Hey family and friends!

A fairly focused entry for today ;) I’m going to talk about animals in Ghana, because they’re interesting, because they take up a whole entry by themselves, and because it’s Saturday, which to me implies “extra random things” ;) My extra random thing for you today is my current understanding of animals around Cape Coast.

So, we’ll go in order of experience. The first I ever figured about animals in Ghana came from Eleanor Branch, the Guilford coordinator of our program. She “warned” me that in Ghana goats and chickens roam the streets. For some reason from what she said, I thought that simply meant that *some* people’s goats/chickens roam the streets, or that they simply did sometimes. I don’t think this was because I was unwilling to face reality – I think I simply somehow misunderstood. Goats and chickens are *everywhere*. The groups of them are not overly large – generally you’ll see four to eight animals at a time, but the fact is that they can go anywhere. Chickens and goats roam over everyone’s yards, through all the streets, basically just grazing. To my initial alarm, they also jump down into the sewage gutters to eat & occasionally walk. I should never have been worried, because chickens can flap, and the goats are pretty good jumpers. Also, the taxi drivers are adept at avoiding them, and while they don’t run from humans they don’t seek their company either. My closest encounter with chickens was trying to harass them away from a dog’s food, and only once have I seen a near-accident due to goats (trying to cross a busy road in a herd. The first one was safe, the last one caused the car to swerve).

Both chickens and goats apparently go home at night & get more food & shelter, though I haven’t witnessed it yet. Chicken’s eggs are sold in the markets, though I’m not sure whether they come from individual’s stocks or from farms farther away from Cape Coast. People also eat chicken meat here, also easily bought. Ironically, there’s a store on the way to town called “Innocent Blood: Frozen Chicken Parts”. I’m quite sure that the Innocent Blood is meant to be a reference to Jesus rather than a macabre joke, since over half of the named stores here have religious slogan names, but it’s still funny and strange to me. Goat meat is also eaten… I think it’s generally part of “Light soup”, often eaten with Fufu.

The main thing about casually living with chickens, of course, is that the roosters crow. My family doesn’t own any chickens (or goats) but they’re around our house all the time nonetheless. Mostly these roosters crow in the morning & the evening, though Katie & Chantal say that they crow all day in Ola. Also, about my third week in Ghana I got really annoyed with the roosters because the later the day went, the more the final note of their call sounded like a death caw. “Cock-a-doodle- O-What-A-Cruel-World!” or “Er- er-er-er- EEeeehhrhrhr…”. It was just something that grated on my nerves, and I know that it was wearing on Chantal a few weeks ago. But since then, I haven’t heard the roosters as much, though I know they’re still as active as ever.

The baby goats, on the other hand, can sound like babies/children crying, which is equally disturbing. Katie, whose host mother Giftie is a veterinarian, tells me that they do this consistently when getting shots. There are two kinds of goats here: tall ones and short ones. I personally think the short ones are cuter, because they’re more round & less mangy, but both sets of babies are adorable. The adult tall ones get to be maybe 3 feet tall, while the short ones max at 2 feet or so. Their bodies are also structured very differently – the tall ones have spindly, tall legs. The short ones, when pregnant, get remarkably wide from a bird’s eye view.

Akwasi also jokingly warned us on our first night in Ghana of the “giant spiders”. I sincerely think he was joking, but I have seen on giant spider… it was maybe 4 to 4.5 inches in diameter, and was climbing the walls and curtains in a professor’s office where we were having class. The professor made fun of those who jumped, saying how strange it was to have a generation of Africans who were afraid of spiders ;) “It’s just Anansi”… the irony was that we had just been talking about an Anansi story. This happened in my Jesus in the African Context class. Apart from that, though, I sincerely haven’t seen too many spiders. I saw one this morning that shocked me – it was hanging on my screen door and was maybe the size of a half-dollar – but there are so many more ants than spiders that it’s just not a concern at all. No one has said anything about any poisonous spiders yet.

A side note about Anansi: I really need to hear or find more of the Anansi stories. Anansi is the trickster character of southern Ghana. I remember hearing about him occasionally in elementary and middle school. Some of the tales definitely made it to the US through the slaves, but mostly my introduction to Anansi came through others’ later study of African lore. Anansi really survived in places like Jamaica, though. His name changed to “Nancy” or “Mr. Nancy”. If you read Neil Gaiman’s book American Gods, this will all make lots of good sense, and I bet you will be happy with Gaiman’s scholarship and interpretation. It’s very neat. But anyway, Anansi is always going around tricking people and getting the best of them. Some critics wonder whether these stories teach children to be mischievous and lie, but Africans counter that these are stories about surviving – about not using might, but cleverness to solve problems. You’ll notice that most tricksters (spiders, foxes, ravens, kokopelli, Brere rabbit (who coincidentally also probably came from Ghana- the northern part)), are small, and not usually considered powerful. Isn’t that interesting?

