On Issues of Love and Marriage

I had the opportunity to go home this last week and one of the most
common questions I was asked was some form of “How do your cultural
differences affect your marriage?” I think it’s because when I
answered questions about the culture and shocked many people on how
different it seemed (I was delighted to find that I’m getting used to
it!), they immediately wondered how my husband and I reconciled those
differences. I gave an example that has been stewing in my brain for a
while as I’ve finally come to see what an amazing man my husband is:
In Ghana, the culture is very segregated when it comes to men, women,
and children. Men have their work, and women have theirs, without lots
of helping each other. Women don’t ride bicycles or work as laborers,
and men don’t change babies or wash dishes. Ever. Not that they can’t,
but that they’ll be seen as un-feminine or emasculated, and in a
society where social pressure is huge, that’s a strong motivation.


Now, there are some exceptions to this rule: my husband is one of
them. He is happy to play with the kids, likes to cook with me, and
doesn’t mind helping me around the house when I get behind. But, he
doesn’t really ever help me with the dishes. Unless I’m sick or just
had a baby, it’s just not something he does. I admit, I used to resent
this. In many American families the mom cooks and the dad does the
dishes, or at least takes out the garbage. Or at least feels guilty
and apologizes for not helping with the dishes. I felt frustrated at
my constant slavery over dishes (I feel a little embarrassed about the
drama I put into this now). I think I even mentioned it to him a few
times, then resigned myself to the fact that my husband just doesn’t
care. Then, we came to Ghana. And I watched other married couples. I
noticed how the husband not only never did the dishes, didn’t seem to
do much of anything around the house. Wouldn’t rock a crying baby,
wouldn’t set the table, wouldn’t say “I love you,” or hold hands with
their wife or kids. And I became very grateful that my husband did all
of those things. I recognized how much he had had to go away from the
culture of his country to be married to me. I started to realize how
petty I had been for being hurt over him not washing the dishes, when
really, he probably felt frustrated I had not acknowledged the many
things he does on a daily basis that his countrymen would call
“women’s work.”

Culture is important, and it runs deep within us. It’s usually hard to
describe to anyone who hasn’t grown up in it, and anyone who has grown
up in it needs no explanation at all. When we move outside of our
culture, either to move to a new country, neighborhood, or family
(shout out to my newly-wed sister Irene!), we have to be ready to look
at our new culture carefully. Not reject it instantly, as our
knee-jerk reaction may desire, but wonder, “Does it really matter?
Does this really make that big of a difference?” Or, if we’re
Christ-like enough, “In the eternal perspective, will this be
important?” Some things, yes, they are important and may need to
change. Like some cultures tendency toward infidelity, or abuse. But
some things, like who does the dishes, or kills the spiders, or makes
overtures of affections, you just have to figure out for yourselves.

This morning I made a new friend at church. She is only visiting for a
few weeks, but she and I had something special in common: She is an
American, married to a Ghanaian. This combination I have seen, maybe
four times (almost five times!) here in Ghana. I know it happens more
often, but many of them don’t come back to Ghana. I feel like it’s a
special bond I share with other women who’ve made my same choice: to
overlook glaring differences and embrace my husband’s and my
similarities. This particular woman looked slightly panicked. I could
tell this visit to Ghana had been difficult for her. She’d only been
here two weeks so far, but I could see the thought of living here
forever seemed very intimidating. And I can see why. The first two
weeks of any life change are very difficult (think new marriage, new
baby, new country…). I hope Ghana doesn’t scare her too much. I hope
that all of us who are facing new challenges will not give in to fear
but face the future with faith (self included).

Many Happy Returns!

Hello World! I'm sorry we've been so absent again. I do actually have two blog posts, but this internet cafe computer says they are unidentifiable files...so we'll try again next week to clear the back log. Here's a quick note, and then next week, on to something really important: hair.

