It's Electric!

This will be the first non-epic blog post in a while, hopefully.  Though I am unable to post pictures, due to the fact that technology hates me (right, Dad?), I want to write about the electricity project that was just completed.  One of the three libraries that we are working with, Sherigu, did not have electricity when we arrived; and as per usual, funds were tight and unlikely to improve in the near future. My mom had the wonderful idea of asking our church community to raise the necessary funds, and God was truly present as they responded to the challenge.  Thanks to a generous local electrician who volunteered his services, the library now has light and ceiling fans, which trust me are a necessity in this climate! The gratitude from the community is endless, which can feel overwhelming at times. My gratitude to all who helped me with this project, especially our Church treasurer (thanks Mom!)

Laura’s Schisto-Swim, or, the Bath of Bilharzia…yet another epic blog post

More on the title later… but to re-emphasize …the time is going way too fast! We are officially at the one-month-to-go mark for Ghana and the 2-week mark for Sumbrungu. We are going to miss WAAAYYYY too many people around here. I think we’re going to be in for a shock once we leave the awesome Upper East Region…we’ve been pretty spoiled. Things we will miss dearly in Upper East (besides friends): our favorite Ghanaian dish, TZ with leaf stew, is sadly only a Northern thing; the relaxed pace of nearly hassle-free Bolgatanga; making people smile when we can greet them in the local language (FraFra); being dry and hot (ok, won’t really miss the heat part) instead of humid and hot, as it appears the rainy season has begun down south where we will be traveling during our final 2 weeks in Ghana…glad I have my $0.99 Walmart poncho!

This week has been full of “it’s the last time we do fill-in-the-blank". One of those was our final monthly librarian meeting. Frustratingly, we were never able to have a meeting where all 3 librarians were present…either due to sickness or other commitments or who knows what. However, this last meeting was definitely our most productive yet and for me, one of the most exciting. After postponing it twice, we FINALLY got to have our book club discussion about Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey!

The book is written by a Ghanaian author and takes place in the Volta Region of Ghana. It’s a detective novel, a mystery about two similar murders in a village, separated by 20 years or so. The title comes from the references to the “trokosi” system in some parts of Ghana, where a traditional priest takes several wives, often immediately after puberty. I was SO excited to hear how much Jennifer, Bernard, and Lucas (he loves a good debate/argument) had to say about the book. There’s too much to detail it all here, but one thing both Laura and I learned is that the book is a lot more Western or American than meets the eye. The Ghanaians thought the book jumped around too much because it used the “cliff-hanger” chapter endings common in Western novels and would switch to a different plot line for the next chapter. Lucas and Jennifer were frustrated by this writing style and preferred the straightforward style of classic African novels like The Gods are Not to Blame (ok actually a play) and Things Fall Apart. In contrast, I really struggled with Things Fall Apart when I read it because of this “tell it like it is” style; to me it was a little bland, which was a big disappointment since it’s THE premier novel of classic African literature. But hey, the Ghanaians love it that way. Another interesting part of our discussion was when Bernard described how he used one of the Reading Strategies (!! J) to think about what would happen if a murder like that happened in his community. We ended with a lesson on traditional marriage practices and rites in Ghana, and learned that in some places, even if a Christian ceremony has taken place, the families won’t consider a marriage valid until the traditional rites have also been performed. This involves the bride jumping over a cow into the new husband’s home, and sometimes a large bride-price of many domestic animals. All in all, it was a great discussion, everyone had something to contribute, they seemed to enjoy the book despite the foreign writing style, and we hope the book club continues. And, if Quartey writes a sequel, they said they’d definitely read it.

