All About African Dance

I am all about african dance after my second week of African Repertory: Music & Dance class. After last week, I felt like I was going to keel over and had to stop at the academic center with friends for some water on our walk home. We ingested a bunch of dust from bending over and dancing around in a circle, the beats we played on this bell with a stick were too complicated to follow and on top of that, my hips hurt so badly from jutting them back and forth, trying desperately to imitate the teaching assistant in the middle. She walked around as we danced, randomly highlighting those students who seemed to really "get it." There was one white girl from our group who was called into the middle to show off her skills. The rest were African students. And so the first week ended quite sadly...I left feeling like a stereotypical white girl with no sense of rhythm and everybody knew it. 

I practiced the past week in our courtyard and even one night at a local club, where some Ghanaian guy taught me to salsa. Flash forward to today...The drummers did their thing, same as last week, and I felt a little more confident with the moves. I looked around at everyone else in the group. Some were straining to keep up with the pace of the circle and not looking so great. Those who cared the least were actually dancing the best. I kicked off my shoes and danced barefoot like some of the other students and I just decided not to give a sh*t. I threw my head back, poked my butt out and got down with my bad self. The teaching assistant pulled me into the inner circle.

Community Service Project

I received a message today about my community service project in Ghana. I will be volunteering at the Morning Star School. The school is about 3 minutes from where I go to class and has about 1300 students from kindergarten on to 9th grade. My job will be to assist the teachers in grading assignments, teaching English, Math, Science and Art, and helping out after school with clubs. It sounds like it is going to be a lot of fun and I'm really excited. I should start sometime next week. I'll be there roughly 10 hours a week so it should make for some good stories to blog about. There are two other girls from NYU volunteering at the same place with me but we haven't figured out if we will be there at the same time or not. Either way, I love kids so this should be a great learning opportunity and a whole lot of fun!

First week of classes & Obama Inauguration

My week began with Twi class. Both of my roommates are in this class with me so we're hoping we can practice together at the dorm. So far I'm really only able to greet people by saying good morning/afternoon/evening, but that is a good start, considering that greetings are a really big deal here. 

My next class was supposed to be African Women Speak, however the professor cancelled the first class because she had to go out of the country unexpectedly. More on that class next week. 

Tuesday I had Society, Culture and Modernization in Ghana. The professor is super nice and there are actually quite a few of us in that class. (Most of them are only 4 or 5 people!) For the first day, we learned about the different cultural groups that exist within the country as well as a few of the customs.

Wednesday was African Music and Dance...Let me just say this was the most fun AND the most physically difficult class I think I've ever taken. I was so sore after and hour and a half of dancing outdoors in the hot sun. So far, this instructor is my favorite. He is so passionate! At one point he was trying to emphasize the way that Ghanaians put energy into each and every movement they make. He said that "watching the women walk in the market is like...Its like eating ice cream." We all cracked up, but by the end of the semester I'm sure we'll be on the same page. He also told us he is going to make sure that by the final performance (in front of the whole school...eeek!) he will have taught us to "see the music and hear the dance."

Lastly was Special Topics in Non-Western Art. This was another really adorable and fun professor. He also seemed very invested in the class. Making connections between love and art, he went around the room and asked us all if we had ever been in love! We giggled a little bit...Teachers in the states are hardly ever this forward. I love their approach, though. They just want us to get into it and you know, I think its working!

Tuesday night we had another very important event - The presidential inauguration!! Some of the group went to the W.E.B. Dubois Center to watch it and listen to live music afterwards. Others went to a Gala Event. I decided to watch Obama be sworn on television at the Academic Center with the Ghanaian security guards and our RA. It was a very moving and emotional experience anyway, considering that I have been an Obama supporter since the beginning. But even more so because he is like a god to the locals here. The news station that broadcast the event had a ticker moving across the bottom of the screen with words that people from all over the country had sent in. It said things like "Good luck Obama, we love you" and "May God watch over Prez Obama and his family." Leaving the center, there were some students wearing Obama paraphernalia. Locals were chanting "OBAMA" and congratulating us on his victory. We were high-fiving total strangers and celebrating in the street. It was quite the sight. I think I'm glad I was here in Africa for this event rather than in New York, actually. 

That's about it for this week. I'm still waiting to hear about my volunteer placement. Until next week-Yebeshia! 

Final Class Schedule!