I had a wonderful trip recently to visit family in Alaska as my sister Irene was married. Oh, it was so nice to be with family again. I enjoyed them all very much, I enjoyed being in America too, but, contrary to local speculation, I did return to my family as planned. Do you know, a lot of our ward members, and even some of our friends and family members thought I wouldn't be coming back. When Emmanuel mentioned I'd traveled to the states, they thought I'd flown the coop! I guess that's the pattern here for Obroni's, they marry an African, come over for a while, become desperately homesick and tired of living here after a few months and then they leave. They may travel back and forth for a while trying to convince their husband's they still love them, just not their country.

Someday I will love this country.

I'm proud to report that my husband, my in-laws, and my children were not surprised when I returned. And hopefully I've earned a closer look from the locals who didn't expect to see me here again.

Everything Free in America...

Tomorrow I'll be flying back to the States! My wonderful, amazing, ecstatic sister is getting married and my parents have been so kind to fly me back.

I like to be in America!

OK by me in America!

Everything in America!

For a small fee in America....

I think that song each time I talk about my trip. The few times I've sung it out loud people look at me weird, they've never  heard it before...
Every time I mention to someone here that I'll be traveling to the States they all say, without fail, "Oh, ok, I'll be in your suitcase." If they are someone I don't know very well (like the vegetable seller at the market), they say "Ok, what are you bringing back for me?" Social interaction is funny in Africa. I think they are joking but I also know when I buy vegetables after I get back she's going to act offended and pout.


Things I'm looking forward to: 
Seeing my Family again(!!!)
Being with my family when we go to the temple with my sister
Feeling a little chilly
Taking a long shower (I'll probably feel really guilty doing it)
Grilled cheese sandwiches on whole wheat bread
Cooking American food without seriously expensive ingredients (parmesan cheese is about $15-20 a lb.)
Hearing english on the radio
Annnnnd.....
Coming back to Ghana and being happy to be here!

Some thoughts on rain, electricity, and security

*This blog post was written a long while ago, but internet problems kept it from posting correctly. Sorry!*

Welcome to the rainy season! I’m finally detecting a slight drop in temperature and enjoying the great cooling rain showers that come almost every day. It’s wonderful. I was a little worried before we came that the rain season would mean great flooding monsoons, but here the showers are sometimes intense, but the sun comes out to dry up the puddles eventually. I really love the heavy rainfall that comes in sudden downpours, it makes such a nice musical sound. Sometimes the rain comes so suddenly, with very little warning, so I’ve learned not to hang the laundry outside (even if it looks nice and sunny). That’s ok, the bars on the insides of our windows make excellent drying racks.*

Everyone here is putting on sweaters, or wearing extra clothes, and actually shivering and complaining of catching colds. They get so concerned when I walk out in the rain to pick up Dante from school. All I can do is chuckle a little and try to describe what cold really is (my family remembers hauling wood in Alaskan winters…where the scarf in front of your face turns icy from the moisture in our breath.) There is nothing like cold in Ghana. But I guess if you are used to it always being 80-85 degrees, 75 would feel a little chilly.

Our electricity has been flickering a lot lately, and we’re getting really good at managing without power. I remember how nervous I was about not having consistent electricity before we came. I even attended a class on cooking without power. Here, the solution is very simple: everyone uses gas stoves. Then even if the power is out you can make a nice meal (as long as you cook it before the sun goes down, cooking in the dark is difficult). My oven is gas too, which was really hard for me to get used to at first. Gas ovens have a gas burner at the top of the oven and at the bottom, both of which you have to light to get an even heat (lighting the oven is not easy!), then monitor them closely, sometimes the flame dies even when the gas is still flowing, causing a bad smell and potential explosion. And then, there’s no temperature dial or gauge, so you just have to practice enough to not burn or undercook something.  This week I successfully baked some pies and my first sort of good batch of bread (sort of good means it wasn’t overly burned, and the inside has actually cooked through)! I felt pretty heroic; I’ve gotten past the first hurdles with my oven!

