End of a Year, Beginning of an Era

by Brady

As 2018 comes to a close, I find myself reflecting on the victories and setbacks Untold International has experienced in the last twelve months as we attempt to finish a language arts center in a rural village in Ghana.

 

Building progress has been frustratingly slow. We went into Ghana thinking we could get the building done within six months, a prospect I laugh at now. Between issues with fundraising, money transfers, structural mistakes, and laissez faire contractors, that six months has stretched into three years. This is, oddly enough, incredibly common in Ghana. The landscape there is dotted with half-finished concrete structures; people commonly add a bit at a time as they get the money, taking years and sometimes decades to make something habitable. We didn’t intend to follow this trend, but we ended up building more like the locals than we meant to. The silver lining is that we’ve kept going, and we now have beautiful, finished building that just needs furniture to be operational.

We have begun building the furniture, starting with big, double-sided bookshelves that are coming out nicely. They are being built by a local carpenter named Kwaata, who also did the concrete forms. Once we get just $2,000, the furnishings will be done and the center can open.

And open it will! We are actually now planning the opening and inauguration of Kasadwini Atenaeɛ (the language arts center in Asisiriwa) for either late February or early March of 2019. The local community has requested that Kaitlyn and I be present for the opening, and they are all very excited! This will be a huge milestone for us as an organization, and for all the individuals involved. If you would like get involved in making this a reality, we have more good news!

Untold International now has its own 501(c)3 status! This means that all donations made directly to us are tax deductible. So if you’re looking for a nonprofit organization to make an end-of-year donation to, consider us! You would be directly contributing to the opening of Kasadwini Atenaeɛ, and you could see the impact of your donation within just three months. We’ll be posting pictures and videos of the inauguration in March so you can celebrate with us! Click here to donate now.

Thank you to everyone who made 2018 an important year for Untold, and thank you in advance to everyone who comes along with us to make 2019 the beginning of a new era for the community of Asisiriwa. We’re just a few months away from changing some futures forever, and I grin wildly at the imagination-baffling potential that’ll be unlocked when these kids have the resources to empower themselves.

The New Name of the Literacy Center in Asisiriwa

by Brady

Names are important. Not only do they give a first impression, but they actually inform the identity of the thing or person they’re attached to. Parents often name their children based on how or who they want them to become. “Look to your namesake, [Alexander, George, Martin Luther, etc.]”

The poet formerly known as George Awoonor

Igbo parents embed bold hopes or claims in their children’s names, like Chimankpam (“God knows my needs”) and Zioranmachukwu (“Show the world God’s beauty”). Ghanaians who wish to embrace their African identity often throw off their European-inspired “Christian” names and replace them with local ones, like the poet George Awoonor who became Kofi Awoonor.

When we partnered with the village of Asisiriwa in Ghana to build a literacy center and library, we were intentional about so many things, from using the local environment to stocking the library with appropriate reading material. We knew we had to be intentional about the name. It wouldn’t be enough to simply call it the “Asisiriwa Literacy Center”, because 1) it’s so much more than that, and 2) that’s not the right language.

The not-quite-finished center

Asisiriwa is 100% Twi-speaking. Sure, there are some immigrants from the North who speak their mother tongues in the home and the kids have to learn English in school, but the language spoken in public – in almost all domains – is Twi. It’s the language of the heart there, and that’s why we have been committed to offering Twi literacy classes and writing workshops on an equal footing with English since the project started. The literacy center belongs to Asisiriwa, so it only makes sense to give it a Twi name.

Just a few of the kids in Asisiriwa who ONLY speak Twi

Thankfully, Asisiriwa is the home village of Professor Kofi Agyekum, one of the foremost Twi linguists of all time. When Coca Cola started its campaign of featuring people’s names on individual bottles and cans, they consulted Prof. Agyekum on how to do it in Ghana. When a local bus company wanted to give their coach types Twi names, they turned to Prof. Agyekum. So we had access to the expert.

Me and Prof when he first brought us to Asisiriwa

I provided some keywords to try and get at the heart of the project. Honestly, I don’t like the name “literacy center” to begin with, because it’s not really about literacy. It’s about storytelling. As our motto says, storytelling unlocks imagination, which unlocks innovation – it’s just that we have to offer literacy classes in order to empower the reading and writing of stories. So I wanted to move past the ideas of books, libraries, and classes. That’s when Prof suggested Kasadwini Atenaeɛ.

Professor Agyekum coined the term “kasadwini” in 1998, and it has been used since then within Akan Studies to refer to literature or verbal art. It combines the words kasa (“language”) and adwini (“art” or “design”). Atenaeɛ comes from the verb tena ase, which means “to sit down”, so it refers to a place where people sit (thus, a center). So Kasadwini Atenaeɛ (ka-sa-jwih-nee ah-tih-nye-ay) is a place where people gather and sit to enjoy the art of language. That, to me, is perfect.

Asisiriwa junior high school students playing Scrabble in the unfinished center

Names are important. When the people of Asisiriwa and the surrounding villages walk by the bright blue and yellow building with the cool, slanted roof and see the signboard outside that says Kasadwini Atenaeɛ, they will know that their language matters, that something new and exciting is happening, and that somehow art is being consumed or created through words. And they will be welcome to join in.

If you would like to contribute to finishing the center, feel free to go here to make a tax-deductible donation.

How to Refine Your Vision

by Brady

A professor at Regis University recently told me, “I love your vision. As you’ll soon learn in development work, about 5% of the overall effort is the vision and 95% is the delivery and refinement of that vision. No exaggeration here!” I had a feeling that he was right, but could do nothing to refine the vision than to brace myself for landing at Kotoka International Airport and see what I found in Ghana.

Our vision for a literacy center has been met with much praise and excitement. Several trusted friends here have said, “Yes, it’s needed.” We even have people lining up their own villages for us to come in and see if we can help. I’m rarely satisfied with partial information, so we continued meeting with people and asking questions about the current education system in Ghana. Combining that with chance meetings (it seriously seems like divine appointments out here start with, “What are you doing in Ghana?”), we began to see the situation opening up in front of us.

Origins and Interrogations of Being “Broke”

by Brady

There is a strange, stony silence that ensues when your partner looks at you and says, “Well, I’m officially broke.” The realization that both of your bank accounts add up to less than a hundred dollars leaves a bitter, malnourished taste in your mouth. It causes you to think about the direction your life has meandered, the purposes you’ve undertaken, and the nutritional information on the back of Top Ramen.

Maybe it’s the liberal arts education, and maybe it’s my recreational use of the dictionary (though I’ve also dabbled in glossaries), but when fecal matter starts flying at the spinning blades of cooling appliances I tend to linguistically analyze these accepted concepts rather than sink into a depressive funk. For days, the use of the word “broke” bothered me, and not just because it’s a conjugated verb being used as an adjective. It bothered me because the connotations to using a form of the word “broken” to describe one’s condition are deep and unsettling. So I decided to look up the origins of the term.