Miawoezon!

In Accra, the Ga people say “Akwaaba!” to welcome us to this beautiful culture.  In Dzodze where we arrived today, the Ewe people say “Miawoezon!” which adds this sentiment “Thank you for the trouble you have taken to come here.” Appropriate indeed, not only because it is not a casual thing to take the time away from home and family, save the money for the expensive plane flight alongside the tuition and come to a continent where most have never been. 

 

But in addition to that, many of us 30 music teachers from here, there, and everywhere worked against all odds to solve the problem of the U.S. Ghanaian Embassy shutting down due to an internal crisis, with many of our passports sent there to get a visa stuck there with a. distinct possibility that they wouldn’t get back to us in time to make the trip. A week of desperate phone calls, WhatsApps and e-mails and some getting new passports to get a Visa at the Accra Airport upon arrival, and miraculously, no one was turned away. So “Miawoezon” now has an additional meaning—trouble indeed, but finally, here we are.

 

It has been a promising beginning. Before we have even begun the official teaching in our Orff Afrique course, the magic is afoot. A day in the marketplace bargaining with glee and finding some lovely things. A lunch at the marketplace that included a band showing up playing xylophone, drums, shaker and bell with such joy, musicality and great energy— and my delight in recognizing three of the xylophone pieces. In fact, they invited me to sit in on one and play shaker (ahatxe) on another. And then invited people to come up and dance one or two at a time and finally to sit in on some drumming. Sheer delight!

 

Some of the more adventurous young people ventured out in the town at night and came back with fun stories. Then today a long 4-hour bus ride to Dzodze, people still catching up on jet lag and another extraordinary welcome with the Nunya Academy Students all lined up holding cards with our names. 

 

We each met our student host (anywhere from 6 to 28 years old), who took us to our room and then the games began. I’m familiar with many now, so that made it an extra pleasure to play them all. A rhythmic math game, a go-in-the-middle and show- us- your- motion game, a duck-duck-goose kind of chasing game (6-year-olds chasing 40- year-olds!). Finally waved goodbye to the kids while we had our first dinner at the White Dove Hotel. 

 

After dinner, I got together with my xylophone teaching partner Aaron (he’s the expert, I’m the translator to the Orff classroom) and discussed what pieces we might be teaching and played snippets of them together. With Wi-Fi not set up yet so freed from their phones, people drifted over to the music and then sat down at one of the 22 xylophones and we all began jamming with Aaron in the lead. For about 40 minutes straight without a pause. Once again, welcome to Ghana!!

 

Is it enough to simply share the news of good-hearted people in a culture that teaches its people to welcome people with smiles and sincere interest in enjoying our shared humanity? Sometimes. But when a building is on fire, casual conversation as if everything were normal makes no sense. After we’ve sounded the alarm and retreated to safety, all talk should focus on how to fireproof our house and prevent another disaster from happening. 

 

So imagine with me here that in 1957, the same year that Ghana won its independence from Britain, the students in Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, lined up like the Nunya students, some holding signs of the names of the 9 black students poised to walk into an all-white school upholding the law approved by the Supreme Court. All of the white community—including parents and teachers and the Governor himself— singing a song of welcome as they walked the students to their lockers and desks.

 

Once in school, all of them, black and white, would learn the history of what happened to so cruelly divide the blacks and whites and make vows to stop the poisonous narrative that had brainwashed potentially good people into performing unspeakable acts of cruelty. It would have been such an important first step in healing the sins of past ancestors and stepping forward into a kinder, fairer and more loving future. 

 

But of course, that didn’t happen. We see the photos of the faces of white women contorted and twisted in hatred shouting their contempt, scorn and vitriolic bile toward Elizabeth Eckford, a dignified girl who never did them any harm, just walking to school with her books. Mothers who went through the sacrifice and pain of giving birth to life and nurturing their young turning against an innocent sweet young woman because their brains had been twisted by an ugly story passed down to them. And once in the school protected by the National Guard, those 9 students would hear that Africa is a place of savage people, a continent filled with what a later President would call “shithole countries.”

 

So to all of you who supported and continue to support that guy and the spoken and unspoken doctrine of white supremacy, look at the photos of those women and then the Nunya kids. Who are the savages? Who lives in a shithole country? Consider re-thinking all you’ve been taught or think about what you’ve never been taught and join those of us working to flush this purposefully perpetuated poisoned hatred from our system. Choose to refuse it. Consider that a life lived with great music, open hearts and minds, warm welcomes to fellow humans no matter how they look or where they come from, is ten thousand times more fun and fulfilling than the opposite. Come to Ghana and see for yourselves. 

 

And yes, humans and human problems here as you will find anywhere— no romantic portrait of paradise with no conflict and no issues that need attention. But from my point of view, all of it in proper proportion standing firmly on the ground of music, dance and a welcoming humanity. 

 

Today will be a formal welcome from the Chief and then a dinner hosted by our venerable teacher, Dr. Kofi Gbolonyo’s family at their home compound. A generosity and hospitality we all deserve here while my country’s shithole leaders are sending death and destruction bombing the land of my many friends in Iran. When will it all stop? When will we finally civilize the savages?