Sometimes I trick myself into thinking that two years of living and working in this country has made me an expert, that nothing can surprise me, and that I’ve basically got it all figured out. I’ve realized recently that those sentiments are probably not reflective of the whole truth. Sure, I’ve learned, integrated, grown, and become more comfortable here, but recently, I’ve encountered more than a few surprises about the place that I call home. Maybe more importantly, though, I’ve surprised myself with my reactions to recent events. I want to share a few examples of what I’m talking about with you today, and interestingly enough, they both deal with different understandings of time and the value that is placed on it. Although anecdotal, I think they further cement in my mind the idea that there are some ways in which my own culture and upbringing is bred very deeply within me, and there are some ways of life that I might never fully understand :).
After waiting on probably hundreds of buses/tros/taxis/cars to take me on various trips around the entire country over the past two years, I found my mouth gaping last week in my most recent adventure away from the village. A friend and I decided on a whim to finally visit another volunteer who lived about 2 hours away in a big fishing village. We had been talking about visiting his site for a long time, so after finally picking the day, we set off on a Saturday morning to the bus station to get on the second (and last) bus of the day heading out to his place. It was around 10:30am when we got to the station, and we figured we’d have to wait about an hour or so for the bus to fill up and leave. As a huge storm rolled in about an hour later, we watched as everyone got on the bus where we were already sitting and were hopeful that a bus full of passengers meant that we’d be leaving shortly. To our dismay, we were still sitting at the bus station 3 HOURS later, at 2:30pm, having watched as the storm passed and all of the passengers got OFF the bus again to do various tasks such as going to buy supplies, chatting with friends, and eating food. We finally started asking the driver why we had been waiting for 4 hours for a full bus to leave, and he replied, without quite answering our inquiries, “oh you just wait a little, we’ll be leaving very soon!” Now, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to wait hours and hours for a bus to fill up or for some form of transportation to leave the station, so this type of thing shouldn’t bother me. But as we quickly passed the four hour mark of waiting for the bus to pull out of the station, I found myself very frustrated. These frustrations became even more pronounced when I watched as a mechanic, who had been sitting around for a few hours eating food and chatting with his friends, got to work fixing the starter on the bus. In my mind, this problem could have been addressed, oh, I don’t know, 4 HOURS AGO when the driver realized that the bus needed some fixing and called the mechanic over, but clearly me and the driver (and every other, uncomplaining soul on the bus) were on different pages. Finally, at the 5 hour mark, I watched as they finished fixing the bus and STARTED to load the supplies onto the back of the bus. The driver had apparently been waiting for everyone to physically get on the bus before loading all of their things. The tricky part is, everyone had been waiting for all of their things to get loaded on the bus before physically getting in. Now, you might laugh at this bit of circular logic, but the amazing part is, it happens EVERY SINGLE TIME a bus goes anywhere in my region. Which is why I was slightly horrified at my outburst of frustration when I saw it happening, yet again, on this trip. I guess after a couple of years of seeing how inefficient (in my mind) this system is, and how much time/money is wasted while people stand around and nothing happens, I couldn’t take it anymore. My loud protests to the driver about my utter disbelief at the amount of time (namely, almost 6 hours) I had wasted waiting for a bus that could have left within 30 minutes of my arrival were greeted with a lot of belly laughing and a statement that went something along the lines of, “oh white woman! You don’t understand our culture! Haha! We will leave soon! Don’t worry yourself! We will leave at any time now! This is our way!” I felt a little offended at his accusations that I didn’t know the “Ghanaian way,” but also realized that my behavior proved exactly his point. As my frustration and surprise illustrated, I clearly DIDN’T understand the culture, or at least temporarily forgot, considering my American friend and I were the only two people complaining in a bus of over 100 people…
My next set of surprises came just a few days ago, when my colleagues and I had finally planned to hold a malaria workshop we’d been planning for several months. We had invited 12 villagers representing 5 communities to a workshop to train them on malaria prevention/treatment and how to conduct educational outreaches that would benefit their respective communities. I was excited about this project and we had put many hours into the planning and prep for the workshop to fit in as much education and hands-on activities as possible in a day’s worth of training. We planned for the workshop to start at 7:30am and go for the entire day, though we told the representatives to report to our office at 7am, anticipating that they’d be late. As 7:30 rolled around, I sat with two other volunteers and waited for not only the participants to arrive, but also our supervisor to arrive, who was bringing all of the supplies for the workshop and acting as our translator. 8:00am came and went, and when I called my supervisor to ask where he was, I found out that he was still in a large city about an hour away getting breakfast and had to pick up a few things before he made his way over. I was shocked. He was unfazed. “Don’t worry,” he said, “No one will show up before 9:30am anyway.” I think the only thing I said to him out loud was, “What?! Okay, whatever you say…” Though in my mind, I thought, “They were told to come at 7 o’clock! Surely all twelve Ghanaians wouldn’t show up to a conference more than 2 hours later than they’re supposed to! A few, sure, but ALL TWELVE, and YOU, my supervisor?!”
