More to the point

I’m back home in Sydney after the Making Links conference and reflecting on some of the great things I learned about. A couple that may be of interest to readers of this blog are:

The Home Lands Project. Coordinator Kirsty Baird gave a great presentation on this internet TV project, which seeks to link young people from refugee communities in Australia with their homeland communities by making TV programs about themselves, on the premise that such connections build stability for young people settling in a new country. They are working with two communities in their pilot project – Karen and Sudanese. Young people from both communities in Melbourne have already started making programs, and young Karen in a refugee camp on the Burma/Thai border have also started. The project is still trying to establish links with a suitable Sudanese community back in Africa – they are looking in Southern Sudan, Kenyan Kakuma refugee camp, and Sudanese communities in Egypt. Wish them luck, it’s a great intitiative for which I can see loads of potential down the track, in linking many communities of different diasporas. Including, perhaps, mixed kids? Who needs Fox studios anyway?

The other initiative I want to mention is Africa on Screen. This link doesn’t give you a lot of recent info about it, but I think it’s a group of film-makers that formed after some Sierra Leone journalists made a  film in Australia – Darkness over Paradise – with footage they’d smuggled out of their country during the conflict. Bouyed by film-making tuition at Information and Cultural Exchange, a growing group of Africans in Sydney, from a wider range of countries, have been making more films. One, Colourblind, was screened at the Making Links conference digital arts festival. It was a moving short film about how racism can affect even people who are blind. It’s told entirely without words; very effective.

And finally, I didn’t get to finish my last post about the Aboriginal language Awabakal – just wanted to tell you that apparently the clergyman who wrote down the language in the 19th century was a Yorkshireman – and so when the community was trying to figure out how it would have been pronounced, they had to get in a linguist to ‘de-yorkshire’ it before they could proceed any further. Made me laugh – also made the token Yorkshireman who was at the conference laugh when I told him about it. So I leave you with this thought: how many other languages have been the victim of accent attack?

Making links with language

I am shamelessly promoting a conference that I helped organise – Making Links 2008, a conference for not-for-profits on information technology, web development, multimedia & stuff like that. It has nothing whatever to do with bicultural parenting, but … yesterday there was a fantastic session about a database and training program called Miromaa  which has been set up to record Aboriginal languages in Australia.

The presenter, Daryn McKenny from Awarbukarl, was passionate abnout this project, which is really interesting. The fact that the database includes pix and video of words & concepts and that he made his whole presentation using digital stories (including some cute animationes) rather than PowerPoint, made a potentially dry subject fascinating. I also learned that the Awabakal language – I think it’s from the  Newcastle area, where he’s based, was recorded by missioaries in the 19th century and the very first book of an ABoriginal language was published somewhere around the 1890s. So I cornered him after the session to talk about language preservation, and how his organisation Awarbukarl are figuring out how to rebuild a language which, except for a few words,  no one speaks anymore. He seemed happy to be cornered, it is his passion, after all.

Others at the session seemd more interested in the techie bangs & whistles, and I can’t say I blame them – although another presenter, open source advocate nancy Mauro-Flude later expressed concern about his reliance on microsoft technology. Gotta go, my internet credit’s running out! I feel like I’m back in Ghana …

Who’s who

Before I write any further on my life in Ghana, it’s time to introduce the family. It’s a significant point of difference between Africa and the western world, that I could describe who I was staying with in the US in a sentence or two, but here in Ghana, it will take several pages. Partly this is because I’ll be mentioning them more than my US rels & friends, so I want to give a more detailed picture of who everyone is, but mainly because it’s a large extended family and a bit more complex than your average Australian – or American household.

Starting with the immediate circle of those who are visiting from Australia, there’s DadaK and his other children, ActionMan’s half-siblings. The oldest boy is 9, and I’ve decided to call him 50 Cedis. It’s been tough coming up with a name for him. I considered “The First Black President of Australia”, because I think he has the political skills and the charisma to be that. But even reduced to an acronym, TFBPoA is a bit of a mouthful. 5O Cedis, on the other hand, captures his present day interest in all things hip hop, (including the moves), whilst acknowledging the Ghanaian roots.

After 50 Cedis comes Abrantie, 7, whom I’ve introduced in an earlier post (Music for Gentlemen, May). Abrantie means gentleman, but I’ve been having trouble remembering why I called him that recently. Something about a soft centre?

The third boy, who’s 4, is G Ketewa. Ketewa means little, or junior, depending on the context. G. Ketewa is the littlest boy, although only in size. These Australian-raised Ghana boys all have huge personalties, and G. Ketewa certainly knows how to make his presence felt and has high expectations of getting the same rights as taller people. This expectation is continually frustrated.

