Termite hunting

When small chickens or guinea fowl hatch during the hot season, there aren’t a lot of things they can eat because they are too small. So what do they eat? Termites. During this season, people collect corn husks and manure. They add a little bit of water, and pack the mixture into a clay pot.

After the pots are packed, they put small sticks across the top, making a lid so the manure and corn husks will stay inside even if the jar is tipped upside down.

In the evening, people will put the pot, upside down, over a place where they know there are termites around. During the night, the termites climb into the jar to eat the manure/corn husk mixture.

Early in the morning, people will come and collect the pot. They remove the contents, and then the chicks scratch through it and devour the termites.

Baby Backing

“Patience, what a beautiful baby you have!” some women said as they passed me on their way to go fetch water. “I think he looks like me,” I answered. They all laughed. Abdul Salaam looks nothing like me.

They were commenting because I decided that I wanted to learn how to tie a baby on my back with a piece of cloth, which is how women here carry their children. Madame Shera offered to teach me, and her son was the one I had tied on my back.

Baby backing is pretty straightforward. You bend over and put the baby on your back, and then move the cloth so it goes just under the child’s neck. Then you pull the top part of the cloth tight and tuck it in under your armpits. After that, you pull the bottom of the cloth under the baby’s bottom and twist it in front of you before tying it in a knot.

Carrying children that way is really easy and surprisingly comfortable (although it does squish your chest a little). I was hauling firewood with Salaam on my back, and it felt secure.

Several months ago I met a traditional healer on the bus, and I promised to go to her village and visit. I finally found the time to go. As I approached the house, a young woman with tiny braids and no head scarf scowled at me. “Is Amina here?” I asked her. The woman led me into the house.

Madame Amina was surprised to see me. “I didn’t think you would come!” she said, which made me feel guilty. I sat down in her room. Her walls were full of posters extolling the importance of treating people with mental disabilities (called madness or not normal in Ghana) with compassion.

After some time, she took a red powder out of a bag and held it in front of me. “Fever,” she said. The intense young lady who had led me in, Amina’s daughter in law, translated “this one is for malaria.”

Amina reached into another bag and took out a tan powder, which she said was for the stomach.

Then she offered me some of a third substance which looked like tiny pieces of charcoal. “This is for if you want to give birth,” she said. I politely declined.

As we were talking, a young woman came into the room carrying a young baby.

Amina pulled out a white cloth that had some shells and small trinkets tucked inside. She spread out the cloth, and handed the woman one of the shells. The woman took it, and then gave it back along with one cedi (about a dollar).

Amina then gathered the shells and trinkets and tossed them back onto the cloth. She stared for a moment and then started to talk to the woman as the baby crawled around the room. She did this a total of seven times, and the final time the woman was also talking.

From what I picked up of the conversation, I was guessing that she was telling the woman’s fortune.

Two men came in for the same procedure a little while later. When they left, I put a cedi into Amina’s hand. She laughed and called her son in to translate.

Here are the highlights of my future as told by Amina:

 There is opportunity for me in Ghana. A man will come to my house via motorcycle and offer me something good. This will definitely come to pass if I buy milk and millet and prepare it. I did not buy or prepare the milk or millet.

 I will be very rich. Thank goodness.

 I need to watch out for my best male friend. He is watching me and will steal from me if I am not careful.

 I am healthy and will remain healthy.

Her son pointed out a calabash that was hanging from the ceiling of the room. “See how there is nothing underneath it?” he asked me. “Some small spirits hold it. That is how you know this woman is very good.”

We ate rice and tezed before I went home.

“Oh, oh oh. This is not fine. This is very, very bad,” my chief said as he studied the hole in the back door of my house.

The chief coming to see my broken door was the last in a series of events. A few weeks earlier, I had gone to Tamale for a meeting. I told my counterpart and my neighbors I would be gone for the night and I would come home on the first bus in the morning.

There is a short walk (less than five minutes) between where the taxi drops me and where my bus picks me up. I was carrying a duffel bag on my head and a backpack as I walked from the taxi to the bus. I saw someone approach me from the corner of my eye, and as I turned to see who it was a man grabbed the bag off the top of my head and ran into a nearby alleyway. Some people on the street saw what happened and tried to catch the man, but were unable to.

I was upset, and decided to return to the Peace Corps office instead of going to my site. I turned around to go back to where the cabs were. A few moments, a man came out from behind a wooden stand at the market place. “Come here,” he said and started walking toward me. I began to walk toward the street, away from the man. Two men on a motorcycle came and grabbed my backpack, dragging me for a short distance as they tried to remove the bag. The three men disappeared, and a crowd of people who were nearby but not quite close enough to help gathered around me. Somebody gave me cab fare to go back to the office. I was sore all over but unhurt other than a large bruise on the back of my left knee and a small cut on my neck from where my hat was taken.

I reported the incident to the Peace Corps office, which promptly sent medications, helped me file a police report, sent me my own bank account number so I could withdraw funds, and made a new ID for me. Because of Christmas and various other causes, my medications took 11 days to arrive. I have asthma, and I was not willing to go back to my site and away from the local hospital without getting my inhaler replaced, so I had to remain in Tamale for the entire time.

I scrounged some old clothes from around the office. My friend Dan gave me an extra toothbrush he happened to have. After the bank opened, I bought some basic supplies, like underwear. I made a point of walking around town every day while I waited for my medications. This was important, because walking around town was terrifying and exhausting for me at this point. Tamale is a busy city, with lots of people and lots of motorcycles. I was startled any time either a person or a motorcycle got too close- which happens every few moments in Tamale. It’s unavoidable.

The day after the robbery, as I was out walking, another man started walking toward me. “Come here,” he said. I shuddered and turned away. He caught up to me and explained that he was the man who had paid my cab fare the previous day. He had recognized me and wanted to ask if I was OK. I hated myself for not greeting him immediately, for being afraid of everything. I wanted to go back to my site so I could be with my friends and start to fix my head, but I was still waiting for my medications.

Three days after the robbery, I happened to see my stolen hat for sale. The man argued that it wasn’t mine, even though it had a spot of paint on it from a project I had done earlier. I didn’t want the hat back, but I was really angry with the seller. Then another seller shook my hand and scratched my palm with his finger. When someone scratches your palm, the person is propositioning you for sex. It is a remarkably insulting gesture. I still wanted nothing more than to go back to my site and my friends, and I was still stuck in Tamale waiting for medications.

Finally, my medications came, and I was able to go home to my site. On the bus, I was thinking about which carpenter I would need to call to let me into my house, since I no longer had a key. It turned out not to be a relevant issue, because when I got there, there was a hole in my door- the house had been broken into while I was gone. My house had been robbed. This probably happened because no one was watching my house since I was only supposed to be gone for one night.

I felt disappointed. Depressed. I had been so excited to be with people I trusted, and my trust had been broken.

After a few moments to get myself together, I went to tell Achiri what had happened. His family was happy to see me; since my message had not gotten to the village, they were wondering why I had been gone for so long. I explained the situation and together we took an inventory of what had been taken. I asked Achiri and Madame Shera if there was any reason for me to stay in Ghana. “Be patient,” Madame Shera said. “God is there. Just wait.” It didn’t sound like a good reason. “They will do something,” Achiri said.

A few days later, the chiefs and elders and some other important community members came to my house. After the Imam said a prayer, the chief formally apologized for what had happened, particularly the part that happened in my village.

They presented me with a 100 ghana cedis, a bundle of yams and a guinea fowl. This was a huge gift. They also put several new locks on my doors.

The message was clear- that my community was there for me, and that they wanted me to stay. It meant a lot.

Even with the generous gift, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay. Peace Corps Service is hard, and I felt like I had been working hard (without amenities like running water, air conditioning, internet access, or even a real salary), and I got repaid by being mugged and having my house broken into.

It took some time, but I realized that I was not seeing the situation correctly. The truth is that I could have been mugged or had my house broken into anywhere. The truth is that nobody in America except my closest family would have reacted with as much compassion as the leaders of my village. I seriously doubt that the mayor or any other important community figure would have come to my house to apologize if this had happened in America. The truth is that these incidents happened because of a few individuals, and they do not represent Ghana as a whole. I’ve been in Ghana for a year and a half, and I know that the majority of the people here are kind, generous, and protective. I have never lacked for anything because my Ghanaian friends have taken care of me. Ghanaian strangers have taken care of me too. The truth is that no matter how I keep score, Ghana has given me more than it’s taken.

Thankful for Suf

Ambassador Donald Tietelbaum invited the Peace Corps Volunteers to his house for Thanksgiving. He did this last year too and it was a good time, so I was excited to go. It’s always nice to re-connect with people you haven’t seen in a while. It’s also always good to eat turkey and mashed potatoes.

I took an early bus from Tamale to Accra. I was sitting at the station, patiently waiting for the bus to load, when I heard someone say “Kim?”

I looked up to see a man staring at me intently. He looked very familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Then he started greeting me in Dagboni, and I suddenly realized that it was Suf. Suf was my language trainer. I haven’t seen him since training ended more than a year ago. We chatted for a while, and I asked him if he would like some bofrut, because I was getting hungry. He said yes, and I wandered off to get bofrut. I started talking to the woman who was selling the bofrut in Dagboni. She asked my name. I told her, and she didn’t understand, because I still can’t pronounce my Dagboni name. She got it after a few attempts, and I went back to sit down by Suf.

I sighed and complained that I couldn’t pronounce my Dagboni name, and he asked what it was. “Patience,” I said.

He started breaking it down syllable by syllable, and I wasn’t getting it. “I’m pretty sure this is a lost cause, Suf” I said.

“They shouldn’t have given you a name you can’t pronounce,” he said as we boarded the bus.

I didn’t notice it at first, but a few weeks later I was on one of my evening walks and someone asked my name. I told her, and she understood the first time. Then I realized that this had happened a few times. Actually, it’s happened every time since- I can finally actually pronounce my own (Dagboni) name! I’m thankful to Suf for taking the time to show me how.

Fire Festival

“You need to learn how to prepare our food,” Achiri told me on the day of Fire Festival. We caught two of my chickens and slaughtered them. I did most of the work on one of them myself, which made me proud. We made a broth with the chicken, adobo seasoning, and salt. Achiri made a face at my salt shaker, so I removed the top, and he added a good inch or so out of the bottle. When the chicken was cooked, we removed it and added a package of dried ochra and let it simmer. He went and got fufu from his house, and I ate.

I changed into some trousers and my running shoes and went to Achiri’s house. Some men there talked to me about Fire Festival. One man said that it started because someone’s boy was lost at night, and they needed fire to be able to find him. I’ve also heard people say it was to cleanse the land. I think it depends who you ask.

The festival starts at the chief’s house. Achiri and I were there pretty early, and there were about 20 other adults there. There were also about 300 kids with painted faces carrying torches, which were unlit so far.

The kids were fighting. Achiri pointed his flashlight on a particularly violent kid. “Hey, you! You!” he said in Dagbani, stopping the fight. I tried to imagine a group of 300 painted children with torches that would soon be lit and only 20 adults for supervision marching through Salt Lake and laughed out loud. Marching is the wrong word, but I don’t know the right one. Scampering, maybe?

The chief finally came out, and the linguist lit the chief’s torch. Everyone else lit their torches from the chief’s torch. By now, there were many more adults and several drummers. Everyone started dancing with their torches, fanning out into the bush. At the end, everyone throws their torches into a tree, so it looks like a giant column of flame. Then people take some branches and move to various houses.

