Language Class

(I have a lot of somehow-pretyped blog entries from the past few months, as I get online I will try to post them. Consider any misspellings and typos a bonus - I’ve become lazy.)

Wed, 16 July 2008

“En kye; Braa ntem. — Don’t keep long; come back on time.” It’s 7:30 when I bid my homestay family goodbye for the morning. It took me many weeks to adjust to hearing their parting admonitions, regardless of my destination, as standard phrases of parting. As I walk out of the courtyard, I cast a glance eastward, towards the mountains that send this little valley town its daily dose of rainy season goodness. This morning our rolling green hills are shrouded in fog. The maize fields usually visible are obscured by a misty screen of rain. I have maybe an hour. Language class is scheduled for 8:00-12:00, so with a smattering of luck I should stay perfectly dry. Downfalls here rush in hard and fast, but rarely last long. As my gaze shifts, I catch the eye of a magpie in a nearby nut palm. I love these giant birds; they’re the black-and-white crows of Ghana. This one cocks his head to stare disdainfully at the street before us both.

This street is alive with activity, the threat of rain granting an extra buzz of electric energy. It’s early yet, but the neighborhood’s rhythm is already in full swing. Tables and stalls materialize along the roadside: you could tether yourself to a ten foot radius and still live for a month on the cornucopia of merchandise within arm’s reach. Fruits and vegetables, fish and maize, phone credits, soap, rat poison, water sachets, fabric, shoes, ice cream. Lizards scuttle brazenly between the legs of swarming goats who, in turn, are stalked by ever-present chickens. Beady eyes watch for any and all edible spoils of the goats’ movements. A dropped maize cob is set upon by a furious mess of feathers and squawking dust.

“Amma Sara, Ma kwe-oo!” The shouts assail me as soon as I enter shouting distance. I shift my water bottle self-consciously to my left hand, freeing up the “polite” right hand to wave in return. The call-and-response greetings swirl and meld around me until no one is sure where one set ends and another begins. No matter. The phrases we send bouncing back and forth, the market ladies and me, are stilted. Dusty, perfunctory, rote exchanges. The smiles and laughter that accompany, though, are not. Below the cacophony of socially correct greetings, connections are being made without a word. If I look carefully enough, I can see it happening — but too often it’s something I don’t notice until I’ve passed on by. Like watching life breathed into the world through the retrospect of time-lapse photography. I see it in the shy grins and boasterious giggles of my Small Entourouge, in the good-natured teasing from the women selling oranges… in the shuffling dance steps of a toothless old woman who shows her appreciation for my garbled Twi by grabbing my hands and whirling me around.

“Ashe bofro anopa”. I flag down a bofro seller, spending 10 “cents” on a hot chunk of sweet fried bread. After the first week of interminably long language classes I learned to plan ahead for snack breaks. Bofro and a handful of groundnuts, maybe a miniature banana or two, and my mind is able to think and learn in Twi for a few more hours. The exchange takes only a few moments; the vender stops and swings the box down off her head in a deceptively simple maneuver. We exchange coins and bread, and I attempt to move on. Too late; the seconds I spent standing still were enough to allow a fairly large contingent of my Small Child Army to gather. A few nights ago my host mother warned me for the nth time that if I don’t take my porch chair indoors at night it might get stolen. I countered with the comment that if anything were ever stolen from me, I have enough Smalls to send an army to beat the thief and rescue my stuff. She laughed, and the idea stuck. Every obruni here has their respective swarm of smalls — I, apparently, am blessed with my own Army.

“Amma Sara, wo ko ahe?” I’m going to class, I’m going to class, I’m going to class! The question and my answer is repeated incessantly as I continue down the street. An inquiry and answer that weaves through the constant greetings until it’s indistinguishable from itself. Everyone is going somewhere in Ghana — and if you’re not going somewhere at this second, you’re still going somewhere eventually. If a destination isn’t immediately apparent, the polite thing to do is ask, at least once. As the local white girl, I get more than my fair share of curiosity. A gaggle of Smalls reply, unbidden, that they are going to school as well — a fact made obvious by their faded yellow uniforms.

“Obruni, ba baaaaai!” The last echo of a dozen Smalls too young for school chases me around the corner. It’s nearly 8am. I’m not late, just on time. It has taken the better part of half an hour to walk only a few blocks - I can actually still see my house from here, if I climb up a flight of stairs to look. Between the greetings and smiles and impromptu dances; the conversation and questions and introductions and partings — I’ve walked a few hundred meters from my home to language class, yet feel as if I’ve already had a full mornings’-worth language practice. And, I hope, I’ve extended my roots a little further. Built upon a few relationships, shared a little more of myself. Found a little more comfort in my own identity here among my family of strangers.

Not long after class begins, the skies open. Shouts and squeals pulse past the windows like phantom butterflies, as disembodied shadows run to take cover. My language instructor raises her voice to be heard over the sudden noise, but class goes on despite the interruption - there are only 4 of us here, so we just crowd closer. Machine gun drops beat a tattoo on the tin roof over our heads.