Bela Bela

 Bela Bela 

For some months I have been taking Dagbani lessons. I found Dagbani very fascinating, one of the most beautiful thing for me is that is has no gender, words have no feminine neither masculine. 

Learning Dagbani is immersing me in the Dagomba culture, both because my teacher tells me a lot about it and because words in Dagbani are also related to traditions/events. All the words have special meaning and their sentences, most of the time, do not make any sense when translated literally, they gain sense and meaning when put into the Dagomba context. 

For example, to say "how are you?" they say "Ti gbihira?" that translated literally means "how did you sleep?", this is because in the Dagomba culture being able to sleep well is synonym of health and wealth. 

Even though understanding conversations in Dagbani is still far  from my abilities, I'm very grateful because this lessons are giving me the basic knowledge to greet and have small conversations with people, which is very important in society here. People greet each other when they meet on the street even if they don't know each other, and being able to do it make me feel more a local than a stranger. It is almost emotional to me to walk around and speak with my neighbours. 

Something I have learn and I will never forget is "bela bela", which means "small small", living in a city I have grown up surrounded by a society that wants you to react fast, to act fact, to do everything in the fastest way possible, here I learnt that "bela bela" beautiful things can happen. That "bela bela" you can savour things more and also treasure everything that surrounds them and makes them so. "Bela bela" I have been learning Dagbani and shaped my place into this community and I found it beautiful. 

This blog started as a blog to tell about my Dagbani lesson and became way more, exactly as the lessons themselves.