So, thanks to everyone who has posted notes of encouragement on the blog and on Facebook. I can't tell you how much I've appreciated it lately. I've felt like a bit of a fraud getting your votes of confidence though, since I've been struggling quite a bit during the last week.
I'm not going to lie, the site visit to Asiri was disappointing in some aspects, although I'm still hashing out which will be the real problems and which will be surmountable. First of all, I should say that Asiri is beautiful. The Habitat for Humanity community has planted cashew trees everywhere, mixed with stands of teak. Even as we approach the dry season (late November to early February) when there will be little rain, it's a green place...
...except for my house, which is actually a spare room (albeit a very nice room) in the local HFH office/building supply storage structure. In doing some kind of site work they cut down all the trees around it, which means it is hot as fuck with no natural shade during the day. For some reason they've also burned the ground around the place so it's situated in the middle of a sort of blackened wasteland with stumps of trees scattered around. HFH people show up pretty frequently to use the office or take things in and out of the storeroom, and the community definitely treats the building, very reasonably, as public space.
I'm also becoming increasingly worried about the role I'm expected to play in Asiri. I don't want to go into the details of how Habitat for Humanity works, but essentially these people need money to help pay for low cost/low interest mortgages. They don't need someone to show up and organize a reforestation project, a community nursery, or another community venture. What they need are realistic opportunities to make money, either in small income generating ventures or as employees of a larger concern. It's hard to overstate how ambiguous the effects of "development aid" are here. Facilities are built, function for a short time, and then are literally abandoned when funding stops or priorities change. I'll say it again in a different way: these people need access to markets (local, national, and in some instances international) and various kinds of training to establish viable businesses, not just charitable institutions. What I'm trying, badly, to say is that Peace Corps does a pretty good job of teaching environment volunteers how to organize community projects, but I don't think Asiri needs community projects, I think they need private enterprise. I don't intend for this to be the last word on the subject, just to say that it's not simple, and I'm not really sure how to proceed yet.
In a more general sense, I spent a lot of time over the last couple days just thinking "Can I do this for two years? Do I want to?" I don't have answers for either of those questions right now, and I don't think I'll find single answers either. I should make it clear that these are not problems with Asiri the community, whose people have been unfailingly generous and welcoming. It's a mix of concerns over whether I'll be able to support genuinely helpful projects here and about my own personal resiliency.
I'm not giving up yet, but a lot of the issues I'm dealing with here (from food to privacy to language to my job) are starting to pile up, and right now I don't have a good sense of how to start dealing with them.
So, it's hard. No one ever told me it would be easy, and I made the choice to come here. We'll see how this plays out.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Early Travels in Western Ghana
I've been struggling with where to start to try and convey some small portion of my experiences in Ghana so far. And then it struck me that the best introduction might be some account of my first experiences traveling and exploring in Ghana outside the structured embrace that the Peace Corps provides during the first few weeks of training. I'd also like to talk about that trip (the "vision quest" where trainees independently visit a currently serving volunteer at their site for a few days) because my final placement has ended up being in the same area. On Wednesday I'll be returning to the same region, although a different town within it, to finally get a chance to see where I'll be living and working for the next two years.
We, a small group of trainees and currently serving volunteers, caught a tro-tro at the station in Accra, heading north to Kumasi, the regional capital of the Ashanti region and traditional seat of the Ashanti people. The tros are vans that, crammed full of people, are the backbone of Ghana's public transportation sector. They're hot, painful if you're in the fold-out jump seat over the wheel well, but once they get moving and the breeze starts coming in the windows they're heavenly. They're also cheap, and Peace Corps volunteers live like nearly everyone else in Ghana, hard-up for money and getting the squeeze from rapidly increasing transportation and food prices.
The market was urban Ghana in a nutshell. Lots of people, but relatively easy to find your way because if you ask any Ghanaian for help finding the right car they will go to great lengths to make sure you get there. People talk about this being the friendliest country in Africa, and there is some truth to that. The hawkers walk through the crowds, women wearing beautiful, colorful dresses of the local fabrics and carrying gigantic loads of food, items for sale, or water on their heads. Everywhere you hear the high pitched cry "Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiccce pure waaataah" and after a few minutes in the heat I flagged down a girl to buy a 500 mL plastic sachet of filtered water for 5 pesawas, about five cents. Water sachets are a big part of our lives here.
