make way knowlton house

after spending a long day in the library and around campus last week, amanda and i had a realization... we are the goofy foreign exchange students of KNUST. perhaps you've seen us on your own campus sporting capris, sleeveless shirts, and over-the-shoulder bags. we are rarely found alone, frequently ride bikes, and enjoy speaking in our native tongues. the average KNUST male dresses in leather shoes, slacks, and a button down shirt. i, however, have chosen to defy these conventions with my sandals, shorts, and t-shirts. these wardrobe selections are less of a fashion statement than they are a survival mechanism to endure the 100 degree afternoons; although i do think i look pretty fly in my chacos.

mangoes and maize are in season (i say maize because that is how ghanaians refer to corn, not just because i really like alliteration) and i have been enjoying them regularly; lots of times we can pick mangoes right off of the trees!

tomorrow amanda and i are traveling to cape coast to visit with friends and to attend a musical show. my friend jones has been working on what he refers to as an opera for his independent research project. the opera tells several stories about kweku ananse (a spider) through high life and hip life music. the show features some of the biggest names in ghanaian music, none of whom you've probably ever heard of (reggie rockstone, maybe?).

my firing with frank has been postponed until saturday so i will be returning early to kumasi to help stoke the kilns. i was going to bring smoar and grilled cheese ingredients to cook over the fire, but then realized marshmallows and cheese don't exist here; nor do any dairy products for that matter, i haven't had a glass of milk in three months.

who's playing floralia???? does anyone still read this???

love, dane

on fufu

after three months in ghana, i confidently can say that i have learned to eat fufu properly. fufu is more than a food, it is an experience and i'll do my best to explain. although it is eaten all across ghana, fufu is the dish of the ashanti people. the ashanti make fufu with cassava and plantain, while others use yams and cocoa yams. ashanti fufu is made by boiling the cassava and plantains in a large pot. the cooked starches are then placed in a mortar by the 'turner'. pounding fufu is usually a two person job and the turner is most commonly a female. she sits in a stool next to the big wooden mortar and after each drive of the pestle, the turner sneaks her hand into the mortar to expose a different section of ingredients. the pounder is usually a man and they stand with a large wooden pestle (about 5 or 6 feet tall). the pair work together to soften the mixture of starches until they reach a soft, doughy consistency. fufu comes either soft or hard depending on how long it is pounded for. the turner then shapes the gooey concoction into a ball--usually between the size of a softball and a muskmelon if it is one serving--and places it into a bowl. one of three types of hot (temperature) soups is then poured on top of the fufu ball - groundnut soup (peanut), palm nut soup, or light soup (egg plant, which is known as garden egg); light soup is my favorite. a meat, either cow, chicken, goat, or fish, commonly accompanies soup. fufu can only be properly eaten after taking apateshi. apateshi, the local alcohol made from palm wine, increases one's apatite and two shots are frequently taken before one begins chopping (what ghanaians call eating) fufu. at restaurants fufu is always served in individual bowls, however, when one eats fufu with family or friends, it is usually served together in one bowl. before eating, one must wash your right hand in a bowl of water that is always provided. when eating fufu, you use your index and middle finger as scissors to cut off a piece of the ball. you then use your entire hand to form the cut off piece into a ball and to soak in in the soup. fufu, like most ghanaian foods, is a vehicle for transporting the soup. the ball is then placed in the mouth and swallowed, never chewed.after the fufu is finished, the eater can cup their hand to scoop the soup into their mouth. by the end of a fufu session, the eater's entire right hand (sometimes up to the elbow) will be dripping with soup; and the eater's fingers will be pruned like when you exit a hot tube after three hours. the right hand is again washed to end the meal. my mother in accra said that you can only eat fufu on sunday and then you must walk around the block and go to bed. for an ashanti, however, it's not uncommon to eat fufu everyday; many claim to eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, everyday! there is nothing polite, sanitary, or attractive about eating fufu, but i have grown to think it is delicious!

in other news.... this past week i continued to make the commute to frank's studio. his studio is in a village called adankwame, which is about an hour north of kumasi. there i have been throwing pots, digging clay, chopping wood, and firing kilns. i will be loading a kiln this week and staying over at the studio on wednesday to fire the kiln through the night.

today i went to the otomfuo tenth anniversary celebration. otomfuo is the ashanti king and he has held the golden stool since 1999. the celebration was held in the soccer stadium and every sub chief in the region gathered around the field to pay their respects to the king. the king gave a speech (actually is was his linguist who did the speaking for him), as well as the current president john atta mills, and the former president jj rowling. after the speeches and greetings, the king was carried into the streets and paraded back to the palace, it was crazy! there were so many people dancing and cheering in the streets and shooting guns into the air (ghanaian fireworks). it kind of reminded me of the parade after the red sox won the world series.