A concoction is made with the tree branches and water, which is thrown over the participants. It is supposed to make you invincible. It’s warm and it feels really good when you get a chest full of it.

Then everyone dances, carrying tree branches and cutlasses. It’s hard to see because there’s a lot of dust in the air. It’s hard to hear because of the drumming and the guns going off in the background. We headed back to my house and realized that another village (my village is really 3 villages smashed together) was still going, so we joined in similar festivities there.

Afterwards, I went home and ate a leftover piece of chicken and took a bucket bath to rinse off all the dust. I was told that the women will collect the branches used in the dancing and prepare bath water for their children. It is supposed to protect the children.

The next day, people go around and greet their fathers, uncles, and grandparents. The relatives are supposed to give the children meat, and sometimes chickens. I am still waiting on a chicken from my family.

Achiri and I went to greet the chiefs, and I got to eat kola nut (I can’t seem to get away from it). A man with a silver beard said that I was his grandmother and that I should give him a hen. Achiri and I laughed. Later we went to market.

Introduction/ Pre trip

Several months ago, my friend Lizzy had the idea of doing an HIV/AIDS educational event along the banks of the White Volta river. Waterways mean that fishermen and other people can easily travel. Mobile populations are more at risk for HIV. Some volunteers had done a similar project along different portions of the river before, and they had discovered there was a great need for education. In some places, people had not even heard of HIV/AIDS. The rate of people who tested HIV positive was much higher than what current statistics indicated. Everything indicated that HIV education of riverbank communities via boat was a good project and should be done again.

After several months of looking for a boat, making a budget, buying supplies, going to safety meetings, and coordinating with nurses to bring HIV testing, Lizzy, Liz, Julie, Beth, and myself were ready to go.

Day 1: The Water of Life or All Things Begin in God

The boat trip began at 6 a.m. at a bus station. Julie, Beth, Old Boy, and myself had finished buying supplies and were boarding a tro for Nawuni, our first stop. Liz and Lizzy would meet us there with the boat. Sadiq and Achiri had their own transportation to Nawuni, and would meet us there as well.

Nawuni is the Dagboni word for God. We figured starting a journey in God was a good idea. The name comes from a local deity that lives in the water near the village. They used to throw people accused of witch craft into the water. If you were a witch, the crocodiles would eat you.

We got the community health volunteers together and began the educational activities. Sadly, they weren’t able to bring the whole community, so we only trained the health volunteers. After we finished, they took us to the room we were staying. The room was decorated with two giant posters- one featuring football (soccer) players, and a semi-pornographic one with the caption I will love you lifetime. Underneath it was a book outlining the steps for accepting Christ into your life.

Day 2: The Boat-less Boat Trip

We discovered that the next village on our list was close enough to Nawuni that we would be walking instead of taking the boat. Day 2 of the boat trip, and I still hadn’t been on a boat. I didn’t like this at all.

We packed up our educational materials and headed to Afayilli. On the way, we had to ford a giant mud pit. We put our things in a fishing canoe so they wouldn’t get wet and then crossed. The education went smoother on this day; we were getting the hang of things.

Day 3: 2x2 into the bath or Shoes off my feet

Finally, we got to go on the boat. The boat was a giant canoe shaped motor boat designed to carry livestock. It was named Patience in Gonja. Since my Dagboni name means Patience, I liked this.

We unloaded our supplies and made the short walk up to the village and started the education. They served us Akple and fish heads for lunch. Akple is a dish made from millet. I’ve never had it before, but I want to have it again. Even the fish heads were tasty.

My shoes broke. Sami, one of the health volunteers in the community, traded his shoes for mine. I was grateful, because I didn’t have any extra with me, and there was no place to buy more.

We went to the riverbank and hung out near a little lagoon. A woman was fetching water. We got back just after dark and wanted to bathe. We asked our hostess where the bathing facilities were, and they tried to take us to the facilities two at a time- something we were not comfortable with. “There’s somebody in there,” we protested. “go and bathe,” the hostess answered. Everyone ended up confused. We finally got across that we would prefer to bathe one at a time and set up our sleeping places.

Day 4: Kim Gets Lost in the Bush or Get Me a Hoe

We left Shigbuni fairly early in the morning, and realized that we had accidentally eaten our hostesses bread, thinking it was a gift. We felt bad, because the village was small enough that she wouldn’t be able to buy bread, even if we reimbursed her. Oops.

We docked, and began walking toward the village. It was a long walk. “It’s like hiking,” I told myself in an effort to be positive. Inside my head I immediately started ticking off the differences between this and hiking: It was hotter, I was wearing plastic shower shoes, people had buckets full of 540 condoms and 2 wooden penises on their heads. I guess I needed to work on my positive thinking.

When we got there, the community was ready to go. We put down our things and started the education. For this village, I was working with the community instead of the volunteers. We did our introduction to HIV/AIDS, a risk game, and condom demonstrations. This was the routine in all the villages. When we finished, we asked for a volunteer to do a condom demonstration. To our surprise, a woman volunteered. She got to the end, and she looked at us. “I need a hoe,” she said. “You’re supposed to bury the condom when you’re finished with it.” We gave her our hoe. It was the most serious anyone had taken these demonstrations.

We had the hoe with us in case the communities didn’t have latrines. This was the case in Tampia. Julie had to go, so she asked a woman where the best place was. The woman walked with Julie to a field on the edge of town, carrying the hoe. When they got there, she dug a hole for Julie to use, and then came back and covered it up. A truly full service hostess.

I woke up at about 2 a.m. and realized I needed to use the latrine. The hole-digging hostess was asleep somewhere, so I grabbed my flashlight, the hoe, and the toilet paper and walked until I was a ways out of town. On the way back, I missed the path to our place. There was no moon, and no one to ask directions from because it was late. Then my flashlight battery started to die. I managed to find our house after only 45 minutes of wandering around. My flashlight even held out. What a relief!

Day 5 We break up or Where Everyone Knows My Name or Lizzy Plays Pied Piper

The next day, we had to split into two groups, because the nurses were not going to be around for a few days and we wanted to test as many people as possible. Lizzy, Julie, Sadiq, Achiri and I went to Walemole, and Beth, Lukman, Old Boy and Liz went to Adayilli.

Walemole was bizarre because everyone knew who I was. “Patience! How are you? How’s your house? How’re your hens? Greet Madame Shara for me!” This was repeated at least 5 times. “How does everyone here know you?” Julie asked. I shrugged. Achiri said that this village was close to mine, and that these people went to the same market as me. Trying to get a feel for the distance, I asked how long it took for them to get to market. He said about two hours on a tro. It’s not that close.

Lizzy, Sadiq, Julie and I were waiting for the volunteers to come, and Lizzy started playing her recorder. A group of children gathered around her to see what she was doing. I started videotaping, largely to try to prove that the recorder was annoying. “Sadiq,” I asked, turning the camera to him. “What do you think of the music?” “The music?” he said. “I don’t know about it.”

When we finished, we joined Liz, Beth, and Old Boy in Adayilli. They had been busy- it was one of the biggest communities on the whole trip, and they had to cover it alone. They were finished when we got back, and a woman was braiding Beth’s hair.

Day 6 (Queen) Liz Eats Kola

The next community was Daboya, which was different from the other communities we went to because it’s much bigger. We were ahead of schedule, so I went to see if the nurses were ready while everyone else waited under a tree. They were not ready, so we decided to take the day off so we could rest, restock supplies, and do laundry. Japan, saw us in town buying food, and decided that we needed to go greet the chief. Liz, Lizzy, Julie and I took off. (Beth had wandered off somewhere and our counterparts were sleeping). Daboya was the first Gonja village. Liz’s site is a Gonja village, and they made her a Queen Mother there. A Queen Mother is like a chief, but female.

Queen Mothers have different rules for greeting than the rest of us. For one thing, she’s supposed to wear her fancy queen mother cloth. She didn’t have it, because she was worried about ruining it on the boat and she wasn’t expecting to need it.

She also has to lay on the mats or skins on her right side through the greetings (the rest of us got to sit on a bench). When the chief offered us kola nut, Liz was the one who took it. Kola is a stimulant, and it tastes very bitter. Apparently Liz has grown accustomed to it though, because she ate it rather quickly. Later, she stole another one from our stash. Gross.

Day 7 Julie and the Cat Share a Disease

After our day of shopping, kola munching, and laundry, we were ready for our community event in Daboya. Sadly, Beth had to leave early, so she took the first bus back to Tamale.

When we finished the education, we decided to make lunch for ourselves so we could use up some of the supplies. Julie, Liz, and Lizzy started attempting to light the coal pot (I was happily asleep). After investing a significant amount of time trying to get it lit, someone noticed an electric burner. The coal pot remained unlit.

Julie had picked up an eye infection, and we bought some eye drops the medical officer prescribed. The house cat came in furiously blinking one discolored eye. “Julie, you infected the cat!” we said. We held down the cat and gave it some of Julie’s eye drops. The eye cleared up right away.

Day 8 Beth Makes Salt Cookies

As part of our pre-trip planning, Beth had mixed together some ingredients for no bake cookies. The cookies were for Liz, because her birthday was near the time of our trip.

Beth had left the day before, so we texted her to get the recipe for the cookies. She texted it back and we discovered we were short an ingredient. We made Liz go to buy the ingredient, because we are terrible friends who make people buy things for their own birthday present. When Liz got back, Lizzy offered to cook. She mixed all the ingredients, put them on the electric burner, and started playing cards with Old Boy and Sadiq, forgetting all about the cookies. Julie salvaged them before they got too burnt, and we laid them on some plastic bags to cool.

When we bit into them, we realized they tasted like blocks of salt. I tried a second one, and it was just as bad. How much salt did Beth put in that mix? Everyone wanted to know. “Thanks for the cookies. Do I have a goiter?” Liz texted Beth. We decided they were inedible and dumped the cookies in front of the house for the goats. The next morning, they were still there. They must have been awful. Until then, I thought that goats eat everything.

Day 9 How Do You Spell Tidrope?

We were finally on the move again. We were scheduled to go to a village called Tidrope. We got to the village, unloaded our things, greeted the chief, and got started. I was teaching the health volunteers in this village. They seemed like a well educated group, so I asked them how to spell Tidrope. “Fishcamp,” they said. “No, how do you spell it?” Achiri looked at me funny and said “It’s fish and then camp.” Then it started to dawn on me that we were in the wrong village. I asked a few times, and then felt rude, since they were all ready to learn and I kept repeating that we weren’t there for them anyways. We finished the education and then hiked to Tidrope and did it again. We were exhausted. This is not meant to be done twice in a day. We pushed on to the next village so we could finish early in the morning.

Day 10 Nobody Drowned

We finished the education in Kito early the next morning. The nurses had gone to another village with the same name. We figured that at least we were getting the right number of villages, if not necessarily the right ones. We got to Yapei and unloaded the boat in the early afternoon. We had educated 450 people about HIV basics, given over 20 condom demonstrations for over 400 people, provided HIV testing for over 600 people, and showed a film about kayayo issues to over 700 people. We had also healed a cat, fended off an attack of stink bugs, survived salt cookies that not even goats would eat, and managed not to throw Lizzy or her recorder overboard. Success.

Cure for a Sore Throat

On the eve of Halloween, I woke up with a cough and a sore throat. It was market day and I felt otherwise fine, so I went out anyways. My neighbors asked me to pick up some koshi at market. Koshi are fried bean batter cakes. I told them I would and took off.