We got everyone onto the tro, and the heat melted away as we started to move. We traveled out of the Greater Accra region (Ghana is divided into ten regions that are the rough equivalent of states in the U.S.) into Ashanti, where some of our group left to continue heading northwards, and then westwards into Brong-Ahofa region. As we moved into Brong-Ahofa the climate and lanscape began to change from the lush, tropical humidity of Southern Ghana. Brong-Ahofa region forms a transitional belt between tropical southern Ghana and the dry, savannah conditions of northern Ghana. This is really two countries, a relatively urban, developing South and a much poorer, struggling North. The difference, at the root, is rainfall. Southern Ghana has two harvests, so small farmers (roughly 60% of Ghana's population) make that much more compared to their northern neighbors. Brong-Ahofa straddles that line.
Brong-Ahofa is beautiful. Everywhere we went there was a triple band of colors: bright blue sky, dark green forest, and red-orange soil. The village we stayed in was filled with big, shady teak and cashew trees, as well as a massive banyon in the center of town where funerals were conducted. The volunteer we were visiting had traveled with us from Accra, as he had been one of our trainers there. He works with a local Habitat for Humanity affiliate in his community. HFH works with the local farmers to improve housing conditions, and Will was working with interested members on income generating projects to help increase their incomes. Will also introduced us to "Ghanaian English," a slow, clipped diction that Peace Corps volunteers learn to speak. You have to learn it because although many people here speak English, they will not understand you if you speak "American" English. It's as much of a barrier as not understanding Twi, the other lingua franca among Ghana's more than SEVENTY spoken languages.
During the time we stayed at Will's site we took a trip to Sampa, his market town, to buy food and supplies for our stay. Sampa is literally on the border with the Ivory Coast, and in addition to the various market stalls there were a lot of soldiers from both Ghana and the United Nations in town as well. We can't travel to the Ivory Coast as Peace Corps volunteers, it blew up a decade or so back and hasn't settled back down yet. While in Sampa I was able to pick up a "two-yard" a piece of Ghanaian fabric that you can carry as a travel blanket, towel, headrest, curtain, sheet, or have made into a shirt. Comparisons to the place of the towel in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are apropos.
During the day it's brutally hot here, but in Brong-Ahofa the heat doesn't stay in the air as humidity, so it's okay if you can find shade and it eases away in the evening as the sun goes down. We cooked food in the evenings and listened to iPods on a pair of tinny speakers that Omar, another trainee, had brought with him, and watched the lightning storms outside. Will was staying in a house that Habitat had constructed, and a small, comfortable concrete block house painted yellow that was a good size for him and his dog, Woro, who he had gotten in Ghana a while back. Will was doing a livestock project and a beekeeping project in his community, helping some interested people get started with supplies and training to keep goats (sort of on the Heifer International model of "passing one along") and keep bees, both of which represent modest but real wealth.
Well, I'm running out of Internet time so I'll have to wrap this up. A couple weeks after returning from the trip to Brong-Ahofa I found out that I'll be placed there, in another Habitat community, also working on income generating projects. Despite some concerns, I'm pretty happy about it, and it's a good fit for my interests and background. I'm going on a site visit in a few days, and will have a chance to see my house (yeah, I have a house now, go figure), get a feel from my community what they may be interested in doing, and generally meet and greet. I'll take a few pictures and post them when I get back.
We, a small group of trainees and currently serving volunteers, caught a tro-tro at the station in Accra, heading north to Kumasi, the regional capital of the Ashanti region and traditional seat of the Ashanti people. The tros are vans that, crammed full of people, are the backbone of Ghana's public transportation sector. They're hot, painful if you're in the fold-out jump seat over the wheel well, but once they get moving and the breeze starts coming in the windows they're heavenly. They're also cheap, and Peace Corps volunteers live like nearly everyone else in Ghana, hard-up for money and getting the squeeze from rapidly increasing transportation and food prices.
The market was urban Ghana in a nutshell. Lots of people, but relatively easy to find your way because if you ask any Ghanaian for help finding the right car they will go to great lengths to make sure you get there. People talk about this being the friendliest country in Africa, and there is some truth to that. The hawkers walk through the crowds, women wearing beautiful, colorful dresses of the local fabrics and carrying gigantic loads of food, items for sale, or water on their heads. Everywhere you hear the high pitched cry "Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiccce pure waaataah" and after a few minutes in the heat I flagged down a girl to buy a 500 mL plastic sachet of filtered water for 5 pesawas, about five cents. Water sachets are a big part of our lives here.
We got everyone onto the tro, and the heat melted away as we started to move. We traveled out of the Greater Accra region (Ghana is divided into ten regions that are the rough equivalent of states in the U.S.) into Ashanti, where some of our group left to continue heading northwards, and then westwards into Brong-Ahofa region. As we moved into Brong-Ahofa the climate and lanscape began to change from the lush, tropical humidity of Southern Ghana. Brong-Ahofa region forms a transitional belt between tropical southern Ghana and the dry, savannah conditions of northern Ghana. This is really two countries, a relatively urban, developing South and a much poorer, struggling North. The difference, at the root, is rainfall. Southern Ghana has two harvests, so small farmers (roughly 60% of Ghana's population) make that much more compared to their northern neighbors. Brong-Ahofa straddles that line.
