tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70361399096489162702023-11-15T10:48:35.146-08:00Valley of the DeafA Deaf Anthropologist in AdamorobeAnnelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-59591814703005825292010-06-11T12:16:00.000-07:002010-06-11T13:40:13.404-07:00Ready, Set, ... GO!*Closes HyperResearch and ELAN and exhales with relief*<br /><br />A hellish job it was: translating 20 hours of filmed interviews and stories from Adamorobe sign language, and coding about 1500 pages of field notes and interview translations.<br /><br />Originally, it took me ages to merely translate 2 minutes of a video which I played at 70% of the realtime speed (you’d be baffled to know how much one can say in 2 minutes!), but towards the end it went smoothly on normal speed and I even almost didn’t have to rewind any more. I set a rule for myself: translating 15 minutes of film data every day – and I couldn’t even bring myself to doing a measly 10 seconds extra.<br /><br />What that consisted of – a method perfected for and by myself during the months I spent doing it – was: staring at my screen completely fixated for two minutes and pressing the space bar (start-stop-start-stop), scribbling down every sentence in a hand writing only decipherable by myself on a A4 sheet folded in the length, and per piece of 2 minutes, typing everything in a window in ELAN (a sign language analysis programme) of which it took me a full 2 months to discover I could enlarge it to something bigger than 5 by 5 centimetres. <br /><br />In the meantime, my mind is constantly and neurotically trying to ‘breathe’ (as in: escape) and I click towards e-mails, the website of ‘De Standaard’ (Belgian newspaper) and Facebook. My three big pals and at the same time my enemies in these days. It was a challenge, for my willpower, discipline and patience, as much as the challenge I faced by staying in Adamorobe. And this yet again, and again, and again. For five whole months. I scribbled through a pile of (draft-)A4 sheets of about 10 to 20 centimetres high. I cannot bear to see any more draft paper. I cannot bear to see any more of ELAN. I cannot bear to see any more of the green (film-)background of my bedroom in Adamorobe.<br /><br />And then, when after 3 hours I had struggled through about 15 minutes of film and could finally, contented, place aside my draft paper, the ‘clicking work’ began, as I started calling it after a while. In the programme HyperResearch there’s a window with your text (field notes) and there’s a window with a list of 500 terms: codes. A list which I built up myself, along the way. You read some sentences from field notes and with a few mouse clicks, you assign to them one or more codes (themes), for example: ‘marry rules’, ‘police does not take deaf’, ‘white visitors: deaf stories and refs’, or ‘church: role, meaning’, or ‘traditional religion: deaf roles+participation’. So later, when I want to write about a theme or a group of themes, I just have to click on the code and my screen will show everything that has been linked to that theme between 15th October 2008 and 15th October 2009 – everything that has been said, that happened, has been signed or written. One thousand five hundred pages. Five hundred codes. Five thousand marked text fragments.<br /><br />A routine job without many challenges (except for the challenge my capricious character had to face).<br /><br />But what I noticed, thought and felt every day is: “WOW!” Innumerable ‘Aha-erlebnises’. Innumerable palpitations of my heart and innumerable shots for my enthusiasm. The data I gathered in Adamorobe is extremely rich, multi-faceted and thorough. Fantastic! I can do SO much with it! I have tons of ideas of how to bring it all together, how to link and connect it all! And during coding, how many times have I thought: “Oh!! I forgot that part! That should be in it, in my PhD! And thàt and thàt and thattt…” I almost bursted at the seams of sheer ‘lust’ and enthusiasm to get it started.<br /><br />And now, I’m finally there, after 5 months of scribbling and clicking: that mountain is in front of me, that mountain of data which was intricately intertwined at first, chaotic, dark and huge; is now arranged, structured, deciphered and mapped. I wish my PhD could contain a million words. Only eighty thousand words I get to put it together. “Is loads, isn’t it”, you think? Think again! It’s only about 200 pages with double line spacing. And that also has to include methodology, literature review,… And I don’t want to butcher my great data. And, and, and… A new stream of brain twists is being formed. But err… I’m ready. I’m set. Let’s GO!Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-38999722828925660612009-10-03T05:17:00.000-07:002009-10-03T05:22:55.307-07:00It’s-almost-over-and-done-with-lists<span style="font-weight:bold;">Eleven things I’m going to miss</span><br /><br />1. The daily view on many palm trees, the beautiful jungle around the village and the view of the hills around Adamorobe.<br />2. Never being cold<br />3. Sitting outside in the cool evening air underneath a starry sky without light pollution<br />4. Fufu, banku, kenkey, ampesi and ‘red-red’: the local dishes<br />5. The absolute mixture of all ages: the eldest until the smallest shrimps, all mingled together, in every corner of this village<br />6. The goats, cats, sheep, dogs and chickens scratching around everywhere, performing ‘the deed’ and, unfortunately, leave behind their droppings<br />7. Not seeing my budget shrink that fast<br />8. Fooling around with the Adamorobe deaf<br />9. The written conversations about Adamorobe’s history and culture with my hearing research assistant<br />10. Dedicating my full attention to my research and not being aware of what’s happening in the rest of the world<br />11. The kick I still fell every day during interesting conversations or interesting situations, basically every piece of the puzzle that will contribute to my PhD-thesis<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Eleven things I’m not going to miss</span><br /><br />1. Being ripped off, getting no (!) or not enough change because I’m white and am seen as a walking wallet for everything ranging from food, education, medical expenses, a car up until a flight; while there are people in this village – with car and/or big house – who are definitely more wealthy than I am.