Looking Back: First Months in Ghana

The previous post I wrote looked back, a reflection for me on how I came to be where I am, and an insight for you into why I decided to move from lovely, comfortable Connecticut to Ghana.

This post will continue looking back, but less for my sake as for yours. Writing a blog post has been on my to-do list for a while now, but the post I’ve been intending to write will be the final part in this trilogy. It will look forward to the next year of my life and my ideas for what might be coming after. This post will aim to describe the previous two years of my life and why these two years have produced a third. While it’s probably unrealistic to expect anyone reading this, who hasn’t been to Ghana, to fully grasp the tragedies and the triumphs, the idiosyncrasies and the monotonies, of living in this country, I’m going to write this with a generous expectation of a reader’s empathy.

My extended adventure in Ghana began two years and a couple days ago. I met the rest of my training group in DC a couple days before we flew to Ghana for a few days of training. I arrived last because my flight was delayed. Remembering walking into the conference room in DC seems so unrelated now than before. The people in that room, waiting for me to arrive, are not anyone I know now. They were all remnants of each of our past lives, none of whom I knew or know now. Since then, I’ve had glimpses of these former lives but in most ways they aren’t the lives of the people I know and love.

 It’s strange looking back on those first couple days. I try to put myself in that Joe’s head and I struggle. My first moment of clarity wasn’t until about a week in. The staging, the trip to the airport, the layover in Frankfurt, the arrival in Ghana, the police escort to the university were we stayed our first week, the training we had there, and the trip to homestay. All of these things were a whirlwind of introductions, fascination, and confusion, essentially suffocation of revelation. I wouldn’t say I recovered from it anytime soon, but the moment of clarity, the moment where I first remember my thoughts precisely was the first day at homestay. Homestay was the base for our training: we lived with a Ghanaian family in a village and learned how to live that life. It was crucial for our integration and development as Peace Corps volunteers, but was, almost without exception, the most, or one of the most, difficult parts of every PCV’s service. It started with us being given away, as a bride might feel in a culture of prearranged, traditional marriages. Except we’re being given to these families who we have nothing in common with, who speak only some weird Ghanaian language, and are going to impose their way of life on us. After we were given away to our new families, we were taken back and showed the new homes we’d have for rest of our lives (2 months.) Then they moved me into this tiny room, put up the mosquito net over my bed with a rock as hammer, and left me. Alone. In Ghana. I couldn’t leave because that would initiate another overwhelming interaction with the strange creatures living outside. They certainly weren’t members of the human race I’ve known so happily for the previous 23 years. I had no idea even where or how to go pee, or if anyone was going to feed me at any point, or if I was left to fend for myself. This is when the guided missile of clarity was zeroing in. Impact was as sat down in my chair.

What the fuck had I gotten myself into?

From there, it actually wasn’t so bad. I can say, proudly, that, existentially, that was the lowest moment I had. Sure the next Sunday at homestay, when I pooped my pants right before I had to go to church was pretty bad, and when everything I tried to do at site failed miserably the first year, it didn’t instill hope in me that the Peace Corps would be anything but a ‘learning experience.’ But that moment, the first day at homestay was the bottom. I just wanted to go home to my parents and sit on my couch and have a beer in absolute comfort and security.

But the good thing about hitting bottom, is there is nowhere else to go but up. Up by fits and jerks, but up nonetheless. The rest of training was alright. We fit in 120 hours of language training in the next four weeks. Went north for technical training. Learned that it’s alright to throw plastic out the window of a moving car but not banana peels. Learned all about dwarves and how to feed them. We learned about all sorts of projects we could do: beekeeping, village savings and loan, rabbit rearing, cashew etc. I quickly forgot everything technical, but at the very least it was sensitized us towards the possibilities and the challenges associated with village life.

After technical training in the north we returned to homestay. I went back to Comfort Anim, my homestay mother. She was an imposing figure. Large, loud, illiterate, she spoke a bit of Krobo, the language I was learning, and would try to supplement my daily language classes by yelling at me when I got home in Krobo. When I inevitably didn’t understand her, she would get louder  and angrier until I feigned understanding and went and hid in my room. She also had this lovely habit of waking me up at 4:30am for breakfast. The first time this happened I swore she was an apparition or that I was dreaming and I remember letting her in to bring me my food and then going back to bed after she left intending to wake up from this nightmare.

