Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Pictures!

I got a chance to come to the internet cafe unexpectedly, so I don't really have a post prepared.  I decided to post pictures instead.


My sisters, Adua Gladys and Prinsla.  Awesome girls.



Host mother pounding fufu.  


The internet is too slow, so I will have upload more photos later.  Sorry it is so few!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Training and Trying out a Ghanaian Life

So now it is time for training.  For two months, we exist in this limbo under the label of “trainee” as we get our heads stuffed with a new language full of foreign sounds that we inevitably butcher and technical skills that must be absorbed and mastered quickly before we get sworn in as full fledged Peace Corps Volunteers.  I am finding, for the first time in my life, that I am beyond prepared for this training, that the skills from graduate school and all the freakin’ theory they crammed into my brain is actually being visibly expressed before my eyes and I am excited that I am able to witness and articulate it without much trouble.  I think that now that I am no longer surrounded by my academic peers, whom I was constantly struggling to keep up with, I feel more free to develop my own ideas and recall with better clarity previous things I have learned.  I also feel I am able to absorb more now that my saturation point has been raised by graduate school.  I can take my time with a text a few pages or a chapter at a time without having to get through the whole thing in a week, AND have some brilliant insight about it.  A friend of mine said to me several months ago: "There's no reason to not be always theorizing why you're there."  I didn't realize how easy it would come this time.  It is invigorating to merge my academic with the real world, and finding out where it fits and doesn't fit.

So for the training stage, our group of 72 has been split by sector and language needs.  We have been grouped by sector (education, Health/Water and Sanitation, Environment, and Small Business) and placed in separate communities for living and training, but all within 10 kilometers of each other.  Every Friday, we come together at the PC “hub” in Kukurantumi for “seminar days” which include medical and safety sessions.  I have been placed in a village called Anyinasin with a family of Ghanaian farmers.  We live in what’s called a compound—an enclosed courtyard that is surrounded by a rectangular building consisting of 6 or 7 rooms and a locked front entrance.  I have one of the rooms and my host parents one of the others.  A couple of the rooms are rented out, one is used for sitting, and the other three are storage or empty.  Most of the social time is spent in the courtyard—that’s where the cooking, the eating, the conversing, the playing, etc takes place.  The bathing space is inside an enclosed wall and the pit latrine is out back.  My host parents have five grown children, three or four of which live down the street in other compounds or living arrangements.  I think two of these children have children and so they make regular visits to grandma’s house.  Prinsla, Grace, Karen, Gladys and Phillippa are always here, though Gladys is the only one who sleeps here.  And though they are small, they can nearly knock me over with their hugs.  Anyinasin is a small community of probably 500 or so, and rather busy and active.  The children roam freely between and among homes entertaining themselves and each other.  Many nights I find myself engrossed in their games and watching their interactions.  It is usually young girls that surround me as their games require no props or items, and they are brilliant at entertaining themselves.  They know dozens of games and songs that require nothing more than their hands and voices and each other.  They spend their days and play time in constant interaction with each other reciting chants, hand clapping games, songs, and dances.  They have their own system for order in a large group and conducting such games.  None shy away from the center nor spend time pouting about a loss.  It’s about the game and the action, not about getting out or winning.  They also break at a moment’s notice to perform some chore or other activity.  They collect water when needed, carry my bags, get a chair, wash dishes, pound fufu, etc without a second thought to the interruption, then go right back to what they were doing.  I think this is the first time I’ve actually enjoyed children.

This is mostly the evening’s activities.  The daytime is taken up by training activities.  For these first two weeks, we are concentrating hard on the language portion of training with only a little technical until after we visit our sites and regroup to focus on the technical.  So, for 4-6 hours a day I am trying to pronounce sounds and make words that my mouth resists.  I am learning likpakpaln (though sounds something like “li-pa-pa”) with two other people in a small church just a hundred yards from my house.  We try to ignore the children that sit at the windows and the door and shout “Obroni, obroni” all day, though our shooing sometimes works.  There are so many languages in Ghana, that most other groups are small as well, though I think likpakpaln is especially rare.  But that is what my village speaks, so there I go.

