Generosity

Sitting on the only chair in the room, surrounded by people sitting on their haunches, and sipping the Mangola while the slum children looked at her with their big, greedy eyes, Sera felt overwhelmed by guilt and sorrow. With each sip of the thick, sweet mango liquid she felt as if she was swallowing a blood clot. … The generosity of the poor, Sera marvelled to herself. It puts us middle-class people to shame.

Between work and trying to spend time with our host families or friends in Ghana, I think a lot of JFs find it difficult to make time for themselves – even though some days you really, really could use some. I’ve been able to do a bit of reading over the summer – so far I’ve read Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, The Shack, and currently I’m reading a book called The Space Between Us. As I was reading through this latest book the other day, I came across the passage above that rang so true to my experience here.

Monday morning I was supposed to attend a farmer group meeting with one of my AEAs, but I had to cancel my attendance and send Gregory to the group alone so that I could meet with my Director and Wayne (my EWB coach/the Team Lead for our MoFA sector) to discuss the work that the next EWB volunteer in the district will be doing.

I met with Wayne and Dr Quist, then attended the office management meeting, and afterwards noticed I’d missed 4 calls, all from Gregory. When I phoned him back, he asked if I’d be in the office for the afternoon. I told him I wasn’t sure, and asked him why. He replied that he wanted to come meet me, so he’d come by the office tomorrow morning. Gregory has been doing amazing work with AAB since I’ve gotten here, and I immediately started to worry what could be wrong. Was he angry I didn’t attend the meeting? Does he feel like I’m not investing enough time in him? Did something go wrong with his farmer group? Are they mad I told them I’d attend then cancelled? Ah! The whole rest of the day I worried about what would come the next morning.

So 9 o’clock rolls around Tuesday morning after what felt like an eternity, and Gregory approaches my door with one of the men from his farmer group. They step into my office and sit down in the chairs across from me. I hold my breath as Gregory begins to speak about my absence yesterday. He tells me the group was disappointed that I couldn’t make the meeting… It is their community’s tradition to formally welcome or thank someone by presenting them with eggs, “so that their breakfast plate is always full.” The group had collected a bag-full of eggs they had planned to present to me.

I can’t even explain the surge of emotions that washed over me. Guilt because I missed their meeting. Guilt particularly because I have the expendable income to buy eggs, or anything else I need for myself, and I know these farmers don’t have the same financial freedom. But still so, so much gratitude and love because these farmer groups really didn’t need to do anything at all.

Every farmer group meeting I go to I’m given a plastic lawn chair to sit on while the farmers themselves sit on wooden benches, maybe tree roots or maybe the ground. When I first arrived in the village I stayed in for my first week in Navrongo, every household gave me a handful of eggs as a welcome. In another one of my farmer groups’ community, the tradition is to give visitors water, but the group’s borehole had broken so instead they have me 10 GhC to buy minerals (pop) – enough money for about 16 bottles of coke.

I really wonder what kind of world we could live in if everyone had that level of generosity. Yes, at home we offer our guests a drink or give them the best seat in the house. But that drink never leaves us going thirsty ourselves. That seat may mean we’ll sit on the floor – but it’s probably carpeted anyways. I don’t think that the middle class is necessarily uncaring, but what we give of ourselves to our visitors, relative to what I’ve received here, well… It puts us middle-class people to shame.

 

Some ‘Aha!’ Moments

It was Wednesday, April 28^th that I said my goodbyes to my family and headed to Toronto, excitedly looking ahead to the next 124 days until I’d return home again.

That was 84 days ago.

I can remember texting Kaitlyn, the other JF from Carleton, amazed when we had 75 days left.

Now I can’t believe I only have 40.

In my last post I talked about the experiences I’ve had since coming to Ghana and how they’ve changed the way I see things. I should have expected that another JF would catch on and push me to elaborate on those experiences and changes (thanks, Sarah). So here are just a few small “AHA” moments in Ghana…

On my village stay, I tried carrying water on my head. (Emphasis on tried…) I’ve since decided that if you want to learn to carry something on your head you should start with something a bit more balanced than water, but that’s besides the point. The point is that all the women around me could carry HUGE bowls of water, but only if someone helped them to lift it first. People have so many abilities and so much potential on their own and it’s always amplified – never diminished – by asking someone else for help.

Saturday, five of us made the moto trek from Bolga to the Tongo Hills and Tengzug Shrines. The hills are small mountains, beautifully faced with bare rocks and lush greens. To look at them from the base was one thing, but the most beautiful views came before me only as we sat in the shrine-cave nestled into the hill – all five of us topless. The local tradition requires that everyone who enters the shrine takes off their shoes and socks, rolls their pants up to the knee, and takes off their top. It would have been easy to give into the awkwardness I felt and forgo the experience, but the reward for stepping outside my comfort zone was so much greater than what I gave up for doing it (seeing as all I gave up was my own lack of confidence).

