A second greeting from Kumasi on a sweltering hot African day... last night I experienced my first tropical storm - wow!! About 6pm the dry sky was filled with lightning and booms of thunder, the air was warm and moist and there was a strange stillness around - all the animals were quiet and were nowhere to be seen - I lay outside awhile and watched the sky - the flashes of lightning were so close together, lighting up the dark sky with such intensity! Then a few warm, fat drops of rain fell... my first time to feel African rain! After 5 minutes the rain stopped and I went inside disapointed... about 10 minutes later the sky opened up and the rain began to pour from the heavens!! I have never heard it rain so hard in my life!! Wow - the noise was deafening, and then the winds began... howling through the building, the tin roof pounding, the doors banging - the electricity went out and we were alone in the darkness with this immense display of mother nature's power! It was amazing - I found a candle eventually and realised the lock had broken on my door - it was a bit scary but I tied the door shut with string and enjoyed the cooler temperature to sleep in! When I left Besease for Kumasi today (about 12) the electricity was still out but the ground had the most glorious smell of earth and the air felt so fresh. It was a beautiful morning - although unfortunately the orphanage didn't fear so well and half of the concrete banister that surrounds the exterior had come off! But after the cooler morning the sun has come out in it's usual intensity and as per normal my skin is beaded with sweat and my clothes are sticking...
Life in Besease continues... the orphanage is challenging and I am beginning to realise the level of problems in Africa... it can be a bit overwhelming when I think about it. The problems here are so great that I don't know how they will ever be overcome. Even the smallest thing is an immense challenge (like teaching the children that it is not wise to throw their rubbish on the ground - they just think you're stupid - what else is the ground for?!!). I take the orpahange as a microcosm of greater Africa and it is already teaching me so much. The church which "runs" the orphanage is virtually permanently absent - they receive money every month from an American organisation and the majority of the funds disappear in paying the church members salaries for doing the most inconsequential jobs! Like the "administrator" (who has been there twice in the time that I have been living there) decided to double his monthly salary for petrol costs in driving to the orphanage from Kumasi (about 45 minutes). Then he says that he does the work "from the goodness of his heart"!! And the children go without... without enough food, without enough clothing, with no underpants, no bedding, no school books. The 24 children who live in the home were expected to use 7 bars of a soap for an entire month. For washing themselves and for washing their clothes. This is what the "administrator" thought was appropriate. I have had to buy the children's school books and text books from my own money because otherwise they simply wouldn't have them! And the same goes for soap, underpants and pyjamas. There is simply not enough money and I feel certain it is because the money is taken by the church members who run the home to make a profit for themselves. It is immensly frustrating. Amanda (the Canadian student there) has been working with social welfare and trying to install a social worker to attend the home twice weekly - social welfare has written reports about the orphanage and offered advice but the church will not take the advice because social welfare is partisan and "doesn't understand the way the church works" or "doesn't understand the religion". And when Amanda or I offer advice (Amanda has been trying to get them to change the systems for a year now) they disregard the advice because "you are obroni, you don't understand how it works in Africa". And so, we pay for the things the children need or we see them go without. It feels overwhelming and the immensity of the issue is exhausting! And this is one small orphanage in a rural Ghanian village. Extend these issues to a continent rife with corruption and the obstacles to development here can begin to be comprehended.