I am enjoying most of the food, though my host mother tries to feed me way too much.  Three or four times a week I come home to find her or her and one of the other girls pounding fufu for all they’re worth.  Fufu is the quintessential Ghanaian dish made from plantains and cassava and smothered in soup.  They take the plantains and cassava and place it in a big wooden bowl, then take the end of a five foot long stick and pound it till it softens.  Little by little water is added until the plantains and cassava make a thick dough.  The pounding is something to watch though.  Often, the elder woman sits at the bowl while a younger person stands holding the stick and lifting it up a foot or two in the air before bringing it down on the food.  This is repeated over and over, and between pounds, the older woman flips the dough with her hands.  There is definitely an element of trust, rhythm, and experience at work as the fufu is pounded, because if one misses or miscalculates, fingers are smashed.  Once the fufu is pounded into a round soft dough, it is placed in a bowl and the soup, made of ground nuts, palm nuts, or other soup with meat (or fish) is poured over it.  The eater then tears off a piece of the fufu little by little, dips it in the soup, and swallows it whole.  It is good, but dense and filling.  I cannot post a picture now, but I will, since you really should see its process.  Or look it up on YouTube.  I'm sure there's something there....

Tomorrow we are off to see some falls--I can't remember their name--but I am excited to get out into some bush, some nature, the Ghana landscape and feel invigorated by a short hike.  It always helps with my connection to a place.  Don't get me wrong, things are going well, and all that I have given you, Blog-o-sphere, are the good things.  This has definitely been a challenge, even thus far, but a challenge I know I am more prepared for than I would have been three or four years ago.  I know myself better--what my obstacles will be, and the mood stages I will go through--at least nothing will catch me unawares.  It has not been all unicorns and rainbows, but not dark clouds either.  Transitioning is always abrasive and difficult, and integrating even more so, but it's easy to wade through when you know there is light on the other side.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Explosion!

This is the first day I've had access to internet in a while, so I must publish all my posts at once.  The oldest posts are at the bottom, so if you want chronological order, start there.  :-)

Site Assignment June 17, 2010

After lots of quaking anticipation, the day finally came!  The day most of us have been waiting for for many months.  Today we found out where we would make our home for the next two years.
I am destined for the Volta Region northeast of here, in the very north of it, in a village called Damanko.  It sits next to the Volta River and next to Kabobo National Park.  My village sits on the border between the Volta Region and the Northern Region, and most of the Health/Water and Sanitation volunteers are in the Northern Region.  I will be doing a lot of sanitation work (latrine sanitation and open defecation are major issues in Ghana) plus some HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health care, and family planning work.  There are even some environmental secondary projects it looks like.  I will live in a compound with a self contained latrine and bathroom, kitchen, living room, bedroom, and electricity.  And I will continue learning Twi.  I made bank.  This will suit me.  I wish I was a little closer to Tamale or other major city, but that is not the most important.  My traveling stamina will build.  It’s also a replacement site, which means that volunteers have been there before, and I will be able to build on their already established projects and living arrangements.  This will suit me just fine.
I will not be there until August-ish, so I do not know much more than this.  In a few weeks time, we will set out to visit our sites, and I will know more then.

Upcoming posts:  Home stay life.  Stressful and exciting.

A Glimpse of my life in Ghana June 13, 2010

Some quick details I don’t want to detail, or find the energy to write extensively about.
1)      It’s HOT.  Well, duh, you say.  But I just thought I’d start with that.  It is humid in the south, with lots of beautiful jungle-covered mountains (though not even Appalachian size mountains) in the south and drier, flatter land to the north.
2)      I clean myself twice a day (or thereabouts depending on the weather) by virtue of a bucket bath.  Very few places in Ghana have running water, and so, water is collected from wells or from rain catchment and contained in great big blue barrels.  Ghanaians wash by filling a bucket with water, taking it to the “bath area”, and washing, soaping, and rinsing.  It’s funny; it’s not as big an adjustment as you’d think.  Plus, who the hell wants a hot shower here anyway?
3)      This bucket is what I also do my clothes washing in.  Sit down with the bucket and some laundry soap, rub it on your clothes and go to town.  There is a special technique that makes the bucket all foamy and the clothes whiter than when they went it, but as I’ve not had a lifetime of handwashing clothes, I am sorely lacking in my abilities.
4)      Goats are everywhere.  Mostly pigmy sized goats, of all different colors, and coat texture as well.  They roam freely, though everyone seems to know who they belong to. 
5)      I eat lots and lots of starch—rice, pasta, yams, etc.  The most common sauce is tomato based with peppered seasoning.  The best Ghanaian dish I’ve had so far (well, besides Patience’s fried guinea fowl) is ground nut soup.  Groundnuts are peanuts and a major cash crop here.  They are ground into soup and cooked with lots of palm oil and whatever else with beef or other meat added, and poured over a sticky rice ball.  Yum
6)      For all 72 of us trainees, in a week, our standards of comfort and luxury have changed dramatically, and when encountered are met with excitement and surprise.  “Wow, my host family has a flush toilet.”  “We have tap water.”  “Our host volunteers have a refrigerator and a ceiling fan.”  “That store has A/C?!”  “I’ll deal with latrines and bucket baths, but I really want power!”
7)      All beer is served in half liter bottles and there are about 4 different kinds, and Coke and other sodas are served in old style glass and made with real sugar.
8)      I’m getting tired of everyone complaining about the lax schedule and all the sitting around time.  Get off it!  You’re not in America, in on African time now!
9)      I can already feel myself switching over to Ghanaian English.
10)   We can all sing pretty well the lyrics to the Coca-Cola World Cup commercial.

