Decisions, decisions
*****
I am a highly underestimated person in my village. I’ve found that to be both an advantage and a disadvantage.
It’s like, when taking an art class, how making a really crappy first drawing and then gradually working up to your full potential will almost assuredly garner you an A. Or if you really don’t want to put in any effort with what you’re working on, feigning ignorance or some believable level of helplessness will somehow relieve you of your responsibilities (like when you have an electronic-savvy brother handy and you have a confusing wad of cables to your new DVD player).
Not that I ever do those things.
Though, sometimes you actually do want to do something that you know you’re fully capable of doing. You’re not being graded, you don’t have to pretend to progress - you’re already there and you don’t want to waste time. But then you’re being held back by, it seems, everyone because of one reason or another. For me, it usually falls into three categories: gender, color and village status.
“You want to do whaaaat? But you’re a woman!”
“You mean I don’t know how to play soccer because I have XX chromosomes? Is that what’s been holding me back all these years?”
Or - my personal favorite - “Madame, wait, it’s too far. The lorry will come.”
“So…I should wait for a dirty, old school bus to come so I can be crammed into the stairwell behind an overweight bread seller and a baby with diarrhea running down its legs? I’d rather take my bicycle and my iPod and sweat for thirty minutes - and yes, I know I’m white but I don’t think that will effect my ability to pedal eight kilometers.”
Or any general argument against my doing any sort of physical labor - like hauling water or buckets of concrete or sand, sweeping the compound or squatting while talking instead of sitting in a comfy plastic chair.
And this one I sort of understand. I’m a guest in the village and they’re only treating me with respect. But it’s still not any fun to run up against when I’m trying to do something.
Most recently I was trying to ride my bike to my friend’s house. By road, it’s about fifty kilometers away. By goat path, it’s about twenty - five of it on relatively decent road. For months I’ve been trying to go visit him because he’s my closest neighbor and what’s twelve miles on a sandy dirt path between friends?
My chance finally came when, the other day, he decided to visit me first. It didn’t take him long - about an hour and a half - and he said the ride was really pretty. The main reason he came was to pick up a bus ticket I’d gotten for him in the city. We slept on the porch and he was gone before dawn, wanting to tackle the ride before the sun came up.
But he forgot his ticket.
I wasn’t planning on traveling any time soon, but I saw that it was a perfect opportunity to actually learn the road for myself. If I’d taken a tro, round trip, it would’ve cost me no less than three cedis - half of my daily allowance. Via bike - free, except for the pack of biscuits/cookies I bought as a snack.
So I explained to everyone that I had to go that day, that my friend was leaving for Kumasi in the morning and needed the ticket immediately. The only way to do that was for me to ride my bike.
And I got instant approval! Met with a healthy round of “are you sure you can make it? it’s far!” But I was expecting that.
And about halfway through, I was inclined to agree.
There are sandtraps and dips and rocks and bumps everywhere. You have to get off your bike and walk at times because you just can’t pedal any further. It was really foggy, too. The Harmattan returned for a few days with a vengeance, casting a dusty fog over the village world. I was out on a farm path between my village and another and since it’s not farming season, there wasn’t another soul around.
It was kind of nice to finally be alone.
I’m alone all the time here, essentially. If my counterpart, Zack, isn’t around, I can go for days without hearing a word of English (except from the children shouting “Balima! Bye-bye, yo!”). It’s hard for me to ever make any true friends without being suspicious of their motives (or of them in general - like how my friend Amina began stealing from me about a month after I knew her). But there are always people around. Whether I’m in my house, or on my front porch with the gate locked, I can always hear the chatter of children or see their dirty faces peeking through the windows (no matter how much I hate that or how many times I’ve squirted water at them - or like now, as I’m typing this, there’s a stranger on my porch watching me write and I secretly hope they can read English and understand how much they’re annoying me [they can’t and they don’t]).
But out there, it was…nothing. Not a sound for miles around and I was so happy to finally have some peace. I didn’t realize how much I was missing it until I was in the midst of it. It was wonderful.
As I neared the edge of the other village, I came across a bridge Guillermo told me about. A hand-made thirty-footer that spans a dried-up riverbed that will become a lagoon in the rainy season. It’s hard to believe nothing but local lashing and logs can support the weight, but it does, year after year.
But the riverbed was perilous for my rear tire. I blew a flat about a mile outside the village and had to walk the last leg before I could get some air. And then came the final stretch of the trip - three miles on the Tamale-Bolgatanga Highway. Or, as I like to call it, the Death Lane. It’s a two-lane road and all regard for speed limits lay on the shoulder with strips of tire and bits of broken glass. I was so happy to get to Guillermo’s place and not be on that road anymore.
