This is a guest blog from Sharon Kennedy (sharonkennedy.com) a professional story teller who came to Aba House in Jan. 2013.
In January this year I went to Ghana in West Africa for three weeks. I
am a professional storyteller and I perform many kinds of stories
including folktales and historical stories for children and adults.
Sometimes the desire to collect folktales instead of just reading them
in books leads to an urge to travel. This is what brought me to Ghana.
And so the story starts: we were on a rooftop in Nungua, a suburb of Accra, at a place called Aba House, a
cultural
compound for visiting and native artists and educators. One visiting
sculptor had carved giant crocodiles all around the periphery of the
roof. The night was hot and humid and the light was from the moon and
the stars and one hanging lantern. The ocean waves provided part of the
soundtrack.
The cook at Aba House, Talk True, had arranged for three nights of
storytelling. He invited two friends from the Ewe tribe “And then,” he
said, “I will tell on the last night. I will be the ‘last killer.’”
When storyteller Big Joe told his tales in the original
Ewe,
Talk True translated, but the sounds of the Ewe language were so much
more musical and intriguing than the English. Two Africans and three
Americans, all drinking Talk True’s delicious, cold hibiscus drink (made
with a dash of hot pepper), formed an appreciative storytelling
audience and we all laughed and laughed at the punch lines. The
translation was certainly conveying the story’s main message.
“Pig and Tortoise went into business together thinking they could
make money. They did well until Tortoise and his new wife got greedy and
started skimming the money off the top of every deal. When Pig realized
that he was being cheated, he came to Tortoise for his money. Tortoise
put Pig off for weeks with all kinds of tricks.
“One day Tortoise had a new idea. He folded his legs and hid inside
his shell. He told his wife, ‘This is your new granite stone so you can
grind pepper on it.’ Then Pig came and said, ‘Where is your husband?
Where is your husband? If you don’t answer me I will take your stone and
throw it into the bush.’ The woman didn’t answer, so Pig grabbed the
stone and threw it away. A few minutes later Tortoise appeared and heard
his wife and Pig arguing.
“‘Oh, Pig, there is no need for arguing. Your money is ready. Just go
and get that stone wherever you threw it. Your money is safely hidden
inside.’
“To this day Pig is still looking for that granite stone. After
searching for days, he decided it must have sunk into the earth. So if
you see Pig digging and digging in the ground, now you know why.”
By the end of my third night at Aba House, I had heard fourteen
stories. Cephus Mensah Amabale told a story about a beautiful woman
from a wealthy family with more suitors than she could count. Her family
constructed a series of tests to determine which man really loved her
for herself rather than for her money or her looks. Ben Kwao Adipah told
a story about a chief’s wife who is unable to give him a boy child so
he keeps marrying more and more wives, all of whom have girls.
But it was time to leave Nungua and travel along the coast to
Kopeyia, another cultural compound specializing in drumming. On the way
we stopped at Keta for lunch outdoors on the beach: fried tilapia caught
that morning and fou fou (pounded cassava) with “red red,” a spicy
sauce made with vegetables and red peppers. I pictured Tortoise’s wife
pounding those red peppers on her granite stone.
At
every beach we passed in our un-air conditioned van, we watched
fishermen in brightly painted wooden fishing boats bobbing on the waves
and women sorting many different kinds of fish in wooden baskets. We
went to market day in Denu and everything was for sale from shoes to
auto parts to towering piles of mangoes. We saw what amounted to a “fish
aisle” with twenty or thirty women selling every kind of fresh and
dried fish from their baskets. It had the feel of an auction as men
yelled out types of fish and their prices, but not in English!
In Ghana most people speak English but when they speak to each other
they use their native language. And also, although most people are
Christian or Muslim, many of them practice a much older,
animist
African religion as well. In the small villages, the native
culture--fetish priests, traditional health cures, drumming, dancing,
singing, storytelling, and pottery making--is still very much intact.
Happily for tourists, friendliness in Ghana is abundant. In Kopeyia, Kofi Agbeli, our guide at the “Dagbe”
compound, organized an evening of storytelling just for us. He told
three stories and then I told one. Everyone sang and danced and drummed,
for his stories, and for mine as well.
After we left Dagbe, Kofi called the next day to make sure that our
travels were going well. At the time we were visiting two “Kente cloth
villages” and buying some of the famous (and gorgeous) fabric. We told
Kofi that everything was great, little knowing that we would arrive
later that day (a Friday afternoon) in the city of Kumasi to find that
every hotel was booked. We were hot and tired and getting a little
desperate when the third hotel said “no.”
I used my storytelling skills to describe how much we needed a room
and this brought quick results. Within ten minutes the hotel clerk
introduced us to a former employee who hopped in our van and led us to
“The Pink Panther Hotel.” There we were shown to the “Executive Suite.”
It had two huge rooms, red velvet couches, an exercise bicycle, a
stereo, a microwave, and best of all, air conditioning and two beds.
We all know the stereotypes about Africa. Would it surprise you to know that Africans have some strange ideas about "others"? Africans believe that foreigners (especially white ones) have no problems, have unlimited money, cars and all have high status.
