May 31st
“we are building a world on shadows”
I'm in an interesting place right now, mentally, physically... and the other physically. I guess I will start from the beginning of this interesting place.
So, Saturday myself, Gajin, Adam and Spencer met up in Wa. That would be the last time I got the chance to post. We had a pretty good time, chilling out and sharing stories about our placements and how they were going. We had had to split up at the internet cafe because the only internet jack working was mine, so they all went elsewhere and I stayed where I was. After I'd finished sending stuff and writing, I picked up and met up with them near downtown Wa where we went to a pretty nice guesthouse for the night. The TV had some really god awful sitcoms on, something called “wicked wicked games” that we started watching just because of how purely bad it was. I made it through the night okay, but at 6 in the morning some troubles started. I started having really bad diarrhea and had to go to the washroom around 6 times before everyone else had even woke up. I tried to drink some water to keep my hydration up, which turned out to be a mistake as the water as well as everything else I'd drank or eaten in the last 12 hours made a pretty epic return all over the floor of the washroom. It was around then the others decided it might be best if I went to a hospital. I updated Alanna on the situation, my supervisor in Burkina Faso, and got some advice on where to go in Wa to get help. We tried the clinic she had recommended first but it appeared to be closed, so we hit up the hospital in town instead. I thought it was actually a pretty nice facility all things considered. I had clean sheets on a bed in a ward shared with about 7 other beds which were variably occupied throughout the night. At various points they took people to a bed at the far end of the room and performed some minor operations. One poor kid had been bitten by a crocodile while fishing (/me recalls back to an event concerning several children swimming in crocodile infested water), so they had to stitch up his leg in all sorts of places and manners and goodness knows what. Basically my “rest” in the hospital was interrupted at various intervals by people screaming their lungs out in pain, it was fun stuff. For the most part i was probably the loudest patient there though, their tests said I'd contracted Malaria AND Typhoid. I was having epic diarrhea, stomach pains, dizziness, occasional muscle spasms, muscle soreness, all sorts of fun stuff. As I write this I've recovered from the malaria but still supposedly have Typhoid. I say supposedly because apparently the tests for these often get false positives, but I was retested in Bole when I got back 3 days later (Spent a total of 3-4 days in Wa, most of which was in the hospital). In Bole I took a place at the guest house my coach and I had stayed in the first night in town. It wasn't the cleanest place in the world but I needed the toilet (I learned the hard way that free range and diarrhea are not a good mix). I spent two nights there before Gajin got me a place at a brand new guest house right across from my office, so I wouldn't have to walk as far to get to work or to get water, as the petrol station was directly next door as well. It was pretty nice, had it had running water it would have been a lot nicer. The bed had something resembling satin sheets going on, there was a toilet and mirror and everything, air freshners in the washroom, etc. The running water thing was key though. Instead of relativiely clean clear water I was pouring water out of filthy jerry cans into a bucket. I let the particles settle to the bottom before washing but still had an interesting scent going on after my showers.In any case, while staying here I began having serious panic attacks. So I updated my coach and supervisor about this as well, at first I thought I'd be okayish, then they got worse, so I thought I'd be able to last 3 more weeks or so. Then they got really worse. So... now I'm in Tamale, less than a week later. They've put me up in a guest house with air conditioning, running water, a fan, and pretty comfy beds, and are making me eat western food. The staff seem to think that I am suffering from culture shock, which admittedly is very very similar to Generalized Anxiety Disorder so I can certainly understand. My feeling is that I probably do have culture shock but it is a minor to moderate contributor to whats going on, or perhaps was the initial catalyst. As the anxiety attacks get worse I've begun to feel depression and other fun and interesting emotions as well, so I'm honestly not sure what my future here is at the moment. I've decided to treat it as though it were culture shock and we will see what the result is, but I'm pretty far along in the process and pretty uncertain. Pretty scared too, to be honest. These are some of the worst anxiety attacks I've ever had, and I have yet to recover from the nervous breakdown I had last April. Having another nervous breakdown would probably be a bad plan. I do want to stay. I love the work I'm doing, I like Ghana, I like waking up to Muslim prayers in the morning and listening them lullaby me to sleep. The people here are absurdly friendly and easy to talk to and will watch your back even if you don't know them that well, which is pretty much the ideal kind of person for me and the sort of people I wish Canadians were. If I fully adapted to Ghana I honestly think I'd like it better than home.It's just that there are a lot of things getting. My OCD has been going wild here, especially as the anxiety attacks get worse. I just washed my hands 3 times, and had to wipe down my laptop cause there was like, a tiny smudge of dirt on the fingerpad. Other things have been getting to me as well. I dunno, i definitely have the mind for the work here but I'm not sure I have the mind for the world here, if that is sensible enough for people to understand. I'm planning on working with my coach Wayne to try and treat it as though it were purely culture shock and we'll see where we go from there. I dunno. I'm not getting my hopes up or anything just in case. Basically I'm a mental wreck right now and not improving, I had the worst panic attack pretty much ever this morning. One sign of a panic attack is that it feels like a heart attack, except this hasn't been something common to my panic attacks, only the absolute worst ones. This morning I felt like my heart was going to burst. There are some other issues going on but those are more private and definitely not something to share on a public blog =P Suffice it to say I'm not doing so hot.
On the plus side I did my first presentation for work. It went reasonably well I suppose, I'm not terribly good at presentations to begin with and this one was done while suffering from Typhoid and panic attacks, so yeah, interesting combination. In attendance were 3 AEA's out of the 5 in my district (one was sick, one was away), most of the district officers, and some members of the farmer group society from my village. They seemed for the most part really interested, one of the officers seemed to be falling asleep, I'm hoping that's not my fault lol. I was also having some crazy problems with my right ear, dunno what was going on there. Felt like the ear drum had burst or it had decompressed or something. In any case, it went well! I set my office up with all the forms and things my AEA's need too, so that they can at least start working on it while I'm gone. The farmer group wanted copies of the cards as well which was interesting. This is the same group I posted about last, that is having some finance troubles.