There have been a few times I’ve been browsing through my contacts list on my phone deciding what JF to text or how to make use of the 99% discount going on with MTN, and I pass by the name Ethel – a girl I met in my first week in Navrongo. She’s a friend of a friend, and we spent only about 30 minutes together and then she put her number in my phone and we hadn’t spoken since. I always thought it would seem crazy if I called her, yet just this afternoon my phone rang and her number popped up. She called just to say hello, that it had been forever since we’d seen each other, and to ask what I was up to tomorrow afternoon so we could get together. And did I find it crazy? Of course not – I was too excited that she wanted to catch up! And yet I let myself lose touch with her for no reason at all. Even if she did think I was nuts, what harm would come from trying to make a connection with someone?

On Sunday night Trevor, the JF program manager, came to Navrongo to spend the night at my house on his trip through Ghana. We arrived home from visiting crocodiles just as the sun was setting and spent a good hour just sitting on the roof watching it sink below the horizon. I can’t even explain all the emotions that flew through my head and my heart. The sunset was one of the most beautiful I’d ever seen and I felt flooded with love for this place. Despite the challenges of living and working in Ghana and the daily frustrations that come with the inability to ever affect as much change as you would want, the experience is so priceless. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to be here. So grateful for the life I have at home that allows me the opportunity to choose to come to Ghana, or the opportunity to do whatever else I could dream of. The experience reminded me of how happy I am to be here and how important it is to remember that when things aren’t going my way.

There are so many other moments I could write about – so many other moments I want to write about. But I’ll leave it there for now.

However, on the note of things I want to write about, I also realize that when I write my blog posts I just write about whatever strikes me in the moment, and don’t really have much idea about what you want to hear about! So if you have any requests, please comment and let me know!

(Oh, and by the way, as much as I’m loving the experiences here I promise I’m still missing all of you at home!)

 

Places

It’s one of the strangest feelings I’ve ever felt: arriving back at the Catholic Guesthouse in Tamale not quite 60 days after leaving it the first time. The reception desk handed me the key to the same room where I spent my first few nights in Ghana and I was back in the same physical place, but at the same time in such a different mental place.

This past week has been our Mid-Placement Retreat and Country Meeting. Wednesday afternoon all the Ghana JF’s (with a few guest appearances by some long-term volunteers) reunited at the bus station in Tamale and made the uncomfortable yet so exciting ride to Mole National Park. We got to spend a bit of time unwinding from the stresses of life in our own districts by checking out the wildlife, loving our lives in the pool, and possibly drinking a beer or two. We got caught up on each others’ placements, offered each other support for challenges we’re facing and set goals together moving forward. By Friday at noon we were back in a tro-tro on our way to Tamale – the place it all began.

Friday night to Sunday was the Country Meeting: a chance for all EWBers in Ghana to come together and discuss challenges, successes, learnings, and strategy. The motivation of everyone there, despite the difficulties of life in the district and being effective in our work, was so inspiring. It re-ignited my fire and excitement to get back to Navrongo and put my all into making the last 5 (ish) weeks of my placement really count.

Sunday evening a number of us checked into Catholic Guesthouse to spend the night before heading back to our districts on Monday. Laying down on the same bed I’d slept in two months earlier I realized just how much some things have changed despite others being so the same. The Retreat and Country Meeting had a huge effect on what I’m thinking and how I’m feeling now, but those changes didn’t happen over a few days. I’ve had so many new experiences in the past 2 months that have affected me in a million different ways. From the little things like living without running water, or eating and trying to cook Ghanaian foods, to bigger things like discussing development priorities with farmers and development workers alike, seeing with my own eyes the backbreaking work of subsistence farmers, and beginning to understand the consequences of poorly planned development projects and the challenges facing implementing ones with so much potential… Somehow so much happens without you even realizing it.

Now I have just over 5 weeks left of work and only 7 weeks in all until I’m home to keep learning, keep experiencing and keep making changes in this environment until I’m back home. I’m so excited to get back and feel again that feeling of being in the same place… but in such a different place.

 

Wisdom Without Education

This may sound strange, but sometimes when I sit in a farmer group meeting, I get the same feeling I used to get when I was a camp counsellor. I feel like I’m contributing to their development in some small way, but at the same time unexpectedly gaining more knowledge from them than I feel I could ever give in return.

