I went to Tanzania for 4 months in summer 2012.
The adventures are on a separate blog: http://kickininkili.blogspot.com/
Wednesday
Monday
Rediscovered Journal Entry from Ghana
Here is a journal entry I recently found from the April - August 2008 trip.
When "Grandpa" was
a baby, his mother came in and saw a black mamba sleeping next to him. Black mambas have enough venom in one
bite to kill 40 men (at least according to my friend Clive who owns a snake farm
in South Africa). Somehow, the
mother snagged the baby (who was grandpa) and got the baby out, got a hunter to
shoot the snake, and scared the baby nearly to death because
of the petrified expression on her face. I’ve seen black mambas before in South Africa and they are creepy. They are probably the only snakes that
will stare at you in the eye, follow your eyes with their heads, and look like
they want to strike out even though they are completely unprovoked.
On another note, the Lever brothers (of
Lever soap) built the compound we live in. There was a factory nearby and one of the executives lived
in this compound.
This week the water was off again (it happens more often than
I thought it would) but unfortunately it went off in the middle of me washing
my face. I had to walk out of the
bathroom with my eyes closed, find my water bottle, get back to the bathroom,
and wash it off. The day was also
unfortunate because I sat in office doing absolutely nothing except dealing
with stupid technology. The email
was extremely slow, and my computer’s memory was completely eaten up so Solomon
and JJ recommended I save everything I want to and completely wipe it. There were all kinds of other
technology problems as well. I felt so unproductive, but in the end
realized things will run much more smoothly with these problems fixed. The electricity is always going out as
well (it happens throughout Ghana, at the office and the house). It was actually kind of funny last year
staying at the temple dorms because the temple would go out and come back on
immediately with the generator whilst everything else remained dark. Anyhow, when the electricity goes out
at the office it is a bit hard to work because my laptop battery doesn’t last
very long, and the computer there won’t turn on. But there is nothing we can do about it… that is Ghana! I am just ungrateful because it is the
norm for me to have light and water.
I should think of those in the villages who always have to use lanterns
or fetch water from boreholes.
While we were driving in a busy part of Accra, we saw a
gated complex. The wall had golden
symbols on it and the words that said something about it being a palace. We asked Kweku about it, and he told us
it was the chief. We also saw some
chiefs walking down the street in the city. I had assumed chiefs were only a rural thing, but we found
out that complex in the middle of busy Accra was a chief’s palace. In fact, the city is split into
sections where different neighborhoods have different chiefs.
Three random people came into Kweku’s house and sat on the
couch. We had no idea who they
were and thought they must be relatives.
Apparently, no one else knew who they were either, but they were
“siblings.” “Cousin” is a new word
in Ghana. Since Kweku was supposed
to be the chief, he has a lot of distant “relatives,” apparently.
Another interesting tidbit. Mommy means “mother.” “Maahme” which sounds the same to me,
is “give me.” In addition, if you
wave at a child the way a lot of Americans wave, wiggling the fingers with the
hands lowered, it actually doesn’t mean “hi,” it means “come.”
Wednesday, JJ, Solomon and I visited Sunil (the energy
expert) at the World Bank. The
most valuable thing we got from him was a long list of other people’s
contacts. Let the goose chase
begin! I also made an application
for the rural schools so there can be some competition among the schools in
receiving a merry-go-round, and hopefully in turn have them take better care of
the equipment. The most memorable
thing that happened at the office was that some of the shop workers picked us
some coconut off the trees outside the office and we got to drink the liquid
straight out of the coconut while working. Once again, they chopped them open with a machete and we got
to eat the meat as well.
The taxis and trotros all have stickers on the back windows
that are usually religious such as “Redeemer” or other words. Some of them are not religious but very
random. For example, we saw one
that said, “Happy Yourself.” I
wasn’t sure at first if this meant, ‘you can be happy alone’ or ‘make yourself
happy.’ Solomon then told us he
knew a man named “Happy Yourself.”
