A few pictures

Hey,

Some of these pictures are from a bike ride, some from a workshop, others from my compound and a few from Faar with whom I will write a 'day in the life' post very soon. Enjoy.

Link to pictures (click on me)

Conversations:

Just some of the conversations and events from today, basically an overly indulgent journal entry:

When I woke up this morning (approximately 6 AM) the people in my compound were already up and awake, it’s an odd yet comforting way to start the morning; rising sun, annoying roosters and a smooth and steady swishing sound as one of the women in my compound sweeps away dust and dirt from the day before. I usually lay in bed for a little while trying to regain my orientation, I do a little daydreaming and listen to a little music. Some days I’ll be up at 4, it all depends on the night before. It was a nice surprise when I arrived the other day, Elizabeth had given me a new prayer mat, the old one was too small for me, so she bought me a new one, it was a nice bday gift even if she was unaware of the occasion.

When I got off the floor at around 7am, I sat in my chair (had a carpenter build a table, chair and shelves for me), shaved my head and had a few cigarettes, listened to a little more music and then went to take a bath (nice cold bucket of water in the concrete bathing section). Every morning I come to a sort of standoff with someone in the compound concerning bath water, they sometimes let me fill my bucket (from a refurbished oil drum filled with either rain water or water from a borehole nearby) other times they refuse to allow me to do so. Today a new woman was in the compound, she insisted in some other language and I couldn’t refuse (I’ve gotten decent at rebuttals in Bassare unfortunately this woman was a Konkomba). So she filled my bucket and placed it in the bathing section of the compound. After the usual morning greetings I went to bathe. It’s always fun walking back through the compound, white towel wrapped around my waste, various tattoos poking out from my pasty white skin as if to say hi, they must be lonely underneath my clothing, not partaking in any of the days many greetings. The skull on my forearm has looked a little depressed lately, it must be feeling neglected.

Entering my room and starting to dress I noticed the top of a head bob past my window followed by laughter. There were new kids in the compound (must have come with that insistent woman), I wonder what he saw and why he was laughing. In my defense the water was cold.

I then had my first surprise of the day; in one of my books I found some cash, three Cedis. I don’t remember putting it there. I remember wondering if the family was slyly repaying me the cash I had given them for the room and food, they were pretty adamant about not accepting repayment for what they believed to be a Christian duty and somehow a blessing.

I packed up my laptop, notebook, cell phone and other random office related items and tried to sneak out the door. Elizabeth has been bugging me to wash my book bag for a while, to be honest the thing was getting kind of dirty and is falling apart. It’s been on my back from here to Tamale a few times, both while bicycling and by tro-tro. The last time I came back from Tamale (two nights ago) I traveled in the back of a pickup truck with 21 other adults and three babies. It was an interesting trip. Ghanaian Sardines, three rows of us basically sitting on one another's lap. After repacking my things into a rubber (polyethylene bag) and giving Elizabeth my book bag I remembered the green peppers and carrots I had picked up in Tamale and I gave her those. She responded by giving me this marvelous orange fruit that I’ve never seen before, she said it was coco. Supposedly one cuts the fruit open and chews on the seeds, she described it as being like toffee.

After the surprise exchange of gifts I jumped on my bicycle and headed towards town, I had travelled around 5 feet before my tire deflated. That bike has been through a lot, maybe it needs some attention, it’s starting to groan and moan and might need new bearings. I don’t think it imagined itself being road through Northern Ghana by a crazy white man, I wonder if it misses Asia, longs for its friends. At least it will be able to brag about its adventure if it ever makes it home again. Do bicycles see the Michelin tire man on their death bed, do they dream of a new pair of brake pads and lubricant, do they lust after unicycles?

Walking through the other homes before reaching the street I had my third surprise of the day, a girl came my way and started lifting up her shirt (she is homeless and not entirely there, the people in the District take care of her decently well, every now and again she’ll approach me while I’m eating on the roadside and do something interesting). My eyes were instantly on the ground, as I quickly made my way onto the main street.

The roads in Kpandai Town have had asphalt for over a month, at least 3km in a straight line through the town. One can see the wear and tear tolled out by Ghanaian weather, the gutters are filled with mud from a recent downpour, and the road is starting to fall apart as one hits the curb. The roads here are under a lot of pressure, the torrential rains, the trucks filled with what must be 5-10,000 yams, the pickups with over 20 people in the back, plus a few on top. I’d say this is one of the only places I’ve ever been where owning a hummer would be justified; unfortunately they seem to be built for the people who need them least.

Walking down the main road towards my office for the first time in two weeks I found myself in a constant and seemingly never ending conversation, one person after another greeting me and welcoming me home. It was a good run, I knew at least a third of them and the adults were intermingled with a group of primary children who must have been on their way to class, cute little buggers in their matching uniforms.

I made my usual stop for egg and bread at Kpandi’s stand (he is from my family, the one non-Christian of the group having converted to Islam at an early age). We have a routine, I arrive in the morning groggy and discombobulated, he fixes me a nice egg and bread with nescafe, provides a few interesting anecdotes and I leave prepared for the morning. I had brought a few green peppers for him, he usually refuses my money when I return or am leaving Kpandai for Tamale, I pay him back by bringing in whatever I can, usually Jam or Veggies.

I remember talking to someone a few days ago about the limitations in my daily interactions, how I’ve never spoken to a Ghanaian female my own age while in Kpandai. Low and behold surprise number four; a beautiful stranger walks over and sits down. She was from The Upper West region, here in Kpandai to do research for her final project at UDS (University of Development Studies in Wa), she had been researching gender equity in the education system and was with a group of students from UDS who were all researching an aspect of development or human rights in Kpandai. We talked for a while and to be honest I was feeling pretty awkward, having just complained about the lack of such a situation I found myself speaking with a beautiful Ghanaian woman of a similar age. Maybe it’s the awkwardness I miss? She told me the office was empty, with almost everyone attending a Muslim naming session for the recently created child of one of my co-workers. I got my Nescafe and egg and bread to go and headed towards the office once again. I wish they would pack drinks in plastic bags in Canada, much more fun and compared to the ridiculous bottling we tote around not that bad for the environment. Of course you’d have to recycle the baggies and not burn them like they do here.

As I arrived at the office I found she was telling the truth, not a soul to be found. To make things worse the door to my office was locked and someone had taken the spare key from the main office. So I sat upstairs in the main office and ate my breakfast. I then did a little work, tried to figure out what I’d do in an empty office and decided against having a one man dance party.

So I made my way back to the compound to rest for a while and wait things out, I had no clue where the naming ceremony was taking place and everyone must have had their cells turned off at the moment. When I arrived back at the compound I explained my situation to Elizabeth and found that she had taken my dirty clothing from the room and had already started washing it. It’s funny, sometimes it feels wrong having someone else do your laundry, I remember a day probably one month ago, work was extremely stressful, we were in full flight with the DWSP and I hadn’t washed my clothing in over a week. I came back from the office exhausted, and having missed the nights meal I slunk to my room to sleep the stress off. When presto: fresh clean clothing ironed and laid out on my shelves and a pot filled with rice and tomato/hot pepper stew, with two not one BIG pieces of chicken. Didn’t know whether to have a one man dance party or eat. Choose to eat. Same thing today, I sometimes make a big deal out of washing my own clothing, getting my own water or picking up after myself, other times you can’t help but shut up and be grateful. This is one of those times.

I sprawled out on my new prayer mat, noticed that Elizabeth must have washed my bed net while I was away, the thing is once again white and not the brownish color I had left it in. She had even sewn closed the holes, I personally thought the duct tape was a nice touch but it does look better sewn. It didn’t take long for me to pass out, slept till around 10:30 am when the sixth surprise of the day, Ahmed is back! Which is probably the best news I’d had in a while. I had called him that morning but hadn’t received a response, Ahmed had been at our Finance Officers naming ceremony, must have been interesting for Ahmed as he just had his first child a few weeks ago.