i hope final studies are going well for everyone, i'll be home in about a month!

love, dane

action

yes, it's true, you can see me and three fellow SIT students in the highly acclaimed, cinematic suspense thriller of the century: innocent souls. alex, amanda, toby, and i met kwame on thursday afternoon and naively anticipated a brief view of the ghanaian film industry. kwame took us to board a bus headed for the gold mining town of obuasi, about an hour outside of kumasi. we arrived fairly late in the evening at the super mambo hotel where kwame informed us we would be spending the night. despite our lack of preparation, we agreed and went to the roof top bar where we met the director of the film that we were about to star in. we woke up the next morning at 5:00am, but we were not alone. the entire cast and crew were also staying in the super mambo, and with them we boarded a bus to a near by village where the film was being shot. we ate breakfast with the cast and crew (about 40 in all) on location before filming. we first observed the taping of a scene in which a man fell from a tree while attempting to pick a mango. a thin piece of foam was used at first to catch the crashing man but after his first attempt, a group of men stepped in to catch him trust fall-style. the man hit his head on a rock and ketchup was used to show his injury. the director would keep rocks in his pocket and whenever someone on set was talking during a take, he would throw one at them.

next it was our turn. toby and i were costumed as middle aged fathers manning the barbecue at a saturday afternoon picnic. we played the parts of president obama's lawyer and body guard. alex and amanda were given outfits that were left behind after the last spice girls tour. they were 'our ladies'. the entire village (about 150 people) gathered to watch the filming of our scene! in the film, we had traveled to ghana with our friend david, who we met in america, to visit his family. what else happens in the film?? you and i will both have to wait and see. i do know that there is a godzilla like monster, and a small person (who was wearing a wisconsin badgers hat! and p.s. i saw another favre jersey yesterday!). we finished our scene and returned to kumasi.

on saturday i traveled to a village where i will be doing ceramics. it's an awesome outdoor studio with hand crank wheels and wood fire kilns. i will be working with a man named frank and his five friends and brothers. he is a former student of naab's and lived in china for two years teaching english and studying ceramics.

some new pictures are up! that's me and JK from the village, me and yemi, kintompo falls, and david with cassavas on his head.

love, dane

pictures!

three pictures made it up! hopefully more will come today. the first is from the canopy walk at kakum national park, the second from a soccer game that amanda and i went to on sunday. we watched kotokoo (from kumasi) play against another team from the ashanti region. they are playing in the otuomfo cup. otuomfo is the senior chief of the ashanti region and on the 27th of april he, and the rest of the region, will be celebrating his 10th anniversary as chief. we are going to the final match on the 22nd. the third picture is of an okomfoo or priestess; she was possessed by a spirit and telling us our futures.

on monday amanda and i picked up bicycles to make getting around town a bit easier. since then i have learned that the only thing more amusing to a ghanaian child than seeing a white person, is seeing a white person on a bicycle. amanda is now known by several children as the rough rider.

tomorrow two fellow students, toby and alex, will be coming up to kumasi from cape coast. toby and i scored roles in a ghanaian film that we will be shooting tomorrow. our friend kwame is a ghanaian actor and he got us parts in the film. i can't wait to tell you more about it! ghanaian films usually take about four days to produce so hopefully i will be able to bring a copy home.

this weekend toby, alex, amanda, and i are going to lake bosumti. it is a huge crater lake outside of kumasi and we are going to spend the weekend hiking around it!

a picture of a monkey just got up! hopefully i can get a few more on. have a great weekend!

love dane

back to kumasi

when i sat down at this computer i ambitiously attempted to load 50 pictures into an album... 45 mins later and i think 5 have loaded... but check um out!

http://s647.photobucket.com/albums/uu193/dbjorklund/

i hope it works. if it works, the pictures probably need explanations, but i'm not sure which ones have loaded, i hope they're good ones.

i'm back in kumasi! our estimated four hour bus ride ended up to be about eight, but we have grown used to that. i am here with three other students from my program doing independent research. we all lived together for a night and then split up a bit. right now i'm living with amanda in a hostel near campus, there are lost of students living there and it has been fun getting to know them. today i began working with naab after the long holiday weekend. easter is a huge celebration here. the entire city looked like the outer ring at the kentucky derby; women were in big hats and men in fine suits, and bright flowers were everywhere. the art studio on campus is busied by students finishing their final projects (one student is building a bed frame out of clay) so tomorrow naab is taking me to a near by studio where i can work.