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!

Bucket Baths and Methloquine June 6, 2010

We are just getting settled in.  Our first orientation that took place in Philadelphia was full of introductions, name remembering, and getting to know Peace Corps, The Organization.  There are 72 of us, so just the logistics means we end up standing around a while as people get gathered up and ready to go.  We had a bit of a free afternoon on Wednesday which a few of us used to run up the six blocks to the Liberty Bell and then back to the Reading Market Terminal for lunch.  The next morning, they piled on three buses and we rode to JFK airport.  Being my first time to New York, I quite enjoyed the ride through Manhattan and Queens.  We got to JFK incredibly early since it takes a long time for 72 people to check in and get through security.  The next eleven hours were filled with, unfortunately, very little sleep, lots of yakking, and whatever other entertainment contraptions they programmed into the individual touch screens.  We touched down in blessed Africa and were met with a healthy spring rain.
We arrived in Accra at 8am and after getting our baggage, took a cruise through customs.  We got onto the special Peace Corps bus that took us to the Accra office where we were welcomed with a short Ghanaian-style ceremony—complete with locally brewed gin!  The rain didn’t seem to faze anybody as we met all the staff and continued to mingle with each other. 
It’s now the third day we’ve been here and it feels a bit like summer camp.  We are staying in lodgings belonging to the Women’s Seventh Day Adventist Valley View University which is really open and outside the city.  We’ve had our first lesson in Twi—Makye, wohondusay?—learned how to bathe and do our laundry with buckets, started our anti-malarial pills, eaten some Ghanaian food, learned to do everything with our right hand, played lots and lots of Mafia.  We’ve actually done very little as they seem to have the idea that they have to break us in slowly and that we will be too easily overwhelmed.  They also are not considering this phase as training which will start in full swing in about a week.  But first we must have a Vision Quest.
Apparently, after giving us a little bit of Twi, some directions, bus tickets, and promises of a willing already stationed volunteer at the other end, they put us on a bus and send us to a possible field site.  The trip could take anywhere from a few hours to a couple days for those of us traveling all the way to the north.  We don’t have our assignments yet, but I’ll tell you all about when I finish.  It’s meant to give us a sense of accomplishment that we can travel around Ghana on our own outside of our so far exclusively American group.
Though they don’t let us out much, we do get the occasional glimpse of the city as we drive from the PC office to Valley View.  Pictures speak better than I can describe, but the ride is full of private vendors selling various merchandise from fabrics and groceries to car parts.  Women carry large bowls full of anything and everything on their heads with great skill (I saw a ten year old girl balancing a five foot bench on her head—horizontally), piles of tires act as a road barrier, roads switch between paved and packed red earth, and scorpions are as big as your hand.
The people I am with are diverse and interesting, and a few with connections to me that were a surprise.  A guy who’s hiked the entire Appalachian Trail; a guy from Salt Lake who first went on his mission to Uganda, decided against Mormonism after a year and came back and did this instead; a woman who’s a nurse and been to Africa several times; a guy who roams, but spent the last year in Portland; a woman from Takoma Park and a guy from Silver Spring, ten minutes from my home in College Park; an older man who grew up in Edinburgh and on his second Peace Corps trip; and a guy who was born in south Sudan and has come back to the continent of his birth.  Everyone seems great, and we’re all excited and raring to get going.  I am excited as we all pass through this process together and see where we all end up.