I sat and sulked and even started loudly questioning what would happen if no one showed up to the workshop at all. All of that money down the drain, all of the wasted time and effort, and the embarrassment of planning a project that utterly failed were just a few of the dramatic consequences that I found myself conjuring up. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a project go exactly as planned or ever had a meeting start on time during my service, but I still found myself in doubt over how this program could possibly be anything but a total wash. Sure enough, as the time neared 10am, villagers started to stream in, and my supervisor arrived shortly afterward. The workshop ended up being very successful, with EXTRA people showing up for the training and every one of the participants walking away with new knowledge and skills that they can now share with their communities. At the end of the day, I found myself shaking my head in awe at how successful it had been after all of my worries and doubts.
I share these stories with you both to release some of my own frustrations and to illustrate how my understanding of the value of time, the success of a project, and the importance of having a schedule STILL differ from a lot of my Ghanaian counterparts. I have certainly learned a lot and changed the way that I do things since coming here, but there are still so many differences that amaze me on a day-to-day basis. I think maybe I’d amend that popular old adage to say something like, “You can take the girl out of her culture, but you can’t ever, fully, take the culture out of that girl.” Yeah, that sounds about right.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Monday, May 14, 2012
The Stranger
For more than a week, there has been a mysterious woman living on the porch of my compound. I first noticed her sitting on our front step when I came back to the village from my Close of Service Conference last week. She was a small woman, probably in her later 30s, wearing a typical outfit with a cloth wrapped around her waist and a headscarf. I didn’t recognize her as a woman from my village, but we have had a lot of visitors around the community for the recently held chief’s funeral, so I automatically assumed that she was someone’s relative and was simply resting on our porch.
I thought it was strange that when I greeted her in Dagbani, she didn’t say anything back or even make much effort to look at me. Her lack of response indicated that she was either being incredibly rude to me, or she didn’t speak the local language, so I tried to say hello in English. Again, she simply stared straight ahead and gave no acknowledgement of my greeting. Oh well, I thought, maybe she’s just quiet, and I brought my things into the house to unpack.
A while later, I came out of my house to greet people in the community, and the woman was still sitting on the step in front of my place, quietly staring out at the road. This time, however, I noticed that she had tucked two large bundles of items in the corner of our porch, where they would be protected by the awning above. By the evening, when I returned home, she was in the same position, and I realized that she must, for some reason or another, have temporarily set up a “home” on our front porch. A few hours later, I walked outside to talk to a friend on the phone, and while I was sitting on the other side of the compound, the unknown woman approached me with a small ball of TZ and a plastic pail full of a thick soup. She didn’t say anything, but simply left the food with me and walked back to the corner of the porch and sat down again. I ate some of the food, which was cold and had clearly been sitting out for a while, and returned the rest to the woman and tried to thank her. She only nodded her head quietly and looked away.
After two days of seeing this woman in the same position on the stoop, I finally asked a couple of my friends in the village if they knew who she was. They all shook their heads, and some answered that she was crazy. They explained that she stepped off of a vehicle one day with her two bundles of clothes and other items and parked herself on our porch, not having said a word to anyone since she arrived. Apparently she has been given food by various neighbors, but doesn’t eat much and generally just stays to herself. Because of this, several people have speculated that she is from a neighboring village, but is “sick.” They say her mind has gotten to the point where she has forgotten language and doesn’t know where she is. Others think she’s a woman from another region of Ghana who ran away from her family and is quiet only because she doesn’t speak our local language and doesn’t want people to know who she is.
Regardless of her reasons for staying in our village, her presence has made me think a lot about the way people fit into society here, and a typical community response to people like this woman. I find it interesting that the people of my compound and surrounding compounds have brought her food and allowed her to sleep inside of the building on rainy nights. For the most part, besides their musings about the circumstances that led to her staying with us, haven’t made much fuss about her presence. Certainly no one has called the police or demanded that she leave our porch, though I have no idea how long they’ll entertain her here.