But on the whole, homestay was a good experience. Living with Comfort Anim was a great introduction to Ghana, to living with a family in a village in Ghana, and the absolute terror and intimidation only big Ghanaian women can instill. Once the end of training was near, my focus was turned towards the great leap: going to our sites. We all visited our sites for a few days earlier in training, but in my case, it did not instill me with overwhelming confidence. The constant presence of massive spiders was worrisome, and the few days we spent there did not give me an accurate understanding of what my daily life would be like. The people there, my counterpart and supervisor, were all nice enough, but the unknown and ambiguous answers to most of my questions about “what do you want me to do here?” left me with a feeling that I was standing on a cliff about to willingly jump into a mass of swirling dark clouds with no real idea of how far below the ground was.

The end of training was somewhat anticlimactic. We had our final weeks at homestay, swore in with the US ambassador, and then we were free to go. Most of us went to the beach for a couple days before going off to site as a last hurrah but the next step we had to take was in the back of all of our minds.

Anniversary Post

Today is the two year anniversary of the day after we arrived in Ghana. Two years ago I woke up in Africa. This morning I woke up, still in Africa. 

These two years have contained some of the best days and some of the worst of my life. The emotional ups and downs I rode were far more dramatic than anything I’ve previously experienced. I’ve always considered myself a typically even-keeled, calm person. Not prone to undue stress or bursts of emotion. But Africa brought something new out of me. Anger, euphoria, sadness, hopelessness, defiance. These begin a list of emotions I newly became aware of feeling. Not that I didn’t experience any of these before, but the situation I found myself in, day after day, imposed a need for reflection and introspection. Also, the shifts were so sudden and seemingly spontaneous that I couldn’t help but think ‘what the hell is going on with me?’ It took me to realize, not much. I like to think of it as my emotions catching up to my experiences.

These experiences started two years ago today. The most important thing I was told in the beginning, in Pre-Service Training was ‘you are here for you.’ It’s true, I was and I am here for me. Altruism and compassion, sure, I’ll admit to being overwhelmingly full of both, but I came here, stayed here and will come back to Ghana for me. 

Let’s rewind a bit, back before I came to Ghana, back before I even really knew where Ghana was, back when the first inspiration to apply to the Peace Corps rocked my brain. I’m sure you’re thinking that it must have been a memorable moment that was looked back upon often as various trials (uncontrollable diarrhea) and tribulations (children screaming at 5:30am as their mother beats them) caused me to question the obviously delusional motivations that led me to this godforsaken country. But I never once thought about it in those times. Nor when I was feeling content enough to be sure I would marry and settle down in the village. This seeming ingratitude for divine inspiration is not due to any flaw of my person as one would suppose. The truth is I just don’t remember. Seriously. I can provide the context but I have no idea what the thought process was of the main character. Me.

I’ll give you what I can. 

I was in the second floor of the library at UConn. Next to the computers, at the tables opposite the tutoring area. I remember pulling up the page and opening up the application. This was in the beginning of my final semester at UConn. I had just ended a longterm relationship over the winter break. I was graduating in just a few months with a History degree and sub 3.0 gpa. It’s a bit of an understatement to say that I wouldn’t be scaring away other prospective applicants to jobs and graduate schools. On top of that, I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, so even if I did get an interview, my conviction and enthusiasm for whatever the work  was going to be in whatever job I was applying to was not going to be an asset.

Peace Corps is a refuge for the uncertain. And it attracts many who are filled with uncertainty. But it is also far more than just a refuge. Some of the people I’ve met here are more uncertain but with more conviction than anyone I’ve met before. They need a refuge like I need to go to a sweat lodge. I was and am still uncertain. I didn’t necessarily have a disproportionate amount of conviction, and if I did, it was favoring a dearth of conviction. That hasn’t changed drastically, but after two years, I more excited to hear an argument of conviction, and be potentially swayed by it, or experience something that could lead to it’s formation, than ever before.

