I Dey Kai ("I Remember")

by Shainah Andrews (United States of America)

Making a local connection Ghana

More often than some colleges would like to admit, most of what students study in-class often does not ever leave their binders and textbooks. My first day in the Motherland was August 6, 2018, having decided to study abroad in Ghana my senior year to soak up as much culture, history, and sun as I could in four months. Mouthwatering jollof, fried plantains, beans for breakfast, vibrant traditional wear, and catchy Afrobeats are all among the greatest of my memories in West Africa. But as a student minoring in linguistics and earning a certificate to teach English globally, the most fascinating element of travel for me is language. Twi, Ga, and Ewe are just three of the 250+ languages and dialects spoken in Ghana. I’d learn that the Twi word “oburoni” is not just friendly yelled to gain the attention of a “white person” but anybody who looks or sounds like they are “from over the horizon.” “Chale,” a Ga word, became my favorite to carry back to North Carolina. It means “friend” and is the term that I choose to still use when I talk to people I met in Ghana who are now spread across North America. The semester before I left for Ghana, I read a book about Ghanaian English like it was a page-turning fiction novel, captivating readers and being impossible to put down for too long. I read the book in hopes of mentally storing words and phrases that I could use (or at least recognize) in Ghana. I was the first person in my study abroad program to arrive on-campus. The man who handed me paperwork talked to me in English. And I know that I’d just spent over 24 consecutive hours traveling, but no amount of sleep would have prepared me for the Ghanaian English that he spoke. I had to ask him several times to repeat what he said, and each time he spoke slower than before. He was a grand puzzle maker and I was trying to make sense of it all and assemble — piece by piece, sentence by sentence. My brain finally connected the dots and formed the big picture of what he was saying. But I felt defeated: everything that I read in rented books from my university’s library and wrote about in papers proved to be pointless. On the first day that I explored some of University of Ghana’s campus with one of my program’s student leaders, I felt an overwhelming sense of belonging and comfort. K2 and I are around the same age and bonded over both African and American music, seafood, and our mutual desire to see as much of the world as our passports would allow; I told him all about studying abroad in London and he told me all about his summer trip to Germany and the Netherlands. I explained that chill parties, back home, are often called “kickbacks.” K2 found the new word intriguing, softly repeating it to himself. At some point, he ran into a group of his friends. The guys, like all guys in Ghana that I saw and heard, shouted various greetings across streets and red paths. ‘Boss man! Chale! Wasop?’ I don’t remember exactly what his friends said to him (because my ability to understand Ghanaian English and Twi hadn’t developed yet), but I do remember this exact sentence as if it were spoken to them yesterday: “I dey work.” I dey work. (“I am working.”) It was a sentence that I’d read verbatim in the same book that, yesterday, I thought had let me down! The little person inside of my brain managing the electricity pulled the string switch, bringing forth light. I’d go on to impress locals whenever I’d say “thank you” (medaase) at a stand to buy bananas or “I’m fine” (εyε) in response to εte sεn (“how are you?”). And my Twi class would provide me with even more impressive words to be used when bargaining at my favorite art market. I learned so much in-country, but I still smile even now when I remember that I first made a local connection before I even landed.