By the time I got to market, my throat felt much worse, probably because of the hundreds of greetings that I needed to respond to on my way there. I told my friend Azara, who sells a variety of things. She handed me a pill. “Tim,” she said. Tim is Dagboni for medicine. It also is Dagboni for juju, so you need to watch the context clues. The pill was a painkiller with caffeine. I figured it wouldn’t do much for my throat, so I declined it. She handed me three Tom Toms. Tom Toms are a local candy that taste and act like cough drops and have menthol listed in the ingredients. “These are very good,” she said, pressing them into my hand. I was grateful, and put them in my bag for later.

I didn’t get home until just before dark. I dropped my stuff off at my house and then walked to my neighbor’s to drop of the koshi. They wanted to talk, but my throat was tired. “I am sick here,” I told them, pointing at my throat. “I want to go home and rest.”

“Come,” Sahida told me. I followed her into her compound, where she fetched some water. She then proceeded to throw the water onto the grass thatch roof of one of the rooms of the house and catch it in a giant can that originally held tomato paste. She did this several times and then handed it back to me. “Tim,” she said, saying the Dagboni word for medicine. Then she laughed. “Kim tim.” Safura, another friend of mine who lives in the same house and was preparing food, thought the rhyme was funny too.

I started to drink it, wondering how many parasites were on the roof of their house, and how many would now be in my stomach. It tasted fine, but I only took a few sips because it looked dirty and I was worried about making myself a lot sicker than I was. I handed the tomato paste tin back to Sahida, and she assumed I didn’t understand.

“It’s a local treatment,” the landlord explained in English. “I’m not sure what the scientific reasoning for it is.” Me either.

I went home and made tea with honey and ginger, my own sore throat remedy. I’m not sure what the scientific reasoning for that is, either.

The next day, my throat felt a lot better. I guess something I tried worked.

Transportation

Travel in Ghana can be rough. Consider this text message from one of my friends. “In case any of you are having a bad day, my morning after leaving (Tamale)- arrived at station, took taxi 2 jctn, lost earring, chipped tooth on a rock n my chop, got on new tro in front, engine gave my feet burns, moved to back, flew up and hit my head, tro got stuck in puddle and nearly flipped, had 2 climb out window, walked in noon sun, til now- on top of a tro 5 mins from home. Need a godspeed or 2 please.”

Travelling is usually rough (but usually not as bad as that text describes).

The first issue is getting transportation. Most vehicles don’t leave until they’re full. This may take a few hours, but if you go later it may leave without you. Your other option is to hitchhike. I have hitchhiked on tractors, in private vehicles, in cargo lorries (safely seated in the passenger seat). I know people who have hitch hiked in tankers and on fire trucks. The easiest vehicle to hitch hike on would be a motorcycle, but sadly Peace Corps doesn’t allow volunteers to ride on motos. (Motorcycles are called motos here).

The most common vehicle for public transportation is a tro. A tro is something between a small bus and a large minivan. They are usually rusty in several places. Sometimes they are infested with cock roaches, but luckily that’s really rare. There are generally 5 seats per row, but usually there are at least 8 people sitting in each row. The last people to board stand packed together in the front or climb on top of the vehicle. In addition to people and luggage, there is usually an assortment of goats, sheep, and chickens inside and on top of the tro. Every once in a while there is a cow on top.

Cargo lorries are another thing altogether. They are designed for cargo instead of people, but usually they are full of people sitting on top of rice, maize, and whatever other cargo is being hauled. They are generally overloaded and some times tip over on the roads if the driver goes too fast. I recently took a cargo lorry back to my village from another one. I was surprised to see another woman sitting up front, generally only men and strangers (anyone who is not local is a stranger) get that privilege. She was pregnant. It was a really hot day (almost none of your transportation options includes air conditioning). We kept having to stop, first for a problem with the tire, and then for a problem with the clutch. The mate (that’s the guy who collects money for transportation) was bent over the tire when I got out of the vehicle to find shade. “That woman is giving birth,” he said, laughing. She exited and laid down in shade on the road. I heard her groan, and wondered how much worse travel would be here if you were eight or nine months pregnant.

Having to stop to fix vehicles is common. Sometimes you have to wait for someone to get another vehicle to the nearest city to buy a part, or to send another vehicle. Waiting is almost always full of false starts, like described in this message from another friend who had been stranded for about an hour already “It was so promising. Everyone got back in (the vehicle), it started, and we moved ten feet. Now we’re sitting again.”

Roads are in worse condition than vehicles. It’s not unusual for roads to completely wash out during the heavy storms of rainy season. Sometimes the roads will get fixed, more often they don’t. Some stretches of road are bad enough that everyone has to get out and walk for a small distance in case the lorry tips over on the rough spot. The people who choose which lorries take which routes assign the worst vehicles to the worst roads, since they don’t want to ruin the good vehicles.

Regardless of the condition of the roads and vehicles, there are almost always people on top. Once the mate forgot to come inside the vehicle before the last stop. He was on top of the tro in the back, and he needed to get in so he could collect the fare. He put his feet in the windows, and side crawled to the front of the vehicle that way, staying outside the entire time until he got to the door, which he opened, entered, and then closed. This is normal too. Somebody inside the tro greeted him “How’s the journey?” which made him laugh.

The best thing about travel in Ghana is the food. Almost any time the vehicle stops, there are people selling food, water, and other miscellaneous things from baskets or bowls on top of their heads. My favorite travelling snack is a hard boiled egg with pepe, which is like salsa. You can also get bofrut, which is like a donut with a tenth of the sugar, meat pies, bananas, avocados, rice, porridge (served in plastic bags, you bite the corner off and drink the porridge), mangoes, cookies, plantain chips, and many more. It’s really cheap to buy food that way, and all of it is convenient for travelling. So much better than a Snicker’s bar at a gas station, which was my American travel routine. I wouldn’t complain if women started selling red licorice here though.

The other great part about travelling in Ghana is the opportunity to meet new people. One of my closest friends here I met on the lorry. More recently, I met an herbalist who lives near me, which is something I’m fascinated by. I’ve met speakers for my community events while travelling. There are two main tros that go through my village, and I know the mates on both of them fairly well.

Another great thing about travelling here is that everyone wants to know where you are going, which means it’s difficult to get lost. The people sitting by you and the mates will make sure you get off at the right place.

Mosque in Tamale

“Remove your pants,” Maria tells me. Maria is the woman I’m going to sleep with tonight. I want to protest that I’m not wearing any pants, but then I remember that in Ghanaian English, pants means underwear. We are crouching in a dark urinal down a dark alley in downtown Tamale. We’re in there with a young girl neither of us has ever seen before. I’m confused. I’ve been confused more or less continuously since coming to Ghana over a year ago, so at least that part of the situation feels familiar.

“Wash,” Maria says as she hands me a bhuta. A bhuta is a plastic container shaped like a tea kettle. It is used for performing ablution, the ritual washing that Muslims make before entering mosque or praying. We’re in this urinal together to perform ablution, which apparently includes washing your private parts. No one in my village mentioned this part to me, but that might be because of the language barrier. The woman who taught me how to do it did make a hand motion that I thought meant “do you need to pee?” Now I know what she was trying to get across all those months ago.

Maria and I step back outside, wash our left and right hands and feet and our faces. Each part is washed three times. She helps me get into a sariga, a piece of cloth that women cover their heads and upper bodies with when they pray. We make our way back up the dark alley toward Tamale Central Mosque. The alley and the streets around the mosque are full of beggars of all ages, a few who are missing limbs or sitting in make shift wheelchairs. Maria gives some coins to some of them.

Tamale Central Mosque is big- it has three stories and it is wide. I can’t get a good sense of how wide because the men and women’s sections are separate. The women’s section is smaller, but I’m not sure how much smaller. Women are packed together, looking beautiful in their nice cloth and bright sarigas. Shoes litter the entryway, because you can’t wear your shoes in mosque. Small boys roam around the floor, pedaling prayer beads and dvd’s. I want to ask Maria if she finds this disrespectful, but she turns to ask me what color of prayer beads I want first. I select the green ones and assume that if she found the peddling of goods in mosque disrespectful, she wouldn’t buy them. The boy doesn’t come back with her change very quickly, so she leaves for a while to go and collect it.

Maria tells me the service is about the importance of going to Mecca if you can. She starts to explain how to use the prayer beads, but then decides to wait until after the service. For the prayer, everyone moves in unison. This is cool to watch at my village mosque, but it’s really cool in the gigantic Tamale Central Mosque. Hands up to your face, look left and right, touch your forehead to the ground. It feels good to move, and I’m more or less familiar with the motions by now. This is my first time at the Tamale mosque, but it’s definitely not my first time at mosque.

The service ends, and Maria grabs my hand. We hold hands back to the cab station where we pick a cab back to her house. It’s very normal for women to hold hands or for men to hold hands, but it’s pretty rare to see a man and a woman holding hands. Rare and slightly inappropriate.

Maria

Maria is a teacher in a nearby village. We met once on the lorry, and so naturally we’re best friends now. This is one of my favorite things about Ghana. I was travelling and had no place to stay, so she offered her brother’s house. It’s nicer than my place. When we come back from mosque, Maria introduces a group of women at the house. She calls them all “wife.” One of the women is her sister in law. Wife’s husband is living and working in America. She’s the one who is allowing me to stay. They are fasting, but the fast is broken after dark, and I am invited. Wife and Maria make food I’ve never had before- a dish that tastes like hominy and beans, and salad. Maria tells me that sometimes she will drink a Smirnoff and eat biscuits for dinner. In Ghanaian English, biscuits are cookies. I thought Smirnoff contained alcohol and Maria is a strong Muslim, so I ask her about it. She tells me why drinking alcohol and making “unnecessary sex” is very, very bad. I listen attentively, still not convinced that Smirnoff does not contain alcohol. I’m glad that wasn’t the dinner she chose for me.

She won’t stop asking me about the boyfriend I don’t have. “You must be hiding one,” she said. “Won’t you take a husband?” Later, my mom calls me. When I hang up, Maria is grinning. “Your boyfriend. I heard you saying I love you here and there. I knew you had a boyfriend!” I laughed, and then I called my mom back so Maria could greet her and find that my mother is not in fact my boyfriend.

The next day we wake up at 4 a.m. Since Maria is fasting, she has to drink and eat before the morning prayer call. It costs less to make phone calls at that time, and someone calls. 4 a.m. is a normal and acceptable time to make phone calls in Ghana.

When she hangs up, she explains that this man tried to date her but already had another wife. “I won’t be the second wife!” she said. She then explained all the research she did to find this out, which included talking to a lot of people. “You have to be careful, or you won’t have anything.” He wants to borrow money for his school fees, and she thinks it’s ridiculous. She starts talking about the evils of unnecessary sex again, and finishes with “it’s all finished for him. He can find somebody else.”

I’m trying to pay full attention, but I’m still having a hard time dealing with the fact it’s 4 a.m. Maria has already recovered from both the time and the conversation with the want to be lover and is happily devouring a giant bowl of rice. “Are you sure you won’t eat?” she asks me. “It’s very good for human beings to fast during Ramadan.” I try to fall back to sleep without success.

Much later that day, I lose my phone in a taxi. Some of my friends tried to call it, but whoever picked it up turned it off. I mentally noted that my chances of getting the phone back were really, really low, so I bought a new one.

Later that evening, when I got back to Maria’s house, she greeted me “Where is your phone?” I told her I wasn’t sure. “I called you and a man answered! I thought he was your boyfriend. I was greeting him and I was very confused. Let’s go to collect the phone.” She grabbed my hand and we left. Two men met us with the phone. Then we came home. Wife made a nice salad (I wasn’t aware before this that Ghanaians ate salad) and tezed for dinner, and we ate. The next morning I left to continue my travels. I definitely want to stay with Maria at again.

