According to Frank, we were headed eastward towards the mountain. He’s an optometry student from Nigeria who has been here for eight years. It was a 2-hour drive and there were five of us, which gave us time to get close. Most of us are from Canada and the U.S. but have had the privilege to do a lot of traveling. It was fun to swap stories and strange to be surrounded by people who experience travel in the same way that I do. Combined, I think we’ve actually travelled most of the world.
The village where we were heading was mourning their chief, so we couldn’t distribute eyeglasses and medication. I recently learned that you wear red and black for untimely deaths and white if the death was of old age. In any case, we watched a pretty arbitrary, though impressive, “football” game between “Germany” and “The Netherlands”. During the game, all the children called us Obruni, which literally translates to white person. They usually yell and point, but it’s an expression of excitement not hostility or anything. After lunch we went back to the hotel, hung out and talked a while. Conversation got pretty interesting when Frank came around. He had changed from his more official clothes into a shirt that simply read, Rock Party. We all instantly thought of Party Rock Shuffle and talked about popular American and Ghanaian songs. Like most Ghanaians I’ve met so far, he’s good-humored, helpful, and laughs at our strange Obruni habits and mishaps. We discussed the marital age for woman, and he was surprised by marriage customs in the U.S., especially for women. In Ghana, you only get married for the sake of having children. In fact, the son’s parents expect children very quickly and may get very agitated if you aren’t pregnant within by your second year of marriage. Learning all this, I can definitely say I’m working towards my goal of experiencing the culture.
The village where we were heading was mourning their chief, so we couldn’t distribute eyeglasses and medication. I recently learned that you wear red and black for untimely deaths and white if the death was of old age. In any case, we watched a pretty arbitrary, though impressive, “football” game between “Germany” and “The Netherlands”. During the game, all the children called us Obruni, which literally translates to white person. They usually yell and point, but it’s an expression of excitement not hostility or anything. After lunch we went back to the hotel, hung out and talked a while. Conversation got pretty interesting when Frank came around. He had changed from his more official clothes into a shirt that simply read, Rock Party. We all instantly thought of Party Rock Shuffle and talked about popular American and Ghanaian songs. Like most Ghanaians I’ve met so far, he’s good-humored, helpful, and laughs at our strange Obruni habits and mishaps. We discussed the marital age for woman, and he was surprised by marriage customs in the U.S., especially for women. In Ghana, you only get married for the sake of having children. In fact, the son’s parents expect children very quickly and may get very agitated if you aren’t pregnant within by your second year of marriage. Learning all this, I can definitely say I’m working towards my goal of experiencing the culture.
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