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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
13 July 2009
9 July 2009
Survival 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 (Sign scala in Ghana) was more about Ghana in general. But what about Adamorobe specifically? How and when are the different sign languages present?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
20 June 2009
To the land, again and again
Practically 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
31 May 2009
Back in the valley
I’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.
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’.
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.
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).
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 ;-).
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’.
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.
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).
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 ;-).
2 January 2009
Five hundred
That 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.
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.
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.
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.
Long story short: the way of life here is relaxed – that’s why it’s Africa – but my brain is constantly working hard.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Long story short: the way of life here is relaxed – that’s why it’s Africa – but my brain is constantly working hard.
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.
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!
24 December 2008
The deaf god versus (?) the Lutheran church
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.
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.
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.
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