I noticed a missed call, must have slept through it. It was from one of the long term volunteers here with EWB, he was checking in on me. I quickly explained that I hadn’t started with any of my three objectives at the office because it was vacant, but surprise surprise Ahmed is back, which means things are going to happen. I quickly dressed, repacked my rubber and headed back to the office.

I met Ahmed about half way; after about a dozen more greetings I noticed someone was beeping their horn at me (I sometimes wander around not noticing where I’m going, good thing the office is almost a straight line away from my compound, lucky I’ve not ended up in another District while riding my bike, well, that’s only happened once but that’s a different post, ever bike through Northern Ghana at 9pm without a bicycle light? Wasn’t intentional, that’s all I’ll say). Ahmed was heading to his quarters on motor cycle to pick up a few documents. We went our separate ways. That’s a common theme out here, meeting and greeting someone then going off on your own path. Every time you walk down the street you’ll bump into one person or another, sometimes the only chance you have to get work done is to wander around the office or main road and look for the person you want to work with. One never truly knows what is happening in the District, it’s an odd system of communication which requires that you be in the right time at the right place in order to keep on top of things. Some mornings I’ll show up at the office and find it vacant, only to later learn everyone is attending some workshop or another, they themselves only having learnt of the workshop at 4am that morning.

Sitting in the office waiting for Ahmed, I noticed that our ceiling fan had disappeared, the AC unit on the wall wasn’t working and the room was quite stuffy. We must have had another power surge, the electricians out here don’t install circuit breakers, a few weeks ago one of our computers was fried. I’ve tried to explain the concept of using fuses to protect from these constant surges, it only costs a few Cedis to protect expensive equipment, unfortunately the electrician doesn’t want to be told how to do his job, I can’t really blame him. It’s odd, the power lines seem to be added and added to the grid, I don’t know if anyone is taking into consideration the effect this has on the system, hopefully someone at the power company is taking note and has a plan…

After Ahmed came back we got to work. Kpandai will be undergoing an assessment fairly soon, the FOAT (Functional Organizational Assessment Tool) is done in all Districts in Ghana, it is a program of partnership between Donors and the Government of Ghana, over a three day period, November 7-9^th our office will be assessed. They will be looking for documents recording almost every aspect of functionality, from the minutes and attendance of meetings to updated quarterly reports on expenditures and tender documents for projects in the District. If a District passes the basic requirements they are given a certain percentage of a big pot of capital, then after the basic requirements they are assessed on performance indicators, the higher they score the more money they receive. Kpandai is a new District, but the officers in this district are extremely capable and professional, the only problem is making sure everything is properly signed, in the right form and easily accessible. We went through the list of requirements, discussed our status on each one and tried to figure out where we should be focusing our attention. It is always interesting talking to Ahmed about the District, he has a complete understanding of the work being done in the District and without him I think the District would be strong but severely lacking, he seems to tie everyone together. We had Kenke for lunch and I consumed far too much hot pepper sauce. Spent the next couple hours running back and forth to the washroom (love this office, two flush toilets!). After piecing together a few documents with him I went home for the day.

After arriving back from work at 5:30 I began writing, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything online and I felt like writing. So I started “The Upswing” and “DWSP:” and after sitting in the room for about an hour I heard a knock on my door. It was Faar letting me know that the TZ was hot and ready to go. Tonight was a treat, I hadn’t had decent TZ in almost two weeks, it’s odd how much of an appetite someone can develop for such food. Faar has been doing well in school, he’s a bright kid, speaks French, English, Bassare, Konkomba, Nawurri and probably a few other languages. I remember seeing him late last night studying outside, he was reading about mercury thermometers, I told him that Mercury was a poison, he laughed but will likely trust me (hopefully). Sometimes when we are finished eating he’ll start telling wild stories, I can never tell if these stories are first person or some random tale passed between the children, sometimes I hear them outside the compound recounting some bizarre event and laughing manically. Tonight he was telling me about a mystery lizard, I had asked him why the Bassare were afraid of salamanders, we switched to chameleons, then to a mystery lizard that was somewhere between a Labrador dog and crocodile in length. He told me that as a child in Togo he had captured and killed two of them, once while returning from the farm he found a mystery lizard crossing his path, chased it down and beat it to death with a stick, the other time returning from school he chased one into the hollow of a tree where it lodged it’s upper body leaving its hind legs exposed and then beat it to death with a stick. I was a bit skeptical about this lizard, I’ve seen many things in Kpandai and on the road to Tamale, I’ve seen a weird squirrel like animal (grass cutter), I’ve seen some extremely odd birds (one red bird with a tail at least 5 times its body length, another with an odd metallic shine on its body), I’ve seen chameleons, black and green snakes but I haven’t seen a dog sized lizard. So we involved the whole family in the discussion and after some moderate disagreement a length and size was agreed upon. They are around 3 feet long, can swim decently fast, have an extremely powerful tail and taste grrreat! He promised to take me to the families garden where they sometimes encounter these mystery lizards.

At the end of our chat he asked when I’d be leaving Ghana, told me he thought I had gone for good when I hadn’t shown up the week earlier (I went to Tamale for the Data Management workshop, stayed longer to sort my head out), told me that he was going to miss me when I leave. I’ll only be here for another month and a half, that’s not a lot of time, there are so many things I have yet to do out here, so much work to be done, so many experiences to have, so many new animals and reptiles to eat.

After supper I decided to take another bath, I find that out here one needs to scrub down twice, once in the morning and once before hitting the hay. If you don’t clean off after a day in this sun you can feel the accumulated grim all over your body, makes it hard to fall asleep. This time they let me fill my bucket.

After washing off the day’s grime and redressing (making sure to wear a tshirt and shorts so my tattoos could breath) I began a conversation with Elizabeth, it was during this conversation that I brought up the mystery money which had appeared in one of my books, she explained that since she wasn’t the government she wouldn’t chop my money, she had found it in the room while putting the new mat in and stuck it in one of my books. We ended up having quite an animated discussion on snow and the concept of a snow storm. Turns out she knew exactly what I was talking about, during the Dry Season and more specifically during the Harmattan; when the wind blows strongly and the air is so dry your skin cracks open they have sand storms in Kpandai so thick you cannot see two feet in front of you, from there my explanation of a snow storm wasn’t hard for her to understand. It’s funny, she has a very limited English vocabulary but I find her to be one of the easiest people to understand over here. It says something that a Togolese woman who hadn’t finished junior high can explain almost anything to me using hand gestures, a few words and appropriate pauses in her speech. Makes me a bit ashamed of my own communication skills, and if you’ve made it to the end of this posting you probably understand why.

A recount of the day:

Surprise 1: Mystery Cash: turns out to just be a simple good deed. To “chop” in a Ghanaian context either means to eat, e.g. you go to a chop bar for TZ or FuFu or to cut a little money from the top. It is a practice one hears of constantly when working in the District. People justify it by saying the government does it, so why can’t they?

Surprise 2: Mystery Fruit, anyone know what to do with an orange fruit that supposedly has toffee like seeds? Well, besides eating it?

Surprise 3: In a Ghanaian context to “Flash” someone means to call them on your cell phone and hang up before they have answered. You do this when low on credit or if you are calling a rich white friend.

Surprise 4: Oh beautiful stranger, where have you been for the past five months? How hard will it be for me to re-integrate into the Canadian culture, where communication between a male and female is constant and doesn’t mean marriage? It’d be hard to say I’ll be more awkward when approaching the finer half of our species, as if such a thing could happen.

Surprise 5: Clean clothing and bed net. Sometimes you’ve just got to shut up and be grateful…

Surprise 6: Return of the wayward son. Life approaches normality with the return of my Planning Officer.

Update on Kpante and some random things.

Update on Kpante (thought it was Banti, then Kpanti, now once again revising the spelling):

He’s back in the compound, sits in a chair at the far side (away from my room). He has a voracious appetite, has movement over most of his body(saw him walking around, held by the elderly woman he calls Auntie) and is finally smiling. In fact he is back to his usual mischievous self; ordering everyone around in Bassare like a miniature dictator, Auntie more food! Faar fetch me the puppy (family has a new dog named Jack), Auntie I want yam slices! etc.. Wabodam is back in business and the compound is a better place due to it. I only wonder now, since the initial scare is over what actions will be taken by the family?