Ramadan and Sala:

We recently finished the Sala celebration in my village. Sala is the big festival that marks the end of Ramadan. The festival is formally called Eid el Fitr, and also has a Dagboni name that I can’t spell or pronounce.

The festival starts with about 30 days of fasting. During the fasting period, Muslims don’t touch food or water while the sun is up. Children and elderly people are excluded, but children who are old enough fast for two days and teenagers sometimes fast for 15 days.

A drummer goes around the village to wake people up early in the morning during the fasting period, because everyone has to eat and drink before the day starts. People have told me that not drinking water is the most difficult part and that not eating is relatively easy. I didn’t try, so I’m not sure. Muslims are always encouraged to be generous, but this is particularly true during Ramadan.

Sala starts the day after the moon is seen, and it marks the end of fasting. Gunshots and drumming announce the end of Ramadan, and everyone comes to the lorry station to pray together. There is a type of uniform for children who have memorized the Koran, and they are all there. It’s really pretty to watch everyone praying together.

Then people slaughter goats. Many, many goats. Everyone eats rice for lunch. People go from house to house greeting their friends and bringing meat. This continues for dinner, which can be any food. I had both tezed and fufu and maybe an entire goat- at any rate a lot of goat meat.

My Farm Small Small

I keep a small garden, which is quickly becoming an obsession.

It started in February, when I decided that I wanted to grow some fresh vegetables. February is the middle of hot season, and nothing grows. I knew this, but I have learned that things require time in Ghana. Better to start early.

I knew that a fence would be necessary to keep out the roaming sheep and goats. I asked how to make a fence. “Don’t worry. You will see everything in full measure.”

March and April came and went, with no sign of a fence. I started asking again. I was told “you don’t worry. It is in order.”

The rain started coming, so I started nursing some moringa trees and tomatoes. I filled used plastic bags with water and dirt and manure, and watched as the seeds turned into small plants. Still no fence.

Sometime in June, JHS students started showing up at my house with sticks. My fence is coming! I thought happily. The moringa I had nursed desperately needed planting, roots pushed against the edges of the bags.

The sticks remained in a pile in front of my house for several more weeks. I decided to improvise and make my own fence.

When I went outside with a shovel and started moving sticks around, students were immediately pulled out of school to come and build the fence for me. They didn’t do it very well, and I ended up re-building it anyway.

My grandmother was delighted when I told her I was building a fence for a garden. “Do you have it goat-proofed yet?” she asked. “I think so,” I said. I didn’t realize that goat-proofed fences are a myth. No matter how close together the sticks in the fence are, the goats work their goat juju and get inside. I know it has to be juju because the goats are unable to get back outside of the fence unless you make a hole for them. Juju is the only explanation.

Once the fence was in place, students helped me dig ridges for the plants. My counterpart promptly re-dug them. “These are not correct,” he muttered. He dug two rows in the time it took me to do a quarter of a row.

While he was building more correct ridges, I went to turn my compost pile. As I took out a shovelful of rotting vegetables crawling with insects, I caught myself thinking about how beautiful it would be in a few weeks. My first clue that my garden had crossed into an obsession.

The second clue that I had crossed the line was when some of my friends started addressing me as Farmer Kim.

No one in my village calls me Farmer Kim. The people in my village look concerned when they see me working in my garden, and anxiously ask if they should send their children over to help me.

I tried joking with my counterpart that I would be a farmer when I finished my service. There was an awkward pause as he tried to figure out how to tell me that I should definitely not be a farmer without hurting my feelings.

I left my site for a couple of weeks for the Girl’s Leadership Camp (you can read about it on my projects page). When I came back, the whole garden was overgrown with weeds and my pumpkins were being attacked by a plague of locusts. OK, I don’t know what a locust is, but there were a lot of yellowish beetles happily chomping away. I pretended like I didn’t want any pumpkins anyway, but all my friends knew I was lying. Someone offered to help me apply pesticides. I’m not comfortable with pesticides, but I’m less comfortable with an absence of pumpkins. I accepted. Then I found out that they were applying kerosene to the pumpkins, because they felt that chemicals are dangerous.

Normally I hand pull my weeds, but two weeks of growth made it impossible to do it that way this time. I dug out the hoe that people here use to weed their farms. After 30 minutes I noticed my breath was coming quickly and my biceps were burning. I could feel all those small, conveniently forgotten muscles around my rib cage. Irritated, I reminded myself that weeding is the chore given to the smallest children because it’s the easiest. A blister formed on my palm. I thought about green mamba snakes hiding in the grass. The thought made me finish weeding the section. I started the next section. A second blister formed next to the first; something bit the top of my foot. Not a snake, but it still hurt like hell. I put away the hoe, admitted that small children can do a better job than me. How do people do this for ten hours a day all season?

So far, I have moringa trees, sunflower, pumpkin, tomato, carrots, onion, maize, sweet potato, basil, and something that I think might be lettuce. Or cabbage. Or something else entirely. I was rather sloppy with my labeling, and I’ve never grown it before, so I’m not sure.

Text Messages

Volunteers in Ghana usually keep in touch by texting. I got this message from my friend Lizzy a few weeks ago.

“Oh my word, I just was playing a game w my English club, and a lizard on the ceiling caught a bat, like slo-mo planet earth video, had close early cause screeching.”

When I asked her who was screeching, herself, the kids, or the bat, she wrote

“bat was screeching, too loud for us to continue too, what a bugger, it was so cool though.”

Village vs. New Volunteers Football match

The new group of volunteers has almost finished training. As part of their training, they went on a field trip through my site. We ate a really delicious lunch of rice balls and groundnut soup prepared by Madame Shera and Madame Rahi (who I’ve decided need to come back to America with me to be my personal chefs. I haven’t told them that yet though.)

After lunch, I arranged a soccer game with the new volunteers vs. my community team, with the trainees teaching about malaria prevention at half time. Ghanaians love soccer. It’s called football here instead of soccer though. When community teams play each other it draws almost everyone in the village. Kids climb into trees near the field so they can see better, and everyone else just packs in tight around the edges of the field, which is conveniently located across the street from my house. It’s usually a good game, because kids start playing football when they are really young.

Beth, one of the trainers, told me that the new volunteer vs. community team game was a chance for America to redeem itself from the game against Ghana in the World Cup. (Yes, America lost.)

I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending, but the new volunteers definitely did not redeem the America/Ghana football match. They lost, 0-3. Then my community team held practice, because apparently the game wasn’t all that challenging.

On the upside, the new volunteers did a great job teaching about malaria (even if they were all sweaty and out of breath). They even made sure to keep everyone involved by asking for volunteers and letting my villagers speak, instead of lecturing about it. The new volunteers seem ready to start their service, which they will in a few weeks. It was great to meet some of my new neighbors. My community didn’t get to see a great football match, but they did get to see a great comedy- and people were laughing quite a bit.

School

Students start coming to school as early as 6:30 a.m. The students sweep, weed, and keep the schools clean. Boys wear shorts that hit about mid-calf and a green button up shirt. Girls wear a dress of the same color, with a white sash around the middle. All students are required to shave their heads as part of the school uniform. By 8 a.m., most of the students are there and they line up and start singing “God bless our homeland Ghana…” the national anthem. They usually march to one or two other songs before going to their classes. When the Saints Go Marching In is popular.

There are two schools in my village, the primary and the JHS. In America, this would be the equivalent of the elementary school and the middle school, respectively. The nearest SHS (equivalent to our high school) is at the district capital, a little over an hour by bicycle.

The primary school has two buildings. There should be three to accommodate all the students, but one of the buildings literally washed away in the rain. Goats play on what’s left of it. The roofing is stored in the library so that people won’t steal it. There are no books in the library, only the sheet metal roofing. Students crowd four students into desks designed for two students. There are no posters on the walls, let alone terrariums or other accoutrements that we had in my elementary school.

Students start school at different ages, so grades (called forms) are not made of students of uniform age. Sometimes students take a year off to work for fees associated with school.

Teachers come in from Tamale, about 2 hours away by bus or motorcycle. The community provides housing for the teachers. Usually the teachers come to the village on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, and then go back to Tamale to be with their families on Thursday or Friday. Sometimes they don’t come.

If it rains, neither students nor teachers come. There’s no point- the rooms have no electricity, so when it rains it’s too dark to see, and the rain is loud enough that you can’t hear anything other than the pounding of water on the roof.

Each class has a syllabus mandated by the federal government. Classes cover similar subjects to American schools, with the addition of Dagboni literacy and moral and religious studies and the subtraction of art and music. Classes tend to emphasize memorization of material. Students spend a lot of time chanting answers, especially at the primary level. When the teachers don’t come, students stay in the classroom. I observed a Dagboni literacy class at the primary level without a teacher. The students chanted vowel sounds for 20 minutes before losing interest. A fight broke out over some lip gloss.

Students take a National Exam in order to pass on to the next grade. In my community, over 70% of students fail the exam.

People in the community, on the PTA, and school officials say that enrollment is equal for boys and girls. This is true until the last two years of JHS, where the class enrollment shows half as many girls as boys.

There are no official school fees for primary or JHS. Some students can’t afford to go anyway because of the cost of books, paper, pens, and uniforms.

Class sizes vary. The class that I taught last term had about 50 students in it. This term I have about 30. It is hard to pinpoint how many people there are per class though, because absenteeism is common. Students might miss class to go work on farm, or because of an illness. Sometimes they don’t come because they don’t have the materials. Sometimes students skip class and go sit in a tree all day, particularly if they are in trouble and are scheduled to receive a punishment that day. Punishment usually takes the form of extra clean-up work around the school. Caning students is illegal in Ghana, but it still happens.

When the teachers come, they have a good rapport with the students. Sometimes students will come over to the teachers quarters for extra help. The teachers are patient and will keep repeating things until the students understand. They do the same thing for me while I try to learn Dagboni.

Teachers feel that the students are not serious and that neither students nor parents understand the importance of school. The teachers aren’t making things up. I asked my men’s group once why it was important to send their children to school. The answer I got was “because the white man says it’s important.” Teachers and headmasters tell me stories about how a parent got angry when one of his twins advanced in school while the other twin did not. The parent was confused, because the boy who had been held back was physically bigger than his brother.

A common dinner discussion at the teacher’s quarters is whether or not pay has been added to their accounts, because paychecks do not always come on time. They also talk about how they want to get jobs that have better pay than teaching. Most teachers see teaching as a temporary job on the way to better things.

The building in front is the primary school building that washed out and now serves as a playpen for goats. The buildings behind are currently used for the primary school

Reasons I’m terrified of going home:

This list is a mix of entertaining observations of cultural differences and things that I am seriously not looking forward to losing when I leave.

1. I’ll hiss at restaurant waiters

2. After I hiss at them, I’ll forget to tip because it’s not necessary to tip in Ghana.

3. I’ll starve whenever I take a bus and there are no vendors crowding by the windows at every stop

4. I’ll freeze. America is cold.

5. I’ll give new neighbors live chickens and yams instead of baking bread or cookies

6. I’ll cuss because I won’t be able to find guinea fowls for the new neighbors instead of chickens

7. I’ll bow down to greet anyone older than me

8. I won’t wake up to the Muslim call to prayer

9. I won’t be able to sleep without hearing all the bats in my ceiling

10. I might get arrested for peeing on the side of the road

11. I’ll think something is wrong when children no longer follow me in throngs.

12. I’ll be sued for harassment when I try to make small children cry (sometimes children here cry when they see a white person. This was disconcerting at first, but the parents think it’s hilarious, so now if it looks like the kids are uncomfortable, I’ll move closer to the delight of the parents.)