However, none of these really explain why I started applying to and ultimately joined the Peace Corps. I have thought about this a lot over the last couple of years and none of these explanations felt convincing to me(the last, while true now, didn’t hold much over me at the start.) The strongest reason for joining the Peace Corps, I’ve decided, is getting out. This might not be the obvious reason for anyone who has known me, and it certainly wasn’t obvious to me, as it took over year of being in Ghana to realize. But coming here, was as much about getting out of Connecticut and the world I had lived in for the previous 23 years, as anything else, and more.

Up to this point in my life, I have lived a charmed life.  I don’t say this because everything was easy for me. Some things weren’t. But nothing was particularly difficult. I had a very happy childhood and adolescence, a wonderful family, an abbey, good friends, and a strongly principled but loosely structured upbringing that allowed me to develop naturally as an individual but inside boundaries that directed that development in a good way. All these things were perpetual, and they remain today despite communications difficulties. However, the fact remains that I grew in a small conservative farming town on the border of Litchfield (old, wealthy, and waspy,) went to Holy Cross High School, and then went to UConn. The transition from Holy Cross (a Catholic school) to UConn was impressive because not only did close to half of my class also end up at UConn by the end of my four years, but a large number of the remainder of the twenty thousand students could have also gone to Holy Cross if I hadn’t known better. 

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at both, and wouldn’t do them over any differently if I had a choice (try harder at Stat 101 maybe, I could have gotten better than a C.) I met some really amazing people and still have friends that I value over anyone else, but I still imagine, ‘what else?’ What if I had done anything else? Done something a little more atypical of a middle-upper middle class white kid from Bethlehem who went to Catholic school? I had never felt quite content at any stage of the process because of these unanswered, and unknown, questions.

I can’t express how relieved I am that I didn’t leave that question unanswered for long. The answer, Peace Corps, has thus far proved entirely satisfactory. 

Continued next......time...

Home and Back Again

*This post was written the day after arriving in Accra, but the faithful blogger was unable to post it because the internet in the Peace Corps office works as well as it does in my village, where there is no electricity or cell phone service*

Returning to Ghana, after being home for the holidays, I feel a little bit like Bilbo. Except the opposite. After living a life of adventure (kinda,) stress (sorta,) and exertion (not really at all,) I'm torn away and sent to a life of comfort and relaxation. This life is largely spent swilling all types of strange brews, eating decadent foods, and sitting in front of the fire. After returning, things will superficially seem the same, but there will be something missing. Just like Bilbo. I'm not actually sure about this yet, as I've only been in Ghana for about 18 hours. But I imagine I will constantly have a feeling that there is something missing. Quite a bit missing, in fact. But despite the constant complaints and sufferings, like Bilbo I fully expect to look back on the adventure as a worthy chapter, or three, in a book that will be written by my future self (or ghostwritten, if I ever make any money.)

I don't know if that comparison worked. It was a spur of the moment type thing and I decided to go with it. I'm not going to reread it, specifically because I'm worried it's not going to make any sense and I don't want to rewrite it or fill the space with something else. I'm a big fan of always passing the buck, especially to people who are currently enjoying the first world while I'm not.

Anyway, I am alive here in Ghana, with my bags, my health, and as much of my sanity as I can really hope for. Also, I have two miniature ceramic houses modeled after real houses in Amsterdam that KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines, gives to all their first class passengers. Whatever else happens while in the Peace Corps, I will look at those houses and know that it is all going to be okay. Right now I am still in Accra, but will back to my village tomorrow. I was concerned that this departure from the States would be significantly more difficult than the last one because the excited anticipation is not there. But it really wasn't too bad. Flight was delayed, rebooked and got first class. Thought I lost my bags, didn't. Thought PC staff would kick me out of the Accra office today, they didn't and are letting me stay until tomorrow. All in all, a painless reentry into this unreal reality. I'm sure I will be fighting emotional surges when I get back to site and really leave the first world (Accra is basically 1st world,) but a significant is excited to get back and get things going again so I'm not too worried.

