Sunday the 5th

Friday was great and busy. Brach n i went to town to use the interwebz n to buy provisions for shabz. We bought challah and palm wine (palm tree alcohol) for kiddush. Came home. I went to shule to organise some lessons for the adults for shabbat afternoon while bracha returned to town to help a community member set up his first ever email address at age 45. i showered and went to shule at 5pm for kids service. We sung all the songs we'd taught over the week and then i began singing kabbalat shabbat. Luckily bracha got back to the community just before shabbat and could join me in singing kabbalat shabbat. Even though the kids couldn't sing with us (except for lecha dodi which we taught them) they seemed to really enjoy it anyway. Friday night was a revelation. We'd lit shabbat candles in our room and since we eat and sleep in that room we hadn't left any light on there. But conveniently the shabbat candles provided adequate light. We finally understood why these candles are so necessary in the first place, they serve a practical not just a spiritual purpose. In general i find that jew stuff makes more sense in ghana but i'll leave my meditations on that for another time.

Shabz morning we were at shule by 8.30am. Shule didn't finish till 12pm. That is way too long to be in shule. Particularly why most of it is in sefi or twi, ie: languages that i don't understand. But at the end of the service the kids did a performance for the adults of all the songs we'd taught them. They were pretty good, i was pretty proud. But by the end of shule i was super grumpy b/c i hate spending 4 hours in shule even when i know what's going on. So we had lunch and i napped and then i woke, read and then complained to bracha about the 3rd world and how much i miss running water and fridges and vegetables. At 5 we returned to shule and ran a lesson for the adults, though the kids came too since they like brach n i. So we taught them the order of the prayer service and facilitated a discussion about the length of the service and whether they would like to shorten it and the ways in which this is possible. They seemed to like my suggestion of only reading one third of the parsha each year and thereby having a 3 year cycle. Also potentially doing musaf in the afternoon service since they don't do mincha but gather to learn on shabz arvo. We then taught Rambam's 13 principles of faith. This was super challenging to explain that god never has a hand or a mouth, not on earth and also not in heaven. Also resurrection of the dead? Good luck explaining that. But all in all i'd say it was a good thing to teach. It's challenging material so well suited to adults but also super important things to know as a jew.

Saturday night i was still grumpy and bracha n i went to get soft drink so that sugar would improve my mood. That and having kontomre stew for dinner (my favorite green vegetable) and i was definately feeling a bit better by the time we went to bed at a very late 10.30pm.

This morning we got up early, breakfasted, said goodbye to everybody, gave them monies for looking after us for the past 2 weeks and were on a bus to kumasi. We arrived at around 12pm at my government bus station and asked about buses to tamale but it turns out that they don't have overnight buses. So we took a taxi to the STC station and bought tickets for a 4pm bus to tamale which would arrive at 10pm. Which meant that we'd have to return to the bus station at 3pm. The woman told us however, that if we miss the bus that we'd be able to get another one the next morning at 7am. So we hopped onto a tro tro home in kwamo. Once home, i reunited with all my friends. But i also called snappy who was meant to come to kumasi from cape coast with my passport so i could grab it on my way to tamale since it's been at the immigration office for 2 months getting a visa extension (long story but it basically comes down to african incompetence). However, snappy informed me that he wouldn't be back in kumasi until 5pm which meant that we had to miss our bus. Grrr. But it's ok, we'll get up at 4.30am to make it to the bus station by 6am to allow for arguing for the bus tickets tomorrow. On the plus side hopefully susan will join us to mole national park which should be super exciting.

As for tonight my plan is to blog, watch the ghana vs tunisia game and shower, though the bathrooms in kumasi are super gross.

Miss u all. Xoxo.

Thursday the 2nd

Thursday was delightful.

I taught Alex some modern hebrew at the beginning of morning seder and then we moved on to pirkei avot

At around lunchtime i went and got brach n i some yam chips n milk for a snack since Alex was bringing us lunch and given ghanaian time that meant it wouldn't arrive till3pm.

Then brach n i chilled, read a bit, watched a ghanaian tv show until it was too trashy and stupid for us to continue with.

