Eating Oranges in Ghana

In the United States, I am used to feeling fairly confident about my accomplishments in life. Minimally, I know I am capable of getting through just about any interaction without violating any unspoken norms and of taking care of myself on a daily basis.

Living in Ghana has changed that a bit.

Before being placed in our permanent sites, the other trainees and I underwent 10 weeks of cultural and technical training. You would think, after ten weeks of that, that little things like eating and sitting without making a fool of yourself would be easy. Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

For example, shortly after I got to site, my landlord offered me an orange to eat. I was very happy to accept. However, the thing about oranges in Ghana is that A) they are not orange, and B) if you try to eat them like you eat oranges in America, you will make an utter fool of yourself.

To eat a (green) orange in Ghana, you need a knife. You slip the nice between the hard, green outer peel and the soft white inner peel. You cut off all of the green peel, but be careful not to pierce the actual inner pouch of juice. Once you've gotten the green peel off, you slice off about ten percent of the orange from the top. Instead of biting in, put your mouth on the exposed bit of orange at the top and squeeze. You don't have an orange to eat; you have a juice box to drink.

This is completely self-evident to everyone living in Ghana. It was not self-evident to me.

Joining Peace Corps--or at least joining Peace Corps Ghana--means accepting that you will not know how to do a lot of things. There are two year old children who are better at swinging a hoe than I am. There are five year old children in my community who can carry their weight in water on their head. I have worked my way up to carrying a half-full bucket on my head with both my hands to balance it, and I'm afraid my progress seems to have stalled.

No matter how much I practice Ewe, I will never speak it fluently. I would be extremely surprised if my attempts at language ever stop being hilarious to people living in my village. The other day, I was able to make what I thought was a hilarious joke: "Those goats, I think they are funny, but the chickens, on the other hand, they are fear-mongers!" Unfortunately I can't say that anyone appreciated the humor quite as much as I did.

I don't know how to build a fence. I don't know why some goats are tied up and others are not. I don't know how to fix a broken hoe, and I don't know how to properly leave a conversation. I regularly embarrass myself in front of the chief, and I'm still not totally sure how to walk up to a house and chill without feeling completely self-conscious.

And you know what? I'm okay with that. I don't mind when people laugh at my feeble attempts to explain myself or my lackluster rows of peanuts. I would also laugh if someone told me, in all seriousness, that they had spent the evening contemplating what the best thing to eat was in town (I meant to say I was thinking about what I projects I was going to work on.) In two years, if I'm lucky, I will have approximately the same competence of a two-year-old Ghanaian child.

Two years well spent? I think so.