December 21st. About 4 P.M. I venture towards a compound close to mine, where the shrine of the god Adamorobe Ayisi is situated. A group of men is playing their drums and woman hit together little gongs. A fat hearing woman with white powder over her whole body is dancing and transmitting messages of the gods, but not in spoken Twi. No, she doesn’t speak a word, performs dance steps and begins to sign and depict. “Now she’s possessed by a deaf god”, Akosua and Afua explain. When this fetish ‘becomes’ a hearing god, she speaks again.
Traditional religion still lives around here, and its symbolism is closely linked to the history, the family clans, the harvest, the animals which live here etc. There isn’t just one god, but there are many gods and ‘deaf village’ Adamorobe thus also has a deaf god. The needs of these gods and the deceased ancestors have to be gratified by offering them food and beverages (by throwing/hurling them onto the floor) and by adhering to a couple of rules.
But also Christianity has made its entrance here. Not Catholicism (any more); that’s something which wasn’t and isn’t very successful in Ghana, but all other kinds of denominations: Pentecostalists, Seventh-day Adventists, Presbyterians, and loads of others which I had never heard of. Adamorobe has an impressive number of minimally eleven (!). Besides these hearing Christian church groups in the village, a deaf Lutheran evangelist from Accra visits weekly for the deaf.
Because yes, also deaf Ghana has been converted. When you hint to a deaf person in Accra that you don’t go to church, you are often looked at with disbelief, and you become the target of converting attempts which are even more imposing than the marriage pleads of hearing men. A few of the churches in Accra and other places offer translation in Ghanaian sign language, and also songs and psalms are translated in GSL (more SSE when you come to think of it).
A priest who has been trained in Kumasi (another large city in Ghana) applies this approach in Adamorobe. Each week I witness deaf Adamorobers copying songs of this evangelist without even understanding what they are singing. For years, the sermons were, opposed to now, translated from Ghanese sign language into Adamorobe sign language by a deaf person, but this person got ill a few years ago and died.
Another late afternoon in December. Kwasi signs to me that he wasn’t a Christian as a child, and that he cooperated in the traditional rituals. “But I go to church now… so I don’t participate anymore, I do still go and watch, but I don’t eat what they prepare”. You see, during these rituals food is prepared and passed around, and eating it is considered “joining’. During the ritual referred to in the first paragraph, Afua declines schnapps because of her church religion, but Akosua does drink it. Kwadzo, one of the deaf males, is quite active in the traditional religion and gets criticized heavily because of this by the rest.
This criticism does not originate from a belief that these gods are ‘not real’, but by the idea that these are real indeed and that it is dangerous to get involved with them. You’ll go to hell, because it comes down to worshiping the devil: a conviction probably brought over by Christian missionaries. Here in Ghana, however, it is not uncommon to practice both religions, how much of a contradiction this may seem.
Besides that, there are almost daily references to witchcraft: witches are for example jealous family members (like old women) who poison people and a lot of deaths (of deaf as well as hearing people) caused by severe illnesses for example, are explained by means of witchcraft. I get warnings like not to walk on the central (most crowded) path of the village, because “there are too many witches there!”. Or take for example: “Something got stolen from my land, so I threw some eggs and a bottle of schnapps in the river and the thief got mortally ill”. That’s an example of divination. Also, magic is practiced: objects and things like hairs and fingernails are manipulated to serve a goal, so one time a deaf girl told me: “my underwear got stolen, so I was scared to death”.
Those are things come to my attention in stories and conversations and luckily I’m able to interpret them because of my anthropology studies, because otherwise I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to see the larger picture: the Christian god in the heaven and the Akan gods – amongst which a deaf god – who live in and around Adamorobe. The ghosts of the deceased ancestors which wander around us. Witchcraft and magic which are practiced by real people. This world is filled with invisible beings and ‘devilish’ practices, organized in a cocktail which could be very unbelievable to western eyes, but which is very real for the deaf and hearing people here.
24 December 2008
19 December 2008
To marry or not to marry?
One day, many years ago, the gong was sounded in the village. An announcement was made: the deaf cannot marry the deaf anymore, says the chief, because you might get deaf children. This, while at the same time there are a lot of hearing people with deaf children in Adamorobe, and hearing people with deaf parents. There were deaf-hearing marriages as well as deaf-deaf. The last type was therefore forbidden from that point forward.
A few obeyed the prohibition and married hearing people. A few amongst them did not have any issues with it, because “the deaf gossip too much anyway!”. Others were very annoyed with the new rule, because they didn’t think it was an appealing option to marry a hearing person. According to them, the hearing were bad spouses per definition, because lot of deaf people have had failed marriages with hearing people.