True to form Alex brought us beans and plantain at 3.30pm. But then as we were eating the beans we noticed fish bones in it. There were pieces of fish per say but definitely bones. Now, i haven’t seen any treif fish in ghana. All the fish i've seen had fins and scales and when i asked why type of fish they eat here i was told a lot of herring, sardines and salmon, all kosher varieties of fish. But i was still upset by the fish bones in my beans b/c i didn't know what type of fish it was, so theoretically it could have been treif. But furthermore because Alex knows i don't eat fish and i was annoyed at being fed fish anyways. Though to be fair Alex probably didn't know the beans were cooked with fish since at all other places i've seen the beans are cooked sans fish. Also in ghana, unless it actually has pieces of fish or meat in the food they don't consider it a dish with fish or meat. So a soup or stew that was cooked with meat but doesn't actually have meat in it they will tell you is vegetarian. So you have to learn to ask all the right questions, very clearly and multiple times before you decide whether or not the dish is actually animal free.

Anyways after that we went to go and teach the kids again. It was a great class. We did revision on everything we'd learnt so far plus taught them about the laws of shabbat and a few songs about shabbat. The kids love songs and particularly ones with dances or actions as well. It was also great teaching the laws of shabbat because all the av melachot actually apply here. So like, when there's a law against ploughing they understand what that means and don't go and plough their farms. Also when it says don't light a fire for us it's not so relevant but literally shabbat is the only day of the week that they don't have a fire.

After our class we went home and had dinner - boiled yam and eggs and kontomre stew (yay for green vegetables). Bucket showered and to bed before 10pm.

As for today - Friday, well, Alex is sick and has gone to hospital. I think he hurt his back and is getting some painkillers. In ghana the hospital is basically their doctors office since they don't have general medical clinics. So brach n i are going to shteig instead and go to town to use the interwebz.

One more annoying thing. I left some of my cash in accra in my suitcase. So after paying for accommodation here i would only have 100 cedies ($80) left for a week of travel. And travel is expensive. Luckily brach has muchos cash and is willing to share, but i feel very stupid for making such a silly mistake.

Apart from all that we also have to prep for shabz. Woot.

Cheers.

Wednesday the 1st

Wednesday was also lovely - Alex and i had morning seder where we learned the parsha and then more of massechet kiddushin.

I then went home while Alex joined bracha in town doing administrative things for the guesthouse to be set up. I ate my chocolate covered peanuts and read my book, 'beyond the horizon,' another ghanaian novel this time about a village girl in an abusive marriage who ends up a prostitute in germany. It was a great story even if the writing wasn't of the highest quality. I then washed pretty much every item of clothing i own including my handkerchiefs (yeah, i bought one to wipe up the buckets of sweat coming from my face in ghana). That took an hour and by the end i was totally exhausted. So i grabbed a frozen water sachet and sat in the sun and finished my book.

At some stage bracha came home and brought a late lunch of kinkey and soft drinks. We then prepped for the evenings class with the kids. We revised the songs and the hebrew we'd learnt yesterday and then went on to teach the story of chana and the beginning of the amidah. We then taught a few more songs and called it a day. Tonight (Thursday) we are going to teach them the laws of shabbat.

After class brach n i went back to Alex's and watched ghana play against guinea. It was a 1:1 draw but b/c of the other games that meant that ghana continues to the next round while guinea drops out.

Then it was home time and bed time. i've started reading 'a portrait of a lady' on brach's kindle. We also taught rachel to play solitaire and to use paint on my laptop. Of course the first drawing she did was of moses floating down the river with pharoah's daughter watching him. Rachel is kickass.

It's particularly satisfying to walk around the village and hear the kids singing the shema or `am yisrael chai. Being in the village has been the most awesome Jewish education experience of my life. If i though ujeb was important work this is a whole new level. Moreover what i've learnt about judaism has in some ways totally changed the way i relate to so much of it. But i will save these revelations for their own post.

And for now, that is all. Cheers!

Tuesday the 31st

So the past 3 days have been super wonderful goodness.

