Ghanaian Culture: Distings, Wildlife

Two out of the three main goals of the Peace Corps deal with the cultural exchange that takes place when volunteering in a foreign country. In addition to learning about the Ghanaian culture and teaching them about American culture, it is important that I share my experiences with people in the U.S. so they can learn more about Ghana. So here is my first attempt at explaining some things that are different/funny/interesting here…

Distings:

"Disting" is a word (not really) that is used a lot by Ghanaians. Most Ghanaians speak English very well in addition to their indigenous language. In fact, English is Ghana’s official language and thus all education in the country is in English. Ghanaians, though, have trouble with some certain sounds in the English language. The "th" sound that is frequent in so many English words is difficult for Ghanaians to pronounce, so it often just becomes a "d" sound. As such, "this" ends up sounding like "dis" and thus "this thing" becomes "disting." In Ghana, disting is used a lot like Americans might use "what-cha-ma-call-it" or something of that nature and it is used a lot here when people can’t remember a word or it is obvious what people are talking about. The frequency of the word and the wide variety of "tings" (i.e.: election, pen, water bottle, shoe) it is used to portray can be quite comical.

Wildlife:

I am in Africa and I suppose people might wonder (as I did) what sort of "wildlife" and animals there are here. Well, where I am currently, there are no zebras, hyenas, lions, tigers, rhinos, hippos, or monkeys. Nope, this whole place is not like a safari.
Most of Ghana (as far as I can see) has much less exciting, but still fun, animals roaming around. On a daily basis I see: dogs, cats, lizards, roosters, chickens, goats, and sheep. I have my language classes in the front of my home-stay house here and every day there are a couple dogs and tons of chickens and lizards just roaming/hanging out/running all around the yard… it is great. The dogs, cats, roosters, chickens, goats, and sheep usually roam free but they belong to somebody and stay close to where they are fed. Some people have dogs and cats as pets here, but not like we do in America. Here, they always stay outside of the house and they are just fed extra scraps of food that are leftover. Dogs are great to have because they bark whenever anyone comes near your house and cats are great because they chase away mice and other varmints. Dogs (and I think cats) are eaten by many people here, so sometimes they are "chopped" and eaten. Goats and sheep are kept for meat and they either roam around town or are tied to trees. Lizards, from tiny to huge in size, are all over the place! Roosters and chickens hang around in the villages near where they are fed and they crow ALL DAY starting at about 4:30 in the morning.

Although I have not seen them yet, Ghana DOES have all sorts of exciting wildlife. There are a few major national parks here and some sanctuaries where you can see all sorts of exciting stuff. Mole national park is I think the biggest and most famous and is in the Northern Region (I think) of the country. My site, Gwollu, has sacred ponds full of crocodiles and nearby there is also a hippopotamus sanctuary. There are also 2 monkey sanctuaries in the country, one in the Volta Region and one in the Brong-Ahafo Region. As I visit these cool places I will have more to share about them, but for now I just wanted to assure you it’s not all just roosters and lizards here.