So now on to some sights and sounds of Kpandai:

Ate my first rat today; it was in the soup. Having TZ and groundnut soup with Faar, it was actually agushi very similar to ground nut. We had finished off the bowl of TZ when Faar started talking about eating rats, said the flesh was delicious and that he had eaten several. Not knowing where the conversation was going I asked if he had eaten dog meat, he stated that they are too much like humans (on that note I have to agree with Faar; they listen when you speak, have a similar face and I’ve always wondered about the way a dogs eyes speak, if we have souls wouldn’t they? I remember asking as a child if my dogs would go to heaven, I couldn’t understand why people would be allowed eternal bliss when a much more deserving soul would simply cease to exist.)Then it was time to eat the meat, it looked like they had cooked up some fish, I could see a ribcage, so I took a piece and chewed, tasted more of chicken than fish. So I asked what it was, he said rat. So I finished what I had taken and tried to explain that where I grew up rats are considered too filthy to eat, that it’s a taboo. The Bassare won’t eat Crocodile, but rats are fine. So we finished the rat, I ate sparingly. To be honest the meat was fine, the soup was piping hot when it arrived but it just felt weird eating a rat. I don’t know what kind of procedures one would have to go through in order to properly prepare a rat for eating, I don’t think the plague is alive here in Ghana, don’t think you can get rabies from eating flesh that had been boiled. Time will tell.

The Latrine in our compound is a mosquito breeding zone. I opened up the door the other night and had to spit a few mosquitoes out of my mouth. I have to hand it to them, it was a smart place to breed. Are you going to hold it in? That’s nearly impossible; when you’ve got to go you’ve got to go, do not trust your bowels or bladder out here. Or will you allow your rear end to turn into a pin cushion? I tried emptying an eighth of my last bottle of mosquito repellent into the room and went to work. It’s unnerving though, there were just too damn many, they swarm out of the hole at a steady stream and I could feel them bouncing off my underside. I can handle the cockroaches, the occasional tickle from an antenna doesn’t bother me when compared to a malaria infected promiscuous entering a no enter zone. Such is life. It’s interesting, working on the WatSan plan for Kpandai, less than 4% of the over 110,000 people living here have access to even a latrine. You have to be careful walking around at night, never know what it is your splashing on yourself. Now, please don’t take this as an indication of the cleanliness of the people of Kpandai, the women here keep things to an almost obsessive compulsive level of cleanliness. It is simply a matter of materials, how are you going to build a latrine when the ground is too hard to dig through, where are you going to get the cement for the shed? For some it is a matter of why would they bother with a latrine when the rain takes the feces away? Anyways enough of fecal talk.

“She didn’t make me up”. Oddest phrase I’ve ever heard came from one of my co-workers mouth. It was early in the am (about 7), we were both in the office early to finish up some work. He was referring to an encounter he had with a Peace Corps volunteer in the District. We had bumped into her and a friend a few days earlier, they had been introduced, she is working at the only senior high school in the District, he had gone there to pick up his transcript from the head master. I hadn’t had my Nescafe that morning, and was groggy from a lack of sleep. “I went to get my transcript, I saw your friend and she didn’t make me up”. I stared at him open mouth for a few minutes, his English is clear, he is a well educated and intelligent individual. Was he trying to mess with me? Sometimes he’ll start speaking to me in one of the dozen or so languages he knows, I’ll reply in broken French or Spanish just to aggravate him. After about five more minutes of conversation I finally realized he wasn’t messing with me, he was in fact saying that my friend did not recognize him from their earlier meeting. He says it’s a common phrase here in Ghana, that it is accepted English used by university professors and included in their English books. He didn’t understand “to make someone out in a crowd”, he didn’t understand the concept of imaginary people. It’s just one of those odd colloquialisms one has to accept, but probably the most confusing one I’ve ever encountered.

What’s with all the babies? I’ve been offered quite a variety of child brides since the beginning of my placement. I find it unnerving being offered a female child, there are so many things wrong with the situation. Makes you wonder about the Catholic priests who came here about 20 years ago, everyone calls me father and they offer up their youngest children for companionship. Maybe I look like a pedophile? It’s supposed to be a sign of deep respect, some people here say it is a traditionalist belief, Ahmed said it was Muslim. If you’re given a child bride you can oversee their development into a good wife. I think it comes from the mothers desire for their child to have a better life, I don’t understand it, I am not capable of understanding it. Maybe they believe that a white man can provide more for their daughter than they ever could. Maybe the women don’t love their children, a child can be a huge burden. Regardless of whether it comes from love, or out of a lack of love it happens. The worst case was on the 15hr bus ride to Accra, I was sitting with a Dagomba Woman, her child and the child’s Aunt. The kid was adorable, huge happy and curious eyes. Sometimes the kids here will take one look at you and start screaming, sobbing until you leave. Other kids throw rocks at you (only happened once), but this baby was pure curiosity. At around the 10hr mark the conversation I was having with this woman turned from general stuff, where you from, what are you doing in Ghana, to “Melanie will make a good wife for you, take her back to Canada”. I don’t know if she was messing with me, to be truthful it’s probably funny watching a white man squirm. Things went from weird; ohh look your wife made a poo poo. To disturbing, holding the child up and bouncing it on her lap “Do you want to go to Canada with your husband” giggle giggle giggle, “you’d make a good wife wouldn’t you” giggle giggle giggle. The episode sent me into warp speed culture shock, trying to figure out what in the world would cause a woman to offer up her child. I just couldn’t figure it out, had a bit of a panic attack and hit the bottle as soon as we got off of that bus. Other times being offered a baby is just funny, I was at the inauguration of an EU built school in Chakorie, there were ‘traditional dances’, music and home brewed moonshine. After the end of one dance a group of women came over to me and thrust out a child wrapped in a huge white cloth, I shook my head and laughed, they laughed. Maybe it’s just to make the white man squirm. I wonder what they’d of done if I took the baby? Maybe I’ll try it sometime.

On either side of my office one can see rubble which is the result of an overly high level of precipitation, which lead to flooding, flash flooding and subsequently the displacement of many Kpandai natives. While I was away to Tamale Kpandai had a record level rain fall, one of the area councils, Nkanchina was hit extremely hard, I’ve yet to make my way out there, hoping to do so tomorrow. They said it’s the first time on record for something like this. The buildings that once stood next door appeared to be strong, they were brick with steel roofs. All around Kpandai Town one can see caved in buildings. Not sure what to say about it. I was told the water was almost 4 feet high and flowing fast in some parts not sure how high it was or how strong it was, all I know is that it decimated part of Nkanchina.

Kpanti (pronounced Banti)

Hey everyone, I’ve got some questions for you concerning the level of involvement a volunteer should take with the people in his host community.
First off an explanation of the situation which has been pre-occupying my mind for the past two and a half weeks, it’s not a pleasant one:

There is a seven year old in my compound named Kpanti(I had spoken briefly of him a while back). His is an orphan that my host family took in a few years ago. His father has rejected him, his mother passed away over 5 years ago from an unknown disease. He was a sick child, this year was supposed to be his first in school; but he missed the majority of class due to illness. He does not speak English, is slowly learning Bassare (host families language) and yet everyone understands him, including me. That’s because he is a natural comedian (the family calls him “Wabodam”, which translates into “Mad Man”), his behavior is slightly odd, but in a slapstick kind of way he keeps spirits at the compound going strong.

When I arrived in Kpandai after seeing most of the JF’s off (myself and Stacey Gomez, a MoFA volunteer have had our placements extended by 4 months, the rest have gone back to Canada) I found out that Kpanti had been brought to the clinic with an extreme fever a few days earlier. His face had swollen shut and he was delirious. When I went to see him for the first time (the night of my arrival), he looked like death. His face had gone down to almost normal size but he couldn’t open his mouth, couldn’t speak and couldn’t eat. His right side was completely paralyzed, and he could barely move his left hand (the only thing he did when I saw him was try to rip the tube out of his nose). He was convulsing, still had a serious fever and cried when they tried to sit him up to spoon feed him juice.