<br />2. That people try to pry all my personal belongings from me, going from my clothes up until my backpack, my flashlight and my cell phone, and the argument that I can’t go and walk around naked in the UK does not matter, because at home I have – in their eyes – heaps of cell phones, clothes, back packs and flashlights, don’t I?<br />3. That the deaf keep wanting more and more in exchange for my research: getting a finger and taking a hand, but really wanting an arm<br />4. Being seen as potential partner in marriage or just a freaky bed partner by men of all ages who are offended when I turn them down and don’t agree with my argument of not being single, because “he can’t see what you’re doing here, anyway” and carry on thinking that I don’t want black men and hence I’m actually a racist<br />5. The fact that in a village where everyone lives outside, every movement you make is closely monitored, and without exception is surely commented on and criticized behind your back<br />6. The constant – and I truly mean constant – gossiping and putting each other down in the village life slowly tends to disgust – ‘that one is bad’, ‘that one is a hypocrite’ and ‘that one is stingy’ seem like frequently used expressions, embedded in their vocabulary<br />7. Straightforward Africa: the burning sun that sometimes tends to lower your energy levels while you’re conducting your research for about 12 to 14 hours a day <br />8. The dust that gets on, under and in everything<br />9. Mice, spiders, ants and cockroaches that ALSO get on and under everything, crap and munch on everything and even have the guts to come and pay me visits in my bed<br />10. Always seeing the same people<br />11. Forcing myself every day to get up and at finishing my field notes, which takes me about 2 to 3 hours<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Eleven things I look forward to</span><br /><br />1. Anonymity<br />2. Privacy<br />3. Going to a pub or a restaurant with my friends<br />4. Going through my research results – of which I am very pleased I might add – with my promoter<br />5. Seeing HIM again in November<br />6. Using a different sign language than AdaSL<br />7. The amount of choice in the supermarket<br />8. Wearing something with long sleeves and sleeping under a cozy, comfy thick blanket<br />9. Easy internet access and being able to send e-mails all day long<br />10. Getting behind the stove and cooking myself, being able to choose from more ingredients than tomatoes, fish and rice<br />11. And ESPECIALLY: having something else on my mind than Adamorobe and my researchAnnelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-73545408197895168522009-09-07T13:42:00.000-07:002009-09-14T03:45:39.579-07:00Lost: the research editionOn moments I want to wrap my mind around something else, like before going to bed, I put a DVD into my laptop. These days I’m watching the episodes of the series ‘Lost’ for the second time. Watching Lost while you know that a couple of meters from your bed are similar palm trees, hills, woods and waterfalls is quite something.<br /><br />But what’s more… it has crossed my mind several times that my research is quite similar to the way ‘Lost’ is constructed. No, no polar bears jump out of the forest here, I haven’t found secret hatches in the woods and I’m not chased by ‘the Others’.<br /><br />And still. Here, you’re immediately submerged into local life, like you’re ‘crashing’ into a foreign culture, in a special village, and then are forced to make sense of it all. And doing that one step at a time, is not quite possible. One of the weirdest things in ‘Lost’ were the polar bear and the monster-like thing in the woods. These are things which are initially ‘the big puzzle’, but which slowly move to the background after the first episodes (or, regarding my research: after the first few weeks), even though they do not get solved right away.<br /><br />Other things appear much later and once they have, it’s never the same again. Like the discovery of the hatch, and in particular the opening of it, or the contacts with ‘the Others’. Conducting a research, there’s potentially a period in which you are unaware – for a humongous period of time – of things that are vitally important, like here: the much talked about reputation Adamorobe carries outside the village, or the fact that the deaf used to be very active in the (military) defense of the village. Or… it comes to you before you know that the theme is potentially very important , but it takes a long while before you are able to investigate it in more depth. An example: the opinions of the hearing concerning the deaf. You start to wonder which elements are still out there, that can make your thesis look completely different; if all those important hatches have already been opened, if the ‘terra incognita’ (‘unknown grounds’) have been revealed.<br /><br />Sometimes, ‘Lost’ drops a story line to only pick it up again a full season after that. A lot of viewers get impatient: some things finally get meaning after a very long time, but in the meantime, a lot of new non-understandable elements are stacked up and the whole picture seems like an incoherent mess. You sometimes start to wonder if the writers are pulling your leg. But still, ‘Lost’ remains addictive to many: it’s fascinating and frustrating at the same time. Once again, bingo: that’s exactly what it’s like conducting research here in this village, in this culture.<br /><br />Sometimes you lose track and you have a hard time for a while. You see things you wish you hadn’t, people suffering, people dying. You stumble upon conflicts and fights which can escalate. Sometimes I do not have the mental energy to get out of my room, fearing that I’ll get faced with another gossip litany, round of compaints or argument report for the umpteenth time. However, now and again there are unexpected interesting encounters or surprising bits of information which make my day.<br /><br />And take the people for example. Adamorobe has 41 deaf. ‘Lost’ initially tells the story of a bit more than 40 people who have crashed. It’s not possible to focus on each of these individuals without getting superficial. The series portrays the stories of a subgroup of 10-15 people, the frontrunners. My research, as well, contains such ‘lead players’ with very diverse backgrounds and ages. However, this does not mean that the other people are as ‘faceless’ as in ‘Lost’. Because don’t you ever wonder how the other 30 survivors experience their stay on the island?