Brong-Ahofa is beautiful. Everywhere we went there was a triple band of colors: bright blue sky, dark green forest, and red-orange soil. The village we stayed in was filled with big, shady teak and cashew trees, as well as a massive banyon in the center of town where funerals were conducted. The volunteer we were visiting had traveled with us from Accra, as he had been one of our trainers there. He works with a local Habitat for Humanity affiliate in his community. HFH works with the local farmers to improve housing conditions, and Will was working with interested members on income generating projects to help increase their incomes. Will also introduced us to "Ghanaian English," a slow, clipped diction that Peace Corps volunteers learn to speak. You have to learn it because although many people here speak English, they will not understand you if you speak "American" English. It's as much of a barrier as not understanding Twi, the other lingua franca among Ghana's more than SEVENTY spoken languages.
During the time we stayed at Will's site we took a trip to Sampa, his market town, to buy food and supplies for our stay. Sampa is literally on the border with the Ivory Coast, and in addition to the various market stalls there were a lot of soldiers from both Ghana and the United Nations in town as well. We can't travel to the Ivory Coast as Peace Corps volunteers, it blew up a decade or so back and hasn't settled back down yet. While in Sampa I was able to pick up a "two-yard" a piece of Ghanaian fabric that you can carry as a travel blanket, towel, headrest, curtain, sheet, or have made into a shirt. Comparisons to the place of the towel in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are apropos.
During the day it's brutally hot here, but in Brong-Ahofa the heat doesn't stay in the air as humidity, so it's okay if you can find shade and it eases away in the evening as the sun goes down. We cooked food in the evenings and listened to iPods on a pair of tinny speakers that Omar, another trainee, had brought with him, and watched the lightning storms outside. Will was staying in a house that Habitat had constructed, and a small, comfortable concrete block house painted yellow that was a good size for him and his dog, Woro, who he had gotten in Ghana a while back. Will was doing a livestock project and a beekeeping project in his community, helping some interested people get started with supplies and training to keep goats (sort of on the Heifer International model of "passing one along") and keep bees, both of which represent modest but real wealth.
Well, I'm running out of Internet time so I'll have to wrap this up. A couple weeks after returning from the trip to Brong-Ahofa I found out that I'll be placed there, in another Habitat community, also working on income generating projects. Despite some concerns, I'm pretty happy about it, and it's a good fit for my interests and background. I'm going on a site visit in a few days, and will have a chance to see my house (yeah, I have a house now, go figure), get a feel from my community what they may be interested in doing, and generally meet and greet. I'll take a few pictures and post them when I get back.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Ghanaians Love Celine Dion
Seriously. I never expected the soundtrack to my time in Ghana to be "My Heart Will Go On" (the theme from Titanic) but there you go. I was in an Internet cafe the other day when the proprietor started playing it and a bunch of young Ghanaian guys started singing along. Like a lot of my experiences here, it was both totally awesome and completely unexpected. Things like this happen a lot.
I've been trying to think of how best to describe my life in Ghana, and the hopelessness of taking on that task is immediately overwhelming. It's not just Ghana, it's Africa. It's not just Africa, it's the absence of everything familiar. And it's not just the absence of everything familiar, it's the replacement of all those familiar references with a panoply of colors, images, languages, and people.
Which is my way of saying "I'm working on it, give me some time to process."
I've been trying to think of how best to describe my life in Ghana, and the hopelessness of taking on that task is immediately overwhelming. It's not just Ghana, it's Africa. It's not just Africa, it's the absence of everything familiar. And it's not just the absence of everything familiar, it's the replacement of all those familiar references with a panoply of colors, images, languages, and people.
Which is my way of saying "I'm working on it, give me some time to process."
Monday, November 10, 2008
Barack Obama
We were in a small Catholic guesthouse in Wa, a city in the Upper West region of far northern Ghana, very nearly in Burkina Faso. We had asked all of our friends back home to call us when the results started coming in, and at around 3:00 a.m. our phones started blowing up with text messages and calls. We huddled in the dark in a small circle in the courtyard, a small group of environment trainees, yelling and giving each other high fives. I called my parents to celebrate the moment. In southern Ghana, the capital city of Accra went crazy. In Kenya, a national holiday was declared. Since then I have had so many conversations with Ghanaians about Barack Obama that I will hopefully write about in more detail later on. I've been realizing that part of what defines my experience in Africa is being here as Obama has been elected, and during his Presidency. What can I say, except that on January 20th President Barack Obama becomes my new boss!
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