Sunday, January 30, 2011

Books, Bathrooms, and Buildings

So projects are beginning to take shape.  Our first endeavor was to organize a latrine building project.  After talking to many groups in the community and asking them what they wanted me to accomplish for them in my two years here, nine times out of ten the first and almost immediate response has been: “We want toilets.”  Well, okay then.  Throughout Peace Corps training we talked about the various situations that latrine projects have encountered.  For some reason I haven’t gained an insight into, when people build their houses, they don’t incorporate or plan toilets—or latrines, into them.  Perhaps it’s the cost of the cement needed.  Most houses are built with mud, sand, and water.  Granted, you could build a latrine with that too, but good solid latrines are built of cement, which can be pretty expensive.  Pretty much every latrine here is reminiscent of the outhouse.  It’s a little shack with a vent pipe that covers a deep hole in the ground over which you squat.  I know that right now you’re thinking of your white (clean?) porcelain commode with running water in your own sanitary and tiled bathroom at home and thinking “ewwww, they poop in that?”  It’s really not as bad as you think.  If can keep the odor down and the bugs away, it works just fine.  And anyway, it’s loads better than having to find a place in the bush or your rubbish pile.  Anyway, of all the situations we talked about in training, I have found very little to no evidence of those same obstacles here.  Perhaps the most important indicator of all is that people are asking for them.  Organizations that have traditionally helped communities build toilets have found their efforts and monies go to waste because they didn’t do the groundwork beforehand to make sure the people were ready to use them and just went ahead and built them.  As a result, these same organizations now make the communities do a considerable amount of the work beforehand to facilitate a sense of ownership and make sure a lot of education about the connections between defecation and disease take place first.  But the fact that people are explicitly asking for help with toilet acquisition means they are already a great deal past that.  At least, that’s what I think.  Time will tell if I’m right.

So, Kwesi and I, through various community leaders, collected the names of households requesting toilets.  So far there are 76 of them.  An organization in the district capital, Nkwanta, called World Vision has a program to help communities with the purchase of the cement and the vent pipe.  Their budget can only cover about 25 toilets, so that’s where we’ll start.  I’ve asked the local government to cover the cost of the skilled labor—the cement layer.  Surprisingly, the District Chief Executive said the amount “was too moderate.”  I think he expected me to ask for more money.  I’ll keep that in mind for next time.  The 25 households have to do most of the work, though.  They have to dig the hole, build the structure (with local materials that don’t much or anything at all), and pay 10 cedis to help with other expenses.  Imagine…a whole, new, sanitary outhouse for the cost of 10 cedis and a whole lotta work.  If they want to put metal sheets on the roof instead of thatch, then they have to figure that out for themselves.  Although, if the District Assembly really wants to give me more money, they can fund that or more than 25 toilets.  We’ll see what happens.

Project #2.  The government junior high school is one building with three classrooms, a teachers’ office, and a big empty which is labeled “Library.”  Inside this room is a small blackboard, crumbling tables, a large pile of sand and fishing nets (*shrug*), four bookshelves, and lots of bats and guano in the ceiling.  Not a single book.  Other than school books and the novels I have that float among PCVs between sites, there is not really anything for anybody to read in this village.  This means children and adults can read, but without anything to practice with, their abilities are minimal.  How simple, I thought.  There is already a structure and even book shelves that only need a little TLC.  There are also many organizations that organize book donations to Africa.  This is also a project common in the PCV world.  This I’m sure we could do lickity-split, granted I can find the right organization.  Once we get some books, then I can make a reading club.  Voila!  Then this monster came along….
I had a meeting with the school teachers a few days ago.  They want me to help them build a computer lab.  Oy.  Alright, I told them, let’s think this through.
ICT (or information computer technology) is a relatively new subject in the Ghana school curriculum.  Unfortunately, the government doesn’t really have enough money to pay for the introduction of a new subject (the new teachers, their trainings, the materials, test materials, etc.) AND the cost of building and furnishing computer labs to all of its schools.  So what happens?  Teachers in (most likely) rural villages must teach ICT to students who have either never seen a computer, or never touched one, by using the old methods—lecturing and writing descriptions on the blackboard (what’s lovingly referred to as “chalk and talk”).  Imagine trying to teach the parts of a computer (the screen, the mouse, the keyboard, etc) with no actual computer.  Imagine trying to learn it, then writing an exam on it.   Very few students pass their exams in ICT.  There is no doubt as to the need of computer labs for students to gain experience on.   Perhaps, they thought, we could take over the long pavilion that’s not being used, build a structure with two or three rooms and put the library inside there too.