<br /><br />In ‘Lost’, new actors are gradually added: the French woman, ‘the Others’, Desmond, the second group of survivors. Once again, a match. The first months, I solely focussed on the deaf people: they were my starting point, my point of departing, the core of my research. Because and through them, I learned the language, the ‘who is who' and ‘what is what’. Until various hearing started to also take the stage. One of them is currently a very important informant regarding Adamorobe’s culture and history and interviews hearing in the local language of Twi, following my request. He also notes down the answers in English. To open the hatch ‘hearing opinions on the deaf’, this person is and was therefore indispensable. <br /><br />At the end of the third season, the people leave the island, without all mysteries being solved. Probably – hopefully – it will become a bit more clear to me and be a bit more satisfying. But I’m not left with too much time: the clock is ticking and my lists of to-do an to-double-check, to-dig-in-to-deeper, still-to-ask, still-to-interview and still-to-observe-a-bit-more-indepth are still long…Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-13653053573442070642009-07-13T15:37:00.000-07:002009-11-09T01:42:32.579-08:00“Coming out”, or not?In Ghana, deafness is often seen as a punishment of a god or something that’s done to you by a witch. It’s mainstream to mock deaf people or to compare them to leaf-eating animals like goats: a leaf is put into the mouth and you pretend to chew on it. Or people point and say in ‘gestures’, insulting or mean, “you cannot hear”.<br /><br />2nd July 2009. I’m witness of a slightly dramatic village argument in Adamorobe. A hearing woman enters into a conflict with a deaf woman (Adwoa) and goes on to mock her deafness behind her back. The hearing daughter of Adwoa hears the fighting and stands up for her mother. More and more people gather from every corner of the village and about 4-5 women get entangled in a fight: pulling hair, each other, hitting and scratching. The hearing woman really gets it good.<br /><br />Several deaf told me about similar fights. People of Adamorobe are well-known for certainly starting a fight (or a heated argument) when they are mocked. They don’t just let it slide by, and the hearing are aware of that, so they’re usually quite careful. Also, the hearing here in Adamorobe do not generally seem to have quite the negative attitude towards deaf people. Thus, fights like the one mentioned above are not a daily reality.<br /><br />3rd July 2009. I’m in Accra. I have to take a trotro and I write the destination on a piece of paper for the ‘organizer’ of the buses. This hearing man, who noticed darn well that I’m deaf, starts talking to me, in God knows which language. I don’t understand him and communicate several times that I do not hear. He looks at me, says something to a few other men who are stood with him. They start to laugh. I start to get goose bumps and I give him a mistrustful look, because it’s definitely about me. He looks at me again, pretends to be an animal who’s chewing something – with a retarded expression on his face – and laughs mockingly. It feels horribly demeaning and it infuriates me, so I treat him to my most destructive look, making a stressing hand sign meaning something like “what’s your problem?” and openly ignore the laughing man with a wave of the hand. What I really wanted to do at that point was attack him brutally.<br /><br />12th December 2008. A large funeral is being held in the center of the village, and here, the evening part of a funeral still bears most resemblance to an exuberant open air rave. I walk into the compound of Ama and ask her if she and Afua will be attending. She answers that she’s not in the mood and explains that there will be too many people of outside the village. In that case, the deaf tend to go have a look, but also signing there is something else. “When you use AdaSL and for example a Ga (another ethnical group) sees it, he will say something to the person sitting next to him. They laugh and that person puts a leaf in his mouth and mocks: ‘he/she-doesn’t-hear’. And that leads to fights”, Ama concludes.<br /><br />14th June 2009. I’m in a little house on a point where different paths cross each other, together with two deaf women. We’re having a conversation. A few hearing people come walked up after each other on one of the paths. Afua, who’s speaking at that moment, is seated with her back in that direction, but she sees me looking in that direction. She looks behind her and stops in the middle of her sentence. She waits until the people have walked by. When they were gone, I ask her why she silenced so abruptly and she reasons: “They will go an spread the word in other places that there are a lot of deaf people here and that thus, this is a bad place!”. Another woman passes by and we exchange greetings. Afua tells me: “You see, I know Adamorobe’s people, I greet them warmly, that’s all alright”.<br /><br />So even though the situation here is not always without conflict, there’s a balance between small scale fights and teasing, everyday conversation or just saying hello and asking how things are. Outsiders of Adamorobe make the deaf here realize that it’s not all that bad here. There’s communication between the hearing and the deaf and the hearing do not generally seem to have negative prejudices about the deaf.<br /><br />So, what about when people go ‘outside’? Well, in Madina or Accra they will just negotiate and take the buss like the hearing do. I also explained in former blog posts that the average hearing is able to communicate much better than in the West. The hearing are generally not taken aback when they notice that someone’s deaf: they smoothly switch to ‘gestures’. I have never seen deaf pretend to be hearing. And still, and still: having a more elaborate conversation in sign language with another deaf person; outside of the normal interactions and transactions, is not something every Adamorobe deaf people seems to be comfortable with every time.<br /><br />2nd of January 2009. The end of my first research period. A few deaf people accompany me to the airport to say their goodbyes there. I treat them to a drink before I go inside. Everybody is very quiet and I wonder why. Kofi answers that it’s wrong for people to see AdaSL. I answer that in my eyes, it’s not wrong, but Kofi explains that de doesn’t want the hearing staring at our signs and slandering.<br /><br />5th December 208. We’re in the bus to Madina: Ama, Afua and I. Ama and I are talking, but Afua does not want us to sign in the van. When we’re walking in the city and are constantly moving, all of a sudden she’s fine with it.