Say What? Word Play in Ghana

[this post is dedicated to Matt and Hoda, my linguistics friends, who would love to just listen in on my life here. I know it.]

One of the reasons I chose Ghana for my study abroad destination is because the primary language of instruction here is English. Or so I was told. Since my arrival it has become apparent that while English is the official language, no one actually speaks it on a daily basis. As illustrated by one statistic (quick and dirty) and two personal examples.

Boring part first: according to a study done on English education in Ghana (which is really awful, by the way), only 30% of the population has a working knowledge of English although it is the ONLY official language of the country. But all business, education, health, and government is conducted in a language that less than half of people can actually understand. Which means that less than half of the population can participate in those things with out a translator. So if Kwame who lives in a village in Northern Region comes to Accra to makes his way in te world, he will arrive, rent himself a bicycle and icebox, and hire out as an independent contractor selling FanIce products (little plastic pouches of vanilla, chocolate or strawberry 'ice cream,' yoghurt, and orange juice) for 30 peswas a pop. At the end of his workday/week/whatever, when he gets paid, he will go to Stanchart bank, or Ecobank, or (god forbid!) Barclays, to open an account. Only all the forms are in English, and he can barely write his name. So he gets one of the ladies or gentlemen to help him, but to do that he has to stand in line and...anyway, banking is complicated enough in this country without the added stress of not knowing the language.

Now personal examples: To start off, I have probably waxed on and on about the joys and wonders of my Arabic class. It is amazing. One of the most fun things about it might be the fact that sometimes (lots of times, actually) the TA Saleh teaches it because for whatever reason the Prof cant be bothered to come. And Saleh is hilarious for many reasons, but one of my favorite is how he speaks. Before I say anything else, let me just say that this man is very smart. He speaks Arabic fluently in addition to the at least two other languages that he knows [side note: the average Ghanaian knows three languages if they are not Akan and went to school. They know their local language learned from the cradle, they know Twi because it is hard to function in southern Ghana without at least SOME knowledge of it picked up off the street if nothing else, and they know English taught poorly at school. When I say taught I mean that when you enter primary school in Ghana they start teaching IN English. So if you don't know math, geography, history, whatever, you LEARN it in English, to which you may have had no prior exposure to...not smart. But I digress from the digression]. So Saleh is smart and educated and knows several languages. He is rather fond of saying that he can speak Bad English well, though he has to work had to speak good English. This was to explain to us that if we need him to repeat anything he will. And when he wrote on the board in class, something along the lines of "These letters can not be joined" it showed up "Dese letters can no b join." Exactly like that. And when he lectures and is trying to explain something that someone doesn't understand, he will call on the person by saying "Yes, m'boss?" and reply to their question in Pidgin English, Twi, or a mix of the two that is not really intelligible to me. The rest of the class gets it, because amongst university students, the lingua franca is pidgin. Almost no one speaks English on an informal level here, and I can feel that when people talk to me. It is outside of their easy, light realm of conversation, which might be one of the reasons for the hard work I have to put in to talk to people, to really communicate. Because no one here, or very few people, think in English. And there are some thoughts that are harder to have in one language or another, or harder to translate from one language to another. Everyone has to work harder when the language of communication is English. This is also evident in the level of written work submitted here. I thought the simplicity of a short paper I wrote would reflect badly on me as a student, but in comparison to Ghanaian work, my simple paper is a better grasp of the language. So English may be the language of instruction here, but it is not applied the way I thought it would be.

The other example is less formal, but still interesting. This past weekend I got my theater feet wet again working as an assistant stage manager for another girl on the program, Mary, who was managing a Ghanaian production. The director, Sadat, is a shortish, in-his-20's Ghanaian, and he ruled over his 25 or so actors with an iron fist. Or at least iron vocal cords. The show consisted of two short plays, on Ghanaian and one Nigerian, with a combined cast of heck of lots of people. I was (not gonna lie) really excited to be doing theater again, because I have a tendancy to idealize it, and forget how much stress and work it is (although the stress might be why I love it...stage managing and long research papers are not what most people do for fun). And in many ways this was just like my experiences working backstage on amature theater in the US. There is an alchemy that happens, and over the course of (for me) five days, these people became my best friends, and that is consistent. The feel of expectant tension before a show, when the audience is waiting and you can hear the rustling from backstage, is the same here, though punctuated by a group prayer to God or Allah, depending on who leads it. But there were some things that were uniquely Ghanaian, like punctuality. Pretty much no one was on time for call, and some people showed up fifteen minutes AFTER the show was supposed to start. But that was fine. What I really didn't like was how Sadat yelled at the cast. He would get emotionally angry about things that he should be professional about, and it was quite a challenge to work in that environment. The most interesting (and frustrating) thing about notes after the shows was how he would slip into Twi without thinking. And everyone understood except the two oborunis (Mary and me), who sat there and just watched as important information was imparted in a foreign language... And at one point Mary brought it up, and Sadat apologized, but said that it happened so naturally that he almost didn't notice when he stopped speaking English. I am learning Twi, and honestly being backstage with several willing expert Twi tutors was wonderful, but I do not know enough to follow a complex debate about blocking and double casting.

It feels weird to be in a world where the 'official' language is hardly used. Of all the things I anticipated about Ghana and planned for in my head, I was not expecting my language to make me this much of an outsider. When I walk down the street with my ears open there is no doubt that I am in a foreign country. Most days I love it, and some days it makes me very homesick.