Soze, not much else been happening really, just been trying to deal with my mental disorders and physical diseases. Will see where things go from here, I'm just taking it as it comes as best as I can at the moment. That was a lot of “as”'s.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
May 23rd
see post below for basically last weeks events =P
just a story to share here really, other than this little update: I'm in Wa, which is in a different region of the country altogether, to use internet. its only 2 hours away from Bole or so. Staying the night here apparently because we didnt plan this internet usage trip out very well lol. I'm here with 3 other JFs though, Adam FK, Gajin and Spencer.
So the other day one of the executive members of a farmer group society in Mankoma came up to talk to me while i was chilling out in the shade (hydration is a really serious issue for me, to the point where im worried i may not be able to stay here for the whole placement, but im doing my best to deal with it). He had a pretty amazing story to tell. His farmers society has been doing pretty well for itself overall. it started out planting groundnuts because it had identified this as a potential market, but just this year had switched over to maize and casava because the groundnuts werent doing so well in the soil. theyre presently doing 12 acres or so total.
the stated goal of this society was actually really impressive to me. they formed specifically to fight poverty in their region and employ people in the village. and theyre really, really close to making a huge stride forward towards that goal. theyve just completed construction of a depot, where they can store their fertilizer and other goods, and next to that have nearly finished a processing center where they are going to put a grinder to process the food they produce. they plan to employ dozens of people from the village to work there, thereby reducing the unemployment rate and providing steady wages to many community members. except theyre short on cash by about 1000 cidis, from what i gather. they need some money to roof the building, and then a bit more to buy the processor. right now they only have 150 cidis in the bank, they had to pay 500 cidis to the district assembly to use a tractor to plow their land. basically, theres this amazing opportunity to employ and develop an entire village and be a shining example of success, and its 1 grand away from happening. otherwise its probably going to tank and just become another failed project. theyve invited me to their exec meeting tuesday, to offer my ideas and input on how they can raise this money. im not really sure what to say to them, they seem to think i have connections to big canadian NGOs but really im nobody here... its heartbreaking. i could probably personally fund the entire project myself, but thats not really helping in the way that matters. NGOs wouldnt really be helping either... so i dunno. im trying to think of local ways to raise that money, either through advertising deals or something else. ive also been told that if they owned their own tractor instead of renting it, theyd be farming 60 acres instead of 12, which is also ridiculous.
anyways, got some emails to send. shall post later hopefully =)
just a story to share here really, other than this little update: I'm in Wa, which is in a different region of the country altogether, to use internet. its only 2 hours away from Bole or so. Staying the night here apparently because we didnt plan this internet usage trip out very well lol. I'm here with 3 other JFs though, Adam FK, Gajin and Spencer.
So the other day one of the executive members of a farmer group society in Mankoma came up to talk to me while i was chilling out in the shade (hydration is a really serious issue for me, to the point where im worried i may not be able to stay here for the whole placement, but im doing my best to deal with it). He had a pretty amazing story to tell. His farmers society has been doing pretty well for itself overall. it started out planting groundnuts because it had identified this as a potential market, but just this year had switched over to maize and casava because the groundnuts werent doing so well in the soil. theyre presently doing 12 acres or so total.
the stated goal of this society was actually really impressive to me. they formed specifically to fight poverty in their region and employ people in the village. and theyre really, really close to making a huge stride forward towards that goal. theyve just completed construction of a depot, where they can store their fertilizer and other goods, and next to that have nearly finished a processing center where they are going to put a grinder to process the food they produce. they plan to employ dozens of people from the village to work there, thereby reducing the unemployment rate and providing steady wages to many community members. except theyre short on cash by about 1000 cidis, from what i gather. they need some money to roof the building, and then a bit more to buy the processor. right now they only have 150 cidis in the bank, they had to pay 500 cidis to the district assembly to use a tractor to plow their land. basically, theres this amazing opportunity to employ and develop an entire village and be a shining example of success, and its 1 grand away from happening. otherwise its probably going to tank and just become another failed project. theyve invited me to their exec meeting tuesday, to offer my ideas and input on how they can raise this money. im not really sure what to say to them, they seem to think i have connections to big canadian NGOs but really im nobody here... its heartbreaking. i could probably personally fund the entire project myself, but thats not really helping in the way that matters. NGOs wouldnt really be helping either... so i dunno. im trying to think of local ways to raise that money, either through advertising deals or something else. ive also been told that if they owned their own tractor instead of renting it, theyd be farming 60 acres instead of 12, which is also ridiculous.
anyways, got some emails to send. shall post later hopefully =)
couple days
big dump!
May 22nd
lordy!
So, I biked 32km on a crappy used bike from China. It wasn't as bad as i thought itd be, but it was bad. When i got back it took me 1.5 litres of water and a 20 minute rest to get from one end of town to the other. I made it though! I went on this bike ride with one of the agricultural extension agents (AEA) from my district office to visit a farmer group. We bike about 16km to this village, only to find that he hadnt told anyone he would be coming, so none of the farmers were even there. His two options were to either go another 8km (HA!) or backtrack to the other side of the village where there might be another farmer group, so i opted for that one. We wound up meeting a small number of people from a farmer group there. I learnt quite a bit from this short experience though so id say it was worth it. It was interesting seeing how people reacted to the AEA being there, to me being there, and how the AEA did his work. Im finding that everyone presumes im some important person from MoFA and not an outside westerner. Im not sure if that can be advantageous or a problem?
Another interesting discovery made later on: evidently AEA's are supposed to spend a week in the field learning rural livelihoods, just like me, except they have a policy requiring “suitable living conditions,” eg. A toilet, clean running water, electricity, etc.... so what you will never see in any rural setting ever. Its interesting that a requirment so detached from reality exists, because it suggests quite a bit about the mindset of the people creating these policies. Defintiely not people from the ground!
