In my last post I mentioned that Keesha had a worm in her foot. I decided to leave out my worries that I had one too, blaming it on being a hypochondriac. However, after more than a week of itching my big toe, and the obvious migration of a linear lump across the pad, I admitted that I too probably needed to be checked out. The good news is that the little buggers (coetaneous larva migrants) are easily treatable. I’m two days into a four day regime of albendazole 400 mg and the itching is vastly improved. All the locals are flabbergasted by our worm catching abilities. Apparently our feet scream ‘foreigner’ too. In other happier health news—I am now free of my walking cast and down to a small aircast!
We had a great midweek adventure with Doris last week. She grew up in a village near Akwatia and offered to take us to show us around and meet her mom. Though we live in a secluded small town, there are definitely many less accessible really rural villages off the beaten path. I was really interested in getting a chance to learn more about rural life, so Doris’ offer was a great treat! Thursday we wrapped up early at work and headed out. Doris explained that in the last 10 years or so the village has become much more accessible—now tro tros run several times a day from the small tro tro station in Boudua, through and beyond the village of Dwenase (pronounced je-nas-ee). Even at the tro tro station in Boudua my skin color generated comments and lots of grins, the limited obrunies in the area apparently don’t often venture on this route. The tro tro took off in the direction of Kade, turning east not far from Boudua, cutting deep into the rippling hills of dense jungle I described off to the East in an earlier post. The first 20 minutes or so were spent on a smooth road paved for the first time in recent years. Dense elephant grass lined the road, broken only by the occasional footpath, notable only by watchful eyes discerning broken reeds recently parted. Several times passengers signaled the mate to stop when nothing but jungle and elephant grass was visible on the roadside. They would disembark, gather there things, and step confidently through one of the hidden passages. Doris explained that some people live in what she called “cottages” isolated in the jungle, stating that the footpaths usually lead a single home or two well off the road. We came across a few villages, mud and stick homes along side dilapidated cement dwellings, with far fewer roadside vendors than main thoroughfares. On the top of one the rolling ridges running perpendicular to the road, the pavement stopped abruptly and the road narrowed, making it difficult for any opposing vehicle to squeak by. All the while, the beautiful views of the rolling hills of jungles we’ve been admiring from afar came closer and consumed us. We journeyed, past a few bulldozed dirt inlets to the jungle, which Doris explained were private gold mining areas. While Akwatia is known for diamonds, this area to the east is known for gold. The last sizable village before Doris’ had an active little village centre, including a strange entertainment venue created by a pool table awkwardly placed out in the open just a few feet from the road, occupied by a few young men engaged in an intense game. I wonder how that got there…? The dirt path continued on, shared with a number of pedestrians used to trekking without the aid of frequent tro tros.
The first sign of the town of Dwenase is a clinic, large enough for just a few rooms, on the side of the road. It closed a few years ago, and now sits vacant. The dirt road opens into the center of the quiet village, lined by a handful of cement buildings with rusted tin roofs, nestled amongst picturesque fog capped jungle hills. At first glance the place appeared virtually deserted, with a just person or two sitting by the roadside, or carrying loads expertly atop their heads. Doris was beaming at this point. So, excited to show us her home town. The people who were out all greeted her warmly in passing, “Ma Doe!” (short for Mama Doris!). Our first stop in Dwenase was Ma Doe’s mother’s home. From the main dirt boulevard we turned south toward a beautiful view of an imposing peak lush with foliage, down through a washed out alley between wooden and cement shacks to a two room cement structure, with a well worn roof, and small shaded porch. There sat Doris’ 78 year old mother, dressed in an unbelievably white robe, her eyes looking wise, but cloudy, sad, and well-worn. A few other relatives, and Doris’ skinny elderly step-dad, with his toothless grin greeted us from the porch. We said our hellos, exhausted our limited Twi vocabulary, and then tried a short conversation with Doris’ mom, translated through Doris. Her mom knows some English, and Doris playfully tried to get her to rack her brain for phrases, but frankly I don’t think she felt up to it. She’s not been feeling well, and keeps telling Doris it is her time. It was an honor to meet her—I can’t imagine the life she’s led. We returned to the house again just before leaving the town and took Doris’ picture with the available family and her mom at Doris’ request. Now I just need to find a spot to get it printed for her!
After meeting the family, Doris was determined to track down one of our study participants that we had had a follow-up interview with over the phone the day before. Doris had mentioned to her that we were coming to the village and would try to stop by to check in. As there are no road signs (or footpath signs for that matter) or addresses, the way to find people is to ask locals. Doris wandered into the mission housing, and asked a pretty young women if she knew where we could find this woman. She said she did, and dropped what she was doing to take us there. We walked a little further down the road, then cut off across a footpath, winding through banana trees, deep off the road, behind and through a number of small well maintained clearing with little huts, down into a valley, finally stopping at a row of three huts, connected by full cloth lines, separated by a large cast iron caldron. The woman approached the door, and called the participants name, and vola!, out she came. As far as villages go, this one is considered relatively accessible, but in that moment I was thoroughly impressed that this woman had delivered at St. Dominic’s. She and Doris exchanged pleasantries, and Doris asked to see the baby. She was a little hesitant to bring her out, but did so briefly. Doris later explained that the traditional belief is that the baby must stay in the house for the first week of their life, which is a little funny since the baby was born at St. Dominic’s and had already obviously been out of the house to get home. But, that aside, the belief has been adjusted to account for hospital births, but still remains that once home the child must stay indoors for the first seven days, until the naming ceremony occurs.
Upon leaving the women, Doris decided we needed to find a truly rural Ghanaian treat- palm wine. She inquired with the neighbors, and soon lead us into a nearby yard. Doris introduced us to an elderly scrappy looking gentleman, with stubs for teeth, no shirt, lean well defined muscles, and pants many sizes too big held on with a rope belt. He greeted us warmly, and was happy to oblige my many questions about the wooden bowl with a pointed base he was chiseling out of a large piece of tree trunk. Through Doris’ translation he explained that it was used in gold mining, going through the motions of how one might sift through handfuls of dirt diluted by water using the bowl. Doris used the yard as a mini-teaching station, showing us the reed cooking hut, the clay mortor and pestle, the pots used for boiling palm oil, and finally a cocoa tree. Ripe cocoa fruit, hung directly on the trunk of the bushy trees, looking like large yellow avocados. One was plucked, and a machete was used to hack it open. I must confess that the inside looked decidedly un-tasty. The inside of a cocoa looks like a giant white larva, slimy and segmented in the shape of a grenade. Sections the size of gumballs divide off, and are considered a succulent treat. I wasn’t warned that I should simply suck on the fruit, and instead crunched into it, easily breaking open the bitter cocoa seed inside, turning my mouth purple, and giving our hosts a good laugh. When done correctly sucking on the slimy treat gives off a taste similar to a mango, leaving you with an almond sized cocoa seed to spit out. At one point Ghana was one of the world’s leading cocoa producers. It is still a popular crop, explaining why Cadbury has an office in central Accra.