In Kpandai there are no doctors. No doctors for 100,000 people. Half a dozen underequipped ‘medical assistants’ do what they can, and assisted by the nurses in the District they handle themselves fairly well, all things considered. A trip to Tamale or Accra for medical treatment is rare; it’s expensive and takes a properly timed response to the first signs of a serious illness. The last time I returned from a major EWB gathering I found that one of the girls in my compound had passed away without warning (she was always crying and rarely healthy so it wasn’t completely without warning). She was a Togolese infant here with her mother (an interesting woman), older sister (who only started smiling a week after the little sister had passed, before that she was timid and always frowning) and their drunk of a father who was working on my host families’ farm. They didn’t response quick enough and the girl died, no-one knows what killed her. When I got off the metro mass and walked into the compound the entire family was sitting on two wooden benches and some plastic chairs watching crappy western movies. They did that and only that for a few days.

I am writing this in Tamale (here for another EWB meeting), Kpanti has been at the clinic for over two weeks. I stopped visiting him a couple days before I left. I couldn’t look into his eyes; they were too intense. I believe he was embarrassed to have me see him in that situation, having me show up probably changed the way the family behaved towards him. It just stopped feeling appropriate for me to be there. The family told me he has regained some feeling in his left side and begun communicating with movements. They were hoping to bring him home from the Clinic, he was apparently requesting a bowl of TZ.

I have pushed for his transportation to Tamale, the capital city of the Northern region so he can check into a proper hospital. Of course he would have to be well enough to travel, and the money for his transportation and medical bills would have to be provided. This is where I came in, and my question about the level of involvement a volunteer should have in these types of situations. I gave them a chunk of my stipend and intend on giving them more, I do however have some reservations concerning such actions as they may create a situation I cannot handle financially and emotionally. If he passes away what will my role become; will I be held accountable if something goes awry at the hospital I transported him to? If he continues to approve, will I be looked at as the person who can provide the financial backing when someone in my community falls ill? If he continues to improve but requires specific medical treatment who will be expected to provide that treatment?

I recall a story from a friend here, he is a carrier for the sickle cell deformity(AS), and his cousin is a patient(SS). Her treatment costs upwards of 30,000 New Ghana Cedis a year. She is alive due to her father’s position as a doctor in Britain; I am incapable of providing such support. No-one in Kpanti’s life is capable of providing such support, but something needs to be done. He’s had a shitty life for a seven year old, and I can easily do without a chunk of my stipend as it doesn’t put me in any danger (EWB gives us quite a bit). But even so, as I take this level of involvement I risk the possibility of becoming ostracized in the community and ruining my placement, which means ruining the possibility of assisting in the betterment of the lives of many people in the District, not just one boy or one family. But that doesn’t seem to matter as much, his condition is more urgent and worrying about such things seems petty given the situation. I’m not a doctor; I don’t know what is going on with him. Speaking of it with my sister in Canada it seems most likely that he has Cerebral Malaria and that once his fever has dissipated he is in the clear, his paralysis may or may not lift but he will survive. But what about HIV? His mother died of god knows what; all anyone says is that she was a wild woman who died a horrible death. I want to have him tested, I want to help him obtain proper treatment but how much should I get involved?

How much would you get involved? Where would you draw the line? What is that line based on? What factors would you consider?

It’s hard to behave logically when you see a small child basically rotting to death in a run-down clinic. Laying there helpless as he is pumped full of random drugs by people without the proper medical training to deal with such situations. That’s where my head has been for the past while, when I am at work my mind is focused, when I am at the compound his absence is apparent.

New pictures

I'll post a proper update soon, I promise. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so maybe these will make up for my month long delay in posting. Enjoy.

Pictures



And, as a bonus I've included the presentation my DCD did on the first four months of my placement

small small pic

So I actually got to farm, lasted for around seven hours. I was weeding a field before they planted maize. It was fun, my left hand was eaten up by the hoe, the family was impressed but won't let me farm again (they hadn't seen blisters before). These pics are from the farming session, Kpandai and from my trip down to the River Otis (through Nkanchina). They are low res, but the connection here is starting to bug out, plus it is getting towards curfew time here in Tamale (no EWBers out past 10pm).

Enjoy

Road to Tamale

Note: this is a pretty fractured telling of my trip from Kpandai to Tamale, some notes were taken on the road, most were added today(three days after the trip). I’ve got some decent pictures, hopefully they will upload from this cafe. I may have messed my camera up trying to take a video during a storm, I’m probably going to bike back tomorrow morning, I’ll try to get some better pictures this time around, but won’t be able to share them as I’ll be in Kpandai till the week I leave Ghana(August 20ish), although my departure date is up in the air right now, I may stay until Dec…

Piktures pretty disappointing, low quality and only from the first half of the voyage. Lost the stuff from when the storm began, camera is working spotty right now.

It’s 3:56 am, I’m about to depart, 42 miles to Salaga, 72 Miles from Salaga to Tamale. Should be an interesting trek. Listening to “Fat Time” by Miles Davis, eating fresh groundnut paste(PB my family made for me, haha Canada!), and enjoying a cigarette while sipping some Nescafe instant coffee. Mmmmmm. Why am I doing this? Mostly to see. My bike rides through Kpandai have shown me a lot of the district, given me a way to relax and sweat out some of that infernal palm oil they literally soak food in over here (not complaining, just a bid hard on the arteries). The mosque is doing it’s thing, the roosters are once again pleading with the world to show them a greater purpose. Poor bastards.

1 false dead end: after biking in the dark for almost 2 hrs I suddenly felt lost. I hadn’t seen many people and it was still before sunrise. I took out my map and checked for any possible false turns. I didn’t know what community I was in, couldn’t find a sign. I pushed on, the road seemed straight, but there weren’t any people to ask. I came to a dead end. There was an opening, the road stopped, there was a clearing(looked like a yam field) and I almost ran into a group sheep just relaxing on the road. I cursed the sheep, took a picture and returned the way I went. I finally found a person on the road, they understood “Salaga” and pointed me back towards the dead end. The sun had started to rise as I approached the dead end sheep, and much to my surprise I found them to simply be resting on a raise in the road. Laughing at my self and breathing a sigh of relief I began my journey again.

14 water satchels (seven ltrs of water):even with this much water I constantly felt dehydrated. When I got into Tamale I drank at least 5 ltrs more, barely urinated during the day or the next morning.

3 Minerals (two sprite, one coke): I consume more pop out here than in Canada.

1 Egg and Bread: during my stop in Salaga.

2 Double Nescafe’s with cream and sugar, one in the am, one in Salaga.

1 bag of chips (cookie like things my host family gave me)

10 or so spoonfuls of groundnut paste: perfect way to start a morning.

1 Feral Cow: Ninja jungle cows.

1 speed bike: My bike is strong!! I had brought the bike back to my fixer three days in a row, working out the kinks. Ended up getting a welder to do some work on the back axle. I love these Asian bikes, they’d be perfect for city driving, slim tires, one speed. It’s even got a disk breaking system for the back tire.

3 minor crashes, it’s hard biking while talking on a cell phone, or having a conversation with a motorcycle driver and navigating a dirt road.

12:13 am, taking a break under a tree, next to a big pile of cow droppings. Ever hear of a feral cow? They exist!! So far I’ve seen three herds of cows (one heard appeared to be oxen or maybe cows on steroids), even saw a brown cow all by itself, grazing in the woods. I’ve been travelling for around 8 hours now, only a few minor muscle cramps and spasms. I ran out of water about 2 hours ago, got so thirsty I considered drinking some of the brown water conveniently placed in delicious looking pools by the side of the road, it looked like chocolate milk, maybe a gift from the brown cow? Who knows, I ended up going to a market and picking up some satchels, all better now. The most interesting thing I’ve seen so far was back in Kpandai district (in Balai), it was around 6:40ish (I’ll have to check the time stamp on my pictures) next to a pretty well built bridge. Approaching the bridge I could see around 10 females gathering water, when I got to the other side I saw around 40 or 50 girl child and elderly woman all balancing huge bowls of water on their head. I would have taken a picture, but to be honest I don’t agree with snapping people without their permission, hate it when it is done to me, not my right to do it to someone else. You’ll have to take my word for it, it was surreal. I’m about 70 Miles in, the road was paved for around 10 miles after Salaga (capital of East Gonja District), and sometime soon it will be paved again, hopefully the last 30 Miles go quickly.