I just measured the inside temperature here, its 29 degrees at 9 in the morning. Thats after it having rained last night, so this is “cool” weather here. Itll probably hit 35 around midday if i had to guess. I here its 20 degrees in Ottawa. Just the idea of not feeling hot makes me homesick right now, lol.
May 18th
Okay, so...
I'm living in a small village called Mankoma, 10 km outside of Bole where I work. I'm at the MoFA office atm, this is actually the first time I've come here in 4-5 days I think. I came into town tuesday from Tamale, and met some of the staff then. I stayed the night in a guesthouse in Bole, kicked around town again a bit wednesday and then went off to Mankoma to greet my host family.
Mankoma has made me realize what a strange but beautiful collision of worlds Ghana really is. I'll often be sitting just outside of my room watching some goats or something wander by the door to the compound, or further down one of the neighbours pounding tz or foufou with a giant mortar and pestel, and then a big cargo truck will drive by, roaring past and forcing a couple goats off the paved road that runs through the center of town, blowing some dust behind it. Then perhaps your eye will catch the powerlines running parallel to the road, part of the Rural Electrification Project by the federal government, which have just been put up a couple days ago, adding a few new posts to the small number of trees dotting the village which people often use as shade during the hottest part of the day. Often someone has also built a small platform out of logs to sit on where it is shadey, or else added their own thatch roof to it to make small pools of shade where people may rest. The houses often have tin roofs, which make all sorts of racket when it rains but reflect the sun well when theyre new. Other houses are built with flat roofs, so sometimes at night that is where the family will sleep, climbing up using a ladder made out of a carved log. At night it becomes pitch black, as there is not yet electricity, but flashlights turn on all over town as the younger people go out to talk with friends, or stay in to study for school. In my house they bring me a carisine lantern for my room as well, so I have some general light. Many people here seem to have well-developed night vision, so that a flashlight isnt terribly necessary, but they may bring it anyways.
Mankoma seems to do well for itself in general, but its still definitely a rural village. There are three bore holes, which I've yet to see run dry, but they also have 3 rivers and a couple of small lakes nearby. The furthest river lies beyond their farms, a 5 mile/2 hour walk west. Beyond that river is Cote D'Ivoire, the country bordering Ghana on its western side. My family uses unclean water to do washing of dishes and things, but borehole water to cook, so one hopes it evens out to a healthy enough meal.
The people in Mankoma speak Gonja, although I'm picking up that there may be different dialects of Gonja even between Mankoma and Bole. Gajin has learned different greetings in Bole, and another westerner from the UN, David, seemed to be using what I thought was a greeting to mean “name.” I have a small notebook with about 8 pages of different Gonja words and the translations already, so I'm starting to pick up what people are saying sometimes. For the most part though I'm understanding Gonja by the tone of voice and body language accompanying words. Concern, anger, frustration, a joke, these are all easily identifiable because of Ghanain mannerisms. There are probably more nuanced things that I'm understanding but don't realize it yet.
My host family is fairly large. There is my host father/landlord, my host mother, and then their 2 sons and 2 daughters. One son and one daughter are very young, while the eldest daughter looks about 9-12, and their son says he is 19. He has been showing me around the village quite a lot. When I first arrived the MoFA director made it clear that I was there to learn about the life of a rural farmer, so everyone is interested in showing me their farm and their house, and what they do when they work.
I walked the 5 miles to my host family's farm, getting a pretty serious sunburn in the process. They grow so far away from town so that the goats and cows they keep in town do not graze on their crops. Why they dont just build a pen for these animals I haven't quite figured out. Well, the cows at least. The goats are handy sometimes, because they eat bloody well anything they find, so its like having a lawn-mower, vaccum cleaner and garbage man rolled into a tiny bleating animal. Baby goats are probably the most adorable thing in the world, just fyi. As you get out of town you come across these giant 7 foot high mounds, which at first you kind of think are just weird rock formations. But then you see the termites crawling all over them. I don't have any idea what would possess anything to go through what I'm sure is months of work to build these giant structures into the air, but I guess it works out for them. Apparently people sometimes dig into them to get female termites from the center of the colony, apparently this is to eat... so im watching what i get served now. After walking for nearly 2 hours we arrived at the farm, which was pretty large. Each able bodied member of the family keeps a plot to themselves, so there are 3 large fields of yams with a couple fields of tomatoes, casava, and beans being planted nearby. Yams are planted in a small mound, and they each grow a vine, so each mound needs a stick put in it, or otherwise a tree nearby that you can wrap several yam vines around. However, they kill the tree with fire so that it does not steal water or nutrients from their crop. So a yam field is an interesting thing to look at, as it is several yards of small mounds with sticks and stringy little vines coming out, occasionally dotted with a burnt dead tree. The farm also had three small grass huts, one which seemed to be purely for putting your bicycles and other things, and 2 others which seemed to be for storing yams and other produce.
In the village I ran into a woman from Japan, named Satomi. She has been in Mankoma for 4 years, so she speaks Gonja fluently. I had heard some various things about another “white” woman in the town, but it had never been clear to me that she was still there (nor that it was a she, there seems to be some confusion about that for some reason, i couldn't see why). If I remember she was staying in Mankoma while working for the UN in the surrounding area. Apparently she is leaving this week though, which is too bad because I'm sure I could've learned some interesting things from her.
Another place I stumbled upon in the village is where they make Pito. It is made out of maize that they let germinate a little bit before grinding up and boiling. It smells and tastes like a beer of some kind, but apparently isnt alcoholic, although I'm not sure I believe that bit! I've had only a little bit because it generally isn't sanitary where they make it, with flies buzzing all over the place. It's... intriguing. Not something I seek out to drink.