Another one of our “lasts” was our last week of Phonics Mini-Camp at Gowrie. There was one student in particular, Awinbila, a good reader from the start who really stretched himself to take on harder books at the end of the week. This was really exciting to see. And, during our final review day almost everyone had “Bossy E” down pat. We are doing quite a few revisions for our next rounds at Sherigu and Sumbrungu, and it’s difficult to tell how much will stick with them given the short time we had, but overall I think it was a success. Our final day in Gowrie in particular was a blast, beginning with Laura finally taking the plunge into the reservoir nearby. She wanted to do this since we first went to Gowrie, and after I made her take the necessary precautions to avoid contracting potential parasites, she embarked on what I call her Schistomiasis Swim, or Bath of Bilharzia. She was very happy, and I was very happy she was alive after she ALSO jumped off a 20ft tall concrete piling into the lake…Unfortunately after this great start we were displaced from the library by screaming-baby-weighing for the morning (just like during inventory) and were forced to camp out under a tree, entertaining a horde of 4 year olds and attempting to keep them from beating on each other too much. We grew weary of this and headed into the main part of town to get some lunch and have a well-deserved drink at a spot to celebrate the last day of camp. Little did we know some members of the community would surprise us with more drinks and a traditional TZ meal at the end of our class! It really touched us to see that they appreciated our efforts and was a nice ending to a great two weeks at Gowrie.

Last but not least, we went back to Navrongo to visit our friend Roland and his family yesterday. I’m sort of speechless about how generous and welcoming they were. And they were SO delighted to entertain Roland’s new “fella” (word for white person #7?) friends. We spent the first part of the day relaxing inside, watching a very confusing Nigerian movie and one of hundreds of “prophets” on TV. That was when the copious amounts of food began to roll out…Roland’s trio of sisters-in-law, Esther, Beatrice, and Rebecca, made us popcorn and fresh cut mango and melon. Then they began the preparations for TZ with leaf stew. We tried to “help” and they let us pound some groundnuts and stir the TZ once or twice…but mostly we hung around the extended family compound and chatted with these really cool women and their children. They’re all fairly young, late-20s-ish, and are really modern, stylish, and rather progressive, Esther in particular. Her husband (Roland’s brother Benjamin) is currently in the Western Region at the University of Development Studies campus there, and Esther stays in Navrongo raising their children, Pearl (6) and Ludovic (2, called “Lu” for short). She only speaks English to her children because she wants them to have a head start when they get to school. Everyone else in the compound, however, speaks Kassem (the local language) to them, so they are growing up bi-lingual. I thought this was pretty neat, and I wonder if other young Ghanaian couples are starting to do the same thing…

The kids were a hoot to play with. Lu, one of the youngest of the cousins present, was terrified when we first showed up, but soon got his confidence and started treating Laura and I like his own personal jungle gym. He was clearly going through some “terrible two’s” moments and threw a few fits, but each time we briefly left the compound, he and his little cousins would come running out to give us a big “welcome back” hug…even if we were only gone for 2 minutes. So. Cute. Once we did leave for a longer stretch to go sit with Roland’s friends at a spot across the street to have a few drinks, and to discuss something they could not wrap their heads around: polygamy is illegal in the US. Roland loves to ask us questions about what things are like in the US and usually accepts the answer, but this one in particular he couldn’t understand. “You can’t even have just 2?”. We brought up how some sects of Mormons practice polygamy, but they were still a bit confused. Ah, cultural differences.

After we chowed down on the TZ and a delicious “fruit salad” (more like fruit puree), we took our gluttonous selves for a stroll to visit the famous cathedral and mission site in Navrongo. The cathedral (over a hundred years old!) was beautifully decorated with the traditional, red-black-white Northern-style paintings inside, as well as a marble copy of the Pieta we were told was sent to them by the Pope! Navrongo is the epicenter of all things Catholic in the Upper East and I think was the site of the first Catholic mission to Ghana so it’s a very important place. We ended the night with a trip to the nearby Teaching College campus to meet Roland’s mother, a super sweet woman who cooks for the dining hall there. We made sure to tell her she raised a very nice young man and tell her how generous her family had been all day. It was an AWESOME day, and we would love to take them up on their invite to come back if we have the time…so much to do, so little time, stay tuned for more exciting final-week adventures!

Hiking around the Bongo Hills.  One of these rocks makes a cool sound like a drum when you hit it, but we never did determine which one it was...