The basic premise of taking the backseat in farmer group meetings isn’t all that exciting. The meetings generally take place in the local language (school attendance in Ghana is on the rise, but all too many of the adult farmers I’m working with can’t speak, read or write English – they never completed primary school), the only exception is with one of my AEAs who doesn’t speak the local language, so he asks the questions in English and the chairwoman Esther (amazing and impressive woman: female and yet the best English-speaking farmer I’ve met) translates. In these meetings, I at least have a better understanding of how my AEA interprets the curriculum – in most I get just a small re-cap of questions and answers. Yet still there are so many things about these meetings that I love.

The group I really want to talk about today is called Atababa Vegetable Farmers’ Association. It’s a group of 14 men, whose ages range I’d say from 20 to 65. Three of them have some ability to communicate in English, but all of them are such incredibly smart men. Each time we have a meeting with this group, I can’t help but imagine how far they could have gone had they been given the opportunity for an education.

Gregory, my AEA, will ask the group a question. Maybe he’ll pass around a picture and ask for the meaning, tell a story and ask for the important details, or ask the group questions about themselves: their own strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. With every question, multiple hands will shoot up with an answer. I can see a spark in their eyes that shows their pride and eagerness: they know they have a useful contribution to make. I even find joy in seeing the small sadness that comes when they’re not called on for their answer and the excitement that builds again when it comes to their turn.

Gregory has held four Agriculture as a Business meetings with Atababa group. After the first meeting on Group Strengths, they were inspired with the realization that they have the potential within themselves to become a strong, successful group. They resolved to reignite their commitment to their group. After the second meeting on Group Meetings they decided to meet more regularly, ensure attendance and minutes are taken, and use the opportunities to discuss their ideas for the group and support one another in the challenges they face. The third meeting discussed Group Finances and the men resolved to contribute 6 GhC per month in dues, after realizing they had the potential to mobilize funds without a loan. By the time we met with them again one week later, they’d already collected 61 GhC, their total savings now amounting to just under 200 GhC. Just this past Saturday we met with them to discuss a Group Project. While the group was able to identify a number of feasible projects, they refused to decide on which one they would undertake without all members present. They decided they would meet again within the week to discuss the feasibility and profitability of each option and ensure that all members agreed on a project unanimously.

We’re not spoon feeding anyone answers but helping them to see that they already know the answers. We’re just providing a support structure to help the groups realize the potential that already exists within themselves. And oh how they have so much potential.

 

Lauren Dodds: Agri-business Lady

When I first got to Navrongo, some of the people in my office started referring to me as the “Agri-Business Lady.” Two things I felt I knew almost nothing about. Agriculture and business. Yet here I am in Ghana to implement an Agriculture as a Business program. I don’t know if I really had a particular interest in agriculture before coming to Ghana, but I definitely didn’t have a particular interest in business. Oh my how things have changed…

It started out with just a few thoughts about the AAB program EWB is implementing. At a certain stage in the curriculum the farmer groups are to work with the extension agents to discuss different marketing options. Based on what the group is producing, who are the different buyers they could be selling to? What are some of the challenges facing the group in trying to access bigger, more profitable markets? How can the group overcome these challenges?

They’re extremely important questions when it comes to helping groups increase their profits. But I wondered how feasible it is for these groups to actually access these more profitable markets without some assistance in creating these relationships? The extension agents I work with are well aware of the important of marketing – but they don’t (yet!) see themselves as market facilitators or advisors.

Thus began my journey down this exciting path of market facilitation! Last week my EWB coach came to my district for a visit to check in on my progress and discuss what other work I can do. From there, Friday I made the spontaneous decision to hop in a taxi and head off to visit a group about 40 minutes away called the Single Mothers’ Association. (If you don’t have someone’s phone number in Ghana, it really is easiest to just drop on in!) The group was formed in 1998 to assist single mothers in a community called Zuarungu with income generating activities. They now focus on rice processing and packaging. My original plan had been to learn about how to access packaging materials from them, but that hit a major roadblock as they’re experiencing their own challenges sourcing packaging materials lately. Fortunately for me, though, it turns out that Single Mothers’ actually sources their paddy rice from Navrongo – my own town – because of the numerous irrigation sites that make it possible to buy rice here year-round.

Currently they buy most of their rice from ICOUR (the Irrigation Company of the Upper East Region). ICOUR has a warehouse in Navrongo where they buy small holder farmers’ produce and aggregate it to sell to larger markets. While it’s convenient to source from ICOUR, Single Mothers’ is charged 45GhC per 85kg bag when buying from the warehouse, while they could pay 35GhC to buy the same bag directly from a farmer. Single Mothers’ is interested in the possibility of creating contracts with farmers or farmer groups who can provide them with the right variety of rice at a high enough quality.

