondence with the work in their journal, and when they came in the next day, it was the first thing anyone noticed. Dejan asked me if he could include the line, "Your butt is as big as an elephant," in his poem, and he was surprised at my amusement. The kids in this class are old enough to think that they're grown and they judge adults by whether they're cool or not. I come off as a complete square to them except for the few moments when I'm quoting Weezy or using slang. When we first started converting similes to metaphors, a handful of the kids didn't understand exactly what the difference was. I uttered, "that song is fire, son," and asked the class to explain to me how it was a metaphor and how to change it to a simile. Tymeer raised his hand and recited, "that song is as hot as fire, son."
"Does ya' dookie come out white?!"
For the first week, we assumed that we could keep all of the classes on the same level, but when we tried to teach similes to the 3rd and 4th graders, we realized that it would not be a good idea. The 5th, 6th and 7th graders will continue to do poetic devices and persuasive writing, while the 3rd and 4th graders are going to learn basic grammar skills. This week we tried to teach sentence fragments and proper nouns to the younger classes, and even these lessons seemed to stump some of the kids.
My birthday was on Wednesday and it was the first day that I felt like a teacher. Up until Wednesday, the extent of my job was to augment the lessons while Marla led the class, and to walk around the classroom reading over shoulders. On Wednesday, Marla started the lesson on sentence fragments and I could sense that she was becoming more and more irritated by the lack of understanding in the room. But after 10 minutes of her building aggravation I took over the class and finished the lesson on fragments with our homeroom, and the other class of 4th graders. Marla is used to teaching kids a bit older, and her mood changed the moment the 5th graders entered the room.
The 5th graders didn't have much trouble with similes and metaphors, but were generally indifferent to the lesson. A few of the students would put on fake British accents as they read similes like, "Your eyes are as beautiful as a butterfly." In the class of 6th and 7th graders, we experienced a surprising reaction. Eric and I ran the lesson on metaphors with this class, and found that a few of the boys were more than excited to be going over the concept again. Eric and I both saw this as an opportunity to use lines from popular hip-hop songs to explain the different types of metaphors and similes.
Reggie is in 7th grade and he usually answers every question we ask the class without raising his hand. He almost always answers correctly but no one gets a chance to answer questions when he's in the room. When we asked for an example of a simile on Monday, he shouted, "my bike is as fast as, uh," he paused, "as a runaway slave!" I laughed and replied, "I was expecting a cheetah, or a Lamborghini." Every day he asks when we're going to do a lesson on onomatopoeia. On Thursday, Eric and I brought in several examples of similes and metaphors from the new Lil Wayne album and the hardest part of the lesson was calming Reggie down. As soon as we mentioned the album's name, he started telling the class which songs he knew all the words to. Then, he started reciting verses until Marla demanded quiet and told him that if he couldn't control himself we wouldn't do any more fun lessons. We gave that class an assignment to write an 8-line poem with at least one metaphor and one simile.
Later that day, I opened one of their journals randomly, and read the poem. There were too many spelling mistakes for a 7th grader and I couldn't stop myself correcting the spelling and writing a short note at the bottom of the page. I didn't think it was fair to do one, so I sat down and did the same thing to all of the other poems. This was another part of the day that made me feel like a real teacher. My hands were cramped, but I felt like I was having this private correspondence with the work in their journal, and when they came in the next day, it was the first thing anyone noticed. Dejan asked me if he could include the line, "Your butt is as big as an elephant," in his poem, and he was surprised at my amusement. The kids in this class are old enough to think that they're grown and they judge adults by whether they're cool or not. I come off as a complete square to them except for the few moments when I'm quoting Weezy or using slang. When we first started converting similes to metaphors, a handful of the kids didn't understand exactly what the difference was. I uttered, "that song is fire, son," and asked the class to explain to me how it was a metaphor and how to change it to a simile. Tymeer raised his hand and recited, "that song is as hot as fire, son."
2008-07-06
WEEK ONE
"Do you have a culture?"