13. I’ll start saying things like “nice shirt. Give it to me now!”

14. I’ll still think that it’s perfectly reasonable to fit 3 adults, 2 small children, a goat and a sack of groceries on a motorcycle.

15. Any time I can’t find someone I’ll say that they are unstable

16. I’ll try to compliment people by telling them that they are growing fat

17. I’ll think hitchhiking is a perfectly normal, reasonable, and safe way to get around

18. When I want groceries, I’ll give a seven year old some money and a motorcycle to go pick them up for me.

19. If I buy my own groceries, I’ll have to get them from a store. Market is so much more fun- it’s an excuse to visit all your friends who are selling things. I also tend to get a lot more food for free at my market than I ever have in a grocery store. Then again, I find myself buying stuff I don’t really need when I go to market. I never did that in America.

20. I won’t get to greet as many people. I really look forward to talking to a lot of people every day. People in America aren’t outside as much, and they expect you to have plans with them before you come over. In Ghana, you can just show up and be welcomed.

21. I won’t be able to sleep outside every night.

22. I speak English well, so people won’t laugh at everything I say anymore.

23. I’ll actually know what people are saying about me.

24. People will look at me funny when I carry things on my head.

25. No tezed or fufu or ochra stew or groundnut stew or bofrut. I might starve when I go back.

26. I might not get to take afternoon naps any more.

27. When I hear gunshots at 4 a.m., I’ll think it’s a good idea to go and greet the house that they’re coming from.

28. Every single person that I walk by won’t be asking me where I’m going. This sounds like something that would be nice about going home, but when you have a really poor sense of direction like me, it’s nice when people ask and all direct you where you need to go.

Homesick

The top things I’m homesick for (not counting obvious things like my family and friends):

1. Friendly dogs. People in Ghana treat animals differently than people in America treat them. The result is that you almost never see a friendly dog- when you see dogs and other animals, they keep their distance.

2. Food- sort of. I really like the food here, and I think whenever I go back to America I’ll miss Ghanaian food as much or more than I miss American food here. I do miss yogurt, butter, real bread (I’m too much of a bread snob for the stuff they have here to count as real bread) spinach, and berries of all kinds. I can get a decent hamburger in the city, and my awesome friends keep me stocked up on pretty much anything I crave that can be shipped. Thanks!

3. Public libraries. There are libraries here, but it’s not even close to an American library. America in general and Salt Lake in particular rock at public libraries.

4. Taking the bus to work. I had a great routine before I left where I would walk to the bus stop and talk to a construction crew flagger while I was waiting for my bus. I always sat near the driver, Patty, and another passenger who had the same schedule as me and would talk to them until I got to my stop. Then I would talk to the crosswalk guard at the school near my old work, and he would always be laughing and playing with the kids. I really miss that whole routine.

5. Housecleaning. I hated cleaning my house in America, but I really hate it here. It’s a lot more work, I have to do it more often, and I’m a lot more likely to run into some sort of scary looking insect.

6. Garbage bins. There aren’t many garbage bins here. If you are travelling, it’s almost impossible not to litter. I don’t approve of littering, so this is hard for me.

7. Bike shops. I miss being able to bring my bike to a shop, have them fix the problem, and tell me if anything else is wrong with my bike. Here, they will tell you what part you need. Then you have to find and buy the part, bring it back to the repairman, and wait for them to fix it. They don’t check to see if there are any other problems with the bike. This is extra frustrating with my language barrier.

8. Silverware and eating at a table. Every time I eat with my hands I end up burning my fingers. I also really like eating with everyone at the table. Women all eat together here, but usually men and guests (like me) are served in a separate bowl in a separate room. I am close enough with a few families that I can eat with the women now, which is nice.

9. Diapers. I hate it when new moms hand me their kids and all I can think of is if the baby is going to pee on me. The answer has been yes enough times for me to be worried.

Brother’s Visit

My brother came to Ghana for just over a week to visit me. We spent a couple of days in my village, where he received 30 guinea fowl eggs, a package of spaghetti, a can of tinned tomatoes, a sack of groundnuts, some kola nut, three Ghana cedis (about $3), and several delicious bowls of tezed, fufu, and porridge as welcoming gifts. Here’s what we did while he was here:

Market- We went to my market so that we could greet all my friends there. Generally gong-gong beaters hang out at market so that people will give them money. This time there was someone in a strange costume. He had an entourage of drummers, and he carried a very large knife. He danced and made a weird keening sound by scraping the knife against his lip. It was creepy. I asked my friend Azara what was going on. Apparently the man is from Nigeria, which is why I was puzzled. We gave him fifty pesua and finished our shopping. Then we hitchhiked home on the back of a crowded tractor.

Ate Cat in a Mud Hut- About a month before Brian got here I contacted my friend Adam in a nearby village to ask if he would be able to get cat meat so my brother and I could try it. He said that he could, and a few days before Brian came he came to my house to inform me that he had found the cat and gave me the price. I paid him and made arrangements for his mother to cook the cat for us the first day my brother came in.

I thought this would be a rather straightforward transaction, but Adam came that night to say that his mother was unable to cook it that day, because she went to farm. As I had predicted, we had no shortage of food, so we ate fufu instead that night. Then the next day Adam came back to say they were having trouble catching the cat. They caught it on the third morning (when we were planning on leaving to go see parts of Ghana outside of my village). We decided to stick around for the cat.

They served the cat with tezed and ochre stew. The cat was in a separate bowl. When you looked in the bowl, you could clearly see the head and the tail of the cat. There was no confusion about what we were eating. It’s difficult to explain what the meat tastes like. It was a dark meat, and it was really, really good. I’ve heard it compared to rabbit, but I’ve never had rabbit meat, so I’m not sure.

Adam and my tailor (don’t know his name, and very embarrassed about that) joined us for the meal. It was my tailor’s first time eating cat meat too, so he made me take his picture. They told us the story of trying to catch the cat. Apparently it took 10 men. They closed the cat in a room, and the cat swiped at my tailor’s head- he showed us the mark. Then there were problems because one of the men wanted the cat in return for his efforts in chasing it. He was very stubborn about the issue, so they had to go to the landlord who originally sold the cat to verify that I had bought the cat already.

Fed the Monkeys- Our next stop was the Boabeng/Fiema Monkey Sanctuary. The monkey sanctuary is a sacred forest that is home to mona and colobus monkeys.

Our guide, Edmond, has worked at the sanctuary for over two years. Edmond’s head reaches to about my chest (I’m only 5 ft. 6). He walks with his feet pointed out and he has a high pitched laugh that comes rather easily. It was easy to tell that he was knowledgeable about the sanctuary, because he was able to point out interesting things like a 300+ year mahogany tree and a giant ficus tree shaped like a giraffe. He could also thoroughly answer our questions. He told us the story of how the sacred forest started.

The story is that long, long ago a hunter saw a fetish and four monkeys on the river. A fetish is a small god. The hunter took the fetish back to his village. The next morning, the four monkeys (two mona and two colobus) were in the village. They consulted an oracle, who explained that the monkeys were the children of the fetish. If the people liked the monkeys, they could keep the fetish. If not, they were advised to put the fetish back on the river. The people kept the fetish, Daworo, and were charged with the care of the monkeys.

Because of the monkeys, people will not cut trees in the sacred forest. They believe that if they cause harm to a monkey, that same harm will come to them. So if a person kills one of the monkeys, the person who killed the monkey will die. The people are very careful about how they store their food, because the mona monkeys come into the village to steal the food, and they cannot punish the monkey without having the same punishment happen to them.

The monkeys never die in the forest. They always come into the village to die. People in the village prepare the bodies the same way they prepare their human corpses, and then bury the monkeys in a small cemetery in the forest. The ceremony is the same as a the ceremony performed for humans.

Two humans are buried in the monkey cemetery, Nana Kwaku Amponsa and Afia Boahen. The first was a priest who was dedicated to Daworo. The other was a woman who wore the fetish on her head. By wearing the fetish, she was able to warn the village when something was about to happen. Legend has it she lived to be 120. Nobody wears the fetish anymore, but the monkeys will congregate near the village and wail for seven nights to warn the village if something will happen.

The colubus monkey is “shy” and endangered, but we were able to see a whole group of them swinging from nearby trees. Edmond was happy that we found them so close to the ground. Usually colubus monkeys stay high up in the canopy.

The mona monkey eats everything that people eat, and is therefore less shy. When Edmond brought a loaf of bread, the mona monkeys would come take it out of our hands. He told us that some of the dominant males are over 35 years old. They can live up to 60 years.

That night we ate a delicious meal at the sanctuary prepared by Auntie B, a matronly woman who seemed to enjoy visiting with us. We stayed in an extra room in the village (complete with a hanging beach ball that said Canada on it, among other random things). This is where we met Jill and Frederick. Jill was a volunteer for Volunteer Solutions. She spent three months in Ghana and was on her way home. Frederick is the volunteer coordinator for that organization who was accompanying her. We all went out for a drink, and Frederick talked me into changing my travel plans to go to Cape Coast. Good thing too, my idea was much lamer. The next morning Brian and I headed to Techiman, after eating some of Auntie B’s pancakes with local honey and pineapple.

Techiman

Techiman is the capital of the Brong Ahafo region. It has a huge market, but unfortunately we didn’t make it on market day. We still found things to buy though, including Obama underwear. (If you are an Obama fan, Ghana has plenty of Obama merchandise, including t-shirts, books, water, cookies, and more.) I made Brian try a gin sachet, so he could have the experience of drinking from a plastic sack. Eating and drinking out of plastic bags is common and convenient in Ghana. Unfortunately the drink tastes a lot like the way I imagine floor cleaner tasting. Brian also treated me to pizza. He said it wasn’t impressive, but I thought it was good. I don’t get pizza much. We left for Cape Coast the next morning.

Cape Coast

By sheer dumb luck, we met Jill and Frederick at the bus station. We got into Cape Coast by that afternoon, and immediately went to the Cape Coast Castle. It was beautiful and depressing. Our guide had a gift for telling the story of the slave trade in the castle. The place smelled musty and unpleasant. The dungeons just had a few holes for light. I know the guide was knowledgeable and told us a bunch of things about the slave trade, but the main thing that I got out of the tour was an overwhelming feeling of depression.

The mood got much lighter when we went out to kakoum Canopy Walk. The canopy walk is a narrow bridge suspended between trees in the rainforest. Our guide’s name was Fred. He told us to expect the bridge to sway and creak and asked if everyone still wanted to do the tour. He advised us that if we were afraid of heights we should “look straight, walk normal, and remember God loves you.” I think he secretly likes watching people be frightened and/or uncomfortable, because then he listed a bunch of poisonous snakes we might see “if we were lucky.”

As it turned out, we weren’t lucky. No snakes. No other wildlife either, except one butterfly. The main attraction was walking on the bridges, which do feel precarious. Fred explained that the bridges were constructed by climbers, who anchored the bridge on black ebony trees. Black Ebony trees used to be used for measuring elephants, because the elephants would scratch against them and you could measure the height of the scratch marks. It is the only tree big enough to support the elephant’s weight.

After the canopy walk, the four of us checked into a hotel on the beach. The ocean was beautiful, but the beach was littered with trash. When I waded into the water, a plastic sack sucked against my leg. The hotel was OK though. It had a nice view of the castle, and I enjoyed watching the fishermen, who showed us their catch. It didn’t seem like they were getting a lot of fish. There was a sea snake in the net though.

