Last week I fended an unexpected offer to be Queen Mother of one of the interns’ villages. What had once been a simple plan to celebrate Easter in the village was whipped into a frenzied weekend of royal festivities in my honor. The plan went as follows:
I was to arrive at the junction to the village on Saturday morning, where I would be met by the rented brass band and several strapping young men who would lift me onto their shoulders and carry me one mile into the village. Would they set me down? Oh, no they would not. They would carry me the entire weekend. On Saturday there would be a ceremony where I would be “enstooled” (essentially enthroned), involving lots of singing, drumming, and a bracelet of Queen’s beads more glorious than any of the “inferior” beads we had bought from expert local bead-makers. The bracelet would identify me all over the country as a Queen Mother. They would prepare a special room for me and I would feast on the best food found in the village.
On Sunday, the brass band would be traded for a sound system (a huge undertaking for a village without electricity), and the festivities would continue. The village, with about 15 households and no more than 200 people, was planning to pay for a radio announcement about the celebration the week before so that any community members living around the country could return home to join in. They would try to keep me as long as possible, but I could leave Monday if I absolutely had to.
I bet you’re wondering why me and what my role as Queen Mother would be. To answer the first question, the official reason I was given was that they were so happy with the two volunteers “I” gave them that they wanted to honor me in this way. As the elder representative of the organization, they felt it was only right to bestow this honor upon me. As Queen Mother, I would be responsible for the development of their community. After returning to America, I should remember them and send them assistance.
Let us take a moment to draw a picture of my relationship to this community prior to their decision. I visited the community with my Ghanaian counterpart Martha when scouting for new communities and met with the elders and the host families. We decided it would be a great site for two of the interns and placed them there. Now, I visit once a week and meet briefly with the families and interns.
While I was honored that they wanted to show their appreciation to our organization in this way and was a bit excited about the Queen’s bracelet and the title of Queen Mother (I’ve always wanted to be queen), I felt uneasy about accepting this responsibility. Let me count the ways:
Knowing that I wouldn’t actually live up to my responsibilities as Queen Mother, I don’t think it is fair to accept the title just for the honor and the bracelet. Too many politicians and people in power here sit in their fancy houses with their lofty titles and don’t actually do anything to help the people they are supposed to help. I can’t do the same thing, filling them up with hope and reverence for my title, and then casually and quietly disappointing them with my inaction.
I get that I am an “elder” among the group (even though Martha is older than me, so perhaps “elder” was not the only factor in the decision), however the interns placed there have a much stronger connection with the community. It is not fair to take this honor from them.
I don’t like the idea of being the focus of the weekend and the larger program for this community. Again, it is not about me, it is about the interns and the community.
I lived in a village in Cameroon for two years. If I was going to “assist” any community, Meri is the one I would assist, not a community I barely know in Ghana.
I am not comfortable with the idea that the village would spend so much energy and money to honor me when those resources would be better used in the community itself. Also, the whole idea that someone from outside the community is more responsible for its development than the community itself does not sit well with me. It disempowers the community and gives them a scapegoat when their situation doesn’t improve.
This was a big deal that the elders of the community had discussed and agreed upon. After discussing with Martha, who supported my reasoning, I felt that I had to turn them down. Martha called and tried to explain it to them (in the local language), but they would not accept my decision. In the meantime, the host community for the other two interns got wind of the first community’s plan and now they want me to be their Queen Mother too. Two Queendoms! What more could a girl want?
We are working on a swift resolution, but the situation underscores some of the major issues of international “development” work. For one, the projection on foreigners, especially white people, of the power and ability to make things happen that a community doesn’t think they can do for themselves. If they have the money to rent a brass band and a sound system and make Easter t-shirts for the whole village and buy the special beads for my bracelet and feed me delicacies, they certainly have the money for a small project. They absolutely have the workforce and skills for construction projects like latrines, water tanks, and classrooms. In this remote community, they could wait thousands of years for help that never comes, while ignoring the resources in their midst to build slowly, bit by bit. So the question I ponder constantly in my work is why do they wait? And I’m not looking for simple answers like they have so much farm work or no system for fundraising in the village. I am looking for the more complex psychology of being part of a community that has received messages that they need to change and “improve” their ways, and has all the skills and most of the resources to do so, but still, nothing happens.