After finishing off the cocoa, we were led around the back of the hut where another shirtless elderly man was hard at work hacking away at a downed thick trunked palm tree with a machete. Again, he grinned ear to ear and happily told us about his work through Doris. He was working to clear away the bark and expose the wood of the tree high up on the trunk. He explained that once the bark was cleared a tool like an ice pick was used to hollow a rectangular notch several inches wide and deep into the wood, exposing sticky yellow sap. Another tool is then used to pound a smaller hole in the center of the notch all the way through to the other side of the tree. An empty jug is placed under the hole. Given the wide trunk and root system exposed at the lower end of the trunk, the upper shaft of the tree is angled toward the ground, employing gravity to drain the sap out of the palm into the waiting jug. According to Antoe (the palm wine preparing old man) an average tree gives about 4 gallons of wine. Our gracious host, excitedly pulled a jug out from under a nearby tree, after exposing the smelly yellow sap hole to show us the finished product. Someone ran to get a little bit of mesh, and fresh palm wine, straight from the palm was poured out of the jug, through the wide mesh fabric, into a bowl, which was proudly served to us. This is real rural Ghana! We took a few swigs of the cloudy yellow substance that tasted a bit like very fermented pineapple (aburbay in Twi!) juice. The two older men beamed, offered me a job making palm wine, and in the true spirit of Ghana asked to marry us. Doris laughing all the while to the point of tears at the hilarity of the whole scene. A gold connoisseur and a wine maker- one could do worse eh?!
Our tour continued. We collected a large empty white snail shell from the many shells scattered on the forest floor for Keesha’s shell collection much to the continued amusement of Doris, then ventured through more winding paths to say hello to more of Doris’ friends and family. In some of the yards a mossy green grass was growing, bright, and short, making it seem that we were walking on Astroturf or a golf course. We were gifted more cocoa fruit, by the endless acquaintances of Doris. And came across a Ghanaian little person (is that the correct term?) carrying a full bucket of plantans atop her head. Doris greeted her warmly and said she had delivered all of the women’s three children, one of which ended up being our taxi driver on the way home. Doris is the bomb.
As if the day could get better, we wandered back toward the center of the village and happened upon recess at the school yard. A stampede of kids came running toward me pointing, waving and yelling. They were overjoyed and amazed to see an obrunie in their village! The scene was unreal. Doris again laughing, me approaching the kids like an alien pledging that I come in piece. I said hello and then was mobbed by this excited throng of screaming children all wanting to shake my hand and touch my skin, jumping up and down, wanting to pose for photographs, partying like this was the coolest thing to happen in Dwenase since bag water. When school let out a little while later and we had finished walking around, I felt like I was leading a parade, all the school kids in their blue uniforms mobbed me again and walked all the way through town with us, jumping into pictures whenever we tried to snap a shot, all the while were all laughing so hard we can barely walk, and the kids are having just as much fun. When we’d walked far enough for the crowd to thin, Doris doled out candies, further fueling the excitement. During our stay we’d acquired gifts including a large stalk of plantans, a jug of palm oil, and the cocoas, which kids proudly carried for us through the street. They pressed up against the glass of the taxi and ran behind us waving goodbye, capping off our truly rural experience in Dwenase.
Friday afternoon I set out on my next adventure, my first solo trek in Ghana. Keesha decided to stay home for the weekend, while I went into Accra to drop off some paperwork, and then head out on a day trip with Ella and Nicole. At this point I’m fairly comfortable with getting back and forth to Accra, and know the basic lay out of the city, so I wasn’t too worried about going it alone. I found tro tros without a problem, and was quickly on the road. Unfortunately, none of our trips to the city ever seem to go without mishap. This time a ways into the trip our tro tro hit a large goat while going full speed. The tro tro was passing a car going through a village, and the goat trotted out from in front of the car as we came around to pass it. I was sitting in the front sit, as we mowed the poor guy over sending him tumbling and very much dead directly underneath our speeding van. The passengers got riled up, making lots of the frustrating clucking noises that are so popular here, as the driver slowed, peered in the rear-view mirror helplessly and then continued. Just before reaching Accra we got stuck in an hour long traffic jam off cars trying to mud-bog through the mudhole of a construction zone flooded with rainy season rains, but without hitting any other innocent goats, we made it to Accra.
The afternoon was a bit of a mess—me trying to find a copy place through countless misdirection by people on the street, resulting in several marriage proposals, and more than a few “I love you’s” from the less than helpful male vendors. Keesha and I have to renew our visas after 60 days (which is coming up quick) so I needed some copies for that, as well as to fax information to the safari we booked in Kenya (more adventures to come!). I ended up finding the place after deciding to go along with a conversation with a helpful male, in trade for being led to the copy place. Just before we got there he pulled the classic Ghanaian line of best used immediately after meeting someone briefly on the street: “I will never forget you, you are so wonderful, can I have your number?” to which I replied that I was married. By the time I made it back to the tro tro station it was getting dark, my plan had been to take a tro tro to the station near where Kofi was staying to drop off the paperwork, but my plan was foiled when I reached the area where that particular tro tro should be and instead found a line 50 people long waiting for the next van. I waited in the growing darkness and drizzle for 20 minutes before springing for a cab. I ended up having to call Kofi twice to direct the cab driver who, though nice enough, knew his way around Accra about as well as I do.
Exhausted from a day of work and an afternoon of being perpetually turned around, I crashed at the hostel in preparation for an early morning with Nicole and Ella. We left at 6 AM, bought street food at Kaneshie market for breakfast (including a push cart with Nescafe!), and were then on the road to Tema. After bumper to bumper traffic out of Accra , we arrived in Tema (the home of Katie, Megan and Ajab), found amazingly clean porta-potties for 20 pesewas a pee, and hopped the next bus to Ada. Since Nicole and Ella had been before, I had the luxury of kicking back and following their lead on directions.
Outside of Tema the crowded feel of Accra fades away quickly, giving way to scrub brush type lands-- green grasslands with scattered shrubbery covering the fairly flat topography. Much of the roadside is hand tilled farm land, with the occasional small herd of long horned cattle being shepherded along the roadside by a boy on foot. A few old bikes were parked by the roadsides, as there presumed owners, broke their back hoeing the long crooked rows of plants. One of the most popular crops, at least in terms of the roadside stands, were delicious looking watermelons.
