more to come

I have alot to catch up, but i have just arrived in Burkina, and this is the first time in a while my access has allowed me to update.... enjoy!
5/18
Yesterday, I once more packed my bags, said my goodbyes, caught a taxi, found myself a bus and left again. I have gotten fart too good at inadequately saying goodbye. I have perhaps taken too much to heart the advice that Ignatius once gave to his society and, quite the revers of the son of man, I leave like a thief in the night. I was only just beginning to get my feet on the ground there. It is quite funny, in fact. Just the day before I left, I got a call from one of the other fellows mother in laws, who is a Ghanaian. Her son even lives on campus, just around the corner from where I live. Time was too short for me, however, and this local connection remained unexplored and unenjoyed, as I departed Accra. It is only my experience at the Akrofi-Christaller Memorial Research Center (ACMC.org) that just might call me back, to even live here in fact. Their Masters to PHD program is attractive and their professors (particularly their director Dr. Kwame Bediako) are inspiring. Who would think that the country that seemingly left the least relational appeal for me, could become a 2-8 year home.
Anyways, the other aspect of leaving, which is not easy for me, is packing. I have done remarkably well in not collecting too many things as I travel. The exceptions being those times when I knew I had an opportunity to ship something home. I have once again, enlarged my already heavy traveling library and have added another 10 books to be placed on my bookshelf at home. I am an intellectual packrat and my collecting will put me into an early grave, or at least an early wheel chair. My back started hurting even before, I finished packing, just from the thought of carrying this around two more countries. Every time I pack, I encounter this strong desire to throw out half of everything I own. Maybe this hails to my Irish roots more than anything else: packing grows in me the desire to follow the spirit of the wandering ascetic monk. Unfortunately, foresight holds my hand, for I know that a simpler mike might regret it when he has worn the same shirt 4 days in a row a week later. Upon leaving Burkina, however, my last long term country, I will happily jet to the left and right items which have long been worn through or which will have no use for me in the comfortable life of Oregon.

It is funny how I can write two paragraphs on leaving without even mentioning where I am going. I began yesterday my overland journey north to Burkina Faso. I am currently in Kumasi where I am visiting The most Right Reverend Archbishop Peter Sarpong, who has been spearheading the issue of inculturation in Ghana. The bus ride to here, which was supposed to be 4 hours, ended up being closer to 7 after 2 breakdowns and a very slow engine (think of the steam engine that could going up the hills…. I think I can, I think I can). I am spending a few days here, visiting kumasi with the bishop, attending mass with him and then moving north once more towards tamale. From Tamale I head to Navrongo, where there is the largest mud cathedral in Ghana. Then on from there to Ouaga. It would seem I have a whirl wind of experiences ahead of me.



5/19/07

At the zoo we are always told not to feed the animals. What do you do when the animals try to feed you? I visited the kumasi zoo yesterday. The lack of variety of animals living there is made up for the proximity that you get to them. Indeed, I spent a good 10-15 minutes hanging out on the otherside of the bars of a chimpanzee. We had the most basic of hand gesture mimicking going on between us. I would put out my hand, he would put out his hand. I would point to the right, he would point to the right. Then at one point, he grabbed some papaya off the ground, lifted it and offered it to me. What do you do? Well, I did the best thing that I could think of, put out my hand and took his offer.
So what next? I had a piece of papaya, gifted to me from the zoo floor by a chimpanzee. I pretended to eat it and passed it back. He then sniffed it, and perhaps seeing that I didn’t eat any, passed it once again back to me. This activity went back and forth perhaps three times before I decided we had reached our language barrier and I walked on. It was nice to visit something normal.

While in Kumasi, I also attended the military museum. Typically I find such places to be generic and repetitive, but I was in for a real treat as the guide led me through and explained the entire history surrounding the 1900 Asante war, a conflict between the British and the Asante. The war began surrounding issues of the golden stool, the symbol of the Asante people. This stool is one of three artifacts that are sacred to the people, and it is said to hold the soul of the asante people. The british govenor at the time, having already deported the asante king to the Seychelles islands, demanded this stool, so as to “break the will” of the people. One woman stood in defiance, when the elders themselves were ready to fold, and began a war that lasted for 9 months.


5/22

A two weekends ago I went to the cape coast to visit the slave forts. Clean, sturdy and whitewashed, these buildings stand as a memento of the greatest tragedies to befall us in history, the mass transit of human beings sold as property. I had not done much research on the sites before going there, and found my own imagination to be inadequate to grasp the grave injustice that had been committed here. Attending a seminar for half of the week following on Christianity slave trade and anti-slave trade, I was able to better fill in the picture. Visiting the forts, the visitor unfortunately gets the idea that the story is black and white. The truth of the matter is that slavery and slave trading had long existed before the Europeans ever arrived to the continent. Arriving at the trading ports along the sea, they took advantage of this existing slave trade. Indigenous slave trade and slave holding has been maintained in Africa since time immemorial and exists today even still. People were regularly captured as prisoners of war and made into slaves to work in the ground or in the fields.
I am not trying to lessen the gravity of the tragedy of the slave trade. Within this mass forced migration, the gravest and most brutal offences against the human person were committed. Understanding slavery in its context, we can far better understand the long lasting ramifications of slavery. Indigenous slaves were kept here in Ghana, and many of them were attached to a family and became a part of it, with its own costs however. This person, attached to a family was devoid of privileges: they do not go to school; they do not inherit. This “stain” of slavery on a person still existed and is long remembered. It affects issues even today of chieftaincy and inheritance. I have even heard, though have not seen or experienced, that this form of indigenous slavery is going on today here in Ghana. Slavery was only outlawed here with british colonial rule.
The seminar that I attended did an excellent job in highlighting the impact that Africans in diaspora were having on the thought regarding the institution. For example, there was a free African brazilian catholic named Lorenzo in 1600’s who was quite influential within brazillian society and even spoke before the pope in italy regarding the plight of Africans. The pope responded by issuing a papal bull that forbade catholics from participating in any way in the slave trade. We followed more in-depth the movement towards the abolition of the slave trade in britian in 1807. I found it to be quite interesting that the initial stirrings of abolition as a movement came out of the Pennsylvania colony in the US.