So, here's the DL. I've been in Ghana for a little over two months now, and I have a little over two months to go before I head back home. There has been so much happening it's been insane. But I'll try and keep it all straight for you.
I've got a new and awesome roommate, Emefa, who allows me to use her computer when she isn't on it so that I can do my class assignments. She has also promised to bring me home to meet her family one weekend, so hopefully once my directing project is over and I have free time again, that will get to happen. I am really very lucky to have such a cool roommate. She is 400 level, a Ghanaian student. And she is studying Psychology and Political Science, I believe. She started in the performing arts though in 100 level, and she was a drummer, so that was pretty cool. The reason she was so late is because she was teaching high school students in Brazil English. She is really awesome.
As far as classes go, my Traditional Songs, Dance, and Drumming have been wonderful. I feel like we've moved so quickly through stuff. Now we are starting to talk about exams and I am worried I won't remember it all. Luckily I have a lot of good Ghanaian friends in those classes who can help me out when it comes to studying. I have been very lucky in that respect. As for my theatre classes they are mostly good. I really enjoy my Directing course and Playwriting. They keep me very busy between rehearsals and preparing my director's book and trying to find time to write my play. But it's been good. I also just found out about a competition I can enter in the States for playwriting, so I am trying to finish my full-length play and get some others up to snuff so that I can submit them by the end of the month for this competition. My playwriting professor has also offered to read through them and help me to clean them up a bit for the competition. My directing course is mostly good. I have been enjoying the opportunity to direct, but I have also found that there is little communication between the professor who teaches the lecture and the one who teaches the practical. So, we are oftentimes back-tracking and trying to update one or the other professor on what was discussed in the other class. But it's good overall. I feel like I am learning more from the experience of directing here though than I am in the classes related to directing. In fact, a few of the other directors have asked for some of my notes from home to learn from me. I think they see the organized way in which I go about my directing and the very specific guidelines I am following and they want to try it. Because the model they have been given isn't organized at all, and it's hard to learn how to be good at something when you are really just being thrown into it to try and figure it out on your own. But yeah, I am actually meeting with one of the directing students today to give him a packet from Jeffrey, my directing teacher back home. I am hoping that will help him understand the analysis portion. Then I took some notes down on the rules that Jeffrey gave us about blocking. I am hoping that I didn't forget anything, but it's possible that I did. I didn't have the luxury of having my directing notes from last semester in front of me. There is so much that I wish I had access to that is back home. Like my notes. And my play selection, my anthologies. And the wisdom of my faculty at home really. I feel like I appreciate their advice even more now that I am on my own pretty much trying to practice all of the principles that I have been taught over the last 3 years. Then the other theatre class I have is "History and Development of Theatre in Ghana" which I actually skipped today. lol. It's a good course. And most of the time I enjoy the discussions that we have. But the prof. splits it between discussion and then what is considered a normal lecture here. So, sometimes we go and just sit for 2 hours writing pages and pages of notes that are dictated to us very slowly by him. Yea, seriously I just write paragraphs of notes that sound like they are coming straight from a textbook. It's ridiculously boring, and when I am writing I have no idea what I am writing, what it all means. Even at the end, when I have the whole picture, I feel like I haven't really learned that much. I wish he would just give us a print out of the notes and then have us discuss and ask questions for the lecture instead of just sitting there writing to his dictation for 2 hrs. That part of the class sucks. But the other half of the time we have really cool discussions about Ghanaian theatre, the problems that they are having, the solutions that there might be, and we discuss African plays. It's really great. In fact, today I actually missed a discussion. We were discussing a couple of plays that I hadn't read yet. I just got them yesterday and I haven't had a chance to read them because I've been so busy. So instead of going to lecture I just ate lunch in the sound booth with a friend and talked about graduate school. Then came to the computer lab. (I am not always the best student)
The only other course I am taking here is Choral Ensemble. To be honest, I was expecting a lot more from the choir here to start with. When we first started, it was awful!! Hardly anyone had copies of the music we were singing, but they still insisted on teaching the song and expected you to just learn it and then get a copy later. You have to pay for almost all of your own music scores, so for a score that's 10 pgs you have to pay 1 cedi in photocopy costs. It's a bit annoying, but I guess it's like the course fee for the U.S. Then the choir itself was awful. Everyone was just screaming instead of really singing the songs. Most of them are not trained at all so they don't know dynamics, most don't understand even the simplest things about reading music. Then on top of that, some of them don't have the best ear, so they are singing off constantly. To make matters 10x worse the sections are led by students, usually the more talented upper-level students take this responsibility, but they aren't teachers, so they leave some people completely lost, they don't have the best sight reading skills so they confuse some singers by singing the wrong thing. Then on top of that the director was just clapping really loud or snapping in rhythm instead of actually directing the choir or giving in dynamic