Everyone else here makes Ghanaian friends that I tag along with because I am too unapproachable to meet any friends on my own. Maggie being the nice, approachable, and nerdy girl that she is has made lots of friends (especially of the male variety...). One of these friends is Juliana, who lives down the street from us and also runs a shop with secondhand clothes. We visited her shop yesterday and it was quite an experience. All of her sisters and a ton of children were there and greeted us like we were the highlight of their day –there was lots of shrieking and hugs…I felt like Oprah. BTW...Whitney is apparently a very difficult name to pronounce so introductions took about ten minutes…not Richley, not Winny…no. Anyway...these women were crazy, which you are not allowed to say in Ghana because it is a huge insult, but I doubt anyone form Ghana is interested in the obruni perspective and will be reading this. Crazy in the best possible way – they were so loud and never stopped joking or laughing, and they kept sharing story after story with us. They also gave us cokes and I have been so caffeine deprived since I’ve gotten here that I loved them immediately.
Juliana’s sister at one point in our visit mentioned that she wants to marry a white man because apparently white men treat you better than black men do. This was her reasoning:
• All black husbands do is yell at their wives to cook and clean.
• Black men can beat their wives.
• White men will not beat their wives.
• White men are nice.
• White men take care of their women and families.
I wish I was kidding. We all tried to tell her that no, white men are not all nice, there are white men who will abandon their family/beat their wives, but they were unconvinced. They also told us that they like white people better because we are more respectful to each other – it is safe to say that there is a skewed perception of the States in the Ghanaian community. There is still the belief that all white people must have money, or that if they meet a white man or a foreigner that they’ll be able to stop working, come to America, and have a better life, and I don’t really blame these women for wanting that. It’s obvious that they are working ridiculously hard – running a business and having a family puts a huge amount of responsibility and pressure on them, and they still have a fantastic attitude and an incredibly friendly and generous personality. The only thing about this is that this means the kids are having a very different childhood than what we are used to seeing – the older kids very often are taking care of the younger kids and spending a lot of their time hanging out and helping out around the stand. No playgrounds, no toys, no afterschool activities. But I will tell you; I’ve never seen more adorable children than the ones running around Accra. I want to steal them all.
Tonight I am off to London so the posts will be a little different – hopefully I will find a white man to marry me. I heard they treat women the best.
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Just read your latest entry and couldn't help but smile at the part where the women talk about the great white husbands they have been waiting for. Funny how some of what they say mirror what some of my Asian friends say. And these are people who were born and raised in America. Perhaps you have seen evidence of that on campus. Asian women skipping over Asian men to date only white men. Very sad, but true.
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