I have begun to feel quite helpless in the face of it all!!! But, I am taking every day as it comes and trying to do the best for the children with what I have and what I can provide. Even if I can only slightly positively influence their lives for the time I am here then it is all worth it. And as was explained to me before I arrived - things here progress very slowly. Life is slow - frustratingly slow at times (like this computer!). I am trying to set up systems at the orphanage in an effort to keep things cleaner and more organised but the children miraculously can't understand English when one is asking them to clean their room!! It's a challenge, but they are worth it. And when I see them smile and see that they are being taken care of then it is all worth the struggle. Life is hard for them - and will be hard for them for a long time, the biggest chance they have to escape the poverty trap is to do well at school and either get scholarships to foreign universities or get sponsored to complete university in Ghana and get a well-paying job. For most they will never acheive this though and the level of unemployment in Ghana is huge - there is no welfare system here either. If you don't work, or beg or steal then you go hungry and homeless. People sell things everywhere - anything - even pencils and shoelaces - they will try to sell to you through the windows of buses or on street corners. Women walk through traffic in the blistering sun all day with children strapped to their backs trying to sell things to passing traffic - I think how hard life must be for them and how it must appear that "obroni" have it so easy. And perhaps it's true... perhaps we do have it so easy. On Saturday another volunteer arrives - a 30 year old from Holland - hopefully her and I will be able to set up more of a routine and perhaps get some much-needed cleaning done around the orphanage! I think it will be easier then. I have also decided to stop working at the community school. After some sadistic behaviour by the teacher I decided that to stay would be to be a passive participant in child abuse. The children would be beaten for anything - for misspelling a word (an offence which the teachers are constantly guilty of!) they would have to come to the teacher with their fingers held in a bunch - she made another student bring her a plastic 30cm ruler and with the sharp edge of it she brought the ruler down hard on the children's fingertips - again and again and again. The children were yelping with pain and pulling away - their eyes filled with fear. For not remembering their times tables they would be beaten around the head and back - for lateness or "disrepectful behaviour" they would be caned - I counted 12 times a child was caned in one setting. And Amanda told me of an incident she witnessed where a child was layed out on a table, their legs and arms held, and their back caned repetitively - just like how the English colonisers treated African slaves in the 1800s and that is deemed human rights' abuse, why is this not also!?! I decided that I could not participate in the system that allowed this to happen and found out the ministry of education requirements for discipline - this behaviour is definitely outside the mandate (the ministry allows the headmaster to cane a child no more than four times on the palm or the buttock for a certain type of offence - lateness and disrepect - definitely not for getting the answer wrong and definitely not by the teachers!). So this morning I went to the school and waited for an hour to see the headmaster. While I waited I spoke to one of the teachers and told him my thoughts - "you can't say that to the headmaster!!" he said "say something else, but don't tell him that you are leaving because of the discipline, I don't know how he will react - it will never cease so why tell him?". I said that because it won't cease I MUST tell him and that I had a responsibility as a human being to tell him, no matter his response. When I finally could speak with him he gave me a big exapserated sigh. "You don't understand" he said "African children are very different from European children" (how so, the pigment in their skin?) "if you tell a European child to sit down, they sit down. If you tell a European child to go to school, they go to school" (what sort of magical country does he think I come from?!!) "African children must be disciplined and they only respond to being beaten, otherwise they would not come to school". I told him that I thought they would not come to school for fear of being beaten. He said that all "obroni" dislike the discipline used at the school but that we don't understand African ways. I explained to him the ministry of education regulation and said that beating the children for getting the answers incorrect is illegal. He said he agrees and would inspect the classes and "redirect" the teachers if he saw it "but I am a very busy man, and I can only go and inspect the classrooms when I have some time". So I doubt anything will eventuate, but at least I said my peace. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that people do not talk audibly about the behaviour - that the teachers are afraid of the school systems, and of the headmaster. The violence acted out in the school perpetuates itself in the orphanage; the children beat each other and I am constantly breaking up fist fights - between girls, between boys, between boys and girls! Even as young as 3. Someone must break the cycle and it must start somewhere! The teacher agreed with me, but will anything happen?
\u003cbr\>So I am focusing my time on the orphanage. Writing a manual to help other volunteers and trying to work out a roster for jobs. I am also attending the social welfare office to see how social welfare works in Ghana. Yesterday I was allowed to sit in on a family mediation where a man had died and his family had not allowed his wife any of his property as they believed she had killed him by putting a curse on him! In Ghana women have very little rights under the law and if a woman wants to leave her husband she is entitled to nothing. She has to buy her husband a bottle of schnapps to appease him and then she walks away with nothing. Of course very few women will leave abusive relationships and the development of womens' rights is trailing sadly behind. On Thursday I am going to youth court with the social worker which I'm very much looking foward to.\n\u003cbr\>\u003cbr\>The highlight of my week was Sunday when I went to a malam (a traditional African fetish priest) with one of the older boys at the orphanage (he wanted something to help his football team win a match they are playing on Friday!!) I couldn't pass by the opportunity to experience this first hand so early Sunday morning we left... we had to take a tro tro to another village and there we began to walk into the forest. What a journey! We walked for about an hour through this incredibly dense, green forest - the air was so humid and the bush kept rustling with snakes fleeing as they felt our footsteps approaching. We met many people who were journeying through the forest - cocoa farmers and yam farmers, women carrying massive bundles of vegetables on their heads and men with machetes going to harvest crops. They were all so friendly and when I greeted them "akwaba" they would laugh and give me things - I collected two oranges and an avocado - they must have wondered what an obroni was doing so far into the forest! A cocoa farmer stopped us and allowed me to watch him collect the cocoa pods from the trees with a long pole, he cut one of these green pods open and showed me the cocoa beans inside: white and gooey and not particularly appealing! I tasted one, the gooey exterior is very sweet but tastes nothing like cocoa! (The seeds are dried in the sun before being transported to Europe for turning into chocolate). After about an hour of fast paced walking we arrived at the malam's house, completely isolated apart from one neighbour in the middle of this West African forest! As we walked through the forest nearing the house we were surrounded by the most brilliant butterflies I have ever seen in my life! It was incredible - butterflies of all sizes, gold and green and blue and purple, flying in front of me and next to me, darting from one bush to another - it was incredibly magical and apparently a sign of good luck.
