Going, going...gone!

Jordan here:  Wow, its official.  We are now RPCV status (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer).  Signed all the papers, did all the medical tests, said all the goodbyes.  We are left with our last lunch of pizza at Melting Moments and hand off our bag to be taken for us by a great friend James to London (thanks James) where we'll pick it up later in the trip home.  How does it feel?  I think once we're on the plane and flying away for the last time things will just start to sink in.  No more regulations, rules, etc.  We're free!  But that can be kinda scary.  Now without the Peace Corps safety net, we'll have to handle all our problems ourselves until getting home.  Our last days at site were good.  Said our many many goodbyes, said our amens to all the prayers our community sent with us, and took some last pictures.  The last day when Nico showed up for his replacement visit went by very quickly and when it came to the moment of the car door open and our closest friends there to see us off, tears definitely fell.  Issah, Osuman, Alija, Hikima, and a few others, the characters of many of our stories and subjects of our favorite pictures were there.  Eventually we just had to do it and jump in.  We were silent for a good half hour, watching our land of 2 years pass by our windows.  But, I firmly believe that our lives were greatly fortified having that time with those people in that place.  We'll miss many things about it.
    The trip to Accra was very low stress.  Nice car to pick us up, a couple hotel rooms, and not have to worry about our luggage.  In Accra, we started straight off the car and got to work with the administrative process.  We knew it would be a bit of stressful few days, especially now that since we're gone from our home, there's little holding us here.  I lost 23 pounds since coming to Ghana, wow!  I predict most of that will be gained back quite rapidly.  We weighed and packed our bags, cashed out our accounts and exchanged into Euros, and printed our intinerary for the next 6 weeks.  We can't wait to see family along the way and good friends.  We'll stay in touch on this blog as we go since our parents will be traveling with a laptop and we can find internet.  So check back again in a few weeks to see how Morocco was and maybe the first days of Europe!  Until then, just starting to let things sink in and saying lots of prayers for safe, relaxing travel, and returning back to the USA ready for the next chapter!

Things my parents taught me: Life's not fair!

Sarah here!  Sorry we haven’t been able to blog lately, it’s been a busy final few months at site!  But we enjoyed being able to spend the last amount of time in our service in our village.  We also haven’t written a ‘Things my parents taught me’ blog in awhile; not because they didn’t teach us many things!  But more so that we didn’t have an good examples of where and how we put those pieces of knowledge to use.  Well, unfortunately, we recently had a perfect example to use something my Dad taught me at a very young age: Life’s not fair!  When I was little, and things weren’t going my way, I would constantly complain, “But that’s not fair!”  And my Dad, without fail, would respond, “Life’s not fair!”  If we don’t come to grips with this early on, life can be a pretty tough thing to get through, because obviously the world doesn’t revolve around ME and won’t always be fair to ME specifically, and how could it!  We see plenty examples of unfairness (in our eyes, at least) on a daily basis: woman cooking, bathing their children, fetching firewood and water, etc, all while their husbands drink tea and talk with their friends; kids not really getting a childhood in the sense of playing and learning instead of being shouldered with responsibilities at too young an age; hearing stories of politicians making oodles of money and still “chopping” it from the programs that need it.  So obviously there is unfairness all around us here, but not necessarily relating directly to our lives here.  But....

I recently came home from school on a Monday afternoon, 19 days until we were scheduled to leave our village to travel down to Accra, to find that someone had broken into our house.  They broke open the front door and went through any and all places they thought we would be hiding money...and they found and took all of it.  However, we were VERY lucky that they didn’t just grab our wallets/lock box/backpacks and run, then they would have taken our passports, Peace Corps IDs, Ghana ATM cards, and our American credit cards.  THEN how would we have had our COS trip?  They also bypassed our computer and expensive camera, which would have been way more crushing than losing our money.  This is one of the reasons that we suspect the thief was someone from Tarsor instead of an outsider: the person didn’t want evidence of what he/she had stolen.  We informed our village assemblyman and went about talking to the chief/elders, who then disseminated the information to the community.  As mad as we were at the thief, we were equally as happy in the response from our friends and community members.  Everyone was appalled that this person could do something like this to us, (people coming to live with and help the community, be away from their home/family/friends for two years, and live on a relatively small salary - we make about half the salary a teacher does), and expressed their disgust in the bad name it now gives their community.  The teachers all rode their motos from the school to greet us and offer their support right when they found out, and my headmaster and assistant headmaster joined in the meeting with the chief/elders. 

So while we were right away initially feeling very strongly: “This isn’t fair!”, my Dad’s words echoed in my head: “Life’s not fair.”  Yes, it’s unfair that we came to this community to live and work, didn’t make a salary for two years, left our friends and family and home for two years, etc, and had this happen to us less than three weeks before we were to go home, but hey, Life’s not fair sometimes!  And we figured that we could either react with anger and suspicion towards the community, or accept the fact that sometimes in life, S%^@ happens, we can role with it and show the community members that we can still be positive in the face of adversity.  We were also able to cite the fact that we have had a vehicle broken into back in America and a computer, mp3 and money stolen, to show that in general, groups of PEOPLE are not bad, it’s just individuals that make bad decisions, and that can happen anywhere.  Because....life’s not fair!  And while that still doesn’t make us feel better about having our money stolen and our personal property sifted through, it does give us perspective on the fact that it’s just money, a material thing that we can hopefully replace someday (once we get jobs... :) and our health and personal safety are still intact.  So THANKS Dad for the resounding words!  We’re still following your advice all the way across the ocean, as we finish up this crazy adventure! 

