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