This last weekend, the whole group got to go on a trip to Kumasi, the most populated city in Ghana. After a long night at the club the night before, we woke up at 5:30 a.m., inhaled breakfast, and hopped aboard our Obruni bus 6 hours to Kumasi. Because we were all very “tired” from the night before, most everyone slept the whole bus ride, so it only felt as if the drive took us 2 hours. We got out, checked into our rooms and our iPhones (thank you wifi!) then quickly got back on the bus to go to Kumasi Central Market.
The market in Kumasi is one of the biggest in all of Ghana. One second we were on the street and the next we were walking through a labyrinth of people, food, smells, and every type of good imaginable. In all the chaos, I was more focused on my own two feet and not losing the person in front of me than I was on everything around me but I did notice that I was surrounded by walls of STUFF. Shoes, gold bracelets, knives, hair clips, bras, fabric, toiletries, and all kinds of food. We walked through rows and rows of people selling unidentifiable meat, vegetables and fruit of all colors, shapes, and sizes, and fish. So. Many. Fish. For those of you that don’t know, I am completely and utterly grossed out and afraid of fish. In Ghana, they serve fish with the heads and tails and eyeballs all attached, so needless to say I’ve been only eating chicken. At the market, people were scaling fish, gutting fish, frying fish, holding fish, serving fish, eating fish, carrying trays of fish on their heads as they skimmed past us in the narrow walk way. I held it together pretty well until a woman with a bowl of live chickens on her head removed it and held it towards me. I let out a little yelp and scurried ahead. You may laugh, but it was all a little overwhelming! And then there were the smells. Every few feet I would get a whiff of body odor, some sort of raw meat, or waste. Just when I thought I had seen and smelled enough, the people of the market started to surprise us.
My group and I have learned that the more impoverished an area is, the angrier the people will be if you attempt to take their picture without asking. While it can be tempting as outsiders to feel the need to take a photograph of anything that is different, it can come off as offensive and intrusive. This same sentiment was shown towards me when a man in the market walked straight up to me and put his camera phone two inches away from my face and started taking my picture. I was confused as to why he was taking my picture. My first thought was that this is typical for some Ghanaians to ask for your picture because they are friendly or because we are obruni and look different than what they are used to seeing, but then I couldn’t help but wonder if he was doing it as a sort of lesson, as if he was saying, “Hey this is what it feels like to get a camera in your face for being different.” I may never know the real reason, but as he walked away, that feeling of guilt swept over me. While I had not brought my large camera with me to the market, I silently became much more aware of when I would use it and when I would not.
While we were waiting for the whole group to finish shopping for fabric, two children started shouting “bruni, bruni, bruni” (short for Obruni, or white visitor) at us. A woman sitting near them getting her hair braided told our guide Senna in Twi that the kids were shouting “Obruni” in order to get sweets from us. We apologized for having none and Enya started talking to the woman in Twi. The woman was pleasantly surprised to hear some of us speaking (very limited) phrases in Twi, but she responded warmly and we took pictures and joked around with her and played with the kids until the rest of our group returned. It was just another example of how connecting with Ghanaians by using Twi can make a huge difference with how people here perceive you. I’ve noticed that when I use a greeting in Twi with cab drivers, they are much nicer to me and give me a fair price. After making one small effort to connect and participate in the culture rather than just observe it, people are much more receptive and gracious. While I’m VERY rusty with my Twi, my coworkers at Joy FM LOVE to teach me new phrases and test me on my Twi, so maybe through them I’ll be able to connect even better and be seen a little less as an ignorant American.
The rest of our time in Kumasi we spent our time participating, rather than just observing. We went to a factory where people weave Kente cloth, a traditionally designed cloth that is hand woven and designs have significant meaning. The workers there gave us each lessons on how to weave, which is much harder than it looks. We then went to Adinkra Village where they make Adinkra cloth, which is similar to Kente cloth but is stamped with Ashanti symbols that all have a greater meaning. We not only learned how to make Adinkra cloth, but were lucky enough to pick out our own cloth and symbols and each stamp our own. We each made our own individual cloth, along with one as a group. It became a very personal experience to be able to connect something we created ourselves with something culturally meaningful to many Ghanaians. After three weeks in Ghana, our weekend in Kumasi had me feeling a little less like an Obruni and a little more like an Obibini.