Keyanna asked me on Monday within an hour of being introduced to me. Ms. Marla, the ceritified teacher in my classroom, started the morning by warning the children against any nonsense or knucklehead behavior. She and I agreed that they should fear us first and like us later. She introduced herself as Ms. Marla, and her two assistants, Mr. Eric and Mr. Jules. Marla, Eric and I spent last week getting acquainted and we all quickly realized that we would get along when we spent our money for school supplies on more than 10 Blaxploitation films such as "Shaka Lulu" starring Sidney Poitier and "Black Brigade" with Richard Pryor and Billy Dee Williams. Marla and I bonded quickly over a mutual love of Yaphet Kotto, the former Lieutenant Al Giardello of NBC's Homicide. I told her that Kotto is actually a devout Jew, and not a convert either.
Eric is 18 and just finished his first year at Clark Atlanta. He grew up in the Ivy Hill neighborhood in Newark, a product of the Newark Public School system, though a complete deviation from the average achievement. He went to the arts high school in the city. Eric plays more than 5 instruments including piano and various woodwinds. He is an incredible step dancer and has a level of energy I haven't possessed since I was probably 12 years old. Whenever Eric isn't doing anything, he has a habit of breaking into a pop'n'lock dance he has memorized. Often Marla and I will watch him, waiting for his body to snap into the steps, whereupon we crack up pointing at his almost unconscious control of his hands and feet. When we were paired together, Eric was very open with me about his inability in the past to make friends with other boys, which he attributes to his lack of a father figure in his life. He told Marla and me that as a child, he and his sister used to look for their father in various phone books -- they only knew his name. The story came up when I explained that I was a child of an anonymous sperm donor, and though we can sympathize about a lack of father figures, our stories stand in stark contrast.
Marla grew up in Mobile, Alabama and moved to New Jersey 8 years ago. She has two daughters, whose father is from Trinidad. Marla is in the final stages of a long and painful divorce, her ex proved himself to be an extremely irresponsible father -- a deadbeat. Marla's boyfriend is from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and is Muslim. Marla explained on the first day that we met that her days of listening to hip-hop are over, and that she will not patronize artists who degrade women. Over the week she disclosed that despite her feelings on the subject, she still listens to hip-hop radio with her kids -- and as repulsive as she finds the Lil Wayne "Lollipop" single, she can't help but sing along during the "call me, so I can get it juicy fo' ya" breakdown. This aside, when it comes to her personal music choices, she prefers Jazz and African music. I was delighted to hear this as my love of African music is the most important factor in my decision to study abroad in Ghana this coming Spring. I brought in Fela Kuti, who she was hearing for the first time, when we were decorating our classroom last Friday and she brought in a compilation of Afro-Cuban music which I fell completely in love with. As the three of us danced, Marla would shout "mhmm! I need some Hennessey and Sprite 'bout now" while Eric was pop'n'locking and I was busting out my white-boy-chicken-dance moves.
On Monday morning we met the kids. Our homeroom class is made up of five 4th graders and seven 3rd graders. I am lucky to have a talent for remembering names, and I had memorized who everyone was fairly quickly. To be honest, the names of these children were the most memorable part of my first day. In my homeroom class there was Ibn, Dejane, Keyanna, Nosakhare (his parents are Nigerian), Xavia, and Myia, among others. These were my favorite names of the kids in my homeroom, but memorizing the names of the kids in my other classes was a bit more difficult. Besides the homeroom, we see three other classes of kids from 5th grade to 8th grade. In these other classes I have two different girls named (I will spell phonetically) Ni-Ky-Ah. One girl spells her name Nicaya, and the other (this is my favorite) Nakiaye. Some of the other names I haven't been able to forget are Imeena (pronounced Eye-Mean-Uh, she goes by Meena), Ah-Quell, Al-Fatin, Deja Vu (<- yes that is her real name), and Tyriq. Nakiaye has taken a bit of a shine to me and spent two of her lunch periods chatting with me about the BET Awards and The Wire. I assume she about 11 years old. When she found out that I was a huge fan of Lil Wayne she didn't believe me. She needed further proof and explanation. Her challenges degenerated into a long conversation about the BET Awards which we both watched live the week previous. Chris Brown and Ciara