<br /><br />In our society it’s generally perceived as valuable to ‘show who you really are’: sign language user, homosexual,… Some people tend to reason that you’re not yourself when you systematically go hiding things for the outside world, and that it’s good to make large and plenty variations between people public.<br /><br />The Adamorobe deaf will strategically hide or lessen their sign language once in a while. It it because of shame? I have the impression that maybe I could rather call it pride. They’re very clearly proud of their sign language, and the most deaf of Adamorobe would not want to be hearing. Or is it simply ‘self preservation’: preventing humiliation, confrontations and fights? Is ‘coming out’ a luxury for them who live in a (more) free society where they are not mocked or condemned? Who knows?Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-26033820799938166462009-07-09T14:04:00.000-07:002009-07-11T06:34:36.970-07:00Survival of the fittest language?A while ago I already wrote about the difference between Adamorobe sign language (AdaSL), Ghanaian sign language (GSL) and the general Ghanaian ‘gestures’. That post (<a href="http://adamorobe-valley.blogspot.com/2008/12/eng-sign-scala-in-ghana_2794.html">Sign scala in Ghana</a>) was more about Ghana in general. But what about Adamorobe specifically? How and when are the different sign languages present?<br /><br />The daily language in the village is – for the deaf amongst each other, and the deaf with the hearing – AdaSL. A few of the hearing who don’t master it well, use the general gestures. The deaf priest from Accra who comes to do services for the deaf, however, uses GSL. Signing songs in GSL seems to be enjoyed by most and I’m persistently pushed to join them, even though it often does not quite resemble the original. But the (for them non-understandable) sermon in GSL is found very boring and a lot of the deaf start falling asleep, which leads to sneering of their neighbour, whom him- or herself falls asleep 5 minutes later. I often suggested the priest to use the deaf’s own language, but he’s struggling with the conversion, even though he knows quite a bit of AdaSL.<br /><br />The influence of GSL has been around for tens of years. The current priest visits since 10 years, but before that another deaf man gave the deaf religious education and some reading and writing lessons. As a result of that, the deaf adults know some GSL-signs and (as a consequence?) borrowed GSL-signs appear once in a while, like the one for ‘name’. The most clear examples of ‘borrowing’ from GSL are the name signs, based on finger spelling, of which the hand forms are often made wrongly, because the deaf are illiterate which makes them poor finger spellers. It’s a fact that name signs in AdaSL are considered as being teasing and even demeaning, because they’re quite explicitly based on how the person looks or moves; while those based on GSL are considered to be more neutral. Both versions of the name signs are in used.<br /><br />These two sign languages do not seem to be related in any way and are tremendously different. GSL generally gives a quite ‘calm’ impression, it’s a language with few mouth movements and barely any facial expressions, a lot of initialized signs, and seems a lot less visually motivated than AdaSL in my eyes. It’s derived from American sign language; thus imported and altered within Ghana. AdaSL, on the other hand, uses a very vast sign space (sometimes even down to the toes), and is a language with huge hand and arm rotations; mouthings in Twi, sometimes English, and also other mouth gestures: growling, clicking etc.; and very strong facial expressions. Like I already explained in the mentioned earlier blog post, AdaSL incorporated a lot of gestures which West African hearing also use and is fully developed from the culture and life here.<br /><br />A young man who finished school, told me that a teacher of his school, granted AdaSL a lower status than GSL; but he himself though that it came down the same thing: communicating effectively. The deaf of Adamorobe generally seem to have a neutral feeling towards the difference between the two languages. Some of them use GSL at me, but I’ve understood that the reason for that is merely because they just feel like doing that sometimes or – which is the case more often – because they think I’m very familiar with American signs. They have had white Americans here (using ASL, very similar to GSL) and they seem to think that ‘the country of white people’ is homogeneous to the point of culture ànd sign. To prove them wrong, I showed some of them some movies in BSL and VGT. <br /><br />GSL doesn’t only seep in through the church. It’s the national sign language in Ghana and is therefore used in the schools for the deaf. The eight school children of Adamorobe, thus ‘completely’ use GSL, which looks very different than the ‘basic GSL with heavy to very heavy AdaSL accent’ of the deaf adults. These youngsters have job opportunities outside the village, because their schooling opens doors from them; but in Adamorobe some amongst them are struggling because they don’t all master AdaSL. You see, the school children are in a boarding school and are only in the village for a couple of weeks. In august they’ll be here and I’ll focus specifically on them, their language use, their attitudes, plans for the future etc. There you go: to be continued.Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-7532790101331069012009-06-20T08:09:00.001-07:002009-06-20T08:09:35.450-07:00To the land, again and againPractically all the deaf of Adamorobe are farmers, in heart and soul. Every morning you see them, machete under their arm, a barrel of drinking water on their head and in their old clothes, leaving for their piece of land where they cultivate corn, cassava and yam. The land of the Adamorobe farmers is located on the surrounding hills, which makes the journey go uphill, often through low but dense jungle which has to be mastered with the humongous knife. They use a stick to pound on the ground to chase snakes and scorpions off the trail. Behind them, Adamorobe gets smaller and smaller, like the picture at the top of this blog.