Once we arrived at the house - a tidy compound with three mud buildings and straw roofs and a cooking fire in the centre, we waited for about an hour on a wooden plank while the malam was called in from his farm - we sat with some of his children and one of his wives (he has two). One of his sons had dreads and all the others had shaved heads, Ato (the boy from the orphanage) explained that this boy has dreads because the spirits have chosen him to become the next malam. As such he cannot cut his hair until his father dies, if he does then he will fall ill and die. The boy was bewitching! He had the most beautiful, sparkling eyes and kept shyly stealing glances at me and looking away! (I think seeing an obroni woman out there was a novelty!) The wives could not speak english but smiled and greeted me warmly with their presence, they wanted me to photograph them and laughed and laughed at their images on the screen! Eventually the malam arrived and we were permitted into the room (without shoes or socks) - the room was small and cool and dusty - in the centre was a shrine with schnapps bottles, two wooden post red with the blood of sacrified animals and surrounded by white feathers and a small bowl with black powder inside and two white eggs. There were various other instruments for diving and some obscure objects that were apparently a part of a spirit - the malam sat on a stool in one corner and we faced on a small stool - he had a kind face with smiling eyes and a gentle demeanour. He smiled at me and asked me to ask any questions I wanted (Ato translated) - I talked to him about the spirit world and his work as a malam and the traditions, I could write immensely about our discussions but this email is long enough as it is so I will summarise with the explanation that the tradition is ancient, passed down from father to son - the spirits choose the son who they want to become the next malam - he takes no payment for his work but gifts are required for the spirits. He said we all have spirits and when we die our spirits will leave our body and enter another (reincarnation!) but some spirits do not go into other human beings and these are the ones with which he communicates. He said he will prepare something for protection for me and my family and he told me that the spirits liked me so he allowed me to photograph him and the room (including the objects that were part of a spirit) - afterwards we sat under a tree with his wives and his children and he told me that he would like me to stay and become his third wife and provide him with white children!! I laughed and laughed and told him that two wives were more than enough! The wives laughed and asked me to stay - they were all so kind and welcoming and open that a part of me wouldn't have minded to stay in the forest and live with them!!