We headed to Elmina to see the other castle the next morning. This castle looked more impressive. It was still depressing, but for some reason not as much as the Cape Coast Castle. I think it’s because most of the dungeons had more light. Also, the guide was slightly less gifted at storytelling. As far as touristy things go, the bookshop at Elmina castle was great. The city seemed better too, but we didn’t have enough time to go check it out.

From the Elmina Castle, we went to Accra for Brian to get his flight home. Wish he could have stayed longer.

Flooring and Plastering

When I wrote about making houses, I left out the part about plastering the walls and making the floors. I actually have an awesome video of a flooring, but I have no idea how to post it.

Plastering the walls of a room is essential, because if a room is not plastered, the mud will wash away in the rain. Men are responsible for building the rooms, but women are responsible for both plastering and flooring.

The plaster is made of gravel, cement, mud, and crushed up termite mounds. The ingredients are mixed into a fairly moist gob, and then the women throw the mud at the bottom of the wall and slide it upwards. Throwing the gob of plaster insures that it gets into all the little cracks in the mud, and then a swift upward movement of the hand smoothes it out. This is repeated until the entire building is covered.

I didn’t see the ingredients in the flooring, but I know it involves gravel, mud, and dawadawa. Dawadawa is a spice that comes from the seed pod of a tree. When you split open a pod, the inside looks like yellow chalk. It tastes like Smarties candy, but a little less sugary and more chalky, if that’s possible. Unlike Smarties, dawadaw can be added to soups, where it tastes a lot better than it does raw. Dawadawa has quite a bit of protein. It also has something that helps floors stay solid, and is added to the flooring.

When a house needs to have the floor built, a woman will call together all her female friends, neighbors, and relatives. They all come together and sing songs and pound the floor in rhythm with a special club. It takes about an afternoon. You can hear a flooring from quite a ways away.

If the family is putting concrete over the top of the floor, the women will polish the concrete until it is smooth using a stone. Not everyone can afford concrete.

Small Victories

The first piece of advice I got about Peace Corps service was to really hold on to the small victories, because work here is frustrating. Here are a few of my small victories:

1. I can carry my groceries on my head without using my hands. I also carried all the equipment to start a soap making business on my head. Couldn’t lift it up there myself, but I could carry it. I can’t carry water- yet. It’s a little harder because it sloshes.

2. All the kids in the village next to mine know my name, so they shout that out instead of siliminga (white person) when I walk thru to go to market. Teaching them all to use my name has taken a lot of work and a lot of patience, but they’ve all got it now. Hearing my Dagboni name is a lot less annoying than hearing siliminga shouted out over and over again.

3. My language is sufficient for me to be able to sell kola nuts at market. My seller wanted to go pray, so she let me run her stall at market for about half an hour. People thought it was hilarious, but I was pleased that I was able to do it without any confusion over my weak language skills.

4. I overheard one of the women in my hearth program telling another mother about the importance of breastfeeding. Couldn’t quite get the whole conversation, but I heard enough to know she was passing on good information from our program. I also had one of the husbands come up and thank me for the program- he said his wife was learning a lot.

Soap

I had the opportunity to go to a moringa soap making workshop in the Upper West region of Ghana. Adam, a volunteer there, works with the Lawra Methodist church as a business volunteer. The Lawra Methodist Church runs an orphanage and a center for people living with AIDS. They pay for the facilities primarily by selling moringa soap.

Before I write about the workshop I want to write about an interesting side note. The orphanage has two sets of triplets in its care. Twins and triplets are considered bad luck. Some people here believe that if you give birth to triplets than they will kill you when they get older because children are only supposed to be born one at a time. I’m not sure if that belief is Ghanaian or local to that region or tribe.

The workshop was interesting. Alex, a thin, shy man with a quiet voice led us through most of the steps. You start by adding caustic soda to water and letting it sit for 3 days. You then melt oil to use in the soap. We used palm oil and shea butter. Different substances are added at this point to help get rid of the smell of the oil, such as pieces of lemon. The oil is filtered before being added to the soda. The dried, crushed moringa is then added, as well as any color or scent you want to add. Everything is stirred.

The liquid is poured into a wooden mould lined with plastic. The soap is then left in the mold for several hours to harden. Then the soap is cut by pushing it through some tightened wires. After that, each bar is polished with a tool that looks a lot like a paint scraper. This makes the soap look shiny instead of rough. Each bar is then wrapped and distributed.

One of the cool parts about the workshop is that it included the equipment, which means that the interested people in my community could start a business together and only have to buy the ingredients- which is significantly less than getting the capital to buy equipment and ingredients. Several people in my village have expressed interest.

In addition to learning how to make soap, we also learned how to make soy milk.

The workshop closed with a xylophone performance from another group that Adam works with. This included xylophones, singing, and guitar. The songs were traditional songs from that area.

Hippos

On the way home from the soap making workshop, I went to the Wechau Hippo Sanctuary with Elyse, Lindsey, Jason, and Jeff. We each rented a bike to go into the sanctuary. Our guide, Azize led us through. The bikes were not that great, but it was a nice ride. My bike was a little better than the other ones, which is good- I’m the only person in the group not training for a marathon and I would have had trouble keeping up without my unfair advantage. We brought some mangoes, beans, rice, tomatoes, avacadoes, and bread with us. The sanctuary typically has three options for staying- you can stay in a treehouse right on the river, stay in the lodge, or camp in front of the lodge. Unfortunately, some other people beat us to the tree house, so we ended up staying on the roof of the guesthouse, which was comfortable but not nearly as interesting.

After camping, we biked the rest of the way to the banks of the river. The boat wasn’t big enough for all of us and our guide, so we went out with just the navigator, Suni. Luckily, Jeff is really good in the local language of that area, so we didn’t miss much, because he could translate everything that Suni said.

Spit Shine

Last time I went to market, I sat down to talk to my friend who sells kola nuts. Kola nuts are either green or red. You eat them, and they’re supposed to work as a mild stimulant. They stimulate me to promptly spit ihem out and go brush my teeth. They are very bitter. We were talking about the hot season and how far the walk is from my village to market. She bought some hard boiled guinea fowl eggs and some water for us to snack on. Guinea fowl eggs have a dark yellow, creamy consistency yolk. As we were talking, her daughter wanted to share her egg with me. When I said that I didn’t want it, she proceeded to wipe the yolk of the egg all over my face. She’s little enough that this was funny. Another kola nut seller who was sitting next to me saw my dirty face and frowned. She then spit onto a piece of cloth and scrubbed my face clean with her spit. And all this time I thought I had outgrown that…

Building a House

Most houses here are constructed from mud and grass. Houses are designed into compounds, with rooms arranged in a circle and the middle opening into a courtyard. Rooms are either round or square. Square rooms are more difficult to build, so they have a higher status. Typically only men stay in square rooms.

The landlord is the head of household. His room is always just east of the entrance into the compound. This is because the sun comes up in the east, so whatever the day brings will come to the landlord first.

To build a room for a house, the people measure the space using string. They then dig a shallow line along the measurements. This is filled with mud, which is allowed to dry. This is the foundation for the room.

The mud comes from pits people dig using picks and shovels. The mud is then mixed into cement by stomping on it. Donkey carts bring big barrels of water to mix the mud. People then roll the mud into balls. The balls of mud are carried to the building site. One person is responsible for putting the mud onto the walls, which are built about 1 foot at a time. The other people carry the mud and hand it to that person. This continues until the room is tall enough. A stick is used to push the mud inward. This helps support the room so that it stays sturdy.

Little divots are left at the top of the last layer. People then collect large neem tree branches and cut them until they are all a similar size. The base of the branches is placed in the divot, and then the top of the branches rest together, like a tipi. These branches are the basis of the roof. Roofs are never built on Thursdays. I was unable to find out if it’s bad luck to roof on Thursdays or if people just don’t.

After the sticks are placed and secured together with rope, the people add a few layers of grass. The grass is woven into a sheet before it is placed on the roof. More grass is woven into ropes which are used to secure the sheet of grass to the sticks.

The women then plaster the house with a finer mixture of mud and river sand. This is important, because without plaster the room will wash away in the rainy season. The plaster is applied one handful at a time, and then worked into the wall in upward circles.

Women also make the floors. They do this by using big sticks to pound the dirt until it gets to the consistency of concrete.

Most people buy their doors and windows from carpenters.

Hot Season!

I’ve complained that it’s hot here before, but now I am experiencing hot season for the first time. I feel like I’m melting. Everything tastes like salt because sweat is constantly running into my mouth. I look like I have pimples across my torso because I have heat rash. If I sit down, even for a minute, it looks like I wet my pants because of the collected sweat. I know that I haven’t because I have a hard time drinking enough water to pee more than a few times a day- even if I drink more than a gallon. I’ve taken my temperature a few times thinking I had a fever only to discover I’m perfectly healthy- it’s just that freakin’ hot. Every night I dip a cloth in my water barrel and sleep under the wet cloth to stay cool. It doesn’t work, but it’s better than nothing. I have seriously contemplated trying to sleep inside my water barrel more than once, but I can’t quite figure out the logistics to make that work. It’s not this bad every day though. Even when it is, there are some upsides. I am sleeping outside every night because it’s a little cooler, and it’s beautiful. I really like sleeping outside. From about 4 in the morning until about 8 in the morning it is gorgeous outside. For the rest of the day, if there is even a tiny breeze it feels amazing. It wouldn’t have as much impact if it wasn’t so hot. There are more ants and termites, which sounds bad but it’s actually nice because they come and carry away other insects and make it so I don’t have to clean my house as often. Because Dagomba people love greetings, there are some special hot season greetings that make me laugh- “How is your heat? How is your sun? How is your sweating?” Even with the good parts of hot season, I catch myself fantasizing about living in Siberia or Antarctica every now and then.

Excellent Question

I was getting dressed the other morning when I heard my door opening. It was about 6 a.m. It’s not unusual to get company that early in the morning, but typically people announce themselves and then wait for me to come out, so I was a little concerned. I finished dressing and went into my entrance. A four year old kid I had never seen before was standing in my screen door (he had opened it but not entered). When he saw me he asked “Why?” I had to laugh, because I wanted to ask him the same thing. I told him to go home and he left.

Chief’s Funeral

My village recently held two funerals for the chief. The first one was at the chief’s house. It involved lots of drumming and dancing and shooting of guns- it was basically a lot like the burials, except the body is already buried. The second funeral had some variations because it was a chief’s funeral. The second funeral took place at two houses- the house of the messenger sub chief and the house of the warrior sub chief. At the warrior sub chief’s house they had a special type of drum that sat on the ground instead of being carried. There were also a lot of flute-like instruments. The eldest male and eldest female child of this chief wore a special hat made out of animal skins. A male and female grandchild were also selected to wear a special hat made out of paper. The paper hats had some cigarette packages attached to them, which held some charms to protect the grandchildren who were wearing them. The other house was the house of the messenger sub-chief. The children and grandchildren wore the same skin and paper head gear. The main difference was that this house had the traditional gong gong beaters.

Naming Ceremony

Children are named one week after they are born. The family prepares food and friends come to celebrate the occasion. The day of the naming ceremony, the baby is circumcised if it is a boy. The head is also shaved, regardless of gender. People believe that if the hair is not shaved, dogs will always try to attack the child and the child won’t grow. Friends usually give money to the new parents at the naming ceremony. The mother and child go to live with the woman’s family for some time before the woman moves back in with the husband.

American Ideas that Don’t Make Sense Here.

