How Does it Feel?

For the past 2 weeks I’ve struggled to write a post about food insecurity.  Food insecurity has been the core focus of my studies the past 4 years and is a fundamental aspect of my research. Not being able to write fluently about my engagement with the topic was a bit disturbing. Yesterday, after another attempt that left me agitated, I came home and begrudgingly began to do some ironing (a chore I NEVER do in the US, but Ghanaians always look well pressed and as you know, “I’m trying, oh!”).

To make the ironing less tedious, I put on some Bob Dylan.  At the outset of my research I “joked” that I was going to make What Would Bob Dylan Do? the mantra of my fieldwork.  I made this declaration because it is inevitable to have intellectual and logistical crises during fieldwork that necessitate some sort of spiritual guidance.   Because of my everlasting commitment to Mr. Dylan, WWBDD? seemed appropriate.

As the wrinkles in my blouse refused to un-wrinkle and my fated destiny of being an anthropologist who studies food insecurity but can’t even write about food insecurity seemed sealed, Like a Rolling Stone came on.  

WWBDD?  He wouldn’t struggle to regurgitate and explain the Food and Agricultural Organization’s definition of food insecurity.  He’d write a brilliant song that captures the very essence of food insecurity, that of an experience of poverty. Take the first stanza:

            Once upon a time you dressed so fine

            You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?

            People’d call say, “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall”

            You thought they were all kiddin’ you

            You used to laugh about

            Everyone that was hanging out

            But now you don’t talk so loud

            Now you don’t seem so proud

            About having to be scrounging your next meal

How does it feel to be scrounging your next meal?  It feels shitty. Being food insecure is more than feeling hungry.  It is feeling shame.  It is feeling worried about where that next meal is going to come from.  It is feeling left out.  As John Madeley puts it in his book Hungry for Trade: How the Poor Pay for Free Trade, “Lack of food is the ultimate exclusion.  When people don't have food they are excluded from what the rest of society is doing regularly--eating.”  My intent in researching food insecurity is to look at this experiential aspect of it.  I’m not so much interested in the nutritional consequences of food insecurity as I am the emotional, the psychological.  This first stanza so defines that experiential aspect of poverty. 

Being food insecure is to feel part of nothing, to feel all alone.  Perhaps nowhere in the world is this more apparent than the US.  I give myself a lot of grief because I’m not studying food insecurity in my own cultural context.  National food insecurity rates in the US stand at around 16% While I will eventually become more involved in food insecurity advocacy and research in my own country, I know that part of the reason I’ve decided to do the research in Ghana is because the concept of food insecurity is not segregated from the concept of poverty. In Ghana it is easy to engage with food insecurity as a topic because it is acknowledged and addressed.    Food insecurity in Ghana has its own aspects of politics and power to contend with, but at least it is not an issue swept under the rug. Food insecurity is conflated with poverty.  And poverty is talked about A LOT here.  Poverty is at least part of the national discourse, so there is at least an extension to engage. 

In the US food insecurity has to battle its way into the national discourse in order to be acknowledged as a piece of American reality. The fact that Lily, a food insecure Muppet introduced on a Sesame Street special on hunger induced scorn and controversy shows how we refuse to acknowledge the problem of food insecurity. The fact that Congress recently cut funding to food stamps shows how we deal with food insecurity.  In the US we conflate food insecurity with laziness. And laziness is punishable.

If I did my dissertation research in my own country I imagine I would become so mired within the discourse of ignorance and intolerance that I would burn out.  If I burn out before I earn these damn letters I’ll be terribly upset.

I’ve always used Like a Rolling Stone as a way to think about my own progress through life.  My interpretation of this song when I first really listened to it in my early 20s was about rolling through the ups and downs of life.  I was completely oblivious to the greater political and economic context. I know, I know--what a D’oh moment. But at the forefront of 33, and at the forefront of my research on inequality, what seems so apparent to me now is how this song is about how American progress is made and lost--how the winners take wherever they have leverage to take and make more losers.

Take stanza 3:

            You used to ride a chrome horse with your diplomat

            Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat

            Ain’t it hard when you discover that

            He really wasn’t where it’s at

            After he took from you everything he could steal.

American policy does not tolerate losers. This is the attitude we show to poverty despite the fact that the transition from winner to loser can be perilous and beyond your ability to control. 