So I am focusing my time on the orphanage. Writing a manual to help other volunteers and trying to work out a roster for jobs. I am also attending the social welfare office to see how social welfare works in Ghana. Yesterday I was allowed to sit in on a family mediation where a man had died and his family had not allowed his wife any of his property as they believed she had killed him by putting a curse on him! In Ghana women have very little rights under the law and if a woman wants to leave her husband she is entitled to nothing. She has to buy her husband a bottle of schnapps to appease him and then she walks away with nothing. Of course very few women will leave abusive relationships and the development of womens' rights is trailing sadly behind. On Thursday I am going to youth court with the social worker which I'm very much looking foward to. The highlight of my week was Sunday when I went to a malam (a traditional African fetish priest) with one of the older boys at the orphanage (he wanted something to help his football team win a match they are playing on Friday!!) I couldn't pass by the opportunity to experience this first hand so early Sunday morning we left... we had to take a tro tro to another village and there we began to walk into the forest. What a journey! We walked for about an hour through this incredibly dense, green forest - the air was so humid and the bush kept rustling with snakes fleeing as they felt our footsteps approaching. We met many people who were journeying through the forest - cocoa farmers and yam farmers, women carrying massive bundles of vegetables on their heads and men with machetes going to harvest crops. They were all so friendly and when I greeted them "akwaba" they would laugh and give me things - I collected two oranges and an avocado - they must have wondered what an obroni was doing so far into the forest! A cocoa farmer stopped us and allowed me to watch him collect the cocoa pods from the trees with a long pole, he cut one of these green pods open and showed me the cocoa beans inside: white and gooey and not particularly appealing! I tasted one, the gooey exterior is very sweet but tastes nothing like cocoa! (The seeds are dried in the sun before being transported to Europe for turning into chocolate). After about an hour of fast paced walking we arrived at the malam's house, completely isolated apart from one neighbour in the middle of this West African forest! As we walked through the forest nearing the house we were surrounded by the most brilliant butterflies I have ever seen in my life! It was incredible - butterflies of all sizes, gold and green and blue and purple, flying in front of me and next to me, darting from one bush to another - it was incredibly magical and apparently a sign of good luck. Once we arrived at the house - a tidy compound with three mud buildings and straw roofs and a cooking fire in the centre, we waited for about an hour on a wooden plank while the malam was called in from his farm - we sat with some of his children and one of his wives (he has two). One of his sons had dreads and all the others had shaved heads, Ato (the boy from the orphanage) explained that this boy has dreads because the spirits have chosen him to become the next malam. As such he cannot cut his hair until his father dies, if he does then he will fall ill and die. The boy was bewitching! He had the most beautiful, sparkling eyes and kept shyly stealing glances at me and looking away! (I think seeing an obroni woman out there was a novelty!) The wives could not speak english but smiled and greeted me warmly with their presence, they wanted me to photograph them and laughed and laughed at their images on the screen! Eventually the malam arrived and we were permitted into the room (without shoes or socks) - the room was small and cool and dusty - in the centre was a shrine with schnapps bottles, two wooden post red with the blood of sacrified animals and surrounded by white feathers and a small bowl with black powder inside and two white eggs. There were various other instruments for diving and some obscure objects that were apparently a part of a spirit - the malam sat on a stool in one corner and we faced on a small stool - he had a kind face with smiling eyes and a gentle demeanour. He smiled at me and asked me to ask any questions I wanted (Ato translated) - I talked to him about the spirit world and his work as a malam and the traditions, I could write immensely about our discussions but this email is long enough as it is so I will summarise with the explanation that the tradition is ancient, passed down from father to son - the spirits choose the son who they want to become the next malam - he takes no payment for his work but gifts are required for the spirits. He said we all have spirits and when we die our spirits will leave our body and enter another (reincarnation!) but some spirits do not go into other human beings and these are the ones with which he communicates. He said he will prepare something for protection for me and my family and he told me that the spirits liked me so he allowed me to photograph him and the room (including the objects that were part of a spirit) - afterwards we sat under a tree with his wives and his children and he told me that he would like me to stay and become his third wife and provide him with white children!! I laughed and laughed and told him that two wives were more than enough! The wives laughed and asked me to stay - they were all so kind and welcoming and open that a part of me wouldn't have minded to stay in the forest and live with them!!
I also attended a Ghanian/Duth rastafarian wedding on Friday night which was another experience altogether but I am running fast out of time as I must get back to the orphanage by 5pm for the study group I have set up...
Oh and something I missed in the previous email! While we were at the national park there was a scorpion in the bed! I had never seen a scorpion before and it caused a bit of a stir... to say the least! My fear of large spiders is well and truly cured though as I share my toilet and wash room (shower bottom with a hole for a drain and a bucket) with several large but seemingly friendly spiders...!