After an hour or two we reached Ada. Ada sits on a peninsula at the mouth of the River Volta, where it opens into the Atlantic Ocean—one side of the peninsula is washed by the ocean and the other by the river. The tro tro dropped us at the last stop, an empty tro tro station in the village of Ada-Foa. Honestly, without Ella and Nicole I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do next, as there is were no other tro tros or water in site. The next task turned out to be bartering for a boat. The actual peninsula continues for another mile or two. In order to get down-shore where the beaches are, one needs the help of a local boat. The boat driver we found wandering in the tro tro station marched us through a mud hut village and market, through a few back yards, to a little beach where a handful of kids were washing their clothes in the river. He told us to wait for his return with a paddle boat, but instead allowed ourselves to be easily coaxed onto a sturdy motor boat offering the same fare. The drivers mentioned a nearby sugar cane rum factory (?) and crocodiles, but we stayed the course to the beach in the interest of time. The river’s width as it nears the ocean makes it appear more like a turbulent lake, but the opposite shore line appeared thick with palms, and picturesque from afar. The beach on the river’s edge was beautiful, as were the tall palms that shade the wooden huts topped with dried palm fronds. Our boat sped past a number of docked fishing boats with the same construction and colorful paint jobs we’ve seen before at Kokrobite and Elmina. Along the shorelines children romped mostly naked, people bathed with ample suds, clothes were scrubbed, goats romped freely and fishing nets were hauled in and repaired. The shore had a number of inlets, creating little almost-lakes on the peninsula, fed by the river, erecting natural barriers between clusters of huts on the shore. In stark contrast, the huts also shared the coast with a few mini-mansions, with drive in boat garages and covered gazebos over the river.
The boat dropped us at Maranatha Beach Camp on the river side of the peninsula. The camp consists of a few tables and chairs shaded by palm roofs, 20 or so one room cabins made of woven reed walls and palm roofs, with wooden doors painted in honor of a variety of national flags, and a bathroom constructed with the same woven siding, no roof, and a hole in the sand covered with a toilet seat. At this point on the peninsula, the ocean side is essentially a desert of sand and the peninsula is only wide enough to take about 5 minutes to walk from the river across the sand to the ocean. After some much needed food, we spent the remainder of the afternoon walking from the camp around the tip of the peninsula, and back down the ocean side. Thankfully there was a strong breeze, which kept me cool enough to prevent me from being tempting into the shistomiasis laden river water. Instead, we walked along the beautiful river side beach barefoot collecting thick, heavy shells in a variety of shapes and sizes, and scaring the speedy sand colored crabs back and forth across the beach as we walked. Ella found sea glass that made her day, and Nicole happened upon a sizable handsome cowie shell that she was pretty stoked on. The tip of the peninsula narrowed to a pointed strip of sand, washed over with the rough clash of the river current trying to flow out in to the ocean, while strong ocean waves tried to roll inward. The result was a criss-cross of waves with impressive surges. Continuing down the ocean side the strong pull of the tide and crash of the waves has created shear sand cliffs that stretched well above our heads as we walked on the beach below. My aircast and I tested the strength limitations of them by standing on the upper edge, and were rewarded by an avalanche of sand below us, leaving me with more than a little sand in my swimsuit, but no other injuries to report. Unfortunately, the ocean side of this otherwise gorgeous spot was pretty depressing. From the tip of the peninsula onward, the coast was thick with trash. Even the waves rolling in were visibly caked in plastic bags and scraps. Midway down the beach some kids a ways up in the sand started yelling obrunie and waving, all while still squatting in a row relieving themselves in the middle of the coverless beach.
We returned to Maranatha, soaked up a bit more sun, and then headed back to the mainland on a strict timeline to avoid missing the big football match that evening. Our boat driver dropped us off several beaches too early and then turned to a random passenger disembarking and asked him to drive us up the road. It ended up being an incredibly lucky incident. The man was a Ghanaian engineer, and his passenger was a family friend from North Carolina, here in Ghana to visit family. Once we were in the truck and the driver found out where we were headed he insisted on driving us all the way to Tema, where the pair were headed. Thus we lucked out on an incredibly cushy, free, air-conditioned ride in a nice new truck, complete with thoroughly entertaining commentary about Ghanaian life from the well-traveled driver. We made it back to Accra in record time, and were settled in at home long before the game started, despite a lengthy thwarted attempt to eat at an essentially non-existent beach side vegetarian restaurant billed by the guide book as a popular back-packers lodge and eatery. What we actually found was a rundown house hidden behind a crumbling old school yard, where several children introduced us to their high-as-a-kit maybe father who informed us that his ex-pat wife who apparently runs (ran?) the place was out.
Instead we settled in to watch the game with the Accra hostel staple, rice and chicken from His Place. For those who aren’t following the world cup, Ghana is the last African team left in the running. Saturday night Ghana went head to head with the United States, in a single elimination round. Though I’m not a sports watching fanatic by any stretch of the imagination, it was a great game. I surrendered my patriotism and rooted whole heartedly for Ghana—football is such a big deal here, and the World Cup is after all on African soil for the first time! Plus, the longer Ghana is in it the more we get to experience Ghana all hopped up on football frenzy! The game went into overtime (2-2), and was then clinched by a goal from “the hope of Africa”. Though we were in the hostel for the game, every time Ghana scored, and for an hour after the game you could hear the entire city, scattered around TVs and radios absolutely roar, in thundering jubilation.
And that my friends is the latest!
Love from Ghana! (And Go Black Stars!)
Monday, June 28, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Cape Coast
As one might expect, as time goes on and we get more and more comfortable with our surroundings, the days get fuller and really start to fly by. We are now well past the half way point for our time in Ghana, with just four weeks left, followed by two weeks in Kenya and Egypt.
Late last week we reached a big milestone at work. We stopped accepting new women into the study, upon having reached ‘saturation’—a qualitative research term meaning that we’d stopped hearing new information. We capped the study at 85 women (a big number for qualitative research!), and are now hard at work following up with the women who have delivered. I personally am a big fan of the follow-ups, as we have realized we are able to catch a bunch of the women on the ward after delivery, before they are discharged. Thus, I get to see their cute babies, tell them how “eff-eh” (beautiful) they are, while trying to recall by the day of the week they were born what their Ghanaian names are. Each morning Doris and I go to the maternity ward, and stop into all the post-delivery rooms to see if any of our women are there and feel up to a quick 5 minute interview. Doris is a wonderfully patient and knowledgeable midwife, so in making our rounds I also have the chance to learn as Doris can’t help but aid the mom’s who are struggling to breast feed or have questions about some aspect of their experience. She’s a very active and attentive midwife—who all the staff love to work with, because she does far more than her share of the work, much to her frustration. All the baby girls have their ears pierced by the midwives before they leave the hospital. Yesterday Doris was horrified to see a baby whose ears had been pierced far too high, bordering the hard cartilage. With a few swift women to the mother, she pulled out the offending piercing, and used the sharp back of the earring head to re-pierce the lobe in the correct spot, and then turned to me to start the interview. Problem solved! Next!