• Buying houses. In my village, when somebody wants a new house, they build it. First they get permission from the landowner, and then the people gather and make the house out of mud. There is no real cost for building.

• Renting houses. If you move to the village, someone will have a place to stay and they will feed you too. Hospitality is valued here.

• Helmets. Helmets are largely unavailable here. By largely unavailable, I mean that the only ones I see here belong to Peace Corps volunteers who brought them from America. Once when I was riding my bike, an older woman asked me about the helmet. I explained that you wear it in case you fall, and she looked at me like I was crazy. “Who told you you would fall?” she asked. I have to say that she was wrong on this point. Most bicycles here are old and not well maintained, so many don’t have working brakes. Combined with all the animals everywhere and horrible roads, bicycle wrecks are pretty common.

• Sandwiches. Some friends sent me an amazing care package which included a copy of Salt Lake magazine. I was excited because it had pictures of things that are hard to explain (like snow). It also had pictures of sandwiches. I showed a group of men in my village, and they looked at me and asked if I was really sure that the picture was of something that you eat.

• Toilet paper. What a waste of money when there are so many other materials you can use!

• Moving away from home. You are not allowed to move until your parents tell you to. You are not even allowed to ask about moving- your father has to bring it up. Most people don’t get their own compound until they are about 40.

• Being my age and not being married with children- I know my friends always complained about Utah being bad about this, but Utah’s got nothing on Ghana. Here it is absolutely unacceptable not to have a spouse. And the idea that not everyone wants children is inconceivable.

• Alone time. Most people here spend almost every minute of every day with other people. Women share their rooms with their children, so they don’t even sleep alone. People were very worried about me being in an apartment by myself when I first got here for this reason, and were not OK with it until the teachers in the apartments next to mine were back.

So, as I'm sitting here at the sub-office in Tamale frantically trying to do all the work that I need to get done on the computer while I have access, something suddenly flew maybe a foot away from my head. I looked over in the direction the object went and saw a bat that had just flown from the ceiling and landed on the printer. I have bats in my ceiling at site, but I'm not accustomed to sharing a room with one. I quickly decided that this was not something I could handle, so I went out to get the guard. Luckily it was one of my two favorite guards. I told him that there was a bat in the office, and it would be great if he could help me get rid of it. His response was "Again? We had to chase one out maybe three days ago."

My Birthday

I had a wonderful birthday. My friend Julie made the long bike ride from her site to mine. I baked a chocolate cake for us with my dutch oven. My counterpart made a sort of porridge for us with cows milk and millet. It tasted similar to rice pudding. Julie gave me some small candy bars, a gravy packet, and a small yo-yo, all things that are hard to find here. She and Achiri stayed most of the day, and we played a Ghanaian card game. Apparently, Ghanaians remove a lot of cards from the deck (I think we took out every card with a value under 8.). The game was a lot of fun, but I lost every time.

The next day Achiri and I headed to Kumasi for a workshop with my fellow Health volunteers and their counterparts. It was really nice to see everyone- some people I hadn’t seen for five months. The workshop was fun and informative. More importantly, the food was good. I also won a hand washing station in a raffle and got to take some tree seeds back to my site. Hopefully I will plant them with my JSS class.

One of the most interesting things we did was to visit an agric university. The idea was to look at income generating projects for our villages, such as beekeeping, raising snails (people in the south eat snails.), growing mushrooms, and keeping rabbits or grasscutter. Grasscutter looks like a cross between a rat and a rabbit. They are a popular food here, which I haven’t had the opportunity to try yet. Depending on your region, they are expensive. We met a man who became farmer of the year here. He started with a small poultry farm, and worked his way up which I found inspirational. He was incredibly smart, which was obvious by the detail he gave when answering questions about his farm. He now keeps fish, crocodiles, monkeys, and ostriches. Ostriches are huge and scary looking creatures. He was a mechanic before he became a farmer.

I forgot how different the south is than the north. Where I live, everything is brown and the air is like a giant dust cloud because of the Harmattan, which blows dirt from the Sahara desert. This sounds unpleasant, but it’s actually nice because it gets cool at night (sometimes cool enough that I have to sleep under a sheet). Kumasi, however, is always green. Near the roads, all the plants are coated in red dust from the road, but they are green underneath. The vegetation is more tropical and the air is moist. Houses, animals, and people are larger. Taxi drivers are more aggressive. I don’t speak Twi, the primary language in Kumasi. The food is different (good, but no tezed and a lot more palm oil. Everything is still mashed into a giant ball of starch though). It’s strange, because Ghana is about the size of Oregon, and going from Tamale to Kumasi is like going to an entirely different country.

Marriage

It’s hard to pin down marriage customs in Ghana because they are changing, but here’s a quick synopsis.

If a man wants to marry a woman, he will approach the woman’s parents. Some people say that he approaches the woman too, others disagree. I interpret this to mean that it varies. If the parents say no, then the marriage will not happen. There is a bride price. This is to buy the things that they will need for the house, such as dishes and cooking utensils.

After the price is settled, the couple has a courtship. During this time, the man will visit the woman’s house and vice versa so that they can watch how the person acts. The woman’s family will also ask around to see if there is any ill health or disreputable characters in the man’s family. The wedding can be called off during this time.

Occasionally, women are offered for marriage while they are still children. This tradition is dying off though.

Islamic men can take up to four wives if they are able to support them financially, pay the bride price, etc. The first wife does not get any input into this, although some men pointed out that there could be trouble in the house if the woman doesn’t want her husband to take another wife. He usually approaches her by reminding her that another wife will help her with the chores around the house. Jealousy is a common problem. One woman argues that taking wives is what keeps Ghana from developing, because the men can’t always feed all of the children. I’m not sure if there is truth to that, but there does seem to be some status in having multiple wives, so it would make sense for men to try to have more. Men with more wives are perceived as having more money. Families with one wife to a husband have just as many malnourished children as families with multiple wives. One man explained to me that having more wives is an economic advantage though, because most people are farmers. It is an advantage to always have someone available for farm. If one woman is pregnant, another one can still go to farm. I have seen many women in late pregnancy still going to farm though. More children can also mean more labor for farm. For women, the advantage of being one of multiple wives is that you might get a “very nocturnal husband…a maniac.” Keeping a very nocturnal maniac husband happy at night is a duty easier shared by multiple wives, apparently.

Weddings

Weddings are an all day affair. The bride comes to the man’s house, and people drop by to congratulate the groom’s father. People also drop by the bride’s father’s house to congratulate him. Loud music is played. There are a group of women and a group of men that act like our bridesmaids and best men, and they wear matching patterns. Women for the most part stay inside the courtyard, and men for the most part stay outside of it. This seems to hold true for most social functions here. There are no colors that are particular to weddings, it’s just what the person likes. The bride paints her feet with the zabelo. At some point in time, everyone goes to the mosque, where the Imam talks about married life. Just like in regular mosque service, men and women are separated. At the wedding I attended, the women didn’t even enter until the Imam had been talking for a good 15 minutes. Afterwards, everyone goes back out and continues to socialize. In the afternoon, the bride makes tezed for the groom’s family for the first time. A fowl is slaughtered for the occasion, and the man is warned not to judge the woman if the soup is not as delicious the next day when it doesn’t have fowl in it. After the wedding, the woman is responsible for cooking for the whole compound. She alternates this duty with any other wives the man has or that his brothers have (so it’s advantageous to marry someone whose brother already has a wife, or else you’re stuck cooking for everyone every night until another wife enters the family). I think that there is drumming and dancing in the evening of the wedding, but I went home after 5 hours so I’m not sure. Ghanaians have a lot of stamina in general, but particularly when it comes to their weddings, funerals, and naming ceremonies.

I Will Find You a Boyfriend

I always spend time at my market talking to the vendors (which frequently results in free food for me). A few months ago, I was talking to a woman setting up her stand. I would guess she was about 40, and a little plump. Like everyone else here, she wanted to know why I don’t have a husband, and I told her I wasn’t looking for one yet. She then asked me if I had a boyfriend. I told her no, and she said something in Dagboni I didn’t understand. I told her I didn’t understand, and she thought about it for a minute and then said in English “Sex! You a fine young lady. You need sex. Don’t worry. I know your village, I will find you a boyfriend.” I’m still waiting to hear back from her.

Ghanaian Pickup lines

For your entertainment, I’ve recorded the funniest pick up lines I’ve heard here.

- “Good afternoon. How is your house/father/mother/husband?”

“I don’t have a husband!”

“Then you should come and sleep with me.”

- “Do you have a husband?”

“No, I don’t like husbands. I won’t marry until I’m at least 50”

“But you will be in Ghana for 2 years? You should at least have a lover then.”

Christmas

I celebrated Christmas in my village. I went to mass at the Catholic Church in the morning. The service was normal, except more crowded. During the afternoon, there was some traditional dancing. For the dancing, there was a group of drummers. All the people circled around the drummers. The drummers would single out a person from the crowd by beating their drum and kneeling in front of them. The person that was singled out would then place some money on the drummer’s forehead. When the drummer received the money, all the drummers would play for the person who paid them. The person would then dance for a small time. If people liked the dancer, they would come out of the crowd and put money onto the dancer’s forehead. Both men and women danced.

Fire Festival

This is definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. A gong gong beater started to drum after dark to tell people to gather. Everyone gathered at the chief’s house, bringing torches made of grass with them. The children gathered around first, and then everyone started dancing. Both adults and children painted their faces with white powder, so it looks like a mask. More children painted their faces than adults. As more people gathered, the dancing picked up in intensity. Finally the fire was started, and everyone lit their torches while still dancing. Then everyone started to move along various paths, lighting up dried grass while they went. When we reached the road, grass was lit on both sides of the road. It felt a lot like how I imagine being caught in a forest fire would feel. Miraculously, nobody’s house caught on fire (most houses have grass roofs). After this, people tore tree branches off and danced around with the branches. By this time, the people had made their way back to the chief’s house. The dancing continued late into the night, although after a while it was hard to tell if people were dancing or fighting. I was informed they were dancing- but do you really need to sharpen your machete to dance with it? Apparently so, because I saw a few people sharpening theirs before joining the fray. Some people say the dancers don’t get cut because they have been sprinkled with a special concoction of water and tree branches which grants protection. It wasn’t too long before I couldn’t see anything at all because of all the dust kicked up by the dancers.

The Village Idiot

If my village has an idiot, it’s me. Here are some examples:

• I was trying to explain to somebody sitting next to me on the lorry that I was laughing at something my grandma wrote to me, and I told him to write my housewife instead.

• I started seeing some green, leafy crops growing, and I got all excited because it’s hard to find fresh greens here. I asked my counterpart what it was so that I could ask around my market for some. He told me it was tobacco. Tobacco leaves were not the salad material I was hoping for.

• I don’t have skills that most seven year old children here have- like how to tie a baby on my back, how to carry water on my head, how to take a boiling pot of yams off the fire without using potholders, how to ride a bike when my feet won’t reach the pedals, how to slaughter and smoke guinea fowl or chicken, how to kill mice and birds with a slingshot, or how to mow the soccer field with a machete. I am not exaggerating about the ages. You see very young children doing most of these tasks here, and I can’t do any of them. I can carry groceries on my head though, I’ve been working pretty hard on that.

• I still can’t pronounce my Dagboni name. I’m starting to think that I won’t ever be able to.

• I still get lost in my village, even though I walk through different parts of it every day and the village isn’t really big.

