Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Rahman’s favorite phrase right now (he has those quite often) is “I make sorry waa!” (“I make” is high tone, “sorry waa” is low tone.) It’s pidgin for “I don’t really care but I’ll sarcastically pretend to feel bad for you.”

So the other day my students were whining about all the assignments I gave them and finally I couldn’t help myself, I let out a “I make sorry waa!” and they were so surprised. “Ei! Ms. Tran speaks pidgin?! It must be the waakye.” Yeah I eat a lot of waakye. They don’t sell waakye near where I work because I work in the ritzy part of town (Labone) that charges 10 GHC for banku and mostly sells foreign stuff (hamburgers, Kentucky Fried Chicken, sandwiches with shrimp in them, and who knows what else), so the kids make fun of me for bringing my 1 GHC waakye-in-a-bag from home.

Yesterday I got to see two of my Legon peeps which was nice. One was my friend Jeremy (the one who took me to his home town for the chief’s durbar and took me to the place with the biggest tree in West Africa which was not as big as you would think the biggest tree in West Africa would be. He is also the one who watches tons-o of anime and gave me a very detailed synopsis of Naruto over several nights) and the other was my friend Courage (the one who taught me how to say "I'll walk all over your face" in Twi the first time I met him).

P.S. For those who don't know, I'm working as the Education Fellow at Ivy League Consult Africa, a private learning center in Accra, Ghana that focuses on international admissions.

1 comment:

  1. I need a more descriptive explanation of "waakye" than what Wiki gives me please.

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