Us with an 87-year-old crocodile.  That's our friend Roland on the right, with one of his friends.  This picture was followed by the realization that both our motorbikes had flat tires, followed by a 90-minute wait at the Inefficient Mechanic Shop.

Us with the children from our first 'Phonics Camp' at the Gowrie Community Library.  Sorry Lauren - I didn't realize your face was blocked in this one!

Camps, Crocodiles, and 'Cycles

Well, as expected, time has started to fly by as we busy ourselves with all the programs we’ve been planning for the past month.  Combine that with all the fun touristy things we want to cram into our final three weeks in Sumbrungu, and we have barely had time to breathe. 

Every morning around 7:30am, we embark on an 80-minute bike ride to the library at Gowrie.  Though our Phonics Camp that we are running there doesn’t begin until 3:00pm, this is the only time when we can bicycle without frying to a crisp, becoming dehydrated, or suffering from heat exhaustion.  That’s Ghana’s ‘dry season’ for you.  We spend the day preparing for the camp, or for our other evening activity sessions (more later), doing logistical stuff for FAV L, or resting.  Around 2:15 (shockingly punctual, especially for Ghanaians!) our group of 15 fourth-graders starts to arrive.  We help them read and decorate leaves for the Reading Tree – each child adds a leaf with his or her name and the title and author of the book they read.  We’re having mixed feelings about the Reading Tree; on the one hand, it’s a great way to motivate students to read, but it also encourages them to read the shortest and easiest books possible, which is frustrating when we’re trying to increase their reading level.  We then spend the first half of class introducing and practicing a simple phonics concept – for example, the past week we reviewed consonant sounds, short vowels, and long vowels as indicated by a silent ‘Boss E’ at the end of a word (hat à hate, etc).  With much patience and repetition, we think they are getting the hang of it.  They seem to have trouble applying what they have learned, but after we sit down and point out that they can figure out how to say each word, they usually get it.  We just hope we’re not trying to do too much in too short a time.

On Tuesday and Wednesday nights at our home in Sumbrungu, we have ‘Reading Activity Sessions’ with fifth and sixth graders.  We cancelled the Tuesday session last week due to the Ghana-England football match (which Ghana tied with 2 minutes to spare!  You should have seen the reaction here, you’d think it was the World Cup!), but had 12 show up for Wednesday.  We played some fun word games with them, such as hangman and word scramblers, then had them make bookmarks with construction paper and colored pencils, which we laminated and look amazing!  We’re also hoping to start a pen pal program with students in the US, but this is proving more complicated than expected – in the overly-legalized USA, you cannot simply give a child’s name to a complete stranger on the other half of the world, apparently. We are also hoping to do more reading-based activities with this group, but the library is still closed due to the construction.  Rumor has it that it will open any day now, but I’ll need to see it to believe it. 

Friday night was our first attempt at running an activity session without an interpreter, and I’ll go ahead and say it was a success!  We had 12 JHS Form 1 (7^th grade) students come to the first of four sessions focused on the newspaper.  The premier newspaper in Ghana is the Daily Graphic, and it publishes a weekly children’s edition called the Junior Graphic, which we rightfully suspected is not very well-read within the community.  We spent the first part of the class going through the different sections of the newspaper, to familiarize the students with content, etc.  We also had them read a letter to the editor about the political unrest in Cote d’Ivoire right now, then discussed the article, the situation, and the potential impact on Ghana.  One or two students seemed familiar with the situation (to recap: Former president Laurent Gbagbo refuses to step down from the presidency after losing the election, claiming it was unfair.  Military had supported Gbagbo, and essentially locked President-elect Outtara in a hotel room in the capitol for a few months, put has since withdrawn their support.  Situation looks hopeful), but I think their understanding improved tremendously after reading the article, which stated the situation very clearly.  Next week, we plan to have them write their own letters to the editor about a topic of their choice, which will not only actively engage them with the newspaper, but will get them invested in reading it for weeks to come.