G. Ketewa is not entirely a psuedonym, because some of the family here do refer to him as that, although of course they say his name, not G. Like both DadaK and ActionMan, Ketewa is a Monday-born boy (Kwadwo – pronounced Kwadjo), and like DadaK, he’s his mother’s third born son (Mensah). By coincidence this is the same as DadaK, and so instead of naming him after the prophet Amos, as planned, DadaK and Obaapa named him G, after his dad. This is a fairly common practice in Ghanaian families. Here in the family, G Ketewa is called Ketewa to distinguish him from his Dad and reduce confusion.

In fact there are four Kwadwo Mensahs in the house. ActionMan is one of them, because DadaK uses Mensah as a surname, and the other is a cousin’s child whom Nana’s adopted, but I’ll refer to him as Daniel. On one occasion, when one of DadaK’s nephews, who was named for him, was visiting, we had five.

Are you still with me? Hope that wasn’t too confusing! The family do have ways of managing this confusion, e.g. by using Ketewa, and in ActionMan’s case by tacking his other African name on and calling him Kwadwo Asiedu. I begin to understand why Ashantis have lots of names – in any given situation, there’s a range of possibilities to chose from, to distinguish an individual from others – and am glad that we stuck to Ghanaian naming practice when naming ActionMan.

Speaking of which, nearly everyone here calls the youngest child (Treasure) by her Ghanaian name of Maame Frimpoma, rather than her English name, which is mostly used n Australia. And I’ve started calling her Treasure in real life. I’m wondering if I should change it her blog name to Ohemmaa. Oheemaa means Queen Mother, and she certainly rules the roost here. The mothers of Kings, in Ashanti culture, are more important than their wives, because you can only be a King if your mother belongs to the royal lineage. As her grandparents were co-founders of the family village of Mensakrom (the name’s a coincidence), Treasure may actually qualify as royalty, if the village ever gets big enough to have a king.

Treasure has started calling me J___ Maame, which is very cute, and I assume it’s to distinguish me from all the other Maames in the house, not all of whom are mothers. But I’ll get to that.

The person without whom this establishment would not exist is DadaK’s Maame, Nana (means Gradnma, but sounds more like Mama than the Aussie ‘Nanna’). DadaK’s mission in life for many years has been to give his mother a more comfortable life and he finally succeeded when about five years ago she moved from the village into this house, which he’s been building (remotely) for longer than I’ve known him. However Nana of course is very old and so she needed people to move with her to look after her. Her daughter’s family moved with her, and also two young women she adopted.

These two women are two of the other Maames. As I mentioned, babies are often named after other people, and these two girls were both named Maame Yaa, after Nana. This gave her the right to adopt them, which she did when they were children. Maame Yaa Penne is 26 and I first met her as a ragged teenager in the village. She’s now chief cook and bottle-washer for Nana, making her soup and fufu separately each evening. She’s also a seamstress with a collection of stylish wigs. I’ve yet to see her natural hair, and perhaps never will. When I need to go into the city, and on the already numerous occasions when we’ve had to go to the clinic, Maame Yaa is often our guide and chaperone.

Maame Yaa Ketewa, as you will immediately guess, having paid attention earlier on in this post, is the younger of the two. She’s in her late teens and is an apprentice hair-dresser. She’s very quiet, but every now and then surprises me by snorting with amused contempt when someone misinterprets my English, and correcting them. She’s usually right too. Hiding her light under a bushell, that one.

Nana’s daughter, Georgina, is really the main boss of the household. In her early 40′s, Georgina is Nana’s only surviving daughter and her youngest child, so she is also a Treasure. One daughter died in childhood, the other as a young woman from complications in childbirth. I’ve stayed in Georgina’s home the last two times I’ve been to Ghana, and we both agree that her English and my Twi have improved since last time. She is a fabulous cook. Everyone younger than her calls her Serwaa, which means Auntie, even her own children, so I will too. To Treasure, she’s Maame Serwaa.

Serwaa’s husband, Akonta, who I mentioned in my last post, hasn’t been around very much because he’s been working with a trotro driver, Bra John, who also has a room in the house. Bra John usually lives in a village near Mensakrom and spends the week driving around that area. He took us to Mensakrom when we went on an overnight visit earlier this week. Every Friday, he and Akonta come home and unload plantains, red plantains, cocoyam roots and leaves and sometimes cassava and avocados from the roof of the trotro. Sometimes he leaves on Saturday, other times he spends the weekend here.

Serwaa and Akonta have five children, although strictly speaking, the two oldest are from Serwaa’s first marriage. Her oldest boy, Gyamfi, came to Australia with Obaapa and the baby 50 Cedis, back in 1999. He’s now 21 and a panel-beater in Sydney but he came back to visit with DadaK, so for the first time in almost ten years Serwaa has all her children under one roof.

Serwaa’s oldest daughter is Afia Serwaa, whose beautiful smile I first captured on film on my very first visit to the village in 1993, when she was 9 or 10. She’s now 24 or thereabouts, still has the beautiful smile, and braids women’s hair on the verandah for a living.