Sunday i got up early, and was at the bus station in town by 7am. But meanwhile it took a while for the bus to come and then bad roads meant that i didn't get to my home in kumasi until 11.45am. I spent an hour there, finishing packing, having some porridge and coffee (I LOVE COFFEE) then got on a VIP super lovely bus to accra. I arrived in accra and had to walk with all my luggage to a tro tro park and got a tro tro to madina new road. I arrived at about 9pm. Meaning i'd been travelling for 14 hours that day. There enoch met me and brought me back to the aiesec house. Just like the kumasi house it's totally packed with interns. They had a bunch from china and some from brazil. Also newly arrived that night was a girl called siril from norway. Conveniently she was short and had brown hair so i wasn't totally outshone by a stunning scandinavian. We shared a bed since there weren't enough beds for everybody that night. Siril was going to be an intern in cape coast and was just staying the night in accra on her way. So we had a whole long chat where i imparted all my knowledge about ghana to her. Well, as much as i could while we were lying on a single mattress at midnight both totally exhausted from our long journeys.

Monday was a exceptional. I was so happy the whole day. Accra has fast (by african standards) internet so i caught up on all my internet needs with the wireless in the house. Then i spoke to the boys and sorted out how to get to the various locations that i needed during the day. So by 9am i set off for accra mall. Which is say about the size of malvern central. But it did have a cafe in it. Where i had a latte. My first non-instant coffee fix in a long time. Why i finished my coffee i went to the supermarket in the mall. Even though i'd found a 'supermarket' in kumasi it was really just a glorified 7-11. This was a real supermarket. With a freezer section, a deli, a bakery section, heaps of imported fruits and vegetables. So i bought some pre-cut and washed radishes from Germany and some pre-cut and washed snow peas from Guatemala. I bought some cadburies chocolate, some wasabi peas, some fresh juice (pineapple and ginger) and a tiny sachet of salad dressing with a kosher stamp from south africa. I then used the toilets in the mall (a flushing toilet! So exciting!) and i washed my hands with running water. And then used a handryer! I was in heaven.

I then grabbed a tro tro to the airport to pick up Bracha (my BFF) once there i washed my vegetables with clean drinking water and noshed on them with my little sachet of honey mustard dressing. The first fresh vegetables that i'd had in a long time. I was ecstatic.

But then things got even better when my platonic lover, my bff, arrived and we were reunited. Joy.

She'd packed light ( a girl after my own heart) so we walked to the main road to get a tro tro home instead of having to get a taxi. That also made me happy since a taxi would have cost 15 cedis and a tro tro costs 80 peswas (cents). I took her back to the aiesec house and we sorted out what she was going to take with us and what she was going to leave in the house. Also i took from her the relevant winter clothes that i'm going to take with me to israel. We then put our unneeded bags in a cupboard up high and set out on our epic journey back to sefwi wiaso. We got to the tro tro park and sorted out how to get the bus. It was an overnight bus and it left at 8.30pm.

Along the ride they showed a nigerian film called 'a world apart' about a village girl and an African prince who fall in love with each other. It was basically a shit version of my fair lady. But it was enjoyable b/c of the prince's totally outlandish outfits - ie: a pink furry crown. Seriously.

We arrived in sefwi at 5.15am and grabbed a taxi back home. We napped until 8.30 when we got up and breakfasted. After that i showed Bracha Alex's place, the shule and the construction site of the future guest house for the community. We then went to town and got bracha a kerchief (good for wiping up sweat and keeping hair off the face) and a wallet and sunglasses. We then walked up the hill and used the internet cafe. There we met Alex. We grabbed some beans and cassava and plantain for lunch, went home and ate it. After digesting we went and found bracha a pair of thongs for 1.5 cedies.

We rested in the afternoon, read and kinda almost napped.

From 5 till 6.30 we ran a class in the shule for the kids. We taught a bunch of songs and had a hebrew lesson. The kids were well behaved, quick learners and totally adorable. They ranged from say 5 years old to 13 i guess. So cute.

After dinner (jolof rice and boiled eggs) we had a meeting with Alex about the guest house and how to finish getting it set up and running.

All in all it was a super efficient and productive day. Which is generally the case with my bff. Probz why i love her.

As for tomorrow, morning seder with Alex. Chill in the arvo and then teach the kids in the evening.

As for now - i'm off to have a bucket shower n wash my hair. Then bed. Woot.

g'nite.

Saturday the 28th

Friday was pretty kickass. Davened then tea and toast before beginning morning seder with Alex. We learned for 4 hours in the morning. We learned the parsha and then pirkei avot. His hebrew is pretty good. It was a good study sesh and i left feeling super inspired and satisfied.