Selling a Cow

It doesn’t quite take a village to load a cow onto the top of a lorry, but it does take a pretty decent sized crowd. When somebody sells a cow to a butcher in Tamale, they tie a rope around the cow’s hind leg so that they can control the cow’s movements. When they get the cow next to the lorry (yes, the cows get loaded on top of the lorries along with goats, chickens, luggage, and people who won’t fit inside because the lorries are so full) they tip the cow over, grab it’s legs, and a crowd gathers to help shove the cow up towards the top of the lorry. Another small crowd on top helps grab the cow, and they strap it on top and wait for all the people and other luggage to get loaded. I’ve also seen a cow in the back of a taxi. I hope I see a cow being loaded into a taxi before I leave, just because I can’t picture how you can get the cow into the taxi. There aren’t many taxis in my village though.

Beware the Gong Gong Beater

Drummers here are called gong gong beaters. They are present at all the funerals, at the market, and occasionally just randomly. They also make community announcements, which is handy if you’re a Peace Corps Volunteer who has an event you want people to attend.

It’s important to know that when a gong gong beater makes eye contact with you, you are expected to give them a small amount of money. I found this out at a funeral. I was out walking around the village, which is what I spend most of my time here doing. I heard the drums, gunshots, and other loud noises that mean there is a funeral, so I went to greet the house of the funeral. A gong gong beater spotted me and I looked away and kept on walking, and he followed me. I thought that was kind of weird. Then I was cornered against a building with him and one other gong gong beater blocking my way out. I had no idea what was happening, until a lady close by said “Money. Give them money.” Of course, I didn’t have any money with me because I hadn’t planned on needing any. Finally I managed to explain this to the gong gong beaters, who let me pass. I later found out that you are supposed to give money any time you see a gong gong beater playing. Lessons learned: 1. Always carry money 2. Avoid gong gong beaters unless you need them to make an announcement for you

Thanksgiving Highlights

I had the opportunity to go to the ambassador’s residence for Thanksgiving dinner. This entailed a long journey to Accra, but the Peace Corps office arranged for us to stay with various people working for the embassy and USAID. I stayed with a really nice couple from New York. They fed me wine and spaghetti and let me watch American t.v. The house was air conditioned and they had a warm shower too! Amazing!

Dinner at the Ambassador’s house was also very nice. The best part was seeing some volunteers that I haven’t seen since training. Afterwards we went to Champ’s, a sports bar in Accra. I also went to a shopping mall, and discovered that shopping malls are not a part of American culture that I miss, even a little bit. The whole time I was at the mall I was thinking about how much I wanted to greet my onion seller.

The journey to Accra was uneventful until the very end, when traffic was stopped so that some workers could use dynamite- I think we were passing a rock quarry, but I’m not sure. Everyone got off the bus to play with a football that my friend Beth had brought, and then there was mass chaos as traffic started moving again and everyone re-boarded the moving bus. Luckily traffic was still slow when it started back up. The trip back was on a Muslim holiday, and the lorry station was packed with people trying to get to Kumasi, including me. I paid way too much for a ticket after throwing elbows and getting some smashed toes to get through the crowd to the bus. But it ended up being air conditioned and the seats weren’t smashed together, so I guess it was worth the extra money. They had a church service on the bus, which I haven’t seen before. I was vaguely amused until they tried to take a collection. I pretended to be asleep. Probably not the noblest response, but I didn’t want to go to church. I just wanted to go to Kumasi.

New Season

The Harmattan season has begun, and rainy season has ended. The Harmattan season is named for the Harmattan winds, which blow down from the Sahara desert. It looks like there is a fog covering everything, but really it’s just dust from the desert. The sky is grey with dust. It now cools down at night enough to where I sleep in a long sleeved shirt. Afternoons are even hotter than they were before. At 6 a.m. today, the thermometer on my alarm clock said 74 degrees, and yesterday afternoon it said 92 degrees. My room is usually a tiny bit warmer than it is outside. Leaves are falling from the trees. The people here hate this season, and everyone is kind of listless right now.

Make-Over Ghana Style

When the women here are not cooking, hauling water, making Shea butter, or tending their children, they will do each others hair. They put it into tight braids wrapped with a plastic thread. These braids can hold for up to three months, and they can wash their hair with the braids in.

Older women also use zappelo on their feet, and sometimes on their hands. I think this is like a henna dye, but I’m not sure. It looks like dried and crushed spinach, and then they mix it with water and spoon it onto their feet. Then they let it dry, and peel off the dried mixture. This process is repeated several times. The first time leaves your feet orange, but it gets darker and darker with repeated applications. When I tried it, I did two coats. That was almost two weeks ago, and my feet are still orange, although it is fading.

Some people associate the zappelo with weddings, but others say that it’s just something that women do to make themselves more beautiful, like the way Americans wear make-up. I got the impression that it traditionally was used for weddings but is becoming more of an everyday sort of thing.

When they were putting the zappelo on my feet, the women were fascinated by my tan lines from my sandals. I showed them how much darker my arms are than my belly, and they were horrified. People here like lighter skin- the lighter the better. People who can afford it spend a lot of money on creams to lighten their skin. They told me I should wear long sleeves everywhere so I wouldn’t ruin my light skin. I told them that in America people will pay a lot of money on tanning lotion to make their skin darker, which they thought was bizarre.

People will sometimes cut the cheeks of their children to produce scars for beautification. Among the Dagombas, this is optional and only done to make the child more beautiful. Some other tribes have tribal markings, meant to identify the person with their tribe. Usually, the cut is either diagonal across both cheeks or vertical. Both men and women have them.

Making Shea Butter

Many women make and sell shea butter here. This is done by roasting the shea- the women put the shea into big pots over a fire and stir, stir, stir. After it’s roasted and cooled, they take it to the grinding mill and have it ground into a powder. They then put the powder into a big bowl with some water and use their right hand to stir. It looks like a giant bowl of chocolate cake batter. Hot water is added in small increments until it gets to the right consistency. Then cold water is added, which causes the oil to rise to the top, where it can be skimmed off. The water is then discarded. When I helped, the women gave me a small bowl that some of the younger girls were using. I wondered why, until about 10 minutes in when I was struggling to keep stirring. The consistency is very thick, and you have to slam it down to get the oil to separate. My arm was sore by the time I finished, and I had only a small bowl and someone was helping me. I guess that’s why the women here all have toned arms. My hand was soft from the butter by the time I finished.

Hello everyone! So, I have some good news. First, I have finally embraced technology and created a blog. I’m getting too popular, and more people are requesting these e-mails than my e-mail is capable of sending out. I will keep sending to this list, but if anyone else wants to see it, the link is www.ghanakimsuri@blogger.com.

My parents also very generously sent me a camera to replace the one that was stolen. That means that my new fancy blog will have pictures. I hope you all enjoy them as much as I’ve enjoyed taking them. Hopefully it will make some of the things I write about make more sense.

Finally, they hooked up electricity at my house.

Trash

In America I always tried to be conscientious about how much I was throwing away, but now I am my own garbage disposal service. The result is that I make an effort to not make any trash, particularly plastic.

The way that garbage is disposed of in Ghana is relatively simple. You throw it on the ground or the floor or wherever you are standing. Every morning the floor and the ground are swept, and the garbage is burnt. It’s hard to breathe in the evenings because the smell of burning plastic is so thick in the air.

Almost everything that you buy comes in a plastic bag, so there is a lot of plastic. It surrounds roadsides and occasionally goats here die of obstructed stomachs from eating the bags. Since the bags are called rubbers here, people will say things like “that goat died from eating rubbers.” The phrase makes me giggle, but the problem isn’t funny.

Plastic also holds water when it rains, which makes the extra trash a mosquito breeding ground. More mosquitoes mean more malaria.

In spite of the litter, I can’t help but observe that if Americans threw all their trash where they were standing, we would be buried in it. There are some huge cultural differences in how goods are distributed, which makes a big difference in how much trash is produced. For example, almost everything is sold in bulk, so it’s easy to bring your own container to market. Even with all the plastic bags, nothing is sold in layers of unnecessary packaging (except candy, which very few families buy).

Some types of garbage are impossible to make here. For example, you cannot throw food away. If you can’t pawn the food off on some children, you can throw it in the back yard where dogs, goats, and sheep will quickly dispose of it.

It’s also impossible to waste serving dishes or tin cans. Children find the tins and make elaborate toys with them. This would probably send most hypersensitive parents in America into a panic. Sharp edges! Oh no! There might be parts they can choke on! Mysteriously, children here don’t die from creating and playing with these toys. Mysteriously, people in Ghana don’t die of a lot of things that terrify Americans, but I will write about that another time.

If your sandal breaks in America, you almost have to buy a new pair and throw the old pair away. In Ghana, you ask who can fix it, and it’s as good as new in less than 5 minutes and for less than 25 pesua (cents). It’s interesting to me how many people (especially people who travel a lot) come back and talk about how wasteful Americans are, but they never notice how much harder it is to not waste things in America. I don’t know where I could buy wheat, corn, milk powder, or rice in bulk in America. Here I just go to market and that’s the only option to buy it. I don’t know where I could get my shoes fixed in America, but I know at least 3 people who can do it here. I don’t know the answers, but it’s interesting to look at the differences.

How to Butcher a Goat

I happened to walk by a while ago while some men were butchering one of those goats that choked on a rubber (I had to get that phrase into this e-mail again) so I stuck around to watch. People here slaughter the goat by slicing it at the neck and letting the blood leak out. Then they cut a slit in one of the hind legs. One of the butchers uses this hole to blow up the goat like a balloon, which is supposed to make it easier to butcher. Then they slice the skin down the belly and peel it off, breaking off the legs at the knee. After that, the innards are removed. The stomach and intestines are washed, and served. The best cut of meat (according to the Dagomba people, not me) is the liver, followed by the intestines, followed by the legs. Children are given the brain and eyes, which are considered lesser cuts of meat. The liver is usually given to the oldest man in the compound. The skins are used to make leather, which elders and chiefs can sit on. It is taboo for anyone who is not an elder or a chief to sit on leather. When a new chief is announced it is called an enskinment for this reason.

Burial

One of the village sub-chiefs recently died, and I got the opportunity to go to the burial. The Dagomba people have a burial for the dead, and then they also have three funerals. The burial is the same day, the first funeral is within three days, and the other two funerals are sometime within three years of the death, depending on when the family is ready. Funerals are almost always held during the dry season, when people are not busy at farm.

For the burial, almost everyone in the village gathers to the compound of the man. The women get in circles around calabashes full of leaves from Shea trees. They sing traditional songs (something about cows, but my Dagboni wasn’t good enough to pick up much else) and beat sticks against the ground. Everyone who has a drum or one of the flutes made from animal horns plays them. The young men in the village all take turns digging the hole for the body.

The body is buried in the compound. The men dig a small hole (maybe 3 x 4 feet). When they reach the depth that they want, they make the hole larger at that depth. When the body is placed in the hole, it is off to the side in this larger part- so if you look down into the hole, you can’t see the body.

The family members uncover their heads during the ceremony, and the grandchildren collect money from all the people attending. They set a fee before the ceremony starts, and they won’t release the body to be buried until they get the required sum. I think this money goes toward the actual funeral, but I’m not sure.

When the money is collected, water is heated to bathe the body. Then everyone leaves the compound except the family and the gravediggers, who wash the body and wrap it in what looks like a woven mat.

When this part is finished, the people take the body around the outside of the compound three times. This is considered the person’s last visit to the house. Everyone is still singing and drumming, and during this part they also shoot rifles into the air. Burials are loud.

After this is completed, the body is brought back into the compound and put into the hole. All the men help refill the hole and dance on it to help tamp down the dirt.