Meanwhile, after bringing it up with my extension agents, I learned that some of the farmer groups I’m doing AAB with are producing the same variety of rice (though I don’t know yet of what quality), and selling in an uncertain market, usually for 30GhC per bag.

So here I am with the opportunity to save Single Mothers’ 10GhC per bag of rice they purchase (which is minimum 100, maximum 200 bags per MONTH!), and help my farmer groups gain 5GhC per bag they sell and secure a buyer for them. The project is barely yet off the ground but I’m so excited about the opportunities it could bring!

I’d always had a certain amount of disdain for business as I always thought of it in terms of absolute competition: win-lose, no draw. But here is a window of opportunity just waiting to be opened to create a win-win situation for some very deserving parties, spurred by a sudden onset of interest in marketing. I just hope the six weeks I have left at work are enough to get it off the ground!

 

Market Day

Every three days in Navrongo is Market Day. Navrongo is a pretty large town for Northern Ghana to begin with, but the place is just buzzing on Market Day.

There is a “market” in Navrongo every day. Tucked in behind the street-side shops, there are a few alleys that feed into this hidden maze of stalls. Every day women are selling cloth, rice, groundnuts, cans of tomato paste, second-hand clothing, beans, laundry soap, fish, shea butter and hundreds of other goods to meet one’s daily needs. It’s like the Northern Ghanaian equivalent of a shopping mall or a grocery store.

But on market day people and goods flood the streets. Women selling vegetables overtake the grounds of the taxi station selling tomatoes, onions, hot peppers, and local leafy vegetables. If I’m lucky, a few stalls will have carrots, cucumbers and green peppers.

Across the street, the usually barren dirt field becomes the site of various organized markets. One corner becomes the fish market, in another women are selling rice in bulk. Piles upon piles of mangoes and oranges appear and on a good day some pineapples will show up in the fruit section. Throughout it all men, women and children will walk about with everything imaginable piled on their heads. Water, spiced tofu-kebabs, juice jugs, chickens, toothbrushes and toothpaste, flip flops, and a Ghanaian version of donuts.

Inevitably, every Market Day, someone will ask me how often we have Market Day at home in Canada. I try to explain to them that Market Day really doesn’t exist in Canada. There are Farmers’ Markets in some places, but for the most part, every day is Market Day when you have shopping malls and grocery stores. I tell them about shopping malls bigger than our office block and every room will sell something different. I explain that in the grocery store there’s only one pile of oranges and the meat section had packaged meats, not live chickens. They talk about how nice and convenient it must be to shop in Canada.

Yes, it is convenient. But there’s something about the challenge and adventure of finding what you want in the Navrongo Market that makes it a new and interesting experience every time.

I could play a betting game with myself of whether or not I’ll find pineapples this time. I can ask around and either there will be no pineapples today, or someone will walk me half-way across town to the one stall selling them.

Everyone quotes prices differently. Just a few years ago Ghana changed its currency, dividing the denominations by 1000. But that simple math is sometimes not so simple. Something that costs 1 Cedi can be quoted as “1” “10” “100” or “100,000.” You have to take an educated guess at how much something should cost to know whether they’re telling you its 1 cedi or just 10 pesewas.

Sometimes I miss the convenience of the grocery store. Sometimes I’d rather just know I can get my pineapples. But I think for everything you’d gain from opening a grocery store here you’d lose something it just can’t replace. It would definitely do wonders for food safety – despite everything I love about the market I still cringe at the piles of dead fish and I miss the quality that comes from refrigeration. But Market Day has character. It’s a community event. It breathes life into Navrongo every three days. Maybe I’ll be happy to go back to shopping the Canadian way when I get home, but for now, I love taking in a deep breath and enjoying the bustling activity.

And for right now, I’m off to the market!

 

Understanding Farmers’ Realities

As Junior Fellows working with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture on the Agriculture as a Business (AAB) program, we’re frequently told we have an unparalleled opportunity to interact with farmers and really understand their realities, in comparison to JF’s in other sectors. When I sat down under a mango tree this morning for my first farmer group meeting, I still didn’t see how that was really true. But not thee hours later, after the meeting had wrapped up, as I sat on the back of my colleague Clement’s moto heading back to the office, I realized just how true it might be.

In Northern Ghana, poverty is rampant. Rampant yet subtle. Ghanaians are extremely proud people. Even rural villagers will bathe twice daily and bleach their clothes so that they just about shine in the sunlight. If someone is coming to visit, they’ll prepare food for their guest in huge portions. I have yet to see anything dampen their spirits. But still the statistics and numbers tell us that these families are extremely vulnerable and are using every bit of their energy to make ends meet. Despite the fact that it’s likely every person I’ve encountered is having difficulty meeting their family’s needs in some way, I’ve only been asked a handful of times by strangers for spare change. The Ghanaians I’ve encountered talk little about their own poverty, and show it even less.

