Maddeningly Fine

Greetings are an integral part of Ghanaian culture, the foundation for social interaction of any sort. Every time you pass someone on the street or in the office; every time you make eye contact with a stranger; every time you need to make a purchase, find out information, or even get someone in trouble; every time one human being engages in any sort of social congress with another, there is a long string of greetings involved, different for every cultural group. And for every one of them, the correct answer is “Fine”.

“Good morning!”
“Fine!”
“How is work?”
“It's fine!”
“How is your husband?”
“He's fine!”
“And your children?”
“Fine!”
“How is the farming?”
“Fine!”
“And your animals?”
“They're fine!”

I have visited people languishing under malaria who have told me they were “Fine”; walking through the hospital greeting patients bleeding from every orifice also elicits “Fine”. People in the middle of disciplining their children, in arguments, and chasing wayward goats, all “Fine”. I tell people here that I am certain if I could find a Ghanaian with his house burning down around his ankles, he would tell me that he was “Fine”. They laugh, and agree.

The question in my Canadian brain turns rather logically from “How are you?” to “Why ask, if the responses are the same?” When I ask this of my Ghanaian counterparts, my host family, and people in conversation on the street, they give me many important and interesting answers. Even in semi-urban areas like Nalerigu, everyone knows each other. The ties between friends and relations are strong, and further cemented with the knowledge that if you pass each other on the street, you will actually speak—whether you've met once, or have known each other for years. The social hierarchy is cemented every time a greeting is given: children bow to their elders, adults bow to the elderly, and everyone bows to the Chief and his council. It is an unavoidable conversation-starter, essential in this inherently friendly Northern Ghanaian culture. And sometimes, it is an important link to a tradition that threatens to slip with the influx of globalization.

Walking to work, greeting the strangers I pass in mangled Mampruli, starts my day with the message that despite my differences, or perhaps even because of them, I am welcome. Ending my day with a tsunami of children screaming the only English they know--“Salaminga, Hello!!”--reminds me that change is happening all around me, and like it or not, I am part of it. It reminds me that what is important to these people, these “Dorothy”s, is for me to observe, not to decide.

And it reminds me to ask better questions.