Updates from Jennifer

Below is a piece I wrote at the beginning of our days in Akokoamong, which was by far the best time we've had so far in Ghana. Sleeping on the floor of a classroom, making our own meals and even trying our own African drumming circle around a campfire the last night made this time a unique and powerful experience for everyone. Rural life was very different than city life in Kumasi, and the girls agreed that it was their favorite part so far. All are in good health and we're now in Cape Coast; this afternoon we'll go to Elmina Castle, one of the slave castles. I continue to encourage the girls to blog, but our very limited internet access (made worse by regular power outages) has made it difficult to keep you all up to date. I'm sure all the girls will post reflections after we return, and I'm hopeful that a few more will post in our last five days.

REFLECTIONS ON THE OUTSIDER EXPERIENCE

Katie and I enter the small Catholic church close to the end of Sunday mass and every head turns. Distracted from God and prayer, children and adults alike stare at us, the kids whispering and the women eyeing us with a sort of cool curiosity. Music resounds through the small, humble space, where the paint peels from the walls and people kneel with real reverence and hope, their heads bowed not because of the rules but because they are overcome with prayer. The air feels alive with resonant music and a kind of celebratory devotion I've rarely seen before, except perhaps in Black churches in the U.S. After the service ends, we're asked to come up front, to state our mission in Akokoamong and to introduce ourselves. No one speaks much English here in this rural village, and though obruni have come here before, we are still a curiosity. Our Ghanaian coordinator Wendy translates what we say, and they all cheer--especially when we share our Ghanaian names.

An old woman approaches me after the service ends--she keeps repeating my Ghanaian name, given to me by Sister Cecilia at Martyrs of Uganda Jubilee School: Adua meaning Monday born, and Nyamekye, meaning gift from God (she found it funny when I said I hoped my own mother would agree with the choice, surprised to hear me discribe myself as a difficult child). The old woman keeps saying something in Twi after my name, but all I can do is shrug and say I don't understand. Then Wendy appears to translate: the old woman has a daughter named Adua Nyamekye, she explains, and she's saying that means I'm her daughter, too. I can feel tears rising; her face is soft and kind, her smile wide. "Madasi," I say, "Thank you." And then I say "Madasi Mama," and everyone applauds and laughs as she embraces me.

I've almost always been able to blend as a traveler, I've been mistaken for a Spaniard across Latin America, I look like a local in the Middle East, and I take pride in my ability to adapt to the point that I can blend into almost any environment. But Ghana has been a different experience entirely. After a few days of feeling like a zoo animal here, I've given up and tried to embrace my role as the outsider, a serious challenge to my usual style. Ghanaians certainly seem willing to embrace us, to accept and welcome us in spite of how foreign I know we seem to them. Here in Akokoamong, the children follow us everywhere, peering in through classroom doorways to watch us paint alphabet murals for the nursery classrooms, watching our every move. There is always an audience here, almost as though we've traveled to be seen more than to see.

Two weeks ago, Amber and I were invited to a traditional engagement party in the far north, and we were the first whites ever to visit the small village. Part of the groom's entourage, we kept hearing "obruni" during the ceremony, which was essentially an extensive petition for the bride's father's permission--and then hers--to marry. Amber and I both felt like a distraction from the real point of the event; people kept standing up to take photos of us even more than of the bride and groom, one man even snapping a photo of Amber during the receiving line as he shook her hand. Several people blocked everyone's view of the bride and groom to stand and photograph us. When we asked later, however, my brother Kojo insisted that we were far from a distraction, and were mentioned only because we increased the value of the groom's petition. The groom's spokesman had basically said that the bride was so special that the groom had even brought obruni in his party, and he claimed that our presence brought Obama's blessings for the couple, a very big deal in a society that sees him as a son of Africa and the next great hope of the world.

I guess sticking out has always felt like a bad thing before Africa. Unwilling to be associated with rude American tourists and disapoionting American values, I've tried always to make myself disappear into every new place I visit. Maybe the change in our administration has helped make it easier to admit I'm an American, but part of it has to be the inherently welcoming, communal nature of Ghanaians. This is about being different in a new way; this is Africa, and I'll never be the same for it.

The entire church community of Akokoamong insists on coming to welcome the rest of our group. With 50 men, women and children alongside us, we walk back to the FST/Loretto schoolhouse. With all our students gathered, the community begins to sing a song of welcome and friendship to us. My new Ghanaian mother smiles sweetly at me from the crowd, and still singing, they all file past to shake our hands and welcome us. "Akwaaba," they say, pressing our hands and joining their voices together to make us one of them, still white but no longer outsiders, invited into this simpler life and the warm embrace of Africa. And I do feel welcomed, and I am changed.