UCF International Knights

Stepping onto the beach in Accra marks a movement into a completely different world and culture. There you find men in sequined leotards flying in the air and dancing before crowds in the hopes of being *dashed* a handsome tip from onlookers. Women walk around with traveling spas on their heads, tempting women to pamper themselves with a manicure or pedicure while they enjoy the scenery. And, as with most places in Accra, there are street merchants *hawking* all types of goods from paintings to Ghanaian highlife cds. But, two things you do not expect when you step into this enchanted spot of sand are rain and orphans.

As group members from the trip sat on the beach trying to persuade hawkers that we were actually serious about not needing to buy their various souvenirs, the sky was overtaken with darkness and it suddenly got windy and cold. It reminded me of home where the day suddenly changes to night at the onset of a violent storm. Everyone on the beach began to scurry, quickly taking down kiosks and moving chairs inside. The beach became so deserted so quick that I felt as if I conjured the performers and stores out of the air.

Our group quickly hurried inside of the restaurant where we had been eating on the patio and just as we made it under the wooden over hang the sky let loose. The wind was intense and we were all suddenly cold, rain dripped through the slits between the wooden boards of the roof, a red river formed in the sand as water ran from the highland back to the sea and we watched in awe as the ocean violently threw waves upon the shore. As we waited out the storm, the acrobats continued and people began to play music and dance. Everyone was laughing and carrying on so much that it was almost forgotten that rain had spoiled the atmosphere.

Among those waiting out the storm was a group of about fifteen children and one European man. As we waited we chatted with the man about his group and learned that he was a flight attendant on layover and while he waited he was volunteering at a local orphanage.

He had chosen only fifteen children to go the beach out of an orphanage of more than 150 children. We asked if we could chat with the children and he nodded, telling us with his eyes that he was overwhelmed. The children shared bananas and crackers that one of the older boys and the volunteer passed among them. They were enthralled by one of our group member*s cameras and it seemed that all of the children wanted their picture taken. We helped them go to the restroom, let them color with pens from our notebooks, bought them peanuts, and covered their wet and cold bodies with our clothes and towels. Some of the children danced and others would not let us put them down, clinging to our necks and laps as if they never wanted us to leave.

After hours of watching acrobats, rain, and children, we ran through the rain carrying these children and helping them into taxis. The volunteer allowed us to follow him back to the orphanage and when we arrived we were shown a tour of the facility. We saw children bathed in the courtyard in the rain; we saw rows of bunks, tired and exhausted workers and volunteers, and bright and helpful children. We learned that the only elder boy who accompanied us from the beach did not have to help out but was gracious enough to wash all of the beach goers* clothes.

In that place my heart broke for those kids and then immediately swelled for the people who were there trying to make sure that these children learned about community, family, and sharing even if it was done outside of the traditional familial setting. In that moment I wanted take all of those children home or help find them a home and I thought about my home and what I could be doing for the children in need there.

The beach turned out to be one of the most emotional and rewarding experiences of this trip and it has made classroom knowledge come alive. The ocean has always been a source of inspiration for me; today the sea reminded me of the instability of borders and brought into the focus some of my goals for study abroad, reminding me that I can build community partners here and at home in order to make alliances around issues of building a sustainable future.

- Meredith Tweed

Ghana: The Drama of Cooking, Week Three Blog Entry

acardec — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:54:52 +0000

Mix fourteen people from different cultures and experiences together, simmer in the African sun, broil without electricity, and serve. The dish served comes out with a different taste daily. Sometimes the dish smothers you with spices, giving you heartburn, making you yearn for the smoothness of your favorite dishes at home, where people know your tastes. Other times the dish serves you bitterness and your face sours; the dish is too much and you shriek back from what it has asked of you, shown you about yourself, shown you about others. Mostly, the dish hits places in your mouth and heart that you did not expect could feel, and it fills you with ideas of who you could be and what the world would be if everyone tried something new.

