Too Much Too Young

So the last couple of days have been a huge flurry of activity. Homestay, lectures, performances, lessons... It's hard to say where to begin.

I guess the most immediate thing to discuss is the homestay. My family is wonderful. Three generations actually live in my house, which is more like a complex than a simple house. The main hous has two wings: the grandparents (and heads of household) live in one with their cook/maid (who as far as I can tell isn't related to them), and the other houses guests - they apparently put up a lot of people, though there's only an Ethiopian guy other than me right now. One of their daughters lives in the other house (the entirety is maybe sic times the size of my house in South Africa) with her family, who I haven't actually spent all that much time with yet - I've mainly been getting acquainted withthe grandparents so far. They're very interesting - both used to teach at the university, him economics and her fine arts. They've traveled a good deal, and always have something interesting to say. Generally, I'm really pleased with my family and look forward to getting better acquainted with them.

The ethnomusicology aspect is also absolutely incredible, both theoretically and practically. We've had several great lectures, mainly from Dr. John Collins, one of the foremost scholars in the field of African popular music, as well as several other topics such as Ghanaian history and so forth. I've been learning a lot - I feel like these last few days have been as informative as several weeks at UCU. That also has something to do with the experiential part of our music component - we had our first proper lesson, in the atenteben bamboo flute, today, which was an interesting experience considering the last time I tried to play a wind instrument was the recorder in 5th grade. This isn't actually that dissimilar - it's like a more resonant, organic recorder with far more style. It's not really something I see myself playing much, but it's fun and we got our own from Gavin with no extra cost. I'm probably starting private lessons in a day or two - I'm learning a type of peg drum whose name I constantly forget and the Gome, which is a frame drum that doubles as a seat. I'm also hopefully going to learn at least some of the process of drum-making. I can't wait.

The performances have also been fantastic - we've seen two scheduled ones, a neotraditional group called Hewale Sounds (who we may be seeing again soon) and the Ghana Dance Troupe. There have been a few spontaneous drum sessions which have been amazing. I'm running out of credit at this internet cafe, so I'm not going to add details now, but I'm having a great time and it only looks to be getting better and better. 'Till next I write.