So when I sat down to meet this morning with Kebana Kanna Group – 21 women who support each other in growing and trading yams, I didn’t see how sitting there was really going to help me understand their difficulties. First of all, having been told a white lady would be coming to the meeting, many of them it seemed decided to dress up for the occasion. Beyond that, my role in farmer group meetings is to sit back and support my Agricultural Extension Agents (AEAs) in facilitating the meeting. Seeing as the meeting is conducted in the local language, I even have to depend on Clement to translate most of what is being discussed, and try to give him suggestions based on that small information.

So I’m sitting a circle, in a backseat role, faced with a language barrier. I’m not seeing these women actually working on their farms. I’m not seeing them in their farming clothes… Remind me how is this the best opportunity in the organization to be understanding farmers’ livelihoods?

Then they started talking about the work they’re doing. What projects have they taken on as a group? Their group was formed in 2008, and with little influence by MoFA, has managed to sustain itself. That alone is an impressive feat. They have a bank account, and collect small dues. For the most part, their group exists to support each other on their individual farms. They don’t buy inputs or sell their produce together. All of this was sounding pretty standard. Pretty typical. No ‘unparalleled insights’ were being achieved here.

Until the group started talking about their latest – and first – group project.

Since 2008, they managed to collect 132 GhC (Ghana cedis. With the exchange rate, I’d say that’s just over $100) in dues. Last year, they withdrew 100 GhC from the bank to purchase groundnuts at the time of year they’re cheapest. They’re now storing the groundnuts until the season when they can sell it at the highest price. They expect to make 20 GhC in profit. With 21 group members, from this venture each member will make less than 1 GhC in profit.

This is considered impressive. That the group has taken on any project at all that will increase their profits, without being pushed to do so by MoFA or an NGO is a great feat.

And it is impressive. But at the same time, frightening in so many ways.

At first I questioned why the group wouldn’t just leave their money in the bank. There, it would earn interest. But then again, though I don’t know the bank’s interest rate it would definitely be FAR below the 20% return on investment they hope to receive from the groundnuts.

But putting their savings in the bank protects them from risk. To put your savings into groundnuts is a pretty significant risk. What if they get wet and go bad? What if they get eaten by insects or animals? Clement asked the group why they didn’t shell the nuts and sell them at an even higher price. Their response: they didn’t have the time to do it together as a group (this is a secondary project to their individual yam-growing), and if they were to divide the bulk and send each group member home to shell, they feared their children would eat the nuts, not understanding why they weren’t supposed to have them.

The risk of investing their savings in groundnuts is huge compared to putting it in the bank. Yet the potential for profit from the groundnuts is huge compared to that from the bank. But this ‘huge’ profit is still less than 1 GhC, less than ONE DOLLAR, for each group member!

THIS is that unparalleled opportunity to understand farmers’ realities. No one is otherwise having these frank conversations about money. Most farmers don’t even keep track, let alone discuss and analyze how much, or better I say how little, they’re making.

Living with a farming family, seeing them work in the fields all day and even working with them to experience it yourself, yes you see how demanding their work is. Yes you can understand the back-breaking labour. But I don’t think you can fully understand their challenges until you can connect that to the dollar amount that represents just how little they receive in return for all those painstaking efforts. School fees for secondary school here are 1.50 GhC per student, per week. These women we making less than 1 GhC from this project. For the year. For a group of women who themselves have next to no education (only one of the 21 members was literate, having finished the equivalent of grade 6 more than 30 years ago), to be starting any project at all without outside help is considered a great achievement. I’m now just praying that through AAB, and through their determination, we can see that 1GhC grow to an amount that will actually make a dent in their long list of unmet needs. Now THAT would be cause for celebration.

So yes. This is my new appreciation for farmers’ realities, put as best as I can explain the inexplicable.

 

Life as the fullah in Navrongo…

Some tidbits about my daily life as the white lady in Navrongo…

1. Wake up: Probably several times throughout the night.

Roosters are calling, pigs are awkwardly grunting and geckos are trampling across the tin roof at all hours of the night. The need to pee usually arises at the most inopportune times also.

2. Actually get out of bed: As early as 5am, never later than 6:45.

My host family is almost always out and about by 5am. The exceptions are due to rain, and sometimes even slightly colder morning temperatures seem to keep them inside.

3. Morning routine: Bucket shower, breakfast, lots of extra time to ask to help with the family chores, and normally be turned down.