The power goes on and off and no one really knows why. During the dry season local Ghanaians explained that black outs were due to the low level of water in the Volta river, since almost all our electricity comes from the hydroelectric dam there. That reasoning made sense. But now it’s the rainy season and we’ve had plenty of rain, and the power still goes off pretty frequently… maybe the rain is knocking out the power? Either way, we’re blessed to have a generator for long blackouts and candles for short ones.

 Really, sometimes I like it when the power goes off in the evenings, or a sudden storm makes us run indoors. It feels very cozy to gather close around a candle and read or tell stories.  

It does get difficult to get real work done though. Everything kind of stops when the power goes out. That’s nice sometimes, when things have been too busy, but it gets old really fast when you have work you want to do. I wonder if that’s part of the reason progress is so difficult here.

*Yup, bars on the windows. All the windows. And not one, not two, but three locks on our front door. I used to think we were a little overboard with security here, but then Mom told me the story of when there were thieves breaking into their house. They called the local police station and the police told them, “Ok, sorry about that, come in tomorrow morning and file a police report.” If you want the police to come, you have to go pick them up!

Parasites, tapeworms, and germs, oh my!

Well, it finally happened. I knew it probably would eventually, and considering we’ve been here 6 months before it hit, that’s pretty good. I got Malaria. 

Fortunately I didn’t die from it, as most white missionaries did when they first arrived in Ghana 400 years ago. But! I thought I was going to.

Malaria is kind of funny here, if you’re an adult it’s really not so dangerous because there are very good medicines to treat it. As soon as local people start feeling flu like symptoms they start taking a malaria treatment and the symptoms clear up quickly. But Malaria can be really scary in little kids, so as soon as the children get a fever or throw up or have a headache, everyone rushes them to a clinic for a malaria test. I think part of the reason is because even though I felt miserable while I had it, I could force myself to still eat and drink to keep up my strength. But little kids usually give in to the nausea and lack of appetite they feel and soon they get dehydrated and you have to nourish them with an IV drip just to get them strong enough to take the medicine. Everyone here knows several horror stories of kids who died quickly of malaria, or became deaf from it or something, so if kids are sick at all everyone gives them malaria treatments (even if the malaria test says they don’t have it, people are afraid the test is inaccurate).

As far as my experience with it, I thought I was going to die. It’s a horrible combination of nausea, headache, and feeling weak, so you just want to lie down and not move. Time also seems to sloooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwww doooooooooooown so you think you’ve been miserable forever and will continue to be miserable forever. And all food make you want to throw up even more, so just sitting at the table seems like hard work, let alone muscling down a few bites. At least the medicine works quickly, I started feeling better a few hours after I started taking it. Then had just a couple of days of not feeling too strong, and then I was back to my normal self.

Malaria is caused by little parasites that mosquitos pass around, so it tends to lurk in your blood stream, waiting for your immune system to be weakened. In my case, I had another attack of intestinal parasites that dehydrated me pretty good, making room for the malaria. I guess I have to be serious about treating tapeworms too, not just be grossed out by the fact that people here get them (self included). And of course, there’s lots of other germs being passed around for good measure: cholera, chicken pox, staph infections, elephantitis…normal epidemics. We aren’t affected by many of them because we don’t eat at the roadside stands or from the street hawkers (usually). In the clinics they have posters up about washing hands and only buying from the roadside if the food is hot. Course, as soon as you buy the food you wait for it to cool…

Fortunately the kids have not been sick with malaria at all! They had a lot on funny flu bugs these past few months, but have been very healthy lately. When we were going through those fevers and flus the local church members said that’s called the “African Baptism!” They seemed so cheerful about it, hopefully it means now we’ve got an extra layer of protection against future sickness.    

I'm sorry there are no pictures again! I did actually take some, but our internet connection doesn't really let me upload them. I'll try again soon!

We are here! We are here! We are here!

Sorry everyone, I know it’s been a very long time since I’ve last posted. I’m setting my goal again to post every week and you are my witnesses. I guess I’ve been hoping our internet would be fixed before long…but it’s been about two, maybe three months since we’ve had home internet…I think I’ll just find another solution!

