First Impressions of USA

Samuel has been living with us since early August-really my Fulbright experience started the day he moved in. Samuel is my age, has a successful teaching career and is head of the Math Department at his school. He has a wonderful wife and family with children roughly the ages of mine, one has graduated college, one is in her second year at Princeton and one will start high school this year. And, he has never been out of Ghana.

It has been enlightening to see our country through his eyes. Especially for his first two weeks here, everything we did each day was a new experience for him. Below I’m going to try to give you snapshots of his first impressions/experiences. I’ll leave out things like his first trip on the Metro, or the Baltimore Aquarium, or a Barnes and Noble…because I think you can imagine those experiences. But here are some of his thoughts-in my words.

Cleanliness- Samuel asked if the streets and sidewalks were swept every night. He was impressed with how clean everything is-people don’t litter, I explained about recycling. “It is good”, he said.

Order,order,order- Perhaps some of us don’t realize the uniqueness of it, but ours is a society of order. We wait in lines (ques), we drive in lanes, we stop at stop signs, we plan out weeks at a time of material to teach, there are procedures, and (generally) we follow them. We got to the bank and were the third one there to open an account, so we were the third one to be helped. This is not true in many countries. Samuel was impressed.

First trip to Target- one of our first shopping stops was to Target. A cell phone was a priority and a few fall clothes. We were heading up to the second floor when Samuel said, “They had one of these at the airport”. I looked around…one of what? A rack of inexpensive jeans?? No, he meant the escalator, that was only the second one he had ridden on..

Bigbigbig- The bigness of everything hit him at first: so many lanes, so many stores (Microcenter-an entire store of computers and technology!) Think about Rockville Pike and its corridor of stores upon stores. Car Dealerships, Restaurant servings, Trees (there aren’t many big trees in Ghana-they’ve been cut for fuel and building supplies), houses, Malls…it goes on and on.

Happy Birthday to You! It happened to be Samuel’s birthday his second day here. I invited some teachers over to meet him and we had a barbeque. We got Samuel a cake (his first) sang the song and then explained how to blow out the candles! He said it was the first time he’d celebrated his birthday. Traditionally Ghanaians don’t celebrate their birthdays. What IS important though is the day of the week you are born. I will explain that at another time...

Diversity-We ate at the food court last weekend at Montgomery Mall. It was packed and as we were eating I looked around and realized he was getting a great picture of the DC area. We were eating with people from all ages, races and ethnicities. But do you know what he commented on? He commented on how much more involved the fathers were here. I wondered where that came from until I looked around us and saw a father feeding a small child, a father out shopping with two kids-involved fathers-usual for us but not for him.

Elderly- another initial observation he made was that we have ‘old people’. It is rare there. I told him my 83 year old father still works. I read somewhere that the average life expectancy for a Ghanaian male is 54.

Empty Streets-Samuel commented on how are sidewalks are empty. I saw people walking around and wasn’t sure what he meant. He said that in the cities and towns the streets are filled with people walking around, there are clusters of people in front of shops-why? Unemployment. Many (usually the men) have nothing to do. He was surprised to hear that many high schoolers have jobs after school. He told me that wouldn’t happen in Ghana because there wouldn’t be jobs for them to have. There is mandatory government retirement at age 60 so that the younger adults can have access to those jobs.

So it’s been a learning process for him as it will be for me soon. School starts on Tuesday –he’s excited. As Samuel said to me this AM-my days are numbered. Next entry will be from Ghana.