Mondays the antenatal clinic doubles as a postnatal clinic. Fridays it doubles as a children’s vaccination center; Women stride in with their young ones securely sashed to their backs with a stretch of fabric just over a yard long. The carrying technique fascinates me and looks beautiful. To get the babes up there, the women fold at the hips, as if touching their toes, hoist the child onto their back, so that the child’s arm and legs are hugging the mother, and then lay the stretch of fabric over the child’s back. The top bit of the cloth falls just below the child’s armpits, as well as the mothers. The top of the cloth is crossed in front of the mother and tucked in under her arms, leaving the bottom half hanging. The mother grabs both ends hanging like a cape, and scoops them up so the baby’s bottom is cupped just above her hips. The feet of the baby stick out of the bottom of the cloth at her sides, as the excess is twisted together and tucked neatly into the fabric around her middle. The contraption looks secure, is inexpensive, and seems rather comfortable for both parties… of course when the women at the clinic realized we were not well versed in this method of baby totting they were immediately intent on teaching us. We regularly see 7 year olds carting along their yearling siblings using this method, so the idea that we were incompetent at it was pretty hilarious to them. Thus, this past Friday, on children’s clinic day, when lots of 1 and 2 year olds are brought in for shots, Doris solicited volunteer babies. Amused mothers offered up their clueless kiddos for the entertainment of the clinic—watching an obrunie try to be African—quality entertainment! The first volunteer baby thought my obrunie-self was too scary, and wasn’t having anything to do with me. The second smiled the whole way though it—the women got a really good laugh at me, feeling like I was mimicking their method, but turning out a subpar result. I can’t believe women haul their kids like that with giant piles stacked on their heads—just inching through the clinic I was sure my volunteer baby was going to slip out! Luckily she did not, and after a photo-op was safely returned giggling to her brave mom.
Outside of work in the clinic last week, Keesha and I tried to spice up our social life with a dinner party—our first evening gathering in Akwatia! We invited our adopted Ghanaian mother/translator/midwife Doris, her kids, and our other helper Joyce over for a bring your own plate and silverware dinner party. Initially we had hoped to make something American, but the scarcity of the necessary ingredients, and some lack of foresight fogged Keesha’s initial dreams of something as classic as a hamburger. Instead, we (ie: Keesha, with me as sous chief) made rice with a mixed vegetable and fish sauce and in a ground-nut paste base. Your choice of drinks: mango juice or kool-aid (now that’s American!). Classy eh? For dessert, there were milo based pancake crepe type items with chopped mango and pineapple. Dessert was definitely the best received. Doris was a hoot all of dinner, reminding me of my mom and making up for an otherwise very quiet table. Other than that, all in all it was a hilariously awkward scene. Doris has two biological children—Blessing and Kaleb. Blessing is away at the University of Ghana, and Kaleb, is waiting to find out whether he has been accepted to University. He had polio as a kid (as have a fair number of others we’ve seen in Ghana) and walks using crutches secured to his forearms. Doris also has an adopted daughter Leena, who is 12. Leena was born at St. Dominic’s, but abandoned by her family. Doris was working on the ward, and really took to the child, leading her to end up adopting Leena when the family never returned. Kaleb and Leena came to dinner with Doris, and despite the fact that they both speak English, I barely got 2 sentences out of them the whole night! Leena would just giggle, and about the only thing I could get Kaleb engaged in was teaching us new words in Twi—leading to a few useful phrases like: “many comb” (I’m sleepy) and “Ed-eh” (Delicious!). Joyce turned out to be a picky eater and was falling asleep at the table—not that I can blame her as she works full time as a nurse in the clinic and goes to school at night. Keesha was pre-occupied with worry that the quiet crowd didn’t like her cooking, leaving Doris and I to do the talking, Joyce chimming in loudly with “Ohhh Efffffia and Yaaaa!” (our Ghanaian names) as a stand alone statement, apparently appropriate commentary for any long silence. When 7 PM rolled around and the staff bus came to pick up the night crew our visitors made their exit, hopping a ride back to the hospital, leaving Keesha and I wide eyed wondering what had just happened. We tried! In return Doris has invited us over to make banku next week, which should again, if nothing else, be entertaining and informative!
Our work week was capped off with the realization that that itchy bug bite on Keesha’s big toe in is infected… with a worm. At first we just thought it was itchy and swollen, and when the swelling moved I blamed it on blood flow diffusing the inflammation… but when the distinct shape of a worm emerged under the skin on the pad of her foot… and then moved overnight, making the diagnosis was fairly clear. Too many Discovery channel terror shows about worm migrating to people’s brains had her fairly ready to lob her foot off and jump the next flight home, but we think we’ve got it taken care of now. The docs think it is a sub-cutaneous skin worm, and have prescribed her daily wormer for the next few days. Apparently that should take care of it, but either way, Keesha has sworn off sandals for the duration.
Friday after work Keesha, myself, and her tag-along the worm, high-tailed it to Accra. As per usual the ride in was eventful. A traffic jam in the construction zone outside of Accra brought our tro tro to a standstill. After a few minutes of waiting, and peering out the window to survey the prospects, our driver decided off-roading was the solution, veering off the road, onto the dirt embankment of the construction site, driving underneath a half finished bridge while being screamed at and chased by angry construction workers, presumably shouting in Twi to get back on the road and off the construction site. Some construction workers foresaw the drivers planned escape route and blocked it off with rebar before we got there, invoking a heated yelling match between the driver and the crew, which somehow mysteriously ended in the crew moving the makeshift blockade out of our way, allow the tro tro to skirt the entire jam, putting us back on the road speeding along to Accra. Traveling by tro tro: strong likelihood of a near death experience, but guaranteed entertainment!
This past weekend’s journey to Accra was to join the Michigan crew for a trek to the Cape Coast area of Ghana. Saturday morning we piled into a chartered 15 person van, with the other SPH and MHIRT students in Ghana and Kofi, and set off for the Cape Coast. The Cape Coast, as one might guess, is on the coast of Ghana, located a few hours West of Accra. We drove over lush lands, less hilly than the ones near Akwatia, dotted with fewer trees and more tall elephant grasses and small hand worked farms. The further we got from Accra the further between towns, stretching into deserted sections of land without a soul in sight.
Our first destination was Kakum National Park. The area was declared a National Forest in 1931, and became an official National Park of Ghana in 1994. The park’s main claim to fame is a jungle canopy walk. From the ranger base at the park, complete with a super-pricey gift shop and bar, we hiked a half mile or so into the forest, gaining 250 metres in elevation, over a less than successful attempt at a stone paved path. My crutches never would have made it, but on the walking cast I was a little slow but mostly steady. The first bit of the walk was a mix of deciduous and jungle flora, dense with thick veins (strong enough to swing on… not that I tried or anything) and exposed roots. Along the path were a handful of hand painted signs labeling a few types of trees and species of the forest. My favourite trees included the kyenkyen trees, whose root bases start to spread from the tree a few feet above ground, creating a handful of skinny wedges jutting out from the base for a few feet before disappearing into the ground and the bamboo trees, whose thick cluster of shoots creates a bush looking tree whose base spans a good twelve feet. The real tree heros of the park are the tallest trees the Baku, whose thick stalk straight trunks rise far above the forest canopy. It’s on these trees that the canopy walk was built. The canopy walk is a series of hanging bridges, supported by rope and wire 30 metres above the forest floor. The Indiana-Jones like foot-bridges start from a hut built on the side of a valley, stretching out over the forest, to a series of Baku trees. Swaying under the footfalls of tourists, the walkway offers a unique view down through the jungle trees below, and across the sprawling valley beyond. Unfortunately, given the popularity of the canopy walk, the outing is less than serene, and therefore not likely to result in spotting any fauna to go with the flora. According to the ranger station information postings, the Kakum jungle is hope to a variety of monkeys as well as forest elephants… all of which evaded my probing eye.