It’s been good for me to take a break from blogging though because I’ve realized how very little I understand of what’s going on around me. Most of us know that the culture we grew up in is a very big factor in the shaping of our behavior. At least, we know that in our brains. But when we step out of our culture, when we try to figure out someone else’s, that fact has to come out of our brains and get written onto the insides of our eyelids (so that every time I blink I’m reminded “Maybe this doesn’t mean what you think it means!”

I am a little reluctant to try and explain some of the things I see really, since many times I just see on the surface, and have to ask for explanations later. Like the American leader who came to Ghana and wondered why the women call their husbands “My Lord,” but didn’t stay long enough to find out that husbands call their wives “My Queen,” or “My Equal.” I’m afraid I will give you the same warped, arrogant, ignorant point of view, and you won’t even know it.

           But, I think someday that may change. Someday I may actually understand what people mean when they say “You’ve grown fat!” Someday I may even actually feel flattered by that statement (Now I know in my brain that it’s a compliment, but it’s still hard to not feel offended!). That will be the day when I know I really understand. Not when I actually know the reason behind the behavior, but when responding appropriately will be easy and second nature.  

Here’s some cultural differences I’m working through:

1.    The way people talk here, it ALWAYS sounds like they are fighting.

2.    Everywhere I go, people call me Obroni, the Ga word for “White man” or “foreigner.” I’ve been told many times it’s not an insult, it’s actually supposed to be a compliment, since people here admire and look up to westerners (most of the time). But still... to complete strangers and friends, me and the kids are “Obroni!”

3.    When you are at the top of the social, corporate, financial ladder, you don’t do a lot of work for yourself. People bring you food, sweep your porch, pour your water, run your errands, pretty much anything you ask. At first, I thought everyone was just being really nice to me, but now I have to actually insist on doing things myself.

There are other cultural differences (LOTS of cultural differences), so I’m sure you’ll hear about more of them as time goes on. And maybe next week’s post will feature a counter argument on why fitting in may not be the right thing to do!      

In the middle of all the confusion inside and around me, I know Heavenly Father is still watching over me and my family. He has a purpose for why we are here (including why I am here, which isn’t clear to me just yet). He’s leading me on “small small” (little by little).

Here’s some family details!

Emmanuel is still working hard at the school. I really don’t know how he juggles all the little details, especially since he does it without losing the big picture. We had a rough couple of months when all of us were in school because Iris and Dante kept getting sick. They had funny fevers and vomiting episodes that’d last long enough to scare everyone, then act like they were fine. We decided Iris is probably too young to be in school (DUH!) And so now she’s home with me again! I love being home with her. I miss working at the school a little bit, but I really love what I do now (which is funny because I distinctly remember a time or two when I felt bored and frustrated! Blessing in disguise: making me a working mom has made me value my family and home soooo much more.) Dante’s kind of adjusted to school and is learning so much! He’s in a writing explosion and it’s so fun to watch him write and draw and tell me about when he’s written. I love it!

"I cannot live without books."

Wow! I think we just went an entire month without internet access! Our internet used to come from the server the school was using, but since we've been changing and upgrading it so we can support online learning, it's been down for a long time. Finally, Emmanuel and I broke down and bought a mobile modem. It works kind of like a cell phone with pay-as-you-go-minutes; once you've used up 2 gig downloading, you have to go refill it by buying more data. But to make a long story short, now we are reconnected to the world! I feel so grateful for internet, you really feel like you're in Africa when you can't Skype family, check email, download books...or look up how to make soy milk...it's funny the things you miss!

