Jamestown, University of Ghana, and Mosque in Legon

I was completely taken back by our trip to Jamestown Fishing Village. I was astonished by the way of life of the people in this community. Everyone had a role and responsibility and abided to their obligations. Men wake up early in the morning around 6am to set out on their morning journey to fish, a second set of men may go out and meet the met at their fishing spots to collect the catch and bring it to shore so the initial group of men can continue to fish. When the catch is brought to shore, more people gather the nets and assist in retrieving the catch. Most of the fishermen are village men, while the women are responsible for selling the fish and cooking the family's meals. It's truly remarkable to see how these men, women, and children survive and thrive off of ocean life, operating this fishing system all on their own, and taking pride in doing so.

Many of the men were not thrilled that we were there observing them complete their daily routine. Shouting at us, "Where is the money?!" Apparently a couple of weeks before our visit, a couple of foreigners, white men, had come to take pictures of the villagers and displayed them on television in derogatory manner. The fisherman never received any money for this videotaping and to add insult to injury were showcased in a bad light. They wanted to make sure that this wouldn't be happening again. Nevertheless I was able to catch a couple of good shots, but put my camera away once I noticed people were becoming uncomfortable and outright angry. It was a great learning experience and really brought out the reality the villagers' lifestyle.

I noticed there were no fisherman with any physical disabilities, or not ones that were visible at least. This leads me to believe there is no room for the disabled when it comes to physical work such as fishing in this village. Perhaps they can sell the fish and cook the fish, but sailing out on a boat to partake in the labor component of hauling the fish overboard in nets would be seen as too much of a physical challenge, as well as getting settled into the boat, as there are no safety restraints, and I imagine the person would also have to be a great swimmer.

Our visit to the mosque in Legon will definitely be a memorable one. I was under the pretense that we were going to visit 1 single mosque (as we did when visiting 1 single church), but I was wrong (well, sort of). We met an Imam, who took us around his village, where we entered at least 4 different local mosques as well as the chief of the village! What a surprise! We were able to sit in a mosque and visit others. I felt a bit bad about entering a mosque while men were in prayer, but the Imam wouldn't have taken "no" for an answer. I thought that for the most part the people of this muslim village were happy to see and us show us their culture, but later I found out that they were not so happy about our visit. There were students on the trip who are fluent in the local language Twi, that later told me that many of the villagers were asking why we were there and it was not in a nice way. This is totally understandable, and I am happy that for the most part the villagers were accepting of us, treated us kindly, and were tolerant of us. The Imam was exceptionally hospitable to us and made sure were well taken care of. In fact, we went over our allotted time scheduled for our visit, and as Kingsley would say, "We were fast behind time." We were even given food to take back home with us, KABOBS...