1 Village Chief: at around the 8 hr mark I took a break to work out a cramp in my thigh I sat down, sparked up and took out my laptop for a music break (sooooo important to have music, I have been lending my mp3 player to the DPO for his trips to Tamale, would have been great to have with me, if you’re ever in Ghana bring as much music as you can, share with everyone you can, I’ll have to write a post on music, they don’t do traditional in my District except for weddings and funerals, but man do I have a lot to say about culture and music). After sitting there for around 5 minutes a farmer came out from a field. We chatted for a while and exchanged numbers. He claimed to be a village chief and the conversation gravitated around hunting feral cows, sheep and what he was farming. Told me a great story about how he was in the Jungle hunting feral cows, saw these bright shining eyes and fired away, ended up with two Feral cows. They cut the tails off and bring them home, the meat is supposed to be delicious. It was a great conversation, wish I could have chatted longer(maybe I’ll pass by his village on the way back). We were interrupted by a group of Fulani women, they offered me some raw goat cheese, it looked delicious, but probably would have killed me. When I departed the Farmers friend(small boy, about 13) followed me for a few Km.

1 Intense storm: Approaching the last major village before Tamale(was on asphalt at this point, about 40 miles left to go) I saw some angry looking clouds, even angrier sounding thunder (gunshot lighting, ground shaking roars, f**king awesome storms in Ghana). I was actually hoping for rain on the trip, it brings the temperature down by at least 10C, first you get a slow cool breeze, then the temperature drops, then you get a hurricane like wind(I’m assuming that is what it is like) and all of a sudden, BANG side ways rain and you’re soaked in 30 seconds.

1 Soaked/spoilt digital camera: I was taking video as I approached the village on my bike, the wind got so strong I had to walk, my camera got soaked and the best video I had from the entire trip is nowhere to be found. I’m pretty pissed(which is why I am planning on going back to Kpandai tomorrow morning by bike).

1 hour of shelter provided by a Ghanaian family: When the rain starts to come, before the harsh wind all the Ghanaians disappear, it takes about 5 minutes and you’re in a ghost town. I was trying to walk forward through the storm when a woman ran out and motioned for me to come with her. They brought me into their hut and offered me some porridge. It was a lot of fun, I was soaked to the bone but felt warm. One of them(the woman who ‘rescued’ me) spoke english, so we sat and chatted. They had a baby with them, usually the babies cry or scream when they see me (not just me, they scream at the sight of any white person) but this one giggled. It was a pretty cool overall.

1 Marriage proposal: the only bad part of my 1hour stay with the family was caused by a pushy Ghanaian. He came over and basically harassed me, trying to show off for the women. He ended up trying to marry the english speaking woman off to me. Pushy bastard. I was glad when he left.

1 Change of clothing: Stripped naked during a storm. After I left the hut and got out of the community(it was still raining) I found a tree and stripped down, took me about 5 minutes, my body was frozen and getting my legs through the shorts was a task.

1 Motorcycle dealer; I met a parts dealer on the way, he seemed to be quite well off, with a main office in Tamale plus several branches in other communities. He was returning from his weekly rounds to the markets, dropping of parts and checking in on his staff. He drove beside me for about 20 minutes, just chatting away. He said he loved travelling on the road, never knew who he would meet. Offered me a free moto whenever I was in Tamale(which I had to decline due to EWB policy on motorcycle use by JFs.)

1 serving of watchie (beans, rice, noodles topped with hot peppers). The rain picked up again about an hour after I left Kpelbe, I ended up taking cover and grabbing a bite to eat. This was closer to Tamale, so the people were less friendly.

1 pack of cigarettes: These things are rough on the body, going to have to quit soon. I found an a street vendor(had a shop) around 30Km from Tamale, chatted with him for around 20 minutes. We talked of his family (they were Dagomba, long lineage in the Tamale area), spoke of Accra and how intense and overwhelming it is. Chatted about Canada. He told me about a local school that had been built by a bunch of foreigners, they came over here and laid the brick by hand. Doing all the work themselves, and now they send over a group every summer. Walking through the community, keeping tabs on its development and maintaining the school(which was supposed to be quite impressive). He was pretty old, almost senile, forgot to give me my change(which was fine by me), gave me a box of matches with super Mario on the front. Pretty cool dude.

1 French Fulani (Burkina Bay): I can speak colloquial French, who’d of thought it? Somewhere between the 25 and 23 km markers before Tamale I was joined by a Fulani returning from a near by market. He was selling rubber slippers for 3 Cedis a pop (kind of expensive). We talked about Canada, what he had seen on television; big houses, green pastures, etc. He explained using hand gestures, Franglaise, and the occasional animal call that he was a Sheppard who lived near by and had come over from Burkina Faso. He spoke of his family, having moved to Ghana with his father, and spoke of the poor sales from his market. The Fulani are interesting, they usually are hired to herd cattle. Doing the community action plans(development plans for communities, outlining the problems they are experiencing) it is common to see “Fulani stealing cattle” as a huge problem, I think it is bs, these people get a bad rap. They have no homeland, they are true nomads, rarely educated but seem to serve a purpose in the lands they occupy. But really, what the hell do I know?

15.5 Hours of travel: Left at 4:15am, arrived in Tamale at 7:45pm. Sunrise to sunset.

6 hours of rain: I was hoping for a light rinse, I ended up with constant downpour.

1000 Smiles: they declined in intensity the closer I got to Tamale, people really seemed to get a kick out of an Ebroni travelling through their village on a one speed. The smiles I received felt genuine and I had no problem returning them. It was kind of fun, I started experimenting with my greetings, sometimes bowing low over the handlebars to show respect (works great with the groups of women), sometimes trying out my limited Twi, Basare or Dagbani, interchanging my broken greetings based on the area I found myself in. Man I haven’t smiled that much while sober before. I felt like I was at my sisters wedding, everyone was somehow a friend.

So why did I do it? I wanted to see a bit more of Northern Ghana. I wanted to know what it is like to bike to Tamale (it is rarely done, but what if you had to do it?). I needed the exercise, and wanted the experience, it is pretty simple.

When I was around 30 or so Km from Tamale some of my co-workers passed by in car. They backed up the vehicle and offered me a lift (insisted on one). I explained to them that I had to finish, I couldn't explain why but they understood. One thing about these overseas placements is that things don't ever finish properly, you never get what you want, you never see drastic impact. It's tough stuff, seeing so much and being helpless (aren't we supposed to be the liberators with our landcruisers, bank accounts and M&E requirements?). I suppose I wanted to see at least one thing through to the end before I go back to Canada, it was in my control. I wanted to bike to Tamale. So I finished. I almost cried when I saw the lights of Tamale (not really, but yeah kind of), my legs were cramping (for the last 20 km I would bike for 2km then walk for 10minutes, wash rinse repeat), I was almost passing out as I rode. It is silly, it was just a bike ride, but it was a great experience and I was able to finish something I started.

Random Things

 

I’m in Tamale again, this time it is an unscheduled visit(I posted last week using a cellular device my EWB coach brought to Kpandai). I got pretty sick over the weekend, extreme pains in the right abdominal muscles, constriction of the throat, trouble breathing and one hell of a fever. The doctor in Kpandai suggested pneumonia, my coach half suggested, half forced me to come to Kpandai to visit a 'hospital. So I now have some pretty strong anti-biotics running through my system, the first dose was in Kpandai: I’ve never before had a reaction to needles, but having an injection forced into ones thigh turned out to be my breaking point (or close to it). One for each leg the nurse literally forced what must have been 60ml of fluid into each quad, deep into the muscle. Almost puked, almost fainted, took about 10 minutes to get to my feet. Still walking funny two days later, but what the hell it appears to have worked. I’m about to head to Tamale to try to get some work done, I’ll post again in around 10 days when I am scheduled to be here again. There are two items in this posting, one finished(killed me first snake ma, you proud?), the second is how can it be possible for a westerner to accurately perceive and convey the message of poverty. If I have time during the week I’ll do up a proper part 2. it’s been something bothering me since I arrived, if I don’t have time you’ll be left with a simple outline. Sorry, the internet connection is somewhere between dial up and smoke signal in speed and I’ve got a bus to catch, I’ll stick up a picture of a dead snake and some more words in a week.

