Hail to the Chief

I feel like the title to this post has so many different meanings.

First of all, we just found out a few days ago that Kofi Annan (former Secretary-General of the UN) is being appointed Chancellor of the University of Ghana. Now here they don't have a president of the university they have the Pro Vice Chancellor. He does all of the grunt work (ha, if there is any grunt work other than schmoozing a lot...). The Chancellor is more of a figurehead position. This is exciting nonetheless and Kofi will be here for a huge ceremony on the 11th! Yay!

The other reason I put this particular title is because of the exciting events of yesterday. I was abruptly awoken at 7:30 in the morning yesterday by Elana, our coordinator person. She is very into drumming and has tons of friends and contacts all over the country. One of them called her that morning to tell her about a new chief getting "skinned" (inaugurated) that day in Accra. So she came to see if we all wanted to come. Which was obviously a silly question because who WOULDN'T want to see that kind of thing. After two taxi rides (one of which Lauren and I sat in the trunk part of the station wagon taxi) and one proposal we ended up at this area of Accra. We met Elana's drummer friends who began drumming immediately as we proceeded to move through the street into the neighborhood... passing kids who were sooooo excited to meet white people. These kids were so cute (Frankly, I'm not sure what it is about Africa but I have not seen one un-cute kid) and one latched herself onto me for the whole time I was there. She kept shaking our hands and would introduce me to all of her friends by pointing at them and then pointing at me and then clapping as if to say "You are friends now! Hooray!"

So we got to this little concrete area with a tent covering it and the drumming intensified. There were men coming from all different houses/huts who were dancing and yelling and singing and drumming. It was so cool and so intense. We realized after a little while that we were sitting outside of the "palace" (office/home) of a Youth Chief of a northern tribe (who was the chief for northerners who live in Accra). He was not the new chief getting skinned, but someone we were picking up along the way. After a lot of drumming and singing and dancing we moved out... back to the street where there was a bus waiting to take us to the ceremony.

And this was a party bus - let me tell you. It was the same amount of intensity and energy and people... just crammed onto a school bus. So that part was great. We got to a different part of Accra where the ceremony was taking place and the party kept on moving. Forced to dance by a large Ghanaian man with a whistle, we all tried our best to minimize how foolish we looked. Which was pretty difficult considering that our procession led right into a huge courtyard surrounded by people sitting down. And, really, it's not like we could blend in... So we had to resign ourselves to being part of the attraction.

Finally we were able to sit down and only be somewhat stared at. Elana was with the drummers the whole time so we had a gaggle of Ghanaian men looking after us. And by looking after us I mostly mean moving us from place to place and taking our picture. It was really fun though and we got to see some really amazing culture.

And this brings me to my third and final hail to the chief. So in Ghana, they don't like to talk about the toilet directly. It's too vulgar. So they like to use a lot of euphemisms. One of which is
"talk to the chief" or "visit the chief". We are told this is because the chief has a lot of power over the people in the village and he can force anyone to come see him. You can delay seeing him for only so long before you have to go. Well, at the skinning of this chief, I had to visit the chief REALLLYYYYY bad. Really bad. And most of the people there didn't know what a bathroom, washroom, toilet, loo, water closet was... I finally made it to a hotel which understood the phrase " relieve myself".

And here's an edit to an earlier post. Ursula commented on my phone number info with a correction, so take note.
as for the phone # i thought you'd like to know that 011 is the code you dial to call out of america, 233 is ghana's country code, and 024 is your area code. so if you were calling from a us cell phone, you'd dial +233243413296