After our learning i went back to my room and bought 15 litres of drinking water. Alex came with yogurt and fruit which also made me happy. I spent the afternoon watching the movie 'twelve monkeys.' it's not bad. But i wouldn't say it's brilliant. Though i do love seeing brad pitt in his earlier years. I then (bucket) showered and prepped for shabz. I completed the fence around the house so i would be able to carry around the compound. Though the property is shared with christian families who thought i was a bit nuts. But they should probably be used to nutty Jews by now.

I was also in a pickle about food for shabz. You see, the woman who cooks for me is part of the community and she was cooking everything for me before shabbat because she herself is shomeret shabbat. However, this doesn't extend to carrying on shabbat. Now i knew she was going to carry the food to me on shabz. So i went to her before shabbat and asked if i could take it all now so she wouldn't' have to carry on shabz and work. But she said no, that she brings to food to all the guests and became quite offended that i was trying to take away her job. So it seemed quite impossible without getting Alex (who was uncontactable) to explain the situation since her english wasn't great. I reconciled it as such, that halachically she is not Jewish. She may at some point go through a conversion ( the community is planning to convert by the end of this year) however even then it will be a conservative conversion and she will still be carrying on shabbat, since Alex the leader of the community also carries on shabbat even after his conversion. As such, i decided that pending further investigation and not wanting to offend her any more than i already had that i would simply accept the food that had been carried through the reshut ha'rabim on shabz.

Another question arose then about how on earth she was going to keep the food until my meals. Now i couldn't go asking and indeed she didn't like me being any where near her outdoor 'kitchen.' but it seemed pretty obvious to me that anything i would be eating would not have been refrigerated since i doubt that there is a single private fridge in the whole village. Any food that was cooked was put into like giant thermoses to keep warm until it was time for me to eat the next day. So she'd prepared me a bunch of boiled eggs, some tomato stew and some rice. I ate a little bit of it all but i'm still waiting for the salmonella to catch up with me. She also prepared me some watermelon which was delicious but i have no idea how hygienic or unhygienic the circumstances were when it was prepared. So expect a stomach complaint in the next 24 hours. Keeping track of what i was eating was easier in kumasi when nobody but myself was responsible for my food.

But back to shabbat. Friday evening i went to shule, we sang kabbalat shabbat with the children and a few adults. After that we taught the kids a tune to one of the shabbat prayers and i gave a short devar torah about shabbat.

We walked home but there was no Friday night dinner. Apparently they don't do that here and since i'd eaten at 4 i certainly wasn't hungry. So i read by the light outside and was in bed by 9pm.

Shule this morning was at 8.30am. The service is pretty standard expect that many of the tehillim (psalms) have been translated into the local language, twi, so they sing them in that language. Apart from that most of the service is in english except for shema and the amidah which is lead tby the chazan. They also called me up to read from the 'torah' - meaning a chumash in hebrew for the first 2 aliyot. But after that they switched back to reading the parsha in Twi. I found it amusing that the first time i read in front of a community is in west africa. But then again, i defiantly just read since my leining abilities are limited. After torah reading a gave another devar torah which was translated as i spoke by Alex.

After shule, i went home, read and napped until 5pm when we returned to shule for a shiur, given by myself. I gave a shiur on hilchot shabbat focusing on the laws of mukseh since i mentioned it to Alex in passing a couple of days ago and he had never heard of it. So i explained it to the community. After that there was some question and answer time, much of it coming from the kids and revolving around what they had been taught about jesus in school. It was difficult for me to answer since i don't know much of abut jesus of Christianity but it was important that we had these discussions b/c obviously it's hard for the kids to be Jewish in school surrounded by christians. After that i gave a small vort involving the parsha and pirkei avot and by this stage shabbat was out and we went outside to do havdala which they do in the carlebachian style so i felt right at home. As we walked back home through the banana plantations the kids sung eliyahu ha navi and it felt totally surreal that i was in a small isolated west african viillage.

Tonight we watched ghana play mali in the africa cup of nations. Ghana won 2:0. yay!

As for tomorrow i begin my trek to accra to collect my BFF. Super pumped. And with that, g'nite.