Group dynamics of a study abroad trip add another layer onto the intercultural exchanges you are making in a new country. And, as the videographer for my group I see that “all the world is a stage and men (and women), merely players.” I see that everyone has many faces and costumes that they wear for different occasions. Here in Ghana, we are with fourteen other people all of the time and it brings out the best and worst of people. Many times it does both, because when someone falls often you find that other people help to bring you back up.

But, the group is not the only place that I have found players. I see that the people in the market change their masks when our large group arrives. They jack up the prices, believing that as foreigners we will not know the price. They call us sister, tell us we are beautiful, beg us to let them show us around, and they speak English, for they think they know what we want to hear. They do not let us see as they see, for we are a part of Ghana only in how much they let us in. And, part of the beauty of the trip stems from breaking down of these barriers, of getting to know the people and the land for what it is and not for what others would have us believe, for we want to see as they see so that we may change how people view Africa and its people.

On Saturday we saw an actual play, “The Fifth Stage Landing.” The beating drums pulsed through my body and the large group of dancers beat their way across the stage in unison as if forming one heart. The set spoke of a small African village and the players spoke in an accent so that their English was not my English. This theatre was not my theatre but I knew it, understood the messages and the people. I did not always laugh or understand as the other members of the audience did, for I lack a nuanced understanding of their culture that creates humor, but I realized as I sat their watching the same play as they did that life here in Africa is fundamentally the same as it is in the U.S. Yes, sometimes the heat here makes it feel unbearable, the food tastes different, and the cultures are not the same, but at the core we are concerned with the same things.

Later this week Leandra and I went shopping at the straw market where the women make and sell baskets in kiosks. The last shop we went to was similar to the others, bright baskets of purple, blue, pink, orange and green in intricate patterns lined the walls and hung from the ceiling of the wooden hut. The woman, basket weaver- shop keeper- and mother, showed us her beautiful creations as her small children played around us. Her youngest child, a son of about two, was so taken with us and himself that he twirled around laughing and laughing. He twirled and giggled, throwing the baskets, shrieking from joy, and he did this so long and so hard that he fell to the ground. This young boy had Leandra, his mother, and I in such fits of laughter that our sides hurt. And, there, in Ghana two American Feminists and one native Ghanaian market woman were able to come together, laughing at one small boy who reminded us of the hope of innocence and youth. In that moment my study abroad trip to Ghana had purpose; we are here to learn from one another how to build a better world. The thing to learn about cooking and people is this: you must continue to make the dish, to blend the spices and ingredients together, even if the first hundred tries fail, because eventually you will learn the right combination to make each taste reach its fullest flavor.

- Meredith Tweed

Ghana: Week Two (May 20-May 27)

acardec — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:54:19 +0000

A large white van with an 80’s teal stripe and the words “Graduate Studies” stenciled in white sits in traffic. The exhaust from the mountain of cars on the freeway makes everyone high. People do their daily shopping through car windows as women and young men “hawk” goods, carried in buckets and bundles on their heads, throughout the crowded streets. In the sea of black bodies covered in rich and vibrant colors, trotro’s filled with people going to and from work, the market, or school, and goats or chickens going about their business on sidewalks and red earth mounds, loud and distinct sounds can be heard coming from the teal and white bus.The people sing loudly, “Sail away with me to another world, and we’ll rely on each other, uhuh.”

Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers have made their way to Accra. But, it was not the American students singing on the bus that made this picture so surreal. In fact, it was that the bus driver Daniel, a Ghanaian native, who had put the music on and caused all of the bus to begin rocking to the sound of country music. It is only the American students who wish to hear Ghanaian highlife. The scene on the bus is not unusual. In fact we have been dancing at a hotel and an outdoor beach club and both places have played music from the West. At the hotel it was only country.