Ok, now for the fun stuff.  Fridays are our free day for traveling and exploring, since all the libraries are closed.  This week, we went to Bongo, a small village with a couple small hills and hiking paths.  The highlight is a rock which makes a cool sound when you strike it, the fine print being that you need to hire a local guide to find it, something we did not feel like doing.  DIY tourism doesn’t really seem to be a thing here, evidenced by the total lack of signposts.  Frustrating.  We had fun walking around, an experience highlighted by our discovery of a dam, and evidence of the existence of a reservoir during rainy season.  We unfortunately couldn’t walk for very long due to extreme heat and lack of water, but what we did was very enjoyable. 

Yesterday we finally made it to the premier tourist destination of the Upper East Region: the crocodile ponds at Paga.  Over-hyped and over-priced? Yes, but still fun.  We went with a Ghanaian friend of ours who’s from the area, Roland, which was fortunate because he was able to barter down the price to only mildly exorbitant.  Then we watched as the men stood on the side of a large muddy pond with a ‘fowl’ and ‘called’ the crocodiles with noises that seemed to mimic the distressed fowl they were holding.  Eventually, we saw a pair of eyes surface across the lake and meander toward us, eyes that ended up belonging to one of the largest crocodiles present – I don’t know the exact size, but they told us it was 87 years old!  It took a few steps out of the water, then submissively lay down and waited.  It was at this time that I became aware of how truly huge it was, since the three other crocodiles that followed it out of the water in search of fowl were about half its size.  We posed around it, lifted up its tail, placed a small gnome on its back, etc, and then after all that they gave the fowl to a different crocodile, because ours had already eaten 6 that day.  I was impressed that it came and posed for us when it wasn’t even hungry! This experience was then followed by a 90-minute wait as an easily-distracted mechanic repaired the two flat tires that we realized our motorbikes had gotten simultaneously.  How many tourists can say they’ve had that experience?  By then it was late, so we returned home, but we hope to go back before we leave to meet Roland’s family and see some other tourist attractions in the area.

Happy 2 Month Ghana-versary To Us!

Yes folks, we've officially been in-country 2 months! Where did the time go...but ironically this post happens to be about Burkina Faso?

Confession: I <3 Burkina Faso. As much as I have also come to love Ghana, I’ve always had a soft spot for baguettes and Francophone countries (we’ll see this get me into an interesting conversation later)… so this was a special treat for me. It was also a chance to visit the “vowel-tastic” capital Ouagadougou. Any Stowe High French graduates out there surely remember Madame Austin’s love of this word!

Unfortunately my high school French was pretty darn rusty, but I’d like to think it improved dramatically throughout the week given all the talking I had to do. I was the de facto spokeswoman in Burkina, a role which culminated in a visit to the mayor, education inspector, police station, and the “prefecture”, or President’s representative to the district on our final day in Bereba. I got into a long drawn-out conversation attempting to tell the prefecture that, no his position did not exist in the US, no the president did not dictate the actions of governors or individual states (up for debate right now? Maybe), and yes the individual states were far more autonomous than Burkina provinces. The result of these 7 days of complete immersion is that I was still extracting my brain from “French mode” two days after we returned to Ghana … and now I’ve forgotten 80% of my FraFra…”tant pis” as they say.

A few exciting things for AFTER our amazing village stay in Bereba:

We got stuck in an African-style traffic jam no more than 30 minutes into our 3+ hour journey back to Ouaga. Most people were alternately peeing in the bush or chasing after their bus/car/truck which had begun to roll up farther in the queue. We spent the time hiding in the shade of larger vehicles, worrying about the poor chicken trapped in our hot trunk, and embracing this facet of West African travel. Thankfully the accident that caused this delay wasn’t gruesome; it just took up 2/3 of the road.

