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.

The White Man/Blofono/Obruni Effect

I am a white man. Have been as long as I remember. Up until four months ago it hasn't been anything to get excited over. Of course I knew that I possessed the skin tone that had routinely subjugated  all other skin tones throughout the course of history. This had left me with a sense of...guilty entitlement? I'm not sure exactly what to call it. Louis CK does a poignant bit on it. His modus operandi is revealing embarrassing truths about being a white, middle aged, socially awkward, egocentric man. I can safely say that I will be able to relate to all of that at some point in life. I'm also compelled to agree with most of what he says in the link above. White people have had a monopoly on being the dominant race for most of history and despite what Louis CK says about the future, I'm inclined to believe that will continue or that it will all at least balance out. Maybe there will be an apocalypse and the Nepalese will be the only race whose home was not completely flooded and they will by reason of being the only ones left become the dominant race for the brief and lonely remaining history. But probably not.

I have always thought it would be cool to be black. When I think about it, though, I realize I can't really come up with many substantial reasons. It would be kind of sweet to be a "brother." And I assume I would be better at basketball than I am now. Not that's saying much. Affirmative action is still a thing. But besides that I can't imagine many ways I would necessarily enjoy it when compared to being white.  I also come from a rather racially homogenous town. I lived next to the perhaps the only black man in Bethlehem and never gave much thought to his experience surrounded by conservative white people.

Being white in Africa, though, is a totally different animal. As you can imagine, I am in the minority. That was the extent of the information I could safely rely on concerning race relations in Africa before coming here. My perception of race relations has changed rather drastically. In the last fifty years a big push among the progressives, or whatever they're called, has been to claim that they do not see "skin color." Or some such bullshit. For most of my life I spent as little time as possible concerning myself with that type of thing and was content to superficially agree with it and be on my way. 

In Ghana, everyone sees skin color. As a white man, I stand out like the sun. I cannot go anywhere, do anything, or be present in any sense without everyone I'm attempting, or not, to interact with see my skin color and adjust their response to me accordingly. 

Typical Scenario: I walk into a neighbors house to say hi, not expecting to stay long. The father, or eldest male, or mother, or whoever is senior will yell at a small boy and he will come running up for a chair for me. If the chair is, in their eyes, less than satisfactory, they will go to great lengths, to give me the best chair they have to offer. Including waking up and kick a pregnant woman off a bench. (I still feel bad about that one.) Any objections I have are routinely ignored. Once they have gone to that trouble I sit down. And typically we will have a 15-20 second conversation before my knowledge of Krobo is exhausted. We will then sit for a couple of minutes in silence, make awkward facial expressions whenever we, god forbid, make eye contact. At this point I will have worked up the courage to leave and I will parse together a few words in Krobo which I hope gives me a polite excuse for leaving. 

This is standard. A quick aside: Any implication of it being awkward is from my perspective only. I have had no indication that Ghanaians find the type of interaction related above to be awkward. They are very content sitting and not talking. In fact a popular recreational past time here is sitting. I've tried it but never can catch my second wind and usually fold and end up walking around aimlessly. Or hiding in my room.

As a blofono (white man in Krobo; In Twi, the predominant language in Ghana, I am called obruni) I am apparently entitled to preferential treatment in all things, not just seating. Whenever we chop (eat) together, I always given the choicest cuts of meat. Whenever I get in a tro (van, used for public transportation) they will often kick someone out of the front seat for me. When I go to the bank, rather than waiting in the hour long line a security guard will escort me to the main desk, bypassing the thirty Ghanaians waiting. This is typical apparently, as no one I have just cut makes a sound and smiles broadly at me if I glance at them apologetically. 

I do not mean at all to attribute the generosity and pampering I receive solely to my skin color. Ghanaians are an incredibly generous and kind people to begin with. Anywhere I go I see people going out of their way for complete strangers. One of the biggest cultural faux pas, besides using your left hand to eat or your right hand to wipe, is being a less than adequate host. Anytime you are eating in home and anyone walks by, and I mean anyone, the standard greeting is come and eat. It is understood that unless you are both of equal standing (eg both adult men) and close friends or family the offer is declined but I still find it fascinating the level to which they will go out of their way to play the gracious host. 

