Jamestown Fisherman's Village... 2 parts

This was my second time in Jamestown, which has been my favorite place to visit  although this experience was very different than my first. The way that we experienced Jamestown today was basically the exact opposite of the way you should experience a place like this. Jamestown is one of the most impoverished villages in Accra and it is a fisherman’s village. What this looks like is basically a slum village that is crowded and lacks electricity, running water and space. The people live in tiny huts in theory but I think most live in their boats, which go out every night and every day. The man who I spent most of the tour with described how the work of the fishermen happens. Each night the men (about 15 in a boat) will go out into the ocean and throw their nets all through the night. The men will go back and forth bringing in the nets that are trapped with fish and crab and the women and younger boys it seems, will collect the fish and pull them from the net and organize them. The women will then take the fish, clean and prepare them to be sold.   

 The whole structure of the village and the work done is very specific and everyone has their roles, which is very interesting to see and experience. The difficult part of this experience was the fact that about 18 of us Obronis (white people) are walking thorough this tiny village that is in reality their living room. Where the community lives and spends their time when not in the boats is in the village, so we walked right through their lives in a very intrusive way, which was uncomfortable for us. I felt annoyed at the way some site visits were handled especially this one. I felt like if we wanted to get to know these people and see what was going on in the village there was an appropriate way to do it… and pulling our big old bus into the middle of Jamestown’s slum village was definitely not the way to do it.

Jamestown was one of the first places I visited in Ghana before the NYUers arrived. I was taken there by my friend Solomon, seen above with the mowahk, who I have mentioned in previous posts. He set it up so that I would be welcomed and of course I walked with a respected man in the village called Nice One… I gave him 10 Cedis and he took really good care of me. He introduced me to everyone had me take tons of pictures, tried to teach me some Gah so I could talk with the people I was meeting and overall made me feel comfortable. It is of course not easy to go into people’s lives the way that we did, and wanted to do while on our journey and I would like to be grateful for everything we did see, but I really wanted the rest of my classmates to experience Jamestown the way that I did.

View of Jamestown village from up in the water tower

You can see all of Accra from up in the tower

            The whole structure of the village and the work done is very specific and everyone has their roles, which is very interesting to see and experience. The difficult part of this experience was the fact that about 18 of us Obronis (white people) are walking thorough this tiny village that is in reality their living room. Where the community lives and spends their time when not in the boats is in the village, so we walked right through their lives in a very intrusive way, which was uncomfortable for us. I felt annoyed at the way some site visits were handled especially this one. I felt like if we wanted to get to know these people and see what was going on in the village there was an appropriate way to do it… and pulling our big old bus into the middle of Jamestown’s slum village was definitely not the way to do it.

When I first got to Jamestown we parked the taxi next to the Watertower, which is a little ways back from the village. Nice One told me that the police officers cannot go into the village unless they are looking for a fugitive or someone who has committed a crime outside of the village. Jamestown operates under its own set of rules and there is a common understanding of respect… I do not fully understand the deal, but I’ll take his word for it. This fact also makes me understand why we were so unwelcome when we came with the whole class… and I don’t blame the locals for wanting us out of their home.. I would feel the same way.The people in Jamestown work their assess off on the boats and prepping and selling the fish. They catch and prepare the fish everyday of the week except Tuesday when the ocean “fills back up”. The town operates like a machine, everyone works together and has their job.. it is pretty fascinating to watch the men and women at work. The language there is Gah, which is different from the general local language in Ghana that is Twi. In comparing my two Jamestown experiences it is clear to me that nothing is personal… it is not that the residents did not like us but they did not know us and they did not know why we were there. It makes me think about a disabled person or anyone different… when you are different (meaning we are the different ones) people have a tendency to act out of fear because they just do not know what we are or who we want. Anything different makes people feel initially uncomfortable but once there is a smile, a hello, or a conversation we are all able to see that people are just people and at our core as people we mean each other no harm. 

These are all fish that were caught by the fishermen being laid out to dry so they can be sold.... the kids at the top are playing soccer on top of the drying sardines.

I mean.... FISH

FISH!

Nice One... my host for my visit in Jamestown