I have no idea what the mental state of this woman is. I’m inclined to think that she is struggling with some sort of mental issue, considering her behavior and circumstances. In my experience, it seems quite common that people in my area who are mentally disabled end up in one of two situations. When they are young, they are generally looked after in the village. Though possibly treated slightly more harshly than the average child (ie: yelled at more frequently and often made fun of by other children and even sometimes adults), these children are usually well-fed and cared for by both their family and other families in the village. As they get older, these individuals are generally well taken care of, but often tucked away in their compounds or slightly ostracized from the community as a whole.
There are others, however, that I would put in a different camp. These people are the type that you tend to see on street corners in larger towns and cities, dressed in rags, scratching at open sores, sometimes wandering aimlessly and muttering, often begging. I don’t say these things to perpetuate stereotypes, but rather to describe what I’ve seen in countless towns in Northern Ghana. My heart breaks for these people, as many sleep on the streets with little more than a piece of cardboard among their possessions and have almost no ability to communicate. I’ve seen people walking around in sweltering heat with their bodies covered from head to toe, including face masks and gloves, men wandering around naked at the intersections of large cities, and a woman whom we affectionately refer to as the “Tamale Bag Lady,” who lays in the same spot every day next to the road, crumpled amongst what looks like piles of garbage bags. This particular woman is infamous for collecting a coin from one of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and promptly putting it into her mouth, swallowing, and laying back down on her pile.
So, in the end, I suppose the mysterious woman in my village is somewhat lucky. She has a place to sleep that consists of more than a tarp on concrete, and she has people who are willing to feed her and who have a relative interest in her well-being. I hope, for her sake, that she is a runaway who has a family waiting back in a distant village, and that someday soon she will reunite with them. But if not, at least for now, she has a home on our front porch.
I thought it was strange that when I greeted her in Dagbani, she didn’t say anything back or even make much effort to look at me. Her lack of response indicated that she was either being incredibly rude to me, or she didn’t speak the local language, so I tried to say hello in English. Again, she simply stared straight ahead and gave no acknowledgement of my greeting. Oh well, I thought, maybe she’s just quiet, and I brought my things into the house to unpack.
A while later, I came out of my house to greet people in the community, and the woman was still sitting on the step in front of my place, quietly staring out at the road. This time, however, I noticed that she had tucked two large bundles of items in the corner of our porch, where they would be protected by the awning above. By the evening, when I returned home, she was in the same position, and I realized that she must, for some reason or another, have temporarily set up a “home” on our front porch. A few hours later, I walked outside to talk to a friend on the phone, and while I was sitting on the other side of the compound, the unknown woman approached me with a small ball of TZ and a plastic pail full of a thick soup. She didn’t say anything, but simply left the food with me and walked back to the corner of the porch and sat down again. I ate some of the food, which was cold and had clearly been sitting out for a while, and returned the rest to the woman and tried to thank her. She only nodded her head quietly and looked away.
After two days of seeing this woman in the same position on the stoop, I finally asked a couple of my friends in the village if they knew who she was. They all shook their heads, and some answered that she was crazy. They explained that she stepped off of a vehicle one day with her two bundles of clothes and other items and parked herself on our porch, not having said a word to anyone since she arrived. Apparently she has been given food by various neighbors, but doesn’t eat much and generally just stays to herself. Because of this, several people have speculated that she is from a neighboring village, but is “sick.” They say her mind has gotten to the point where she has forgotten language and doesn’t know where she is. Others think she’s a woman from another region of Ghana who ran away from her family and is quiet only because she doesn’t speak our local language and doesn’t want people to know who she is.
Regardless of her reasons for staying in our village, her presence has made me think a lot about the way people fit into society here, and a typical community response to people like this woman. I find it interesting that the people of my compound and surrounding compounds have brought her food and allowed her to sleep inside of the building on rainy nights. For the most part, besides their musings about the circumstances that led to her staying with us, haven’t made much fuss about her presence. Certainly no one has called the police or demanded that she leave our porch, though I have no idea how long they’ll entertain her here.
