Racially Yours

Obroni! White Man! Mister White! Not a day goes by that I am not deliberately called out on the color of my skin. Even those who know my name will still refer to me as "The White Man." So, let's be honest here, I do certainly stand out within my community. People, especially children, will just stare at me forever like I have some kind of bizarre and fasinating deformity. Even the one-eyed polio cripple calls me out on my skin and stares at me like I'm some kind of freak. Since that guy has a wife, I can tell you that it's not really all that big a deal to be "differently abled" in Ghana than in the USA. Unless, of course, you are the color of a sunburned ghost.

In the US, I used to never make children run in terror from me. Here, the parents think it's hilarious that thier kids freak out at the site of me. Since I don't like kids all that much, I must admit that I enjoy the fact that my skin is small child repellent. And that there is the beginning of my understanding and acceptance of my race here in Ghana.

There is a lot of emphasis on volunteers integrating into their community. The truth is, we can never fully integrate; we are always the "other." This remains true for even the African-Americans who come here, but for the purposes of this prose, I'm going to talk about whitey.

See, all of us generally hate being the token white dude in our communities. We are expected to be rich, to be able to hand out visas, to not know how to do "African" things like eat food with our hands or sweep with a broom. You do your best to get people to call you by your name and treat you as an equal, but it's never 100% successful. Perhaps most people bitch and moan about it. Some ignore it with buddha-like tranquility. I say: embrace it!

Hell yes, I am the White Man in my community! I eat spaghetti, treat my cat like a baby, and more often than not carry my things in a backpack instead of on my head. You want to give me the front seat in the Taxi? Sure, thanks! Want to dash me 40 oranges? Super! Brother, you want to hold my hand as you show me around town? Ummm, Ok, why not? You're giving me your sister or daughter to marry and satisfy me? Here I draw the line. I only marry for love and a little bit for good looks and cooking skills or to get free stuff in market. A man must still have some sense of decency in this mad world.

Part of this job is cultural exchange, so I feel it's important to try to teach Ghanaians about things that white people do. Unfortunately, it's limited to things that I actually CAN do here. So, as much as I'd like to introduce celebrity dance competition, I do the best with the tools I have. So far I have taught my village that White People: enjoy doing crossword puzzles, often grow flowers in pots instead of the soil, use too many dishes in the preperation and consumption of food, eat PB&J when all our dishes get dirty, and sleep in. So as you can see, I've been very busy at my site, teaching the way of the white man.

However, race in Ghana is never a really simple thing. In one part of the country I've been mistaken for Chinese, which means that all the people greet me by saying "ching-chong, buy orange!" I wish I was making this up, but it's true. All I can do is just ching-chong back and hope that I got a good price on that orange (which, by the way, is often quite delicious.) Ghanaians also often refer to white people as being red in color. This is only true of annoying Dutch voluntourists who try to get tan as fast as possible but fail in a bad way during thier 5 day "Save Africa" trip, but becuase they overwhelmingly stick out, they tend to represent the lot of us.

So until a later time, stay healthy and eat well!