Monday the 23rd

Sorry all - this is a bit out of order - this is from Monday but i forgot to post it - whoops!

What did i do today? Well, not much.

Yeah, welcome to ghana.


I mean i got up early at like 6am, i set my alarm to go off at that time but to be honest there's no a high likelihood that i could hav stayed awake much longer anyway because of the cacophony of goats and chickens in the courtyard. I dressed and martha, the woman who's cooking for me, brought me breakfast of eggs and toast and tea which i was actually hungry for and ate happily. Alex came and informed me that he was going to town but that afterwards he planned on taking me to an internet cafe. So while he was gone i had a bucket shower. I should wash my hair but have you any idea how much of a mission that is with a bucket of cold water? Plus it wasn't warm enough this morning so i didn't feel like the chill of that whole experience. I then washed some clothes. Seriously hanging out for israel and a freaking washing machine. b/c scrub as i might in my little bucket of cold water it's just not going to ever really get all the dust and sweat out of my clothes. After that Alex came around and we went to the internet cafe, i blogged and then we bought some butchers paper and a texta for when i teach. I came home and lunch was ready, rice and beans and SALAD! Now on the one hand salad is exciting b/c it involves vegetables. On the other hand who knows if they were washed? Sadly i'd forgotten about this in the excitement of my first fresh vegetables in almost 2 months. That is, until after i'd finished eating. So now i'm just waiting to see if i'm going to get sick. Only time will tell.


At around this time Alex disappeared. As far as i understood this afternoon we were meant to have a meeting to set a curriculum for my kids afterschool classes and the adult evening classes as well as decide what the two of us will study in the mornings. But he's disappeared. Hrm. There was also supposed to be a meeting of the community this evening to meet me but so far it doesn't look like that is going to happen. I know that he's going to kumasi tomorrow. He will probably be back in the evening/afternoon.


This is super frustrating, particularly when i could have spent the day teaching in kumasi. But then again, this is ghana. Things happen slowly and inefficiently. And i'm trying to get used to it.


So this afternoon Bernard and Joseph Junior (aka JJ) and Rachel, ie: Joseph Armah's kids, kept me company. We finished watching the rest of alice in wonderland. We talked a bit. Bernard gave me a talking to about black magic and the bad things it can do and how i should be super careful. It seems that he is christian, i'm gathering this b/c he wears a cross around his neck. But it might not be right. Dinner was boiled yam, tomato and bean sauce and a boiled egg. It looks like i'm going to be having a lot of eggs here.


Another off putting event happened today, JJ, came to me and asked for 4 cedis to buy him new sandals. I asked him if his father knew about this. He said yes, but i was suspicious, so i told him that i'd speak to Alex and we'll see. If his father comes to ask me for money, i'll consider giving it to him. But i don't want to become to local atm. Not that there is actually an atm here locally.


So what will happen tomorrow? Who knows. The kids go to school, the adults go to work/farm and Alex will be in kumasi. I need to remind myself that i'm on summer holidays and that if i don't teach every day it's not the end of the world. But i am feeling pretty frustrated at present.


And so that is all i have to share at the moment. Fun times.

Wednesday the 25th

Today was heaps better, but still not actually quite productive.

Got up early and went with joseph to his work. He's a photographer, weddings and the like. But he also does passport photos so today i went with to his shop. At about 11am i decided to go off and find an internet cafe. Which i did, but sadly i had not brought my blog posts with me so no postage was possible. After the interwebz i met up with Alex and we went back to New Adiembra which is the suburb of Sefwi that the Jews live in. He told me that this afternoon at 3 i would be able to teach the kids, but at 3 he didn't come to collect me so i found rachel, joseph's 10 year old daughter and had her take me to Alex. We found him and i got him to take me to the shule and to get rachel to gather the kids for the lesson. I think i've learnt by now that i have to push for things to get done here in ghana.

Once in the shule Alex took me through their services. Their shabbat morning one is pretty standard but they don't have a Friday night service. Which i think is pretty sad. They do a translation of the torah portion into twi (the local language) but they don't read with a tune so Alex has asked me to read from the torah this shabz. They don't have a mechitza but men and women sit separately.

At about this stage rachel came back and said that the kids aren't around and we won't be able to have a class.