 

1.) Green Mambo

I killed my first snake a couple of weeks ago(didn’t mention it in the last posts), I had gone home from work to take a break, and felt a pull towards the toilet (this pull being almost as constant as gravity), I was at the government bungalow which is equipped with a lovely flush toilet enclosed in a concrete structure. I opened the door and saw a meter long bright green tail swish through the water and disappear into the holding tank hole. I decided to take a leak(the need to urinate was stronger than any fear, the fear probably adding to my need to urinate). Out of curiosity I flushed the toilet on my way out and sure enough a 1.5 meter snake came out with the water. I slammed the door and shuttled out to find some assistance, glad that I had chosen to urinate before flushing the snake out.

So Theo and I (Theo being an interesting character, Theo is doing his national service in Kpandai having finished his studies in Business) went back to the toilet and tried to find the snake, it was no-where to be seen. So I flushed the toilet again, low and behold an angry Green Mambo came flying out, Theo went running screaming loudly, I almost lost it, couldn’t control the giggling (maybe it’s part of the culture shock, but an apparently lethal snake seemed absurd at the time, maybe I’m just stupid, who knows. It was funny to see a grown Ghanaian man scream). When we had regrouped (he went about 50 meters behind the toilet, I went out in front) he explained to me how dangerous the snake was.

We decided to kill it, how could we in good conscience leave a poisonous snake in the toilet for someone else to discover? What a pleasant surprise? Our plan was simple, find a big stick and smash the thing. Returning 10 minutes later we found the snake coiled half way up the inside of the door frame, attaching a nail to the end of the pole(around 10 foot long) Theo attempted to squish the snake by slamming the door. Slam, scream, run. We regrouped and cautiously approached the door, the snake had been caught in the door, but wasn’t dead. We opened the door and it dropped down to the floor, open, scream, run. Regrouping a third time and perching on the concrete wall enclosing the toilet structure Theo swore he saw the snake poke its head out from behind the toilet. We sat there thinking for a while and decided to flush the snake out with a bucket of water. So Theo got the water and I kept watch. Throwing around 10L of water at an angry/scared poisonous snake may seem dumb, but boy is it fun. It only took one shot/splash, Theo threw and I squished, killing the snake before it got more than a foot away from the toilet. Splash, squirm, squish, sigh, giggle?

I’m sorry to say that I didn’t have my camera present during our escapades, and the only photo I have is from the night after. I wish I had a video of the second time the snake came out of the toilet, angry at Theo and I for disturbing it during its dip (one needs to keep cool in Ghana). That snake coming out of the toilet bowl at full speed, winding its way up the tank at lighting pace was a sight to behold, unfortunately you’ll have to take my word for it.

 

2.) Three issues with a westerners view of poverty (especially my own).

2.1) You’re not allowed to see it:

2.2) You are not allowed to experience it.

2.3) Even if you did have the option to experience it would you understand it?

Pictures

So we have a few high res pictures I was able to upload from a high speed connection in Tamale, some elephants, some roads and trees, my co-worker the DPO Ahmed Alhassan, a monkey, warthog(grass cutter), a mysterious math problem I found in the Catholic guest house here in Kpandai, a picture of me infront of the district planning office. Good stuff, I've got a few hundred elephant pictures to share when I get back to the land of high speed.

Enjoy.




- Hasan

It’s a wonderful world?

Ah, what is one to say after over two months of life in Ghana? First a semiformal apology to those I left trembling in anticipation for an update, welcome to life on Ghana time. Everything is relative, and I know that  in Canada it may seem like a month has passed since I have posted. Without the help of a calendar and the occasional phone call from my EWB overseers here in Ghana I wouldn’t be able to tell you the date. My point being that over here procrastination is not possible, and I am not to blame… Yeah, I’m over indulging a bit, so sorry y’all. BUT I’ve got some pictures and a few things to say.

I know that around two months have passed, one month since I’ve posted but it seems like much longer and paradoxically much shorter than that:

Some days I awake feeling as though I’ve just arrived fresh off the plane; white as the wind blown snow, unsure of my surroundings, cursing the incessant braying of sheep and the siren like call of a rooster gone mad. The rooster is aware of its position in life, it knows that being tasty keeps it alive, it understands that its purpose is to be eaten and that is why it shrieks at all times of the day, for seemingly no reason at all. Is it hunger, fear, desire, hate?

Others days I awake feeling a strange sense of comfort, my senses satiated, my mind at ease. Why would one be angry at the rooster? Does it not clean the ground forming an essential part of the decomposition chain? Is it not mans best friend in the fight against the mighty cockroach, showing valor and vigilance in a battle which seems never to end? Do not forget the taste of a freshly plucked bird roasted over charcoal, lightly dosed with pepper…. Mmmmmmmm burnt avian friend with herb, a delicacy anywhere in the world.

So maybe this post will be about the local cuisine?

A brief breakdown(you’ll have to wait for food pictures) and ranking:

Kenke: Take some maize(corn) powderize it with alarming force, ferment for several days then wrap in maize leaves and serve with fish and peppay (local pepper) sauce. Delicious! Probably my favorite local food, the peppay is a dangerous thing, too much and you’ll limit your activities that day to toilet patrol. It is hit and miss with the fish as well, there is one species called Talapia(sp?) which is delicious head and all.

Ranking: no. 1

 

Tz: Take some Maize powder add a bit of Guinea corn powder (it is sometimes made with Cassava), add a few secret ingredients(I apologize for my lazy reporting, I hear more names and facts in a day here than I could digest in a month), pound to a pulp with big wooden mallets(interesting process) and serve with the soup de jour. Tz in my humble opinion goes best with dry Ochra soup, and some big chunks of mystery meet (beef is best).

Ranking: no.2(although it is catching up on the Kenke).

 

FouFou; Take some Cassava, Yam, and sometimes plantain, pound thoroughly. In my district only Yam is used and I’m not as fond of it as Tz or Banku. Probably has something to do with an experience I had about 4 weeks or so ago. I went to a restaurant in Kpandai with Ahmed, it was late and the lights were out (power is fairly spotty in Kpandai). We sat down to enjoy a serving of Foufou large enough to feed an army (or Ghanaian farmer), the sauce was good and things were going well. I took a piece of the mystery meet and bit in, and continued biting in for around 15 minutes, the meet was well without meat. I had gotten a piece of skin with inch thick grizzle attached. In Ghana when a sheep is killed they roast the hair off with open flame, then cut straight through the sheep, bone, skin and all. It is fine to eat and sometimes quite pleasant, but every now and then you get what I had in my mouth, the skin too thick for my teeth, the fat almost impossible to tear a piece off. I sat there sitting in the dark fighting with nausea eventually I swallowed the meat but could not go on. I barely touched the rest of the meal and am now afraid to eat in the dark. So yeah, foufou is attached to a fairly bad experience. With explains the low ranking.

Ranking: no.4

 

Banku: Take some Maize add some Cassava (differs from Tz in the fact that it is using fresh Maize and Cassava instead of powder), add some mystery ingredients and serve with a side of palm tree soup.

Ranking: no.3

 

My breakfast is a cup of Nescafe (instant coffee), with equal parts water, sugar, and condensed milk. Ghanaians love their sugar! This cup of Nescafe is accompanied by an egg&bread, two eggs fried in an excessive amount of palm tree oil, with some diced onion (or fresh green peppers if you’re lucky) and served in a 8inch piece of white bread. All in all an unhealthy breakfast, but delicious none the less. It kind of makes me wonder where the idea of a egg mcmuffin came from.