My skin color merely causes these cultural traits to be exacerbated. The other apparent effect that my pallor has is as a magnet for children. I think it might have something to do with an ingrained ability to smell the sweat of a blofono, but regardless, all children under the age of fifteen can sense my presence as I walk by at a distance of a kilometer. Does not matter if I am in a tro or they are in their house. I hear their shrill cry: "Blo-FO-nooo," and I know all is lost. They will not stop yelling at me until I have turned and waved to each of them in turn. This requires extraordinary effort as there are typically upwards of four thousand of them trailing me at any one time. Until recently I believed my only sanctuary was in my house but the little girl who lives next door just found out that if she repeatedly knocks on the door while the blofono is napping he will come out angrily and yell something that sounds like, "GOWAY!" This is possibly the most enjoyable thing in the history of past times and she conveniently comes home from school at 1pm, just when the blofono is trying to take a nap.

There is really nothing that can accurately convey the experience of being a white man in Ghana. It is the closest thing to being a celebrity or sports star that I have experienced so far. The one sad fact is that my distaste for the attention has forced me to put a close on my dreams of being a soccer star. I'll find my next calling hopefully while in Ghana. It is the least they could do after crushing my last one. 

I hope this blogpost was relatively coherent. I've realized that the design scheme for this blog has been rather monotone and that it could use some freshening up. Suggestions would be welcome.

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

Eating, and its fallout

Life in the Peace Corps, in Ghana, is about as different as can be from life in the states. I can say that from experience now, but that is also all I have heard as I was applying and in training. However, none of that, not even homestay, prepared me for what is to come. Nothing could have effectively prepared me for this. In this post I will gloss over all aspects of food, eating, and the culinary arts in Ghana. 

Eating (and its fallout): Fallout is the appropriate descriptive word if I’m having a good day. For the not so good days, there are many other more appropriate words, which I’m going to allow the reader to imagine on their own.

            Outside of that I enjoy the food and the meals here. Most days for lunch, and everyday for supper, I eat with my neighbor, whose wife cooks for us. Once we finish eating she will then clean up after us. I’m sure all the females reading this are rolling their eyes and all the males are green with envy. However, despite how much I enjoy a little bit of light sexism, I want to ensure everyone that I have done my utmost to remedy this. But whatever do or say, not that she understand any of it, she is adamant that her husband and I eat, while she sits 10 feet away.

            In order to create some hint of self-reliance, I have been trying to get her to teach me how to cook Ghanaian food. This consists of me watching he cook until she gives me something to do, or I butt in. I’m allowed to do my menial task for maybe about 45 seconds, or until she finishes laughing at me. Then she takes the onion I was attempting to peel (in my opinion, very satisfactorily) and I wander off shamed.* Honestly, watching Ghanaians cook is rather intimidating. I have tried to pound fufu on several occasions and it always ends the same way: With the women laughing at me as I try to pound it, with two hands, as hard as possible, missing my target on most hits, and then one of them taking it from me and with one hand putting me to shame. This is consistent everyone from twelve year old girls to one hundred and twenty year old women (ages are usually ballparked here.)

            The meals consist of little actual conversation. Partly because Ghanaians don’t screw around while they eat. It’s all business. Also partly he speaks almost no English and I speak almost no Krobo. The conversations we do manage to have consist of him taunting me for eating like a little girl. I respond in kind and we laugh, finish our meal, and then play cards or ludu (Ghanaian version of Sorry.) Not a bad life on the whole. I'm trying to eat bones but that usually ends with me spitting them out on the floor when no one is looking.

            For Ghanaians, meals are communal affairs. Anywhere I go I am offered food. I will often have supper three times in one day. It has taken me some time to develop the foresight and confidence to be able to tell Ghanaians that I am full or that I will be eating later. Meals are shared, between men, with everyone eating out of a communal bowl and sharing our fufu or banku or whatever other starch is present.

            Most of these aspects of eating and cooking I have mentioned are daunting at first. But I can say, without reservation, that I enjoy fufu almost as much as Ghanaians (almost to a man they have said they would have it three meals a day if possible) and I am pretty damn fond of banku, boiled plantains, yams, and most of the other soups and stews they eat. I want to warn everyone that when I return to America I will be eating everything with my hands so please don't be more alarmed than normal by my eating habits.

*This is easier to cope with because I presciently left my dignity in my room at homestay, back during my third week in Ghana. No use for it here.

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

One week down, one hundred and three to go

Quick post today. I had plans to do a longer more involved one with pictures and everything but the internet is being temperamental.

Anyway, I have been officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer! It feels absolutely no different than it did before swearing in but I guess that’s typical for arbitrary commencements and the like. Shipping off to site was relatively traumatic as me, and my fellow volunteers, were thrown into our isolated sites and ripped away from the people we have spent essentially waking moment of the last three months with. There is a definite attachment that has grown there which makes the separation difficult, but I am guessing that is just a Stockholm Syndrome-esque response and that I will quickly realize exactly how much I despise all those obnoxious obrunis.