Let's do family updates! 
Emmanuel: has been working each day to try and make the school a little better, but still gets pretty frustrated with the slow pace of people and inefficiency of the systems around him. He's been working one getting this internet for the school for a month now and still! Can you imagine if you hired a company to provide you with internet, then had to spend every day checking up with them for progress, and after a month it still wasn't finished! Yeah, that company would not make it in America.  Emmanuel was also recently called as First Counselor in the Bishopric of our ward and has been learning a lot about the struggles of leaders in the church. Our ward in particular has a lot of new members (and it's growing, seems like there's a baptism every week!) so helping people come to know the gospel and trying to build and strengthen the ward, it's a big job. I wish I could be more help to him by being like Heather Plain or Janet Rigby or Adlina Memmot, they were so good at making new people feel welcome. I'm still struggling to learn names and faces...and remembering if I've met a person or not. With everything on Emmanuel's plate I think we'll be seeing Gray hair soon... Yet he's still so supportive and loving to me and the kids.


Natasha: is really enjoying the school break these last two weeks! This last month we (unofficially) moved our Head of Academics for the infant school and lower primary ( basically the principle over the students from 18 months - 3rd grade) to a different post in the school and I've been working feverishly to fill the vacancy. Really the job itself could be easy (a lot of management jobs in Ghana are giving orders and "supervising"), but I feel very under qualified and I'm trying quickly to learn all I can about learning and teaching. Next two weeks we get to have in depth training for my teachers on Montessori and I'm so fortunate I'm not doing all the training myself, my wonderful Mother in-law is helping with a lot of the teaching. But still, I feel keenly my responsibility. Emmanuel (and Heavenly Father) have put me in a position to be very influential and to help make the school just what it needs to be. I'm praying to be able to do it. And still trying hard to be a good wife and Mommy. One very nice thing about working is it requires I be careful and structured and effective with my time so that I get what I need to done and still be able to play with my babies. A very recent development is the possibility that I may have picked up a parasite here in Ghana...we're not really sure but I've had lots of headaches and nausea and been feeling tired. We're hoping it's the kind of parasite that only lasts nine months, but I really don't know yet. I'll keep you posted!  Just finished reading Kim by Rudyard Kipling and I'm amazed that a white person can go to a foreign place and know the place well enough to write a book like that. Really a beautiful picture of India. And gives me hope that maybe I can someday fit in here too.

Dante:  Is growing up so fast. He's outgrowing most of his clothes (good thing the bigger sizes are on the boat headed this way!), and has fallen in love with drawing and legos. He's always doing one or the other and getting good enough I can recognize what he makes. Usually he's drawing dinosaurs and building animals. The other day he showed a drawing to Grandma on Skype and told her a whole story about it! I loved it! He's been bit and bit and bit by mosquitoes poor little boy, even when I put him in footie pajamas, they seem to be able to eat right through them. We're trying to treat him for parasites too (not the nine month kind...that'd be weird). Lately he's still loving Just So Stories and we've also been reading The House at Pooh Corner. I'd never read it before and am enjoying it as much as he is! Oh and I should mention he passed his final exams well at the end of this term...not sure why we have final exams for pre-schoolers...
Iris: has been going through her verbal explosion and is saying several words together now, and is out of diapers!! She still needs help getting her pants up and down, but she tells me very consistently when she has to "wee-wee," as they say here. Her favorite phrase she's picked up is a local one: "I'll beat you!" I know, I know, I don't like it either. In fact every time she says it, Dante comes tattling. Everyone here says it to everyone, including her teachers and classmates (they don't follow through on the threat, just in case you're worried...at least the adults don't). She still loves nursing and reading stories with Mom and Dante, (her favorite she'll request by name, "Moose a Muffin.") and loves to be spoiled by Grandma and Grandpa! I love how happy she is to see them, and they love spoiling all of us too! We're very blessed to have such good family close by.

I've been writing about books partly because I feel so blessed that we have them. It's really abnormal to read to your children here and I really think people suffer for it. Reading is seen as an academic exercise, like learning to add and subtract, not a life skill that enhances your understanding of anything and everything. I'm hoping we'll be able to change that paradigm. If we can help one generation of children here to learn to love reading, maybe we can bring the country to the developed world.