were the best dancers by far, Keisha Cole can't sing worth a dime and Lil Kim was the only thing that made her performance bearable, Rihanna had a beautiful dress and an amazing voice, T-Pain is completely out of his mind, and the surprise appearances of Ludacris and Nelly did nothing for either of us. We generally agreed that the best performances of the night were Al Green, who had the entire audience on their feet in ecstasy, and Alicia Keys who did an incredible performance of her new single, "Teenage Love Affair," after which she brought out girl groups from the 80's and 90's, SWV, En Vogue and the remaining two members of TLC who helped her close the performance with the iconic dance from the Waterfalls music video - the first music video I ever remember watching at my Grandparents house in Palm Beach County, Florida. My mom refused to get cable until I was about 10, and Grampa's porch was where I got my MTV education. Nakiaye found my stories funny and laughed when I joked on her name telling her that the spelling implies Na-ki-yi-yay. She told me I could start calling her Yippee na-ki-yi-yay. The Wire, which aired originally on HBO and focuses on the streets of inner-city Baltimore, has extremely provocative and complicated subject matter. You can imagine my surprise when I found out that this 11 year-old girl had seen every episode in syndication on BET. I learned that BET stretches the show to an hour and a half with commercials, and edits out the excessive use of the word "motherfucker" by almost every character on the show. The Wire is my favorite show of all time, I've seen all 5 seasons more than 3 times and have studied each scene as if I'm writing a goddamn dissertation on the thing. My mother, in fact, is co-editing a book of essays about the show which is tentatively titled 24-7: Believe. As Nakiaye and I went through all of our favorite characters I gained insight into how her mother, a resident of Newark -- a city not unlike Baltimore, would explain some of the more troubling situations the show exposed.
"You rememba when Chris stomped Michael's daddy?! He was like, BAM, BAM!" She pretends to punch and kick an imaginary person to death, "Michael got Chris to stomp him cuz he was touchin' on 'im, right Mistah Jules?"
"Yeah, Michael's step-daddy was touchin' on 'im," Marla answered. She is also a huge fan of the show, and in private she and I quote the more explicit lines from the HBO broadcasts like Clay Davis' memorable rant from season 5, "it ain't these federal bitches all up in my shit, it's muthafucka's from my own city!" Marla loves my impressions of the various characters, and when she and Nakiaye and I get to talking about the Omar and his untimely fall at the hands of Kenard, Marla insists I recite Omar's last words: "Packa Nyoopoat. Sof' Pack."
The most memorable moment of the first week, though, is Keyanna's question from the first day. "Do you have a culture?" If only she knew that the sole reason I have ended up in front of her class, correcting her spelling, is my own pursuit of what my culture is, and how my culture will or will not define the person I want to become. I answer Keyanna, "yes, my culture is Jewish culture, how about you?"
"Um! My mom is from America and my daddy's from Trinidad." Marla asks her in a Trinny accent if she can speak Trinny English and Keyanna answers in a thick accent and delivers a monologue as if she's straight off the island. She walks around the room as the other children laugh hysterically, hunched over, wagging her finger, impersonating her Trinny Grandmother. As the room settles down Keyanna and some of the other kids start asking me questions about being Jewish, a culture they are extremely unfamiliar with. I promise them that later in the week I'll come to class in my yamulke and will answer any questions they have. On Wednesday, I gave them that opportunity as I put yamulke on their "word wall," a bulletin board in class where were spell words that they misspell or ask the spelling of. Yamulke stands out among the other words which range from 'Kangaroo' or 'Dolphin,' to 'Amorous' or 'Intelligent.' Their first questions are about black suits, long beards, curly long sideburns, and a definition of the words Temple and Synagogue -- two words they seem to have never heard before. Finally, I explained that Jews pray in a different language which they were all eager to hear. I realized that I only have a few stock prayers in my repertoire and I give the prayer for the lighting of the candles on Hanukah, as to maximize the "ch" sound in Hebrew, which I knew they would find funny. I intentionally waited until the end of the day to open the floor to questions about Judaism, as I hope to be answering more questions on the subject throughout the summer. I hadn't expected that their interest in my culture would be anywhere close to my interest in theirs.