I have begun to feel quite helpless in the face of it all!!! But, I am taking every day as it comes and trying to do the best for the children with what I have and what I can provide. Even if I can only slightly positively influence their lives for the time I am here then it is all worth it. And as was explained to me before I arrived - things here progress very slowly. Life is slow - frustratingly slow at times (like this computer!). I am trying to set up systems at the orphanage in an effort to keep things cleaner and more organised but the children miraculously can't understand English when one is asking them to clean their room!! It's a challenge, but they are worth it. And when I see them smile and see that they are being taken care of then it is all worth the struggle. Life is hard for them - and will be hard for them for a long time, the biggest chance they have to escape the poverty trap is to do well at school and either get scholarships to foreign universities or get sponsored to complete university in Ghana and get a well-paying job. For most they will never acheive this though and the level of unemployment in Ghana is huge - there is no welfare system here either. If you don't work, or beg or steal then you go hungry and homeless. People sell things everywhere - anything - even pencils and shoelaces - they will try to sell to you through the windows of buses or on street corners. Women walk through traffic in the blistering sun all day with children strapped to their backs trying to sell things to passing traffic - I think how hard life must be for them and how it must appear that "obroni" have it so easy. And perhaps it's true... perhaps we do have it so easy. On Saturday another volunteer arrives - a 30 year old from Holland - hopefully her and I will be able to set up more of a routine and perhaps get some much-needed cleaning done around the orphanage! I think it will be easier then. I have also decided to stop working at the community school. After some sadistic behaviour by the teacher I decided that to stay would be to be a passive participant in child abuse. The children would be beaten for anything - for misspelling a word (an offence which the teachers are constantly guilty of!) they would have to come to the teacher with their fingers held in a bunch - she made another student bring her a plastic 30cm ruler and with the sharp edge of it she brought the ruler down hard on the children's fingertips - again and again and again. The children were yelping with pain and pulling away - their eyes filled with fear. For not remembering their times tables they would be beaten around the head and back - for lateness or "disrepectful behaviour" they would be caned - I counted 12 times a child was caned in one setting. And Amanda told me of an incident she witnessed where a child was layed out on a table, their legs and arms held, and their back caned repetitively - just like how the English colonisers treated African slaves in the 1800s and that is deemed human rights' abuse, why is this not also!?! I decided that I could not participate in the system that allowed this to happen and found out the ministry of education requirements for discipline - this behaviour is definitely outside the mandate (the ministry allows the headmaster to cane a child no more than four times on the palm or the buttock for a certain type of offence - lateness and disrepect - definitely not for getting the answer wrong and definitely not by the teachers!). So this morning I went to the school and waited for an hour to see the headmaster. While I waited I spoke to one of the teachers and told him my thoughts - "you can't say that to the headmaster!!" he said "say something else, but don't tell him that you are leaving because of the discipline, I don't know how he will react - it will never cease so why tell him?". I said that because it won't cease I MUST tell him and that I had a responsibility as a human being to tell him, no matter his response. When I finally could speak with him he gave me a big exapserated sigh. "You don't understand" he said "African children are very different from European children" (how so, the pigment in their skin?) "if you tell a European child to sit down, they sit down. If you tell a European child to go to school, they go to school" (what sort of magical country does he think I come from?!!) "African children must be disciplined and they only respond to being beaten, otherwise they would not come to school". I told him that I thought they would not come to school for fear of being beaten. He said that all "obroni" dislike the discipline used at the school but that we don't understand African ways. I explained to him the ministry of education regulation and said that beating the children for getting the answers incorrect is illegal. He said he agrees and would inspect the classes and "redirect" the teachers if he saw it "but I am a very busy man, and I can only go and inspect the classrooms when I have some time". So I doubt anything will eventuate, but at least I said my peace. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that people do not talk audibly about the behaviour - that the teachers are afraid of the school systems, and of the headmaster. The violence acted out in the school perpetuates itself in the orphanage; the children beat each other and I am constantly breaking up fist fights - between girls, between boys, between boys and girls! Even as young as 3. Someone must break the cycle and it must start somewhere! The teacher agreed with me, but will anything happen?