We’re standing on the village square. Kwasi exclaims that he, without a doubt, wants to marry a deaf person and I put him to the test: “and what happens when you get a deaf child?”. “I would like that”, he tells me without giving it a thought. He points in the direction of the hills: “And I’ll send it to the school for the deaf over there”. The presence of a large school for the deaf means that a deaf child has a future. Does this mean that these people ignore the chief’s prohibition and still marry other deaf?
Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. A lot of deaf cannot marry each other for another reason. Practically all deaf people here are related: brother or sister, nephew or niece or in laws. In this matrilineal society you are allowed to marry certain family members, but you are prohibited to marry others. The four deaf-deaf marriages presently in Adamorobe, break the rules (which are a bit too complicated to just quickly explain).
One of these ‘wrong’ marriages was the one between Ama and Kofi. On top of that, Ama is at least 25 years older than her husband, which is controversial here as well. After a divorce she had been single for a long time and chose him after he saved her life when she was bitten by a poisonous snake. That incident convinced her to marry her nephew anyway: “My family should not give me a hard time… he took care of me so intensively back then, while they didn’t even bother about me”.
Although, these marriages are controversial, they get criticized, and are not acknowledged or affirmed by their families. Sometimes one changes his/her mind because of that reason: several deaf people have had a relationship with this or that nephew or niece and decided not to go through with it in the end.
So why don’t they just marry a deaf person from outside Adamorobe, for example from the capital? “The Accra women don’t go to the farm”, Kwasi told me, “they just girlishly toddle around”. And it’s expensive. In Accra one marries with a “ring and a gown”. In other words: a Christian wedding ceremony. Here in the village one marries in the traditional way: an agreement between the families, sealed with some hard liquor and some money. Simple and relatively cheap.
A few deaf people here are therefore single, and most of them have been divorced once or several times. It’s quite easy to divorce here, and divorces are very common. The single deaf people face three options which are considered unappealing: marrying a hearing person is something they don’t want (anymore), marrying a deaf family member is prohibited and marrying a deaf person ‘from outside’ is expensive or the perception of life is too different. So you see, finding a lifetime partner here is no walk in the park.
A few obeyed the prohibition and married hearing people. A few amongst them did not have any issues with it, because “the deaf gossip too much anyway!”. Others were very annoyed with the new rule, because they didn’t think it was an appealing option to marry a hearing person. According to them, the hearing were bad spouses per definition, because lot of deaf people have had failed marriages with hearing people.
We’re standing on the village square. Kwasi exclaims that he, without a doubt, wants to marry a deaf person and I put him to the test: “and what happens when you get a deaf child?”. “I would like that”, he tells me without giving it a thought. He points in the direction of the hills: “And I’ll send it to the school for the deaf over there”. The presence of a large school for the deaf means that a deaf child has a future. Does this mean that these people ignore the chief’s prohibition and still marry other deaf?
Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. A lot of deaf cannot marry each other for another reason. Practically all deaf people here are related: brother or sister, nephew or niece or in laws. In this matrilineal society you are allowed to marry certain family members, but you are prohibited to marry others. The four deaf-deaf marriages presently in Adamorobe, break the rules (which are a bit too complicated to just quickly explain).
One of these ‘wrong’ marriages was the one between Ama and Kofi. On top of that, Ama is at least 25 years older than her husband, which is controversial here as well. After a divorce she had been single for a long time and chose him after he saved her life when she was bitten by a poisonous snake. That incident convinced her to marry her nephew anyway: “My family should not give me a hard time… he took care of me so intensively back then, while they didn’t even bother about me”.
Although, these marriages are controversial, they get criticized, and are not acknowledged or affirmed by their families. Sometimes one changes his/her mind because of that reason: several deaf people have had a relationship with this or that nephew or niece and decided not to go through with it in the end.
So why don’t they just marry a deaf person from outside Adamorobe, for example from the capital? “The Accra women don’t go to the farm”, Kwasi told me, “they just girlishly toddle around”. And it’s expensive. In Accra one marries with a “ring and a gown”. In other words: a Christian wedding ceremony. Here in the village one marries in the traditional way: an agreement between the families, sealed with some hard liquor and some money. Simple and relatively cheap.
A few deaf people here are therefore single, and most of them have been divorced once or several times. It’s quite easy to divorce here, and divorces are very common. The single deaf people face three options which are considered unappealing: marrying a hearing person is something they don’t want (anymore), marrying a deaf family member is prohibited and marrying a deaf person ‘from outside’ is expensive or the perception of life is too different. So you see, finding a lifetime partner here is no walk in the park.