The next morning, I rode some more on the main road, but just to the junction where you would turn and take the dirt path that leads to my village. It’s about 15K away, but a much harder trip because of the wind - it feels like you’re pedaling into an industrial fan at times. I reached the junction just as my lorry arrived, threw my bike on top and climbed aboard. The ride would’ve been perfect had I not had four guys asking me for work and if I would take them with me when I left for America.
So I returned home a conquering hero. I made the ride to my friend’s place with ease and I tackled the T-B Road. The next day I was as sore as I’d ever been, but wasn’t about to walk funny. It was my chance to prove to people in my village that I’m capable to doing some strenuous things. And I could see they were impressed.
It was a simple victory that I’m proud of for two reasons. One, being the most basic - I did it. It wasn’t anything close to being an easy ride for me. Second, being I did it at the right time.
There are so many cultural faux pas you can commit every day and not even know it. It’s exhausting sometimes, keeping up with all of these foreign norms, mentally translating, then speaking during a conversation. You want to get things right - or at least I do. If I know something should be done a certain way, it would be just as easy for me to do it another and blame my foreign ignorance. But I can’t really operate like that. So for me, it’s always a challenge to try and keep everything straight in my mind.
And as much as I wanted to try out that path so many months ago, I knew it wasn’t the right time. Even though I was sure I could do it, I knew that, because the elders and other select people didn’t want me to, it wasn’t worth it to push it.
Something as simple as that, riding my bike, could jeopardize my entire work here. It might not - but it might. So I have to decide “Is this the right thing to push for? Will it be worth it in the end?” I decided that, even though I was bristling at the fact that I’m a grown woman having people tell me that I can’t ride my bike somewhere, it wasn’t something that absolutely had to be done. I might not have been able to make that decision a few months ago. I’m pretty stubborn when it comes right down to it, but I’ve had to alter that part of myself while living here. And it’s so hard to do that sometimes - especially when you just want to stand up and be like “No, this is the way it is” instead of nodding your head and going along with the wrong choice because someone in power chose it.
And now it makes me wonder how often people in my village think that of me. That they have to just go along with something I’m saying even though they’re shaking their heads inside. I think that probably happens often because a lot of my work involves radical behavior change that goes completely against their notions of what is and isn’t so in the world.
A lot of times I’ll see it clearly in their expressions - but mostly in amusement and mostly on the faces of the older people. It’s kind of an “Oh, that Balima - she’s at it again!” I love it. I love surprising people with new ways of doing things and then having it work out in the end so that they can begin seeing it’s possible to achieve their intended result by alternate means.
Just like I could have gone on a lorry.
But I didn’t. I rode my bike!
I am a highly underestimated person in my village. I’ve found that to be both an advantage and a disadvantage.
It’s like, when taking an art class, how making a really crappy first drawing and then gradually working up to your full potential will almost assuredly garner you an A. Or if you really don’t want to put in any effort with what you’re working on, feigning ignorance or some believable level of helplessness will somehow relieve you of your responsibilities (like when you have an electronic-savvy brother handy and you have a confusing wad of cables to your new DVD player).
Not that I ever do those things.
Though, sometimes you actually do want to do something that you know you’re fully capable of doing. You’re not being graded, you don’t have to pretend to progress - you’re already there and you don’t want to waste time. But then you’re being held back by, it seems, everyone because of one reason or another. For me, it usually falls into three categories: gender, color and village status.
“You want to do whaaaat? But you’re a woman!”
“You mean I don’t know how to play soccer because I have XX chromosomes? Is that what’s been holding me back all these years?”
Or - my personal favorite - “Madame, wait, it’s too far. The lorry will come.”
“So…I should wait for a dirty, old school bus to come so I can be crammed into the stairwell behind an overweight bread seller and a baby with diarrhea running down its legs? I’d rather take my bicycle and my iPod and sweat for thirty minutes - and yes, I know I’m white but I don’t think that will effect my ability to pedal eight kilometers.”
Or any general argument against my doing any sort of physical labor - like hauling water or buckets of concrete or sand, sweeping the compound or squatting while talking instead of sitting in a comfy plastic chair.
And this one I sort of understand. I’m a guest in the village and they’re only treating me with respect. But it’s still not any fun to run up against when I’m trying to do something.
Most recently I was trying to ride my bike to my friend’s house. By road, it’s about fifty kilometers away. By goat path, it’s about twenty - five of it on relatively decent road. For months I’ve been trying to go visit him because he’s my closest neighbor and what’s twelve miles on a sandy dirt path between friends?
My chance finally came when, the other day, he decided to visit me first. It didn’t take him long - about an hour and a half - and he said the ride was really pretty. The main reason he came was to pick up a bus ticket I’d gotten for him in the city. We slept on the porch and he was gone before dawn, wanting to tackle the ride before the sun came up.
But he forgot his ticket.
I wasn’t planning on traveling any time soon, but I saw that it was a perfect opportunity to actually learn the road for myself. If I’d taken a tro, round trip, it would’ve cost me no less than three cedis - half of my daily allowance. Via bike - free, except for the pack of biscuits/cookies I bought as a snack.