Out of the jungle, Kofi directed us to a beach resort 20 minutes from the park. We were all a little amused at his choice of lunch options, as when asked where we wanted to go we unanimously said somewhere local and cheap. After passing a number of truly Ghanaian establishments that any of us would have been content with, instead, Kofi lead us to a picturesque beach, with a beautiful outdoor restaurant overlooking the ocean waves, an outdoor swimming pool for hotel patrons, and allegedly an 18 hole golf course. I think Kofi’s idea of cheap is a little jaded after hosting a few too many international research meetings and donors! The view however was beautiful. Before lunch a few of us went for a stroll on the beach, whose spotless golden sands were contrasted to volcanic looking rock formations spotting the shore, creating foaming explosions of water every time a wave rolled in. Afterwards, with a coffee and tuna-tomato sandwich in hand (not coincidently the cheapest option…), I had readily accepted our lunch location! The other patrons were conveniently crowded around a living screening of Ghana’s second world cup game, projected on a wall, leading us to delay the continuation of our journey until the game ended in a 1-1 tie against Australia.
The final stop on Saturday was the St. George’s slave castle in Elmina. St. George’s Castle, also known as Elmina Castle was built by the Portuguese 528 years ago, eventually changing hands to the Dutch and then English. The castle was the sight of unthinkable atrocities during the years of slave trade. It holds the horrific statistic of having seen the more slaves pass through its hallowed doors than any other site. An estimated 10 to 15 million slaves were marched across present day Ghana and further, to the Elmina Castle. Half of the captors died between capture and departure from Africa, marched and starved to death. The castles sits in ironic glory jutting out on a gorgeous strip of sparking sand, its white exterior glowing in the sun, lit by the colorful backdrop of the bustling fishing port of present day Elmina. Above the castle on a nearby bluff sits St. Jago’s castle, build after Elmina for the fortification of the slave trading grounds. The waters have receded over the years, leaving the castle mote empty-- the waves a solid 10 yards from the walls, rather than flesh against them. A well versed tour guide led us through the castle, sliding room to room conveying the white castle’s many dark secrets. Our first stop was one of the female dungeons. Up to 400 women were stored in the dungeon at a time, sometimes for up to 2 months, laying skin to skin on the uneven rock floor, with little light or ventilation, and only a bucket at each end of the room for release, if one was strong enough to walk there. Other than the dark and foreboding nature, the first sensation that hits you in the dungeon is the smell. It reeks of human waste, even now, after two hundred years of airing out. The stench really is from the battering the room took—only the dungeons smelled that way. From the dungeon we were led into an adjacent courtyard, open only to the blue sky, bordered on the second floor by a wrap around balcony. It was explained that this is where the women got their only exposure to sunlight. Once a day the whole crew of women was corralled into the courtyard. The castle Governor would stand over the crowd on the balcony and point to his chosen woman to rape that day. The rest of the women would be sent back, while cold water was dumped over the selected woman to clean away some of the months of dungeon filth. She was then marched up the stairs to the Governors layer for him to do as he pleased. If she refused, in the middle of the courtyard lay a bowling ball size steel ball to which she would be tethered to until the next day, forced to stand, and go without food. Sorry, I may have failed to warn that this post ends on a less than cheery note.
Out of the women’s quarters, we were led through the men’s and into the ‘room of no return’. 10-15 slaves were tied together in a row and marched through tight corridors, into a light-less room, out through a slit in the wall just large enough for a crouching body, then down a ladder onto an awaiting boat. Peering out the opening today, the sea has shifted, so sand appears below, the ocean to the right, and a picture perfect view of Elmina and beautiful Ghanaian fishing boats to the left. A haunting contrast to the moldy damp dark castle inside, whose only color is offered by the handful of memorial tokens leaning against the wall in the room of no return. From there we continued on to the areas for delinquent staff and slaves—the staff area with air vents and natural light, the slave area without either. We then moved up onto the second floor, touring the spacious Governor’s quarters, kitchen and dining area, pausing for breath-taking views over the castle walls.
One of the most interesting and controversial topics the tour ignited was that of religion. Elmina was home to the first Christian church in Ghana. While still under the purvey of the Portuguese the church was moved from the town, into the interior of the castle. Thus, in the center of the largest slave castle in Africa stands the oldest Christian church in Ghana—a country now incredibly smitten with the Christian faith, with rates of Christianity around 90%. I remain in the belief that if you have spiritual or religious beliefs that give you hope and meaning, or peace and perspective, I fully support your right to worship and mediate on those thoughts. But all too often, religion is used as a tool to leverage much more than a broader meaning to life. I fail to understand how a religion brought to Ghana by the very people that raped the country of humans and resources has been so whole heartedly endorsed and embraced. The oldest Christian church stands in the middle of a freaking slave castle! It’s not the idea of people embracing a religion that frustrates me, I just find it baffling—I know there are aspects of community, of tradition, and unity that draw people to particular religions, but in the case of a country like Ghana, and many others, some of the doctrines informed by purported religious ideology is incredibly frustrating and hypocritical. Obviously, as this old church site attests, at one point slavery was fully endorsed by the Vatican. Today it is clearly not. That is a radical shift in ideology, the acceptance of an entire race—and entire continent. Yet today, religious doctrines continue to single out groups to outcast and wars to wage on differing branches of humanity. In Ghana for example that war wages strong against homosexuality, which more than one Ghanaian has informed me results in a direct ticket to hell. A few hundred years ago someone on the very soil they stand may have declared similar pitiful worth, while manhandling their ancestors, the indigenous people of Africa. The point being that if you believe in a higher being, I respect your right and the meaning it may bring to you to worship and covet those beliefs, but standing in a slave castle staring at the walls of a church centered in its courtyard, I can’t help but beg that religion cease to be cast as a tool for laying judgment, defining superiority, or asserting power. Using it as such has led the world astray time after time, and need not be repeated.
On that note, love from Ghana,
Halley
Late last week we reached a big milestone at work. We stopped accepting new women into the study, upon having reached ‘saturation’—a qualitative research term meaning that we’d stopped hearing new information. We capped the study at 85 women (a big number for qualitative research!), and are now hard at work following up with the women who have delivered. I personally am a big fan of the follow-ups, as we have realized we are able to catch a bunch of the women on the ward after delivery, before they are discharged. Thus, I get to see their cute babies, tell them how “eff-eh” (beautiful) they are, while trying to recall by the day of the week they were born what their Ghanaian names are. Each morning Doris and I go to the maternity ward, and stop into all the post-delivery rooms to see if any of our women are there and feel up to a quick 5 minute interview. Doris is a wonderfully patient and knowledgeable midwife, so in making our rounds I also have the chance to learn as Doris can’t help but aid the mom’s who are struggling to breast feed or have questions about some aspect of their experience. She’s a very active and attentive midwife—who all the staff love to work with, because she does far more than her share of the work, much to her frustration. All the baby girls have their ears pierced by the midwives before they leave the hospital. Yesterday Doris was horrified to see a baby whose ears had been pierced far too high, bordering the hard cartilage. With a few swift women to the mother, she pulled out the offending piercing, and used the sharp back of the earring head to re-pierce the lobe in the correct spot, and then turned to me to start the interview. Problem solved! Next!