Keyanna asked me on Monday within an hour of being introduced to me. Ms. Marla, the ceritified teacher in my classroom, started the morning by warning the children against any nonsense or knucklehead behavior. She and I agreed that they should fear us first and like us later. She introduced herself as Ms. Marla, and her two assistants, Mr. Eric and Mr. Jules. Marla, Eric and I spent last week getting acquainted and we all quickly realized that we would get along when we spent our money for school supplies on more than 10 Blaxploitation films such as "Shaka Lulu" starring Sidney Poitier and "Black Brigade" with Richard Pryor and Billy Dee Williams. Marla and I bonded quickly over a mutual love of Yaphet Kotto, the former Lieutenant Al Giardello of NBC's Homicide. I told her that Kotto is actually a devout Jew, and not a convert either.
Eric is 18 and just finished his first year at Clark Atlanta. He grew up in the Ivy Hill neighborhood in Newark, a product of the Newark Public School system, though a complete deviation from the average achievement. He went to the arts high school in the city. Eric plays more than 5 instruments including piano and various woodwinds. He is an incredible step dancer and has a level of energy I haven't possessed since I was probably 12 years old. Whenever Eric isn't doing anything, he has a habit of breaking into a pop'n'lock dance he has memorized. Often Marla and I will watch him, waiting for his body to snap into the steps, whereupon we crack up pointing at his almost unconscious control of his hands and feet. When we were paired together, Eric was very open with me about his inability in the past to make friends with other boys, which he attributes to his lack of a father figure in his life. He told Marla and me that as a child, he and his sister used to look for their father in various phone books -- they only knew his name. The story came up when I explained that I was a child of an anonymous sperm donor, and though we can sympathize about a lack of father figures, our stories stand in stark contrast.
Marla grew up in Mobile, Alabama and moved to New Jersey 8 years ago. She has two daughters, whose father is from Trinidad. Marla is in the final stages of a long and painful divorce, her ex proved himself to be an extremely irresponsible father -- a deadbeat. Marla's boyfriend is from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and is Muslim. Marla explained on the first day that we met that her days of listening to hip-hop are over, and that she will not patronize artists who degrade women. Over the week she disclosed that despite her feelings on the subject, she still listens to hip-hop radio with her kids -- and as repulsive as she finds the Lil Wayne "Lollipop" single, she can't help but sing along during the "call me, so I can get it juicy fo' ya" breakdown. This aside, when it comes to her personal music choices, she prefers Jazz and African music. I was delighted to hear this as my love of African music is the most important factor in my decision to study abroad in Ghana this coming Spring. I brought in Fela Kuti, who she was hearing for the first time, when we were decorating our classroom last Friday and she brought in a compilation of Afro-Cuban music which I fell completely in love with. As the three of us danced, Marla would shout "mhmm! I need some Hennessey and Sprite 'bout now" while Eric was pop'n'locking and I was busting out my white-boy-chicken-dance moves.
On Monday morning we met the kids. Our homeroom class is made up of five 4th graders and seven 3rd graders. I am lucky to have a talent for remembering names, and I had memorized who everyone was fairly quickly. To be honest, the names of these children were the most memorable part of my first day. In my homeroom class there was Ibn, Dejane, Keyanna, Nosakhare (his parents are Nigerian), Xavia, and Myia, among others. These were my favorite names of the kids in my homeroom, but memorizing the names of the kids in my other classes was a bit more difficult. Besides the homeroom, we see three other classes of kids from 5th grade to 8th grade. In these other classes I have two different girls named (I will spell phonetically) Ni-Ky-Ah. One girl spells her name Nicaya, and the other (this is my favorite) Nakiaye. Some of the other names I haven't been able to forget are Imeena (pronounced Eye-Mean-Uh, she goes by Meena), Ah-Quell, Al-Fatin, Deja Vu (<- yes that is her real name), and Tyriq. Nakiaye has taken a bit of a shine to me and spent two of her lunch periods chatting with me about the BET Awards and The Wire. I assume she about 11 years old. When she found out that I was a huge fan of Lil Wayne she didn't believe me. She needed further proof and explanation. Her challenges degenerated into a long conversation about the BET Awards which we both watched live the week previous. Chris Brown and Ciara were the best dancers by