\u003cbr\>So I am focusing my time on the orphanage. Writing a manual to help other volunteers and trying to work out a roster for jobs. I am also attending the social welfare office to see how social welfare works in Ghana. Yesterday I was allowed to sit in on a family mediation where a man had died and his family had not allowed his wife any of his property as they believed she had killed him by putting a curse on him! In Ghana women have very little rights under the law and if a woman wants to leave her husband she is entitled to nothing. She has to buy her husband a bottle of schnapps to appease him and then she walks away with nothing. Of course very few women will leave abusive relationships and the development of womens' rights is trailing sadly behind. On Thursday I am going to youth court with the social worker which I'm very much looking foward to.\n\u003cbr\>\u003cbr\>The highlight of my week was Sunday when I went to a malam (a traditional African fetish priest) with one of the older boys at the orphanage (he wanted something to help his football team win a match they are playing on Friday!!) I couldn't pass by the opportunity to experience this first hand so early Sunday morning we left... we had to take a tro tro to another village and there we began to walk into the forest. What a journey! We walked for about an hour through this incredibly dense, green forest - the air was so humid and the bush kept rustling with snakes fleeing as they felt our footsteps approaching. We met many people who were journeying through the forest - cocoa farmers and yam farmers, women carrying massive bundles of vegetables on their heads and men with machetes going to harvest crops. They were all so friendly and when I greeted them "akwaba" they would laugh and give me things - I collected two oranges and an avocado - they must have wondered what an obroni was doing so far into the forest! A cocoa farmer stopped us and allowed me to watch him collect the cocoa pods from the trees with a long pole, he cut one of these green pods open and showed me the cocoa beans inside: white and gooey and not particularly appealing! I tasted one, the gooey exterior is very sweet but tastes nothing like cocoa! (The seeds are dried in the sun before being transported to Europe for turning into chocolate). After about an hour of fast paced walking we arrived at the malam's house, completely isolated apart from one neighbour in the middle of this West African forest! As we walked through the forest nearing the house we were surrounded by the most brilliant butterflies I have ever seen in my life! It was incredible - butterflies of all sizes, gold and green and blue and purple, flying in front of me and next to me, darting from one bush to another - it was incredibly magical and apparently a sign of good luck.
Once we arrived at the house - a tidy compound with three mud buildings and straw roofs and a cooking fire in the centre, we waited for about an hour on a wooden plank while the malam was called in from his farm - we sat with some of his children and one of his wives (he has two). One of his sons had dreads and all the others had shaved heads, Ato (the boy from the orphanage) explained that this boy has dreads because the spirits have chosen him to become the next malam. As such he cannot cut his hair until his father dies, if he does then he will fall ill and die. The boy was bewitching! He had the most beautiful, sparkling eyes and kept shyly stealing glances at me and looking away! (I think seeing an obroni woman out there was a novelty!) The wives could not speak english but smiled and greeted me warmly with their presence, they wanted me to photograph them and laughed and laughed at their images on the screen! Eventually the malam arrived and we were permitted into the room (without shoes or socks) - the room was small and cool and dusty - in the centre was a shrine with schnapps bottles, two wooden post red with the blood of sacrified animals and surrounded by white feathers and a small bowl with black powder inside and two white eggs. There were various other instruments for diving and some obscure objects that were apparently a part of a spirit - the malam sat on a stool in one corner and we faced on a small stool - he had a kind face with smiling eyes and a gentle demeanour. He smiled at me and asked me to ask any questions I wanted (Ato translated) - I talked to him about the spirit world and his work as a malam and the traditions, I could write immensely about our discussions but this email is long enough as it is so I will summarise with the explanation that the tradition is ancient, passed down from father to son - the spirits choose the son who they want to become the next malam - he takes no payment for his work but gifts are required for the spirits. He said we all have spirits and when we die our spirits will leave our body and enter another (reincarnation!) but some spirits do not go into other human beings and these are the ones with which he communicates. He said he will prepare something for protection for me and my family and he told me that the spirits liked me so he allowed me to photograph him and the room (including the objects that were part of a spirit) - afterwards we sat under a tree with his wives and his children and he told me that he would like me to stay and become his third wife and provide him with white children!! I laughed and laughed and told him that two wives were more than enough! The wives laughed and asked me to stay - they were all so kind and welcoming and open that a part of me wouldn't have minded to stay in the forest and live with them!!So I am focusing my time on the orphanage. Writing a manual to help other volunteers and trying to work out a roster for jobs. I am also attending the social welfare office to see how social welfare works in Ghana. Yesterday I was allowed to sit in on a family mediation where a man had died and his family had not allowed