<br /><br />At the edge of the village stands an old, tiny building. That building was a little school for the deaf in the seventies. It was closed after just a few months, however, following an escalated conflict between the students and their teacher. For the deaf, this school – in which hearing children now take classes – is a vivid reminder of their limitations today. “To the land, again and again, every single day”, is a complaint you here quite a lot here. It is also the most common job for the hearing, but there are also a few of them with food, sewing, carpentry shops etc. This leaves the deaf feeling limited because they haven’t learned a trade at school.<br /><br />It’s partly because of that, they conceive themselves as better farmers than the hearing. An observation of Kwame, a deaf man of 60, is as follows: “The hearing are lazy… while the deaf are hard and strong labourers”. The roots of these convictions, however, are deeper than the link with the lack of schooling. In a text of 1973, written by a Ghanesian researcher, I found a story about the cause of deafness in Adamorobe. A deaf man was invited to marry one of the hearing women of the first people who settled into this valley. The presumption was that deaf people are stronger and work harder and their goal was therefore to have as many deaf as possible on the land. <br /><br />This is merely one of the various stories which explains the origin of the deafness in Adamorobe. It’s in accordance with what a hearing person here told me: it is assumed that the deaf are involved more seriously with what they do. Moreover, he mentioned that it’s believed that the ancestors trained the deaf as farmers.<br /><br />All’s well that ends well, but farming only provides you with a very small amount of money. This brings forward the complaints about the failure of the education. Throughout the years there have been several attempts to offer the deaf more opportunities. A number of the deaf were brought to the city for longer amounts of time, to learn to carpenter or sew or work as a baker. They didn’t last long because of different reasons. More recently, an American mission donated a corn mill, a developmental project aimed at deaf which was not successful until then. The deal here is, that I – in exchange for their cooperation in my research – support them in setting up little businesses like selling fish, spraying weeds or baking bread; next to their farming, that is. <br /><br />So this is what I’m going to try, and I collected a budget in Europe of which I will be using a part for this goal. If it will work, is another thing. Are their complaints a way of complaining about, situating and/or processing their situation in life; or are they real aspirations? After a lot of observations and conversations, it appears to me that it’s a bit of both. But one thing’s for sure: farming is in their blood.Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-73852100524330195892009-05-31T12:05:00.000-07:002009-05-31T12:13:28.731-07:00Back in the valleyI’m back. Back in the field. And immediately, it felt as if I never left. I arrived, made a little tour around the village, said ‘hi’ to everyone, caught up a little and it felt just as it did last year. In the first hours I already ate fufu twice, got two baby pee pees on my floor and declined two marriage proposals. I’m glad I hadn't been away for too long, it enabled me (and them) to easily pick up where I left.<br /><br />However, some things have changed, of course. My room, for example, has gotten another color: fluorescent green (with, in the meantime, fresh brown smears from dusty kiddy hands). The biggest surprise when I entered, however, was an actual bed! I also had two tables made by a carpenter a few houses away. A rather small table to do my work at and a larger one for putting all my stuff, so my evening visitors the mice and cockroaches cannot (or cannot too easily) freely go around sticking their noses in my stuff and so I do not have to bend over for every little thing I need. I did not expect the furniture to make such a big difference, but the brick space I’m in, suddenly feels much more like ‘my room’ than ‘camping in Africa’.<br /><br />This is quite agreeable seen I’m here for 5 months now, double the time of my last two stays in Ghana. “Five months is a long time!”, a lot of people uttered. But come on, what's five months? To thoroughly learn to use and understand a language takes time, to get to know people and their village life and their mutual relationships takes time. So it’s necessary, for being able to write a PhD on being deaf in Adamorobe. <br /><br />In the meantime, I looked trough the 500 pages of notes from my last research period again, and sorted out the information in them: I put pieces of information in different ‘sections’ with a computer program. I passed my upgrade exam and I have a humongous list of things I want to get a deeper look into (like stories about deaf gods and dwarfs), things I want to understand better (like interindividual differences amongst the deaf) and situations I want to observe more closely (like the contact between the deaf and the hearing). <br /><br />But yeah, I’ll admit: at the same time is does quite feel a little bit long, yes, because working in the field isn’t a piece of cake: it’s arduous and demanding mentally/intellectually, there are the constant ethical and methodological considerations which are needed to be made and having a quick peek on the internet or meeting up with my friends in the evening aren’t options I have. But if I want to escape now and again, there’s always my fresh supply of tea and candy from Europe, a stack of about 75 DVDs (with thanks to my friends!), a few fun pictures against the wall and about 10 books on Ghanese culture. And last but not least, Belgian chocolate ;-).Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-88614188962690244702009-01-02T05:56:00.002-08:002009-01-27T00:56:00.297-08:00Five hundredThat is the number of pages I filled in MS Word the past three months. Illustrating situations which happened, typing my notes, processing information from conversations, uttering thoughts, pointing out impressions, etc. Everything has to be typed when it’s still freshly in my head. Every day I sit with my portable on my lap for at least two hours, ‘throwing everything out’. When I’m done, I feel like I’ve done a ‘number two’: empty and satisfied, but knowing I have to go again tomorrow.<br /><br />Every little bit of information you think is usable, you have to check twice, no three or more like four, five times. Because people say different things at different moments, which don’t correspond. Or they say something and then go and do the opposite. Or they tell you things you’re not able to interpret right because of a lack of background knowledge.