The biggest problem with computer labs in, well, Ghana, is that of sustainability.  Communities want them, but the problem is they’re not always aware of what it takes to keep them.  Many labs here have many computers that don’t work.  You can’t really just call the office IT guy that knows how to magically fix everything to make sure the computers keep running.  Or, for that matter, call the nice people in India.  But also:  Who will pay the electric bill?  Who will keep the computers updated and virus free?  Whose job is it to monitor the students while they’re using the computers to make sure they’re not looking at porn (that’s IF we put internet in there)?  What about a printer?  Is the money the district gives you for ICT stuff enough to cover these recurring expenses?  Can we replace the computers in five years when they’re (reeeeeeaaallly) out of date?  We need fans to keep them cool, a locked door, and a massive voltage regulator to keep the electricity from frying the computers from the inside out.  And somehow, we have to find a way to keep the dust out.
These teachers would not be detracted.  They came up with a solution to every obstacle I threw at them.  I still possess a healthy dose of cautious skepticism, but it is my job to help them do what THEY want, not what I want.  But we can’t very well not try since we all know that to give these students a leg up in the world, to get outside this farming community, they need to know something about the world of technology and have some access to it.  Even if the harried pace of the technological world doesn’t fit the slower pace of a traditional African village. 

So here I am, fast becoming the “volunteer who builds stuff.”  There was a lot of discussion about this during training.  There wasn’t a discouragement from “building stuff”, but just a cautionary note about staking your success on how many tangible things, or buildings, you bring to your community.  Peace Corps is about “behavior change” something my culturally relative theoretical self struggles with, but nonetheless, I see the great value of it.  We are here to educate, influence, lead by example, not just come in and give “stuff” away.  There are plenty of organizations for that, so Peace Corps is supposed to do the harder of those development methods.  Still, all of this bows in deferment to what the community wants.  I am but an aid and an advisor in their own development visions.  If they want a computer lab, then, dammit, I’m going to do my best to help them get it.  There is no ignoring the great need for it.  Besides, with adequate preparation before hand, I can inject the behavior change after we get the proper tools.  Wish me luck!

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Not in Kansas anymore...

Every now and then I have what I call one of my “Holy shit I’m in Africa” moments.  One of my favorites was when Kwesi and I were sitting under a large shade tree in one of the small villages outside of Damanko talking to a group of people about our plans for a latrine-building project.  There we were, sitting in plastic chairs and wooden benches in the middle of a group of mud and thatch houses, the “bush” not ten yards from us.  Half a dozen cattle wandered behind us trying determinedly to get a mount, just as normal as could be, with chickens skittering around their hooves trying to peck of the tasty bugs.  This is how planning meetings occur in the village setting.  No suits, briefcases, and fat conference tables here!

Then today:  Sitting on top of my water tank with a book and the cat.  The market space was busy with the evening market as the weather cools off and people come back from farm.  The dust creates a haze as people walk with their fetched water on their heads, as children scamper everywhere, and bicycles cross to and fro.  Then all five of the mosques nearby start singing for evening prayers.  It provides quite the soundtrack.

Holy crap, where am I?

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Fun with pronunciations

Addai:  I need to go buy some sauce.

Me:  Sauce?  (thinking that's an odd thing for a Ghanaian to think he wants to buy.)  Like, what kind?

Addai:  For my uniform.

Me:  Huh?  (as I watch him point to his boots.)  OH!  SOCKS!
        (Then laughing hysterically.)  I thought you said something totally different.

Addai:  It's my British pronunciation.

Me:  Uh-huh.  Sure.  And the fact that you're a native Twi speaker has nothing to do with it...

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

New Year's or---Prom?

Forget Christmas—New Year’s is where it’s at.  That’s the big party around here.  I think it was especially festive this year because January first was close to a Sunday, so they could stretch the party out for longer.  See, the first Sunday of the new year is really the important day, because church offers people an opportunity to get all gussied up in their new clothes.  Gift exchange is not really a part of these holiday traditions, but there is a sense of obligation for somebody (men to women and vice versa, parents to children) to buy at least one set of new clothes or dresses.  Tailors and seamstresses have been burning the midnight oil for days getting all their projects done.  And of course, if a girl gets a new dress, she has to get her hair done too, so the hairdressers have also been weaving their fingers raw.  It’s like everyone’s getting ready for prom or somethin’—complete with dance late into the night.  So Sunday afternoon/evening comes around (or Monday or Tuesday) and suddenly you see all these really neatly dressed people, and no naked children.  Everyone’s just walking around town—through the dust no less—visiting one another, children forming packs of obnoxious, firecracker-throwing hellions (though dressed up nicely in their miniature suits and sunglasses), showing off their new clothes.  Young men have new ornately embroidered jeans and sports t-shirts plus bling—they look like they just hit up a Zumiez store.  The girls and women have traditionally designed and tailored dresses from Ghanaian print fabric, and small children are in anything that looks new and clean.  Dresses, new clothes, hairdos, jewelry, and dance party at the end.  It does feel eerily similar to prom.  

