Try just a little bit...

Hello friends! I know it has been a while since I was able to share with you last, so let me take a moment now to pause and say I am sorry. Sharing with you has been one of my great joys while I serve in Africa. Sharing with you has been a source of renewal and mirth amidst an environment that is otherwise challenging and can sometimes be downright difficult! For all of you that have been so kind as to write a long or short e-mail to me or post a comment here on my blog, I want to say a special thank you from the innermost and deepest feeling core of my heart. When I am blessed to have electricity and that much more blessed to have a free half-hour or so in my weekly schedule to go on-line, when I see that I have messages from my friends and partnerships that are waiting to be read, it is a cause for celebration! I cannot express to you how powerful even the shortest and most simple words are to your humble missionary to Africa!

I know that if I were where you are right now, I'd be wondering what I'd be eating next. Will you go out to eat or stay in? How long have I been away from American?, of course you're going out to eat, I always did! In Ghana, we never go out to eat, and though I'm usually decidedly hesitant in the use of infinite terms like always or never, in this case, believe me when I stress to you that, generally speaking, it is definitely true. Perhaps due to culture and custom, maybe due to comparatively high restaurant prices or most likely due to a little of all of the above, most Ghanaians rarely, if ever, go out to eat at a restaurant. This seems to fall increasingly on generational lines, such is the case it would seem due to the relentless march of "westernization" across the developed, developing and even undeveloped places on earth. As I watch an older Ghanaian sit at home and eat and hear of a younger son that is out spending fourteen Ghana Cedis on a single pizza, I'm beginning to understand why the world to varying degrees looks to "the west" and shakes either their fist or their heads with similar emotion. They feel an impending loss of culture and an increasing detachment from their own children that cannot be explained away. Feeling estranged from the next generation is a big deal in Africa because of the importance of relationships, especially family relationships.

A very wise missionary to Africa told me once that throughout his time of service, many Africans asked him, "But what do we have to offer? What can America, that has everything, possibly learn from us?" and the answer is simple, the importance of family. Here is food for thought, if you're lucky you have a mother, father, perhaps even a sibling or two. You see your "family" as who you live under the same roof with, right? Maybe you include an errant uncle, aunt or a few cousins. In Africa, the concept of family is so vast, so far reaching, it can hardly be done service here by your humble missionary. Everyone is an "uncle" or "auntie." It is culturally acceptable for a child to call people of no blood relation "mame" (ma-meee) or "papa." What can you learn from the people of Africa? You can learn the importance of family, and you can widen your definition to include not just the people you share DNA with, but all of the people in your much wider circle of contact, and you can seek to prosper them, encourage them and invest in their success so that when it arrives, you stand alongside them in celebration!

As of this Thursday just passed, your humble missionary has been in Ghana, West Africa for exactly one month. I have begun to pick-up the most basic elements of conversational Twi and am taking two one hour classes at the nearby Legon University. The locals are absolutely thrilled and delighted to something far beyond my powers to describe at hearing Ashante Twi bubble forth from my "obruni" (white person) lips. Any utterance of the like is followed by widening eyes, the explosive and contagious laughter of disbelief and sometimes even by people running away a few steps as they experience the former and the latter. To everyone's best recollection, there is only one other "obruni" that took to Twi so quickly and she became somewhat of a marketing legend here in Ghana. To any ability I seem to have in my rapid fluency in the language I give God the glory, I am too rational to be foolish enough to think that I can learn so quickly simply by my own ability. The current favorite of the Kwame Boyd stories to be swapped back and forth at church is the tro-tro tale. At a "tro-tro" station (bus, sort of, but I'll explain later) a street vendor (they wait everywhere and sell everything, more on that later as well) caught sight of me and smiled and half-heartedly chanted "obruni, obruni." I spun 90 degrees on the well worn heels of my sandals and smiled back as I cried "Ey! Obibini! Wo ho te sEn?" which literally means "Hey! Black person! How are you?" The vendor startled and exclaimed "Ey!" and took off at a quick walk, looking over his shoulder laughing and shaking his head. I should point out here briefly that as long as you don't get offended by being called "white person," the African does not get offended by being called "black person." The terms are equally inoffensive and neither bears the burden of an epithet or slur.

Second only to the enjoyment of the language, your humble missionary has had the opportunity, nay, the privilege of consuming myriad local dishes that would boggle the mind and perhaps cause the forearm and neck hairs of my western friends to stand on end. I've boldly sat to plates and bowls of things I never thought of combining or eating for that matter, but I know some of you might be squeamish if I jump right in so instead, with mercy befitting my work, I will walk you slowly into the Ghanaian cuisine. Bear in mind that the things that seem familiar to you aren't anything like what you've had, you have my personal assurance as to that. I've had pineapple that melts in your mouth, so fragrant you can smell it being cut a room's distance away. I've hate water out of small plastic bags, in fact, that's pretty much the only way I've had water to drink! I've had chicken that was clucking not one hour before, fish that I don't even know the names for! Everything is deadly spicy, but that fits in perfectly with the concept I had already instilled in me before leaving America of how to be a "fierce Ghanaian." I've found a common high ground with my host father, who, despite being dyed in sandal Ghanaian, does not like fufu. I have become a bit of an addict of sugar cane, freshly cut, chewed and sucked then spat out forthwith, fried plantain and friend yam (all three I'm proud to say I can prepare myself - to the amusement if not amazement of the locals!).