 

During the day I snack on groundnuts(peanuts!), boiled egg(guinea fowl), tea bread and the occasional banana or orange (hard to find fruit in Kpandai). I avoid the local foods during the day for two reasons. First the size of serving is enormous, think three or four cereal bowls worth of condensed maize! Second is my bodily reaction to such heavy food during the day, I believe it is the combination of heat and heavy food that does it to me. EWB has a term for it called the ‘brown menace’, the brown menace: an ever pursuant enemy, lurking in the shade of a palm tree, waiting to spoil your new shorts(hasn’t happened yet, but there have been some close calls, and I happen to be one of the lucky ones, other JF’s have not shared fortune).

Water comes in satchels, five Peswas will get you one 500ml plastic baggie filled with the life giving stuff.

A meal: Kenke, fish, sauce costs one Ghana Cedis.

Groundnuts come in at 10 Peswas for a handful, I’m in heaven over here, fresh groundnuts are in abundance!

Since moving in with my family my diet has improved, I now eat a full and hearty meal of TZ every night, wake up licking my chops and have not been able to avoid grabbing a midday meal for a couple of weeks. I’ve also found a almost constant supply of oranges, which although slightly sour (harvest season is a few weeks away) do provide a nice kick throughout the day. Also worth noting is the freshly produced groundnut paste available, I plan on brining back at least 2L to Canada and I may even be able to grind it myself (the family has several acres of groundnuts on their farm).

 

So yeah the food is great, much different than in Canada but I now crave Kenke as much as pizza. Mmmmm pizza… Well maybe not.

 

Ooops, almost forgot. The Bananas are small, but taste like a starburst fruit chew, a mixture of fresh grapes and sweet banana. Mmmmm.

The Family and my first Sunday service

 

I moved in with a host family around the beginning of June, they are a slightly conservative Christian family of the tribe Basari. Extremely helpful, humble and a few of them speak excellent English. The head of their household is Father Latom (sp?), a 70-80ish farmer who seems to hold a great deal of respect both amongst the family and in the community at large. The woman I speak most often with is sister Elizabeth, a women I have yet to see simply relax. My two companions in the compound are Ezekiel and Sandy, an interesting pair, both of them 16-17 and attending school. I’ll speak a bit about Elizabeth and my ‘two friends’ as she refers to them.

 

Elizabeth speaks very clear english, her vocabulary is not as extensive as my ‘two friends’ but she is much easier to understand and speaks with little noticeable accent, I almost never have to ask her to repeat anything. From the day I walked into the compound it was apparent that she is the backbone of the place, always in command, always looking to help out in some way and seeming to go 24 hours a day. I do not know how old she is, she seems to be around 60, but still strong as an ox. She typifies the African woman, resilient and compassionate, she is the first person I let help me with my laundry and I swear she must be bionic to get those stains out. It seems almost misogynistic to recall the washing power of a woman as a sign of her strength or worth, so I’ll explain a bit more. I started washing my clothing by hand before I left Canada, so by the time I arrived at the compound I had been washing my clothing everyday for over a month. When I arrived in the compound I didn’t feel comfortable having someone else do it for me, so I agreed to work with the kids on my laundry, we never got around to it and the weekend was approaching.

It was a daily discussion point, these kind people really wanted to do my laundry! Maybe I was getting disheveled to the point of embarrassing them? I don’t think I was doing that poorly, sure there were stains on my white shirt, but hey, what is a stain but the sign of a shirt one has lived life to the fullest in? The weekend came and I hadn’t done a wash in 4 days, so Saturday I made an agreement with Elizabeth, I’d go farming and upon my return she and I would go through the smelly mass of cloth on my floor. I went farming, and returned to the cleanest crispest clothing I’ve had in years, the whites were white and it smelled good, not just like cloth but of freshness. She had done it while I was gone, and done it better than I could have if I’d taken a full day to scrub each piece. In some sense it was a violation of trust, but when she did it I realized I was going to have to temporarily dispel with my views of household chores, I was going to have to respect the way things went in the household. It was odd and I haven’t gotten quite used to it, she has done my laundry twice now, without me being aware (she snuck in my room while I was travelling to Tamale). That’s just the way it is… I’m not allowed to do laundry in the compound, I not allowed to fetch my own water (the older males simply don’t do such things), I haven’t been allowed to help with the cooking, she manages those operations in the compound and takes pride in what she does. I have more to say on her, but not to post online for others to see. Interesting woman.

 

My ‘two friends’. Interesting pair, both intelligent and well spoken, both diligent in their studies. They both have a lot to learn about this world and it would be interesting to have a conversation with them when they reach their 20’s.

One of my first interactions with Ezekiel, during one of my first visits to the compound revolved around an evangelical healing preacher who’d come to visit Kpandai, he enthusiastically recounted the 200+ blind and 200+ crippled who had been healed by the power of Jesus! I approached our future discussions cautiously, afraid that I had landed myself in a mad house, but besides that one conversation and a few jabs sent my way concerning a white mans ability to farm, or clean, or do anything besides type on a computer things have been great. He is soft spoken and honest, and has provided me with many useful insights into the life of a Ghanaian youth.

Sandy is equally interesting, more reserved and slightly less clear in spoken english, he is also one year younger than Ezekiel, which may explain the roles they play in the compound. One interesting thing about Sandy is that he gives English lessons to younger children almost every night. I have seen him in the morning ironing school uniforms for the younger children and then at night they set up a chalkboard and go through man,woman,men,women,person,thing over and over and then over again. It’s pretty damn cool.

So yeah, those are the three people I spend most of my time with in the compound, there is also a little boy who sometimes follows me around, he speaks a bit of english and is an interesting little dude.

 

Oh yeah, before I forget. I went to church and it didn’t burn down from the wrath of an angry spaghetti monster. The family is part of the evangelical church of Ghana (ECG), one of the older males in their extended family is a pastor, and their family plays a key role in the activities. I went last Sunday (not sure what date), it was almost great. When they sang and clapped I clapped along, when they prayed openly; each person saying his own individual prayer out loud, the room filled with Basarai, Konkomba, Twi and English prayers. Which was almost touching, it would have been great if the guy behind me wasn’t screaming in english and spitting foam on the back of my pants, “BY THE POWER OF JESUS! YOU SHALL REPENT!! (splash) BY THE POWER OF JESUS YOU WILL OBEY!!”. It was almost cool that one church member made the effort to translate the service into English for me, interesting hearing a service in two foreign languages(the church is mostly Basarai and Konkomba) then softly spoken in English, it would have been better if I could have gone without the English translation.

I’ll say this about music: when the singer is speaking english you listen to the words, they become an integral part of the song, and you can’t hear the song without the words. When a singer is speaking in a foreign language you can accept their voice as an instrument, and appreciate the nuances of the audible experience. I wanted the experience without the words.

Father!!

I’m not sure how to interpret the instant celebrity status affixed to me due to my pasty white skin. The local term for outsider is Jabroni or Dgebroni (not sure of the spelling, it is Twi but sounds like an Italian word) , I asked a local friend what connotations it had, he replied that it was a neutral term for outsider/white man. He then said it was like being called ‘black’ in the states. I don’t know what to think of that. I bet that being called ‘white man’ by a smiling Ghanaian is a whole lot more enjoyable.

The second local term for outsider (white male in particular) is Father, once again I just do not know what to think of it all. I can only imagine that this town( Kpandai town) has not be shaken by the indecencies that seem to plague the Catholic church in North America. Good for them, lucky bunch.

I went for a bike ride this past weekend (great news eh!?). I had only travelled through one side of the district (coming in on a dirt road much like those encountered in Labrador) and was curious about the other half. It took me around 4.5 hours, I had underestimated the heat, left at around 1pm and arrived back at 6pm having drained my water and with little power left in my legs(a one speed makes any hill just that much more interesting, especially when your front wheel and handle bars aren’t properly attached). The most memorable part of the ride was the chorus of children screaming ‘Father!’ while smiling what could possible be the biggest smile one could fit on a child sized face and streaming towards the road in groups of 20. One group would spot me coming and signal my approach, then another group would sound off and the chorus would rise again. I’m going to have nightmares about my loss of identity and may possibly be sharing dreams of a chorus with the pope (although for very very different reasons).