And the man would tell everyone, “No one can make you happy except you.” I think I will start selling “happy
yourself” bumper stickers.
I thought we were going to dramatically perish on the ride
home. The taxi driver was
nuts. We had so many near
collisions. My heart was palpitating
wildly the whole way, and since it’s over an hour drive I think my blood
pressure increased notably. People
drive extremely close to the cars in front of them so no one else can squeeze in,
but everyone sticks their nose in anyway. I guess it was better than the taxi ride in the village when there were 8 people in a 5-seater, and one door was completely missing so I was hugging the person next to me so I didn't fall out, and part of the floor was missing (so I could see the ground below us).
I had mentioned my gum bleeding problems to Lydia, so she picked up
some “chewing sticks” for us. They
are just small chopped up chunks of a certain kind of tree that contains
natural antibacterials apparently.
So we’ve been chewing on those nonstop. JJ says they are bitter but I cannot taste it.
The home teachers came for the Anno family one day, but JJ
and I were the only ones home.
They told us we are family now so they would just teach us instead and
we could teach everybody else after they left. They gave us a lesson and I’m sure they checked ‘the Anno
family’ off the list on the way out.
I’m glad to be considered part of the family.
Thursday we (Solomon, JJ, and I) visited the West Africa
Aids Foundation to ask them how to get a good auditor and get our finances in
order. We followed up on the
contact list from Sunil, continued to deal with technology problems (we have
internet access for 1-2 computers for the three of us).
I thought the day was comparatively boring until we came
home at night and there was no electricity, although this time it really stayed
off for a long time, as in, more than a day. We had decided to cook spaghetti, but the gas stove was not
working so they pulled two coal pots from outside into the kitchen. It was pitch dark in there besides one
“torch” (a citronella candle) and one other torch (a small flashlight). We waved the coal pots with a big fan
to get them going and cooked spaghetti and sauce in them. It took more than an hour and was quite
the experience. The whole family
was in the kitchen, some sitting on the floor, others fanning, others stirring,
some standing around. We ate by
light of a small lantern and it was interesting getting ready for bed with no
electricity and no water. I used
my cell phone to read scriptures and brush my teeth. Once again, I am completely convinced the work we are doing
here is valuable!
Friday the most enlightening thing that happened was
visiting Cyril Kattah at the IFC (International Finance Corporation). Kattah is in charge of the Lighting
Africa competition I wrote about earlier that JJ and I caught the last day
of. We want to enter it next year
if there is a contest, but now they are still looking for funding. They cannot help us fund the project
because they are looking for businesses with returns, not nonprofits. They did an extensive survey in rural
areas of Africa to see which type of lighting is preferred (LED, what type of
lantern, kerosene, candles, etc.)
It was Lydia’s birthday on Friday. She went to Nigeria in the morning so we were supposed to
leave the house at 6am to get her to the airport but didn’t end up leaving
until closer to 7am (time here is sometimes like the traffic laws. It supposedly exists). We did not celebrate her birthday that
day, but JJ and I had gotten her a card and some English chocolate bars, which
she really appreciated. After we
gave it to her, she started telling us about her cross-stitch and showing us her
patterns and the things she has done.
I think she took heart because she saw that we were actually interested
in her. I felt bad though because
the rest of the family hadn’t done anything… although her friend gave her some
money so she could buy a cake for herself. Maybe birthdays are not as big of a deal here.
JJ tried to get drunk off the fermented orange juice
(remember the Thursday coal pot cooking adventure you just read about unless
you are skimming?) It stayed off
the whole night and he didn’t realize until after he’d had a swig. The banku eaten often here is a very
common fermented dish. I really
wonder about it sometimes.
Saturday I woke up feeling absolutely awful; Thursday and
Friday I didn’t feel great either but Saturday it was worse! We visited Linda (remember the one with
the two kids from Nigeria)? I
really felt like we should visit.