My compound’s “bathroom” is actually a room – complete with a light, tin roof and open-air window. This is pretty impressive. On my village stay, there were three walls which weren’t quite as tall as my shoulders. You hung your ‘towel’ (two yards of cloth) over a clothesline to make the fourth wall. In such a room, a good bending/squatting technique is key to privacy.

Even for my own compound now though, “bathroom” refers to a small, empty room with a floor slanting to one corner to collect water (and other liquid.. waste) and a hole in the wall lets the water through to the field outside. You can pretty well always count on hearing the pigs rolling about in the mud you’ve created just outside.

The bucket shower experience is actually quite nice. You fill a plastic bucket with water (for me, to the top if I’m washing my hair, half-full if I’m not), grab your bathing supplies and give’r. There seem to be two predominant techniques: cupping the water with your hands to splash yourself, or using a small cup to pour it on. I’m a personal fan of the small cup. It’s beautifully refreshing. And I’m amazed daily at how little water it takes to get so clean!

My usual breakfast consists of oranges, groundnut paste (peanut butter) and bread or crackers. A couple of weeks ago I bought some “ChocoDelight” – essentially Ghanaian Nutella – to eat with my breakfast, but the tub did not last long.

I don’t leave for my office until around 8:15, so there is ample time to offer to help the family out with various morning chores – cooking, sweeping, fetching water, etc. I’m still trying to convince them to treat me like family and not like a guest, but so far they’re still somewhat reluctant to let me help out.

Get dressed in my office clothes, throw some field clothes, laptop, notebook, sweat rag, moto helmet, etc, in my backpack and head to work on my bicycle.

4. Morning commute: Expected traffic is light – delays are resulted by thick sand or the occasional cow, donkey or other large livestock in my path.

The bike ride to my office is only about 2 minutes long. I make a stop along the way to buy two water sachets every morning. A water sachet is a 500mL plastic bag full of filtered water: sold for 5 pesewas each (about 3.5 cents). Even though I’m adjusting to the heat, I still drink at least 4L of water a day. There are three stands selling sachets near my office. I stop at one in the morning, one at lunch and one on my way home in the evening.

5. Life around the office: Slow, lots of greeting, lots of trying to find work to do.

Since this is right in the middle of farm prepping season – ploughing and planting as the rainy season begins – most of the farmer groups are hesitant to start meeting weekly for the Agriculture as a Business program. So I spend a lot of time in the office (while pushing for someone to take me out to the field to do SOMETHING!) trying to find useful work to do. Currently I’m working on writing a project proposal to request funding to have a storage facility built next to the district office.

6. Trips to town: Should be a5-10 minute bike ride. Travellers should be wary of dark clouds or strong winds. Rain may fully delay the trip by many hours. Be prepared to receive many strange stares while in town.

Most days I’ll ride my bike into town to grab some lunch, or to run some errands after work.

Kids along the road will usually yell out “Fullah fullah Good Moooorning!” The little ones say “good Morning” regardless of what time of day it is. Fullah I came to assume meant “white lady” – I asked my friend Isaac who confirmed my assumption was correct. Some people will also yell out “Eh! White man!”

In town, I have some places I frequent regularly. I visit Linda for some deep fried yams and plantains, Vitus if I want to “browse the internet”, and Augustus if I need my bicycle fixed. Every time I’m in town I also visit Esther at her store to chat, and sit down in the shade for a while. I get my FanIce (ice cream in a bag) or Tampico Block (citrus freezie in a bag) from the “A&C Shopping Mall” (this is not a mall, but more like a Wal-Mart shrunk down to a 10′X20′ store. It still manages to carry almost everything you could need though). I visit “Patience Fast Food” for fried rice, but I’m still looking for a place to buy roasted guinea fowl. So tasty!

Market days are every three days, and I have my vegetable lady: the only one in the market who sells cucumbers! I also usually buy carrots, green peppers, onions and tomatoes. I make a lot of tomato and bean-based stews and a lot of pasta. At food stands they usually put spaghetti noodles on the side of whatever you order – they’re cold and topped with ketchup and mayonnaise. While I’m actually kind of getting used to it this way, I’m mostly just happy that because of this fad, dry spaghetti is available everywhere!

7. Evening Routine: Bucket shower, supper, in bed by 9.

I have so many questions about the development of hygienic practices in Ghana. EVERYONE bathes at least twice a day, if not more. Yet washing your hands with soap and water after performing your bodily functions or before eating is rarely practised. As well, there is a latrine next to my compound, but I have never seen it frequented by anyone other than the goats and myself. Somehow “free ranging” (openly defecating) is still the norm.

