Woman: We intellectual women fight for the liberation of women, but in our homes our husbands still try to maintain their authority. Our husbands do not want intellectual women changing the rules of the game.

Man: If a man can get more than one wife, all we can do for him is clap.

(Considering making that last quote the subtitle for my paper.)

In retrospect, I’m glad I chose polygamy in Burkina Faso as my topic.
25 days before I leave for traveling… 25 pages left to write before then if I want to graduate. Life is pretty good! Can’t wait to hit the road!

It is true, though, that jumping around can leave you somewhat shellshocked. Almost a month ago now (A MONTH!!) I took the gruesome 24 bus ride between Ouagadougou and the Atlantic coast for the fourth time. This time, the ride to Accra was pleasant and easy, but when I arrived at Big Milly’s in Kokrobite at about 7AM I felt completely out of it. Compared to hot, dusty, chaotic, conservative, uber poor Burkina the Ghanaian coast seemed cold, pristine, tranquil, prosperous and full of scantily clad foreigners. Serious. If there’s one thing that can be said about white people in Africa, is that generally they have a disdain for other white people in Africa. No exception in my case. The massive groups of 19-year-old volunteers practically made me nauseous, and (besides a pleasant chat with an agnostic preacher) I spent most of Saturday during the day reading my book and avoiding contact with others. At night, I befriended some German girls, talked for a few hours with a charming young Ghanaian man, and finally started enjoying myself while I danced to a Lucky Dube cover band in the rain. The next day, once the volunteers evaporated, I was finally able to get to know the other loners such as myself. I spent my last night at Alison, Sophie and Hannah’s place in Accra. Although only Hannah was actually still around in Accra, it was still nice spending my last night in Africa in the same place I started.

Anyways, less than a week later (with a brief visit with my mom in NYC) I found myself in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala – aka Xela. It is beautiful here. In fact, Guatemala is without a doubt the most beautiful place I have ever been, and that is saying a lot. Xela is fairly high in the mountains, and has narrow, cobblestone streets. The view from pretty much anywhere is impressive. It is strange here though. I have a fascination with expat cultures everywhere, and this place is no exception. I made the following joke yesterday about central Xela – if you made the Gladstone Hotel (in West Queen West Toronto) a village, except with more outdoor active gear, and mixed in 50% cute little Mayan people, you would have Quetzaltenango. Other people don’t really seem to notice or think that there are so many foreigners here, so maybe it is just me coming from Ouagadougou, where there are hardly any. But I still think I am right. There are hip little cafes / bars all over the place though, and there are hundreds of 20-something just hanging about. 20-something neverneverland – that’s what you might want to call the whole country. But despite this I suppose that Xela still has predominantly Guatemalan flavour. It’s not like in Ouaga, where you go out to an expat bar and see only foreigners. In Guatemala there is enough wealth in some classes that the locals join in the fun.

Anyways, to be honest my first week here I was pretty miserable. I thought most of the other travelers I met were jerks, and I couldn’t quite adjust to not being in Africa AND being somewhere new at the same time. After about a week was over, my bitchiness evaporated, and I got into the swing of things. I take five hours of intensive one-on-one Spanish lessons every weekday, and take salsa lessons almost every day as well. There is usually almost always something to do, and when there’s not I am exhausted. The climate is pleasant, and it is easier to relate to local young people than it was in Ouagadougou. Some foreigners never leave, and I can see what sucks them in. It is nice here and I guess you could say the living is easy (at least for those of us who have money.) There is a steady flow of interesting people passing through, it is cheap as hell (although you can find yourself spending way too much money) and there is a great cultural scene and nightlife. I have already started having silly daydreams of coming back to work for a year, or coming here next summer to do my thesis. The Guatemala addiction has already set in.

I still miss Ouaga though – I guess it’s hard to ever love a place as much as the first place you fall in love with, even if it’s a frustrated love-hate kind of love.

Caitlin

PS: The title means “my name is not gringa” in Moore.

Okay, so I’m probably going to offend someone by saying this, but… Ghana is kind of the Japan for foreign women. You know how white men go to Japan, and suddenly they are awash in more beautiful women than they know what to do with? It’s kind of like that here, except for white women. The thing is, Ghanaian men are gorgeous, and for a number of reasons that don’t need to be repeated here, they love white women. In fact, there a many young men in Accra that are known as Obruni (white person) hunters. They seem to hang out in Osu, the upscale neighborhood that expats and volunteers hang out in. They sell jewelery on the street or hang around expat bars filled with white women. Some who I’ve met have never dated a Ghanaian woman!

So there are a ton of western women here with Ghanaian boyfriends. Some really love these men, but I get the impression that some just love the attention. And truth be told, I guess there’s the feeling that you can date men far more handsome than those you’d attract at home. The whole situation makes me a bit uneasy, because you can never be certain whether money is the motivation of the Obruni-hunters. I have met white women who pay for all their Ghanaian lovers’ expenses. So I guess this just begs the question – is this just another form of sex tourism?

I guess I shouldn’t say either way as I have hardly spent any time in Ghana and I have never dated a Ghanaian (or Burkinabe) so I probably don’t know what I am talking about. I do know, however, that the uneasy power/money relations and other obvious problems does make not want to join the ranks of the Obrunis with their local lovers.

I’ve been hanging out with Alison, an old university buddy, who is working for JHR here in Accra. We left on my first morning and headed west, to a beach town past Takoradi near the Ivoirian border. It was actually quite the epic journey getting there – tro tro to Cape Coast, tro tro to Takoradi, tro tro to some junction, and then a half-hour taxi ride down a windy, bumpy road to the beach. When we got there it was unreal – a beautiful little resort right on the beach. To the east the beach stretches for at least a mile, and to the west is a fishing village next to a bluff. The resort was pretty empty, except for a few odd characters, including a hyperactive rasta who babbled incoherently about peach and love, and a Hungarian backpacker who had run out of money and was now frantically trying to find work aboard a cargo ship to get back home. We spent our days on the beach and walking around the area (with the hyperactive rasta as a guide), and the evenings drinking copious amounts of Star beer and whisky and listening to reggae or people playing the djembe. The bartender, George, took us drunk Canadians down the beach to see this creature light up beneath the sand when stepped. It was a ridiculous sight – four Canadians and three Ghanaians stomping furiously on the sand in the dark, laughing hysterically and screaming whenever we saws a speck of light under our feet.

We came back to Accra yesterday, and went out at night to celebrate my birthday. We went to a (mostly expat) bar. It was a night place, but it was weird to step back out onto the street and remember that yes, I am in Africa.

I have bee to Accra before but now I am seeing a lot more of it. I can’t say that it is my favourite place in Africa, but I can see that it is probably more livable than Ouaga (which I still love more, though.) One thing that is quite disconcerting is the sheer number of non-African. There are a zillion white people, and a huge Lebanese expat community. Accra seems to be the volunteering capital of the world, since there are a ton of young people doing short, one-monthish project in and around the city. (“Voluntourism” is what a lot of people call it. Not that my measly three month volunteer project in Burkina Faso was much better, but the vast number of white people “saving the world” here is astounding.) Anyways, I’m not trying to say that Accra is a less authentically “African” city, but it’s just weird compared to Ouagadougou, where we played the challenging “spot the white person” game.