Mondays the antenatal clinic doubles as a postnatal clinic. Fridays it doubles as a children’s vaccination center; Women stride in with their young ones securely sashed to their backs with a stretch of fabric just over a yard long. The carrying technique fascinates me and looks beautiful. To get the babes up there, the women fold at the hips, as if touching their toes, hoist the child onto their back, so that the child’s arm and legs are hugging the mother, and then lay the stretch of fabric over the child’s back. The top bit of the cloth falls just below the child’s armpits, as well as the mothers. The top of the cloth is crossed in front of the mother and tucked in under her arms, leaving the bottom half hanging. The mother grabs both ends hanging like a cape, and scoops them up so the baby’s bottom is cupped just above her hips. The feet of the baby stick out of the bottom of the cloth at her sides, as the excess is twisted together and tucked neatly into the fabric around her middle. The contraption looks secure, is inexpensive, and seems rather comfortable for both parties… of course when the women at the clinic realized we were not well versed in this method of baby totting they were immediately intent on teaching us. We regularly see 7 year olds carting along their yearling siblings using this method, so the idea that we were incompetent at it was pretty hilarious to them. Thus, this past Friday, on children’s clinic day, when lots of 1 and 2 year olds are brought in for shots, Doris solicited volunteer babies. Amused mothers offered up their clueless kiddos for the entertainment of the clinic—watching an obrunie try to be African—quality entertainment! The first volunteer baby thought my obrunie-self was too scary, and wasn’t having anything to do with me. The second smiled the whole way though it—the women got a really good laugh at me, feeling like I was mimicking their method, but turning out a subpar result. I can’t believe women haul their kids like that with giant piles stacked on their heads—just inching through the clinic I was sure my volunteer baby was going to slip out! Luckily she did not, and after a photo-op was safely returned giggling to her brave mom.
Outside of work in the clinic last week, Keesha and I tried to spice up our social life with a dinner party—our first evening gathering in Akwatia! We invited our adopted Ghanaian mother/translator/midwife Doris, her kids, and our other helper Joyce over for a bring your own plate and silverware dinner party. Initially we had hoped to make something American, but the scarcity of the necessary ingredients, and some lack of foresight fogged Keesha’s initial dreams of something as classic as a hamburger. Instead, we (ie: Keesha, with me as sous chief) made rice with a mixed vegetable and fish sauce and in a ground-nut paste base. Your choice of drinks: mango juice or kool-aid (now that’s American!). Classy eh? For dessert, there were milo based pancake crepe type items with chopped mango and pineapple. Dessert was definitely the best received. Doris was a hoot all of dinner, reminding me of my mom and making up for an otherwise very quiet table. Other than that, all in all it was a hilariously awkward scene. Doris has two biological children—Blessing and Kaleb. Blessing is away at the University of Ghana, and Kaleb, is waiting to find out whether he has been accepted to University. He had polio as a kid (as have a fair number of others we’ve seen in Ghana) and walks using crutches secured to his forearms. Doris also has an adopted daughter Leena, who is 12. Leena was born at St. Dominic’s, but abandoned by her family. Doris was working on the ward, and really took to the child, leading her to end up adopting Leena when the family never returned. Kaleb and Leena came to dinner with Doris, and despite the fact that they both speak English, I barely got 2 sentences out of them the whole night! Leena would just giggle, and about the only thing I could get Kaleb engaged in was teaching us new words in Twi—leading to a few useful phrases like: “many comb” (I’m sleepy) and “Ed-eh” (Delicious!). Joyce turned out to be a picky eater and was falling asleep at the table—not that I can blame her as she works full time as a nurse in the clinic and goes to school at night. Keesha was pre-occupied with worry that the quiet crowd didn’t like her cooking, leaving Doris and I to do the talking, Joyce chimming in loudly with “Ohhh Efffffia and Yaaaa!” (our Ghanaian names) as a stand alone statement, apparently appropriate commentary for any long silence. When 7 PM rolled around and the staff bus came to pick up the night crew our visitors made their exit, hopping a ride back to the hospital, leaving Keesha and I wide eyed wondering what had just happened. We tried! In return Doris has invited us over to make banku next week, which should again, if nothing else, be entertaining and informative!
Our work week was capped off with the realization that that itchy bug bite on Keesha’s big toe in is infected… with a worm. At first we just thought it was itchy and swollen, and when the swelling moved I blamed it on blood flow diffusing the inflammation… but when the distinct shape of a worm emerged under the skin on the pad of her foot… and then moved overnight, making the diagnosis was fairly clear. Too many Discovery channel terror shows about worm migrating to people’s brains had her fairly ready to lob her foot off and jump the next flight home, but we think we’ve got it taken care of now. The docs think it is a sub-cutaneous skin worm, and have prescribed her daily wormer for the next few days. Apparently that should take care of it, but either way, Keesha has sworn off sandals for the duration.
Friday after work Keesha, myself, and her tag-along the worm, high-tailed it to Accra. As per usual the ride in was eventful. A traffic jam in the construction zone outside of Accra brought our tro tro to a standstill. After a few minutes of waiting, and peering out the window to survey the prospects, our driver decided off-roading was the solution, veering off the road, onto the dirt embankment of the construction site, driving underneath a half finished bridge while being screamed at and chased by angry construction workers, presumably shouting in Twi to get back on the road and off the construction site. Some construction workers foresaw the drivers planned escape route and blocked it off with rebar before we got there, invoking a heated yelling match between the driver and the crew, which somehow mysteriously ended in the crew moving the makeshift blockade out of our way, allow the tro tro to skirt the entire jam, putting us back on the road speeding along to Accra. Traveling by tro tro: strong likelihood of a near death experience, but guaranteed entertainment!
This past weekend’s journey to Accra was to join the Michigan crew for a trek to the Cape Coast area of Ghana. Saturday morning we piled into a chartered 15 person van, with the other SPH and MHIRT students in Ghana and Kofi, and set off for the Cape Coast. The Cape Coast, as one might guess, is on the coast of Ghana, located a few hours West of Accra. We drove over lush lands, less hilly than the ones near Akwatia, dotted with fewer trees and more tall elephant grasses and small hand worked farms. The further we got from Accra the further between towns, stretching into deserted sections of land without a soul in sight.