Why?
Monday, March 29, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Water Warriors
On Sunday evening, after the interns had gone back to their villages, the power went out at the house. In case you didn’t know yet, it’s hot here. In the nineties with humidity hot. So with no fan, I went outside to get some fresh air. Martha’s three youngest kids, Martin (11), Albert (10), and Sarah (9), were outside washing dishes. We played and chatted for an hour or so and when the power returned, I went back inside to discover that the house had been flooded. One of the interns had left the showerhead on in one of the bathrooms and a lake had spread through the bathroom, the bedroom, the living room, the office, and into the hallway.
Martha took one look at it and said, “Well, kids, looks like you have a big job tonight.”
To which Martin replied, “We are water fighters!”
Just to give you some context on the kids, they are smart, articulate little bundles of energy and questions who I knew were of a special mold on one of my first meetings with them. When I first moved in to the flat at Martha’s house, I received a large, zippered bag full of plastic dishes, pots, pans, utensils, and various kitchen items left behind from former programs. Sitting for a year in a dusty storage room, they needed a good wash. It was perhaps my third day in the house, and Martha’s three youngest kids were eager to chat and help me out. They actually argued over whose turn it was to wash dishes and rotated diligently through the duty. Yes, three children argued about who would get to wash dishes.
In the wake of the bathroom tsunami, these same three children now picked up a mop, an old shirt used as a rag, and a couple of straw bundle brooms and began swishing, splashing, kicking, and sweeping the water out the front door. It took us a good hour to get all of the water out, and I must say the living room has never looked cleaner. The whole episode reminded me of the scene from the Pippi Longstocking movie (American Version), when Pippi dons a pair of brush shoes and has the time of her life scrubbing the floors. These kids know how to make any chore a good time. So, how can we get our American kids to be this good?
Martha took one look at it and said, “Well, kids, looks like you have a big job tonight.”
To which Martin replied, “We are water fighters!”
Just to give you some context on the kids, they are smart, articulate little bundles of energy and questions who I knew were of a special mold on one of my first meetings with them. When I first moved in to the flat at Martha’s house, I received a large, zippered bag full of plastic dishes, pots, pans, utensils, and various kitchen items left behind from former programs. Sitting for a year in a dusty storage room, they needed a good wash. It was perhaps my third day in the house, and Martha’s three youngest kids were eager to chat and help me out. They actually argued over whose turn it was to wash dishes and rotated diligently through the duty. Yes, three children argued about who would get to wash dishes.
In the wake of the bathroom tsunami, these same three children now picked up a mop, an old shirt used as a rag, and a couple of straw bundle brooms and began swishing, splashing, kicking, and sweeping the water out the front door. It took us a good hour to get all of the water out, and I must say the living room has never looked cleaner. The whole episode reminded me of the scene from the Pippi Longstocking movie (American Version), when Pippi dons a pair of brush shoes and has the time of her life scrubbing the floors. These kids know how to make any chore a good time. So, how can we get our American kids to be this good?
Martin, Sarah, and Albert, the Water Warriors
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Importance of Touch
On a hot, humid day in Ghana, as sweat drips from my chin and down my chest, there is nothing that I want less than to be crammed in the back of a shared taxi with a couple of men who claim as much space as they can by spreading their legs past the invisible boundary separating their seats from mine. Why can’t they be more considerate? Why can’t they stay out of my bubble? Why can’t it be No Touch Tuesday?
After a scouting visit to a school where the teachers were particularly touchy-feely with each other, my counterpart Martha, who is Ghanaian, says to me, “That’s just the way we are. We touch each other more than you are used to.
I like my space. If I am riding the subway in America, holding on to one of the bars, and someone grabs hold near me, I scoot my hand a little further away to preserve to formality of personal space, even if we are all packed into the car like a jar of jelly beans. I don’t think I am alone in this. The notion of personal space is an American construct, seen in everything from fenced yards, gym lockers, and apartment buildings to parking spaces, individually wrapped snacks, and arm rests on airplanes. Riding in an elevator with a stranger, we move to the farthest corners from each other, as if to pretend that we are not sharing the same air or being moved by the same pulley.