<br /><br />The first few weeks I often felt overwhelmed by all the new and the contradictory, but by observing what people say, what they say they do, and what they actually do, you are slowly granted more insight. You have to be focused at all times, merely a little detail can be important and suddenly make you realize something: a casual comment , a reaction from a person on a situation, a conflict.<br /><br />I’m a researcher, but that doesn’t mean that I walk around here with a microphone, chasing people like a journalist. No, the most things I learn are acquired through spontaneous situations and informal conversations and by building friendly relations with people. There are a lot of laughs and there is a lot of jokingly fooling around which as already resulted in hilarious photos and video clips. When a conversation starts about a topic of which I feel it could be meaningful for my research, my questions are more to the point and I reach for my notebook – if the situation allows it. I’ve already scribbled my way through about a dozen of those. It’s a puzzle of a thousand little pieces and every piece I discover gives me a kick.<br /><br />Long story short: the way of life here is relaxed – that’s why it’s Africa – but my brain is constantly working hard.<br /><br />On the 2nd of January I’m done here. This was my ‘orientation period’. I had two goals. First, learning the language in which I’ve become reasonably good, which wasn’t that simple in the beginning because it almost entirely took place without a ‘shared intermediary language’ like English ore GSL – as most of the people here are monolingual in AdaSL. The second goal was acquiring a broad impression of the life of deaf people in Adamorobe, in the way described in the paragraphs above.<br /><br />It will be a hell of a chore, but those 500 pages have to be analyzed. With a computer program I divide little pieces of information in different categories. Potential usable pieces have to be filtered out and new questions have to be formulated. I’ll have to pick out themes and subjects which will get special attention in my second research period, which will last six months. I also already have to write a first research report and in April I will have to take part in a kind of oral exam to be allowed to continue this doctoral research. In May I’ll be back here, for my second and last research period, and then there will be regular blog posts again because I still have a whole list of subjects left that I want to blog about!Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-62296647823662086682008-12-24T07:57:00.002-08:002009-03-04T02:12:38.866-08:00The deaf god versus (?) the Lutheran churchDecember 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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).<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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”.<br /><br />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.Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-78990404678533188172008-12-19T02:32:00.002-08:002009-01-26T08:44:03.900-08:00To 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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).<br /><br />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”.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-73786243465400067532008-12-05T07:55:00.002-08:002009-01-26T08:44:21.659-08:00Sign scala in GhanaIt’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!”<br /><br />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<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-71545778488663052012008-12-03T11:50:00.002-08:002009-01-26T08:46:38.982-08:00The tattooA 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: <a href="http://www.focusanthro.org/Archive2002-03/1identification.html">photosite Elena Rue</a>). 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-6996878008299815262008-11-15T14:41:00.002-08:002009-01-26T08:51:19.643-08:00‘The deaf are friends’ and ‘the hearing are bad’<span style="">On a Thursday morning around 7.30 I went to the house of a few deaf people (a ‘house’ here consists of ‘rooms’ around a kind of open air courtyard where people cook, wash, chatter, eat,… and often contains different families). Ama, Kofi and Kwaku – three deaf people – were in a small shed peeling corn. I knew the corn probably came from the land of Ama and Kofi and checked with Ama: “Whose corn is that?” She confirmed my suspicion: “Kofi’s and mine”. I asked: “Then why is Kwaku working too?” Ama laughed and answered: “Ah :-) deaf the same, you know? He stopped by to say hello, saw us peeling the corn and started helping out.”<br /><br />One evening. I’m in the same house as the one mentioned above, talking to a few deaf people. Once of a sudden, Kwabena comes in and tells us that Kwadzo, another deaf man, gave him a serious beating. Kofi exclaims appalled: “But you’re both deaf, then why is Kwadzo fighting with you? (with an upset face) The hearing you can kill, that’s only fair, but the deaf are the same, you have to be friends with the deaf”. (To put this into perspective: he didn’t really mean the thing about ‘killing the hearing’, he was just angry ;-))<br /></span><br />The end of my previous blog post already hinted in this direction: there is a strong connection between (at least some of) the 40 deaf people who live in this village. These people tend to work together on the land, tend to go and see each other for conversations, tend to marry each other etc. The anecdotes above are only two of a whole series I have already jotted down.<br /><br /><span style="">It’s one of the first days here. I’m sitting on a hill on the piece of land of two deaf people. We’re catching a breath from the walk up to there. Kofi is quite quiet. Once of a sudden Ama tells Kofi he has to talk to me, that we’re both deaf, and thus the same, and that that means he has to talk to me.<br /><br />One night. Kwasi was very enthusiastic. He said he wanted to give me casava because we are both deaf. He shook my hand and said enthusiastically: “We are both deaf, you are white, but do I push you away? No! We are friends, both deaf”. He repeated this time after time: “You are white and I am black, but do I push you away? No!”