Once rested, showered, and rehydrated in Ouaga, we went with Charley to visit the Village Artisanal. This was a huge craft “village” next to the grounds for SIAO. Expansive concrete stalls where you can see artisans practicing their craft and displaying their products are set up around a central fixed-price store. The main wares are bronze statues, embroidered tablecloths and napkins, hand-woven clothing and bags, batik prints, and leatherworks. I unsuccessfully haggled and apparently grossly overpaid for some REALLY nifty things; our chauffeur Francois said he could have gotten a certain item I bought for 1/3 the price I paid…AFTER I had already bought it. Sigh. At least I’m in love with my purchases. Laura made up for my lack of thrift with superior bargaining skillz.

We also got our Western food fixes by eating pizza, a club sandwich, and fries at a nice restaurant called Paradisio. Afterwards, the power miraculously turned back on just in time for my favorite activity of the entire week: catching a Burkinabe flick at an outdoor cinema (see Charley’s FAVL blog post about the movie). Nothing could beat this quirky ambience. In the parking lot, people were selling bananas and mangoes presumably for movie snacks. The comfortingly familiar Big Dipper was clearly visible, hanging upside down directly above the screen. Occasionally, a HUGE airplane from the very very nearby international airport would pass right behind the screen. The evening temperature was enjoyably cool while the metal chairs were unbearably hard and uncomfortable. All this for the low low price of about $1! Bonus: I think I understood most of the French/the movie.

If you are still reading this, you are a trooper. I’m about to launch into some long-winded stuff on cultural differences, so go grab some snacks.

To provide some background (or at least my basic understanding of it) on the aforementioned “interesting conversation”: there were some…um…”interesting” things going on at the national level for Burkina while we were there. First, there had been student demonstrations that turned a bit violent in the weeks leading up to our visit. The students were upset about another senior high student who died in jail, allegedly due to mistreatment. We actually headed to Bereba village really early Saturday morning to avoid a planned student demonstration near the FAVL office in Ouaga (but this one was pretty subdued). Second, military personnel in Ouaga were unhappy about a comrade being jailed, so they decided to riot (meaning, shoot guns in the air and loot stores) the night before we returned from Bereba. Third, the following day merchants were demonstrating in protest of the looting from the previous night. *NOTE: we ourselves never actually witnessed these things, but were given great updates from FAVL/Peace Corps and felt very safe our entire trip.* Fourth, set this against the backdrop of the uprisings in North Africa this past month. President du Faso Blaise Compaoré has been in power for the last 30 years via a combination of coups and elections…sound a bit familiar? Throw in the fact that historically Burkina has close ties with Libya. Compaoré and Colonel Gaddafi are close friends.

While hanging with a few Burkinabes who will remain nameless, I stated that I enjoyed speaking French and visiting Francophone countries. One became a bit ruffled by this statement, and the two started discussing in rapid French. When I finally heard “Two Frenchmen died, that’s good,” I decided to interject myself into the discourse. “Ce n’est jamais bon quand on est mort! Francais, Burkinabe, Americain…jamais bon!” I said.

It’s difficult to retell the whole thing in detail since I only understood about half of what was said to me, but an extremely simplified version of what followed: “No, no, France sucks, they abandoned their West African colonies who now suffer. But France sometimes still keeps its armies there, why are they meddling now in Cote d’Ivoire and Libya?? Libya is great. Everyone gets free water, health care, and electricity. The world needs more people like Gaddhafi. French is much more difficult to learn than English. Do you think Ghana is a bit more stable than Burkina? But really, we should just destroy all arms and let there be peace. Libraries and increased education can help create peaceful societies.”

This was a lot to absorb, and I definitely don’t claim to have understood all pieces of the arguments. Mostly I’m just throwing it out there as an interesting interaction for those who like these things. For me, I took it as yet another point of view. I’ve gotten so used to the American perspective, it was somewhat refreshing to hear a different one, regardless of my feelings about it. We've had a lot of chats with Ghanaians about education issues and their perspectives, but less so on international politics so this was a big change from our usual discussions. Food for thought…

Ok and if you made it THIS far…you are a saint! Look forward to upcoming blog posts about our first week of phonics camp, watching Ghana play England on TV, and visits to Navrongo, Paga, and Bongo Hills. :-)