I felt like I was already on Ghana time during the flight down to DC from Boston. It’s barely past 9 PM but 5 ½ hours of sleep last night combined with the vague stress of packing for the next three months of my life(probably high-stress by my standards) has taken its toll and now I’m mostly hoping to sleep well on the flight.
I arrived in DC to find the airport filled with college students (seemingly mostly from UConn, including the men’s crew team) celebrating spring break in typical shorts-and-t-shirt style. My favorite was the pair of guys in matching khaki-shorts/navy-blue-shirts ‘uniforms’, one shirt proclaiming “Obama ‘08”, the other “Huskies”. My walk from gate D3 to C14 gave me time to begin processing that 90 degrees is much warmer than 30s and 40s. It’ll be a hot month.
I reached the gate and found the seats already mostly filled, not surprising for an international flight. Here, I was struck by a realization. (I blame the sleep deprivation and distractions of packing for some of the lag time on these now-obvious thoughts.) Whether it matters to me or not, race will matter in the next month of my life. At the gate, I sat down by the window, already aware by the time I reached my seat that I was one of three white women in the crowded boarding area. The sole white male was the older man, who works for United, who has been circling through the area offering jovially to check any and every bag. He’s also making sure we’ve all had our documents (passports and, for US citizens, visas) checked at the desk in preparation for boarding.
Race will matter in that I will automatically stand out by the color of my skin. I remember the Ugandan women’s rugby team telling us [the Brown women’s team] they were surprised how small we were, that they expected us all to be fat from fast-food hamburgers because we’re from America. The IVHQ Ghana pamphlet has already offered a warning of sorts that “fat” is used in a complimentary tone in Ghana. Don’t, it advises us, be offended.
According to the display monitor, it’s partly cloudy and 84 degrees in Accra right now. It’ll be an amazing month.
[Note from the future (April 17th):
It’s true: race did matter and fat was good. On the race front, I heard “obruni, obruni!” more times than I could count, mixed in with the occasional enthusiastic “yavoo!” (obruni is Twi for foreigner, yavoo Ewe; Twi is the primary dialect of Dodowa, Ewe the Volta region). My taxi driver on the way to the airport yesterday told me that the country in the world he would like most to visit is America because there are “many blacks” there. As for “fat” compliments, the kids happily told multiple volunteers that they were getting fat as their stays progressed into the second and third months. Obolo is a compliment because higher weight signifies access to adequate food. Wives should be plump to show that they are well cared for by their husbands. Our staple foods of white bread, noodles, and white rice seemed to seek to contribute to the goal of fattening us up. It was nice to be in a country with a concept of beautiful so opposite from the skinny American ideal. I think the American approach to moderation and weight control probably serves health better in the long run, but the body image issues sidestepped by the Ghanaian view create a much more positive overall image atmosphere.]
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Anybody who’s flown with me (cough cough, Melissa, cough cough) knows that I like to make friends on planes. This particular flight is no exception.
I reached my row towards the end of boarding only to find that my beloved aisle seat was occupied and only the window seat next to it was vacant (pro of international flights: no middle seat by the windows). Unfortunately for my neighbor, I didn’t submit to the aisle-window swap; I would love to acquiesce, but movement and freedom are essential aspects of my long-flight experiences. I’d rather not submit a seatmate to my stretch-time needs. Fortunately for me, not swapping didn’t seem to harm our long-term interactions. I helped with her Ghana entrance form (she’s from Accra so the form was straightforward, but trying to read the small passport font without reading glasses was proving difficult). I thought I was going to settle in to watch Due Date once we hit cruising altitude (Robert Downey Jr. was good in Ironman, so why not?), but I was mistaken. It turns out, I ended up watching one-minute segments every five or so minutes broken up by questions about where I’ll be in Ghana (Dodowa) or comments on how big the mountains in Colorado are or how sugary American food is (her proclamation: way too sweet). I finally gave up on having even one earbud in towards the end, at which point she suggested that I switch my screen to the map because I wasn’t really watching the movie anyway. Oh goodness : )
We now arrive at our first two lessons of the trip:
Lesson #1: I have an accent. You have an accent. We all have accents. This much we know. But did you know how challenging it can be for someone from another English-speaking country to decode our accents? Very. (For example, I was giving my seatmate the flight number – UA 990 – and we went through a long time on “UI” with a brief stopover at “UL” before hitting “UA”.
Lesson #2: I admit that I had been warned. Personal-life distinctions in conversation, the IVHQ booklet said, are very different and you may find your relationship status (especially if not married) at the center of a conversation. I didn’t realize this meant I would be getting marriage advice on the plane. Specifically, when my seatmate found out that I’m 24 and unmarried, there was the characteristic two-minute conversation break, then she turned to me and said, “You should get married in the next couple of years.” This led into us talking about appropriate marriage age. Take the ages at which Americans typically marry. Cut those numbers in half. Twenty-four starts to look much older, right? This may be one of the few areas of life in which Americans move slower than any non-negligible portion of everyone-else-in-the-world.
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