<br /></span><br />Thus, ‘Deaf the same' seems to ease my ‘integration’ here (although I have to mention that a hearing linguistic researcher seemingly also got a warm welcome here in the past). I am always welcome at the deaf people’s homes. Quite a few of them tend to visit me here, they make sure my water barrel is never empty, they join me when I don’t know where to buy something, they teach me their signs, etc etc, and they repeat constantly that I am just like them, ‘deaf the same’. Even though I am very different at the same time: white, highly educated and in their eyes ‘rich’. You see, I am very well taken care of and sometimes it’s difficult (more about that later on), but never ever boring. I never feel alone and some even say that they don’t want to let me leave. Sometimes it’s amazing to me.<br /><br />On the other hand, as you can suspect after reading Kofi’s ‘killing’-quote cited above: there’s a strong negative feeling towards the hearing here. “The hearing are bad” seems to be a kind of expletive (‘cliché’) here, just as “deaf are the same/friends”.<br /><br />A lot of deaf have bad relationships with the hearing. Elements which re-occur in their stories they tell me when I ask why the hearing are supposedly so bad, are the following: hearing men don’t give their wives any money, hearing women steal money from their deaf men, hearing scold deaf people, insult them and do not treat them respectfully.<br /><br />That means there’s a downside too: when I interact with hearing people (to get to know their viewpoints), the deaf are apprehensive and want to protect me (in an exaggerated way). A large part of the hearing men I encounter, ask me to marry them (yes, typically Ghanaian) and then they without exception exclaim: “The hearing are bad!” When a hearing person approaches me and starts a written conversation in English, they give me an annoyed look and repeatedly warn me that all the hearing are cheats and that I’m better off ignoring them completely; even though I translate everything that is written in signs to not exclude them and even though the conversation is absolutely innocent: for example about a local tradition named Odwira. In other words: there is a huge deal of suspicion towards the intentions of hearing people. So even though the deaf greet the hearing in a friendly manner, and communicate with them in local Adamorobe sign language daily, in the conversations amongst the deaf, that suspicion towards the hearing is very clearly present.<br /><br />Why this is so interesting? I previously mentioned that because of the large presence of deaf people here because of the spread of a deafness-gene, a local sign language had originated throughout the centuries which also a lot of hearing people master (on different levels). There are different villages know with similar situations; in Mexico, India, Bali, Israël and still in some other places. Well, some ‘Deaf Studies’ theories state that in these places, deaf are less (or not at all) inclined to seek each other’s company. This because, in these places there are little or no communicational problems with the hearing people, because they know how to sign. In other words: that the deaf only seek each other’s company when communication between the deaf and the hearing fails. But that is not the case in Adamorobe. There is a connection between the deaf, that much is sure. One of my research goals is finding out where that connection comes from, how it came into being or is motivated.<br /><br />Does the ‘deaf-the-same’ or ‘deaf-are-fiends’ intuition only originate from the above mentioned negative experiences with hearing – that the deaf are driven towards each other? Or are the deaf also tied to each other on a different level, not directly linked to negative experiences? In Adamorobe, there are different very diverging ways in which the difference is made between the deaf and the hearing. The deaf go to a deaf school separately and have separate church services in sign language, the deaf perform patrol work, the deaf as a group perform or performed cultural presentations and storytelling on festivals… Might there be a kind of universal (Deafhood-)intuition which drives the deaf towards each other? Anyhow, the bond which can exist between the deaf goes way further than language and communication, and that is also the case in Adamorobe, that has become very clear to me, at this stage already.Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-45465296939509949192008-11-03T12:03:00.002-08:002009-01-26T08:51:46.004-08:00'The same'?Anthropology has striking resemblances with the work detectives do, now and then. In AdaSL (Adamorobe sign language) there’s a very specific terminology for different kinds of fish preparations, different vegetables and crops, a complicated system for communicating about money etc. But for family ties the terminology is quite simple. The sign for ‘the same (as the opposite of ‘different’/’difference’)’, ‘sister/brother’, ‘friend’ and ‘cousin (m/f)/aunt/uncle’ is one and the same sign: two fingers you turn around and shake from left to right. It didn’t take me long to figure out the first three meanings, but that that particular sign also meant ‘cousin (m/f)/aunt/uncle’ only became clear to me after a week of confusion. What a huge revelation it was, and at the same time it was quite discouraging :-)<br /><br />Also take into consideration that most deaf people cannot write their name (even today not all deaf/hearing children of the village go to school yet) and even if I get a hold of names from a hearing literate person, it’s not possible to derive family ties from them, because people here seem to have two first names (and not even always the same ones) and no surname (or don’t use it?). Several hearing people who can write, note down names the way they sound, which can vary every single time, meaning that the name Asabea can also be Esabia for example. Sum up the fact that it seems fairly normal here to divorce and re-marry, which makes that a large number of people already have been married a few times in Adamorobe with deaf/hearing people and have deaf/hearing children with different people. Add the fact that people often marry people with whom they have family ties. Put all that together and you can start to imagine that family trees here are not simple!<br /><br />Nonetheless, it is important to understand those family ties because deafness is located in families here, and this whole village (or a large part of it) seems to consist of families. That means that if you want to try to understand the social relations between deaf and hearing people, you’ll have you find out who’s related to whom and in which way. Of course I’m not occupied with that the whole time, but now and then I am. (What I àm mostly learning and experiencing here, I’ll blog later on: I have to start somewhere and other things are still to chaotic to put into words correctly, for now).