I once wrote a poem to encapsulate my study abroad experience that began with the words, “What did we expect to find in Ghana?” That rings as true now, finding myself plodding along these same pedestrian-hostile streets I knew so well two years ago. What did I expect this time? What can I expect from Ghana, even having lived here before? Heat, certainly. Sweat and red dirt and water sachets and the numerous, enthusiastic calls of “oburoni!” Beyond that, Ghana is anyone’s guess. We certainly couldn’t have foreseen what has happened this past week.
The first goal was simple, or at least it was distilled down to simplicity for sanity’s sake: spend the first two months in Ghana traveling around the country talking about the vision of Untold International as much as possible and find a community that would emphatically say “Yes! We need this!” The seemed like a fairly difficult first step, since it meant a lot of travel and being in the right place at the right time. Little did I know, I already had been.
As with any project, you talk to the people you know best first. CIEE is the organization I studied abroad with, and they were so personable and supportive then that I figured I might have a shot at getting them behind this. I had emailed the resident director of the program, Kwasi Gyasi-Gyamerah (pronounced Kweh-see Jess-ee Jah-mer-ah, which is so fantastic that I say his full name as often as possible) before leaving Colorado. There are some people you meet and think, “I really like this guy; I would ask his advice on certain things.” Then there are people you meet and think, “Holy crap, I would ask his advice on everything.” Kwasi Gyasi-Gyamerah is the second kind of person. He is young, but he has such a balanced, global perspective—coming from the middle of a developing nation to leading dozens of spoiled, unaware American college students through the trauma of culture shock. He has to have a global perspective; he has his head in at least two cultures at any given time (more when he has to fly to Turkey or China for conferences in the middle of the semester). And he does it with grace. He is the most thoughtfully critical person of his own country, able somehow to examine the shortcomings of his own beloved Ghana without actually comparing her to any “developed” nation, which is a rare skill. He takes Ghana on its own terms, and what it could be on its own without any misconception about the present reality being the fabric we have to work with to make shirts for our own backs. I have enormous respect for this man.
Well, Kwasi took great interest in our project. We when got here, he drove all the way to campus on a Sunday just to sit down with us and hear our goals and intentions in person. He advised us on a few points and ultimately said that this project was necessary. Not only is it needed, it’s wanted. He explained that he had already spoken with a couple people about the literacy center, one of whom was Professor Kofi Agyekum. This made me giddy. Let me tell you why.
Kofi Agyekum was my Twi teacher when I was here two years ago. For those new to me babbling on about Ghana, Twi is the predominant language here (technically it’s a dialect of Akan, but is largely considered its own language here as a point of ethnic pride). Kofi Agyekum is the most badass linguist I’ve ever known. (“But Brady, how many linguists have you known?” A few, okay? And it’s a pretty badass field.) Professor Agyekum is a proud Ashanti who studied for five years in Norway, so he speaks Twi, English, and Norwegian fluently. He was the Ghanaian, in a country where English is increasingly the fad but understood only by the elite, who pioneered Twi on the radio, which allowed laymen to listen in and call in with their opinions. This led to some 20+ Twi radio stations popping up, and even Twi TV stations. He has written books in Twi on syntax, metaphor, taboos, and oral literature. When we met with him, he even showed us a science textbook he wrote in Twi, which is in the process of being published. He described that he is on a crusade to “decolonize language,” a beautiful mission that we whole-heartedly identify with (Kaitlyn was bouncing in her seat as he spoke). He showed us what his students call “The Book of Life,” which contains every journal publication of Professor Kofi Agyekum. It physically hurt to lift it.
So naturally, I was very excited that such a man would be interested in our humble little literacy project. I talked about how our first challenge was to find a community that would embrace this idea. In this, Professor Agyekum echoed Kwasi: “It will not be a problem to find a community that wants this.” Not only was that his opinion, he backed it up by saying that he was interested in having this in his village. I was floored. Here is a man who has done more for his native language in the field of Linguistics than anyone alive, and he wanted to bring us and our project to his home village and make an introduction. This guy is a HERO to me, and he just invited me to come home with him.
So now we’re in dialogues about when to make this happen. He thinks he will go back in two weeks, so we will accompany him then. He believes this will happen there and I have no reason to doubt him. I’m just shocked that we’ve been here less than a week—haven’t left Accra—and we may have already found the perfect place for this literacy center.
We have two weeks to explore around Ghana while we wait for this meeting to happen with the village elders. Can we keep our hopes from getting up? Is that possible?