Our first destination was Kakum National Park. The area was declared a National Forest in 1931, and became an official National Park of Ghana in 1994. The park’s main claim to fame is a jungle canopy walk. From the ranger base at the park, complete with a super-pricey gift shop and bar, we hiked a half mile or so into the forest, gaining 250 metres in elevation, over a less than successful attempt at a stone paved path. My crutches never would have made it, but on the walking cast I was a little slow but mostly steady. The first bit of the walk was a mix of deciduous and jungle flora, dense with thick veins (strong enough to swing on… not that I tried or anything) and exposed roots. Along the path were a handful of hand painted signs labeling a few types of trees and species of the forest. My favourite trees included the kyenkyen trees, whose root bases start to spread from the tree a few feet above ground, creating a handful of skinny wedges jutting out from the base for a few feet before disappearing into the ground and the bamboo trees, whose thick cluster of shoots creates a bush looking tree whose base spans a good twelve feet. The real tree heros of the park are the tallest trees the Baku, whose thick stalk straight trunks rise far above the forest canopy. It’s on these trees that the canopy walk was built. The canopy walk is a series of hanging bridges, supported by rope and wire 30 metres above the forest floor. The Indiana-Jones like foot-bridges start from a hut built on the side of a valley, stretching out over the forest, to a series of Baku trees. Swaying under the footfalls of tourists, the walkway offers a unique view down through the jungle trees below, and across the sprawling valley beyond. Unfortunately, given the popularity of the canopy walk, the outing is less than serene, and therefore not likely to result in spotting any fauna to go with the flora. According to the ranger station information postings, the Kakum jungle is hope to a variety of monkeys as well as forest elephants… all of which evaded my probing eye.
Out of the jungle, Kofi directed us to a beach resort 20 minutes from the park. We were all a little amused at his choice of lunch options, as when asked where we wanted to go we unanimously said somewhere local and cheap. After passing a number of truly Ghanaian establishments that any of us would have been content with, instead, Kofi lead us to a picturesque beach, with a beautiful outdoor restaurant overlooking the ocean waves, an outdoor swimming pool for hotel patrons, and allegedly an 18 hole golf course. I think Kofi’s idea of cheap is a little jaded after hosting a few too many international research meetings and donors! The view however was beautiful. Before lunch a few of us went for a stroll on the beach, whose spotless golden sands were contrasted to volcanic looking rock formations spotting the shore, creating foaming explosions of water every time a wave rolled in. Afterwards, with a coffee and tuna-tomato sandwich in hand (not coincidently the cheapest option…), I had readily accepted our lunch location! The other patrons were conveniently crowded around a living screening of Ghana’s second world cup game, projected on a wall, leading us to delay the continuation of our journey until the game ended in a 1-1 tie against Australia.
The final stop on Saturday was the St. George’s slave castle in Elmina. St. George’s Castle, also known as Elmina Castle was built by the Portuguese 528 years ago, eventually changing hands to the Dutch and then English. The castle was the sight of unthinkable atrocities during the years of slave trade. It holds the horrific statistic of having seen the more slaves pass through its hallowed doors than any other site. An estimated 10 to 15 million slaves were marched across present day Ghana and further, to the Elmina Castle. Half of the captors died between capture and departure from Africa, marched and starved to death. The castles sits in ironic glory jutting out on a gorgeous strip of sparking sand, its white exterior glowing in the sun, lit by the colorful backdrop of the bustling fishing port of present day Elmina. Above the castle on a nearby bluff sits St. Jago’s castle, build after Elmina for the fortification of the slave trading grounds. The waters have receded over the years, leaving the castle mote empty-- the waves a solid 10 yards from the walls, rather than flesh against them. A well versed tour guide led us through the castle, sliding room to room conveying the white castle’s many dark secrets. Our first stop was one of the female dungeons. Up to 400 women were stored in the dungeon at a time, sometimes for up to 2 months, laying skin to skin on the uneven rock floor, with little light or ventilation, and only a bucket at each end of the room for release, if one was strong enough to walk there. Other than the dark and foreboding nature, the first sensation that hits you in the dungeon is the smell. It reeks of human waste, even now, after two hundred years of airing out. The stench really is from the battering the room took—only the dungeons smelled that way. From the dungeon we were led into an adjacent courtyard, open only to the blue sky, bordered on the second floor by a wrap around balcony. It was explained that this is where the women got their only exposure to sunlight. Once a day the whole crew of women was corralled into the courtyard. The castle Governor would stand over the crowd on the balcony and point to his chosen woman to rape that day. The rest of the women would be sent back, while cold water was dumped over the selected woman to clean away some of the months of dungeon filth. She was then marched up the stairs to the Governors layer for him to do as he pleased. If she refused, in the middle of the courtyard lay a bowling ball size steel ball to which she would be tethered to until the next day, forced to stand, and go without food. Sorry, I may have failed to warn that this post ends on a less than cheery note.
Out of the women’s quarters, we were led through the men’s and into the ‘room of no return’. 10-15 slaves were tied together in a row and marched through tight corridors, into a light-less room, out through a slit in the wall just large enough for a crouching body, then down a ladder onto an awaiting boat. Peering out the opening today, the sea has shifted, so sand appears below, the ocean to the right, and a picture perfect view of Elmina and beautiful Ghanaian fishing boats to the left. A haunting contrast to the moldy damp dark castle inside, whose only color is offered by the handful of memorial tokens leaning against the wall in the room of no return. From there we continued on to the areas for delinquent staff and slaves—the staff area with air vents and natural light, the slave area without either. We then moved up onto the second floor, touring the spacious Governor’s quarters, kitchen and dining area, pausing for breath-taking views over the castle walls.
One of the most interesting and controversial topics the tour ignited was that of religion. Elmina was home to the first Christian church in Ghana. While still under the purvey of the Portuguese the church was moved from the town, into the interior of the castle. Thus, in the center of the largest slave castle in Africa stands the oldest Christian church in Ghana—a country now incredibly smitten with the Christian faith, with rates of Christianity around 90%. I remain in the belief that if you have spiritual or religious beliefs that give you hope and meaning, or peace and perspective, I fully support your right to worship and mediate on those thoughts. But all too often, religion is used as a tool to leverage much more than a broader meaning to life. I fail to understand how a religion brought to Ghana by the very people that raped the country of humans and resources has been so whole heartedly endorsed and embraced. The oldest Christian church stands in the middle of a freaking slave castle! It’s not the idea of people embracing a religion that frustrates me, I just find it baffling—I know there are aspects of community, of tradition, and unity that draw people to particular religions, but in the case of a country like Ghana, and many others, some of the doctrines informed by purported religious ideology is incredibly frustrating and hypocritical. Obviously, as this old church site attests, at one point slavery was fully endorsed by the Vatican. Today it is clearly not. That is a radical shift in ideology, the acceptance of an entire race—and entire continent. Yet today, religious doctrines continue to single out groups to outcast and wars to wage on differing branches of humanity. In Ghana for example that war wages strong against homosexuality, which more than one Ghanaian has informed me results in a direct ticket to hell. A few hundred years ago someone on the very soil they stand may have declared similar pitiful worth, while manhandling their ancestors, the indigenous people of Africa. The point being that if you believe in a higher being, I respect your right and the meaning it may bring to you to worship and covet those beliefs, but standing in a slave castle staring at the walls of a church centered in its courtyard, I can’t help but beg that religion cease to be cast as a tool for laying judgment, defining superiority, or asserting power. Using it as such has led the world astray time after time, and need not be repeated.
