Life in Ghana, observations after ten months in residence

It’s been a ten months since I arrived in Ghana. I can hardly believe it. How time flies. And crawls at the same time. This post started as a letter to a friend. After all, I come from a generation that use to know how to write them.

I’ve been here long enough that I’m nominally used to Ghana, even if not fully adapted. One never gets use to the heat, the sweat dripping from the brow onto the sheet of paper your trying to write on, or pouring down the underside of the upper arm as your trying to hold a polite conversation. Or being called a yevu by a group of school kids as your passing. They never say it once. They always call it out over and over again. Or obroni, the Twi equivalent of the Ewe, yevu. These terms are for non-Africans, whether white or red or yellow. Both originated as derogatory terms for foreigners. Yevu is a contraction of aye avu, or cunning dog. It’s what the Ewe called the British a long time ago.

So here we go!

Field note #1, Living conditions or Camping 101:  No matter what I do to make my sparsely furnished, two bedroom bungalow into a home with its low flush porcelain toilet, I still have to flush the toilet by pouring water into the toilet tank, and the shower head is for looks only. It's bucket baths. I can understand now why Degas bathers really sat on stools. It’s so much easier to bucket bath seated.

Field note #2, Water: Drinking water from 500ml plastic water sachets, soft plump things - ends up adding to the increasing worldwide plastic pollution. Drinking from the filter that is provided by Peace Corps, a British Berkfeld ceramic filtration system, is great. But, I am always running out of water, that precious commodity that we cannot live without.

The water issue is a major one in Sub Saharan Africa, especially in areas like northern Ghana. Here is an interesting link to an article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review about how well intentioned development groups, such as NGOs and church-volunteer projects, that come to Ghana meaning to help end up doing worse by the locals than if they had stayed at home.

Field note #3: Transportation. There are no nice smooth bus rides on busses that leave at a scheduled time. One waits until the bus or tro fills before it leaves the station for a given destination, or one waits to catch a trotro or line taxi by the side of the road. One fellow volunteer posted on his facebook page - been waiting for a ride for four hours in 102 degree Farenheit. We are a hardy bunch! but oh how I miss being able to jump in the car and go anywhere I want...

Field note #4, The Weather: No, I'm not use to the heat, yet I don't have to suffer from 102 degrees under the African sun like my friend and fellow volunteer from Fresno. Thing is it may be 90 degrees, humid and feels like 102. I melt into a puddle of my own sweat all day, everyday. It may be cool outside, but I have no secure place to sleep outside. There are no 'compounds' in this basically thatched roof, mud hut village of 600, though people do have money according to the teachers. Don't know what they are doing with it. They are not building latrines, or reservoirs to farm water from roofs, or paying the teachers who teach extra classes to their kids. But I don't mean to grumble about my adventure, because overall, if I forget for a few minutes how very uncomfortable I am in the heat, there is much that is interesting, much to learn and much to see.

They say the hot season will end soon, when the rains come. Trouble is it's starting to rain pretty regularly, and still when it stops it's back to the heat once again.

Field note #5: Education:  The students are lovely, at the same time they are frustrating and irritating. There is no discipline in the Form 1 JHS (equivalent to 7th grade in theory, but not in fact). Being in a small rural village I've come to realize that for the most part they do not put a great deal of value on education. Then again, their schoolbooks are written for people living in Ghana's big cities. Could have laughed when a science 'activity' called for a tennis ball! Where the hell is the tennis court? In Accra where the wealthy Ghanaians, Nigerians and most of the expats live? Or in Kumasi at the home of the Ashanti king, who is rolling in gold. 

Yesterday a group of children sang a lovely song in Ewe, the local language I'm trying to learn, but seem to be forgetting as I try to teach the children English and then hole up to recharge myself! I asked my young friend Isaac what they were singing and he said, 'they sing about the dark and the light, Madam.' Later, after I filmed them singing (I posted it on FaceBook) he told me that 'they are singing about how their forefathers lived in the dark, but now we live in the light, the light of the one true God.' Missionaries have done their work well (I did not put that comment on Facebook!)

I could go on for days about how Christianity has so entirely swept Africa, always adapting to Africa -  drumming accompanies songs sung in native tongues.

I wouldn't mind doing another stint with the Peace Corps, go to a more temperate country with cooler seasons at least a good part of the year. Perhaps even few other amenities, like real flush toilets and running water and a greater variety of foods. I'm definitely out of my comfort zone here, if you hadn't noticed, and learning a lot. 

So here I've gone and dulled your eyesight. I'm trying to figure out how to balance the many faces of what I'm seeing here and there and everywhere. It's really no different from home, in the sense that we are always adapting to the people, places and events around us, eh? 

Enough, I need to go to bed.

With much love!

xoxo b