Lydia dropped us off at the chapel, where we met Linda. We took two trotros (vans tons of
people cram into) into town. It is
hard to figure out the trotros because there is no written system. You just have to know where they allow
you to alight and which ones are going in which direction (which is still a
mystery to me). The first stop was
this crazy market where people were selling refrigerators and random car parts
and even kitchen sinks. There was
also a lot of food being sold—people were pounding fufu or making redred and
wrapping it in leaves as a plate.
There was one part of the road that would get flooded a lot when it
rained, so the people found a good solution by dropping coconut husk on the
part that would flood (one of the shops sold a lot of coconuts which produced a
lot of waste). What a good
idea! It turns into road after a
while and is pretty clean to walk on (especially compared to the other things
we were walking on—both animals and children sometimes relieve themselves in
the middle of the road). We saw
some kids playing with Styrofoam as if they were cars. It was very crowded and very very
dirty. It is kind of fun to see really
poor people so happy, such as kids in nothing but underwear dancing around in
the rain. We saw some guys pushing
a broken down trotro, and the saying on the window of this one was “Never give
up.” The stores never cease to
crack me up. For example, there
was one called “Tourist Attraction” that was just a normal little shop selling
roadside food.
Riding in the trotros is interesting in itself. There are two employees, the driver,
and the ‘mate’ who has a little fold out seat right next to where the door
opens. The door often stays open,
even while driving and the trotro doesn’t really come to a full stop before you
jump out of it at your stop. We
took a second trotro to Linda’s house.
We took a trotro with Linda to the hospital where Lydia was,
and went back to McCarthy Hill to celebrate Lydia’s birthday. She found an EFY song she is
particularly fond of and has been playing and singing it nonstop, kind of like
my mom does when she gets a new CD (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,
eh?). She would even close her
eyes and sway and sing over the conversation during her party, to the point
that she wouldn’t even respond to her name. We had some cake and ice cream for Lydia but I noticed they
didn’t do presents.
Sunday I didn’t even fast because I was still having
sickness issues and figure it’s not really a good idea to combine that with the
heat. I was supposed to teach
Relief Society, but suddenly another teacher showed up, so I didn’t. Sunday School was very interesting
because Lydia was teaching about Alma the Younger and the class started to get
into a discussion about the people they have not seen at church for a while. An American missionary raised his hand
and said, “Whatever happened to Hilda?”
Then others in the class blurted out other names, and Lydia made a list
as well. Lydia asked who would
visit who. Then she said they will
all meet in a certain spot after church, divide up the names, and everyone will
visit after church. It was
amazing! So much more effective
than ward council meetings where you talk about someone, maybe organize an
activity around someone scheduled for the next month, or assign a friend. They just went. Lydia, Kweku, Essie, Adwoa, JJ, me,
Papa, Narki, Nati, their parents, and a few others went to see one man. I think 14 people went to visit
total. He cried and cried. I didn’t know what was going on because
they were speaking Twi (or Ga, I still can’t tell the difference) of
course. At the same time I was so
touched I just about cried. I
think he has sickle cell and used to bring candy for the kids every week and no
one had visited him since he became ill.
They said he looked a lot better though. It reminded me of the mission where we visited one less
active member and he told us, “thank you for remembering there is a
Stephen.” After that we went to
visit the former RS President who had recently given birth. Kweku, Adwoa, Papa, Nati, JJ, and I
walked home up a big hill.
Cultural Blunders
After having spent nearly two years in Africa, I kind of prided myself on being culturally competent and generally knowing what was up. One day there was a nice little breeze outside, so I lifted up my arms to the sky and put
both hands behind my head to enjoy it while tilting back my head. A Ghanaian man came up to me and said, “No, no! Don’t do that! It means your mother has died!!!” He explained that is the
mourning/grieving stance, especially when the mother dies. We actually laughed about it pretty hard
because he was so intense and I was so shocked. Also, here we don’t wave with our left
hands, because it is offensive.
Also, there was a day nobody went to work. I asked why, and was informed that it was "African Unity Day." I went around wishing people Happy African Unity Day and got some strange looks. According to the people I talked to, it is (1) ironically only
celebrated in Ghana and (2) celebrated exclusively by nobody going to work, but still getting paid for it.