My host familys son also showed me a couple places on the other side of town, across the highway. What was most interesting from the perspective of my placement was his school, where there is a teacher that teaches agriculture and proper planting and harvesting techniques. I talked with him briefly, and I think I would like to work with him to develop a lesson plan for students about agriculture as a business, as a potential side project in my spare time. I talked with my coach and he seemed to be okay with it, so meh =P How they plant is a bit different than I've usually seen in Canada. First they make a big circular mound of dirt and sprinkle the seeds all over it, water it, and then cover it with some loose green foliage to keep the moisture in. They let the plants germinate a bit and sprout from this, and then transplant them all to rows to grow fully before harvesting. In Canada it seems we often just plant directly to rows no matter the size of plot, though I've seen some transplanting happen from a bed to smaller planting pots before.
Another very interesting place was this one house belonging to a family that has come from out of town. The father of the household has gone and come from the U.K. and been certified to sell a fertilizer that is apparently good for any crop, so he is busy trying to sell this to farmers in the surrounding area. At his house he also raises an absurd number of animals. There are goats, sheep, ducks (many many ducks), chickens, roosters, turkeys, dogs, a monkey, etc. The first time I went a bunch of ducks came up in a circle where I was sitting like I was their mother or something, it was awesome. I went a second time with my camera to take a video, which is pretty awesome too, I'll upload it the first chance I get.
Lastly, I had a long visit with the town blacksmith, Yusif. He's a pretty chill guy. I watched while he and his assistant made some knives, hammering the blades out of metal and then carving the handles out of wood. He has something seriously wrong with his foot, so he cant farm, instead he just sits under his grass hut all day working metal. He has offered to make me something, which would be a pretty awesome souvenir I think =)
It's been a bit difficult to adjust. I've basically gone from one extreme of living to another. No running water, no electricity, no toilet, no sink, no real bed either. I have a fairly large room, but its occupied by a mattress with a mosquito net over it and a wooden table which I've pretty much completely covered with various things that I need on a daily basis. My host mother brings me a small table to eat on as well. I finally got up the courage to take off the little cloth shed draped over it. Hopefully she will not be offended and just realize I don't need it. It's pretty much impossible to stop them from bringing me things I really don't need. Wherever I go a plastic lawn chair materializes. Sometimes its welcome, like when I had my nasty sunburn, sometimes its just silly. Sitting in a white lawn chair under a tree a few hundred yards from the nearest house, beside a borehole where women are washing clothes, thats just too much, even if it does hurt like hell to kneel or whatever.
Oh, I also saw my first praying mantis, which is an interesting story in and of itself. I was watching the women wash to figure out how its done, when suddenly something big falls from the tree to my left, big enough that i can hear it hit the ground. I look over and theres this praying mantis laying on its back, its wings (?!) stretch out by its side. Its still kind of alive but obviously if it just fell out of a tree it isnt doing so hot. I notice that one of its forearms seems to be missing but otherwise I can't see anything wrong with him. He's still twitching a little and looking around so I decide to keep watching to see what will happen. The boy washing in front of me picks it up to show me and asks if I'd like to hold it, which I politely refuse, so he puts it back down. Around then one of the ants thatd been crawling around comes up to check out the mantis. The mantis totally flips out and stabs the ant through the head with its working forearm before going back to its previous twitching and whatnot. The ant somehow survives this and starts trying to... unstab itself, I guess. At one point it actually pulled so hard it dragged the whole mantis with it a bit, but this seemed to wake the mantis up again, so he reeled the ant in and munched on it a bit, though the ant seemed to survive that too, except now it was half an ant and behind held against the chest of this almost-dead mantis, clutched between the two mandibles of the mantis which seemed to have finally kicked off and entered a fairly peaceful looking death pose, well fed I suppose. Around then I had to head out, but it was an interesting first encounter with a mantis.
I've also seen a crocodile, kind of. I guess its more accurate to say the crocodile saw me and I saw what it was looking at me with. One of the tiny lakes around Mankoma is apparently chalk full of crocodiles, so some of the kids took me to show me. Evidently this meant taking an en masse swim in crocodile infested waters, which I also politely declined. In any case, all i could really see was the eye poking out so it wasnt the most interesting thing in the world, though when they swim around you can see the water rippling. To my understanding they sometimes use that water to clean some of their clothes, which seems like a generally bad idea to me due to A) the aforementioned crocodiles and B) the brown, dirty, not-for-cleaning colour of the water. It would explain why so many people in Mankoma seem to be wearing dirty clothes all the time though, I guess it's cleanish. Maybe its also why so many clothes have holes in them?
Three pages 0.o time to stop, hehe. Oh! But I'll also just mention that my village has named me Kamyiti (ca mnyee tea), which is Gonja for patience =) which I think might be a womans name but meh, i make it look good.
May 22nd
lordy!
So, I biked 32km on a crappy used bike from China. It wasn't as bad as i thought itd be, but it was bad. When i got back it took me 1.5 litres of water and a 20 minute rest to get from one end of town to the other. I made it though! I went on this bike ride with one of the agricultural extension agents (AEA) from my district office to visit a farmer group. We bike about 16km to this village, only to find that he hadnt told anyone he would be coming, so none of the farmers were even there. His two options were to either go another 8km (HA!) or backtrack to the other side of the village where there might be another farmer group, so i opted for that one. We wound up meeting a small number of people from a farmer group there. I learnt quite a bit from this short experience though so id say it was worth it. It was interesting seeing how people reacted to the AEA being there, to me being there, and how the AEA did his work. Im finding that everyone presumes im some important person from MoFA and not an outside westerner. Im not sure if that can be advantageous or a problem?