A brief reflection on actually being at home: It honestly felt like I never left. I was a little worried that conversations and interactions with my friends and family would be a little weird or strained. But that wasn't the case at all. Among my friends, everything was natural and wonderful and if anything, we've all grown up in the last year and are more honest and more appreciative of the relationships we've made and maintained. One of the things I was most worried about were stupid conversations about Africa and my life there. I have no problem if you're not actually too interested in Africa or my life there, but I hated the idea of people asking me things like, "how's Africa?" or "what's it like there?" Recognize that it's a real place with real people inhabiting it and ask real goddamn question. But almost every conversation I had about it was great. Intuitive questions with followup questions were the norm. The few times I got sucked into bad conversations I was able to get out of them rather quickly, aided by the fact that the people I was speaking with were not those I was too worried about insulting a little.

As far as family goes, there were some significant changes. My brother is now officially more successfully than me in life and has a job that anyone would be envious of. Unless you're deaf. In which case you probably wouldn't get the job anyway. His success is a little annoying to me, and might be the beginning of some nasty complex but probably not. Mostly, it inspires me to try and kick his ass, both professionally and physically. Neither, of which are likely possible at the moment, but we'll see how things turn out down the road.

Both my parents are still kicking. Mostly each other, but if there are small people or food or music around 

they're easily distracted. Not unlike said small people. They took excellent care of me and it was tough leaving again. Tougher then the first time but the separation will be shorter because they're going to come visit in March! (They think they're going to enjoy themselves. They'll see just how much after I shove them into a seat on a tro between two market ladies with a basket of live chickens for three hours on a dirt road. Muwahaha.)

The other major development in family news is that I can now be referred to as uncle, in the traditional sense, by two people. People is a very generous word for them. Turds is more accurate, at least in terms of size and affinity. Turd number one, my nephew Judah, does refer to me as uncle, regularly and with great enthusiasm. It's impossible for me to explain or overstate how happy it makes me to hear him yell "Uncle Joe!" when I walk in the door, without prompting or even actually seeing me and proceed to run and headbutt me in the balls. In addition, since I've been in Ghana, my sister and her husband have produced a second turd. She's a little slow. She still can't speak or walk or really even eat, but she is so f**cking cute. And she's super happy all the time. I'll always take happy and dumb over grumpy and prodigious. She is only 8 months old so I guess she still has a chance to make something of herself. If not, she's cute enough that marrying rich will be a reasonable fallback. In her defense, she was able to pull herself up to standing using a chair for support which is apparently an accomplishment at 8 months old.

That's about it. After this post I feel I can take a nice long break from blogging. I've done my share. Shutup.

Update after being back in village for a week: 

Things aren't so bad. Life in the village is the same as it ever was and will likely ever be until they get electricity, at which time it will essentially remain the same except increase in volume. Projects at site are somehow progressing. Everyone was happy to see me and I was happy to see them. I also managed to give presents to most of the people I felt obligated to give presents to, which I was slightly worried about. These presents included: The travel pack KLM airlines gave me on the way over, a bunch of pens with lights on them (thanks to Kolga Shields. Any chance I can score a salary as a marketer or something?) and a mostly used sudoku book which I'm going to teach to the guy I gave it to this weekend hopefully. 

Kwame and Regina's Wedding, Part 1

This post should serve as companion piece to the photo album I posted last week of Kwame and Regina's wedding. 

Before I begin I want to discuss my blogging style. There are many words that could be used to describe it, most of which suggest unreliability, my parents favorite being filial ingratitude. Despite these vicious attacks I refuse to apologize. Being in Ghana and having no electricity and cell reception 90 percent of the time is too good of an excuse to ever admit fault. While I'm in Bormase I do begin writing blog posts in my note book from time to time, but the fleeting nature of my concentration and lifestyle means these typically go unfinished. In this case, I knew I wanted to write one about the wedding as I was watching it. I began writing a post in my notebook, but I began to get lost in trying to describe the mire that is gender roles in Ghana. This was discouraging and caused me to put aside the pen and pad until picking it up in digital form now. In writing this post I've decided to forgo my goal of proposing a grand unified theory of gender/race relations and just focus on my experiences surrounding the wedding. This decision was cemented after I left my notebook at home. 