Trip to Fishing Village
Lydia (my host mother's) sisters were taking
her children into the village to get fish, and they invited us to come along
with them, which was really nice considering how crowded the vehicle was. There were five kids, the aunt and
uncle, JJ, and me. In an eight
passenger vehicle. It wasn’t as
bad as last week Sunday, but when they picked up a big momma in addition (some
sort of relative), and I became wedged right up in between her and Nati, things
got a little more crowded. We
stopped at ShopRite (there is a big mall) and got some pies (the kind with meat
in them). We all ate in the car
and arrived at the fishing village.
It reminded me of last year’s visit to Cape Coast. There were canoes all along the shore,
and fishermen and their children everywhere, and huts on the other side, and a
gorgeous but polluted beach. Adwoa,
Essie, Naki, Nati, Papa, JJ and I took off our sandals and ran near the ocean
line when the waves went down and ran away from them as they came crashing back
towards us. I can’t explain why it
was so enjoyable, but it definitely upped my jolly-meter. We also raced across the sand.
The fishermen’s kids were all gathering
behind us. I think because of the
two obruni (white people). They were watching us and laughing with us. Because it is not a touristy area and
we were with an African family, I think it was quite the novelty. We saw ‘gas stations’ which were
basically a bottle of gas. Some
kids had tied some sticks together to make a ‘high jump’ and were jumping over
it. There were two very small boys
pushing a wheelbarrow full of things around. I don’t know how they were strong enough to do that. And there were many carrying wood or
fish on their heads. That isn’t
much different from any of the other villages, though. We went to the uncle’s lab and changed
into swimwear and went to another beach.
This one was still a public beach but secluded. This time JJ, the five kids, and I were
able to swim, jumping with the waves and letting them carry us to shore. It was very rocky though, so we
couldn’t go out too far. The
others buried Essie in the sand up to her neck, which was great. Meanwhile, the aunt and uncle were
buying fish from some fishermen.
It is cheaper to go directly to them then let the sellers buy and get it
through them. The fish were
HUGE! They had sharp teeth and
were several feet long.
Starving Children
Short story from during my time living with the Annos, my Ghanaian host family:
Essam
Morning: After our night visit, JJ, Solomon, and I left
the hotel at 4am to observe what happens in the villages during the dark hours
of the morning. There was a group
of children walking to the farms to gather cocoa beans to bring back to their
homes to dry at about 4:30am.
There were also men collecting firewood to sell at the market (they had
a truck). The same seamstress that
we saw the night before (she works until 11pm) was getting ready to start
sewing again around 4:30. There
were a few women cooking banku or other dishes that morning as well, some for
their families, and some to sell. One
was putting sugar she bought from town into bags to sell and holding the
flashlight in her mouth. We saw a
woman sweeping the dirt with a small flashlight in her mouth. It was generally much quieter in the
dark morning hours than in the evening when everyone was still awake (even
though some were just sitting in the dark). Nearly everyone we saw awake in the early morning when it
was dark were women. By 5:20 it
was light enough to see fairly well and by 5:40 it was light enough to read
without straining the eyes. By
this time many children were busy fetching water from the boreholes and more
people were up sweeping and cooking.
I pumped a bucket, too. It
was a workout. My guess is that
lanterns will primarily be used at night, by
children. However, if we could
identify some hardworking parents of students such as the seamstress or others
who wake up very early, it could be helpful to them. We saw a lot of wells while wandering around the
villages. Most were buckets but
one was a purse with a hole in the corner. We were passing along a narrow dirt path through the jungle
when we ran into a 103 year old men who was just standing by the path near his
house. He greeted us and looked
rather healthy for a 103 year old.