I have no idea what the mental state of this woman is. I’m inclined to think that she is struggling with some sort of mental issue, considering her behavior and circumstances. In my experience, it seems quite common that people in my area who are mentally disabled end up in one of two situations. When they are young, they are generally looked after in the village. Though possibly treated slightly more harshly than the average child (ie: yelled at more frequently and often made fun of by other children and even sometimes adults), these children are usually well-fed and cared for by both their family and other families in the village. As they get older, these individuals are generally well taken care of, but often tucked away in their compounds or slightly ostracized from the community as a whole.
There are others, however, that I would put in a different camp. These people are the type that you tend to see on street corners in larger towns and cities, dressed in rags, scratching at open sores, sometimes wandering aimlessly and muttering, often begging. I don’t say these things to perpetuate stereotypes, but rather to describe what I’ve seen in countless towns in Northern Ghana. My heart breaks for these people, as many sleep on the streets with little more than a piece of cardboard among their possessions and have almost no ability to communicate. I’ve seen people walking around in sweltering heat with their bodies covered from head to toe, including face masks and gloves, men wandering around naked at the intersections of large cities, and a woman whom we affectionately refer to as the “Tamale Bag Lady,” who lays in the same spot every day next to the road, crumpled amongst what looks like piles of garbage bags. This particular woman is infamous for collecting a coin from one of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and promptly putting it into her mouth, swallowing, and laying back down on her pile.
So, in the end, I suppose the mysterious woman in my village is somewhat lucky. She has a place to sleep that consists of more than a tarp on concrete, and she has people who are willing to feed her and who have a relative interest in her well-being. I hope, for her sake, that she is a runaway who has a family waiting back in a distant village, and that someday soon she will reunite with them. But if not, at least for now, she has a home on our front porch.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Funeral or Festival?
I've had an incredibly busy past few weeks, most of which have been spent away from "home" (my village) helping out with the training for the new health volunteers. Being away from my community and spending a lot of my time talking about various aspects of my Peace Corps service to soon-to-be volunteers has made me realize (once again) the wild range of emotions I've experienced over the past 21 months, and just exactly how torn I am about facing my future away from this place and the people who have become something of a second family to me. I won't go on and on about this, but I think I've certainly reached a point where I am starting to feel how heartbreaking and exciting this next chapter is going to be...
A little over a week ago, a few hours before I was set to leave the village for a few weeks for various trainings, I made my way over to one of my friend's compounds to attend a funeral there. My friend is a man named Adams his late 20s who cuts hair in what I call a "barber hut" in my village and is one of the few people around who speaks truly good English (probably why we became such fast friends at the beginning of my service). The funeral was being held for Adams' mother, who had, somewhat surprisingly, died the week before. This funeral made me reflect on the tradition of funerals here in Northern Ghana and the differences between the way Ghanaians display their emotions and the way that Americans are typically expected to react in such circumstances.
I can't remember if I've talked about the way funerals are held here before, so please excuse me if I'm repeating myself a little. Basically, I arrived to the area around Adams' family's compound, and there traditional drummers meandering their way around a crowd of men, who were sitting down on plastic chairs under a large mango tree, mostly talking quietly amongst themselves. As these drummers came around from person to person, the men were expected to pay small coins to the drummers and traditional singers as a token of payment for their "entertainment." I hung around with the men for a few minutes, but when it comes to funerals (in my opinion), hanging out inside of the compound with the women is the best place to be. I wandered inside to find more than 50 women packed inside the large, circular compound comprised of several round huts clustered around a central, open-air cooking area. Some women were shucking ground nuts out of their shells, some were stirring soups or forming millet-based starch balls (called TZ) to be handed for funeral goers to eat, and some of the older women were merely sitting off to the side of the compound holding babies in their laps (it is very common for the oldest women in the village to hold the tiny infants while their mothers do physical tasks). Loud music was coming from inside one of the huts, so nearly every woman was swaying her hips to the beat as she did her various tasks. After going around to greet all of the women (with a special "funeral greeting," of course), I settled in next to the peanut-shucking women and got to work. Within 10 minutes, one of the older women who was aware of my penchant for very small babies (after all, who isn't?), handed me a 2 week old baby (without any inquiry about whether or not I'd like to hold said newborn), and promptly walked out of the compound to go do something at her house next door (have I mentioned how much I love it that women hand me their children and then just walk away? I'm apparently a very dependable sitter...).