gestures or tempo adjustments. Just clapping really loudly and annoyingly in your ear so can't even hear yourself singing. And since all the students see this as the directing style, that's what the section leaders do too. AND the section leaders aren't always in your section. We had a guy trying to teach the soprano part and singing terribly off key because he was trying to sing a part that was hugely out of his range. It was awful. I literally got so mad one day I nearly stormed out of class. And there are students who know better and don't like the way things are being done, but everyone is afraid to say something because the prof. gives you your grade, and if you speak out against him then he will probably give you a grade less than you deserve in the class. It's awful that way. After the class that I almost stormed out of though, one of my Ghanaian friends talked to me and I told him about how I saw the class and he was like, thank god someone is saying something because everyone is too afraid here. He told me that he would pass my complaints along to one of the better, more understanding professors in the music department so that there might be so me improvement. Then a week later, by some miracle we actually had a decent rehearsal. The director has stopped ALWAYS doing the clapping thing, and he has been working with the choir on dynamics, though I still think they need a lot more work. And I have started to take over teaching the sopranos instead of the student from the tenor section trying to sing the soprano line. There are still women in the tenor section who aren't really tenors and sopranos who really should be altos, and even altos that should be sopranos. But because there wasn't a formal way of putting people in voice parts, they just let people pick, some people just clumped together with their friends, or picked soprano because they knew it was the melody line. But the other day we had another director from the music department come in and he helped up learn a Christmas song. It was actually a lot of fun and he really worked with the sections on dynamic markings and such. It's still not perfect and no where near the kind of Chamber Choir I had at JHS or the any of the Honor Choirs I've been in National, Regional, or State, but it's at least getting somewhere. And I don't dread going there so much anymore. Plus, they gave me a solo part for the piece "O Holy Night" So, I get to sing that. It's pretty cool.
On another musical note, there is an a capella group forming here. I was asked really last minute to be a part of their first performance about a week ago. Literally, my friend talked to me the day before the performance and gave me the music, I learned it that day, practiced with the group that evening and then the following afternoon right before the performance. It was awesome and intense and we sounded really good actually. There were just like 8 of us performing popular U.S. songs like "I'll be There" but it was cool. Almost everyone on a different voice part and doing pretty tight harmonies. It took me back to Chamber Choir days Junior Year and performing "Bohemian Rhapsody". It was really a great experience. Now, they are trying to expand the group and do auditions and whatnot. I am going to try and still be a part of it, cause it really is a great time and its actually challenging, unlike the Choral Ensemble, but we'll see if I can make time for it.
Anyway, that's pretty much everything as far as classes go. Still trying to work something out with the computer situation. For the time being, I am just using the money my Dad sent me to buy minutes for my phone and using the computer labs and Emefa's computer to do assignments and get on the internet. I am hoping to be able to rent a computer from one of my friend's friends for the rest of the time I am here, but I'm still trying to work that out. It's not going so well... so yeah. Might be back to square one on that note. I have tons of pictures to upload, so I am gonna try and do that.
On another note, I have been getting random bursts of homesickness, so I bought some American food and have been enjoying that for the past few days. I had real spaghetti sauce with Parmesan cheese. And I made Beenie Weenie like Mom used to when I was little. I even had Pringles the past few days, and real sliced bread for PB&J. In fact, like the cheap ass college student I am, I have been packing my lunch the last few days. Even in Ghana where food is crazy cheap, I pack a PB&J for lunch. I know I am pretty lame.
I have made tons of Ghanaian friends here. My friend, Chief Momen, is a TA here and literally like my favorite person. He's a poet and a truly inspiring individual. He has such big dreams for himself and for Ghana. It really is wonderful just listening to him talk sometimes. I always enjoy the discussions we have. He has also helped me a lot with classes and stuff. He's actually the one helping me with the computer situation now. I also have a good friend, Phanuel, who is a TA and one of the drama studio managers here. He is great, and I actually go eat lunch with him sometimes. He gives great hugs and is really resourceful cause he knows everyone in the performing arts department and I guess he has a lot of sway with them. He is actually the main person who helped me organize my second round of auditions (after no one showed for the first one) and he even helped me to get replacements for actors who had dropped out at the last minute. He's a great guy. Actually, he's the one I ate lunch with earlier today in the sound booth instead of going to class. lol. I'm also making friends in my cast. One of the girls is Angela. She is so nice and so great. She usually walks with me back to ISH after rehearsals so I don't have to walk alone. And she helps me to clean up the rehearsal space. And she's just a nice person to talk to. The other night we had a really good conversation on the way back to ISH, and afterwards I just couldn't stop smiling. I just felt so good and so happy to have a girl friend here. Another friend is Abby. She's in my playwriting class. I don't get to see her that much, but she's really really sweet and I love talking to her. Anyways, I can't possibly name and talk about all of my Ghanaian friends here, but suffice it to say, that there are lots and they are all so wonderful and have helped a lot to make Ghana feel like home.