But back to bucket showers. The key to the evening bucket shower is to take it before the sun sets. This way you A) get to watch the sunset from the window and B) don’t get attacked by flies, moths, ticks, etc, whose normal attraction to light seems magnified by the smells of the room.

My family normally eats TZ for supper – one of the many pounded, maize-based mushball meals. Try as I might, I just can’t seem to learn to love it. It barely tastes like anything, but the texture just doesn’t do it for me. Quite often I’ll cook for myself, and make extra to offer to the family. They all hated my chili and after each taking one bite, poured it straight into the bucket for the pigs. Yet my pasta primavera they loved. Tonight I’m going to make granola squares, so I’m interested to see what comes of that.

Seeing as the sun sets before 7 and everyone wakes up by 5, the normal sleeping time seems to be around 9. Being the lover of sleep that I am, I’m fully on board for this! I usually settle in under my mosquito net by 8:45, take some time to read, write in my journal or occasionally even watch one of the few movies on my netbook, and doze off to sleep by 10pm.

Set that schedule on repeat and this is, thus far, a pretty standard picture of my daily life!

 

Family Life in Ghana.

What can I say about family in life Ghana?

My family is BIG. Every day when I wake up or come home from work it seems there is a new face that has stopped by to visit, and they’re somehow related. Another JF wrote about their own living situation in their Blog saying, “As far as I can tell there are 5 other people living in the house, but I’m not entirely sure. This may sound crazy but the fact is that people come and go and everyone is either a brother, sister, nephew, cousin, aunt etc. so when someone is referenced I’m usually just confused.” To me it doesn’t sound crazy at all. I know of 10 family members living in my compound for sure, but there is a new face every day that is gone the next, and somehow is related to someone.

There are some times I wish I were living with a family that was a little bit more ‘standard’ – I think I would have an easier time feeling like I had some kind of defined role in such a unit. Here, while everyone is related, they’re going about different things at different times. There is no kitchen table – either the physical object or concept of total shared family leisure time. There is no one in the compound I would consider to be holding a mother or father role. There are grandparents, aunts and uncles, and children. But at the same time, a traditional family unit wouldn’t have the same quirks as this family does, and I’m quite happy to be settling in with them.

It’s hard to guess people’s ages in Ghana, but the patriarch seems quite old. I would guess he is in his 80s, but his youngest children are in their late-20s… He speaks no English, and his health is not great. He doesn’t move around much, and he seems to be half-deaf and half-blind. From what I understand, in his day he was quite the farmer – known to be the most hardworking man in his community.

It took me a while of living here to be sure I had heard correctly, but he indeed had 4 wives. (The confusion stemmed from the fact that the family are devout Catholics. This apparently was only picked up by the generation that came after the Old Man.) Two of his wives have since passed away, one is not well and living in Accra with a daughter, and the last one lives here still. She seems to be younger than the ‘Old Man’: she is still quite spry and can carry a good sized bucket of water on her head. She also speaks no English, but loves to chatter away in Kasim to me. The fact that I have no idea what she’s saying doesn’t slow her down at all. I wish I could speak the language so I could know what she’s talking about without running to find a translator – but still I love that she just wants to talk to me anyways. My Ghana-Grandma is clearly a very loving woman.

I have no idea how many children the Old Man has. His children seem to have no idea how many children he has. I learned the other day that when a man’s siblings pass away, his nieces and nephews essentially become his children. There’s no distinction made. I met his nephew, who referred to him as his father, until explaining to me how they are actually related. This nephew (whose name I can’t remember, but for some reason called himself the ‘Outside Man’) said that the family they consider to be ‘closely related’ consists of at least 100 members. He laughed in a pitying kind of way when I told him mine had less than 20.

Of all these family members, about 10 seem to live in the compound, while others come and go regularly. Vida, Rhoda and John are children of the Old Man. I have no idea whether they’re from the same mother – it doesn’t seem to matter in any kind of way to them. Vida is in her late 20s, a seamstress and a graduate from fashion design school. She works out of their compound so that she’s always around to take card of the Old Man. (I call him the Old Man because I a. can’t pronounce his name and b. Take after Vida, who calls him the Old Man). She’s really laid back; somehow the most ‘North American-esque’ Ghanaian I’ve met – but I can’t really can’t put my finger on why that is…

John I would guess is almost 40. He’s a farmer, extremely hardworking and last year won the district Maize Farmer of the Year award. While his English is not so great, he’s genuinely caring. I’m amazed at his work ethic on a daily basis. I was blown away when I heard he had won the district award – John has a bad leg and has some difficulty walking. From what I’ve noticed around Ghana, there doesn’t seem to be much support for disabilities in any way. So to have made a living out of physical labour and to excel at it just blows me away.