The best way I could describe the atmosphere of this funeral (and every other funeral I've attended here), was the overwhelming sense of community. Women line up to help stir pots of TZ and dole out the food in large, communal bowls and men cluster together in small groups to discuss happenings in the village, while children flit around dancing and helping with small tasks when needed. I suppose there is a certain degree of this back in the states too when someone dies-friends and family often bring meals to family members, offer their support, and attend the funeral in solidarity with those remaining, but here you truly get the sense of the village as a whole coming together during funeral festivities in a way that I just don't think happens back home.
One huge difference that I sometimes take for granted here is the way Ghanaians express their emotions at events like funerals compared to the ways that I'm used to people in states handling their grief. When I first walked up to my friend Adams to offer my condolences, he looked away and quickly changed the subject to a joke about my recent travels and whether or not I had bought anything for him while I was away. I fully expected his response to be something like this, since I've seen many similar situations where other Ghanaian friends reacted in the same way after similar comments. There was no crying at the funeral-in fact, if anything, there was a light spirit throughout the day, which I'm sure ended in a long night of community dancing to incredibly loud Ghanaian hiplife music. I've heard from Ghanaians in my village that mourners are encouraged to dance if they start displaying their grief in an attempt to brighten their spirits and help them forget about their loss. Because funerals in the states are generally all about remembering those we have lost and often results in a public griefing process, adjusting to the Ghanaian way of funerals has been a strange (but not entirely unwelcome) change of pace for me.
I'd love to say more about funerals and many many other topics, but my eyes are too tired to allow me to continue. Thanks for keeping up with me and caring about the things that I say. It means so much to me that any of you take the time to listen to my thoughts and observations about my life here. Cheers.
A little over a week ago, a few hours before I was set to leave the village for a few weeks for various trainings, I made my way over to one of my friend's compounds to attend a funeral there. My friend is a man named Adams his late 20s who cuts hair in what I call a "barber hut" in my village and is one of the few people around who speaks truly good English (probably why we became such fast friends at the beginning of my service). The funeral was being held for Adams' mother, who had, somewhat surprisingly, died the week before. This funeral made me reflect on the tradition of funerals here in Northern Ghana and the differences between the way Ghanaians display their emotions and the way that Americans are typically expected to react in such circumstances.
I can't remember if I've talked about the way funerals are held here before, so please excuse me if I'm repeating myself a little. Basically, I arrived to the area around Adams' family's compound, and there traditional drummers meandering their way around a crowd of men, who were sitting down on plastic chairs under a large mango tree, mostly talking quietly amongst themselves. As these drummers came around from person to person, the men were expected to pay small coins to the drummers and traditional singers as a token of payment for their "entertainment." I hung around with the men for a few minutes, but when it comes to funerals (in my opinion), hanging out inside of the compound with the women is the best place to be. I wandered inside to find more than 50 women packed inside the large, circular compound comprised of several round huts clustered around a central, open-air cooking area. Some women were shucking ground nuts out of their shells, some were stirring soups or forming millet-based starch balls (called TZ) to be handed for funeral goers to eat, and some of the older women were merely sitting off to the side of the compound holding babies in their laps (it is very common for the oldest women in the village to hold the tiny infants while their mothers do physical tasks). Loud music was coming from inside one of the huts, so nearly every woman was swaying her hips to the beat as she did her various tasks. After going around to greet all of the women (with a special "funeral greeting," of course), I settled in next to the peanut-shucking women and got to work. Within 10 minutes, one of the older women who was aware of my penchant for very small babies (after all, who isn't?), handed me a 2 week old baby (without any inquiry about whether or not I'd like to hold said newborn), and promptly walked out of the compound to go do something at her house next door (have I mentioned how much I love it that women hand me their children and then just walk away? I'm apparently a very dependable sitter...).
The best way I could describe the atmosphere of this funeral (and every other funeral I've attended here), was the overwhelming sense of community. Women line up to help stir pots of TZ and dole out the food in large, communal bowls and men cluster together in small groups to discuss happenings in the village, while children flit around dancing and helping with small tasks when needed. I suppose there is a certain degree of this back in the states too when someone dies-friends and family often bring meals to family members, offer their support, and attend the funeral in solidarity with those remaining, but here you truly get the sense of the village as a whole coming together during funeral festivities in a way that I just don't think happens back home.