Serwaa’s next daughter, Martha, is 17 and waiting to hear her Junior Secondary School results. If she gets good marks she can go to Senior Secondary – only another four years in uniform! In the meantime, she’s looking after the small grocery store that Serwaa has up at the local shops. She’d like to be a journalist, but if all else fails I reckon she’d do well as a model – she’s stunning. Martha and ActionMan have a lively, flirtatious relationship and when not threatening to beat him, she has offered to braid his hair for him. However since The Haircut in Germany, there’s not enough left to attach hair extensions to, so he’s settled for trying on Maame Yaa’s wigs instead. And very fetching he looks in them, too. Martha’s own hair is short and natural – apparently this is compulsory for school students.

These two girls, along with the two Maame Yaas, do the bulk of the work around the house: sweeping, washing clothes, cleaning, fetching water, food preparation, chaperoning obrunis. Maame Yaa Penne even washed our shoes one day. None of us honoured guests have to lift a finger unless we really want to.

Next comes Owuraku (sound like O-rare-koo) ActionMan and I both have fond memories of Owuraku, because he is only six months older than AM, and last time we were here he spent a lot of time with us. On one occasion he walked several kilometres with us to a neighbouring village. I was impressed by his stamina, because AM demanded to be carried most of the way. They both remember this occasion, although they were only three or four, perhaps because we stopped at a farm to drink palm wine. Don’t worry, it’s not alcoholic when fresh from the palm. Or so I’m told. Owuraku and ActionMan have quickly re-established their friendship, largely based on a shared enjoyment of wrestling (with each other) and watching action DVDs.

Owuraku is a serious and likeable young man who, like the rest of the family, has a beautiful smile. Also like the rest of the family, he is alternately shocked and amused by ActionMan. AM’s friends and family in Oz will all understand this reaction. His ability to simultaneously annoy and entertain obviously transcends cultural differences.

ActionMan also has a great ability to play rough, and this is much appreciated by the two youngest members of the family: Obaaku, Serwaa’s ten year old daughter, and Daniel. A few days ago ActionMan came home from a visit to the Kumasi Cultural Centre (an arts & crafts consumer paradise), with a wooden pipe, a walking stick and a gorgeous blue tie & dye shirt. He spent the evening pretending to be a cranky old African man: hobbling after them, brandishing the walking stick and yelling in abuse in a reasonably convincing Ghanaian accent. “You bad children! I beat you!” He had everyone under the age of 10 running around the house in hysterics. That was all six of ours plus two of the neighbours, Boahema (aka Catherine) and Kwesi, so it was a pretty wild night.

So that’s it. 19 of us altogether, if you don’t count Boahema and Kwesi, although perhaps I should, they spend so much time here. So far, I’m enjoying it. It does get noisy and the children demand my attention a lot, but there’s enough quiet time to compensate and I can always escape to the internet cafe. Plus the secret of getting time to yourself, I’ve realised, is not answering when people call your name.

Catching up

We arrived in Ghana around dusk just over two weeks ago, after a luxury flight from Frankfurt with personal video screens and a wide selection of movies we hadn’t seen. ActionMan wasn’t happy with the glare on his screen so we swapped seats. I was happy with this arrangement as it meant I got the window seat, and to enjoy the extraordinary experience of seeing the Shara from 10 k’s above. It’s like flying over the ocean, in that all you can see is colour without depth, except when there are clouds – huge, bright white cloud castles floating above a bottomless, sandy haze. In the distance, a layer of cloud marks a border between sand and sky. What a gift to be able to see this sight.

From the ethereal to the earthly. If in the clouds I could imagine heaven, our arrival in Ghana brought an abrupt stop to the sense of unreality that haunted the trip until now. Ghana is real. After years of saving, months of planning, hours of doubt and moments of pure fear, we have reached the goal right on schedule. And there, after we finally make it outside customs and immigration (having meanwhile dealt with another lost suitcase), are DadaK and Obapaa waving & calling to us. It’s an emotional reunion, even without the children, who’ve had to stay in Kumasi and wait for us.

ActionMan’s jaw dropped from the moment we hailed a taxi, and the driver nearly ran into the gutter (they’re often almost a metre deep in Ghana). It remained dropped for several days. When he got into the taxi and discovered there was no seatbelt, he said to me “I suddenly feel very vulnerable”, but was quickly distracted when his father started haggling with the driver over the price (finally reduced to $6), and abused him for being too old and needing to be pensioned off. He was also astonished, once we left the relative respectability of the airport zone, that there were goats on the road, fires beside it, cars stopped in the middle of it and no-one obeying the traffic rules. If you want to turn across oncoming traffic you wave at them and just do it. If pedestrians are in the way, you “horn”. Well, it works.

