Blog dump!

I've seen no internet in a month. All of these posts were written then and I am just dumping them on all at once! Enjoy!

Tamale:

Akwaaba house had its own unique feel. There was energy and wonder and excitement running through the air. We were on our way to adventure.

After finally reaching Tamale, we settled into our new home for the coming week - the Catholic guest house. To be truly honest I don't get the same sense of spirit out of this place. People come and go, over the cow gate and back again. There are too many causes, experiences and voices and often guest houses are just used as a place to sleep along the way. It's as though this story, so epic to us, is being drowned out by the crowd of sleepers and passers by.

That being said, though. It's a nice place. There's water, most of the time. There is also electricity, most of the time. The ceiling fans help us keep cool when they are working, and (duh duh duhhhn) there are toilets! I don't know whether this happened by chance or if it was deliberate on the part of the APS, but for many volunteers these perks have proved most valuable in the ... ah ... adjusting process.

So far my only bout with sickness was some nausea inspired by the local food, but diarrhea is moving through our group like death in Final Destination. One by one we fall victim. Some go during session, some go while alone at night ... some just go all the time. I know it won't stop until it gets all of us.

I look around our little circle in the gazebo and wonder: Who's next? it's only a matter of time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bussin' to Bunkpurugu:

The bus ride to Bunkpurugu was slightly shorter than the one from Accra to Tamale, but perhaps a little less comfortable. We had to be at the metro mass station around 5am to pick up this tickets, and when we got to the station to reach the bus, it was a total beehive of activity! There were people, buses, and tro-tros everywhere!

The last bus had been gloriously air-conditioned. This one wasn't. And strangely, this didn't actually mean that it was super hot. With the windows open, the bus was actually comfortable compared to the searing heat outside. 'Till today, I hadn't thought this possible without copius amounts of freon.

I hung out the open window trying to take pictures, not thinking of how it hadn't rained in weeks. I also didn't think that the traffic on the long dirt road would kick up the dust, suspending it in the air. The effect was as though they had driven me through a cloud of self-tanner When we arrived, my virgin irish skin was covered in the reddish golden glow of sweat and dirt. It looked as though I'd lived under the Ghanaian sun for years!

Now - bring on the bucket shower.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello MoFA!

Robin and I met the director of the district, and the majority of the staff. Everyone seems very kind and really enthousiastic! I have actually already met two of the extension agents that I will be working with. They came to the Agriculture as a Business workshop during in-country training, and they did very well.

The director is amazing. He's high-capacity, enthousiastic, and open! He even treated us to riceballs, groundnut soup, and guinea fowl. Let me tell you, I love this meal.

The district I am working in is called Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo, and there's really no point it trying to pronounce it without a domonstration. There are five extension agents working in the office, and the director is willing to mandate the program to all of them. I am pretty pumped to get to work, but I will be going to a villiage stay in Momboga for a while before I can get into the swing of things!

I am living in Bunkpurugu town with the coordinator of a local NGO called BLFACU. They focus mainly on literacy and agriculture, with some health-related activities as well. There is electricity (completed with ceiling fan in my room ... ka-ching!), a latrine, and I have even been provided with a bed and a desk.

Everyone I've met has been so wonderfully accomodating, I really think I'm going to like it here.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Momboga / Kuenkehe-Daen

My villiage stay in Momboga (or Kuenkehe Daen, depending on who you ask) was really nice! It was strange, I found myself doing nothing most of the time, since in the beginning of the stay, it hadn't rained and the farmers were waiting to plant.

There's this local dish called TZ that people make, it's basically just boiled / stirred maize flour and they eat it with stews and soups. This is the staple food of the region, so people some variation for almost every meal.

At first, it doesn't seem all that appetizing. Imagine someone over-cooking Cream of Wheat until it becomes a solid(ish) mass in the bowl. TZ is pretty much that exactly, except it's made with maize flour. You can pull off pieces of it and dip it into the accompanying soup or stew. I know it sounds gross, but in the end it's pretty good.

The thing about TZ is that it's actually a lot of work to cook it, if you're cooking for a family. There are no stoves here, you have to use a pot over coals. The TZ is so thick when it's cooking that you need to step on bars to keep the pot from moving, and it takes a considerable amount of elbow grease to actually do the stirring! I know, because I tried and failed. One day with my host family I will try again, after I get over the embarassment.

I went to get water with Agnes, the first daughter of the family. They gave me the kind of bucket that the little girls carried! I didn't take it on my head, though. I didn't want to waste all the water, given that they worked so hard to get it.

The women pump the water from a borehole down the way, but it's fairly physical. I didn't it for a short while, but the women seemed to not want to let me work so they made me sit back down after only a few seconds.