One huge difference that I sometimes take for granted here is the way Ghanaians express their emotions at events like funerals compared to the ways that I'm used to people in states handling their grief. When I first walked up to my friend Adams to offer my condolences, he looked away and quickly changed the subject to a joke about my recent travels and whether or not I had bought anything for him while I was away. I fully expected his response to be something like this, since I've seen many similar situations where other Ghanaian friends reacted in the same way after similar comments. There was no crying at the funeral-in fact, if anything, there was a light spirit throughout the day, which I'm sure ended in a long night of community dancing to incredibly loud Ghanaian hiplife music. I've heard from Ghanaians in my village that mourners are encouraged to dance if they start displaying their grief in an attempt to brighten their spirits and help them forget about their loss. Because funerals in the states are generally all about remembering those we have lost and often results in a public griefing process, adjusting to the Ghanaian way of funerals has been a strange (but not entirely unwelcome) change of pace for me.
I'd love to say more about funerals and many many other topics, but my eyes are too tired to allow me to continue. Thanks for keeping up with me and caring about the things that I say. It means so much to me that any of you take the time to listen to my thoughts and observations about my life here. Cheers.
Monday, March 19, 2012
A Brief Tour of the Past 3 Months...
Oh my, sorry about this. I know it’s been a long time, so I’ll try to update you all on what’s been going on and maybe throw in a few of my thoughts while I’m at it.
Well, since it’s been over 2 months since I’ve updated, I’ll start with my December-February updates in rapid-fire fashion, since I have no intention of sitting in front of this computer all day long…
Late December
-Christmas came and went, and actually ended up being a whole lot more fun that I thought it might be. Not to say I was dreading the day, but so many of my Peace Corps friends had plans to visit their friends and families back in the states that I was not particularly looking forward to reading Facebook updates and getting calls from people stuffing their faces with treats and spending quality time with their families singing Christmas carols while the snow fell gently outside… But to my surprise, Christmas ended up being one of the better memories I have from recent months, thanks in part to the used Christmas hats of all shapes in sizes that me and my friend Kristina had been collecting from the local market for months and forced everyone to wear on Christmas Eve (I was especially proud of the hat that I wore, which was a Santa hat with something akin to Viking braids coming out of the sides). A wonderful group of volunteers assembled for the Christmas Eve party and we all donned our Christmas hats while we wandered around the town of Tamale singing rousing renditions of our favorite Christmas carols and wishing our (mostly Muslim) Ghanaian brothers and sisters a very happy holiday.
January
-Hoping to top last year’s painfully boring New Year’s Eve, which consisted of me reading in my bed and falling asleep around 7pm, I met up with three other volunteers at one of my friend’s houses and we all planned to go to a spot in her town for a New Year’s toast and plenty of dancing. Unfortunately, my body had other plans. While my friends had a grand time drinking Stars and mingling with our Ghanaian friends, I was stuck on the guest bed to celebrate New Years by throwing up and burning up with a 102 degree fever. Don’t worry, everything cleared up a few days later and I was back in the village, wondering why illness generally strikes on the times right before I want to have a good time. Here’s to hoping that next year’s transition into 2013 is a little more fun…
-I spent most of the rest of January in or near my village, working with my health committee and spending a lot of time hanging out with the kids in my village (I can never get enough of those babies…). I did leave the village for a week to go to “Training of Trainers,” which consisted of training sessions, planning the training for the group that was to come in February, and creating lesson plans. This was a total departure from the usual work that I’ve grown accustomed to doing here, and it both reminded me of how lazy I’ve gotten when it comes to paperwork and how much I’ve missed the school-style atmosphere of writing, planning, and working under a deadline.
-Toward the end of January, after a significant amount of thought and prayer, I basically decided that I was not going to pursue grad school in the fall, like I had originally planned on doing, and I really settled into the idea that I want to return to Grand Rapids after Peace Corps and push on school for a little while. This decision had a little to do with the fact that I dragged my feet when it came to school deadlines and had missed my major window of opportunity, but it had more to do with the fact that I felt a strong leading toward going back to GR, despite the fact that I had no idea where I might live or what I might do (more on this later).