Another interesting discovery made later on: evidently AEA's are supposed to spend a week in the field learning rural livelihoods, just like me, except they have a policy requiring “suitable living conditions,” eg. A toilet, clean running water, electricity, etc.... so what you will never see in any rural setting ever. Its interesting that a requirment so detached from reality exists, because it suggests quite a bit about the mindset of the people creating these policies. Defintiely not people from the ground!
I just measured the inside temperature here, its 29 degrees at 9 in the morning. Thats after it having rained last night, so this is “cool” weather here. Itll probably hit 35 around midday if i had to guess. I here its 20 degrees in Ottawa. Just the idea of not feeling hot makes me homesick right now, lol.
May 18th
Okay, so...
I'm living in a small village called Mankoma, 10 km outside of Bole where I work. I'm at the MoFA office atm, this is actually the first time I've come here in 4-5 days I think. I came into town tuesday from Tamale, and met some of the staff then. I stayed the night in a guesthouse in Bole, kicked around town again a bit wednesday and then went off to Mankoma to greet my host family.
Mankoma has made me realize what a strange but beautiful collision of worlds Ghana really is. I'll often be sitting just outside of my room watching some goats or something wander by the door to the compound, or further down one of the neighbours pounding tz or foufou with a giant mortar and pestel, and then a big cargo truck will drive by, roaring past and forcing a couple goats off the paved road that runs through the center of town, blowing some dust behind it. Then perhaps your eye will catch the powerlines running parallel to the road, part of the Rural Electrification Project by the federal government, which have just been put up a couple days ago, adding a few new posts to the small number of trees dotting the village which people often use as shade during the hottest part of the day. Often someone has also built a small platform out of logs to sit on where it is shadey, or else added their own thatch roof to it to make small pools of shade where people may rest. The houses often have tin roofs, which make all sorts of racket when it rains but reflect the sun well when theyre new. Other houses are built with flat roofs, so sometimes at night that is where the family will sleep, climbing up using a ladder made out of a carved log. At night it becomes pitch black, as there is not yet electricity, but flashlights turn on all over town as the younger people go out to talk with friends, or stay in to study for school. In my house they bring me a carisine lantern for my room as well, so I have some general light. Many people here seem to have well-developed night vision, so that a flashlight isnt terribly necessary, but they may bring it anyways.
Mankoma seems to do well for itself in general, but its still definitely a rural village. There are three bore holes, which I've yet to see run dry, but they also have 3 rivers and a couple of small lakes nearby. The furthest river lies beyond their farms, a 5 mile/2 hour walk west. Beyond that river is Cote D'Ivoire, the country bordering Ghana on its western side. My family uses unclean water to do washing of dishes and things, but borehole water to cook, so one hopes it evens out to a healthy enough meal.
The people in Mankoma speak Gonja, although I'm picking up that there may be different dialects of Gonja even between Mankoma and Bole. Gajin has learned different greetings in Bole, and another westerner from the UN, David, seemed to be using what I thought was a greeting to mean “name.” I have a small notebook with about 8 pages of different Gonja words and the translations already, so I'm starting to pick up what people are saying sometimes. For the most part though I'm understanding Gonja by the tone of voice and body language accompanying words. Concern, anger, frustration, a joke, these are all easily identifiable because of Ghanain mannerisms. There are probably more nuanced things that I'm understanding but don't realize it yet.
My host family is fairly large. There is my host father/landlord, my host mother, and then their 2 sons and 2 daughters. One son and one daughter are very young, while the eldest daughter looks about 9-12, and their son says he is 19. He has been showing me around the village quite a lot. When I first arrived the MoFA director made it clear that I was there to learn about the life of a rural farmer, so everyone is interested in showing me their farm and their house, and what they do when they work.
I walked the 5 miles to my host family's farm, getting a pretty serious sunburn in the process. They grow so far away from town so that the goats and cows they keep in town do not graze on their crops. Why they dont just build a pen for these animals I haven't quite figured out. Well, the cows at least. The goats are handy sometimes, because they eat bloody well anything they find, so its like having a lawn-mower, vaccum cleaner and garbage man rolled into a tiny bleating animal. Baby goats are probably the most adorable thing in the world, just fyi. As you get out of town you come across these giant 7 foot high mounds, which at first you kind of think are just weird rock formations. But then you see the termites crawling all over them. I don't have any idea what would possess anything to go through what I'm sure is months of work to build these giant structures into the air, but I guess it works out for them. Apparently people sometimes dig into them to get female termites from the center of the colony, apparently this is to eat... so im watching what i get served now. After walking for nearly 2 hours we arrived at the farm, which was pretty large. Each able bodied member of the family keeps a plot to themselves, so there are 3 large fields of yams with a couple fields of tomatoes, casava, and beans being planted nearby. Yams are planted in a small mound, and they each grow a vine, so each mound needs a stick put in it, or otherwise a tree nearby that you can wrap several yam vines around. However, they kill the tree with fire so that it does not steal water or nutrients from their crop. So a yam field is an interesting thing to look at, as it is several yards of small mounds with sticks and stringy little vines coming out, occasionally dotted with a burnt dead tree. The farm also had three small grass huts, one which seemed to be purely for putting your bicycles and other things, and 2 others which seemed to be for storing yams and other produce.
In the village I ran into a woman from Japan, named Satomi. She has been in Mankoma for 4 years, so she speaks Gonja fluently. I had heard some various things about another “white” woman in the town, but it had never been clear to me that she was still there (nor that it was a she, there seems to be some confusion about that for some reason, i couldn't see why). If I remember she was staying in Mankoma while working for the UN in the surrounding area. Apparently she is leaving this week though, which is too bad because I'm sure I could've learned some interesting things from her.
Another place I stumbled upon in the village is where they make Pito. It is made out of maize that they let germinate a little bit before grinding up and boiling. It smells and tastes like a beer of some kind, but apparently isnt alcoholic, although I'm not sure I believe that bit! I've had only a little bit because it generally isn't sanitary where they make it, with flies buzzing all over the place. It's... intriguing. Not something I seek out to drink.