Alright, here we go. 

Kwame is my best friend Ghanaian friend in Ghana. Every evening I eat delicious Ghanaian meals with him, that his wife, Regina (rhymes with Carolina), prepares for us. These meals are typically bookended by drinking sizable quantities of akpeteshi (If it's not correct, it almost is,) which is the Ghanaian moonshine. It is distilled from palm wine, which comes from the variety of palm tree that grows here and in most of West Africa. It can be taken many ways and mixed with many things. My favorite is with bitters in it, which are roots that they'll put in the bottle and make the drink much more palatable. Krobos are big drinkers, especially of the "local," or the homemade akpeteshi. 

Kwame is much more than just my eating and drinking buddy. He is a fantastically hard worker, allowing him to marry which I'll get into, and he helps with anything I need, from weeding my farm to accompanying me to the various funerals and celebrations that occur, which can be very overwhelming for a white person without a Ghanaian friend as an escort. He is also one of the most genuine, fun-loving, respectful Ghanaians I've met. He stopped going to school after the equivalent of fifth grade and is not totally fluent in English but this seems to only amplify the qualities I just listed. He is also a window into the community for me. An excellent example of all these things is that he was just selected to be the new youth leader in Bormase. This is a prestigious position for younger men and allows him to use the title of chief. The reason why there was a vacancy in the position was because the previous youth leader had an annoying knack of "cutlassing," or chopping with a machete, any miscreants that fell under his purview. I'm not sure how literal I can take this explanation as I haven't seen anyone walking around with missing limbs or over sized gashes but he stands by it.

As you can imagine, when he told me a few months ago that he will be getting married, I was ecstatic. After my initial outpouring of joy and congratulations, I did a double take and asked him, "Wait, you aren't already married?" Cue revelation. Wife is a word used very liberally in Ghana. Ghanaian men regular refer to total strangers (women exclusively, homosexuality does not exist in Ghana, at least if you ask the vast majority of Ghanaians) as their wives. I thought I understood the word's myriad contexts but apparently I was mistaken. Many of the couples I've come to know, especially the younger and poorer ones, aren't actually married. They are husband and wife in many ways but not officially, be it by law or by custom. It is a sign that a man is a becoming a "big" man when he has become successful enough to get married. A certain amount of affluence is necessary as weddings are very expensive, particularly the dowry, and on top of that everyone in the community is invited and must be provided for . 

Fast forward two months. For the last couple of weeks Kwame and Regina have been working like crazy frying gari and selling their maize. Kwame's mother and sister have both come to help out around the house and with the wedding preparations. One of these is the selection and purchase of the wedding fabric. In the pictures you'll see many of us wearing matching outfits. The bride will select a fabric to be the wedding fabric and then everyone that is part of the wedding party will buy it and get it made into an outfit. This is especially fun because Ghanaian, and most West African, fabrics are bright and very colorful. This one was no exception. Me and a couple PCVs got this made into outfits for the big day.

Unfortunately, due to circumstances far beyond my control, I am unable to complete this post in one shot. Part 2 will be coming next week. Stay tuned!

Man vs. Bush Fowl

It's been some time since my last blog post as many of my faithful readers have reminded me an absolutely unannoying amount of times. My excuses for this are that I have been travelling about quite a bit, my charger for my lap top fried, and there's been a whole bunch of goings on recently. These are all copouts, but I'm going to stand by them. As you can imagine, due to the amount of time that has passed since my last blog post there is a copious of amount of things for me to tell you about that have happened in my life in the time since. So much in fact that it is a bit overwhelming and I'm not going to discuss any of it. I'll instead, at the suggestion of an admirably disinterested colleague of mine, pick a random trivial experience I had in the last couple weeks and dramatise it to the point that it satisfactorily fills my blog length requirements.