The lizards here, though, are my favorite. There are two completely different common types. One kind I see mostly inside: they’re these almost amphibian-looking green or light brown little things, and they’re about the size of the small green ones we have at home, but their skin is smoother, and they climb walls with fingers that look like suction cups. One occasionally goes across the wall of my room, but I see them more often in my hall and on the wall near the TV set in the living room. They’re very attractive, I think.

The other lizards are much more spiky & rough-looking, but I like them, too. Their bodies are 5 to 7 inches long, I would guess, and their tails are about the same length. They’re also generally greenish or brown in color, though they’re duller, dustier versions of the colors. They often seem to have yellow heads. They scuttle across the ground, and climb exterior walls. You can often see them around our house, or around campus buildings, but they tend to avoid high-traffic areas. I think they may be territorial, because I’ve seen them fight a few times, though it seems to be more a matter of intimidating and pushing the other lizard (laterally pushing your side against the other’s side) rather than outright violence. They also bob their heads up & down in an interesting fashion.

I very rarely see pigs or rabbits here, though I know that people occasionally keep them. The only purpose of keeping them, however, is to eat them. People also “hunt” snails to eat, which is interesting. People think they taste great. I haven’t tried them yet to be able to comment, but I have at least seen them: they’re huge! We’re not talking about escargot here, we’re talking about snails in shells twice the size of my fist. The ones I saw in my kitchen were still alive. It was very enlightening to actually see what people were talking about, but also unfortunate that I missed the year at Fairview elementary where the AG kids got to learn about snails.

People do keep dogs and cats, but it’s not nearly so common as in the US. The cats all seem to be essentially wild, and the dogs just do as they please. But all of them stay outside. It’s rare that they’re even allowed into the living room of a house. My friend Nana says that people just generally don’t notice animals here. They don’t show them affection very much, or do anything with them. When I asked whether they thought baby animals are cute, he thought that people wouldn’t deny it, but would still be rather indifferent.

As far as looks go, though, the cats here (which are far more rare than the dogs) tend to be rather small to my eyes. They’re just very thin, and so they give the illusion of length, but I don’t think they’re particularly malnourished – it’s just how they’re built. The dogs are also small: they generally just come up to your knee. They have small ears that go upright, and they have short coats. They’re generally fairly lean, and have medium-long legs for their little bodies. I refer to the picture of Giftie’s dog, at the top, who has just had puppies.

Also, I’m not sure whether this is significant or not, but whenever my sisters refer to insects, they say “small animals”. Like when I want to sit on the floor, or go in through a door that is currently being swarmed with insects who are drawn to the light, they say “no, there are small animals”. I don’t think this implies any affinity. Insects are simply ignored, flicked away, or killed when found, depending on the situation. But I wonder why they don’t use the word “insects”. Perhaps they were never taught it, or perhaps they were taught but it didn’t stick for some cultural reason.

As for touristy animals… well, they didn’t start off being tourist attractions, but now some are to some degree. I may have written about these before, but bear with me briefly. In Kakum National Park, 30-45 minutes away from Cape Coast, there are supposed to be elephants and monkeys. People are fairly certain that they still exist there, because not too long ago they had to scare the elephants back into the forest to keep them from eating people’s crops. The problem, though is that most of the animals of Kakum are nocturnal, and hard to track. So, sometimes people stay there overnight to try to see the elephants, but it’s difficult. Mostly they just settle for educating people about them in the museum that comes before the canopy-walk. At Nzulezo we really did see monkeys in the village. They were rather small and cute, and were perched on the railings and windowsills of houses. We also saw, though, a baby crocodile that a little boy had caught and was keeping on a string as a pet. We were told by people outside the village that people around the area used to eat crocodile (they do get bigger there) but that now, because of ecotourism, they’ve stopped. Through a bizarre set of circumstances, we actually bought and then lost that particular one. It was unfortunate all around, though the crocodile was extremely neat. I don’t particularly want to go to the place in Ghana, though, where you can sit on a live, docile (overfed) crocodile which is supposed to be a sacred animal. There’s just something even more wrong about that.

Anyway ;) that’s all I have to say on animals. I think they’re neat, and like to watch them when I have time. Generally, though, they’re disregarded in this part of Ghana… we haven’t even learned about animal spirits in my African Traditional Religion class, though I’ll let you know if it ever happens.

I love you all :) I hope you’re well. Be thinking of me as I write papers and quizzes, though they shouldn’t be too bad.

Thanks again for caring!

Much love,
Rachel Rose