What makes my Like a Rolling Stone epiphany all the more timely, is the recent release of the first official music video.  The setting of the video is a TV, and we the viewer of the video are also the viewer of the TV.  We control the channels and can change the channels—from The Price is Right to sports shows to programs that pass as news to housewives enmeshed in desperateness.  All along the way, the people involved in these shows sing the lyrics.  We change the channels and we watch our everyday TV programs relay powerful lyrics about everyday life in America. 

This so perfectly captures this moment in time.  As the Trans Pacific Partnership bulldozes over us what is the hope that inequality will ever be properly addressed? As the tar sand oil fields of Canada continue to be “debated” what are our hopes of doing what we can to slow climate change?  As citizens of our nation can’t afford to feed themselves, what are the hopes for health care?? 

We hear the music.  We know the music is there.  We flip channels.  

We all share food (just in different ways)

A uniting factor among all ethnic groups in Ghana is communal eating.  Food is put in the center of the table and you take as you eat.  If someone walks into a room with food, they will automatically say, “you are invited,” as they place the food out. 

It is lovely to always be invited. But because it is a bit different than what I’m used to, this norm can be a bit anxiety inducing when it is my turn to invite.  When I make and order food I think in a ratio of my hunger to money available to procure food.  In the best case scenarios, when I know I will be around people when it is time to eat, I always make sure to bring a bit more than I want to eat so I, too, can invite others.  In worst case scenario, when I am ravenous and have only purchased/prepared enough food for myself and have unsuccessfully forecasted that I will not be around people, I  invite people as I’ve already started wolfing down food.  Sometimes I channel Joey Tribbianai and brazenly refuse to invite.  

Because of American movies and TV shows, Ghanaians know that I do not come from what they would label as a communal eating culture.  Ghanaians will often comment upon this, in a way that suggests that there is nothing communal about my own eating practices.  I take such opportunities to explain the intricacies of the social aspects of American dining practices. I try to explain that fairness is a value that seems to govern our dining habits and that we do share food in our homes, but that we make sure everyone is served an amount before we begin eating.    I explain how we turn communal eating into parties we call potlucks.  I describe how we will often eat off one another’s plates, but that such practices are limited to the relationship shared between people. I describe how I it is common practice and considered polite to offer your dining companions to try your food , especially if you’ve just commented upon how great it tastes.  I relay how it can be an unwritten rule of your relationship with someone that whatever food is individually ordered will be jointly shared.

Just as our non-communal eating habits have degrees of communality, Ghanaian dining habits have degrees of individuality and structured access.  If you’re eating with someone who is of a higher social status, they’re most likely entitled to the choicest pieces of meat.  I’ve heard stories from friends who have found themselves hungry at the end of a meal because even though they were invited to eat, they did not eat fast enough to reach a level of satisfaction. I’ve also seen Ghanaians hide their fish when they know that someone is about to enter the room so that when they invite that person to eat, the fish will not be compromised. Even people part of a communal culture have a little Joey Tribbiani in them.

I think about such behaviors because it shows how complicated cultures are.  There’s a lot of variability within the labels that we carry as part of a particular culture.    Really trying to understand any culture entails parsing out and understanding those deviations from the norm suggested by categorization.   

How to think about butter in Wa

Wa is not a place where you find butter. To put this in terms that people from mid-MO will understand, pretend you live in Hermann and want to make some Indian dish that calls for tamarind paste.  This is not an ingredient you would ever expect to find in Hermann.  You'd expect to have to go to St. Louis to find it. Hermann is to tamarind paste as Wa is to butter (or so I thought). 

The butter posing against the bag it was put in

The pineapple upside down cake I made with the butter.
It is gloriously topped with Fan Ice (a local ice cream that magically
unites the flavors of two of my favorite guilty pleasures--Cool Whip
and vanilla icing that has a very long shelf life)

I am never one to be deterred, especially if I am being fueled by the desire to make and eat cake.  In my very first full day in Wa I found myself in the company of a volunteer from Japan who has been here for 18 months.  Like you do when you first meet someone, I initiated conversation by asking her if she knew of a place that sold butter.  She said yes, I freaked out, and got on my bike to go find the African European supermarket.  At the African European supermarket I found a cooler full of butter.  The butter was misshapen from repeated cycles of melting and re-solidifying.    But by golly.  BUTTER.  The next day I used that butter to make a cake. 