Rhoda is also astoundingly hardworking. She works in town, I’m not entirely sure doing what – but she’s gone before 6 am each morning and doesn’t arrive home until after 9 pm every night. Its difficult to get to know her better as she’s really only home to sleep, but I’m hoping slowly I’ll learn a bit more about her.

Then there are the younger generation. Nitisha and Kinglsey are in their early teens, and there’s a young boy who doesn’t have an English name, and whose Kasim name I can barely pronounce let alone begin to know how to spell. In my mind I call him Johnny, because he’s on the fast-track to being as hardworking as his uncle John. He’s very inquisitive and always checking to make sure I have enough water, even though I insist I want to fetch the water myself! Again I’m not sure if these three are siblings or cousins, but I know their parents don’t live in the compound. Somehow though all the adults seem to take part in their care, and even more impressively the kids themselves seem to take a huge part in the care of each adult in turn. Cooking, cleaning, fetching water, ploughing fields, you name the task the young ones have already taken care of it.

Despite not feeling like a ‘sister’ or ‘daughter’ to anyone in particular, in some strange way I’m slowly feeling out my role in the family. I think it’s almost just the way this family is – everyone takes care of everyone in some way, and nobody really labels the relation. The family is just one big unit, open to all, caring for all. I’m somehow a daughter/sister/aunt/mother to anyone at any time, and at sometimes find myself with a father out of my little Johnny and a sister out of my Ghana-Grandma.

 

Seasons and Security

There are so many different things I want to write about! I’ll be putting up a post soon with an update on the family I’m living with (it’s taking me some time to fully figure out how who is related to whom…) And hopefully some pictures too!

I wanted to start this one off with a quick fun story though. Last night I was on my evening walk to the latrine (it’s just outside the compound, a manageable hundred-meter dash when need be). It was getting pretty dark by this time. I head some shuffling inside the stall and I thought I had almost walked in on someone… Until a very frantic and frightened goat came running out! I wonder how often that will happen. I found it HILARIOUS.

Ok, now on to something with a bit more insight!

In Canada, when I think of the seasons, I think of them in terms of temperature. Summer is hot (well, compared to Ghana it’s warm-ish), winter is cold, spring and fall are times of warming up and cooling down. I guess I must have learned at some point in school that there’s more to ‘seasons’ than just temperature, depending on where you are located and what the climate is, but I’ve just never really thought of it in any other terms.

But in Ghana, they think of seasons exclusively in terms of rainfall. There are two seasons: wet and dry. The wet season is indeed cooler than the dry season, but nobody bothers to associate the temperature to the seasons. The difference is fairly inconsequential. But the rainfall is everything. From what I understand, there’s hardly a drop of rain in the dry season (I think October – April). During the rainy season though it can rain almost every day. And the saying “when it rains, it pours” is so literally true here it’s unreal! Last night the rain hammered away from 11pm to 6am. I’m so thankful for the plywood ceiling that muffles the sound of the rain on the tin roof in my new room.

I guess I also just don’t know enough about farming at home in Canada, but I never imagined it being to intricately predicated on rainfall. At my office, everything is either waiting for the rain, or postponed because of the rain. Even outside the office, because so many Northern Ghanaians are dependent on farming, life is determined by the rain. Normally most family members in my compound are up and about by 5am each day, but today, I didn’t hear a sound until after the rain subsided. You just can’t get any work done outside when it’s raining!

It’s actually really distressing thinking about being so dependent on the climate and the weather. At home, our AC protects us from the heat, our insulation from the cold. From what I know of Canadian farming, farmers can irrigate no problem, and I imagine our tractors can better handle a muddy field than ploughing with bullocks on foot. Ghanaian farmers are so dependent on forces beyond their control, and climate change seems to be slowly but surely making matters even worse.

There are so many tangents I could go off on here… The one that strikes me the most is just the concept of stability. In Canada, we’ve harnessed technology to stabilize food production and cushion ourselves from environmental shocks. But the stability in Canada goes so far beyond that. Our country is so stable and well-developed that you can take up any job and be pretty well certain that you’ll be paid on time, and that you can use that money to make the purchases you need – food, housing, whatever. But in a country like Ghana, it’s no wonder almost everyone grows their own food in some way. While Ghana is relatively politically stable and making great progress, you hear Ghanaians talk all the time about there being no jobs available for the throngs of new university graduates. And within the public sector there are stories of significant delays in pay, fuel money, etc. If you’re not contributing to the production of your own food and shelter, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to access it.

So! I guess the moral of this story is be thankful that the government of Canada will generally make sure you’re being fed and keeping warm and dry. I know Canada has flaws, but we’ve got a pretty solid thing going – so don’t take it for granted!