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| The three women when they presented me the gift |
I can’t deny how negative some of my views of the village
life is, but I also can’t ignore all the wonderful moments of peacefulness,
kindness, generosity and cultural richness.
One prominent tradition is calling someone by the day of the
week they were born on. I was born on a Tuesday, the word for that is Kuma.
However Elaine was also born on a Tuesday, and as my caretaker she is like my
bigger sister, so the word Abra, meaning little, is put in front of Kuma. My
name became Abra-Kuma, or Little-Tuesday. As I reflected on this I began to
think of the significance of Tuesdays for me. Tuesday was the day of the week I
left Sydney to come to Africa.
Tuesday is also the day of the week I was due to arrive back home in Sydney
in four months time. I wondered what else Tuesday’s would have in store for me.
One day I had tried to escape the watchful eye of Sammy and
took myself off for a walk when I had meant to be at my hut ‘resting’. I had
not gotten half a kilometre away when Sammy ran up behind me. He lectured me
for walking off without him and I thought ‘how ironic! I manage to make it
across the other side of the world only to be told I can’t walk a kilometre on
my own’. But Sammy had explained to me that I was his responsibility, and
besides, if I had crossed into one of the other villages I would have to know
to go to the chiefs of that village and tell them my mission for being there,
and well, I don’t speak Ewe.
We did continue walking into the next village, and as
expected of him Sammy presented me to the chiefs and explained that our mission
was just a friendly hello. There are a set of rules to these interactions, and
although it could seem tedious to perform, I liked that the culture, the
history and respect is still alive here.
When the female children bathed I noticed the Jonu beads
around their waste. I asked Joanna the meaning of these beads, and was told
they serve three functions. First, when it is on young babies the mother can
gauge whether or not the baby is gaining weight. Secondly it is believed that
they shape the woman's figure desirably so that the bottom will stick out. Thirdly she
told me that when it comes time for sex the man can be sure she is a woman
because of the beads; "if she isn't wearing the beads how will he know she is a woman?" … I didn’t answer.
I worry about the future of these traditions, the future for
villages like this. I personally don’t want to see the world Westernised and
colonised by globalisation. But of course who am I to so selfishly say that
things should stay the way they are. If these people want to live in apartment
blocks, drive Audi’s shop at Woolworths and eat pizza then who am I to say that
shouldn’t.
But despite all the negatives I found in the village, I also saw a
lot of beauty, and I saw people who seem to be genuinely quite happy, happier
than a lot of the people I know in Sydney.
I had told Sammy that the biggest cause of death in Australia
was suicide and he flat-out didn’t believe me. “Why would someone so lucky want
to die”? He had asked me. And I didn’t have a simple enough answer. He told me
he wanted to go to Sydney, I
wondered what he’d really think of it.
On my last night in the village I had a knot of sadness.
Everyone had spent the day making me promise I would come back again and stay
longer next time. I promised I would but I knew deep down that I would probably
never see any of them again.
Florence, Elaine
and the old woman who lived across from me brought two wooden benches to my
door to say goodbye. They sat me down opposite them and presented me with a
gift; it was a wooden beaded bracelet they had made. Then Sammy came over and
presented me with some beautiful material that the villagers had pitched in to
buy me. I was touched. I had tears in my eyes from both gifts.
These people really didn’t have much, and they had only
known me for a week. It wasn’t the first time I had been given gifts. Elaine had
come to my room one day with a surprise in her hand. It was wrapped in a cloth
which she swept up to reveal a bottle of Coca-Cola. I don’t drink Coke, I hate
the stuff, but she was beaming when she gave it to me and I thought it was such
a lovely gesture that I drank it, trying to share it with her (read: trying to
get her to drink it instead) but she insisted I have the whole thing. People
had also brought me various foods like yams, beans and bananas and I wished I
had something to give in return.
I was restless and ready to keep moving and so staying in
the village longer wasn’t an option for me, but Hodzo Achianse had been a
refuge from the bedlam of Accra.
It had been an image straight from a coffee table book and many times I just
looked around me bewildered that I was actually in a place like this. It had
been interesting and relaxing and I am never going to forget it, or the friends
I’d made.
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