Speaking of Ghana being like home, October 9th (I think) was Canadian Thanksgiving. So I was able to celebrate a bit with my two Canadian friends, Marianne and Lianne. They are great, and it was a lot of fun. We made putin (pronounced poo- tin, not poo-teen as Lianne educated us), which is fries with gravy and cheese, a Canadian dish. And then we also had beaver-tails, which are these amazing Canadian pastries. They are fried dough topped with brown sugar, cinnamon, and then lemon juice. They are delicious. So fattening, but delicious. I will have to make them every Thanksgiving from now until the end of time. They are THAT good. On that particular day, I was also able to enjoy a very fun performance of "Androcles and the Lion" at the Drama Studio. Two of my friends, Phanuel and Vaneka were playing in it that night, so I was excited to go. Also one of my other friends, Sarah, and her boyfriend, Amante, went to see it with me. It wasn't hugely sophisticated but it was interesting and fun. Both Phanuel and Vaneka did an excellent job in the play. Personally, I felt like it was a fun piece, but that was it. The deeper meanings were lost on the audience I think, like the fact that Bernard Shaw (a staunch atheist) was actually criticizing the Christian religion with this play, rather than promoting it. I also thought that the director made some very poor choices in his direction. For instance, the first 10-15 minutes of the piece the audience literally just watched as a family of lions walked around the stage roaring and then there was a scene where there was a kangaroo, an antelope, a tiger, and a gorilla on stage and one of the lions came in a fought with one of the other animals. That entire intro does not exist in the play, and it was an extension that was both corny (because the costumes and sound effects were not realistic at all) and unneeded. I felt like it just dragged out the play to be longer than it was, and was simply an extension to give more actors a chance to be on stage, which in a very large department so many students need to get credit from being a part of a production, however for whatever reason professors oftentimes choose pieces that don't have a large cast written into them. So they add all sorts of characters and add crowds and even double and triple cast roles to get more people involved. I think it's silly and simply insane. An easily fixable problem. Choose shows with a larger cast!!! Or, novel idea, try doing a musical. Musicals almost always have a large cast. Especially the ones that are older and more available to performance like Oklahoma! Granted it might be hard to find a piece that is easily relate-able to the audience but at least they wouldn't have to add silly and unnecessary things to shows that are perfectly good without their additions.
Moving right along, I have had several very fun experience with the Chinese friends that I talked about in one of my earlier blog posts. I had dinner with them. It was delicious. Rice and I think kenkey (a Ghanaian dish) and then fried potatoes and beef with some different sauces. They helped me figure out how to use the chopsticks much better. And it was fun trying to communicate with them and test their English, and my ability to speak simply. Lol. They are almost all high school students, which was surprising. I had no idea that there were students that young here. They are all studying English here and learning how to speak it and read and write I believe. One is a college student, actually, who is doing all 4 years at the University of Ghana. His English is the best by far, so oftentimes he is the translator for us. It's fun though to talk to them. Apparently all of them are here for an almost indefinite amount of time. It's like their parents send them here to learn English and they aren't allowed to come back until they have mastered it. It's pretty crazy. And all of them have been here for different amounts of time. The guy who is here for college has been here for like 2 years already. There is another girl who has been in Ghana for 6 months, but only at the University for the past 2 months. The most of the others have been here for about a month and a half. One girl, whose English is actually surprisingly good already, has only been here for like 4 weeks. But they are all really cool to talk to. And one of the guys is a singer. So sometimes I get him to sing some Chinese folk songs for me. They are beautiful and the language sounds so pretty when put to music.