So I explained to everyone that I had to go that day, that my friend was leaving for Kumasi in the morning and needed the ticket immediately. The only way to do that was for me to ride my bike.
And I got instant approval! Met with a healthy round of “are you sure you can make it? it’s far!” But I was expecting that.
And about halfway through, I was inclined to agree.
There are sandtraps and dips and rocks and bumps everywhere. You have to get off your bike and walk at times because you just can’t pedal any further. It was really foggy, too. The Harmattan returned for a few days with a vengeance, casting a dusty fog over the village world. I was out on a farm path between my village and another and since it’s not farming season, there wasn’t another soul around.
It was kind of nice to finally be alone.
I’m alone all the time here, essentially. If my counterpart, Zack, isn’t around, I can go for days without hearing a word of English (except from the children shouting “Balima! Bye-bye, yo!”). It’s hard for me to ever make any true friends without being suspicious of their motives (or of them in general - like how my friend Amina began stealing from me about a month after I knew her). But there are always people around. Whether I’m in my house, or on my front porch with the gate locked, I can always hear the chatter of children or see their dirty faces peeking through the windows (no matter how much I hate that or how many times I’ve squirted water at them - or like now, as I’m typing this, there’s a stranger on my porch watching me write and I secretly hope they can read English and understand how much they’re annoying me [they can’t and they don’t]).
But out there, it was…nothing. Not a sound for miles around and I was so happy to finally have some peace. I didn’t realize how much I was missing it until I was in the midst of it. It was wonderful.
As I neared the edge of the other village, I came across a bridge Guillermo told me about. A hand-made thirty-footer that spans a dried-up riverbed that will become a lagoon in the rainy season. It’s hard to believe nothing but local lashing and logs can support the weight, but it does, year after year.
But the riverbed was perilous for my rear tire. I blew a flat about a mile outside the village and had to walk the last leg before I could get some air. And then came the final stretch of the trip - three miles on the Tamale-Bolgatanga Highway. Or, as I like to call it, the Death Lane. It’s a two-lane road and all regard for speed limits lay on the shoulder with strips of tire and bits of broken glass. I was so happy to get to Guillermo’s place and not be on that road anymore.
The next morning, I rode some more on the main road, but just to the junction where you would turn and take the dirt path that leads to my village. It’s about 15K away, but a much harder trip because of the wind - it feels like you’re pedaling into an industrial fan at times. I reached the junction just as my lorry arrived, threw my bike on top and climbed aboard. The ride would’ve been perfect had I not had four guys asking me for work and if I would take them with me when I left for America.
So I returned home a conquering hero. I made the ride to my friend’s place with ease and I tackled the T-B Road. The next day I was as sore as I’d ever been, but wasn’t about to walk funny. It was my chance to prove to people in my village that I’m capable to doing some strenuous things. And I could see they were impressed.
It was a simple victory that I’m proud of for two reasons. One, being the most basic - I did it. It wasn’t anything close to being an easy ride for me. Second, being I did it at the right time.
There are so many cultural faux pas you can commit every day and not even know it. It’s exhausting sometimes, keeping up with all of these foreign norms, mentally translating, then speaking during a conversation. You want to get things right - or at least I do. If I know something should be done a certain way, it would be just as easy for me to do it another and blame my foreign ignorance. But I can’t really operate like that. So for me, it’s always a challenge to try and keep everything straight in my mind.
And as much as I wanted to try out that path so many months ago, I knew it wasn’t the right time. Even though I was sure I could do it, I knew that, because the elders and other select people didn’t want me to, it wasn’t worth it to push it.
Something as simple as that, riding my bike, could jeopardize my entire work here. It might not - but it might. So I have to decide “Is this the right thing to push for? Will it be worth it in the end?” I decided that, even though I was bristling at the fact that I’m a grown woman having people tell me that I can’t ride my bike somewhere, it wasn’t something that absolutely had to be done. I might not have been able to make that decision a few months ago. I’m pretty stubborn when it comes right down to it, but I’ve had to alter that part of myself while living here. And it’s so hard to do that sometimes - especially when you just want to stand up and be like “No, this is the way it is” instead of nodding your head and going along with the wrong choice because someone in power chose it.
And now it makes me wonder how often people in my village think that of me. That they have to just go along with something I’m saying even though they’re shaking their heads inside. I think that probably happens often because a lot of my work involves radical behavior change that goes completely against their notions of what is and isn’t so in the world.
A lot of times I’ll see it clearly in their expressions - but mostly in amusement and mostly on the faces of the older people. It’s kind of an “Oh, that Balima - she’s at it again!” I love it. I love surprising people with new ways of doing things and then having it work out in the end so that they can begin seeing it’s possible to achieve their intended result by alternate means.
Just like I could have gone on a lorry.
But I didn’t. I rode my bike!