First let's set the scene: Early morning, I am on my way to the nearby city to embark on a routine trip. This one happens to be a largely pointless one to Kumasi that is only happening because the Peace Corps Food Security Committee meeting was rescheduled for the 5th time. This shouldn't be a major issue for most PCVs as we rarely have enough to do to actually experience scheduling conflicts but I have the privelege of being one of the few PCVs who has no cell phone service, thus making it essentially impossible to reach me with any important time sensitive information. Thus, I did not find out about the scheduling change until the evening before I was about to leave on my trip across Ghana. Because I had already told my landlady that some of her relatives who are visiting for a funeral could stay in my house I was basically homeless for the weekend. That brings us to where our story begins.

On my way to Koforidua (Kof) to catch a car to Kumasi to pass this homeless period in my life. I catch a car from the junction near my house. Anywhere in Ghana, the only form of transportation is by hailing a taxi or a lorry (a van with a bunch of seats in it.) The road to Kof that passes my junction is rather terrifying. Windy, barely wide enough for two cars to pass abreast and that doesn't take into account the massive potholes that cars and lorries are constantly swerving around. Ghanaian drivers handle these challenges by maintaining a speed never dropping below 60mph. We are about 15 minutes away from Kof, I'm maintaining my zen-like state of terror that I like to assume when driving on the road to Kof, when JACKPOT! Standing in the road are not one, but TWO, bush fowl. To understand the situation you must first understand that in Ghana bushmeat is a delicacy. Bushmeat is essentially anything that is not chicken, goat, sheep, or beef and is typically something that is caught in the bush (forest.) Some people are hunters, some use traps, some like the fish in a barrel method of setting a forest fire and then shooting everything that comes out. Either way, bush meat is their (and now my) jam.

So these two bush fowl (basically wild chickens, pheasantish in appearance) are chilling in the road directly in the trajectory of our taxi. Now any self-respecting taxi or lorry driver will immediately put his life and the lives of his passengers in danger to hit the birds at all costs. This is universally supported by all Ghanaians. So the driver does just that. He guns it at them and as they take flight in a direction perpindicular to the car he swerves and clips one of them. SUCCESS! But wait. The bird isn't dead. It is hopping along in the road behind the car, nursing what looks like a broken wing. So the passenger in the front seat sees this, and before the car has even slowed down, dives out, and takes off down the road after the bird. The bird sees this and is understandably terrified, as I would be. It hops away from this crazed bipedal predator chasing after it and actually manages to get airborne. However, its bum wing is preventing it from gaining altitude and is struggling along about four feet off the ground.

Now the stretch of road where this is all going down is the 50 yard long straightaway in the middle of an S-bend. As you can assume, a series of 90 degree bends in no way precludes the 60mph minimum speed requirement on these roads. So this guy is chasing this bird that is flying across both lanes of this road. Somehow the cars that come around the bends from both directions manage to stop in time and join us in watching the scene unfold. The guy is gaining on the bird who is flying along the edge of the road. As he runs he picks up a cassava branch laying in a bundle on the side of the road. Whoever collected those branches would gladly give it up for its new purpose. The man has the branch and just as the bird is about to veer off and head into the woods, gets into range and with a mighty two handed cut hits the bird out of the air like a tennis ball. The crowd goes wild. The man walks back triumphant holding his prize high over his head, surrounded by an aura of victory that I don't think has been seen in this world since the days of the samurai. The driver greeted the man with the eyes of a Roman wife greeting her husband upon his glorious return from a years long conquest of the barbarians. We congratulated him upon his graduation from man to god and we continued on harrowing journey. However, we all felt, or I imagine so, that if this fateful trip was to be our last, it was worth it.

This is Ghana. Now, I will return to my work here, the amount of which prevents me from providing you lovely people with a more consistent supply reading material on everyone's favorite topic, me.

Survived Site Restriction

As of last Wednesday, me and the other twenty PCVs in my training group made it through our first three months at site. I cannot say unscathed as that is definitely not the case but at least we are all, as far as I know, alive and mostly well. Next week begins our Reconnect training and we all come back together and celebrate our survival. Volunteers with a more competitive nature than my own might belittle the integrity and selfless of the Peace Corps and compare their respective first months at site to other peoples. I will, of course, not be partaking in this and condemn those who do.