My host familys son also showed me a couple places on the other side of town, across the highway. What was most interesting from the perspective of my placement was his school, where there is a teacher that teaches agriculture and proper planting and harvesting techniques. I talked with him briefly, and I think I would like to work with him to develop a lesson plan for students about agriculture as a business, as a potential side project in my spare time. I talked with my coach and he seemed to be okay with it, so meh =P How they plant is a bit different than I've usually seen in Canada. First they make a big circular mound of dirt and sprinkle the seeds all over it, water it, and then cover it with some loose green foliage to keep the moisture in. They let the plants germinate a bit and sprout from this, and then transplant them all to rows to grow fully before harvesting. In Canada it seems we often just plant directly to rows no matter the size of plot, though I've seen some transplanting happen from a bed to smaller planting pots before.
Another very interesting place was this one house belonging to a family that has come from out of town. The father of the household has gone and come from the U.K. and been certified to sell a fertilizer that is apparently good for any crop, so he is busy trying to sell this to farmers in the surrounding area. At his house he also raises an absurd number of animals. There are goats, sheep, ducks (many many ducks), chickens, roosters, turkeys, dogs, a monkey, etc. The first time I went a bunch of ducks came up in a circle where I was sitting like I was their mother or something, it was awesome. I went a second time with my camera to take a video, which is pretty awesome too, I'll upload it the first chance I get.
Lastly, I had a long visit with the town blacksmith, Yusif. He's a pretty chill guy. I watched while he and his assistant made some knives, hammering the blades out of metal and then carving the handles out of wood. He has something seriously wrong with his foot, so he cant farm, instead he just sits under his grass hut all day working metal. He has offered to make me something, which would be a pretty awesome souvenir I think =)
It's been a bit difficult to adjust. I've basically gone from one extreme of living to another. No running water, no electricity, no toilet, no sink, no real bed either. I have a fairly large room, but its occupied by a mattress with a mosquito net over it and a wooden table which I've pretty much completely covered with various things that I need on a daily basis. My host mother brings me a small table to eat on as well. I finally got up the courage to take off the little cloth shed draped over it. Hopefully she will not be offended and just realize I don't need it. It's pretty much impossible to stop them from bringing me things I really don't need. Wherever I go a plastic lawn chair materializes. Sometimes its welcome, like when I had my nasty sunburn, sometimes its just silly. Sitting in a white lawn chair under a tree a few hundred yards from the nearest house, beside a borehole where women are washing clothes, thats just too much, even if it does hurt like hell to kneel or whatever.
Oh, I also saw my first praying mantis, which is an interesting story in and of itself. I was watching the women wash to figure out how its done, when suddenly something big falls from the tree to my left, big enough that i can hear it hit the ground. I look over and theres this praying mantis laying on its back, its wings (?!) stretch out by its side. Its still kind of alive but obviously if it just fell out of a tree it isnt doing so hot. I notice that one of its forearms seems to be missing but otherwise I can't see anything wrong with him. He's still twitching a little and looking around so I decide to keep watching to see what will happen. The boy washing in front of me picks it up to show me and asks if I'd like to hold it, which I politely refuse, so he puts it back down. Around then one of the ants thatd been crawling around comes up to check out the mantis. The mantis totally flips out and stabs the ant through the head with its working forearm before going back to its previous twitching and whatnot. The ant somehow survives this and starts trying to... unstab itself, I guess. At one point it actually pulled so hard it dragged the whole mantis with it a bit, but this seemed to wake the mantis up again, so he reeled the ant in and munched on it a bit, though the ant seemed to survive that too, except now it was half an ant and behind held against the chest of this almost-dead mantis, clutched between the two mandibles of the mantis which seemed to have finally kicked off and entered a fairly peaceful looking death pose, well fed I suppose. Around then I had to head out, but it was an interesting first encounter with a mantis.
I've also seen a crocodile, kind of. I guess its more accurate to say the crocodile saw me and I saw what it was looking at me with. One of the tiny lakes around Mankoma is apparently chalk full of crocodiles, so some of the kids took me to show me. Evidently this meant taking an en masse swim in crocodile infested waters, which I also politely declined. In any case, all i could really see was the eye poking out so it wasnt the most interesting thing in the world, though when they swim around you can see the water rippling. To my understanding they sometimes use that water to clean some of their clothes, which seems like a generally bad idea to me due to A) the aforementioned crocodiles and B) the brown, dirty, not-for-cleaning colour of the water. It would explain why so many people in Mankoma seem to be wearing dirty clothes all the time though, I guess it's cleanish. Maybe its also why so many clothes have holes in them?
Three pages 0.o time to stop, hehe. Oh! But I'll also just mention that my village has named me Kamyiti (ca mnyee tea), which is Gonja for patience =) which I think might be a womans name but meh, i make it look good.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
I'm in Tamale! I will be leaving for Bole Tuesday.
Getting here was quite the journey. We had to travel by bus from Accra to Tamale, which took 18 hours. 4 and a half of those hours were spent waiting, because our bus broke down after we'd passed Kumasi. That was pretty interesting in and of itself though. We all spent some time talking to the people on the bus with us. One of the better moments was sitting with this guy from Denver who was on the bus with us, him on a ukelele and me on a harmonica, doing a tiki hut style song while a little girl danced around us, imitating my harmonica playing.
The heat here is something else. I'm pretty much sweating the second I move. It's worse inside because the air is stagnant, you need a strong breeze to make a difference.
I've done some pretty quintessential African things already. Riding in the back of a pickup truck along a dusty road, piling 5 people into a cab, haggling with merchants on the street etc. It's an absolutely amazing experience. I could go on at length but I think I'm on a short time scale here =S I did buy my first cellphone though. I managed to drop it within 24 hours, thankfully theyre pretty resiliant. I'm sure my brother will send me an email making fun of me for that =P
Check in later!