Merry-Go-Round: Before
school, the kids chop the grass, sweep up the chopped grass, or collect
wood. I predict they won’t play in
the mornings. They will definitely
play on it during break times and after school, though. They love it. The village kids sometimes come and play while Golden
Sunbeam is in session, but I got the feeling that the teachers chase them off
when they see them. Because the
mgr wasn’t fixed by the time we left in the evening, we didn’t get an idea
about how long the kids will play on it during the evening time. I figure we won’t know for sure for a
while since it’s been locked in the evening and can still be considered a
novelty.
We wandered around the
village even after it was light, talking to some people about what they
typically do in the village.
Although palm oil and cocoa are the cash crops, there are actually a lot
of rice and cassava farmers as well.
Our day interviews were fun and I got to give a lot of kids
stickers. They were the sparkly
kind, and one very small child was shy and didn’t seem to know what to make of
it and went back to her mother to steer clear of the obruni. However, whenever I glanced back she
was moving her hand back and forth slowly, I assume to catch the light and see
the sparkle. We were all pretty tired
by the time we did the day visits, so the late night and early morning visits
were much more memorable. I was
finally able to sleep in the car on the three hour ride home.
Trip #2: JJ and I visited Essem again and were able to take a short walking tour this time, guided by Robert, one of the Ghanaian teachers. We saw a
lot of cocoa and palm farms, as well as families drying the cocoa beans. They typically have a long table
outside made of wood and spread them out along the table and move them
around. There was also a family
working on getting the palm oil.
It is quite the process. We
saw the village tailor (there is only one, and he works with one sewing
machine). We ran into some young
men digging a 12-foot hole for a latrine.
We also saw a LOT of goats wandering around randomly, but they even do
that in town. The houses were
mostly made of mud. The people
were so nice and one of the cocoa farmers gave us a cocoa pod to try. They work so hard! All these people living in mud huts
with no lights, pumping their water from pumps, rotating cocoa beans in the
sweltering sun so we can drink our Ovaltine.
Our lunch that day was some cookies,
juice, dried cherries, and the inside of the cocoa pod, all of which we had
brought from home and ate in the exam room, which was just a dark, concrete,
boxy room with one table in it.
There was an exam written on the chalkboard asking questions such as:
what is a buffet? Name three types
of oily fish? and other food-related practical questions suitable for farmers
but never taught to students in America.
It was interesting to read their beginning reader books too. There was one in Kweku’s car. It was kind of like a “See Jane run”
book. Except instead it was, “See
Uncle Sofi hit the snake on the head with a big stick. The snake does not want to die. Uncle Sofi hits it harder. Can you hit a snake with a big stick
like Uncle Sofi?” Or… “Adwoa is
pushing a wheelbarrow full of wood.
It is hard. Why is it
hard? Because Adwoa is a girl, and
not strong enough.” Or, “Kojo is
climbing a mango tree. He falls
down.” Or, “Grandmother is chasing
a big dog. She wants to throw a
stone at it. Why? Because it stole her fish. Can you throw a stone at the dog?” I am glad to see that they had books fitted to their culture. I always get concerned when people have Americans donate all their old books and ship them over to Africa. Just thinking about a young Ghanaian girl reading Sweet Valley Twins or getting a hairstyle book (for white people's hair) makes me shudder.
Send your Girl Child to school
Moving around rural Ghana, I often saw posters that read: "send your girl child to school". I also saw kids at Adenkrebi, under the direction of their teacher, perform a skit in which a girl wanted to go to school but her "father" (fellow student role playing) wouldn't let her. At the end, two male students teamed up, picked the child playing the father up off his feet, and carried him out the door announcing "we are going to arrest you because you will not let her go to school!" It was pretty classic.
I met a man working for an NGO that
helps girls. A lot of girls cannot
learn like the boys because after school they have to go home and help with the
cooking and cleaning, and by night it is too dark to do their studying. Also, a lot of girls, are "afraid
to be discovered" during certain times of the month at school because they
don't have the hygiene products.
If they have to cross a stream or river, they won't go, because
traditionally they are told they will contaminate it. So a lot of girls don't go to school as much as the
boys. He is working on awareness
there and it is fascinating.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)