During training, already established PCVs described these first three  months as a test of a volunteer's mettle and if you get through it without going crazy than you survived the first test of endurance as a volunteer. My first three months was mostly painless. I did have a couple bouts of Nkrumah's revenge or whatever its called and what's been diagnosed by Adam (My friend/PCV neighbor) as heat rash. He has an economics degree. Seriously. Besides these hiccups my spirits have stayed rather high and I'm going into Reconnect training with a satisfied impression of my time so far in Bormase.

Before I continue rambling I think its necessary to clarify a point. When I say I am satisfied with my service so far I do NOT, I repeat, do NOT, want to imply that I've actually accomplished anything thus far. From what I've gathered so far no one in the Peace Corps actually does ever accomplish anything and those who say they do are either lying or are over-achieving assholes who are making the rest of us look bad.

That said, no one really expects us to do much, which is appreciated, especially during our first three months where we are, in fact, prohibited from beginning any projects and aren't allowed to write grants yet. Thus far I have spent considerable time wandering around Bormase with and without my counterpart. When he's not there conversations tend to lead to dead ends rather quickly. On the other hand when he is conversations soar over my head. By the way I am working on the language but its tricky. We have so far met with several communities in my area and formed project groups in them. These are formed around a common interest in an area that I cannot work with the group members on. So far these consist of water groups, poultry groups, and beekeeping groups.

Water groups are formed in communities that are in need of drinking water via a borehole. Members of some of these communities are forced to walk twenty minutes each way several times a day just to supply enough water for their family. In the dry season, which just finished, it is especially difficult as the water table goes down. Stupid ecology nomenclature. But I'll be facilitating the process to get a borehole, which basically means I bug people until they follow through. I truly feel this is what I'm meant to do. My whole life has been preparation for this. Limits that I believed constrained me are as nothing now. But I am really rather psyched that this seems to actually be happening and everyone necessary for the next step has committed to meeting at the local Water and Health Officer's office tomorrow. So optimism all around please. Keep things crossed!

On Thursday, I will be hosting the first Krobodan-run chicken training that we're doing. Again, I will be primarily filling the role of spectator (on my trimester report its read: facilitator) but I am equally psyched that it will be a good start and from here I'm hoping to spread the good word of Krobodan to the masses. My supervisor, Emmanuel Nartey, the farming guru (doesn't come close to doing him justice,) will be running a demonstration of pen construction for layers. For those poor souls not in the poultry business, layers are chickens that lay eggs to be sold. Thus they most be kept isolated from any of those nasty male chickens. Doing there nasty male things. My hope is that this will be a launch pad for these layers in the communities I work with as no one from them sells their own eggs. And also it would make my life significantly easier as I have lost about half the eggs I buy trying to transport them in a plastic bag hung from the handle bar of my bike. Not the ideal mode of transporting eggs.

As far as beekeeping goes, I have discussed with my communities the idea and their seems to be some very positive response. However, at this time we don't have the necessary equipment to get it off the ground, but we're on a grant to change that so I'll be hitting you lovely folks up for money again before too long. (Thats a subtle hint to give money to the GLOW Camp through the link on my facebook page. If you haven't already or are feeling particularly financially frivolous.)

All that said, I'm at the point in this post where I lose interest in writing and have forgotten anything else I planned to write about. If those forgotten things are actually interesting lets hope I remember for the next post (probably 3-12 months from now) or, more likely, in ten years I'm having a conversation with someone and that memory gets randomly jogged.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post do not represent the views of the Peace Corps.  They only represent those of the author.

Valentine's Day

I was blissfully unaware that today was Valentine’s Day until I logged on to Facebook today. Now, I am blissfully aware as I always hated this stupid, over-commercialized consumer holiday. To say the least, VD Day is one of the American traditions I will not be telling Ghanaians about.

