Monday, November 21, 2011
Making a difference?
It turns out I sit at a sub-office a week later, knowing the training in Tumu with the students went great and watching these students interact with a piece of technology they probably thought they wouldn’t get to use was amazing. Even my counterpart was learning for the first time with us. It made me think that my oldest niece Terrina, a 7th grader, can operate skype, types probably 50-60 words a minute, and has a ridiculous Facebook following is on average 4-5 years younger than these kids. Izebella and Olivia, my two younger nieces can play games, operate a mouse, and just recently print a document are several years younger than Terrina. I think we opened some eyes.
All considered, reflecting on the day, one student put it into perspective. He remembered most not the room full of computers, the air conditioning, or the impressive college-level campus, but the flush toilets. I think the quote was “Madame Sarah, the toilets, when you push the handle, the water comes and just takes your $#&^ away!!”
This weekend, I took a friend of mine to Tumu to attend a training on the shea tree. It is an incredibly economic tree especially for women in Northern Ghana and there are many ways their cultivation, management, and processing of the product (shea nuts or oil) can be improved to increase their productivity. Firstly, they could use parklands of well protected shea trees to make collection fast and efficient. No one here plants them. Some say you’ll die if you do, and some just thinking planting a tree that won’t turn profit for 15 years isn’t worth it. That where I come in. Along with shea, I want to manage a massive tree plantation with shea, mango, guava, moringa, cashew, and cassia. If these are protected, each family could improve their nutrition, financial burdens, and perhaps send another child to quality education which in turn (several years down the line) can help to bring the living conditions of the village up a bit. My friend that came to the training with me is super excited, I’ve made the proper contacts with NGOs and now we’ve just got to educate the community about the nursery that will start in April. I plan to write some Peace Corps grants and perhaps open a grant site for interested parties at home to donate small pockets of cash to build strong fencing. However, I’ve got lots of ideas on how to properly use a chunk of change. The hardest part is the sustainability factor. If the community appreciates it and is invested in it, they will use it and protect it when we’re gone. We’ve got our work cut out for us. However, if it were easy, everyone would do it :)
Friday, November 11, 2011
Our friend, D-Dub
Jordan here: We have a friend that we’ve come to call D-Dub. This is simply because we have no idea what her real name is and when we describe her to each other, we just call her ‘the deaf woman’, hence DW, D-Dub. I’ve mentioned her before, but since we see her nearly everyday, I felt she deserved her own entry. She lives in the compound next to us and she’s got to be 60 years old. Each day she grunts at us as we pass to head to school or catch some breakfast and gives us a sort of “so big” pose indicating she’s asking us if we feel strong. We return the gesture as she smiles and giggles to us through her 5 or 6 teeth she still has. Although she has “told” us several times, she tells us which children are hers, and whose mother the children belong to by pointing to her breast and making a suckling motion with her mouth. She also feels free to walk into our compound with various things to dry on our cement patches ie ground nuts, peppers, etc. I guess that’s okay. She doesn’t usually bother anything. She helps keep some of the kids in order around our place and sometimes she gives us small produce things. Sometimes she comes in when we’re not in the mood to communicate with her. It can be frustrating! It takes me back to the days of playing and coaching baseball. In other words, since she doesn’t use any recognized ASL (American Sign Language), her sign language is all her own interpretation. Just like my signs to tell a runner on first used to be a whole lot of rubbish and if I scratched my butt at the end, that meant steal, I feel myself making a series of hand and body signs and think to myself “I have no idea what we just said to each other”. Today she came and was startled by a group of dragonflies sunning themselves on one of the walls. To explain that she thinks they bite her (I’m not sure that’s true) she actually pulled out her breast and showed me her insect bite on her chest. Hmmm, just another “holy crap, we’re in Africa!” moment. All in all, she’s wonderful neighbor who nearly always has a smile for us. I can only imagine in her many years the things she’s seen and could tell me about the old days. However, I just think it may take longer than usual. But who am I kidding, I’ve got some time today.
Sala celebration
Jordan here: Last weekend was the Sala (not sure about the spelling) celebration. It apparently happens 70 days after the end of Ramadan, the month-long Islamic fast during August. After learning more about it, I see similarities that remind me that it’s a small world after all. I thought, being a Christian, that this would be a completely foreign concept and there would be so many customs and traditions to learn about. Except, throughout the day it felt like a combo of Easter and Halloween. First of all, what I heard from the Ghanaians from the history of the celebration was that it was to remember when Mohammed (or Abraham) was asked by God to demonstrate his faith to Him by sacrificing the life of his only son. When he was about to follow through with God’s challenge, God commanded him to stop and to sacrifice an animal instead since he had proven his faith. I’m nearly positive that the exact same story was told to me in Sunday School. The morning of Sunday comes and we’re told everyone puts on their nicest clothes and all walk together to a sacred worship place. Prayers were about the same as the other prayers that happen at that time in the day. And they only lasted about 20 minutes. For all the pomp and circumstance, I thought there’d be more. I’ve heard longer Lutheran sermons J Sarah and I didn’t participate but we observed and I was allowed to take a bunch of pictures. They even put a traditional head wrap for Sarah for the occasion so the pictures turned out great. Then everyone took pictures with family in their nice clothes (like every holiday or family get-together I’ve ever been a part of my entire life) walked back home to change out of the stuffy clothes, and made a big morning meal (Easter breakfast-ish). We took the chance to go and greet a ton of people and every Ghanaian is obsessed with pictures and especially being in them. It’s good my Mom bought me an 8 gigabyte memory card or else I may not have enough space. Then we came home finally and take a quick afternoon nap and went to watch the women’s dance group dance the traditional dances. Of course they wanted Sarah to join since she’s a woman so I got lots of good pictures and video. And now that we had our Sisaali names, everyone wanted to hear about it and smiles were plenty around the village. Then we made our way over to a compound that belongs to some of our best friends and is next door to Osman and his family. She made us rice and stew and we of course stuffed ourselves and played with Bahadjia, Osman’s hilarious daughter. Throughout the day, the tradition is to approach others in the community and ask “barakada sala” which translates please give me something small for sala. It sounds very much like “trick or treat”. So we carried around a bag of jelly beans and would give one to the small children that asked respectfully. Sometimes older kids and adults would ask for things and usually they want money. If you have nothing to give, you say “a la guro”. Later that night, the youth danced to hip hop music until late at night and many kids asked us to come but we were exhausted. So we went home and slept. Apparently, its also like Christmas and its not just a single day, but more like a season. So dancing continued for a few more days and more “barakada sala’s”. Overall it was nice to be a part of the first big community-wide festival and learn more about our place.
Yay Sisaali names!!
We can walk around now and hear people call our names from across a football field’s distance and we call back with a small piece of Sisaali we’ve learned. Everyone thinks the names are great and soon people from both communities will gather at the Junior high school, a central gathering place, and we’ll all celebrate the names with dancing and music and friendship.
Yay Sisaali names!!
We can walk around now and hear people call our names from across a football field’s distance and we call back with a small piece of Sisaali we’ve learned. Everyone thinks the names are great and soon people from both communities will gather at the Junior high school, a central gathering place, and we’ll all celebrate the names with dancing and music and friendship.
Monday, November 7, 2011
We're going, going,...Ghana!:
Click on the photo below for 144 pics! See the slideshow!