<br /><br />How, in the end, you succeed in working your way through the family trees? You keep on asking questions: “So, that person is also born from her mother?” – “Yes” – “And him too, that guy we passed yesterday and who did a little dance for me because he wanted to marry me?” – “Yes” – “So who is the eldest?” – “No no Annelies, you don’t get it, they are ‘the same’, but she is not the first born or later born”. Ok, so they are cousins.<br />Once, I tried communicating with an old deaf woman about the question if a certain dead deaf woman (with many deaf offspring) was her sister. That wasn’t working out too well, because the whole time she thought I was referring to her mother. Because yeah, that’s another issue: the sign for woman, girl and mother is also one and the same. Sometimes I’m afraid it will make me old before my age. With bits and pieces of information, I get there, and I double check regularly with several deaf/hearing people and in different situations. It has already become clear to me that there are at least 40 deaf people in the village centre of Adamorobe, who originate from at least 5 large deaf families (with easily 5 deaf children who are adults now, have gotten married, and have children of their own), who get married amongst each other and who often have direct family ties.<br /><br />After a short conversation about which large families are related, I want to carry out a double check and I ask 5 deaf people surrounding me: “So you are all ‘the same’?” (‘the same’ this time used in the meaning of ‘cousins’)? “Yes”, signed Ama, “we are all “the same”. “Her too?” I pointed at a deaf woman of whom I had just been told that she was not directly related to them. She answers: “Yes, all of us!” I give her a defeated look. A boy explains: “We are all deaf, that is why we are all ‘the same’ – his facial expression shows me I have to interpret the sign as ‘friends’ this time. I want to start with: “But…” but I smile, shrug my shoulders and nod. To completely or even partly solve the puzzle, I’ll need some more time. :-)Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7036139909648916270.post-83655924392163440652008-10-24T02:58:00.002-07:002009-01-26T08:52:33.958-08:00Adamorobe – the beginning...Wednesday, 22nd October, 6.30 PM. Adamorobe, a village situated in a valley in between green hills, densely grown with cassava, banana palms, coconut palms, corn, mango trees and plenty more. At the edge of the village, the river Adamorobe makes its way. I’m sitting in a pitch-dark room, lit by candles only. Power is down for the umpteenth time, but my laptop has still got battery power left for about an hour. Next to me are two small children who seem to be intrigued by what I’m typing. In the meantime I’m hoping that I’ll find internet somewhere tomorrow, in a city a bit further on.<br /><br />On the 15th of October, I landed in Accra (after a detour via Bombay to meet up with my boyfriend) and I came straight here. This means my doctoral research has begun. Finally!<br /><br />I’m living in a spacious room with green walls (painted in two different tones, paint probably ran out ;)) in an empty but large house. The owner comes from a family with 5 deaf brothers and sisters. I’m the proud owner of a socket outlet, a light source, a fan, a latex-foam mattress on the floor, a garden chair and a wobbly mini-table. My belongings are in a corner, divided over different plastic and other bags. My ‘pièce de résistance’ is a huge barrel with water which a few deaf women fill up once in a while with pumped water they carry here on their heads. With this water I wash myself, cook food and flush the toilet.<br /><br />In a while, I’ll be heading to the neighbours - by flashlight light - where almost ten deaf people live in the same group of houses. It was not possible to go and stay with them, because they are housed very small. Regularly though, I have deaf visitors and every day I go for a round of ‘saying hello’. On every little walk, I tend to stumble upon deaf people. There are about 35-40 deaf people in this one village and almost all of them were born here, in different families with deaf as well as hearing members. The sign language which is used by the deaf as well as the hearing, originated in the village itself and is at least 200 years old. The sign lexicon is about 100 percent different from the sign languages I already knew. Although, by now it has already gotten easier to read, because a few deaf people are very active in teaching me their signs, which results in the fact that in one week, I’ve already mastered more than 200 of them.<br /><br />I’m permitted to use the kitchen of this house, which means I can make an omelette or cook pasta once in a while, but there aren’t a lot of opportunities to cook in a ‘western’ way; about the only vegetables sold around here are tomatoes and onions. This means I survive mostly on traditional Ghanese grub: fufu and banku (mashed dough balls which are eaten with an either spicy or slimy ‘soup’), cassava, eggs, fish and once in a while rice and white, fuzzy, low-nutrient bread. De woman of the house supplies me with a plate of such food each day, I venture to a ‘stall’ to buy prepared rice or a ball of banku once in a while and sometimes, I’m offered something there and there. Yesterday, I received 10 huge, slimy living snails from Bosmophrah, a deaf man (and they were surprised that I didn’t know how to prepare them, which lead to me getting a lesson in ‘squeezing slime out of slugs’ – I can assure you it was a greenish experience).<br /><br />This is a ‘real African village’, with strong traditions and a lot of stories, dramas, a lot of deaths, complex family relations, bad sicknesses, gossip, extreme joy and extreme sadness, and last but not least: witchcraft-stories. And the one thing that makes this place really special and intriguing, is the century-long presence of deaf people, and the communication and relations between the deaf and the hearing. I have already come across numerous interesting potential research themes. More about all of this later on: definitely to be continued!Annelies Kustershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10121134368058591578noreply@blogger.com1