Worked with Challenging Heights in Ghana from April 2016 to June 2018.
No matter what country you consider yourself from originally, moving to a new country comes with learning a whole new way of doing things. Here in Ghana, that can mean learning a whole new way of getting around town, getting around the country, getting new clothes and even how to eat.
One thing that I really appreciate about Google is their sporadic Google Doodles and how they encourage me to learn more about people I may have never heard of before. Earlier this week, they honored Ghanaian woman, Esther Afua Ocloo and I was thrilled to learn more about someone from this wonderful country and their contributions to the world.
In 1958, one year after gaining independence, President Kwame Nkrumah made a visit to Washington D.C. adorned in a rich kente cloth draped around his body. This touched off the use of kente among many Black Americans as it became adopted as a symbol of African history and pride. Muhammad Ali wore kente for much of the duration of his visit to Ghana in 1964. But what exactly is kente?
It’s difficult to go anywhere in Ghana and not notice the use of artistic symbols. They are seemingly everywhere: painted on walls, in the backs of plastic chairs, painted on signs, incorporated in cloth patterns and more.
The most ubiquitous is one that is round, kind of like if the “no” symbol, a circle with a slash through it, didn’t have the circle completed and there were bumps on the middle slash. These are adinkra, a part of the Asante culture that has spread throughout Ghana.
Travel around Ghana via road travel, and you’ll soon notice phrases plastered on the back windows or hatches of taxis and tro-tros (public transport vans). Many of them reference religious beliefs, but some of them are a bit more eyebrow raising.
Clothes are an integral part of any culture. They are used to denote status and rank, for spiritual purposes, for storytelling, for connecting with ancestors and any number of other things. They are also one of the most easily spotted and recognized marker of a specific culture. In Ghana there are a few pieces of clothing that are the traditional wear, and while it they may vary across ethnic groups, nationalism has allowed them to spread throughout the country.
For the past several weeks, every morning there has been drumming coming from the school near my office. Walking through town, the beats waft through the air from various schools and classes are sometimes suspended while the children arrange themselves in rows and practice marching. Ghana’s Independence Day, marking 60 years of freedom from colonial rule, is this coming Monday.
So much of the media surrounding Africa depicts places with mud huts, wide open spaces, people clothed in cloths or barely at all. Even if that portrayal is diminishing, those are the visuals in people’s minds when they think of the continent. Which is a big reason why I loved “An African City” so much.
Africa, probably more so than the other continents, is made up of countries with borders that were created without thought to the people who were living there. Ethnic groups cross these arbitrary lines on maps and some call multiple countries their homeland. These groups have different languages, customs and traditional ways of life. In Ghana, there are a few larger ethnic groups, that are often then further subdivided resulting in an estimated number of upwards of 70 languages.
One thing that many travelers will gush about when they travel somewhere is the hospitality that the people of other countries show to them. There are very few countries that I haven’t heard about their amazing hospitality. Ghana is no different. The people here are extremely welcoming. Even after being here for 10 months already, I still get greeted with, “Akwaaba!” or “Welcome!” at least once a week.