One stop shopping!!

Boy it’s hard to write about something interesting about your day when you feel like there’s nothing really grand to it, just a sequence of small, mind-occupying events.  I try to invoke the spirit of Bill Bryson and channel his style of taking the mundane quirkiness of experiencing the everyday in your travels and turning it into a quippy and witty satire that elicits a lot of low chuckles, but some things you just can’t force no matter how much you try.  I walk around slightly frustrated that almost everything I see would not be mundane to those who don’t see this every day, and yet somehow I’m missing the spark to describe it—the wacky connections I could make of something unfamiliar to something familiar, finding something seemingly unrelated that somehow ties a whole string of interesting ideas together, the event or idea that serves as a catalyst for striking understanding into a previously only theoretically understood idea (I’ve been trying to write a post about gender for weeks), or even just the self-deprecatingly hilarious cultural misstep.  Have I just not been putting myself out there enough?  Taking enough risks?  It’s very tiring to endlessly contemplate whether you’re doing as well as you absolutely possibly could (a rather unsavory left-over from graduate school—I have so much to do, am I using every minute to its utmost capacity?), and yet somehow compelled to wallow there in that land of endless self-evaluation. 

Anyway, so here’s my self-assigned writing exercise for the day.  Since today was Market Day, I will attempt to describe the market.  Market happens every six days.  People (mostly women) come from all around to sell their goods here and in other towns on their market days, but today they will arrive with their goods in enormous burlap sacks which they’ve stacked on cargo trucks and which they will sit on top of in order to get here.  Once here, everyone has their place, or at least, their section.  At first glance, like much of what you see in Ghana, you wouldn’t think there’s a system or any order, but as you get used to it, a pattern begins to emerge.  Humans can’t do anything with any kind of regularity or organization if there is no pattern; nothing is repeated if chaos reigns.  It looks like chaos to the untrained observer because we lived in a very obsessive compulsive and organized world in the States.  All vendors have their special means of transport, the areas they’re assigned to set up in, equipment in which to do so, and finally, the most taken for granted of all, a prescribed or designed way by the organizers of how the consuming/buying/browsing crowd is supposed to wander easily among the vendors.  That last bit is what is really missing from this situation and what, I think, gives the illusion of chaos at first glance.  So what does one see “at first glance”?  Well, if you walk out of my front door, you are standing in the middle of the “clothing market”.  There are piles of clothing laying on burlap mats with small children sitting in the middle of them calling out prices, shirts and trousers on hangers hanging from strings strung up around my wall, and people wandering out between all of them.  Then you come to the three thatched shelters that hold the “livestock market” where one can buy everything from kittens to fowl to goats.  Right next to that are the gari women—the women who sell gari which is dried and powdered cassava, sorta.  Okay, now you’re barely 50 feet from my door and you can walk into the market/lorry station proper.  This is where it gets really hairy, because now we’re in the space where vehicles park, but see, market tends to take place anywhere there’s space, so cars full of people end up driving through crowds of people and bread sellers have to move their tables to allow more cars to park.  Anyway, once you walk past the gari women, there is the yam market on your right, which today is weird because the yam market is usually across the street.  Not sure why they moved it.  Anyway, if once continues to the right up the wide path between buildings you’ll hit what I call “Ghana Costco.”  I call it that because here you can buy many things in bulk—maize, groundnuts, 5 or 6 different kinds of beans, peppers, this nut thing that looks like a seed, more gari, etc.—and for cheap Costco prices!  These women bring their product in large burlap sacks that they probably sat on on their trip into town and pour it out into big piles on their mats, or in big basins.  They then sell it by the bowlful—which, if you’re buying for one, is a freakin’ ton.  Then they’ll “dash” you, just to make sure you get your money’s worth.  However, if you don’t go up the Costco aisle, and you continue straight, you’ll walk into the massive produce market (after passing by the guys selling belts and boxers, feminine smelly things, and the occasional aphrodisiac).  Okay, well, the produce is on the left.  There are mounds of bananas and plaintains, like, 30,000 pounds of them, probably (Harry Chapin [sp?] reference just for you, Mom).  There used to be loads of oranges too, but not so much anymore.  There can be watermelons sometimes, the occasional pineapple, etc.  Keep going straight and you’ll get to the vegetables, continue to the left and you’ll get to the wares—containers, pots, buckets, fans, brooms, baskets.  If you’re looking for vegetables, you find the ladies with the freakin’ enormous woven straw hats selling onions, tomatoes, garden eggs (like miniature yellow eggplants), okro, peppe.  On the right are the women selling printed cloth behind a big bus and behind them men selling bikes and tools and various odds and ends.  Going down the path between the buildings past the men selling women and children’s underwear will lead us to another section of the market that has tables that small log and thatch shelters.  See, everything up to this point has been out in the open.  People come and set up their things in an otherwise wide open space.  They are open to the sun, the rain, the wayward vehicle, everything.  When they are gone, the place is empty.  Here, these structures stay even if they do stand empty a good part of the week.  Anyway, this place is the “cloth and soap market”.  Most of the cloth sellers set up here, as do many of the soap sellers, shoe sellers, and those selling jewelry and knickknacks.  At the very end are people selling dried fish, just for a bit of randomness.  Oh did I mention there are also people wandering about trying to sell things from the tops of their heads too?  Yeah, can’t forget the pure water girls.