A mosque opening, a wedding, and two baby naming ceremonies!

Over the past few months, we’ve had some fun celebrations!  The first was the completion of a mosque and Islamic school complex (donated from a Saudi Arabian NGO) that is now the nicest building in Tarsor.  Beautiful wooden doors, tiled ceilings with fans, and freshly painted!  They are hoping to have the school (for grades KG – Primary 3) open by the start of the fall term, but we think that will happen on Ghanaian time – so a year or two? :)  They have been working on this since before we left for Christmas, so it was cool to see it be completed while we were here. 

We also had the chance to attend a wedding ceremony in a nearby village called Kuroboi.  We have attended weddings in Tarsor when the bride is marrying to Tarsor, but haven’t attended one where the woman is from a different village and marrying there.  It was interesting to note the similarities and differences between American and Sissala weddings.  The both have a lot of food!  The diversity of food, however, is much greater in America.  In Sissala, any large gathering of people (wedding, funeral, baby naming, etc) entails making a giant vat of T.Z. (a starch the consistency of mashed potatoes made from maize flour) with some kind of soup, and killing a sheep/goat so important people attending get a small piece of meat.  They both also have a doted-on and done-up bride!  At this wedding, the bride changed clothes three different times, and each time the dresses she wore were beautiful, all accompanied by a large diku (pronounced dee-koo) or head covering, with lots of makeup and henna on her hands and feet.  However, for all of this prepping, the poor bride has to sit inside a room and have people take turns to come greet her, while all of the guests are outside talking, eating, dancing and enjoying themselves.  Weddings normally take all day, starting in the wife’s village and ending with the wife being brought to the husbands village.  The husband doesn’t even attend the ceremony in the wife’s village!  As a result, there’s a lot of down time, so...people sleep :)  (I have a picture of Jordan sitting reading a magazine amidst the rest of the male guests, all sleeping in plastic chairs around him!)  We stayed, ate, and danced (only the females do the dancing) until it was time for the bride to get in the lorry (a broken down van, no limo here!)  with all of the Tarsor people and go back to Tarsor.  We then proceeded on to Nwandono to watch our school students take on their school in a football match.  The excitement of the afternoon was watching the girl’s teams crash into each other (they don’t have as much control of their bodies or knowledge of game strategy as the boys) and walking the 45 minutes home from Kuroboi in the dark when Jordan’s bike tire got a flat :)      

The final ceremony we had the chance to witness was a baby naming ceremony.  We’ve been to one before in our village, but this was for one of my best friends in the village, Fozia, and I was anxious that she had the baby before we left!  The morning begins, like a wedding, with a lot of women stirring a cauldron of T.Z. and preparing soup.  I got the chance to have them all laugh at me trying to stir the T.Z. – it’s basically a 4 foot long paddle!  That takes years of practice, not happening successfully for this foli girl!  The oldest woman in the compound is in charge of bathing the baby.  This is also when they can decide to put the facial and belly markings on the baby (using basically a razor blade).  This custom is fading out, as people see that it can lead to infection, and that it marks you as a “village person” if you ever go get a job in a city somewhere.  The woman also basically massages the baby’s body, stretching out the legs and arms, then bathing it again in a herb-infused water mixture, then finally putting on lotion.  The mother than dresses the baby, and lays her out on nice fabric (Fozia even put her in the dress that I had bought for her in Tumu!  Cute!).  The mother herself also dresses in nice clothes, and sits next to the baby, again (similar to the wedding) accepting well wishes (and money) from people coming to greet her.  The proud father sits outside with his male friends, while the women work at distributing the food to the guests.  The elders also go inside the mosque and pray for the baby, and give her her name.  They named the baby Hikima, which means knowledge (and is also the name of our favourite baby here :) , which is written on a piece of paper alongside the Arabic spelling, and her local name: Wuoweribeta (pronounced Woo-worry-bay-tah).  In the local language this basically means that all things you try will be good.   We had fun mingling between the different groups of people, taking photos, and generally feeling a part of our community and friends! 

We also got to go to another naming ceremony in the up-section of our village right after this first one.  This was also interesting to see, because the woman had delivered twins, and one of them died after birth.  To represent the dead child, they placed a piece of wood roughly carved into the shape of a baby next to the living child on the bed.  It was also interesting to see how composed the mother was in telling me this: that one of her children had died.  Naming ceremonies normally take place a week after the birth, and I don’t think it’s our culture in America that the mother would be able to host a whole big ceremony and not really show sadness at the death of one of the babies she just delivered.  It’s interesting to witness the differences in our views of death and grieving between our two cultures.     

Getting close to the end!