My fellow anthropologist-in-arms here in Ghana and I have conversed a lot about how to interpret our absolute commitment to making sure that we are able to prepare and eat the foods we are fond of.  I spent a week at her fieldsite and she has what can best be described as a food alter.  Here lie sacred spices and non-perishables as well as the high priestess of all cooking implements in Ghana-the can opener.  Because of Accra’s high density of ex-pats (Lebanese, Chinese, Indian, British, Italian and so on), it’s relatively easy to find a wide range of spices and other ingredients that are not necessarily “Ghanaian.”  I accumulated spices and brought them with me to Wa.  I’m still waiting to get permanently settled into the community where I’ll be living and cooking, but for now I do have a very large tote bag full of spices and dry beans waiting for their positions on my own food alter.  

It’s not that we don’t like Ghanaian food and refuse to eat it.  Ghanaian foods compose the majority of our diet and we find it incredibly satisfying. I could eat waakeye (rice and black-eyed pea dish) everyday whether here or in the US.  My cravings for kontomire stew (a tomato and pepper based stew with the leaves of the cocoyam, ground melon seeds and smoked fish) rival my cravings for lasagna.  But Ghanaian food is not the food that nourishes our spirits. At the end of a day of being an outsider whose existence as a single, 33 year old student is an absolutely ridiculous status, I sometimes want comfort food. Just as much as I want the food, I want to go through the familiar and cathartic rhythms of preparing that comfort food.   Food, I think most people would agree, is more than nutrition.  We eat to satisfy a biological need, but we do so through our cultural context and for reasons that extend beyond our biology.  This is a mantra of my research, one that I’m going to smear all over this blog, and one that I find ok to apply to myself.  I will learn how to cook local foods, but I’m also not about to give up my favorite food day of the year that showcases my favorite food of all time.  I’m already plotting how to unite the widely available Ghanaian white bread with my bag-o-spices to create a magnificent stuffing.  

Kontomire Stew

Waakeye smothered in spicy tomato stew 

"You are trying, oh!"

In spoken Ghanaian English, it is virtually impossible to have a conversation without someone peppering the dialogue with “oh!”  The “oh” part comes at the end of the sentence and is used to place emphasis on an action.  Last night I had a conversation with some Ghanaian graduate students who are traveling through the Upper West to collect data for their soil science research.  When they asked how I was getting around town and I responded “by bicycle” their response was “You are trying, oh!”  Indeed.

Trying might just be the most apt verb to apply to an anthropologist.  There’s a lot of pressure to try.  With attempts to immerse ourselves into the context of research, trying is sometimes all we are doing.  I find that even before trying can become part of the agenda, I must have the motivation and momentum.  After my 12 hour bus ride to Wa, I vowed to not go immediately take the nap I so desperately craved. Instead of napping I went bike shopping. A bike is necessary in Wa because public transport is spotty.  I purchased a five gear bike made in China that all the hip old men in Wa ride.  I rode my new bike back to my house with a certain conviction of aggression so as to let all of the motorbike swarms know that I was “serious, oh!” My first attempt at trying in Wa went splendidly.

On day two of biking in Wa, I decided to take up the trying a notch.  Because my bike is detailed with an awesome basket in the front and a platform for bungee cording stuff in the back, I decided that I should do some shopping so as to make use of my bike accessories.  The only things I was interested in purchasing were things that would hydrate me. It’s the start of the dry season here in the Upper West and that entails coping with the Harmattan winds.  I’ve realized I’ve seriously underestimated the influence of the Harmattan winds.  The air is dry, dry, dry.  That, in turn, makes people dry, dry, dry.  Even though I’m not a huge watermelon fan, a watermelon was all I could imagine eating.  So I bought a watermelon and put it in my front basket and then walked my bike across the street to another shop where I could purchase ample amounts of water.  Drinking water in Ghana is sold in little plastic bags.  You can buy these little plastic bags in bulk.  I opted to buy in bulk because I’m consistently thirsty.  As I was trying to wrestle the plastic tower of water bags into my front basket (a feat I should have realized would never work) I dropped the plastic tower and approximately 40 bags of water plopped onto the ground.  This performance took place quite publicly and I did my best to enact and embrace the spectacle of ineptness that is, I’m pretty sure, every Ghanaian’s truest opinion of foreigners. After my performance, some girls helped me gather up the bags and I took one round of goods back to my house. This is where I decided that my ineptness (aka trying) was not finished for the day.   I was ready for an encore.  With a watermelon and 15 water bags weighing down my front basket, I decided that putting the kick stand down would definitely work.  It did not.  The bike toppled over and my watermelon cracked.  It was a gruesome crime scene, but I salvaged the watermelon and took a bow.