So once you see that people set up in the same space every time, and get used to the day-after-Thanksgiving crowds that wander to and fro and anywhere there is space, it doesn’t look so much like chaos.  And wander a few paths away from the market, you’d think you found yourself in a ghost town, cuz nobody’s around.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

What's in a Name? (Wow how cliche is this title?)

So here’s a nice little Christmas surprise—my sister’s preggo with #2!  Okay, perhaps not a HUGE surprise (not like the shock I would have if I found out I was pregnant), but nonetheless an obviously pleasant surprise.  Such things always get me thinking about one of those quirky little things I enjoy thinking about—names.  They are curious things when you think about them.  They’re a possession you’ve had your entire life; something that indicates only you.  Names can mean something special, or just sound pretty.  Some are chosen with great care, some are not.  Some are meant to imbibe the spirit of something or someone special or perhaps an event. 

Ghanaians have a very flexible system for names.  Not being completely restricted to official bureaucratic regiments for record-keeping allows for this.  In America, we have a million forms one must fill out in the course of a lifetime.  Your name must fit that formula—First Name, Last Name, Middle Name.  Here you have to figure out which names you were given all those years ago will fit in which spaces, and then there might be a couple other names other people use for you that go unrecorded.  Not necessarily nicknames either.

Tribes have different naming patterns that travel all over Ghana, but I’ll tell you about most Konkomba naming patterns, since I am in Konkomba-land.  Most people have a family name, sometimes it’s the father’s first name, sometimes it’s the father’s last name.  It could even be the grandfather’s name.  And then it could change between school and adulthood.  Women don’t always change to their husband’s name when they get married either.  Many then have a Christian name (or a Muslim one if you are so), and usually take the form of words us Westerners are familiar with—Franklin, Simon, Esther, Georgina, etc.  They’re often Biblical or of desired virtues—Patience, for instance.  Then they have a tribal name (or “local name”) that maybe their family and close friends use, and that I butcher when trying to pronounce.  Then there might be yet another name—your “day of the week” name.  For some reason I don’t know yet, the day of the week you were born on is important enough to warrant a special name.  There is one for every day of the week and for each gender.  I can’t remember them all, but Sunday born is Kwesi for boys and Akosua for girls, Monday is Kwajo and Adua, Tuesday is Kwabena and Abena, Wednesday is Kwaku and Akua, Thursday is Yaw and Yaa, Friday is Kofi and Afia, and Saturday is Kwame and Ama.  This system is traditionally Ashante, but the spread of the Twi language has also spread this practice as well.  This name is useful for newborn babies who often won’t receive names for the first month of life until they have their naming ceremony.  Konkombas have traditional names for certain birth circumstances as well.  Special names for twins, if you were born shortly after a death of a loved one, if your mother or father died during or before your birth, if you were born on the road, and so on.  There are many I don’t know about, I’m sure. 

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, here is tonight’s Top Ten list—my Ghanaian-names-are-awesome list.  It’s better than any you’d find in Utah, that’s for sure.  Perhaps my little niece or nephew-to-be will bear one of them!  ;)
Top Ten Reasons Ghanaian Names are Awesome:

10.  Prince
                I’ve seen Princess too, but not in the same family.  Also, Pricilla is popular too, though it’s been morphed to Prinsla.

9.  Barnabus
                Yeah.  Met a grown man with this name.  Yow.

8.  Godsway
                Also a popular name.

7.  Safety
                Don’t know the story, but thought this woman’s name was interesting.

6.  Courage
                Name of a police officer I once met.

5.  Blessing
                Also seen “Bless” and “Believe”.  Lot to live up to?  I think so.

4.  Comfort
                Another popular name.  This is the name of one of Damanko’s midwives.

3.  Alnice
                Pronounced like it looks—All-Nice.  Don’t you love it?

2.  Wisdom
                Popular male name as well.  This is my supervisor’s name.

And the Number 1 Awesomest Ghanaian Name Ever:


1.    1.   Blossom
Okay, maybe I’m biased because this is the name of Kwesi’s youngest (and my favorite baby in Damanko), but how can you not grin a chuckle a bit when you find out it’s for a baby boy?  Apparently this was a gift from his grandmother.  J