February
-The beginning of February was tough for me. After returning from the training of trainers conference, I came back to the village expecting my dear friend Sanatu to be the first one greeting me when I arrived home. To my surprise, she was nowhere to be found that first night back, and the next day I went to her house, thinking that she just hadn’t heard the news that I was back. I came to understand through my broken Dagbani (and later through my counterpart’s translations) that Sanatu had gone on Kayayo. I’m pretty sure I’ve explained this word before in a previous post, but Kayayo is basically the migration of northerners (mostly young women) to southern Ghana to be porters (ie: carry/sell things on their heads) during the dry season, when farming gets slow and money gets tight in the north. Because of the health risks of the work that these girls do, their sub-standard living conditions, and the prospect of prostitution as a way to make more money, I was devastated to hear that one of my best friends had left to go to the capitol city, Accra, for Kayayo in order to make money. I was both upset at her, for leaving while I was away for the training and not telling me where she was going, and her parents, for allowing their daughter, who they took out of school after the 5th grade to work on the farm, to go down to this strange city and potentially put herself at risk in order to make a little money. After getting over my initial reaction, I’ve since come to peace with the fact that she did what she thought was best and may ultimately even benefit from the experience through learning better English and seeing life outside of the village. However, I am still distraught at the fact that she has been gone since the end of January and may not return to the village until late next year. By that time, I will have left Ghana, and I hate to think about the fact that I might not have gotten the chance to say goodbye and tell her what she meant to me…
-The rest of February kept me busy, working with the Children to School Project on expanding their school feeding program in my village, and going to fulfil my duties as a trainer for the new health/water, and sanitation trainees (soon to be full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteers). I had a fantastic time in the south for two weeks, helping to run their training and enjoying the entirely different geography and culture of southern Ghana. I managed to eat a whole lot of local food (delicious!), learn a few more words in Twi (the local language of the town in which I was staying), and hopefully was able to impart a little bit of knowledge and experience to help the newbies make a smooth transition into life here.
March
-March has been a whirlwind, as I finished out my stint at the training site, had a great reunion with my Peace Corps friends in the northern region upon my return, and have since been writing lesson plans for the upcoming “intense technical training” for the new volunteers-in-training (my duties are far from finished haha), dipping my hand into various projects around my community, and have been prepping my village for the arrival of the new volunteer (my replacement) next month. Despite being busy and coming to the realization that I have only a few short weeks left alone in my village before a new “siliminga” comes to work with me, I have also made sure to carve out time to soak up my “village” experiences while I have them. I’ve been quick to say yes when kids come knocking on my door to color, or to accept invitations to things like the Tamale chief’s funeral (absolutely incredible, pictures and videos to come). Time is passing so unbelievably quickly that I just want to hold on to these moments as long as I can. Meanwhile, many many things have come together in my life for my return home around August. I will be moving into a beautiful house with 4 girls in Grand Rapids as soon as I get back, and I have incredible job opportunities lined up for me. The knowledge that things have come together with God’s incredible timing has made me appreciate my time here so much more. I’m not stressed about the future, which has totally helped me seize the present in a way that I don’t think I’ve been able to do in a long time.
So those are my updates for now. I just realized that I totally forgot to mention the beggars who rode in on camels from Burkina Faso to my village (you better believe I rode a camel!) and so many other things, so I’m sure another update will be in order very soon. Cheers!
Well, since it’s been over 2 months since I’ve updated, I’ll start with my December-February updates in rapid-fire fashion, since I have no intention of sitting in front of this computer all day long…
Late December
-Christmas came and went, and actually ended up being a whole lot more fun that I thought it might be. Not to say I was dreading the day, but so many of my Peace Corps friends had plans to visit their friends and families back in the states that I was not particularly looking forward to reading Facebook updates and getting calls from people stuffing their faces with treats and spending quality time with their families singing Christmas carols while the snow fell gently outside… But to my surprise, Christmas ended up being one of the better memories I have from recent months, thanks in part to the used Christmas hats of all shapes in sizes that me and my friend Kristina had been collecting from the local market for months and forced everyone to wear on Christmas Eve (I was especially proud of the hat that I wore, which was a Santa hat with something akin to Viking braids coming out of the sides). A wonderful group of volunteers assembled for the Christmas Eve party and we all donned our Christmas hats while we wandered around the town of Tamale singing rousing renditions of our favorite Christmas carols and wishing our (mostly Muslim) Ghanaian brothers and sisters a very happy holiday.