It does take a lot of emotional reserve to always be in the spotlight, but I kinda like being able to publicly demonstrate my ineptness.  As someone immersed in American society, where admitting ignorance or inability is seen as weakness (this becomes even more the case within academia), it is refreshing to be able to acknowledge that I don’t know it all and I can’t do it all.  I’m merely trying.

What's Old is New Again

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Cultural anthropologists are concerned with context.  While my research will take place in particular communities in the Wa West district, I am equally concerned with the broader Ghanaian context.  At the core of my research, I’m questioning how inequality is generated at a local level and how that is tied to the larger national and international context. Because I suspect that inequality in Ghana is growing, I’m doing a lot of thinking about how to investigate and interpret Ghana’s economy in order to position my research findings in this larger context. There’s a strong rhetoric in Ghana right now about “The New Ghana.” This, I suppose, is a way to distinguish that the contemporary moment in Ghana is leaving “The Old Ghana” behind.  The Upper West Region is definitely Old Ghana. Nowhere does this become more apparent than in traveling to the Upper West from the south.

Geographically, the journey between Accra, the national capital located on the coast, and Wa, the regional capital of the Upper West represents a distance of approximately 500 miles.  This is a journey that must be taken by bus or private car.  This is a journey that takes 12 hours. If you go by bus, the journey begins in a non-tarred corridor of a very busy transit hub in Accra. It’s dusty, it’s dirty, it’s crowded and loud.  If it’s the rainy season, mud can be added into the mix.  Here, people wait, alongside food and other goods, to be delivered from the south to the north.  Though I know Ghanaians have other things occupying their minds, if you’re me, when you’re not stealthily eyeing the roaming goats to make sure they are not eating or pooing on your luggage, you are crafting complicated calculations involving thirst, water, and bladder capabilities. These are circumstances that I would consider very Old Ghana.  This service costs approximately 55GHC (about $27)—no chump change in Old Ghana, especially for those most likely to be taking this bus journey.  Meanwhile, there are now daily flights between Accra and the other major Ghanaian cities including Kumasi (in the heart of gold and cocoa country) and Takoradi (aka Oil City). These flights cover significantly less than 500 miles and the time between take off and landing is just enough to eat the complimentary sandwich you are served on board. So while The New Ghana offers fast and convenient options to travel to all of the important economic hubs, the way to get to the parts of Ghana that are retaining the title of Old Ghana is through the Old Ghana way.

Physical discomfort aside, by transporting through these miles and not flying over them, the discrepancies between the north and the south are more in-my-face, forcing me to think about why existing dichotomies are they way they are and how they make New Ghana look not so new. In these 500 miles, you travel from the humid forests of the south to the dry grasslands of the north. These ecological differences translate into economic differences. These economic differences are tied to how colonial economic policy unfolded and is, in some respects, upheld today.  The south is rich in mineral resources and oil is the newest sector to drive the economy.  Ghana’s colonial name was The Gold Coast and gold continues to be a major economic driver.  The climate of the south also supports the growth of cocoa, a key export commodity, and one that the country eagerly prioritizes because people like me love chocolate.

The north is a savanna that supports small scale farmers growing cereals.  Since the days of colonial authority, the products that the north produces (i.e. millet, aka the little yellow pellets found in the seed mix we Westerners feed to our yard birds) have been deemed not appealing to external economic interests or are products (i.e. rice) that cannot compete with cheaper imports from abroad. The available income earning opportunity is found in farming a few hectares and hoping to grow enough to feed your family for a year with a little extra to sell at local markets.  The public and private sector jobs that are available in the Upper West require a university degree and most people in the Upper West have not completed high school. Schools are sparse in this region, teachers are underpaid and don't want to be in this region, and even though primary education is subsidized, education beyond primary school is not subsidized and very costly. Thus the majority of the people moving up and down the country via bus are people from the north hopeful to eke out a living in the south where they might make more money hustling goods in the streets than by fighting agricultural constraints in their home territory.