ActionMan laughed and exclaimed the whole way to our destination. To top things off, the driver nearly ran into the gutter again when we arrived. AM was still so shocked that a week later when he rang a friend back home, the taxi, and apparent lack of road rules, was the first thing he mentioned. From what I overheard of the conversation, his friends are probably all now thoroughly alarmed, because he went on to list everything else he found shocking or difficult. Don’t worry, it’s not all bad.

In Accra we stayed at the house of Dada Finn, the patriarch of Obapaa’s family, an uncle who lives in Britain and like many expatriate Ghanaians has built a nice house back home for one of his daughters and a niece. His niece, Naomi, cooked delicious Fante meals for us, the most memorable being a stew with onions, tomatoes, chillies and fresh fish cooked in deep orange palm oil (abe) & eaten with banku (cornmeal dumplings). Aaah, palm oil, how I’ve missed you! In Ghana, home of palm oil cuisine, people can afford to be lavish with this special, addictive taste-sensation ingredient.

We stayed in Accra until we’d farewelled Obaapa, who was leaving for Australia the day after we arrived, and had retrieved our lost luggage. Fortunately the piece that went missing for twenty four hours didn’t have any essential clothes or toiletries, so I didn’t lose much sleep over it, even though it was the bag with the Milo. We killed time with an early birthday party for Obaapa and a visit to the Accra markets to buy cloth, a dress for a niece who’s been named after me, and more umbrellas. Yes, it rained again while we were having fun, but the gaggle of girls in the dress & umbrella shop were more than happy to have us obruni (foreigners) shelter there for a while, especially ActionMan. I promised to bring him back in five years for the proprietor; I foresee I could make a tidy profit out of having such a handsome son. Heheh.

It’s probably just as well the rain stopped us shopping; we’d got confused about the currency and could have ended up regretting it. In the past year the Ghana Cedi has been re-valued, but everyone still seems to be confused about it, even DadaK. Almost everyone still talks in terms of “thousands” and “millions”, but there is no longer any such thing, at least at street level. A 500 ml plastic bag of water used to cost 5,000 cedis but now costs 5 pesewas. That’s roughly equivalent to 5 Aussie cents, although I still only have DadaK’s estimate for the exchange rate, so I won’t be convinced until I see my Visa statements. One of the lengths of tie-dyed cloth ActionMan bought me as a delayed birthday present cost 35,000 Cedis, or GHC3.50, or AUD $3.50ish.

The next day we picked our bag up from the airport and started the next leg of the journey to Kumasi: a short bus ride to Koforidua. This was easily one of the most scenic drives we’ve had in Ghana; we drove north-east over the hills past Aburi, which is famous for its botanical gardens.

Obaapa’s family live in Koforidua. The idea was to meet them early on our trip so we didn’t have to rush back, also we were traveling with Obaapa’s brother Acheampong and he was keen to go there first. In fact I’m not sure he’s really a brother in the Australian sense of the word, but he’s related somehow. We traveled with an entourage – Acheampong and DadaK’s brother-in-law Akonta – who carried and protected our luggage, bought our tickets, haggled with taxis etc. Acheampong has also been roped in, or perhaps volunteered, to be our guide when we do our tour of Ghana in a few weeks.

I think this is fairly normal for travellers, and not just special obruni treatment, because they all went to the airport to help Obaapa leave. With her overweight bags stuffed full of hair extensions she’d bought cheap in Togo, they had to get there early to bribe the small bosses before the big bosses arrived, according to DadaK. It worked, but she then got searched by Australian Customs. This is possibly related to the fact that in the past Ghanaians have tried to smuggle in foods that would wreak havoc with our primary industries, such as dried fish and live giant snails. (Though I, personally would think twice about putting snails in my undies and I think Ghanaian women would too!). The price you pay for good hair.

In Koforidua we stayed overnight with Obaapa’s eldest sister, Sisi, and visited one of her (same-mother/same-father) brothers, Kwadwo, who teaches at a private boarding school there. We got a tour of the school in the evening. In spite of old, weather stained buildings and fairly basic facilities, it was one of the nicer schools I’ve seen, laid out in lush, shady grounds. The students had lovely colourful uniforms. The boys wore shirts with a bright leafy green pattern on cream background, and the school crest in emerald green, tucked into long khaki shorts; the girls wore the same fabric in fitted dresses. I thought they looked great, tho I can’t see them being very popular in inner Sydney – way too bright & light for most Aussie teens I know.

It was lovely to meet Sisi, she’s a warm, friendly & hospitable woman and she looks so much like Obaapa. I always enjoy meeting people’s relatives because I love observing family resemblances – both the ordinary physical ones and the mannerisms and tones of voice. Sisi was a nurse in London until she retired a few years ago, and late 2007 she came back to be with her mother, who died earlier this year. Again, we were staying in a house built by an expat, and it was very comfortable and easy, compared to previous trips where I’ve been mostly in the village. Mosquito nets on windows! Lights! Fans! Fridges! Soft couches! Cake! Flush toilets! Except the toilets didn’t work because the water supply had been turned off. “This is one of the things I hate about Ghana!”exclaimed Sisi when she found out. “They turn the water off, they turn the power off, you never know when!”

