Anyway, we promised we would return before we left Ghana, as we had all been appointed positions in the village. When we were hanging out in the visitors hut/lodge we met the village herbalist who invited us to see some gwafs. Everyone was intrigued, giraffes? No, I realized, as he gestured towards the ground, dwarfs! Yes, of course I wanted to see dwarfs, especially because he said there were black ones and white ones. So we waited till the rain stopped to go to his medicine hut. The animal paws on sticks, sticking out of the wall on the outside by the door were a nice touch. Inside, I’m pretty sure the stuff splattered all over the wall was blood. There was a lot of random stuff on the wall, goat skins on the floor and a shrine in the corner. It was kind of intense. We all sat down along the wall and the herbalist started to call the dwarfs. He poured some black liquid on the floor that exploded into a cloud of smoke, he lit some incense, and he blew a whistle. Then he got up and from underneath a curtain pulled out a plate of mashed up orange stuff with two hard boiled eggs that rolled off, and bounced around the floor. He picked them up threw them back on the plate and explained that it was dwarf food, plantains and salt. From the way the eggs bounced, I thought it was fake, like the pictures of food in Egyptian tombs, or the food in model homes, but it wasn’t because he ate some and passed it around. Of course I ate some. You pretty much have to do what they tell you, eat what they give you, and go where they want you too in these type of situations. Then he drinks from a kettle and passes that around. Although the mashed orange stuff tasted like it had been there for a couple years, drinking the water was probably a worse idea, with typhoid and all. After all that, he pulls back a curtain to show us where the dwarfs will come, and there were 4 tiny little dwarf stools. It was a great way to spend a Friday night. But then one of us left to go outside where our tour guide, Kofi, was waiting because he was Christian. Unfortunately the herbalist said that because he had told the dwarfs that there would be 5 of us and now there were 4, they weren’t going to come after all. Man.
And I thought Friday was weird. Saturday morning we waited to meet with the chief who had been busy dealing with chieftaincy disputes in another village. (There was another guy in Wassa Domama doing graduate research on biodiversity and this one chief wouldn’t let him complete his survey, etc..) Anyway we sat and talked on his porch for a while. Apparently the drums we heard at 5 in the morning were to summon the people for our ceremony. Halie and I ended up being dressed in traditional clothes by the queen mother and some village ladies that didn’t speak English. It was definitely a process of one cloth after another and ended up with a gallon of perfume. We met the guys in their sweet traditional robes back out on the porch as a hoard of people and drums and ladies with towels descended on us. We started parading down through the village gathering more people and more ladies with towels fanning us and showering us with baby powder. At this point I was far beyond accepting reality. And I wouldn’t have believed that this ever happened except for the bracelet they gave me which serves as tangible evidence. We ended up sitting down in the community center, which was good because I thought I was going to pass out. I wasn’t really breathing because I was trying to keep my robes up, and it was really hot, and they were still spraying perfume. All I know, is those ladies fanning with the towels got me through. We ended up formally accepting our positions and taking an oath. Everyone cheered.
Now, no matter where I am, whenever I hear the call of the drums I must return to Wassa Domama. And then we danced and paraded back to the chief’s house. On one hand it was the craziest thing that has ever happened to me. On the other, it was a little unsettling. Maybe I have read too much about the white man being worshipped as the golden god or something. Anyway I think our real duties to the village are to act as ambassadors, to tell other people to go there and take part in the eco tourism project they have set up. Because although I humbly accept my position as linguist to the queen mother, I don’t know enough Twi, and she doesn’t speak English.
All that before 1pm. So then we went to a funeral. It was probably the most awkward funeral yet. I had to sit next to this cheif that kept asking me to marry him and there was only one person dancing in the middle of the tents. The music was blasting on speakers that were blown and was only turned off to announce how much money each party donated to the family. When they announced our contribution the family came over to shake our hands and give us cough drops. We didn't stay long. I really needed a nap.
One last note, that night I reached another milestone. I ate a face size bowl of fufu. Fufu is ground an pounded plaintain and sometimes yam dough blob that you eat with various stew/soups like groundnut (spicy peanut butter) or light goat (random "meat" particles). You usually order it by the price, i.e. I would like 2,000 fufu is about 20 cents of fufu or a large fist sized amount. We estimated the fufu they gave each of us was 8,000. I hit a wall about half way through but somehow I ate it all and I regretted it.
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Nice Blog :)
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