far, Keisha Cole can't sing worth a dime and Lil Kim was the only thing that made her performance bearable, Rihanna had a beautiful dress and an amazing voice, T-Pain is completely out of his mind, and the surprise appearances of Ludacris and Nelly did nothing for either of us. We generally agreed that the best performances of the night were Al Green, who had the entire audience on their feet in ecstasy, and Alicia Keys who did an incredible performance of her new single, "Teenage Love Affair," after which she brought out girl groups from the 80's and 90's, SWV, En Vogue and the remaining two members of TLC who helped her close the performance with the iconic dance from the Waterfalls music video - the first music video I ever remember watching at my Grandparents house in Palm Beach County, Florida. My mom refused to get cable until I was about 10, and Grampa's porch was where I got my MTV education. Nakiaye found my stories funny and laughed when I joked on her name telling her that the spelling implies Na-ki-yi-yay. She told me I could start calling her Yippee na-ki-yi-yay. The Wire, which aired originally on HBO and focuses on the streets of inner-city Baltimore, has extremely provocative and complicated subject matter. You can imagine my surprise when I found out that this 11 year-old girl had seen every episode in syndication on BET. I learned that BET stretches the show to an hour and a half with commercials, and edits out the excessive use of the word "motherfucker" by almost every character on the show. The Wire is my favorite show of all time, I've seen all 5 seasons more than 3 times and have studied each scene as if I'm writing a goddamn dissertation on the thing. My mother, in fact, is co-editing a book of essays about the show which is tentatively titled 24-7: Believe. As Nakiaye and I went through all of our favorite characters I gained insight into how her mother, a resident of Newark -- a city not unlike Baltimore, would explain some of the more troubling situations the show exposed.
"You rememba when Chris stomped Michael's daddy?! He was like, BAM, BAM!" She pretends to punch and kick an imaginary person to death, "Michael got Chris to stomp him cuz he was touchin' on 'im, right Mistah Jules?"
"Yeah, Michael's step-daddy was touchin' on 'im," Marla answered. She is also a huge fan of the show, and in private she and I quote the more explicit lines from the HBO broadcasts like Clay Davis' memorable rant from season 5, "it ain't these federal bitches all up in my shit, it's muthafucka's from my own city!" Marla loves my impressions of the various characters, and when she and Nakiaye and I get to talking about the Omar and his untimely fall at the hands of Kenard, Marla insists I recite Omar's last words: "Packa Nyoopoat. Sof' Pack."
The most memorable moment of the first week, though, is Keyanna's question from the first day. "Do you have a culture?" If only she knew that the sole reason I have ended up in front of her class, correcting her spelling, is my own pursuit of what my culture is, and how my culture will or will not define the person I want to become. I answer Keyanna, "yes, my culture is Jewish culture, how about you?"
"Um! My mom is from America and my daddy's from Trinidad." Marla asks her in a Trinny accent if she can speak Trinny English and Keyanna answers in a thick accent and delivers a monologue as if she's straight off the island. She walks around the room as the other children laugh hysterically, hunched over, wagging her finger, impersonating her Trinny Grandmother. As the room settles down Keyanna and some of the other kids start asking me questions about being Jewish, a culture they are extremely unfamiliar with. I promise them that later in the week I'll come to class in my yamulke and will answer any questions they have. On Wednesday, I gave them that opportunity as I put yamulke on their "word wall," a bulletin board in class where were spell words that they misspell or ask the spelling of. Yamulke stands out among the other words which range from 'Kangaroo' or 'Dolphin,' to 'Amorous' or 'Intelligent.' Their first questions are about black suits, long beards, curly long sideburns, and a definition of the words Temple and Synagogue -- two words they seem to have never heard before. Finally, I explained that Jews pray in a different language which they were all eager to hear. I realized that I only have a few stock prayers in my repertoire and I give the prayer for the lighting of the candles on Hanukah, as to maximize the "ch" sound in Hebrew, which I knew they would find funny. I intentionally waited until the end of the day to open the floor to questions about Judaism, as I hope to be answering more questions on the subject throughout the summer. I hadn't expected that their interest in my culture would be anywhere close to my interest in theirs.
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