-W
Getting here was quite the journey. We had to travel by bus from Accra to Tamale, which took 18 hours. 4 and a half of those hours were spent waiting, because our bus broke down after we'd passed Kumasi. That was pretty interesting in and of itself though. We all spent some time talking to the people on the bus with us. One of the better moments was sitting with this guy from Denver who was on the bus with us, him on a ukelele and me on a harmonica, doing a tiki hut style song while a little girl danced around us, imitating my harmonica playing.
The heat here is something else. I'm pretty much sweating the second I move. It's worse inside because the air is stagnant, you need a strong breeze to make a difference.
I've done some pretty quintessential African things already. Riding in the back of a pickup truck along a dusty road, piling 5 people into a cab, haggling with merchants on the street etc. It's an absolutely amazing experience. I could go on at length but I think I'm on a short time scale here =S I did buy my first cellphone though. I managed to drop it within 24 hours, thankfully theyre pretty resiliant. I'm sure my brother will send me an email making fun of me for that =P
Check in later!
-W
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
12 hours to departure
This is a pretty difficult period to put into words. I'll do my best.
How does one approach the idea of being transplanted from familiar, comfortable territory to what is for all intensive purposes a new world? a different order of life?
I'm pretty calm about it. I don't know why, but I've never gotten terribly excited about traveling, the act itself. Usually the fact that I went to Germany, or Greece, or France sank in after the event itself. I was in data collection mode for a few days, and then processed all of the information afterwards. in Ghana i think if i go into data-collection mode I'm going to burn out after the first month, because of how much work that would be to maintain. Instead i need to seriously *live* there, and figure out how to do that quickly. And this is significantly different than people I know who have moved to places like China or Japan or other places. I have a set goal and precisely 3 and a half months to do it in. There's no leeway, I can't take a leisurely pace to the macro-scale of analysis, I need to hit it hard and fast and understand it as quickly as possible so that I can have an impact.
That's what I want, but realistically that might not happen, and might not even be what needs to happen. Maybe that macro-scale analysis should wait like it always has till afterwards, and I should just focusing on gathering the information despite the difference in time. But again, I'd like to be more... aware that I'm in my placement, rather than just disassociated from my physical self for it. For that I think id need a clear understanding of the culture and everything before I did the hard work.
so its sort of a problem for me... id rather that i got 2 months to observe the culture and come to understand it first, and then dive into the work. instead im doing both at the same time. this is trouble for how my brain handles complex situations like this i think.
in any case, id like to think about something else...
where am i right now? who am i right now? what am i expecting?
im feeling ready academically speaking, as in we reviewed a lot of technical information that will come in really handy. but as for psychologically preparedness for traveling, i was in better shape at the start of the week. i seem to have an unconcious preparedness system in place for traveling, and coming to a giant city instead of hitting up a hot desert threw me off by a big margin.
im very eager and hopeful, but im remembering myself a bit. all my social science training is kicking in, slowly but surely, and im remembering what questions to ask and when and how. its tough recalling stuff from that long ago though. its also tough putting myself in the margin of space i want to be. so instead of being deliriously optimistic, i want to be practically realistic but hopeful. not quite there yet. thats sort of what my previous post was about. we were asked to write out our commitments to the people we were working for, i wrote 2, the first being an ideal and the second what i would probably actually do. i wrote the second because i realized the first was simply not going to happen.
i feel as though ive kind of wiped my mind of expectations, though im not terribly sure why. i think this was a concious decision to some degree, because i dont want to have so many preconceptions about what im getting into. rather i just want it to be as though im exiting one river and entering another, changing flows and finding my new rhythm with a new stream of life. expectations feel like theyd get in the way of this, as though id be expecting certain rocks in the river to direct me in certain directions, or as though im expecting bends in that river where they may be none. why go through that trouble when i can let the rest of the river steer me in the right way when i get there? it just means asking a lot more questions of a lot more people i think.
on a side note, i think my doxy is messing with my stomach in some unpleasant ways. not too terribly sure what to do about it, other than hope it tides over. its been a bit better the last day or 2 anyways. hopefully i wont have to switch.
How does one approach the idea of being transplanted from familiar, comfortable territory to what is for all intensive purposes a new world? a different order of life?
I'm pretty calm about it. I don't know why, but I've never gotten terribly excited about traveling, the act itself. Usually the fact that I went to Germany, or Greece, or France sank in after the event itself. I was in data collection mode for a few days, and then processed all of the information afterwards. in Ghana i think if i go into data-collection mode I'm going to burn out after the first month, because of how much work that would be to maintain. Instead i need to seriously *live* there, and figure out how to do that quickly. And this is significantly different than people I know who have moved to places like China or Japan or other places. I have a set goal and precisely 3 and a half months to do it in. There's no leeway, I can't take a leisurely pace to the macro-scale of analysis, I need to hit it hard and fast and understand it as quickly as possible so that I can have an impact.
