Vision Quest June 12, 2010

So, for anyone who was wondering—traveling in Ghana is grueling, extra emphasis on the gruel.  I was sent with many of the other health and water/sanitation volunteers to various sites in the Northern region of Ghana.  4:30 am is early no matter where you are, but apparently, in Ghana that is the time to get on the bus.  This part of training is designed to get everyone out of the big American bubble (and in to many smaller ones) and send them off to current volunteer sites so that we trainees get a chance to see what exactly we’re in for, living-wise, and the kind of work taking place.  The trip was completed in parts.  We (like 24 of us) were dropped off in the city of Kumasi in the central part of the country to catch another bus to Tamale in the north.  Trouble was, the bus driver dropped us at the wrong bus station.  We were plopped down in a place recognizable as a bus station only because there were buses around.  There were no shelters, no signs, no kiosk, just people.  People everywhere.  People selling wares, people carrying merchandise, people carrying children, children carrying merchandise, people hanging around, taxi drivers trying to find passengers, just the whole hubbub of life concentrated in this space with an occasional bus.  We were told, that once we got to Kumasi we were to call the PCV who worked at the PC office in Kumasi, who would then help us to find the right bus and send us on our way.  Once we had our PC guide and realized that we were supposed to be at another station and were all subsequently ferried over there, we got on another larger bus for the next 6 hour ride to Tamale.

Two important things must be known when traveling by bus in Ghana—1) you must ask around to determine which bus is going where, as nothing is labeled, and must get confirmation from multiple people that you have indeed received the right information, and 2) you must be prepared to wait awhile for the bus to depart—drivers will not leave until they’ve sold a reasonable amount of tickets, and if they don’t they won’t bother.  One can wait for an hour, or one can wait for four.  Depends on business.  Luckily, the tickets all sold, and we were able to leave on time.  The seats are small, there is no space, and the windows are your air conditioning.  Buses must also navigate unpaved roads.  Passengers arrived covered in a layer of dirt.  Such a long and grueling trip requires sustenance, which is provided along the way.  And I am not talking about the trolley lady from the Hogwarts Express.  About 3 hours into the trip, the bus comes on a village and about 15 women wait along the road.  The bus stops and the ladies swarm the bus with their home cooked goods and sell them from the trays and bowls they balance on their heads.  Passengers exchange money and food very quickly before the bus takes off.  This happens in the cities as well as local public transit sits at stop lights and in traffic, women and men walk up and down the lanes of traffic selling various things to passengers.

Once we arrived in Tamale, and hired a taxi that nearly had our bums brushing the road, we set up for the night in the PC sub office there.  The TSO is the northern volunteer’s home away from home.  There is running water, fans, showers, internet, novels, and beds.  It’s a nice place to get to.

Early the next morning, I set out with my traveling partner, Catherine, to the site that the two of us had been assigned to.  Kimmie, the TSO volunteer, put us on a bus to the little town of Karaga, with volunteers waiting at the other end.  Our bus stayed on the paved road outside of Tamale for only a short while, before it turned off onto a small dirt road weaving its way through the little villages set in the grasslands of Ghana’s Northern Region.  Little hamlets consisting of numerous mud huts with thatched roofs dotted the scenery.  The scenery was not much different in Karaga, only the town is bigger and there is the occasional concrete building and metal vendor shops.  We arrived in Karaga early in the morning to two enthusiastically waving white people.  Kym and Cam are married second-year volunteers both working the Health/ WatSan group, same as us.  After introductions, we went to their place to have a break and some breakfast.  Kym and Cam live in a compound—basically, a building with about 10 different living spaces surrounding a courtyard.  Peace Corps standards require that they (as all volunteers) have two rooms and a toilet and shower area to themselves.  They have neighbors that live in the compound with them, and several with families.  The courtyard is their communal space where generally all the washing and cooking takes place.  They have electricity which allows them such luxuries as a ceiling fan and a small refrigerator.  Cam does 90% of the cooking and uses an outdoor stove hooked to a propane tank.  We ate very well, too, I might add.  Cam is quite an accomplished cook in the bush—we had tortillas, egg sandwiches, and pancakes.  Their neighbor and best friend, Patience, is a friendly and quiet woman with the cutest 18-month-old girl I’ve ever laid eyes on, and also an excellent cook.  For dinner that night, she fried guinea fowl for us and made jollof (a spicy rice dish) and it was probably the best meal I’ve had in Ghana so far. 

Over the next couple of days, Kym and Cam showed us around Karaga, showed us the projects they were doing and had done, some key people and places, and basically just shared with us the average life of a volunteer.  Cam used his construction education to aid in the building of the new modern health center set to open in August, and has helped build the community’s dam that filters the guinea worm out of the water.  Kym works in the nutrition center that helps mothers with undernourished children learn to care properly for their babies.  They have also been instrumental in organizing a school for the orphans in the town, many of them former patients of the nutrition center.  Visiting this school was understandably, very special.  Orphans in this case means only that they have lost one parent (or perhaps both) and have been fostered to other relatives, and due to economic constraints may get secondary care or education opportunities.  This school, housed in an abandoned church and only one room, consists of about 70 kids in ages from about 5-12 split into four classes, or grade groups.  They each have their own section in the open building with a teacher and a chalk board and learn through a series of call and repeat lessons.  The older children may have workbooks, paper, and pencils, but the younger ones watch the teacher and repeat.  Kym and Cam have supplied many materials, mainly from their families and friends back home, and twice a week, Kym goes in and tutors some of the younger children in reading and writing English. 

Because it takes so long to travel to the north, Catherine and I only had a couple of days in Karaga when many of the other Vision Questers got more than that.  I felt like I was able to get a good feel for the volunteer life in a particular site though, and was happy to go back to Tamale the next day.  The four of us woke early (again bus leaving 4:30 am ish) with the Muslim call to prayer sounding through the loudspeakers and weaved our way through sleeping goats down the road to the bus stop.  Kym and Cam were traveling with us to Tamale as the World Cup was to start this day and many volunteers were gathering in Tamale to watch the games.  From there, they were traveling south to Accra where they would then fly to South Africa to see some of the games for themselves.  Once in Tamale, we spent the day running some errands, like buying cell phones and mailing cards and doing some shopping before ending up at the “Peace Corps Bar” in the city.  The bus ride back to Accra was the next day and we did it all in one push—although this time, they did buy us tickets on the nicer bus line.  This helped a lot, but as I was sick the night before from too much beer (no, not a hangover, just beer) and some sketchy Ghanaian food, the ride back was not the more pleasant, even if I wasn’t tied to a bathroom.  Despite that, we arrived after a grueling (yes, there’s that word again, you can tell that I mean it) 11 hours on a bus to our new training site in Kukurantumi  just outside of Accra just in time to watch the kickoff of the Ghana vs Serbia game.  Go Black Stars!