Now I need to set aside a section wholly separate from the previous for the following. The very young and the very old as well as those with less than stalwart constitutions should probably go ahead and leave the room. Have you left yet? The rest of us will wait...
Okay, I should hope by now that the aforementioned are gone. I have had kenkey and banku, both of which are a heavy dough that is steamed until hot and "cooked," made from corn/maize dough but prepared differently from each other. Both of these are usually served with a slurry of very hot peppers (think salsa at your favorite Mexican restaurant) and various chunks of fish and always whole sardines. You eat the lot with your bare hands - no utensils are requested nor provided. I don't know how you were raised, but my mom was raised in the front pew of a Baptist church in rural Alabama, your hands are for clapping for Jesus and even then only when the Deacons and the Pastor are already clapping. As the grammar might be put over the loudspeaker in Dahlonega, Georgia at Burt's Pumpkin Farm, "Let's don't eat with our hands." For those of you still in the dark as to how traumatizing the prospect was for me before "diving in," shall we say, my father is Korean by birth. This by default makes me genetically half-Korean but more importantly, very nearly 100% Korean culturally. Do you know why Asians use chopsticks? Do you know why Asians invented such long, thing wooden sticks to pick up their food with? Distance. We Asian folk like to keep a serious distance between our hands and our foot. I've always found it humorous that for all things to focus on, Americans usually poke fun of Asians for being "too clean." Hmm, if my calendar is right America is working it's way through the "we don't wash or hands but like to touch our faces flu season." Alas, I kid! Speaking of kids, they are dirty internationally, but more on that later.

You take the banku or kenkey much as you would fufu (though fufu is much, much more runny, gooey and gloppy). From your serving you pinch off about a golf ball sized amount between your thumb, index and middle finger. You mash the ball and, for lack of a better term, play with it until the consistency becomes smooth. You flatten it out on the palm-side of your index and middle finger then plunge said fingers into the stew or bowl of previously mentioned salsa-esque fish slurry. You work little pieces of fish and plenty of life-ending hot pepper into your fingerfull of dough then down the hatch it goes. You repeat this process until both your dough and whatever it was served with are gone. There is a large bowl of water, liquid soap and a towel at the table for afterwards. I find that the smell of spicy fish and the natural red dyes of tomatoes have a tendency to stay in the crevices around your nail and cuticle line for at least a week, by which time it is certainly time for some more kenkey or banku. I have gotten quite deft at extracting fish bones of various lengths and thickness from my mouth mid-chew.

I've had "red red," which is black-eyed peas, small fish bits, rice and fried plantain. I'm quite fond of the dish actually, though I'm sure the fat content is quite high. I've had bananas that stay green but are perfectly ripe, fragrant and amazingly delicious (they taste like the best banana smoothie you've ever had but made better by a power of 100). I've had oranges that also stay green but are ripe and when you peel them your gaze is paused in awe of the flesh of the fruit that is vibrant orange with pink tiger stripes. I've had watermelon that would make you realize you never had real watermelon before you had an African watermelon. While I'm sure I'll get countless e-mails expressing concern, I heartily crunch down on the seeds and eat the entire slice (something I can assure you I never did before). Oh but how I've saved the very best for last. Oh you lucky friend, you lucky chosen one to have read this far!

I have had the extreme dining glory of consuming "cow foot soup." I know, I know, what, without inviting you? I'm sorry, I'll be more inclusive next mealtime. A bowl is placed before you that steam and smells of hot spices. The broth is a rich brown with little else in it but what greets you in the center of your bowl like an island to bovine glory, jutting up out of the brown brothy sea. What delectable treasure is this? you wonder. It's the foot of a cow. How nice. I'm told it's a "delicacy" but that's little comfort since most of the wildest things I've eaten are considered "treats" or "delicacies." You spoon the large hoof out of the broth and remove it to a plate, using your free hand to balance the cloven remainder of a once proudly mooing herbivore. On the plate you skewer it with a fork and use your large soup spoon to cut the hoof, complete with hide into small cubed chunks. Replace now cubed hoof into your broth and now you're all set for a gastronomical extravaganza! After a long boil the texture is soft and somewhere between a baked potato and jello, depending on the hoof to hide ratio of your cube. I can't say that the flavor of the broth and thusly the hoof were undesirable even if the texture was beyond foreign. Regardless, I have done it now and if pressed by culture or etiquette I know now that I can do it again, though your humble missionary hopes that far less "delicate" dishes await the remainder of my mealtimes here in Africa.