Like I said, one really wanted me to do any work, and the place I stayed was actually wonderfully outfitted with solar electricity, a guest compound, a latrine, purewater (the bagged clean water for sale in Ghana) and "minerals" (pop). I definitely feel I didn't truly get an experience of poverty. I wonder if closer to the end of my placement, when I've fully adjusted, I should try and go on another villiage stay with another family. I really don't know, but would totally appreciate any input from all you EWBers and past JFs if you're reading!

I did, however, get to experience the culture in depth. There was a funeral going on the day I landed, so everyone from the community had come home! There was drumming and dancing all night long until daybreak! Even through the torrential rain! The funeral was for a previous chief of the villiage and so when I went to the market, the new chief was being introduced to the community! I didn't take any pictures of the funeral because I was a little uncomfortable with it given my own concept of funerals and loss, but it was truly amazing. I met so many people I forget most of them.

I had my first experience with someone asking me to take their children to Canada. She didn't speak english, but someone had translated for me. It was so awkward and I felt so bad. How do you explain to someone why you can't give their child a better life? I don't know. I guess I'll have to learn.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1st days in Ghana

We left Akwaaba house for the airport at 4:30 on Saturday afternoon. We made it there with few hiccups, but some mild frustration at the rain and the fact that our giant backpacks weren't well suited for public transit. 48 hours later, we are nearing Tamale, having gotten up at 5am to catch this bus from Accra.

I'm not going to lie, the road is bumpy and the rest stops make me regret any time I refused to go in a gas station, but who cares? The bus has air conditioning!

This one detail trumps any other on my mind right now. I hadn't even known I was capable of sweating this much! I could literally watch the beads form on my skin. The morning heat in Accra was even more intense than last night when we landed. When the door to the plane opened, it was like the world had instantly become a sauna. It was strange to breathe in air that warm and heavy.

I was woken up in the middle of the night by some pretty intense heat rash on my face. That's right. My face! I cannot express to you how itchy heat rash is. Eventually I fell into a less-than-restful sleep with a wet facecloth over my cheeks. When I woke up to even more heat and enormously swollen feet this morning, I seriously questionned my decision to come here.

Now after over twelve hours of air-conditioned transit supplemented by a beautiful countryside and busy markets with great food, I think I am back on board! Ghana's bananas and mangoes are phenomenol. The fried yams and planatins are also unreal. Everything is spicy! I just love it! Plus, some new friends from the U.S. tell us that we'll get used to the heat.

I keep looking out the windows for animals, but I haven't seen any. That doesn't really matter though, the scenery is interesting enough. Everything is intenseley green and occasionally a mountain or two has popped up. The sun is low in the west now and we just crossed a bridge over a an inlet to the Volta Lake. There was one fisherman still out, while the others had brought their canoes in to shore. In the dimming sky, you could only see his silhouette out on the water. It could have been a movie.

The roadside is dotted with little communities, In the really rural areas, there will be stick huts with thatched rooves. In other places, it's mud-brick houses with the same thatching. Still other communities seem to be dominated by aluminum constructions and storage containers painted with some ad or another. These ones seem to be market communites, with lots of people selling goods or food. Every surface in them screams Vodafone, MTN or Coca-cola. Whole homes and shops are decked out with corporate logos and bright colours! It makes me uneasy. I'm not sure why.

Akwaaba

I love looking at houses.

Beautiful or run-down, big or small, new or old - a house is always much more than what you see. Who knows how many people have made their home, for a time, in a given house? For each, it was the main stage for a season of their life. They leave their memories and emotions there. They recall them when they come back.

In that way I always think that people leave a bit of their spirit in the houses they stay, and sometimes when I see one I try to imagine the people who left their love in those walls.

Akwaaba house is an old place with older hardwood floors, a couple of dens, and a few bedrooms - the kind of place you see four or five college kids staying. If I saw this house a week ago, I would have imagined them jamming on the couch with guitars and cooking KD in the kitchen.

This is ABSOLUTELY not the case.

Twenty four West Africa JFs are currently living two of the most emotionally and intellectually intense weeks of their lives. We have seen elaborate family dinners from the Burkina team, rather than the staple KD, and hough there is a guitar there are also two African drums and someone even brought a trumpet!

We are not the only group that have been here. So many have come and go before us, and ALL I'm sure look back with fond and intense emotions.

No one will see it when they pass. No one will imagine it when they look at front door, but the spirit of this house is idealism. Its walls remember our theories, our hopes, our fears and our flipcharts. Its shower recalls our determination and commitment. Its beds remember our exhaustion. Its plumbing? Well... lets just say it won't mess with us again.