more to come soon!
love dane

more accra

it's great to be back in accra and to have some free time here. yesterday i was able to walk around the university of ghana's campus; something i had not really been able to do even though we had had classes there. the buildings and greens are beautiful; i think maya angelou described the campus best in her book all god's children need traveling shoes - "the university of ghana with its white buildings and red tiled roofs loomed like a chimera atop legon's green hills. the moroccan architecture of arches, wide, low steps and loggia gave the institution an unusually inviting warmth." i eventually wandered into the library where the dust covered, wooden shelves and pull out card catalog drawers made me feel like indiana jones; and like in any good library, this one was very easy to get lost in.

i decided not to stay with mame vida (my former home stay mother) since returning to accra. as much as i loved her and her family, her home was very far away from campus. instead i have been staying with my friend jones and his home stay father papa quenu. papa is 74 years old and fought with the colonial army when he was 14. he was also the head of security at the university. i have enjoyed staying with him and hearing his stories. papa has a cat named moose, which i assumed was a twi word, but found out that he let a canadian student who was staying with him name the cat. papa has a preschool on his compound and spends most of his days sitting out side watching the kids play, listening to the radio and slapping him self dry with his hanky. papa has been hosting students from america and canada for over 25 years and he says that since his wife died, the only things that make him happy are the children and the whites. papa, however, refuses to host american girls; he will take canadian girls and american boys but he finds all the american girls to be troublesome. papa went to the hospital yesterday with malria but today he is thankfully feeling better.

tomorrow i leave for kumasi! i'll be staying there for a month and working with the ceramic technician at KNUST, naab. naab has set up a schedule for me and i can't wait to start working with him.

happy early easter!
dane

more touring

after two months of being away, we have returned to accra! it's wild how different it feels here after seeing so many other parts of ghana. here are some more stories from the tour...

i forgot to mention that our guest house in krobo had a pet monkey chained to a tree outside of the lobby. we liked to give rodger--as we called him--things like cell phones and pens and see what he would do with them. he usually would just stare at them and then throw them away; sometimes he would put them in his mouth. one afternoon corrina gave rodger a guitar pick which rodger liked very much. rodger held on to the guitar pick and when corrina reached to get it back rodger leaped at corrina and bit her leg! luckily we later found out that rodger had received a rabbis vaccination and corrina is fine except for a small scar and a whole in her pants.

in dagbe we visited a group of women who were tomato collectors and also played music together. we joined the women in their circle of singing and dancing and played along with them on the rattles. unfortunately the rattles (which were hollowed out gourds wrapped in shells) had a cool, dark inside that made a perfect resting place for cockroaches. as we banged the rattles against our thighs countless cockroaches crawled out of the gourds and scattered. the women were unfazed and smashed the bugs with their bare feet; we were all to busy laughing or crying to keep playing.

since my last post, we spent four nights in cape coast. cape coast is an old colonial town that rests entirely along the beach. on our first day there, i walked up the coast with some friends to the cape coast castle. as we walked we quickly realized that the beach has become a giant publicly accepted garbage can and toilet. although our walk felt a bit like what i assume traversing a mine field feels like, we were still able to enjoy a beautiful sunset over the gulf. as we walked back we saw a man walking to shore from the water with a string in his hands. as he surfaced we saw that he had caught a sting ray using a piece of rope with several bated hooks on it and a piece of Styrofoam. a crowed gathered around the man as he dragged the ray onto the beach where he took the hook out of its mouth and ripped off its stinger. the man then stuck his index finger and thumb into ray's eye sockets and carried off the beach.

we returned to the cape coast castle dungeon, as well as the st. george's (or elmina) castle dungeon where we were taken on guided tours. we saw the cells where thousands of west africans were held before being taken across the atlantic. i felt a similar denseness to the air as i felt visiting the concentration camps in germany and the killing fields in cambodia. both tours were emotional experiences but also provided me with a much greater understanding of the trans atlantic slave trade.

we travelled a short distance outside of cape coast to kakum national forest where we traversed the only canopy walk in africa. it was so high! we crossed a series of seven rope bridges to different platforms that were built around tree trunks. it felt the high ropes course at camp but more so. after our canopy walk we listened to a music group that lives and performs at the park. there group is called kukyekukyeku (pronounced koo-che-koo-che-koo) who perform to spread knowledge about social issues concerning the park and ghanaian life. they played instruments made of long bamboo shoots that they banged against wooden boxes to create vibrations. the different sizes of shoots made different tones.

i have three more days in accra before heading back to kumasi to begin my independent study! hopefully i'll have time to post again before i leave. hope all is well!

love, dane