So Alex and i stayed in the shule and we discussed the history of the community.

Oh and Alex's love life.

So for hundreds of years apaz the community kept kosher and kept shabbat but didn't really know they were Jewish, it was more that these were the rules of the paramount chief in the area and so everybody obeyed but then the missionaries came and gave him lots of pretty things and so he agreed to relax the rules so people didn't have to worship on shabz anymore. Also then a fetish priestess in the original location of the community, adiembra (i think) incited mini-pogroms so they left the village and mowed to this new part, new adiembra. But then the community lost direction and began to convert to christianity. But in the 70s their leader (whose name i forget) had a dream/prophecy that they were Jewish and had to find more Jews. So he found some in America and started writing to them. The community built up but after his death in 1991 the community waned again. That is except for Alex armah's brothers and friends. They convinced people to return to judaism (they hadn't actually gone to another religion they just stoppd identifying as Jewish) and eventually they built a shule. Alex got in touch with kulanu eventually and was sent to the community in uganda where there is a yeshiva (of 10 students) and now he is due to receive some sort of rabbinical ordination.

The only problem is they won't let him become a 'rabbi' or the head of the community until he marries. The trouble is that the community is 10 families much of which are his own family. So how does one find a woman when you are a jew in ghana? Well, he tried his best in uganda but the cultures were simply too different for him to find a suitable wife. He assures me that he's working on it but that he doesn't want to rush into such a big decision. So for now becoming a rabbi will have to wait while he sorts out his marital status.

In the meantime he wants to start a community nursery school with the hopes that from there he can build a primary and eventually a secondary school and thereby really boost the community.

I asked him some questions about observance in the community. Apparently shabbat was always kept though obviously the rules about not using electricity are new (then again so is electricity). But they didn't write or clean or work on shabbat even before they had contact with other Jews. As for kashrut they only ever ate kosher animals and were killing them in a way that they thought was kosher. However, since Alex went to yeshiva he has learnt how to kill chickens. As such until he properly learns how to kill a goat that will have to do. Though he says that there are still some families that kill their own goats their own way. As for matters of milk and meat, turns out to not be an issue since ghanaians don't eat milk. The only dairy products they would have, maybe is some condensed milk in their tea (since there's no fresh milk in ghana), but they don't even have tea very often. They would never have a milk based meal and plenty have never ever seen cheese before.

They import their matzot in from America, they don't have a tradition for matza, but i'm hoping that maybe tomorrow i will teach Alex to make it. i'm also considering making challah, the only issue for both of these is that i've never even seen an oven in ghana. So while i can make matza i suppose on the back of a wok overturned onto a fire (like pita) i feel like challah really requires an oven.

As for tonight, i had jolof rice with an egg for dinner then finished watching 'willy wonka and the chocolate factory' with rachel (i'd forgotten how seriously brilliant that movie is). Afterwards bernard and joseph junior (JJ) joined us. I don't really like either of them. JJ constantly asks me for money and Bernard thinks nothing is more hilarious than things i don't know. Such as that a local god can curse you and make you possessed. I know, hilarious that i didn't know that. Also that i don't speak twi. Totally hysterical. After 'willy wonka' i put on 'shaun of the dead' coz i figured that ghanaians like that type of horror-lite movie. The trouble is that ghana horror-lite movies are about people being cursed by black magic and becoming possessed and the like. Ie: things that 'really' happen. So when bernard saw this movie, he was convinced that there are real zombie attacks in the west just like people 'really' become possessed by the devil in ghana. Look, i don't want to mock their beliefs, but it's a bit of an issue when you can't recognise what's a movie and real life. He only believed me when i said it's not true and has never happened when i pointed out the impossibility of continuing to attack somebody with a giant whole through your centre as was the case with the zombies. After he realised this wasn't true or possible he thought the movie was stupid. Why would you watch a movie about impossible things he asked.

It's interesting, sarah and rachel are josephs biological daughters and the two bys JJ and bernard are relatives who he's caring for. I don't whether it's a boy thing or a genetic thing but the girls are super intelligent (rachel is out-of-control smart for a 10 year old) and competent whereas the boys are more than a little bit slow. Maybe it's a maturity thing?

In any case, bed time now. Who knows what will happen tomorrow.