On to the important stuff: Me and my well-being. As of today, I am approximately two months into my official service and over half way through my site restriction. For those of my readers who have not previously been in the Peace Corps, site restriction is a three month probationary period at the beginning of every volunteers service in which we are not allowed to overnight away from our sites unless it is on administrative business. At the end of these three months we “reconnect” with our training group at “Reconnect,” which is traditionally viewed as the light at the end of the tunnel. During training, many of the PCVs who came to help train us depicted site-restriction as a torturous three months, by the end of which every volunteer is sleeping outside, without their mosquito net, and without their anti-malaria medication, in the hope that they get malaria and are allowed to go to Accra for a medical vacation.

While I have seriously considered sleeping outside without my mosquito net to have just one night where I do not startle myself awake because I had a dream where I was drowning in my own sweat, to say I am not suffering too badly during site restriction is an understatement. Besides travel restriction, the other administratively imposed reason for the stigma attached to site restriction, is that we are not supposed do any serious work. They want us to participate in our communities passively and learn about their lifestyle and find ways we hope we can make a positive impact. I have found this to be more difficult as at times I do feel a sense of impotence. However, these occasions are definitely in the minority and typically occur when I am sleep deprived or am sweating to unusually high degree and have no way of controlling it. The rest of the time I have been happy as a clam, becoming a member of Bormase and doing my utmost to avoid any semblance of real work. Because the Peace Corps says so obviously.

So as I’m sure most of you might wonder, or will wonder once I finish this sentence, what do I do all day if I can’t do any real work? First, I will clarify: Real work is my lazy way of saying “Peace Corps project work.” Basically they don’t want us showing up at site and trying to build a school a week later. We are encouraged to develop an understanding of our communities and their most critical needs, or at least significant needs that we, as Peace Corps volunteer have the capacity to address. Then we are supposed to “facilitate” a solution. The emphasis is on “facilitate,” because our projects should be sustainable, meaning they will continue to be beneficial after we leave Ghana. We are encouraged to work with our neighbors at their jobs every day and learn everything we can about the day to day work that goes on in our communities.

Anyway, my daily schedule is highly varied. I have nothing even remotely resembling an actual job. Despite this I inevitably wake up at around 6am. My counterpart and neighbors have a knack for knowing when I have not slept well and coming over the next morning at 5:45am and waking me up during the first real hour of sleep I have gotten all night. Even if they don’t come a combination of a deluge of sweat, the neighbors radio, and those lovely screaming baby humans and goats more than suffice to shock me awake at the same time every morning. Besides this uniformity nothing else in my day to day life is particularly regular. I usually will read for a couple hours in the morning, take a nap in the afternoon, and then eat dinner and play cards in the evening at my neighbors house.* How I survive this drudgery is beyond me. I often go to farm with one of my neighbors and just recently cleared my own plot for a garden! They all love to feel the softness of my palms and laugh at how easily I bleed. Just because they have hands made of leather and use them as cutting boards (literally) they think they’re tougher than me. Assholes.

Wednesday is market day so I ride my bike the twenty minutes down the road to market. People I pass on the road have a nasty habit of trying to have a conversation with me while I am speeding down a hill right at one of the four million massive potholes on the road. If I make it through site restriction without flying over my handle bars at least once I’ll have dodged a bullet.

Besides that, I spend a lot of my time visiting people in the surrounding communities, playing football, or going to the local Junior High School (more on this in a later post.) It has been difficult for me to become accustomed to the lack of structure but I becoming used to it and expect to increase my work load through various I plan to start in coming months. None of which I will jinx before they get off the ground by advertising them here.

About six more weeks until site restriction is over but I can’t say I particularly care. It will be nice to see the rest of my training group but I plan to have a very happy two years in Bormase.

*Me and my neighbor play cards most evenings. He doesn’t speak much English, but it was sufficient to learn Egyptian Ratscrew. For those who don’t know Egyptian Ratscrew is a fast-paced game filled with slapping and heightened emotions. Ghanaians are big fans of any game that encourages yelling and fast-paced action for which Ghana is perfect. While I consider myself a rather proficient Egyptian Ratscrewer, having played for over ten years (many lovely memories playing in airports,) my neighbor learned the game and was beating me within three weeks. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post do not represent the views of the Peace Corps.  They only represent those of the author.