Also on the religion topic, people here seem to think I’m Muslim. Possibly due to my hippie parents giving me an Arabic first name. It’s been more help than hindrance, I just explain a bit about my background and the conversation takes off. Some of the customs are new, rituals vary from region to region, but the core beliefs I’ve encountered here are similar to those held by my Muslim friends in Canada. Well, with the exception of polygamy. I had a great light hearted conversation with one of my co-workers about the polygamy issue, he offered to marry my little sister (whom I believe is 19 and in Ethiopia for another few months) and I protested against a 32 year old man marrying a 19 year old as his second wife. It is apparently common, with one excuse being that an older man is likely to run around with many girlfriends, so why not tie him down to just a couple wives, plus it’s in the Koran so it must be what the big G wants. I have a lot of respect for my aforementioned friend, and this conversation was being had with a side of humor, but he touched on some cultural issues I’m likely to have to deal with over the next few months.

In Ghana

I'm sitting in an Internet cafe with around 20 other Canadians, all furiously typing blog posts and emails. We finished our pre-departure training last Monday and left Ontario on Wednesday morning. I'm not sure how to describe pre-dep, I think 'interesting' sums it up. It was kind of like a car crash, the vehicle completely destroyed and yet everyone somehow managed to exit the wreckage(to the shock and dismay of any pedestrians who witnessed the crash), or maybe it was like biting into an apple, expecting it to be slightly sour and instead receiving a mouthful of jalapeno. All I know is that it was an interesting experience.



We arrived in Rome sometime Thursday morning(8hrs from Toronto) and spent the morning at the airport(a couple of the more adventurous JF's went into Rome for an hour). Then it was another 8hr flight to Ghana via Nigeria (seems absurd to travel around the world in a metal box to meddle in the lives of others).


We stayed at a nice little gated hotel/motel/hostel in Accra for the night(arriving at 10pm, leaving at 6am).


At 6am we left for the bus station and took what was supposed to be a 13 hour bus station, with the bus breaking down around 3 hours from Tamale:



We have now spent a couple of days in Ghana, visiting the market yesterday and focusing today on preparing for our placements. Tomorrow morning I will be traveling to Kpandai and meeting with the District Planning Officer, with whom I will be working for the next 3.5 months.

I'll try to post some pictures and a few more words sometime soon, we are being kicked out of the cafe.

Good Governance Project

Just a bit of information about the project I'm working on.

Up until a couple of weeks ago I was part of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture(MoFA) team, I was going to be working directly with Farmers, teaching them basic business skills, finding out what techniques they used and looking to improve both EWB's knowledge of their methods and at the same time 'when possible' try to get them to incorporate different techniques to diversify their crops and hopefully improve the stability/sustenance provided by those crops.

I received a phone call from Ghana, with the option of choosing between the MoFA placement and one with the Good Governance(GG) team. It was partially a choice given to me, but mostly a request made of me. I switched teams, and will now be working in the Kpandai district of Northern Ghana (little purple bit on the map above).

With the GG team, I will be gathering information on the needs of communities within the district, specifically focusing on the presence of bore holes, schools, hospitals and other related information. This information is to be analyzed and then presented to the Ghanaian government and NGO's looking to do work in the district. The hope is that with an accurate mapping/database, the efforts put into development will have a greater effect. I will be working directly with the District Planning and Coordinating Unit (DPCU); partnering with a District Planning Officer.

The switch from MoFA to GG has lessened the amount of time I will have working with farmers, switching me over to office based work with a few excursions into communities. I feel some loss, I am concerned that I may walk away with less understanding of what happens on the ground in Ghana. At the same time I am more suited to the GG sector, as a returning JF Ryan Brideau told me, he was expecting me to be placed with GG the entire time. I'm not a farmer, I am an analytical person studying electrical engineering. I'll probably be able to provide more to EWB and the people I'm working with through data interpretation. We shall see.

Part of my job is to teach some of the computer skills I've gained at school. I can remember back when I was learning how to type using mavis beacon. My father would bribe us, whoever could get over 30wpm would get a buck, it was effective. I only wish he used it himself, it's odd seeing someone with as much technical expertise typing with a single finger. I'm hoping to use a freeware typing tutor provided by Ryan. Any ideas of how to go about teaching adults some of the computer skills we have here in Canada without coming off as demeaning would be appreciated. I'm sure it will all work out, these things always do.

Packing up

I'm still here in Fredericton, going through the junk that has accumulated in my apartment over the past couple of years. It's odd, between myself and a roommate we have filled two large garbage bags with old clothing to donate to the salvation army. So much misfitting, worn out or gaudy clothing. I've been told that Ghana is filled with the stuff, clothing of a wide variety from all over, available for next to nothing being sold in stalls along side produce and sundries. Maybe that is our legacy as human beings, the excessive amounts of unwanted t-shirts and boxer shorts which float around from continent to continent.

Pre-departure training starts on Tuesday. My flight from Fredericton leaves at 6am. I've been told to expect a week of non-stop case studies (for those of you fortunate enough to have not experienced a case study, well I hope you never come to understand why I dread the thought of seven days worth). I can see the use of case studies and I appreciate what I've learned through them, I just feel as though it may be hard to concentrate on random case studies while attempting to prepare myself for the mental shock of landing in Ghana.

If I am correctly interepreting the information sent to me the other day I will be travelling through Rome on my way to Ghana. It will be a six hour stop, it'll also be the first time I've set foot in Rome. When in Rome? Buy a trinket from the airport? Gawk at strangers?

Intro Post?

Hey,

Just trying to get this whole "publishing opinions in a public forum" thing down, I'm not entirely convinced my thoughts should be posted online, but what the hell... It's not like I can't erase them from the web(damn google cache).

The prospect of traveling to Africa as a volunteer is not frightening, it is interesting, very very interesting. It should be noted that I am not an altruist and I am not a selfless person, I am not a bleeding heart and I do not believe I can single handedly fix the problems that exist in our world. In fact I have long had trouble justifying/understanding the existence of humanity, I see no divine will or logic in our continued existence as a species. Love, laughter, drugs, friendship and music are great(especially music and laughter), but someone messed up and I don't know if we should be here.

I am driven by a desire to understand why people live, what life means to people in another part of the world and just how/why they keep on living. Maybe through understanding how others interpret life I can see a bit clearer, it never hurts to have a shared experience.

Imagine living in a shared apartment, there are only two parking spaces to be used by three people. One parking space is continually cleared by the first person, the other two people share the second space. Over time the second space becomes filled with trash, debris, snow, whatever. One of the two people sharing the space continually complains about the mess but never lifts a finger, the other becomes annoyed with having to always clean the space up and eventually that person becomes apathetic and lets the space fill with old shopping carts and dog shit to the point no-one wants to use it. I hope to never be the complainer, and I am trying to fight the apathy this world invokes in me. Our world is messed up, I can ignore the problems or I can try to understand them. Once I understand the problems I will know whether or not I have anything to offer.

I am going overseas to learn and to disperse what little knowledge I have, I am hoping that I will provide something(anything) to the people I meet in Ghana and bring back as much knowledge as I can stuff in my shiny bald head.

The thing that strikes fear in my eyes, that rattles my hypothetical soul and sends quivers of dread down my spine is the heat. I am going to melt, to dissolve into a mass of pasty white flesh(well it'll be red with sunburn). What will I do without constant access to purified water, without snow? It is not something I've ever had to experience, it'll be interesting.

Serious fears revolve around being overly judgmental; who am I to walk into another country and tell people how to behave? I know I have my reservations, I know my beliefs and I'm an extremely judgmental person. I just hope I am not put in a position which requires maturity beyond mine. My beliefs on gender equality will no doubt cause problems, as will my beliefs on the use of physical force. We shall see.