I met two more brothers and another sister in Koforidua, and quite a few other relations, including an adult daughter of Akonta’s that I didn’t know existed. As usual in Ghana, there were lots of people to shake hands with, and it was hard to remember them all.

We only stayed overnight, we were all keen to get to Kumasi. We’ll be back, anyway. Fortunately DadaK did not, as threatened, rouse us at 4.00am for the government bus, we had a more leisurely start and caught a regular bus. When I learned that Government buses don’t have seatbelts either, I wasn’t entirely sure what the advantage was in catching them. Faster perhaps? Softer seats maybe? Assurance of immediate, rather than lingering death in case of accident? I guess I’ll find out sooner or later.

Before we left Koforidua I had the gratification of confirming that Obaapa is indeed an adinkra symbol. (Incidentally, I’ve been spelling it wrong, I’ll correct it later). In one of my first posts to this blog I explained that Obaapa means good woman and there is an adinkra symbol bearing the name. But when I checked adinkra sites and googled it, I couldn’t find it. I’ve decided Google is inadequate when it comes to Ghana. But when I came out of the house wearing a dress made from the cloth I’d bought when here in ’98, one of the women exclaimed “obaapa!” and I knew now that it wasn’t a story made up for tourists, a mistake, or my imagination. Obaapa exists!

Sorry it’s taken so long to get even this up to date – various complications which I’ll tell you about at a later date. But mostly, all is well.

Castles, caravans & cargo

Apologies for getting into the alliteration again, but if there’s one thing I noticed about German Rivers, it’s these three c-words. Castles littered along the hillsides, caravan parks along the foreshores, and barges carrying cargo, which incidentally, from what I could see that wasn’t under tarpaulins, was mostly coal, shipping containers and cars. We also got a good look at allotments – I don’t know what they’re called in Germany, but I assume it’s a similar system to what I first found out about in The Netherands years ago – where urban apartment dwellers have a little block of land they can use for everythng from growing vegies to boucing on a trampoline. I like the idea, it would make apartment living more bearable for me, to have that system in Sydney. Civilised!

On our last day in Germany we went to look at a castle from closer quarters. This was not as easy as you might think. German tourism seems more geared towards people with cars, and with more than a day or two at their disposal. If there is a website that offers detailed, comprehensive info about day tours to castles, I didn’t find it, even though I probably spent as much time researching what we’d do, as we spent traveling to & from, & touring the castle we finally went to. I’d also expected Frankfurt to have more information about castles, but again, if they have it, I didn’t find it. The focus is on the city itself, rather than the surrounding regions.

I narrowed it down to two options: Markesberg and Guttenberg, and decided on Guttenberg, mainly on the basis of the information that it had a falconry and a bird show. It was also one of the least damaged of the castles and was in the opposite direction to where we’d traveled the day before, so we’d be covering new ground (Markesberg is on the Rhine).

Overall, it was a good choice, for the view from the three different trains we had to catch was again beautiful, with the ubiquitous picturesque villages alongside the winding Neckar river, with the usual barges and watergates (locks). (I wasted a lot of pictures on locks the day before, I was so fascinated by them). There was also a beautiful walk from the station, alongside fields of rye fringed with red poppies and other wildflowers.

The castle itself was impressive, with all the right ingredients: metre thick stone walls, archery slits, a classic privy jutting out from the wall, a dizzying tower and a commanding view of surrounding territory, which included another castle on the opposite hill. The museum, housed in one of the smaller towers, boasted a rack, a collection of rare wooden books, each made from and showcasing a different plant, and some ancient guns, the wooden butts as thick as telephone poles. There was also a collection of carved wooden trophy-style stags heads, a number of real, stuffed trophy heads, and numerous engravings of hunting by famous 18th C engraver Johaan Ridinger. I wondered if there are still stags in the surrounding forests. Somehow I doubt it.

I resolved that one day I’d come back to visit Guttenberg and other German castles at a more leisurely pace – and with someone who could join with me in savouring every moment. To be fair, ActionMan did spend a bit of time looking through the museum, but he’s more in the business of fast impressions than deep absorption – at least when it comes to historical stuff. He was more interested in the collection of birds of prey which were on display in the castle moat. Once again, he grabbed the camera and took off. He has some great pix of some quite sinister looking owls (online soon).

The Bird Show however, was disappointing. Had we been fluent in German it would probably have been at least informative & judging by the laughs, entertaining. But we aren’t. I wasn’t expecting it to be in English, but I was expecting it to be more visually engaging. Perhaps someone will correct me, but I think the Taronga Zoo bird show in Sydney is very entertaining without requiring the audience to understand much of what’s being said. Plenty of action & movement, and a flock of white doves swooping low over the crowd provides wow factor from the word go. The Guttenberg Bird Show had perhaps 10 minutes worth of winged action within about 75 minutes of lecture.