Here are the classes I'm taking in Ghana:

African Women Speak (Lit. Class)

Beginner's Twi (Language Class)

Society, Culture & Modernization in Ghana (Anthropology Class)

African Repertory: Music & Dance (We learn traditional dancing and drumming, both theory and practice!)

Special Topics in Non-Western Art

And that is all! I only have class from Monday to Wednesday so the rest is free for volunteering and side trips. I will find out about my volunteer placement soon. 

PICTURES!!

Very cool peacock we saw at Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum.

One of my roommates, Katja, eating delicious mango!

Ghanaian children posed for us outside the market.

My housing!

The beach in Jamestown.

First Week In Ghana!

Akwaaba to my new blog!!!

Goodness, where do I begin? Getting here to Accra, Ghana was seriously a fiasco. After having my initial flight from SeaTac to JFK cancelled, I was already getting a lesson in how to be flexible and go with the flow. That's really big here in Ghana...When I finally got to New York for my connecting flight, it was delayed 4 hours. Fantastic. So I was feeling really depressed about the whole thing and no one around me was speaking English. They were mostly calling their friends and family back in Africa to let them know about the flight changes. I was near complete breakdown from lack of sleep and just generally being concerned that my bags would be lost on top of all this. Then the Ghanaian man next to me asked if I would hold his son for him while he changed his other son's diaper. He handed over this little baby, maybe 18 months or so. I was shocked. I mean, nowhere in the U.S. would you find an American so trusting of a total stranger with their kid! Even the baby looked at me like he knew me already; he was completely comfortable in my arms and didn't cry or fuss. This just goes to show you how community is valued, even from a young age. Ghanaians are all so accommodating and kind to one another and to us foreigners. Everyone is your brother or sister or uncle or auntie. That's just how it is, they share everything. I wish things worked like that in the U.S. because everyone is just in a generally good mood here as a result.

Not much to say about the flight, I passed out and woke up...in AFRICA. The heat and humidity hit me right away as I stepped off the airplane. It was like being in a sauna, but worse. Since then I've adjusted a bit to the temperature but its certainly no Seattle weather, or even New York summer weather, for that matter. Sammy was the driver who took me from the airport to my new home in Accra. The area where we live is called Labone (pronounced with an "e" sound at the end). From there, I went directly to the academic center to join the rest of the NYU in Ghana group, who had arrived the day before and already begun orientation. All week we received orientation from about 8 in the morning to 8 or 9 at night. It was busy and tiring, but it forced us to adjust to the time change. In short, we learned some Twi (pronounced "Chwee," it is the local language), cultural and social customs (like not using your left hand and how to wave down a taxi), visited some prominent sites (such as the burial place of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president) as well as some local markets, shops and restaurants. On Thursday we visited the U.S. Embassy in Ghana and were able to meet the Ambassador and his staff. I was even asked by the associate director (Christa) of the NYU program if I would give a speech of thanks on behalf of all the students in front of the microphone! Ok, not such a big deal (there are only 43 students in our group), but still pretty cool.

Registering for classes has been an interesting journey...things are much different here than in the states. Instead of doing everything electronically and through the internet or email, registration is done by paper in the offices of the university. As a result, things can take a couple of days or more to get straightened out. (I won't have my schedule finalized until February 2nd, but when I do I will be sure to post it on here.) Thursday night a bunch of us went to a club in a nearby town called Osu. It is a well-known venue where locals and foreigners come together for live music and dancing. It was unlike anything I have experienced in the U.S. They charged us a cover of 1 Ghana cedi and 50 pesewa...That's about a dollar and twenty cents (for my New York friends, you can appreciate how small that charge is compared to the $20 cover in most clubs in Manhattan)! The men were very forward with us gals, asking some of us to marry them, take them to America or make them our partner. Still, it was a blast and the music was fantastic. By the end of the night we were all so sweaty and gross from dancing outdoors in 80-degree weather. None of us really cared though.

We have been eating the most amazing food! Some people have gotten sick from it, just because there are a lot of spices in everything, but luckily I haven't had a problem with it yet. Fried plantains and rice seem to balance out the chicken, lamb, goat, beef and spicy vegetables we've been devouring. There are names for all these foods but I haven't memorized them yet. And the fruit...oh the fruit. It tastes like fruit was always supposed to taste. Not artificially sweetened and dried out like it is in America. Wow, I could spend a whole blog entry on the fruit and juice. Altogether, this week was seriously exhausting but seriously fun. Stay tuned... I will try my best to keep this up as a weekly thing. Until next time, take care!!