In class we have been discussing colonization and strategies of resistance. The culture itself seems to be a mixture of the two, visually expressing its complicated history. One billboard on the side of the road celebrates Ghana’s 50th anniversary as an Independent nation and right next to it is a sign that adversities skin lightening cream. Yesterday, we went to the market where the mixture is also apparent. The market is a busy part of the city with outdoor vendors selling goods along one side and another. It is like winding your way through a dream. Going up the stone steps you almost trip and fall and you can never fully tell if it is the street itself that is slippery or that the aroma of baking corn, meat, and fruit forces you to spill over. Amid all of the chatting, car horns, and animal noises you loose yourself in another world. The streets are packed like sardines with fabric stores, t-shirts, to everything like soap and screw drivers. It is not like home, everything is about bargaining; it is truly an outdoor culture. But, even within in this tradition there is the impact of other
worlds. People wear western clothes, they speak English, and imitation Louis Vitton bags hang from shop street stalls. You are here and there, in both at once. And, it is this mixture of worlds that makes Ghana so unique.

It seems to me that Dolly’s song means something different in Ghana…that maybe sailing away to another world brings you to another place you could never have imagined, but in a different way than implied. Maybe that a different world is unimaginable because it is never really new. Sorry Dolly, but we never exist as islands in a stream, we are always connected through unseen ways, even if that connection is underwater.

- Meredith Tweed

Ghana: Blog Entry Week One (Sunday May 13- May 17th 2007)

acardec — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:53:47 +0000

I am writing on a wireless laptop in the hot air of a Ghanaian night without power. As I write students are lounging under a Mango tree in the front courtyard of the African Institute Chalet. The mango tree has already
become a symbol of our African trip; we have class under the shady tree, we eat from its fruit, we squirm at the giant ants that fall on our heads as they drop from the tightrope cord of lights that makes its way across the tree, and we laugh as we all duck as the large green and yellow fruit drops from the branches at the speed of light. Already the missal like fruit has hit several people and we have adapted to anticipate the weapons by the whack the mango makes as it hits other branches on the way down.

In the midst of this lazy night at the chalet the city and the country whiz around us. Today we had a guest lecturer, Dr. Rose Mensah-Kutim from Abamtu (a women’s rights NGO), who spoke to us about Women’s Rights as Human Rights in Ghana. She began by explaining how human rights have provided African women, and in particular Ghanaian women, with the language necessary to make the government accountable to certain rights that are necessary for women to have full and meaningful lives. She made the textbooks and feminist works we have read as students and scholars come alive and I was inspired by the struggle and passion of the Ghanaian women working to create for themselves and others a sustainable future. Later today her lecture again came to life as we spoke with and saw first hand the affects of their work at The Ark Foundation, Center for Women’s Empowerment, that works to end violence against women. Just when we arrived in the country the Ghanaian president signed into law the Violence Against Women Act and it is because of the work of the men and women we met today. The country is on the move and the majority of our culture shock comes from the fact that we are stumped by our own stereotypes of Africa.

Accra, with its high rise buildings, expensive cars, major freeways and billboards amongst the street vendors, traditional homes, and the women carrying baskets upon their heads is a truly diverse city which shows the impacts of colonization and globalization. But, unlike many places in America, Ghana’s capital hosts the friendliest people I have ever met. Everyone smiles, waves, or speaks to us as we walk the streets. As we travel people shout the friendly greeting, “Oburuni” which means “Hey, White person” connoting foreigner. Being from America this sloe paces, easy talking style, grabs people off guard. Augustina, one of the chalet staff members, corrected one of the faculty members, Dr. Pat Darlington, because she asked her for water without saying hello first. I feel like I often forget, in my hurry to get things done, how to be kind to others. As the other faculty member, Leandra Preston, said,” We have to slow down to Ghana time.”

So, we have been trying to adjust to an African way of life. And, it is under the mango tree that we have begun to define ourselves within our African space. We have chatted with the workers of our inn, bought African dress from Miss Elizabeth, and tapped into our creative energy. On one of the first nights students sat under the stars making music, full with guitars, harmonica, and chilling voices. They sang:

We are sitting in Ghana,
Sitting in the grass,
Sipin our glass,
Tomorrow we have class*..

Under the mango tree, in the starry humid Ghanaian night.

- Meredith Tweed

Greetings from Austria - The Video

acardec — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:53:09 +0000

Video montage from Doug Akers and Demetra Pappas, hospitality management students currently studying in Innsbruck Austria.