Behind the veil and under the net

i wish i would have had a chance to experience and study Islam more before moving here because it's so hard to differentiate between what is African culture and what is Islamic influence. It has come together into something that is very much their own. out and about in mpaha you are just as likely to see a woman in veil as you are to see her breast feeding. my personal favorite is the combo: veil and flat, sagging mammary gland both flapping freeing in the wind. I have seen more breasts in the last few months than years of volleyball locker rooms.

just the other day i was greeting a market woman selling tomatoes when a two year old came over and pulled the woman's breast out of the neckline of her dress and started helping himself to a midday snack. the woman didn't even notice, and continued to ask me about my house, my sleep, my room, my children.....

I decided to start going to the main mosque on Fridays. Most of the village goes, and i wanted to observe and experience something that is so central to their life. It took me three tries to get to mosque the first time. i remembered that women needed to wear a veil so i grabbed the veil i purchased just for the occasion and headed to town noticing that the sun was indeed closer to the equator, and at that moment possibly closer to mpaha than anywhere else in the world :D. I ran into Abduli, a local guinea worm volunteer, who took one look at my exposed arms and ankles and told me to go home and cover myself. I left my house again in long sleeves, full length pants, and veil only to be sent back again because i was a woman and needed to wear a skirt. i threw a 2 yard wrap around my waist over the pants and proceeded to walk across town in the heat of the day with the harmatton wind blowing like a giant blow drier across a sandbox.... just when i thought Ghana couldn't get any hotter!

Religion seems to play a much larger role in Ghanaian life than American, in general. Is this due to average socio-economic class? (like a Marxist opiate of the masses-- a higher power to pray to to deliver them from poverty, the promise of a better afterlife???) OR maybe it Is this due to lower education levels? when i was telling a pregnant woman that there are some in America who do not believe in God, she laughed and laughed, and shook her head in pity of those fools. with a big smile she said, "OK, who else put the baby in my stomach than God?"

the other night i was instantly pulled out of my malaria medication dreams because of a strange scratching noise on my sheets a foot in front of my face . i reached for my headlamp and discovered that a bat had somehow gotten into my mosquito net and was now crawling across my sheets and flying around in my mosquito net. conversely, i was in the corner of my bed with my sheets pulled up to my eyes planning out how best to extract a bat from ones mosquito net. when the bat stopped flying circles around my head and landed on the sheets by where my feet had just been, i took my pj's threw them over it, quickly untucked my net and push my the bundle containing my new flying rodent friend onto the floor. i then made sure that my net was tightly tucked and free from anything else that might want to bite me.

well, i'm off to the tamale market to by some food to bring back to site. i hope all is well.
jenell