Dancing and taxi rides

Recently my group attended a traditional Ghanaian festival—or, tried to attend one. We ended up showing up too late to see most of the activities. We did, however, get to see the procession of one of the queen mothers. In traditional Ashanti style, she was dressed in beautiful Kente cloth, with plenty of gold jewelry. I took a video of her coming towards us with her entourage, but unfortunately I didn’t get a good picture that I can post. Oh, yeah, by the way—I decided that I am not going to give up on posting pictures after all, because I stumbled upon an internet café recently that allowed me to post them. The problem is the café is about an hour and a half from where I am, so I might not be back there for quite some time.

Anyway, so the queen mother and her entourage stopped right in front of us with drumming and dancing and bells clanging, and the Ghanaian women started saying, come, come, dance with us! I and my friend Nan were in front, so we sort of got shoved into it…so both of us danced with the queen mother. Ha! Quite an unexpected event. But let me tell you, after being forced to dance in front of an audience of about 300 Ghanaians at the Kumasi wedding (during my second week in Ghana), dancing in front of any Ghanaian audience smaller than 100 people is a cinch J.

On a separate topic, I have discovered that taxi rides are cultural gems here. At the beginning of my stay, I rode almost solely in trotros (stuffed with people) or in shared taxis with other members of my study abroad group. Now that I have been here for a while, though, I find myself alone in taxis much more often, and let me tell you, my conversations with taxi drivers teach me a lot about the culture. Usually all I have to do is say one sentence in Twi, or introduce myself as Afia Boateng, and the conversation is nonstop from there. Some of the drivers, after such conversations, offer to reduce the original price or, in one case, not charge me at all. That stems from this amazing attitude among Ghanaians that you should always help people/do them favors, because one day they might help you, or if not you, then your children. So, as fond as I am of the trotros (that is half sarcasm), I’m really starting to enjoy the conversations that I can have when taking taxis.

One more thing—I think I’ve figured out why I never feel bored here. Although there is less reading and formal “work” to do on a daily basis here, I realized the other day that my analytic/academic skills are constantly being utilized, even if unconsciously. Every day, even after being here for more than two months, I find something aspect of Ghanaian culture to wonder about/puzzle about/ask about.

Ok, that’s all for now. Mabre, enti mereko (I’m tired, so I’m going to get going).