5 December 2008
Sign scala in Ghana
It’s 6 A.M. I walk outside to commence the daily village habit of ‘greeting people’. Immediately, I come across a hearing man, and I greet him. He signs: “How are you?” I answer that all is well, and how is he? I sense the next question coming before he even speaks: “Be my partner, I want to marry you because you are so beautiful, with your white skin”. I decline: “No, I already have a partner”. “Dump him and marry a black man! He’s not here anyway, so marry me!”
I already explained that because of the large presence of deaf people in this village throughout generations, a lot of hearing people know and use the Adamorobe sign language (=AdaSL). Parents, children, brothers and sisters, people in the food stalls and people you meet on the paths of Adamorobe, thus communicate in signs with the deaf people who live here, and also with me. The conversation mentioned above is a standard one with (sometimes very annoying) hearing men :p
A few weeks ago I went to Accra, where people evidently do not know Adamorobe sign language. Still, it wasn’t always the case that I had to fall back on written communication. In my blogpost ‘Scala’, written two months ago, I already discussed the phenomena of hearing people who do not know sign language, but who naturally use simple signs (‘gestures’) in their communication style. A lot of people tend to know the example of the Italians with their vast number of ‘gestures’. That’s exactly the case here in Ghana (and at least a large part of Africa) too, but of course with gestures which are extremely different from those used in Italy.
Well, when I went to Accra after having been in Adamorobe for a couple of weeks, I clearly noticed that simple interactions with hearing Ghanese people in Accra went much more smoothly once of a sudden. I’m talking about using gestures like ‘coming’, ‘going’, ‘do you come from far?’. In a youth hostel: “go there to get your name registered and then come back here” and “for how many nights are you staying?”. Also communication with taxi drivers, bus drivers and street vendors went easier. I picked up these gestures in Adamorobe and they worked much better in Accra than my European hand- and footwork. So, while people outside of Adamorobe do not know Adamorobe sign language, my background in Adamorobe sign language helped me – interesting enough – to also communicate a bit better in Accra.
In a far end of west-Accra I was visiting, I witnessed a conversation between Joseph, a deaf man, and a hearing woman who came from her farm. They knew each other. She wanted money from him and a teasing conversation followed. He made several signs which I recognized from Adamorobe: ‘cheating’, ‘partner’, ‘man’, ‘farm land’, ‘money’ etc. When the woman had left, I noted that that and that and that sign also is used in Adamorobe. He explained that once in a while, he speaks to deaf people who have never been to school and that he then also uses these signs, that they are ‘gestures’ which many Ghanaians know and use.
All of this got me thinking. I remembered a conversation with Sam, a deaf African academic, who once told me that it felt strange to him, to treat village sign languagues like AdaSL as completely separate languages, because AdaSL incorporates a lot of ‘gestures’ which hearing people use too. However, AdaSL is not merely a collection of gestures like those the Italian use, but it is way more complex and contains specific signs which an outsider does not understand. Joseph, the deaf man mentioned above, has been to Adamorobe. He said that he did not understand a lot of AdaSL, in opposition to most hearing people who have been brought up in Adamorobe.
About the strict opposite of AdaSL and everyday Ghanese gesture, is GSL (Ghanaian Sign Language), the Ghanese sign language which is taught in the school for the deaf. This sign language has been strongly influenced by ASL, the American sign language, because a Afro-American, Andrew J. Foster, set up the deaf education in a large part of Africa, with Ghana as starting point. GSL has very plain facial expressions, minimal mouth gesture and does not use the Ghanese gestures mentioned above. It’s a completely different language. By many Ghanese deaf people, GSL is seen as ‘real sign language’, a language with status, linked to literacy, because it is the school language. ‘Village signs’ are ‘common’ in their eyes and ‘not real’ and according to the educated deaf which I met in Accra, the deaf (and hearing) from Adamorobe therefore cannot ‘really’ sign.
Two years ago I spent 3 months in Bolgatanga, north-Ghana, for my volunteer work in such a deaf school. There I got a basis in GSL. For me, GSL was a thousand times easier to learn than AdaSL because the grammar had more resemblances with western sign languages. But even though AdaSL was a lot harder to learn, I feel that living in Adamorobe gave me a mini crash course in Ghanese culture-and-language-integration, much more than my stay at the deaf school in the north.
