Bear in mind- I wrote this on Saturday night. We haven't had internet since Friday.

There are plenty of other things I (Rivky) keep meaning to write about- the amazing banana bread we made for shabbos this week, my final class schedule, the awesome Ghanaian friends we made who live down the hall- but on my post-it (1), I have only two topics listed, so I'll write about them both in this post, even though they're totally unrelated.

This week, we lost water from Tuesday morning until Thursday night. Usually, when we're out of water, there's still water running in the spigot across the road, so we can fill up buckets and lug them back to the dorm to shower, do dishes, flush the toilet, etc. (2) However, sometimes there is no water at any of the spigots on our road, either, so we have actually no water except bottled and sachet water. (3) This week, when we lost water, most of the time, there was no spigot water, so we had to be very sparing with the water we already had in our buckets (4), which is especially annoying and difficult when doing dishes.

Thursday evening, when we got water back, was so incredibly exciting and obviously, I ran into the shower. I was literally grinning as I got into the shower and I literally squealed as I turned the knob and the water went on, I was so happy. The shower was so incredible and I was content and relieved, and I just thought to myself, how often do I appreciate this sweet simplicity of simple running water?

When it rains during the winter months in Israel, we are so happy because of the perpetual drought that we are always told about. I pray for rain in Israel because the agricultural economy depends on rain, obviously. But I've never felt a lack of water. I've never actually been physically unable to shower because there was a water shortage.

Appreciating a simple shower...there's something incredible about that. In America, people often asked, "Why Ghana? Why Africa, of all places?" And there are a billion answers, and they're all partial truths, but the emes of it all is that I don't really know. I wanted something, and I thought maybe I would find it in Ghana. And standing in that shower and feeling like I could not appreciate something more than running water, I think I grinned because I found it.

Okay, sorry for the melodrama about my shower. Sheesh. I'd smack myself if I were you.

Next topic! Last weekend, we went to Cape Coast. I wrote about it last week, I think, before we went. On Friday, we visited Elmina Castle (5), and then we spent shabbos in the hotel. Saturday night, the entire group had a 'conversation' about our collective experiences at the castle and our reflections upon it, and then went swimming, and on Sunday, we visited some sort of canopy walk. All of this was fun and interesting, but I just wanted to reflect a little bit about the 'conversation' our group had after the castles (6).

I guess if one had to, he could relate to the castle by calling it the African Auschwitz. Instead of being a concentration camp or death camp, it was sort of a stopping point for African captives- after having been taken captive, they were kept at Elmina and other castles like it before being brought to the Americas. Our tour guide estimated that about 15 million African captives had been kept in Elmina before being enslaved in the Americas, a figure that doesn't account for the millions who were killed during the middle passage and thrown into the Atlantic. There are tons of things within Elmina that deserve posts unto themselves- like the Christian passages written over door frames, or the strong smell of defecation in the dungeons, hundreds of years after the last prisoners, or the governor's quarters sitting right above the dungeons, where he could easily hear prisoners screaming.

Obviously, during our visit to Elmina, I kept thinking about the comparisons to the camps in Poland. And truthfully, they felt very different. While most camps in Poland were huge, miles, the castle was about the size of a large house, and it was all one building, with a courtyard in the middle. And 15+ million slaves went through this one castle over the course of hundreds of years, as opposed to smaller number of 6 million Jews who were killed in various camps and in towns, forests, and elsewhere. Europeans in the 1500s-1700s also kept horrible records, so it's almost impossible to trace one's family to the castle to which one's ancestor was taken, let alone from which town he came before that (7), as opposed to the Nazis' notorious diligence in record-keeping. And the most important distinction, of course, is that while many Africans died and were killed both by neglect and intention, they were not collected for the purpose of being killed, were never gassed or lined up and shot, as opposed to the Jews in death camps. I did feel, even through these differences, a strong kinship with Africans and African Americans, for having gone through, though vastly different, tortures of victimhood.

On Saturday night, fresh from the castles (8), our group sat and discussed a lot of issues that stemmed from the castle visit- racism, the role of religion in the slave trade, African Americans and their relationship to Africa, etc. I don't usually talk during these things, and I obviously didn't talk here either. But I felt that while I was unable to speak, I also felt really uncomfortable with the white Americans in our group talking about their feelings, about how they related to the camps. CIEE is a mixed group, obviously, and there are plenty of black Americans in our group. Not only was I much more interested in what they had to say, I felt so uncomfortable hearing the white people speaking- like, in my head, this wasn't about them. I imagined being in Poland with a mixed group of Jews and non-Jews, and imagined listening to the non-Jews speaking about their feelings, and I just felt like I would have been so uncomfortable and annoyed. How dare they try and speak as if they are our equals- when it was my people, my family and virtual family that were thrown into the ovens (9)? I imagined that, and then I heard white Americans speaking to black Americans as if they were equal and had equally valid 'responses' after visiting the castles, as if they were the same. Black Americans in our group, as some of them spoke about, came to this castle wondering if their ancestors had been here, if their roots led here (10). These castles ended life as they knew it for dozens and dozens of millions of Africans, and these kids', our peers' ancestors- how dare others speak as if they were affected in even close to the same way? Both in the castle, and sitting in this conversation, I felt an incredibly strong sense of humility, that I should shut up and listen, because this wasn't about me, this was much bigger than me and my 'impressions' and 'emotions.'

I'm probably too sensitive about this, as I am about many things. Even so, this is something I was thinking about. And that's my post. To sum up, I love water and I...feel for black Americans, both for having been victimized and for that victimization to then be trivialized? I know, I know- I'll take a number.

(1) Virtual, of course. I love macs.
(2) Obviously, because the filled bucket is the heaviest thing ever, I barely do it. And the times (time?) I have done it, I had to take breaks every five steps. It's so flipping heavy.
(3) Sachet water is water in plastic bags- mayim b'sakit, if you will.
(4) We keep our buckets full at all times, in case the water goes out.
(5) http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmina_Castle
(6) Some of our group went to Elmina, and some went to Cape Coast, which I linked to in our last post. If I were super fancy, I could link to that post. However, links are beyond me. Sad times.
(7) Roots lied to me. I feel betrayed.
(8) While we went on Friday, the rest of the group went on Saturday- haven't you been reading past posts? Sheesh.
(9) I feel no qualms about sephardim and other Jewish groups speaking about the Holocaust because even though their families weren't personally affected, their larger community was, and their lives were forever touched because of how it's changed their larger community.
(10) When the Obamas came to Ghana last semester, the family visited Cape Coast Castle; scholars are relatively certain that Michelle Obama's great-ancestors had been through Cape Coast. There was an article about Michelle Obama's ancestry in the New York Times a couple of months ago, I think around October- I'll try to find it and update this blog when I do.