Tamale

Julia Littmann says farewell to Ghana.

My heart grows heavier every day. The day before my departure it essentially feels as heavy as one of those huge watermelons that are piled up to form impressive, spherical, light green pyramids alongside the bicycle lane. For me, one month of Tamale for beginners was like being reset; back to square one, having to find everything out, to question everything, to look at everything as closely as possible, bike it all, touch it all, try it all. It also meant discussing everything possible with all of the people who so luckily “coincided” with my time here. The questions and debates are endless, some of it makes me speechless, but most of the asking, explaining and gaining ground leads – at least in everyday life – to that long-drawn out “aha!,” which is the music of cognitive understanding.

I presume that the readers that have accompanied this undertaking have also recognized that Tamale, the city that lies as if it had been poured onto the savannah, provided the very best test arrangement for this undertaking of exploring a different (local) world as impartially as possible.

The capital of the Northern Region is a generous city, which appears to be so unimpressed by the higher-farther-faster demands of modern urban development that in all of the implicitness sometimes it reaches the outer limits of the pain barrier. Insouciantly, it is a city whose largest tourist attraction is a national park four hours’ bus ride away. Of course, the Central Mosque could pass as a local attraction, yet it is as simple and functional as Freiburg’s railway station. Nonetheless it is known far and wide – and far beyond its functionality – as Ghana’s largest mosque. Tamale presents itself as a city with a very singular groove that is very much in harmony with itself in spite of having to cope with much dissonance over the years. To penetrate it all would hardly be possible in the routine of the editorial office of a daily newspaper. Whatever happens to be the breaking news on a given day has priority over “investigation.” Thus, one of the most complex questions that must be fit into my luggage for the return journey is that of the connecting lines and irreconcilability between the traditional “chieftaincy” and “earth healers” and today’s governmental organization, such as the respective regional government. Blood is still inexplicably shed due to conflicts that are of great significance especially in the more rural regions in Ghana – in spite of it often being praised for its democratic potentials. In most cases, these conflicts apparently originate from questions of land ownership. This is precisely where the intersections and contradictions between the different powers of the governing levels reveal a problem that is hardly resolvable.

After our talk, an interviewer asks me what I will pack in my bags when I leave Tamale. The sounds, I begin counting, crickets, fruit bats, antediluvian diesel engine racket, football air horns, automobile horns, moped buzzing, cool music, oops, yes, drums, too, loud palaver in Dagbani, and an English that is hardly recognizable but already feels natural after one or two days: sounds. I will pack images, images, images of stunning variety, also of endless mysteriousness, and lately – thanks to Harmatan – dyed in monochrome desert sand. I will take home encounters of such momentum and warmth that the heavyhearted watermelon effect is inescapable in the face of departure. Well, and then, as I said, I still need to leave room for the many unresolved or even unanswerable questions and for the certainty that I did not really comprehend even the tiniest fraction of Tamale, as much as I'd love to have done. Yet, she will probably not even resent it, the lovely, widely outpouring city, but just take it serenely in her stride.