Volta Region

Okay, it's been a while. A lot has happened so I guess I'll start from where I left off. After Cape Coast my group of 12 supreme performing artists took a tro to the Volta Region in the East. We arrived in the small village of Dagbamente, which was to be our home for the next 10 days. Here we learned the Ewe traditional war dance, Astiaobekor. Picture me with a long stick, i.e. sword, in the shade of the "black berry" tree (produces a "berry" very unlike anything I'd ever considered a fruit) dancing to the rhythm's of my friends' attempts at drumming. It was pretty exciting. The dance and the drumming patterns are immensely complex, especially to my foreign ear. Again, at least four different rhythms going on at one time, and somewhere in there are the master drum calls, which the dancers are supposed to respond to. In Ghana, dance is not only a matter of memorizing movement, it is a matter of memorizing the different drum calls as well, which when played cue the choreography. Luckily, if you're me you are in the second row, observing which moves the front row uses in response to the calls.
Dagbemente, was quite a village. There was a very large shrine here, where on Sundays people come to make sacrifices to the deity. A few of my group members got the honor of witnessing this. We alternated days of visiting other villages in the area and their respective shrines (because these are usually connected to various dancing and drumming traditions) and performing on our own. One very crazy day, on such an excursion we witnessed a complete solar eclipse in the morning. This was the same day that I unfortunately was struggling from stomach pain, due to some questionable yams eaten the previous evening. While viewing a women's group in one of the nearby villages I felt so nauseous I had to leave the group and sat down on what I thought was the crumbling wall surrounding some one's yard. I was very confused when a young girl came and started yelling at me in Ga. Too bad the only word I know in this language is "Thank you". Well, sparing the details, I ended up puking twice in the privacy of this walled off portion of the square, later to be told by my dance instructor, Leggie, it is the local shrine considered to be holy ground, and no one is allowed inside unless they have the proper attire, which actually is no attire at all. Oh well. That said, I have not touched yams, or shrines for that matter, since. I'm currently in Accra starting my independent study on Christian/Muslim relations in Ghana. Should be pretty fascinating :) Figured it was best to give traditional religion a rest for a while. There is much more to say about Accra, but I'll have to save it for another day. I wish you all the best. Bye-byeyo!