I am now living in Bormase, and those readers whose loyalty I have not yet failed to exhaust will remember it as the village where I will be spending the next two years of my life. There are approximately five hundred people in the town and we make gari! I do not want to spoil the joy I felt in my virginal experience of gari, so I will let those reading do their own research to discover for themselves what this magical treat is. I will follow up with a more detailed look at Bormase when I finally upload photos.

There are four other volunteers living near me, and we are all working with Krobodan(Pronounced with a super hero like emphasis on the -dan.) Three of these lovely people are in my training group and we have been going through many of the same trials together. Kofi Adam, our gentle giant, has generously taken up the cross of the serial pooper for our quartet. Not that any of us are lacking on that front but he has notably gone above and beyond the normal human capacity for excretion.

If you weren’t aware, Christmas is next week. Ghana celebrates it too! My only insight into how they celebrate is when my friend in town took me to the local distillery to get Akpeteshie, the local moonshine. It is amazing stuff. Puts hair on the chest and then can be used to burn it right off again. He purchased two gallons of it.

I want to send some postcards home to friends and family but strangely I lacked the initiative to collect addresses before leaving. If you would like me to send you a postcard you can message me your address via facebook, email (jveritas334@gmail.com), or through this blog. I will very likely get around to sending something to everyone in the two years while I am here. If you would like to ensure your name at the top of that list you can mail me something first! My address is:

Joseph Stein – Peace Corps Volunteer

Peace Corps Ghana

P.O.Box 5796

Accra-North, Ghana

I gotta go. Send me something. Or don’t. I will only love you marginally less.

Merry Christmas!

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

The Newtown Shooting

I just recently heard about the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. There are no words to accurately describe this tragedy. I cannot begin to imagine the depths at which this is being felt back everyone back home. The victims will live on in my heart and those of all of the Peace Corps and Ghana. We will pray for the families and loved ones of the deceased, as well as the survivors, at church in Bormase this Sunday.  

Thanksgiving

Currently, all twenty remaining PCVs in my group are living in the Dery Hotel in Techiman. We have air conditioning, running water, a pool, a bar, and little real responsibility. Most of our time is spent complaining, which is Peace Corps Volunteers’ unofficial hobby. We are here for our offsite technical training, which lasts for a total of two and one half weeks and currently has a little over a week remaining. The training includes a mix of lectures, on topics ranging from microfinancing for farmers to pest management, and hands on practicals, on topics such as beekeeping and GPS and tree stand management. It has been a nice mix of tedious and fascinating. Techiman has the largest open market in all of Western Africa. Yesterday was market day and we all went and shopped for supplies for the makeshift Thanksgiving we will be celebrating tonight. I will thankfully be doing none of the cooking and will hopefully manage to be productive in my own fashion.

After our offsite technical training is over we will return to our homestay town of Addo Nkwanta. We spent four of the first five weeks there and after spending two more we will be sworn in as volunteers and shipped off to our sites. We are all experiencing a combination of terror and optimistic excitement at this. The balance of terror and excitement differs but is undoubtedly consistent for us all. I am fairly certain that we will all survive but it is daunting nonetheless. This is exacerbated by the three month site restriction we will all have imposed on us. This is to promote integration of the volunteer into their communities and is definitely constructive in the scope of our whole service. However, it is reportedly very difficult as the way of life we are all about to begin is very different from any we have previously lived.

Four of us will be working with Krobodan in the Eastern Region of Ghana. They are a Danish organization that does development work among the Krobo people in parts of the Eastern region of Ghana. They focus on working with local farmers, single mothers, and increasing secondary income for these two groups. My primary assignment will be helping to facilitate the implementation of improved methods of chicken and rabbit rearing among local farmers. My site is in a community of about one hundred up the road from Sekesua.

This primary assignment is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of my plans for the next two years. I hope, and expect, to be very involved in my community and all of those surrounding it. The primary income generating industries in my communities are bead and gari making. Gari is ground, fried cassava that Ghanaians tend to love and Americans tend to hate. In addition to this, most community members are farmers as well and I plan to work extensively with them. This work should be very collaborative and will focus on introducing income-generating practices into their daily lives.  Teaching is already very likely for me and I hope to work with the local physician in introducing many grassroots health initiatives (i.e. expanded HIV awareness training, prevention of teen pregnancy, etc.). These secondary projects are often the highlights of a volunteers’ service, thus I am particularly excited for these.

           

Anticipation is high for the next couple of months as everything we have been preparing for will be put to the test. The first couple of months we are supposed to maintain a passive role in our communities as we evaluate and assess the specific needs of the community members. This translates to long days with no structure and little progress but I hope things get going relatively quickly and I can make some type of impact. 

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