Jordan here:  I know its been a long time since we last wrote something on the blog.  We’ve come to realize that some of the grandeur of new eye-opening things are happening more seldom than in our first year here in Ghana.  It doesn’t mean we’re not busy, or nothing’s happening.  Perhaps its actually a testament to our integration?  Either way, we are feeling quite torn.  While we have learned our routine here, understand the culture very well, speak the language well enough to get by, and have established many contacts within our and the surrounding communities.  We have enjoyed all the different kinds of food, seen every region, visited all the interesting sites, and feel like welcoming other Ghanaians to our village when they visit from even a few kilometres away.  We feel quite comfortable with our surroundings and the people we deal with.  On the contrary, we’ve never felt more itching to move on to our next chapters in life and to get back to our family and friends in the USA (and Canada, just for you Kels).  So much is happening that we want to get back for, that we’ve started the countdown of everything possible: days in Ghana, days at our site, number of times we have to wash clothes, number of nights of food we have left, how many baby weighings left, number of rains left, times we will have to ride in Ghanaian tro tros, nights of fufu left, number of times to fetch water from a hand pump, and nights of needing headlamps constantly strapped to our heads. 
Our prayers before meals always include asking God to guide us and remind us not to get too ahead of ourselves, and help us to cherish every day we have left here in our village.  This experience has been like no other and will be an incredibly unique chapter in our lives together.  To resort only thinking of our days after Peace Corps before they’ve finished just seems like bad karma. 
As we see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel approaching quickly, we try to look for signs that our time and service here will last and actually made a difference, even if very small.  A really interesting thing happened on the way to the garden last week.  Issah and I were walking along the path and about 5 feet in front of us, I saw a chameleon walking as if leading us to our work.  Issah stopped us and quickly explained to me this was some kind of omen.  He said the chameleon is a symbol of chiefs and leaders of the past.  The way they walk resembles the slow, thought-out work of the chiefs.  They always take their time to be sure to make the best decision.  Anyway, their forefathers told them that if ever a chameleon was seen ahead of your path leading you, it shows the chiefs of the past and the Almighty are blessing whatever you are on your way to do.  After walking some distance on the path, the chameleon scurried along and went on his way up a tree.  As we continued we analyzed what we saw and interpreted that this project and work that Issah and I have always been passing this way to do must be blessed by the Almighty.  As if with new energy had just been allocated, we started talking about how to move forward with our work and make sure it never dies.  Because now we had God on our side ;) 

Spring 2013

Cementing the floor of a new rabbit house

Mixing shea butter with our friend Afusa

Sarah and one of her students, Ubeida

A local store run by our friends

The one the only, Hikima

Demonstrating soap to some girls from Sarah's classes

Pouring our harvested honey through a strainer to remove large particulates

 

The spoils of our bee hive in Tarsor

About 2 liters of honey!

Issah shows the bookeeping for his farmers' group that we've been working on.

Me, Vince, and Stephanie Carey

Sarah's classic pose

Steph and Vince sitting in a tree

Our humble abode for a night. The Oasis is really neat

and the burritos blew my mind...obviously

We found a litter of puppies and couldn't resist. 

Sarah likes puppies too. All in due time... 

We got to help Osman paint his wife's room neon green. Interesting color for the inside of a room. —

Hikima is excited to see me and my camera. So I snap a pic before she mawls me!

Hikima had fun at farm that day.

Issah does a mango graft

Issah shows me a couple of awesome mango grafts. He already has orders for over a hundred to sell to people. Nice job!

Very concentrated

Issah in our forest of okra.

Our friend the lizard comes out to sun himself almost daily now.

He's tired so I caught him in a yawn

I caught a cockroach while molting. A few minutes later and I wouldn't have seen this guy crawling around my feet in the latrine.

The woman dress to the nines is the mother of a baby who is about to get his official name

Poser.

I slap hands with my friend Nanjo (translated to Pepper)

We move the rabbits from their old home to their newly cemented place. I'm sure they'll like it!

I check one of our project's rabbits for pregnancy. She's a fat one and I'm pretty sure has babies inside.

The next day, Molly and I separate the honey from the wax combs and let it sit to drain. you can't see it, but in this picture, we're literally covered in bees.

Molly Rooney helps us before we go out into the bush to harvest the honey from our beehive. We generated a lot of interest just by wearing the suits. So it was a lively night.

look at a part of our garden decorated with lemongrass and grafted mangoes. Nearly everything growing in the garden can be sold or eaten. That's food security!

African women are STRONG!

Kaharo grew up so fast! Working on the farm

In America we use huge machines and mechanized agriculture to manage hundreds and thousands of acres by a handful of people. This 1 acre plot will take Alija and her boys over a week to plant groundnuts by hand!

A boy in the village was bitten by this snake, that we're pretty sure is a puff adder. The puff adder is responsible for the most snake caused deaths in Africa. Low and behold, the boy died later that day. Since we actually knew the boy, it was a very very sad day.

Bori is sporting the great Phillies over here in Ghana!

I squashed this guy the other night trying to crawl toward our house door. BAD SCORPION!