Out and About: Volume 1: Travel and See

By Wofa Baaye

The book contains twenty stories of the authors experiences and other encounters as he travelled through Africa, Europe, and the United States of America. They chronicle events, observations, and various occurrences that travelers meet as they played out in his particular case. People who have traveled in the diverse situations and environments that are described will read and recollect their own circumstances, and would-be travelers should find it interesting and a forewarning that, in this global village, there are many surprises for the traveler.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504994514

Wofa Baaye

The author is a Ghanaian citizen who has travelled, studied, and worked in Africa, Europe, and the United States of America. He studied at Prempeh College, Kumasi, and the University of Cape Coast, both in Ghana. He also studied at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, and the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware, the United States of America. He is currently a partner and senior management and development consultant with GlobalStandard Consulting Limited in Accra, Ghana. Wofa Baaye is a pen name and this is his first book.

Book preview

AuthorHouse™ UK

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone]

© 2015 Wofa Baaye. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/17/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9444-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9451-4 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

1 Culture Shock

2 You Will Be There…Somewhere in the Bush

3 Dead: In Bed

4 Master of Opportunism!

5 Life on the Railway Platform

6 The Unholy Alliance

7 The Teacher’s Copy and the Man in a Boxer Shorts

8 The Bloody Match

9 The Parcel from Egoli to Esondweni

10 Harvested

11 SchÖn Weg

12 Immigration Blues

13 By The Skin Of My Teeth

14 The Taxi Ride from Empangeni

15 Melanin and Kinky Hair

16 Shit Happens All Over

17 Growing Old in the Snow

18 The Ultimatum

19 A Nation at War

20 Elections

1

CULTURE SHOCK

Kwame I do not think you will believe what I am going to tell you but it is true. Mr. Ansa met me with a surprise look as he spoke. He continued after seeing my blank face. I came to visit you and met your housemate at your door. As we met, he rushed at the gate and caught a grasshopper, and then he lobbed it into his mouth and ate it, raw as it was without as much as batting an eye. "You don’t say? I questioned him, curious for more detail. He went on to tell me that my co-tenant had recounted to him how nice the grasshopper tastes. To me, it was revolting; to say the least, to even think about it. But that was culture.

Hand gestures and signs for communication are some of the areas in which cultures differ. A friend once told me a story in South Africa. Kwame, this morning I went out and stood by the roadside looking for a taxi to the next town. As the taxis approached, I would make a gesture which is understood in my country to mean ‘I beg you’ but to my frustration every taxi that passed by was seen with all the passengers laughing as it passed by. Fortunately, one of the taxis eventually stopped and amidst laughter, the driver explained to me that the gesture I was making meant an entirely different thing in that culture. What made them laugh was that it meant I was soliciting for sex and everybody in the taxis wondered who was doing this. They might have thought I was a mad man.

There are different ways of measuring the height of an animal and a human being in certain cultures. You keep confusing us when you talk about a human being and in describing them you indicate their height in this way. That is how we indicate the height of an animal here. When you put the hand horizontal then you are talking about an animal when you are talking about a human being you must make it vertical.

In other domains, using the left hand for anything else but cleaning oneself after visiting the bathroom is unacceptable. No one points to his father’s village with his left hand; is a proverb with the understanding that anything, even including just pointing, is not good if done with the left hand. This is typical among most tribes of West Africa.

These people look happy, but I am wondering what is making them so happy? Is it the song, is it the dance, or is it the drums or what? Nothing seems to agree with each other; the song is cacophonous at best, the moves of the dance seem out of sync with each other and the drums are way too loud but these people seem to be very happy. My uncle observed as we watched a televised show of a cultural event in an African country.

The culture of a people define how they live and this shows in areas like the language, the food they eat the music they listen to and how they relate with each other and to strangers. It defines what is dear to a people and what is trivial in their reckoning. Culture is in the most part dynamic but there is an aspect called tradition that lingers on year after year. One of the major causes of tradition is superstition. Ideas that have developed to explain some intriguing situations are given religious twists to confer on it sacredness that may be used as a whip to beat people; including strangers.

There was this professor who told us in a class about his ordeal. He had travelled to one of the oriental countries where he was invited to a party. In the course of the meal, an announcement was made to the effect that the host had a special gift of honour for him, the special guest. Said he, I was invited to stand in the middle of the guests and then the host began to talk, he had reserved a special drink of honour for male guests and he wanted me to drink it, as was the custom, in the presence of the whole group. It turned out to be turtle’s blood mixed with some locally concocted alcoholic beverage. As reluctant as I was, I was prevailed upon to drink it because it was said; if I refused it, the refusal would be the highest form of disgrace to the host.

It is said that a people eat what their land gives them and different lands give all kinds of things, plants and animals alike. Different types of insects and their larvae and different animals are a major source of differentiation between cultural diets.

There was this day when we were having a Scripture Union meeting, in fact the end-of-year meeting and so it was a bit long. The speaker finished speaking and wanted to pray for the departing students but there was much fidgeting within the crowd and then all of a sudden one student went and brought a large pan filled halfway with water and then put it under the fluorescent tube that served for lighting the room. Surprised, one of the foreign teachers asked. What is that for? Oh that? It is for attracting the flying termites, so that it will be easy for them to be caught for eating. It is a special delicacy here and because of its seasonal nature; when they appear like this, people do not want to miss the chance hence the agitation within the student body. One of the local teachers explained. We then closed early but that was not to be the end of the story. Another man had come as a guest from the town and we went to see him off. On the way we saw someone on the shoulder of another with a bowl of water under a light pole in the street.

The mopane is a tree that is prevalent in the grasslands and woodlands of the central and southern African regions. It so happens that there is a particular moth that breeds on the mopane so its caterpillar uses the leaves of the mopane as food for its rapid growth. This caterpillar has been discovered to be very palatable and nutritious by the people of these regions who refer to them as mopane worms. A friend who was my housemate, who was also a foreigner from another African country, once told me. When the mopane worm season arrives in our country, the villagers become very rich because everybody eats them and so these villagers bring them to retail in the cities. In the street you can see everyone buying and eating the mopane worms and in the offices people share them like the Europeans share sweets and cookies or cigarettes. This is not different from the general Europeans’ obsession with caviar, the French with frogs, the Italian’s love for pasta or the English for fried fish and potato chips. They are all a question of culture. An Englishman will be as shocked with a Frenchman eating frog as he will be with an African eating the larva of the raffia beetle. Once I was disgusted with people, in a particular African country in which I was teaching, who continually offered me mopane worms, which was a normal hospitality gesture and I asked a compatriot, who had been long in the county and had tasted it before, about it. His reply was: I suspect when they are offering you, they are also praying secretly that you will decline, they want as few foreigners to get to know and like this delicacy as possible; it is so tasty that if many of you get to like it, there might not be enough to go round because the thing is nice, very nice. He continued, You know dried shrimps that are used at home for food and how they taste. This thing tastes exactly like that. Now, can you imagine your mother looking on unconcerned while you eat all the shrimps you want? he asked. That is why I say their secret prayer is that you will decline their courteous request of hospitality, because if you discover the secret you will compete with them. He concluded. But can you imagine that these people do not eat fish of all foods. How can a people not eat fish? So, in different places, people eat different things. The best advice is that when you are hungry and you are offered food by strangers, do not ask what food it is, just eat. People eat dogs, cats, snakes, cattle, rats and so on. But food is not the only thing that can show you about a people’s culture.

Circumstances that breed emotions differ among people’s groups. You come to understand why someone is angry and