Trip to Drum Professor's Village

Introductory remarks
I seem to be on the homestretch of my journey in West Africa. I have just about 5 and a half weeks left until I board United Emirates on May 16th and come back to the land of familiarity. I only have one more week of lectures, one week of revision, and three weeks of finals. What a journey this has been. If you have followed along with my blog you know full well how jam-packed my life has been with new and extraordinary experiences over the past three to four months. Though I am so grateful and lucky to have a positive and definitely life-changing experience this semester, I will be ready to come home. It wasn’t until this past week that I really started missing my life in the States. It’s strange that after being here for about 4 months, I no longer constantly think about back home. Interestingly, because I have been away and out of real contact with the States, my life in Ghana has become my reality and I started to rarely think about my life in the States. It wasn’t until just yesterday I remembered how I have a car back home and how weird it will be to go back to my old life with law, order, and most of all, efficiency.

Trip to Drum Professor's Village
Last Friday I set off with my professor and about 15 other students from my Traditional African Drumming class to my professor’s small and remote village called Jajabo in the Eastern Volta region of Ghana where he grew up. While you may be used to blogs jam-packed with weird experiences like baboon attacks or the brakes going out on our bus – my trip with my drum professor was exciting in its own way. I got to completely experience the rural village life for three days. Eat what they eat, shower out of a bucket, sleep on cement, and yes use the toilet hole…. everything!! Even though we were quite the spectacle, all the villagers were so nice and curious about us. While some of the places in Ghana I have visited are camera shy, the villagers in Jajabo loved their picture to be taken and then to see themselves on the camera, so I took about 200 very cool pictures. The most amazing part of the trip was how village life carried on as it would normally as if we weren’t there so we got a real taste of what life in an African villager's life is like. For one of the first times during my travels here in Africa I didn’t feel like an American tourist peering in from afar at African village life – I actually got to submerge myself in it.

What happened?

Day 1 Arrival
Once we arrived, about 50 village children ran out to greet us. My hair was quite a spectacle once again. We stumbled upon a traditional ceremony (which happens one Friday per month) which consisted of traditional drumming and African dancing. I didn’t know this but apparently my drum professor is a very big deal in all of West Africa and is a sort of famous man even in Europe where he has played for the royalty. He is known as "Master Johnson" or "Master Drummer." Once we arrived at the drum and dance ceremony the villagers were so happy to see the drum master. After he hugged all his family and friends he grew up with, all the Ubronis (white people) were pushed into a huge circle of about 100 villagers and my drum professor told us to dance. As usual, people took one look at my dancing and were overwhelmed with laughter but, it’s cool, I’m used to that by now. The ceremony was a very interesting experience because I didn’t think that part of African culture was still alive in Africa. I thought the ritualistic dances in circles and traditional drumming was only something we see in anthropological “stereotypical African movies” or learn about in school and not part of modern village life. But I was wrong. That aspect of African culture tracing way back to their roots and ancestors is very much alive. To my surprise, all the villagers were dressed in beautiful, ornate, and colorful cloths with traditional African designs. It was sort of a surreal experience because I had to take a moment and acknowledge the fact that I was in the middle of some rural village partaking in an ancient African ceremony. Life doesn’t get any cooler than that. After about 2 hours of dancing, our drum prof called us over to this small hut-like building and gave us alcoholic shots of Apateshie (the local spirit or alcohol). It did feel pretty weird taking shots of alcohol with my professor (especially when he said “it burns so good,” but I suppose anything goes in Africa. The sleeping situation was a bit rough both literally and figuratively. Thin foam mats and cement not to mention it was about 100 degrees with no air circulation and yes, cockroaches. A lot of them. All made for a rough sleep but it’s a small price to pay for the experience.

Day 2 The Funeral
For the first half of the day we pretty much just played with the village children and wandered around and talked to the locals. Since it was a rural village they didn’t speak much English so our interactions were basically broken sign language. Our drum prof. then took us to a nearby village where about 300 villagers were celebrating the death of the village elder. Yes, I said celebrating… surprising huh?. Apparently here in Africa when a person dies at an old age, the funeral is not supposed to be sad. There is drinking, dancing, drumming, and traditional festive funeral activities. I personally think that’s the way funerals should be – a celebration of life not a mourning of death. It was pretty cool that we got to partake in ceremonial funeral, something I’m sure not to many foreigners get to experience. Who would have thought that during my stay in Ghana I would have witnessed a wedding and a funeral?