I already explained that because of the large presence of deaf people in this village throughout generations, a lot of hearing people know and use the Adamorobe sign language (=AdaSL). Parents, children, brothers and sisters, people in the food stalls and people you meet on the paths of Adamorobe, thus communicate in signs with the deaf people who live here, and also with me. The conversation mentioned above is a standard one with (sometimes very annoying) hearing men :p
A few weeks ago I went to Accra, where people evidently do not know Adamorobe sign language. Still, it wasn’t always the case that I had to fall back on written communication. In my blogpost ‘Scala’, written two months ago, I already discussed the phenomena of hearing people who do not know sign language, but who naturally use simple signs (‘gestures’) in their communication style. A lot of people tend to know the example of the Italians with their vast number of ‘gestures’. That’s exactly the case here in Ghana (and at least a large part of Africa) too, but of course with gestures which are extremely different from those used in Italy.
Well, when I went to Accra after having been in Adamorobe for a couple of weeks, I clearly noticed that simple interactions with hearing Ghanese people in Accra went much more smoothly once of a sudden. I’m talking about using gestures like ‘coming’, ‘going’, ‘do you come from far?’. In a youth hostel: “go there to get your name registered and then come back here” and “for how many nights are you staying?”. Also communication with taxi drivers, bus drivers and street vendors went easier. I picked up these gestures in Adamorobe and they worked much better in Accra than my European hand- and footwork. So, while people outside of Adamorobe do not know Adamorobe sign language, my background in Adamorobe sign language helped me – interesting enough – to also communicate a bit better in Accra.
In a far end of west-Accra I was visiting, I witnessed a conversation between Joseph, a deaf man, and a hearing woman who came from her farm. They knew each other. She wanted money from him and a teasing conversation followed. He made several signs which I recognized from Adamorobe: ‘cheating’, ‘partner’, ‘man’, ‘farm land’, ‘money’ etc. When the woman had left, I noted that that and that and that sign also is used in Adamorobe. He explained that once in a while, he speaks to deaf people who have never been to school and that he then also uses these signs, that they are ‘gestures’ which many Ghanaians know and use.
All of this got me thinking. I remembered a conversation with Sam, a deaf African academic, who once told me that it felt strange to him, to treat village sign languagues like AdaSL as completely separate languages, because AdaSL incorporates a lot of ‘gestures’ which hearing people use too. However, AdaSL is not merely a collection of gestures like those the Italian use, but it is way more complex and contains specific signs which an outsider does not understand. Joseph, the deaf man mentioned above, has been to Adamorobe. He said that he did not understand a lot of AdaSL, in opposition to most hearing people who have been brought up in Adamorobe.
About the strict opposite of AdaSL and everyday Ghanese gesture, is GSL (Ghanaian Sign Language), the Ghanese sign language which is taught in the school for the deaf. This sign language has been strongly influenced by ASL, the American sign language, because a Afro-American, Andrew J. Foster, set up the deaf education in a large part of Africa, with Ghana as starting point. GSL has very plain facial expressions, minimal mouth gesture and does not use the Ghanese gestures mentioned above. It’s a completely different language. By many Ghanese deaf people, GSL is seen as ‘real sign language’, a language with status, linked to literacy, because it is the school language. ‘Village signs’ are ‘common’ in their eyes and ‘not real’ and according to the educated deaf which I met in Accra, the deaf (and hearing) from Adamorobe therefore cannot ‘really’ sign.
Two years ago I spent 3 months in Bolgatanga, north-Ghana, for my volunteer work in such a deaf school. There I got a basis in GSL. For me, GSL was a thousand times easier to learn than AdaSL because the grammar had more resemblances with western sign languages. But even though AdaSL was a lot harder to learn, I feel that living in Adamorobe gave me a mini crash course in Ghanese culture-and-language-integration, much more than my stay at the deaf school in the north.
3 December 2008
The tattoo
A few deaf people here have gotten a tattoo on the inside of their lower arm. In print: their name, and the name of the village, Adamorobe. (Also see: photosite Elena Rue). I had not seen such tattoos on hearing people yet. On the last day of October – I had been in the village for two weeks – I started a conversation on the subject. I asked Kofi: “You have that tattoo on your arm, why don’t the hearing have one, and the deaf do?” He started to explain that they serve the purpose of not getting lost outside the village. He knows how to get to Accra – the capital which is situated about ten kilometres further on – and he knows how to get to different other places. He learnt getting around from Samuel, an older deaf man from Accra who has lived in Adamorobe for a long time already and who tutored the deaf bible studies, and who also took them to the capital.
