So after the last post i went to the seamstress and collected my dress. She made me a beautiful dress of pale pink beaded indian fabric. The trouble is that it's too big. She measured me, but as always she left some room for growth. She seems to be in denial of my tiny white girl ways and keeps telling me that i need to be more fat to get a husband. Hilarious. In any case, i need to get the dress taken in. But i was leaving kumasi so i didn't have time to have her do it.
After that i finished packing. i'm leaving my big backpack in kumasi with most of my belonging and i'm only taking a small backpack with me to sefwi wiawso. I’m pretty proud of how light i can pack for 3 weeks. I mean, obviously, i will have to do a lot of washing. But because of the sun here, things dry very quickly.
Meanwhile, the boys who went to liberia came back late last night. So today while i was packing i spoke to one of them, kwachy, about the trip. He studies politics and is quite interesting; he is the one who gave me the book on african history. So we were discussing what happened to the child soldiers once the war ended. He told me that there are lots of NGOs and charities and the UN in liberia at the moment running lots of different projects. They do women's empowerment projects, and HIV/AIDS projects and literacy projects but that there aren't any projects for the child soldiers. Mainly because the world and the communities aren't sure whether to treat them as victims or as war criminals. You see, they might have started off as 8 year olds but by the end of the war they were 16 or 18 and by that age you are responsible for your actions, at least legally. So today many of the ex-child soldiers are homeless, most of the time their families were killed (by their own doing) and their extended families won't take them, neither will their villages. They have no education, having spend their schooling years on the battlefield so they are mainly illiterate. The boys are often involved in the black market (which is basically the only market) or various other dubious activities and the girls mainly work as prostitutes. The problem is that unless there are shelters and re-integration programs for these people in their early 20s they are going to be an unstable force in the country. They are deeply traumatised, many have intense drug addictions from what was given to them in the militias and they have no morality having grown up raping and killing from the age when most of us were still being dressed by our parents. If given the opportunity, say if the UN were to leave, these young people would return to their violent ways because looting and the spoils of war are the only way they know of to feed themselves.
So my advice - world - get on top of this. Ex-child soldiers need help. They might have done very bad things (such as killing their own mothers and eating the flesh of captured soldiers) but they are only going to continue to do bad things unless we help them. They have got to learn new ways to provide for themselves. Ok world?
After speaking to kwachy and farewelling all the boys and the house it was time for me to leave kumasi and go to jewville - aka sefwi wiawso.
I took a bus there, a full blown normal sized bus, not a tro tro (minivan). It made me pretty happy. But then again i was still feeling pretty miserable from being so sick. I felt super nauseous and tired, i was quite worried that i would either vomit or pass out on the bus. But i was determined to go to visit the Jews today. Also - i was sick of living in that house in kumasi. There were too many people in it now with all the new chinese interns, and it was becoming filthy, probably the cause of my illness in the first place.
At about 4pm i arrived in sefwi and Alex met me at the bus. He took my bag, we hopped into a taxi and drove to his place. There, a small girl met me and took another bad of mine. They showed me to my room. I was overjoyed. It was a big room with lots of windows, two beds, a tv, a couch and coffee table. It was clean and neat. But more than anything i was happy because on the table were candle sticks, a havdala candle and a small plush toy torah. I was ecstatic. We sat down and i asked the girl what was her name. Rachel, she answered. Not even rachel with the english pronunciation. She said rachel with the deep hebrew gutteral chhhhh. I hugged her. I was so happy to meet a rachel.
So gave Alex my prikei avot and the haggadah that i'd brought. He told me that he's been studying n a yehshiva in uganda for the past few years under the rabbi there. Apparently in uganda the community is over 3,000 people. So Alex studies in hebrew. But the rest of the community don't understand hebrew.
After Alex left however, rachel came in, she showed me her hebrew workbook and what she is learning. She is very good and is learning how to say 'ima' and 'aba' and 'bayit' and some sentences. I mean she's only 10 years old so she's pretty much up to par with the standard Jewish day school kids. Joking. Or am I....
After that Alex came and collected me and we went for a walk. On that walk he spoke to me about the ugandan Jewish community and their history and how they were persecuted. He also discussed how in the past the ghanaian Jewish community were persecuted for opposing idolatry which is the traditional local religion. At this point i asked a question that i was a bit worried about. I asked if the Jews in ghana believe in the local gods as well as the god of judaism. He told me, absolutely not! He said that the Jews know that there are no other gods big or small, they have no powers. He said that because of this they are not afraid of people become angry at them and cursing them and causing them to become sick or die or be infertile. This was a huge relief to me since all the other ghanaians that i have met even if they were christian or muslim also believed in the traditional gods, they simply believed that their other religion was more powerful than the local smaller gods.
He also explained to me some of the history of the community here. It seems that the local chiefs are descended from the Jews but have since converted to christianity, i think, and that they came here are traders across the sahara from ethiopia. Apparently most of the distinctive practices revolved around shabbat. If you were caught working on shabbat you were made to pay a large fine to the chief as a penalty.
After the walk around the town i came home and dinner was waiting for me. They know that i am vegetarian (in truth i spoke to a rova girl who also came here and she advised me against eating their meat since there is no way they have kosher (in the post shulchan aruch sense) shechita) but in any case i have been very sick so i just had some rice with spicy tomato sauce and a boiled egg. I was super happy to eat, surprisingly. Actually, since coming to sefwi i have been feeling much better. My nausea has gone away, i feel much healthier. I think the smell of the house (it still smelled like goat blood from Thursday) was really off putting and reminding me of my food poisoning illness.
As for the next little while,
I’m going to be learning with Alex in the mornings, the school kids in the afternoons and the adults in the evenings. I figure i’ll teach the kids songs and tell them bible stories, the adults i suppose we’ll do pirkei avot and with Alex i guess we’ll be doing Talmud. Conveniently i have all of Talmud and Rambam and various other jew things on my laptop.
As for internet, i think my connection is going to be intermittent so but i guess we will see.
Shavua tov y’all.
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