Day 3 The Chief
Before we set out to meet the chief my drum professor took us to his brother’s house where he said it was custom to drink alcohol before meeting the chief and to give the chief a bottle of brandy as an offering or gift. I’m pretty sure Master Johnson just wanted another excuse to drink with his students but in any event we sat there at 11am and drank hard alcohol with my professor. He sort of reminds me of our late neighbor Dalton Hudson. He is just the kindest and nicest old man you would ever want to meet who dedicates his life to making other people happy. He was so excited to show us around his village.
After, we got to meet the chief. When we showed up, the chief was surrounded by 2 village elders, some sort of guard in a toga, and a linguist who was an English translator. Interestingly, all of the “higher ups” were in exotic togas except for the chief who was only wearing a shower towel. I’m pretty sure he got embarrassed when we showed up because he quickly ran into his house to put on his chief toga and crown. On the way over, my classmates selected me to give the formal greeting as the ambassador on behalf of the United States. I must say it was a pretty epic moment when I bowed to the chief and said, “On behalf of the United States I extend my greatest gratitude for your hospitality and sharing the Jajabo village with us.” The chief then told his linguist to ask me if I could tell the royal council one thing that is unique about the United States as he himself had never been. I replied, “I come from a land of freedom and democracy. A place where all cultures come together as one. A place of hope.” For a brief moment I felt like President Obama. Even though my impromptu speech was a tad corny, it was still a very cool experience. After I gave my greeting to the chief, he stared at me for about 10 seconds and said, “Obama” and reached his hand out to shake my hand. I know it sounds silly now looking back on it, but everybody was dead silent and it was a really cool feeling. For some reason it really made me want to be in a position where I could have great influence in politics and law. After we met the chief we went back to the village and ate some fufu which is one of the food staples in Ghana. It is the smashed playdough-type substance that you swallow whole with a little sauce on it. I’m not the biggest fan of food you have to swallow without chewing because it tastes bad, but what are you going to do?
Anyway, the rest of our stay in the village was just free time. I walked around and played with the kids and spoke with the elders. I also saw a group of people making kente cloth with a huge wooden loom so I bought my mom a scarf and filmed the process. After another tough night's sleep we headed back to campus.

Corruption at school?
So, I know this story doesn’t really fit with the rest of the blog but I have to add it in. So a few days after we got back from the village I was in lecture and the professor started lecture by saying, “As you all know the professor evaluations will soon be administered. I need not remind you that how you rate my performance as a professor may very well effect your grade.” I laughed to myself and looked around thinking that the professor was joking. Apparently he was not. It’s a different world over here, his job must be on the line. I suppose I will never know if it was a joke or not but I suppose I am going to play this one safe and not give him a bad review.

IN CONCLUSION,
I have been thinking about this a lot lately so I thought it might be beneficial to my readers if I added this to my blog.

Changes
We are truly a sum of our experiences. That is, every single person and experience we come in contact with over the course of our life contributes in shaping our very existence on this planet. I never believed this to be completely true, until now. I thought I knew who I was yet also knew that I wanted to be more. I knew that I was a hard worker, had an exceptionally amazing family and friends, and lived a privileged life, but I knew that in a way I was living in a bubble. The privileged bubble of Fair Oaks and UC Santa Barbara is seeming more and more like a dreamworld which is simply not a reality for 99% of the rest of the world. Many of you had asked why I wanted to choose Africa, and in short I wanted to find the full potential in myself. I wanted my eyes to be opened to most people's reality. I know that sounds cliché, but I knew that there just had to be more to life than the suburban bubble. While studying hard and partying/having fun every weekend for much of my college life, UCSB has been a terrific experience and something I don’t regret but coming to Africa has opened my eyes to a different reality and further ignited in me the pre-existing flame to want to make a major difference during my short stay in this life. I know I want leave a major positive impact – and whatever that impact only the future can tell.

Thank you all so much as always for reading the blog. I will see most of you in just about 5 weeks. Anyway, enough rambling it’s time to get back to studying for finals.

Best,
J