I'm still here! - part 2

Recently I dreamed that I had a conversation with the spiders in my room. I was trying to convince them that the spot over my bed was not the best place for them to build their webs, and they were explaining to me why the location truly was ideal... To prevent myself from contracting malaria from mosquitoes, I am required to take Larium, which has the interesting side effect of very bizarre dreams. The beauty of a Larium dream is that when I awoke, I was surprised (and not a little relieved) that there was not a group of chatty arachnids hanging over my head.
Larium dreams are not always so strange, but they are almost always very very vivid. Where this has caused me the most trouble has not been in dreams of spiders, but in dreams of home. I will dream of doing very mundane things, like walking through Walmart, or laying on the carpet in the living room of my parents home, reading a magazine. Sometimes I am aware that I should be in Ghana, and so I am trying to convince myself that it is ok for me to be home, and others it is like I was never here. The unfortunate side effect of these dreams is that I wake up feeling very disoriented and out of place when I realize that I am not truly riding in the car and laughing with my sisters as I thought I was. I think that is when homesickness is the hardest to deal with... ok, so it is a toss up between that and when I sabotage my emotions by pining over pictures of my friends and family.
Luckily, I have found a sure-fire cure for the loneliness this brings on (though my mood often makes me reluctant to pursue this remedy, no matter how effective). The solution to my sadness and homesickness is to come out of my room and walk across to my neighbors and sit with them in the courtyard as they play games or just carry on conversations in Ewe. Sometimes this is the last thing on earth that I want to do - when I am feeling depressed I tend towards reclusiveness - but I am unfailingly rewarded if I manage to overcome my anti-social tendencies and spend time with the people in my community.
I have been perfecting the art of sitting with someone for long periods of time in silence. Sometimes this is because Ghanaians are very content to sit with each other and not feel the need for conversation, and sometimes it is because I can't understand or take part in most of the conversations.
When I greet an Ewe speaker, and they find that I can "hear the Ewe language small small", they are tickled pink and immediately bombard me with all sorts of questions, expecting that I will know what they are talking about. Even those who better know me and the extent of my language abilities will often time carry on conversations around me, expecting that I am at least able to figure out the context of what they are talking about. I am afraid I am just not there yet.
I remember one of my favorite Gary Larson cartoons showed a man talking to his dog in two frames. One frame said "what you say" and it showed the man saying (roughly) "Ginger, No! Bad Dog, Ginger! How many times have I told you not to get into the trash! Bad Ginger! Bad Dog!" The next frame said "what your dog hears", and it shows the man saying "Ginger, Blah! Blah Blah Ginger! Blah blah blah blah Ginger! Blah blah!"
This very much mirrors my experience with Ewe. A person will hear that I can greet in Ewe, and so they start to speak, and I hear: "Blah blah blah church, blah blah blah behind blah blah, blah blah mother blah blah market." Then the person will look at me expectantly. My choices are threefold: I can say in Ewe, "I hear Ewe small small", which will sometimes make the person laugh and end the conversation, as well as possibly end any future attempt to converse with me in Ewe. I can say "I didn't understand", which more often than not leads to the person retrying in different but no more understandable words. Or I can guess that this is a situation in which the almost universal response "Yo...." will suffice. That last option is very hit or miss. Sometimes it results in the Ghanaian nodding and laughing in approval, and sometimes it simply results in a strange look. Ah well, can't win 'em all, all the time, right?
The holidays are now over, and I hear that in my home state of Colorado there have been three major snowstorms, a couple of them effectively shutting down half of the city. It is just my luck that for the past several years there have been very few significant snow storms, and the moment I leave to stay for two years in a tropical climate, and my hometown is hit with no less than THREE major snowstorms. I didn't think I would miss the snow that much, but for me it has been like perpetual summer since May. And when I see pictures of two of my sisters having fun and snowboarding in my parents back yard, it makes Christmas feel just a tad far away.
My Christmas and New Years celebrations, though different than those at home, were actually very nice. There were LOTS of church services... New Years Eve there was a gathering of people from twenty different branches of the church in Bethel... apparently my community is the head of the branches, so with the influx of worshippers, the population of my town seemed to effectively double in size. They came for an all night church service, and BOY was it an event. Picture the lawn beside the church covered in canopies and stacked with rows of chairs filled with decked-out Ghanaians. When the music and the worship starts, so does the dancing, and all of the chairs empty with people prancing around in circles and waving white hankies. It's quite a treat to watch. Dancing is as natural for the Ghanaian as swimming is for an otter, and it is not necessarily the sign of a charismatic church. Every church that I have attended (ok, so the total is three, but they were all different denominations) had dancing as a part of worship. My mama Margaret LOVES to dance her worship. She is so enthusiastic that you can't help but be happy when you see her.
For Christmas, I was invited to the home of the Bishop and his wife (since our Bethel church is the headquarters for all of the Bethel branches, the leader of our church and community has the title of "Bishop" and "Founder and Leader". I really like him and his wife a lot - wonderful people.) After visiting for a while... which included a conversation in which I had to explain and defend why I am not yet married... I was told it was time for dinner. I was led into a room and sat at a table and served fufu and light soup with beef (author's note: Yum Yum! my previous post went on about the joys of American food, but well prepared Ghanaian food is quite delicious.)
As I am telling you that I was invited to have dinner with the Bishop and his family, I am sure you are forming the same mental picture in your head that I had formed in mine, even though I should have known better. I am sure you are imagining sitting around a table with a large Ghanaian family, visiting and eating fufu from a large community bowl in which everyone takes part, eating with their hands (only with the right hand, of course, because it is taboo to do anything of significance with your left hand, especially eat)... Ok, well maybe that was not your mental picture, but it was mine. And so when I sat down at the table and they put the food in front of me and left the room, I waited expectantly to be joined by everyone else... and I waited.... and waited... and a lady came in and asked if I had ever eaten fufu before, and I said "yes, I like it," and she smiled and nodded and left.... and I looked around and waited...
And then it dawned on me; "oh, yeah! this is Ghana and I am an honored guest! No one is going to join me..." I felt a little sheepish as I started to eat my fufu (with a spoon they had thoughtfully provided for the honored American guest), because I had been well aware before that it is customary in Ghana to have the guest eat separately from the family at a special table, and to be left alone to enjoy the meal. But I guess because it was Christmas, and I had such a mental picture of fellowshipping around the table with the family, as is customary in the States, I had forgotten that was what I should expect. So, I ate my fufu, and I enjoyed it, and then I went outside and found the family sitting together, eating and enjoying their meal, and talking and laughing with each other. I sat nearby where they joined me afterwards to visit. And a very fine visit it was, full of the fellowship that I had been craving.
I hope all of you had a Christmas as merry!