That's what I want, but realistically that might not happen, and might not even be what needs to happen. Maybe that macro-scale analysis should wait like it always has till afterwards, and I should just focusing on gathering the information despite the difference in time. But again, I'd like to be more... aware that I'm in my placement, rather than just disassociated from my physical self for it. For that I think id need a clear understanding of the culture and everything before I did the hard work.
so its sort of a problem for me... id rather that i got 2 months to observe the culture and come to understand it first, and then dive into the work. instead im doing both at the same time. this is trouble for how my brain handles complex situations like this i think.
in any case, id like to think about something else...
where am i right now? who am i right now? what am i expecting?
im feeling ready academically speaking, as in we reviewed a lot of technical information that will come in really handy. but as for psychologically preparedness for traveling, i was in better shape at the start of the week. i seem to have an unconcious preparedness system in place for traveling, and coming to a giant city instead of hitting up a hot desert threw me off by a big margin.
im very eager and hopeful, but im remembering myself a bit. all my social science training is kicking in, slowly but surely, and im remembering what questions to ask and when and how. its tough recalling stuff from that long ago though. its also tough putting myself in the margin of space i want to be. so instead of being deliriously optimistic, i want to be practically realistic but hopeful. not quite there yet. thats sort of what my previous post was about. we were asked to write out our commitments to the people we were working for, i wrote 2, the first being an ideal and the second what i would probably actually do. i wrote the second because i realized the first was simply not going to happen.
i feel as though ive kind of wiped my mind of expectations, though im not terribly sure why. i think this was a concious decision to some degree, because i dont want to have so many preconceptions about what im getting into. rather i just want it to be as though im exiting one river and entering another, changing flows and finding my new rhythm with a new stream of life. expectations feel like theyd get in the way of this, as though id be expecting certain rocks in the river to direct me in certain directions, or as though im expecting bends in that river where they may be none. why go through that trouble when i can let the rest of the river steer me in the right way when i get there? it just means asking a lot more questions of a lot more people i think.
on a side note, i think my doxy is messing with my stomach in some unpleasant ways. not too terribly sure what to do about it, other than hope it tides over. its been a bit better the last day or 2 anyways. hopefully i wont have to switch.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Profound thoughts concerning commitments
I will make you reflect, think, consider your reality; your importance, your place in a larger world. I will make you hope things you have not thought to hope for, and make you believe the power to achieve these things is yours.
I will live life alongside you. cry, laugh, work and play. I will share your hopes and dreams, and let you know that I believe they can be real.
Truth:
Ideals are for people who want to end the world.
Tears are for people who want to make it better.
I will live life alongside you. cry, laugh, work and play. I will share your hopes and dreams, and let you know that I believe they can be real.
Truth:
Ideals are for people who want to end the world.
Tears are for people who want to make it better.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
May 3rd
I did my sector placement presentation today. This was basically the most stressful part of the week I think. A lot of people stayed up really late and got something like 45 minutes of sleep beforehand. I hadn't really finalized my presentation plan until a few minutes before I had to go up so it was just a wee bit sketch =P
My presentation was on organizing farmers groups. While I didn't quite get the full strength of my message across, I think it was a pretty solid learning experience. I'll give the low down on my actual presentation and than what happened.
A) So in my mind I broke down organizations into three categories:
1: Social Input: These are the things that group members bring with them when joining the group. So for instance, when organizing a group of rural farmers, you have various things to take into account; ethnicity, race, class, social status, prestige, age, religion, etc.
2: Organization: Basically the methods you use to organize your group. so whether your a diplomacy, tyranny, oligarchy, etc. or a cooperative, corporate, or unionized entity. also, does one delegate, volunteer, etc. roles, or even share them communially?
3: Linkages: those parts of your group that extend beyond its boundaries and attach to its important contemporaries - e.g. the market, collaborative institutions, other groups, etc.
B) When I went around talking to the three discussion groups, some interesting ideas came up. for instance;
1: the skills and physical resources people bring to a group alter their status in it and in society. so someone with a plow or a diploma of some kind may be given much more influence in the group.
There were probably more but I was in the process of entering a coma at the time.
In any case, the presentation made it pretty clear I need to make less presumptions about what people know and how they can think. A lot of people commented on how they had difficulty understanding what I was asking about because they couldnt understand it from a social context but more from a technical aspect, which is probably why they went to saying things like the physical capital individuals could bring to a group, so maybe they misinterpretted me and i in turn misinterpretted them, but I think people got the jist of what I was going for, in that there was definitely discussion about the thick myriad of social issues preventing a group from functioning smoothly. so for instance, is it better to have all men, all women, or a mix in your farmers group? this has various repercussions and implications depending on context, method, and goal, but also in inputs, organization, and linkages. an all male group has different inputs, a different thought process of organization, and a different priority of linkages. this is crucially important to people looking to work with farmers group in Ghana i think.
gotta head out for food =)
My presentation was on organizing farmers groups. While I didn't quite get the full strength of my message across, I think it was a pretty solid learning experience. I'll give the low down on my actual presentation and than what happened.
A) So in my mind I broke down organizations into three categories:
1: Social Input: These are the things that group members bring with them when joining the group. So for instance, when organizing a group of rural farmers, you have various things to take into account; ethnicity, race, class, social status, prestige, age, religion, etc.
2: Organization: Basically the methods you use to organize your group. so whether your a diplomacy, tyranny, oligarchy, etc. or a cooperative, corporate, or unionized entity. also, does one delegate, volunteer, etc. roles, or even share them communially?
3: Linkages: those parts of your group that extend beyond its boundaries and attach to its important contemporaries - e.g. the market, collaborative institutions, other groups, etc.
B) When I went around talking to the three discussion groups, some interesting ideas came up. for instance;
1: the skills and physical resources people bring to a group alter their status in it and in society. so someone with a plow or a diploma of some kind may be given much more influence in the group.
There were probably more but I was in the process of entering a coma at the time.
In any case, the presentation made it pretty clear I need to make less presumptions about what people know and how they can think. A lot of people commented on how they had difficulty understanding what I was asking about because they couldnt understand it from a social context but more from a technical aspect, which is probably why they went to saying things like the physical capital individuals could bring to a group, so maybe they misinterpretted me and i in turn misinterpretted them, but I think people got the jist of what I was going for, in that there was definitely discussion about the thick myriad of social issues preventing a group from functioning smoothly. so for instance, is it better to have all men, all women, or a mix in your farmers group? this has various repercussions and implications depending on context, method, and goal, but also in inputs, organization, and linkages. an all male group has different inputs, a different thought process of organization, and a different priority of linkages. this is crucially important to people looking to work with farmers group in Ghana i think.
gotta head out for food =)
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