Kneading the Shea Butter
The chairman and some of his children; we were removing the kernals from the corn husks
Breaking the shells off the Shea nuts
Women carrying sand to mix with cement for a new room
The one on the right is Adams, he is a field assistant in Bagarugu and has been a good friend
I arrived on a Monday around noon and managed to have a pretty eventful day. I shared a compound with the chairman of the older mango farm, his 3 wives, and his 9 children (I think he has more but they have moved away). When I arrived the women were processing shea nuts into oil. They had grinded the seed into a powder – not sure if they used a mill or not - and were kneading it with water in a big bowl until it thickened and turned to a lighter color. I motioned that I wanted to help them knead the mixture and they were more than willing to let me give it a try. Of course I failed miserably. With everything Ghanaian women do, there is a rhythm and a lot of strength involved. They would use their hand to smack the thick substance up against the side of the bowl, causing the whole mixture to move in a wave-like motion while managing to not spill any over the side. They got a good laugh watching me try to mimic their motions.
Once the mixture has been kneaded for long enough (I think it takes a few hours) they boil it multiple times until it turns to this small clump – shea butter. Later on I learned that this was the least time-consuming part of the process. The women go everyday to collect shea nuts from the trees on which they grow naturally. They transport huge amounts on the top of their heads in these large ceramic bowls. Once they eat the thin layer of fruit on the outside (with the help of the kids) they lay them out in the sun for a while before they begin to break off the outer shells using a wooden stick – with a rhythm of course. I tried to find out a bit more on how they transport the shea butter to the market and how much profit they earn, but it was difficult because of communication. When I go home I will cringe when I see those bottles of lotion that have maybe 5% shea butter and are extremely expensive. If Ghanaians could manage to process the oil into a final product to be exported they could make so much money. This is not a new idea by any means; there have people trying improve shea nut production for years.
After attempting to help the women with the shea nuts, I was playing a bit of soccer with the kids – classic possession game: 4 on the outside passing and one in the middle defending. I could hear some drumming and singing and managed to get one of the kids to take me to see what was going on.
One of the compounds was putting in a floor… sounds like a normal household chore but here it is a cause for celebration and the whole community is involved. When I first walked inside the compound, my senses were completely overwhelmed and I was struggling to take it all in. The compound was absolutely packed with women and children in all of their brightly colored fabrics. Their entire bodies were moving up and down in unison. They were all holding these wooden sticks that have a wide flat bottom edge, striking the ground simultaneously in an effort to compact the soil before the cement is placed on top. There was a single man with a drum, keeping the rhythm and guiding the women through their pounding. When I first walked in everyone turned and looked in my direction, shouting excitedly towards me, laughing, and gesturing for me to come over. I made my presence in the village know pretty quickly. They handed me a wooden pounding stick so that I could join. I though I was doing an OK job keeping up with them when the women standing next to me grabbed my arm to show me that she wanted me to follow her motions. After she struck the ground she would come back up and rock her shoulders back, turning it into more of a dance. I did my best to keep up and she responded with a great big smile. With all of this movement they managed to sing in unison with the sounds of the drum – “Ai-yaaay… Ai-yay Ai-yay Ai-yaaay”. And that’s not all… they began to move forward in small steps. When I managed to look up and take a breath I realized that the women had arranged themselves in circles and would slowly move in towards the center as they continued to compact the soil. People were pulling me in all directions; they all wanted the white lady to try to keep up with them. Eventually someone from my compound called out my name because it was time for me to go and greet the chief and the elders.
By this point I was pretty sweaty and filthy, but that did not seem to matter. I went to greet the chief first. Before you enter his hut you must remove your shoes. When he greets you, you must squat down so that you are lower than him. He asked me a series of questions which is how the typical Ghanaian introduction goes…
How is the journey? – Fine
How is the family? – Fine
How is your father? – Fine
How is your mother? – Fine
How is your husband? – Fine (there is no such thing as a boyfriend in the villages so to simplify things here I sometimes just say I have a husband at home)
How are your children? – No children (this always causes surprise and laughter)
Of course this is all in Dagbani but someone was translating for me and I can understand simple greetings. No matter how you are truly feeling you always respond with “Fine”. The chief then asked me why I was here, welcomed me to Bagarugu and handed me a bag full of guinea fowl eggs. Next I went to greet the elders. Basically the same thing happened over again in each hut, except some of the elders gave me marriage proposals and one of them even gave me 1 Ghana Cedi with the instructions to buy Kola nuts (anyone read Things Fall Apart?)
When I went back to the compound I was pretty exhausted, both physically and mentally. I ate some TZ and bra soup with the women and then the husband called me over to share some meat with him. I wanted so badly to just give the meat to the children, they need the protein much more than I do. I have the comfort of knowing that soon I will be home where I have the ability to have a nutritious diet. These children eat nothing but starch and oil. But I would insult him by not eating the meat so I thank him generously and just eat everything. The same thing happened each night I was in Bagarugu.
One night I saw the chairman dumping some dust into his bag of maize that he was going to sow. Luckily there was someone nearby to translate when I asked him what it was. In the Muslim religion there are 99 names for God. He has memorized them all and writes them down in ink on a wooden board in Arabic. When he cleans the board he preserves the dust. If the dust is poured onto the seeds, the plant will survive even if the rains do not come for a month. I’m not sure but I think this was a form of JuJu (kind of like voodoo). In northern Ghana most people genuinely believe in witchcraft… something I would like to learn more about.
I stayed in Bagarugu until Saturday. I had some pretty frustrating moments here and there but this time around I could laugh them off more easily. Overall, I genuinely enjoyed my stay. The things that brought me down were the difficulties I had communicating and dealing with people constantly asking me for things. One man even sat me down for half an hour, the first thing he says is “In Africa we are poor country”. Then he went on to ask me to find him work and get him a visa. Not once did he ask me questions about myself or what my life was like back home; he just wanted things from me.
In the villages I’ve stayed in, I often compare them to the poverty I’ve seen at home… in Atlanta, New Orleans, Montreal, and various places that I have traveled. I think about the stories I have heard or read about where children grow up with abusive families, and are exposed to drugs and violence on a daily basis. In my experiences here, the “poor” people are always laughing and smiling and seem to enjoy the daily chores that make up their day. More importantly people know that they are safe, they have a family and community that they can rely on, and I get the sense that everyone feels a sense of love and belonging. I would never want this life for myself; I am fortunate enough to have been exposed to so many things and need more out of life. I want Ghanaians to be able to have more opportunities and be able to choose the life they want, but I want Ghanaians to understand that life is not perfect in other parts of the world. We have our problems too, they are just different. I have been learning more from Ghanaians than they will ever learn from me and I hope to take some of the great things about Ghana back home with me to share.
I think I have written enough… congratulations if you have made it this far! I would like to sum this up with another Dagbani proverb that I recently learned which is pretty appropriate for the post:
In Dagbani: “A yi bi gberi nopoyu ni a bi mi ni nohi nyeri binfam”
Translation : If you haven’t spent the night in the hens’ house you won’t know that the hens fart
Further Translation: It is only by being closely involved with the life of a community that we get to know what goes on inside.
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