Well, to try to get somewhere here in Ghana, you arrive at huge, seemingly chaotic ‘lorry stations’ filled with mini buses (‘trotros’) scattered among the place: the buses we sack in Europe, are used here as public transportation. You mostly get to the right bus by asking around. “The bus drivers do not recognize the sign for Adamorobe”, Kofi told me. And writing down the place name is not that obvious. Kofi is a farmer who never attended school. Samuel taught him how to write his name, but to remember ‘Adamorobe’ is more difficult. Therefore, he shows his tattoo to people at the bus station and that’s how he gets to the right tro-tro. “I don’t want to go to my land each day again over and over again”, he explains to me. It feels good to get away sometimes. And to, at those moments, show everybody that he, Kofi, travels to and from Accra on his own.
A few weeks later I heard a story about Kwadzo, who is tattoo-less. He once got lost and spent months away from home. I asked him to tell me that story. He had to go to a cocoa farm (a lot of people from Adamorobe have worked on cocoa farms outside Adamorobe or have emigrated there). He knew the way, but when he signalled he had to get off the bus, the driver just kept on driving. He ended up somewhere he did not know his way. He walked around for quite a while before he ran into the police but he did not succeed in communicating where his home was. He worked on a piece of land for a couple of months, which the police helped him obtain. One day, the police finally found out where he was from and he was taken back. Everybody was ecstatic that he was not dead. So there you see. A tattoo can keep you out of a hell of a lot of trouble.
A few days ago, at a funeral, I saw a woman with a similar tattoo. A hearing woman. I peeked at her arm to read what was written underneath her name: “Oyibi”. Oyibi is a village near Adamorobe. This meant that those tattoos are not something specifically from and for the deaf people. A hearing person who speaks, can without a doubt tell a bus driver or a police officer the name of her village. For a moment, I was confused.
Once of a sudden, I remembered a conversation with Kwame, the first to have such a tattoo. He told me that he got it under pressure of his father, when he went to work in a cocoa zone outside of Adamorobe. Because – as his father told him – if you die in a bus crash (there are quite a few fatal incidents here), how will they know who you are and where to deliver your body? In Europe they look in your wallet. To find your ID. So maybe those tattoos are just like a kind of passport, and they get a more broad meaning and function for the deaf?
Well, to try to get somewhere here in Ghana, you arrive at huge, seemingly chaotic ‘lorry stations’ filled with mini buses (‘trotros’) scattered among the place: the buses we sack in Europe, are used here as public transportation. You mostly get to the right bus by asking around. “The bus drivers do not recognize the sign for Adamorobe”, Kofi told me. And writing down the place name is not that obvious. Kofi is a farmer who never attended school. Samuel taught him how to write his name, but to remember ‘Adamorobe’ is more difficult. Therefore, he shows his tattoo to people at the bus station and that’s how he gets to the right tro-tro. “I don’t want to go to my land each day again over and over again”, he explains to me. It feels good to get away sometimes. And to, at those moments, show everybody that he, Kofi, travels to and from Accra on his own.
A few weeks later I heard a story about Kwadzo, who is tattoo-less. He once got lost and spent months away from home. I asked him to tell me that story. He had to go to a cocoa farm (a lot of people from Adamorobe have worked on cocoa farms outside Adamorobe or have emigrated there). He knew the way, but when he signalled he had to get off the bus, the driver just kept on driving. He ended up somewhere he did not know his way. He walked around for quite a while before he ran into the police but he did not succeed in communicating where his home was. He worked on a piece of land for a couple of months, which the police helped him obtain. One day, the police finally found out where he was from and he was taken back. Everybody was ecstatic that he was not dead. So there you see. A tattoo can keep you out of a hell of a lot of trouble.
A few days ago, at a funeral, I saw a woman with a similar tattoo. A hearing woman. I peeked at her arm to read what was written underneath her name: “Oyibi”. Oyibi is a village near Adamorobe. This meant that those tattoos are not something specifically from and for the deaf people. A hearing person who speaks, can without a doubt tell a bus driver or a police officer the name of her village. For a moment, I was confused.
Once of a sudden, I remembered a conversation with Kwame, the first to have such a tattoo. He told me that he got it under pressure of his father, when he went to work in a cocoa zone outside of Adamorobe. Because – as his father told him – if you die in a bus crash (there are quite a few fatal incidents here), how will they know who you are and where to deliver your body? In Europe they look in your wallet. To find your ID. So maybe those tattoos are just like a kind of passport, and they get a more broad meaning and function for the deaf?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)