After patiently waiting for more excitement than an eagle snapping a dead chicken out of the air could provide, ActionMan resorted to the i-pod in a corner. Ok, that bit of action was exciting. We just wanted more. Unfortunately we were sitting in a spot from which there was no way of exiting without the whole crowd seeing us. I’m sorry to say I preferred boredom over embarrassment, but it did mean we missed the early train and didn’t get home until around 8.30.

This was another night of kebab for him and Pad Thai for me, but we did have a delicious lunch at Guttenberg, which satisfied my feelings that I should have one authentic German meal before we left. Apart from yummy pastries and cheese and salad rolls from the bakeries that are on every corner, we’d basically been living off anything but ‘German’ food: pasta, kebabs, Thai and Indian. ActionMan had a curry at Guttenberg but I had herb-crumbed lamb steaks with veg & potatoes – very tasty. Followed by such a large serving of ice cream with hot raspberries and whipped cream that I thought I’d space-warped back to the USA. It was a tough job, but between us we finished it off.

The Lingo Limbo Part 3

For years, I have been wanting someone – The Ghana Association perhaps, or DadaK’s church – to start Twi language classes for children. But, perhaps for the reasons I’ve speculated about in Lingo Limbo Part 1, no one has. And at some point last year I finally realised that if you really want something to happen, you have to do it yourself. Not that I wanted to start a language school – I’ve got quite enough on my plate thank you – but I decided to find a tutor.

My first step was to advertise on AfricanOZ, the website for all things African in Australia. I’d seen ads there for tutors in other languages, so I thought I’d try my luck – but got no reponse. I hope others were luckier than I.

A few weeks later at work I was talking with a worker from the Multicultural HIV and Hepatitis C website, and remembered that they had Akan transalations on their site. I asked him if their Akan worker would be able to help. (Twi is an Akan language & sometimes called Akan).  He got back to me a few days later with a recommendation that I try the Ghana Association. Der. Why didn’t I call them in the frst place? Well, I’d looked on their website & hadn’t found anything, I guess that’s why. But this time I called the President – whom I’d actually met (again, der!) – and he put me in contact with Tikyani (means teacher – you pronounce it Ticha-nee. More or less. For some obscure reason which one day I may discover, ”ky” in Twi is pronounced “ch”).

Tikyani, it turned out, had done the Akan translations for the Multicultural website, although he wasn’t the Akan worker there. (I felt I was going in circles at this point – you can see why I called these posts the Lingo Limbo?) I got the impression he was a bit of a Twi language resource, for his community, but he wasn’t actually a qualified teacher and hadn’t ever tutored anyone before. I was prepared to give him a try – at least he’d offered!

Actually the lack of qualifications hasn’t been too much of a problem for me, but I think it would be helpful to ActionMan to have more structure. Our lessons are fairly informal & involve a lot of chat about the language. He gets a bit bored. I really enjoy them, but then I have a bit more of a grasp of the language than ActionMan, and I’m also not embarrassed to make a fool of myself trying to pronounce things. But when you’re 13, almost everything is embarrassing.

What I am embarrassed about is the fact that I first spoke to Tikyani last October and since then we have only managed to have three lessons! There have been good reasons for this – illness & injury (AM’s recently become very accident prone), holidays, work commitments, the burden of travelling half way across Sydney, a death amongst our friends which threw us into a time warp for several weeks, and all the kerfuffle surrounding DadaK & Co’s departure for Ghana last month.

However perhaps the most significant obstacle was ActionMan’s point blank refusal to continue with it, after suffering more than usually acute embarrassment in our third lesson. It went like this: in lesson 1, we did the alphabet & unique Twi sounds. In lesson 2 we looked at personal pronouns, and Tikyani set us the homework of tryng to construct some sentences. When we came to discuss these in lesson 3, one of AM’s sentences was “I’m going to eat you” (as in “I, the monster, am going to eat you”).

The problem is, as we soon discovered, that in Twi you cannot put the words “eat you” togther in that order unless you are asking someone to have sex with you. Need I say more? Actually Tikyani handled it well, but ActionMan was squirming.

It was after this that ActionMan announced he didn’t want to have lessons anymore, and I plunged into a “bad parent” trough of depression. Why didn’t I start when he was smaller? Am I wrong to force him? He’ll regret it when he’s grown up! Will Tikyani teach me if AM’s not doing it? Oh I’ve failed, failed, failed!

Of course troughs of depression are seldom useful in taking your life forward, unless you take the opportunity to have a good cry, after which you feel much better. So that’s what I did, and managed to climb out of the trough and gain a better perspective.