Here, I walk down the street and inwardly cringe when I get tapped on the arm by merchants in the market or someone who wants to chat. Added to the unsolicited touching is the ninety degree heat with humidity. I can manage being stuffed into a taxi or a tro-tro, but those extra few degrees of body heat from my neighbor, particularly a pre-teen fresh off the football field, is what makes me want to douse myself in ice water. How do people here handle all this touching when it is so hot?
After Martha puts into words what I’ve been observing for years in various parts of Africa (and the world), I decide to loosen my grip on my personal bubble and let it discreetly slip away. Just to see what changes.
What happens is this: I reach out. I feel the soft dallop of fuzzy hair on a toddler. I hold hands with a baby during a nighttime taxi ride while wind wrestles my hair and she searches my eyes for goodness, or whatever it is babies are looking for. I hug the host mothers of my interns more. I hold hands with the village elders. I snuggle on the couch with Martha’s kids, reading Harry Potter. Under the mantle of their body heat, I sweat off the idea of sterility left from my shower.
Even the merchants who tap me or the men who spread out in the taxis bother me less. They are just being themselves. It is I who is invading their space by traveling here and imposing my expectations on their routines. I still draw a line at harassment of course, but I am finding that by reaching out more and by letting down some of the walls around me, I am able to connect to people physically in a way that I can’t through uncommon language.
Once I realize it’s not about me, the obruni, but that I am just one stone in a cultural stream, bumping up against other stones, resting next to each other for a little while, I can see that if I include myself with people here, I become shaped by the same stream that pushes us all along, softening our edges over time. I am not being touched because I am an obruni, I am being touched because I am here. I become part of the community, the topography. I am not just visible, but present. I am seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling all my surroundings have to offer. And that is a good thing after all.
After a scouting visit to a school where the teachers were particularly touchy-feely with each other, my counterpart Martha, who is Ghanaian, says to me, “That’s just the way we are. We touch each other more than you are used to.
I like my space. If I am riding the subway in America, holding on to one of the bars, and someone grabs hold near me, I scoot my hand a little further away to preserve to formality of personal space, even if we are all packed into the car like a jar of jelly beans. I don’t think I am alone in this. The notion of personal space is an American construct, seen in everything from fenced yards, gym lockers, and apartment buildings to parking spaces, individually wrapped snacks, and arm rests on airplanes. Riding in an elevator with a stranger, we move to the farthest corners from each other, as if to pretend that we are not sharing the same air or being moved by the same pulley.
Here, I walk down the street and inwardly cringe when I get tapped on the arm by merchants in the market or someone who wants to chat. Added to the unsolicited touching is the ninety degree heat with humidity. I can manage being stuffed into a taxi or a tro-tro, but those extra few degrees of body heat from my neighbor, particularly a pre-teen fresh off the football field, is what makes me want to douse myself in ice water. How do people here handle all this touching when it is so hot?
After Martha puts into words what I’ve been observing for years in various parts of Africa (and the world), I decide to loosen my grip on my personal bubble and let it discreetly slip away. Just to see what changes.
What happens is this: I reach out. I feel the soft dallop of fuzzy hair on a toddler. I hold hands with a baby during a nighttime taxi ride while wind wrestles my hair and she searches my eyes for goodness, or whatever it is babies are looking for. I hug the host mothers of my interns more. I hold hands with the village elders. I snuggle on the couch with Martha’s kids, reading Harry Potter. Under the mantle of their body heat, I sweat off the idea of sterility left from my shower.
Even the merchants who tap me or the men who spread out in the taxis bother me less. They are just being themselves. It is I who is invading their space by traveling here and imposing my expectations on their routines. I still draw a line at harassment of course, but I am finding that by reaching out more and by letting down some of the walls around me, I am able to connect to people physically in a way that I can’t through uncommon language.
Once I realize it’s not about me, the obruni, but that I am just one stone in a cultural stream, bumping up against other stones, resting next to each other for a little while, I can see that if I include myself with people here, I become shaped by the same stream that pushes us all along, softening our edges over time. I am not being touched because I am an obruni, I am being touched because I am here. I become part of the community, the topography. I am not just visible, but present. I am seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling all my surroundings have to offer. And that is a good thing after all.
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