I almost forgot to talk about my trip. I few weeks ago now, I went to Kumasi, which is in the central region of Ghana. It's beautiful there and I learned a lot about Ghanaian history, because Kumasi used to be the cultural center and sort of capital of Ghana before it was colonized and everything. It's were the Ashanti Kings lived. The Ashanti were a warrior tribe basically who ruled over Ghana. When the British came to colonize they were the ones who tried to fight them off. In the beginning I think they had some success, but the British eventually cut them down with superior technologies. It's actually quite sad. Kumasi is still a very very rich cultural center though, and the people are very Ghanaian. I got a few gifts while I was there. Some sculptures and kente cloths. I even got an African mask that is pretty awesome. It was pretty awesome. Also we stayed at a hotel where there was hot water!! I had my first hot shower since coming to Ghana, and let me tell you, it was wonderful. : D The second day we were there we went to the Kente village of Bonwire, where they make the Kente cloth. It comes in strips and the designs are very specific. They all have names and most have a story that goes with them as well. I tried to learn the names and stories of all the designs that I bought. I even got to learn how the Kente is woven. The loom that it's on is pretty amazing. Sadly I didn't get any pictures myself, because my camera got locked in the bus, but if you look at some of the pictures on facebook from my other international friends here then you can see what I mean. I found out that Kente is actually traditionally a male profession. For centuries only men were allowed to weave kente and it was considered a huge taboo for a woman to know how to weave or to know the designs of kente. I found that very interesting considering that it was the other way around in Turkey with their weaving rugs. Kente weaving itself isn't that complicated but the looms are very cramped spaces and the weavers work incredibly fast. I just sat and watched one man working for a while just trying to see how he was weaving it. It took me at least 5 minutes to catch how the basic mechanisms worked. That's how fast he was working. I could barely even see what he was doing, his hands were moving so quickly. It was really cool to see though. After Bonwire, we went to another village were they make Adinkra stamps. Adinkra (think that is spelled correctly) is the Ghanaian symbol system. They have some 80-100 symbols that all have different meanings. You see some of them all over the place here, on chairs, tables, headboards, you name it. I even have a necklace with one of them. Remember that first cultural blunder with the guy in Osu, he gave me a necklace and I never paid for it. That necklace has a symbol called Gye Nyame, which is Adinkra. It means something like God is All. I'm actually not sure at the moment, but yea. They have tons of those symbols. So I got a piece of kente cloth with some symbols stamped on it in the traditional dye. I wasn't very good at the stamping so it's not perfect, but I made it! : )
After the Adinkra village we went to the street to see the wood carvers. Wood carving is a huge thing in Kumasi and there were tons of them. I saw so many beautiful carvings, and I wish I could buy them all and bring them back to the states. But as it was I spent all of my money left over that day on wood carvings. After that we were able to go back to the Cultural Center at Kumasi. I actually sort of wish I would have stayed at the Cultural Center to look at the other artwork there in Kumasi, but my hunger got the best of me and I went with the Ghanaian guides into the city to go to a bank and then to get some food. By the time we got back it was pretty much time to go, and we left early in the morning the next day. Overall it was a great trip though, and I definitely have to make it back there before I leave Ghana in December.
So, I just tried to upload my pictures, which I spend last night moving over from my camera to my flashdrive, but I couldn't because the folder with the pictures in it had a virus. I deleted the folder from my flash drive so hopefully it can't infect any more computers, but I don't know where I got it from. I remember an error message popping up last night when I was on Emefa's computer last night and opened up my flashdrive. And right before that I went to a printing place and printed from my flashdrive. So really either I got it from Emefa's computer, which would suck. Or I got it from the printing place, which means I might have transferred it to Emefa's computer last night. I hope not. I would feel really really bad. But anyhow. I will try and get my pictures again so that maybe tomorrow or Friday I can upload them. I know you all are probably dying to see what all I've been up to. lol.
I think that is pretty much it. I know this is a huge update since I haven't blogged in so long, but hopefully you aren't too annoyed with me. Oh, and before I forget, I just got my passport back with all my visa extensions taken care of, and at the end of the month there might be a Halloween party thrown by one of my international student friends. Also, Lianne, one of my Canadian friends, has her birthday near Halloween and they have invited me to go to Kokobite which is a really nice beach not too far from here for her birthday, so I'll probably be doing that. And, for my playwriting class, we are trying to take a trip to Akosombo which is a few hours from here in the eastern region. It's supposed to be November 4th or 5th. And we are planning on driving down there together and then taking the ferry ride to this island and spending the day hanging out and having cool literary discussions. I am pretty freaking excited about that to be honest. There's just 5 of us total, and there are 2 other girls so I don't feel awkward being the only girl, and Chief is going, so it's going to be a freaking amazing trip. Can you tell I am excited? Anyways, that's future plans and whatnot. I'll try and keep you all updated and get those pictures uploaded in the next few days. Loves!
P.S.- I few people had asked about my address(es) here in Ghana. I just added them to the side bar. All letters and packages are very welcome. Any American food (such as oreos, Peanut Butter M&Ms, etc. would be especially welcome) hehehe! Also, I am adding links to some of my other international friends' blogs so that you can see some of their pictures and maybe get another perspective on Ghana if you are interested. Plus, if you want to see some really good pictures from Kumasi you can check out my friend Bobby Lloyd's pictures on facebook. I commented on one of them, so I think that may let you see the album, if not let me know and I can figure something else out.
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