I do think it’s important for him to learn the language – it could make a big, positive difference to his life. He said he just wanted to wait and learn while in Ghana, but I think he needs to have a bit of a head start & some of the basics before we get there. 

So I decided to stick to my guns, but to try and make the lessons work better for him - perhaps he only sits in for a short, structured session & doesn’t have to hang around for the chat. I also decided that I would resort to a parenting strategy of which I normally don’t approve: Bribery. I’m doubling his pocket money on condition he does classes and worksheets (that I’ve devised). It worked – or has worked so far. He’s wanting to pay for a new i-pod, so he’s been doing the worksheets, and our first class, after a long hiatus, is tomorrow afternoon. I’ll keep you posted.

The Lingo Limbo Part 2

When I was about 11, I read the first two books of Lord of the Rings. Like Sam & Frodo, I got lost in the dour lands of Mordor; unlike them, I didn’t make it to the end – at least not that time. LOTR made a lasting impression on me in many ways, but in particular, it left me, as it did many others, with a strong desire to create my own fantasy world, complete with maps, languages, and mysterious dark strangers. And that’s how I spent much of my early teens. (This was pre-internet – there are now whole websites devoted to Tolkien’s Elvish).

What I didn’t realise at the time was that Tolkien was a language expert. He was professor of both English and Anglo Saxon at Oxford University, and the languages he created were far more than just collections of nice-sounding syllables. I guess that’s why he managed to create a satisfactory language, whereas I got seriously distracted by the mysterious dark strangers

It’s really only since getting to know Ghanaians that I’ve come to appreciate the uniqueness and complexity of languages, how profoundly they differ, and how they enable you to gain a deeper understanding of culture.

Learning a language opens windows in your mind, especially when it’s a language that’s very different from your own. When I first heard DadaK and his friends talking together, I was astonished. It was an incomprehensible flow of sounds like no other I had ever heard. With time, I began to recognise some specific words, and learned some basic things like hello, how are you, and thank you.

ActionMan, in his early childhood, also understood and could say a few simple phrases, although it was a bit of a joke between ourselves and another mixed couple we knew, that their son was good with the language but not the food, and ActionMan was the opposite: not crash hot with the lingo, but enthusiastic papapaaa (very) about his Dad’s cooking.

It was on my second visit to Ghana, when ActionMan was three, that I really started to make progress. I was there for about 7 weeks, and on many nights in the village I woud sit ouside after dinner, with a bunch of kids teaching me vocabulary.

“Banana – kwadu, onion – djenne, yam – byere“, they would chant, and I would recite them back. (Please excuse the spelling, I know it’s not right, but I don’t yet have a Twi keyboard).

By day I would ask people to help me with common phrases, and by the end of the trip I could say things like “where is DadaK?” DadaK wa hin?  “I’m going for a walk” me ko nante, and even “circumcision is not good” kotiboto nye! (This last one shows how I was venturing into more sophisticated territory – the world of ideas – & caused much hilarity because no-one had realised I knew what they were talking gossiping about.)

ActionMan didn’t do so well. Had we stayed longer I’m sure he would have picked up the language but as it was, he found it very hard it be around people who didn’t understand him – or he them. He had a great time, but also had night terrors, which he never had back home.

After this visit our education stalled because DadaK and I separated and we no longer had the frequent exposure. And as I mentioned in the lingo limbo part 1, it’s easy for DadaK to communicate in English with us, so he does.

Over the years since our 98 visit , I have asked DadaK to teach ActionMan, and he has tried, when AM’s with him, to speak the language, but it hasn’t helped much. I think you do need formal classes, unless you’re living with someone full time, and there were none.

However with the arrival of Obapaa and subsequently of more children, our vocabulary has expanded again, little by little. We’ve now learned those phrases common to large families such as “He hit me”, “stop that or you’ll get a smack”,”be quiet”, “he’s sick”. (o yare) etc. Sorry, no translation for unfriendly phrases.  ActionMan particularly relishes the fact that he knows how to tell someone they are stupid in Twi.

So the time has really come for us to be able to say more than kotiboto kwadu (have you been paying attention? see above), and over the last few months I’ve sought out someone to teach us Twi. I have to rush off to the BMX track now (it’s school holidays), but at some point after I get back I’ll continue the lingo limbo saga.

The lingo limbo

Border Crossings was recently discovered by another blogger, Gori Girl, who is a white US woman married to an Indian man. She has written some excellent posts about learning her partner’s language (Bengali), which is a wonderful concidence for me because learning DadaK’s language, Ashanti Twi, is currently pretty high on my very long list of things to do.

It’s great to know there are other people out there heading in the same direction. Gori Girl also recommends some useful resources, which I’ll be taking a look at when I pause to draw breath from passport applications, vaccinations, buying luggage and general travel planning. Which may not be until I am actually in Ghana, in early June.