The majority of the people flying from Accra to Oil City are, well, people involved in financing, extracting, and developing the infrastructure for the oil and natural gas industry.   It’s hard not to surmise, then, that an underlying aspect of The New Ghana, the part that is fueling the newness, is the part of Ghana’s economy that is rapidly growing and pushing the country into what the World Bank classifies as a lower-middle income country. Thus the people who get to ride the New Ghana wave are the movers and shakers who can access and benefit from this new growth.  The Ghanaians that cannot access this growth (due to educational and long-standing class barriers) are falling even further behind.  If I think about the Old and New Ghanas in terms of historical and lingering economic dichotomies, this just seems a more fashionable way to acknowledge existing processes of marginalization and exclusion--just another derivative of the 99% and 1%.   Perversely, though, it is the 1% that has established the moniker.

Whether new or old, This Be Ghana.

Why this blog?

This blog is about my attempt to turn anthropology (and my pursuit of it) into something comprehensible.  What was once my impractical undergraduate major became, 10 years later, the pursuit of a PhD.  When I explain to people what I do, I'm usually greeted with confusion that quickly compounds into skepticism.  These interaction usually end with something similar to pity. Though I do often question my pursuit of a PhD, I never question my pursuit of anthropology.  I hope the compositions of this blog create a narrative underscoring how anthropology is beneficial not just to the nerds who pursue it, but to the world at large. Now seems the most momentous time to do such voicing because I am embarking on the actual research part. I've spent 4 years preparing and now I'm finally getting to do the doing. And in preparing to do the doing part, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how anthropology can and should better position itself in the bigger and more accessible picture of communication and idea sharing. For better or worse, that means clogging up the internet with more content. Here are my musings to get things started. 

Spoiler alert: Anthropology is not the study of bugs. 

Though a fellow anthropologist and I have become a bit fascinated by the mutant ants found in Ghana, anthropologists seek to understand diversity and change in the human experience. Anthropological research is grounded in empiricism and not experiment. We place ourselves in real world situations to collect data that addresses our research questions.  We use qualitative and quantitative methods to do this. Where we do this research, we term "the field." The field can be a site thousands of miles away from your own cultural context or it can be the neighborhood you live in.  For me, the field is the Wa West District in the Upper West Region of Ghana (more on this place, soon). Though often overly and overtly romanticized (in reality it entails a whole lot of emotional upheaval led by a general distrust of self),  fieldwork is the penultimate moment for an anthropologist. As such, I hope this blog helps to communicate how cultural anthropologists conduct research as well as why there is merit in how and why we do this kind of research. Though it's probably guaranteed that I'm going to occasionally write about the toils of fieldwork, my intention is to demonstrate what anthropology is (as in its not entomology) and how it is a discipline that not only presents data about the diverse human experience, but crafts a way for viewing and interacting with the world.  

Because my research takes place in Ghana, a supplementary goal is to share my empirical perspective on a small country in a giant continent that remains largely misconceived. I first went to Ghana in 2002 as an undergraduate on a study abroad program. I was captivated by every single minute of exploration, frustration, joy, and trepidation. The decision to go is what I've come to refer to as my “spastic epiphany” and upon leaving, I knew I was going to return. I didn't walk away from Ghana captivated by how different it was, but rather by how similar the differences felt.  I hope to deconstruct ideas that develop when we rely on fast-moving and superficial information about African issues and affairs.  It is my goal to encourage critical thinking about a diverse Ghanaian context that faces social, economic, and political challenges that parallel issues experienced all over the world.  And, though my research is very "issues" oriented, in order to heed the calls that are proliferating in the writings and musings pouring forth from around the continent, I hope to shape a blog that also shows that this giant landmass is more than issues, but simmering with ideas, actions and creative juices that are incredibly fulfilling. 

This is how ginormous the African continent is.  With so much land, how could things not be hugely variable???  This is why the website Africa Is a Country is so snarkily awesome.