January
-Hoping to top last year’s painfully boring New Year’s Eve, which consisted of me reading in my bed and falling asleep around 7pm, I met up with three other volunteers at one of my friend’s houses and we all planned to go to a spot in her town for a New Year’s toast and plenty of dancing. Unfortunately, my body had other plans. While my friends had a grand time drinking Stars and mingling with our Ghanaian friends, I was stuck on the guest bed to celebrate New Years by throwing up and burning up with a 102 degree fever. Don’t worry, everything cleared up a few days later and I was back in the village, wondering why illness generally strikes on the times right before I want to have a good time. Here’s to hoping that next year’s transition into 2013 is a little more fun…
-I spent most of the rest of January in or near my village, working with my health committee and spending a lot of time hanging out with the kids in my village (I can never get enough of those babies…). I did leave the village for a week to go to “Training of Trainers,” which consisted of training sessions, planning the training for the group that was to come in February, and creating lesson plans. This was a total departure from the usual work that I’ve grown accustomed to doing here, and it both reminded me of how lazy I’ve gotten when it comes to paperwork and how much I’ve missed the school-style atmosphere of writing, planning, and working under a deadline.
-Toward the end of January, after a significant amount of thought and prayer, I basically decided that I was not going to pursue grad school in the fall, like I had originally planned on doing, and I really settled into the idea that I want to return to Grand Rapids after Peace Corps and push on school for a little while. This decision had a little to do with the fact that I dragged my feet when it came to school deadlines and had missed my major window of opportunity, but it had more to do with the fact that I felt a strong leading toward going back to GR, despite the fact that I had no idea where I might live or what I might do (more on this later).
February
-The beginning of February was tough for me. After returning from the training of trainers conference, I came back to the village expecting my dear friend Sanatu to be the first one greeting me when I arrived home. To my surprise, she was nowhere to be found that first night back, and the next day I went to her house, thinking that she just hadn’t heard the news that I was back. I came to understand through my broken Dagbani (and later through my counterpart’s translations) that Sanatu had gone on Kayayo. I’m pretty sure I’ve explained this word before in a previous post, but Kayayo is basically the migration of northerners (mostly young women) to southern Ghana to be porters (ie: carry/sell things on their heads) during the dry season, when farming gets slow and money gets tight in the north. Because of the health risks of the work that these girls do, their sub-standard living conditions, and the prospect of prostitution as a way to make more money, I was devastated to hear that one of my best friends had left to go to the capitol city, Accra, for Kayayo in order to make money. I was both upset at her, for leaving while I was away for the training and not telling me where she was going, and her parents, for allowing their daughter, who they took out of school after the 5th grade to work on the farm, to go down to this strange city and potentially put herself at risk in order to make a little money. After getting over my initial reaction, I’ve since come to peace with the fact that she did what she thought was best and may ultimately even benefit from the experience through learning better English and seeing life outside of the village. However, I am still distraught at the fact that she has been gone since the end of January and may not return to the village until late next year. By that time, I will have left Ghana, and I hate to think about the fact that I might not have gotten the chance to say goodbye and tell her what she meant to me…
-The rest of February kept me busy, working with the Children to School Project on expanding their school feeding program in my village, and going to fulfil my duties as a trainer for the new health/water, and sanitation trainees (soon to be full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteers). I had a fantastic time in the south for two weeks, helping to run their training and enjoying the entirely different geography and culture of southern Ghana. I managed to eat a whole lot of local food (delicious!), learn a few more words in Twi (the local language of the town in which I was staying), and hopefully was able to impart a little bit of knowledge and experience to help the newbies make a smooth transition into life here.
March
-March has been a whirlwind, as I finished out my stint at the training site, had a great reunion with my Peace Corps friends in the northern region upon my return, and have since been writing lesson plans for the upcoming “intense technical training” for the new volunteers-in-training (my duties are far from finished haha), dipping my hand into various projects around my community, and have been prepping my village for the arrival of the new volunteer (my replacement) next month. Despite being busy and coming to the realization that I have only a few short weeks left alone in my village before a new “siliminga” comes to work with me, I have also made sure to carve out time to soak up my “village” experiences while I have them. I’ve been quick to say yes when kids come knocking on my door to color, or to accept invitations to things like the Tamale chief’s funeral (absolutely incredible, pictures and videos to come). Time is passing so unbelievably quickly that I just want to hold on to these moments as long as I can. Meanwhile, many many things have come together in my life for my return home around August. I will be moving into a beautiful house with 4 girls in Grand Rapids as soon as I get back, and I have incredible job opportunities lined up for me. The knowledge that things have come together with God’s incredible timing has made me appreciate my time here so much more. I’m not stressed about the future, which has totally helped me seize the present in a way that I don’t think I’ve been able to do in a long time.
So those are my updates for now. I just realized that I totally forgot to mention the beggars who rode in on camels from Burkina Faso to my village (you better believe I rode a camel!) and so many other things, so I’m sure another update will be in order very soon. Cheers!
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