his wife any of his property as they believed she had killed him by putting a curse on him! In Ghana women have very little rights under the law and if a woman wants to leave her husband she is entitled to nothing. She has to buy her husband a bottle of schnapps to appease him and then she walks away with nothing. Of course very few women will leave abusive relationships and the development of womens' rights is trailing sadly behind. On Thursday I am going to youth court with the social worker which I'm very much looking foward to. The highlight of my week was Sunday when I went to a malam (a traditional African fetish priest) with one of the older boys at the orphanage (he wanted something to help his football team win a match they are playing on Friday!!) I couldn't pass by the opportunity to experience this first hand so early Sunday morning we left... we had to take a tro tro to another village and there we began to walk into the forest. What a journey! We walked for about an hour through this incredibly dense, green forest - the air was so humid and the bush kept rustling with snakes fleeing as they felt our footsteps approaching. We met many people who were journeying through the forest - cocoa farmers and yam farmers, women carrying massive bundles of vegetables on their heads and men with machetes going to harvest crops. They were all so friendly and when I greeted them "akwaba" they would laugh and give me things - I collected two oranges and an avocado - they must have wondered what an obroni was doing so far into the forest! A cocoa farmer stopped us and allowed me to watch him collect the cocoa pods from the trees with a long pole, he cut one of these green pods open and showed me the cocoa beans inside: white and gooey and not particularly appealing! I tasted one, the gooey exterior is very sweet but tastes nothing like cocoa! (The seeds are dried in the sun before being transported to Europe for turning into chocolate). After about an hour of fast paced walking we arrived at the malam's house, completely isolated apart from one neighbour in the middle of this West African forest! As we walked through the forest nearing the house we were surrounded by the most brilliant butterflies I have ever seen in my life! It was incredible - butterflies of all sizes, gold and green and blue and purple, flying in front of me and next to me, darting from one bush to another - it was incredibly magical and apparently a sign of good luck. Once we arrived at the house - a tidy compound with three mud buildings and straw roofs and a cooking fire in the centre, we waited for about an hour on a wooden plank while the malam was called in from his farm - we sat with some of his children and one of his wives (he has two). One of his sons had dreads and all the others had shaved heads, Ato (the boy from the orphanage) explained that this boy has dreads because the spirits have chosen him to become the next malam. As such he cannot cut his hair until his father dies, if he does then he will fall ill and die. The boy was bewitching! He had the most beautiful, sparkling eyes and kept shyly stealing glances at me and looking away! (I think seeing an obroni woman out there was a novelty!) The wives could not speak english but smiled and greeted me warmly with their presence, they wanted me to photograph them and laughed and laughed at their images on the screen! Eventually the malam arrived and we were permitted into the room (without shoes or socks) - the room was small and cool and dusty - in the centre was a shrine with schnapps bottles, two wooden post red with the blood of sacrified animals and surrounded by white feathers and a small bowl with black powder inside and two white eggs. There were various other instruments for diving and some obscure objects that were apparently a part of a spirit - the malam sat on a stool in one corner and we faced on a small stool - he had a kind face with smiling eyes and a gentle demeanour. He smiled at me and asked me to ask any questions I wanted (Ato translated) - I talked to him about the spirit world and his work as a malam and the traditions, I could write immensely about our discussions but this email is long enough as it is so I will summarise with the explanation that the tradition is ancient, passed down from father to son - the spirits choose the son who they want to become the next malam - he takes no payment for his work but gifts are required for the spirits. He said we all have spirits and when we die our spirits will leave our body and enter another (reincarnation!) but some spirits do not go into other human beings and these are the ones with which he communicates. He said he will prepare something for protection for me and my family and he told me that the spirits liked me so he allowed me to photograph him and the room (including the objects that were part of a spirit) - afterwards we sat under a tree with his wives and his children and he told me that he would like me to stay and become his third wife and provide him with white children!! I laughed and laughed and told him that two wives were more than enough! The wives laughed and asked me to stay - they were all so kind and welcoming and open that a part of me wouldn't have minded to stay in the forest and live with them!!
I also attended a Ghanian/Duth rastafarian wedding on Friday night which was another experience altogether but I am running fast out of time as I must get back to the orphanage by 5pm for the study group I have set up...
Oh and something I missed in the previous email! While we were at the national park there was a scorpion in the bed! I had never seen a scorpion before and it caused a bit of a stir... to say the least! My fear of large spiders is well and truly cured though as I share my toilet and wash room (shower bottom with a hole for a drain and a bucket) with several large but seemingly friendly spiders...!
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