Learning Twi has been on my list for a long time, for many of the reasons Gori Girl lists – better understanding of culture, not getting left out of jokes, better communication, etc, but it’s been catapulted to the top because of the imminent trip to Ghana. I’d like ActionMan to be able to talk to his Grandmother, even if it’s just a very simple conversation, and I’d like to be able to do more than tell people what I want to eat (Me pe abenkwan).

However the main reason it’s taken a long time to get to the top is because – surprise, surprise – it’s not the kind of language where you can sign up for a course at WEA any day of the week. There are no courses. There are, as far as I know, no qualified teachers, at least not in Sydney. There are not even any classes for children, as there are in the Arabic, Vietnamese and other communties. I don’t know why this is so, but I can speculate.

English is the official language in Ghana and children are taught it in school, so perhaps Ghanaian migrants don’t think it’s that important for the children to learn their own language as other migrants do, because they can always communicate with their children in English. Of course children do learn at home from parents, but I don’t know if they speak it as well as they would if supported by classes. DadaK does complain that his other childrens’ grammar is all wrong.

Perhaps it’s just because they are a relatively new community (only about 20 years old) and small compared to the Lebanese, Vietnamese and other communties that have language classes. It could be that it hasn’t yet become a priority because they have been dealing with so many other issues related to settling in a new country. Also, because they are not refugees, they don’t get the same level of support & services that other African communities do. Tho I’d probably be hard pushed to find a Dinka class if I needed one, too.

Another reason maybe lies with the nature of Ghanaian, and perhaps all African languages. The Ethnologue.com language map for Ghana lists 67; Wikipedia reckons there are 79, although it could be that Wikipedia’s list includes some of the dialects as discrete languages. This is in a country the size of Victoria.

While most Ghanaians in Sydney are Ashanti Twi Speakers, there are certainly other language groups in their community, and this would have an impact on setting up language classes. First, there’s the practical difficulty of finding teachers and resources in exactly the right language/dialect. Then there’s the politics. Which I won’t go into, but you can probably imagine.

This also makes it difficult to learn the language independently. For example, I found a dictionary in a language bookstore which I’ve been using – but it’s Fante Twi, not Ashanti Twi. The differences are small, but confusing enough to be discouraging.

So all in all, it’s not straightforward to learn Twi in Australia, and I’ve had to put in a fair bit of effort to get as far as I have. But the more I learn, the more fascinating it is, and the more fun I’m having. There’s a lot to tell, so I’ll save my stories for another post.

Come back soon for Part 2 of the Lingo Limbo.

Wo din de sen / What is your name?

Do you have one, or many?

If you are of Ghanaian background, you probably have quite a few: day names, given names, family names, Christian names, nicknames, order of birth names, thank-god-you’re-here names, etc. etc. DadaK has quite a few, and they vary depending on who he’s with. He’s K to his wife, which is an abbreviation of his day name. I call him by his Christian name, which is how he introduces himself to white people. Some of his friends call him Opia, which is a nickname that corresponds to his order of birth name, and other friends (the younger ones) call him Uncle.

Confused? Yes, and loving it.

But don’t think Ghanaians have a monopoly on interesting naming practices. I too have many names. When I was growing up in rural NSW my cousin called me Fred and the swimming pool attendant called me Frank. (Did I mention I’m female?). My Dad was called Bill but that wasn’t his real name & some people in the community were convinced there were two of him. I was surrounded by people called things like Bluey (red heads) and Snow (white hair). Not to mention the Smithys, Gazzas & Mazzas …

As a young adult I had an identity crisis and changed my name myself for a while, to Jess Walker (J-walker, get it?) and Ghanaians who met me during that period still insist on calling me Jessie. I kind of like that. Some of the family in Ghana call me Mama J – hence the name of this blog. Maame is Ghanaian for Mum, and MamaJ was already taken as a blog name (grrr).

My Ghanaian day name is Afia & I am fourth born – Annane. I’ve known this for years but it was only quite recently that I made the connection that this is the feminine version of Kofi Annan! What’s also cool is that I probably share this name with thousands of people!

As stated in a previous post, I’ll be using psuedonyms here and I may expain them as I go along. Or not. But just for the record – I think DadaK & ActionMan (our son) are pretty obvious & I’ve just explained MaameJ. I’ve dubbed ActionMan’s stepmother Obapaa, which means good woman. And she is, but it’s also the name of an adinkra symbol which is commonly seen on Ghanaian cloth. (Actually I can’t find it online, but that’s what DadaK tells me. Perhaps he was having me on? I’ll keep you posted.)

I haven’t come up with names for ActionMan’s half-siblings except for his baby sister.  After four sons DadaK and Obapaa had a daughter, and her (real) name is in the ‘thank-god-you’re-here category’. I’m sticking with that trend, and am tossing up between Gifty and Treasure. Stay tuned …