Stories from Ghana

The summer I turned 18 I went to Africa.

I was young and it was before the advent of the internet. And I was a fool in the way only a young American can be: Like the time I ate Kabobs from a street vendor who swore to me the meat I was eating was definately not dog. Sorry Fluffy, I was young, and stupid, what can I say?

Or

There was the week we waited in Accra for the new team of "missionaries" to arrive. We had some long awaited free time so, like good American tourists, we shopped. There was the usual tourist junk, but in the mix was some lovely kente cloth and a suspicious number of fettish statues carved in ebony.

The Indians have the Kama Sutra. Americans have Playboy. Ghanaian have fettish statues. It was sex education right there on the streets of Accra. Now being a remarkably innocent 18 year old I took the naked people statues at face value.

What I should have realized, and didn't, is that these fettish dolls were a reflection of the underbelly of Ghanaian culture. Ghana is, nominally, a Christian nation but the real truth is that it is a nation of ancient tribal religions. And those religions devalue women and children at the most basic level. Young girls are given to priests as sex slaves. The children of those girls sometimes starve to death, and if they survive, they can look forward to a life of slavery too.

Fettish dolls do not make conversation peices in the living rooms of affluent Ghanians. They are used in religious practices so old and so dark that that the nationals who served as our guides in the market led us away from the figurines, but refused to tell us foreigners what they were, or what they meant.

But now I know. And the sweet 15 year old girl I met (who was the mother of 3 children) has a story she never told. I never even guessed.

It's probably good I didn't know then what I know now. I was 18. I don't know that I could have processed that then. I'm not sure I can now.