On that note, love from Ghana,
Halley
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Mishaps and Misadventures
It took a while to fall into place but now that we’re started, our study is really rolling. Last week we brought our interview total to 63 women—more than we initially anticipated being able to interview over the whole course of the study! We’re learning a lot about the women’s perspectives on pregnancy related care, and I think we’ll have plenty of material for a paper or two. This week we’re planning on starting to follow up with women we’ve already interviewed who have now delivered, in addition to interviewing more pregnant women at the clinic.
Now that we’re fairly at home at the clinic, work is getting increasingly entertaining. The crew of six or seven nurses, ward assistants and midwives is the same day in and day out, giving us a chance to get familiar with everyone. The group seems to enjoy having us around, if not for the change in routine, then to razz us. To their credit they are still trying to teach us useful phrases in Twi, despite my consistent inability to use it. Sometimes I worry they’re pulling classic ‘trick the foreigner’ games— I’m pretty sure one of these days, if not already, they’ll tell me a phrase means one thing, while really having me say something ridiculous and inappropriate… not that I would know, as anytime I try to say anything in Twi people laugh! Obrunie fail.
While we anticipated the language jests, we didn’t anticipate the difference in physical boundaries that would emerge out of our relationship with the nurses. It may sound a little strange coming from me, a well known lovely and hugging friend, but Keesha and I were thrown for a bit of a loop by how non-existent the physical friend boundaries seem to be. The other 4 or so 20-something females that work at the clinic are very touchy-feely. When they come in in the morning, they often slide in very close, asking us how we are while stroking our arms and legs and sometimes poor Keesha’s belly! My week was capped off by one of the nurses cupping my boob in front of the clinic crowd and saying “small small”. Really!? I hadn’t noticed! Oh my… Anyway, the point is, the 20-somethings (all single) act similarly together… and now that I’m attuned to it I’ve noticed similar behavior between some men, and even seen several grown men walking hand and hand—all of which seems incredibly ironic to me, given how staunchly homophobic the society in general is. The two guys on our trip for example, had to rent separate rooms for the summer as two grown men sharing a room is forbidden at many establishments in Ghana. Apparently copping a non-consensual feel or a little PDA is fine, but only as friends of course.
That aside, the week was cut short as we ran out of Twi consent forms for the women to sign. Printing is a bit of a challenge. All of our printing is being done in Accra, so we ended up taking Friday off to head back that way. Our day started early Friday morning with me trying to hail a tro tro to Asamankese (Asa). The driveway to the apartment is situated on the back of a little hill. Tro tros to Asa come flying over the hill—much like hailing a cab, on rural roads you just throw your arm out as the tro tro approaches to signal wanting a ride. In addition to a driver, the tro tro is manned by a guy at the side door who has the job of spotting people flagging down rides, collecting money and making change, figuring out where people want to get off, and essentially holding the rickety side door on the van. If the van has space they’ll stop when you flag them, if not they’ll wave at you and pass. Unlike taxis there is no negotiating the price, and unlike in the cities it’s pretty self explanatory where the tro tro is going… there’s only one road. I had yet another Obrunie moment standing on the road, trying to wave down a tro tro Friday. The tro tro sped past, clearly with empty seats. The door man, referred to as “mate” by passengers, did an obvious double take as I flagged him down, very slowly realizing I wanted a ride bringing the van to a screeching halt several hundred yards later. I did my best hobble-run to the tro tro in the walking cast and off we went. In Asa we bee lined it for the same spot in the market where we picked up a tro tro to Accra last time, and sure enough, there was another tro tro to Accra in the exact same spot being jam packed. More impressive organized chaos!
At any tro tro station (a market or alcove where various tro tros clear out their cars and pick up a full load of passengers) there’s a whole throng of sellers that mill around the tro tro as it fills, trying to sell water, snacks and various odds and ends to passengers. My purchases at Asa was a delightful surprise—there are these cold pink plastic packets that I’d seen people buy (the size of popsicle packages), and in the rising sun I decided to give them a go. The packages turned out to be Fanyogo—essentially frozen strawberry yogurt. You bite the corner of the packages off, just like with the bags of water, and then suck the contents out. Fanyogo is my new favorite Ghanaian thing. I can’t believe I missed out on the closest thing to yogurt for the first five weeks! In addition to eating street food with the bravery of someone who has yet to suffer from traveler’s diarrhea (knocking on wood hard!!), we’ve now switched over completely to bag water (oh sush, hear me out on this one mom!). Not only is it far more available (pretty sure we almost bought the stores in Akwatia out of bottles…) but it is much cheaper and readily available! For one cedi, we can buy enough bag water to fill 11, 1.5 liter bottles, saving us 10 cedi—there are even bags made by the same company that we were buying bottles from! The revelation that the good bag water doesn’t taste bad has probably strangely helped my health as I’ve gotten back to drinking a lot more water, and cured the afternoon headaches and drowsiness that plagued my dehydrated pre-bag water self. It’s also really handy to drink in tro tros, as at any town or junction, sellers, often girls, have bowls of bag water on their heads for purchase. Often the tro tros start moving during the buying of the water, and the girls run ago side the tro tros somehow balancing the bowls on their heads while fishing out bags and handing them through tro tro windows, while the passenger passes out a 5 peswae piece or drops it for them… it gets even more complicated when they’re dashing along making change. The bags are 500 mls, and always cool, kept that way by the stocking coolers on the roadside. Two fill my nalgene bottle and I’m ready to roll!
The tro tro we picked up at Asa made a roadside stop a few miles into the journey. The driver and mate opened the back doors and jimmed three large barrels of liquid (smelled like moonshine?) and some palm nut clusters behind the back seat. As one might imagine there isn’t exactly ample cargo space in a tro tro, and in many situations, including this one, the load stick out far beyond the bottom floor, so ropes are used to tie the back doors around the cargo. Once we started moving we had an added surprise… Keesha felt something move under her seat, and we realized we had a new passenger—a little goat! The poor guy bumped and bounced all the way to Accra standing splay legged under the back seat, facing backwards, getting even more of a thrill ride than those of us in the real seats! I’m starting to think the appropriate souvenir from Ghana would be a goat…
So we’re trucking along with our little goat friend, passing through the tiered construction zone I described in a previous post when the tro tro pulls over. A few people get out and I’m thinking it’s just a typical drop off. Then more people get out… then it’s just Keesha and I who are urged to follow suit. I still don’t know exactly what happened, but our best guess is that we ran out of fuel, either way the whole boat load of us was mid-construction zone, a good 10 miles outside Accra without a ride. Words were exchanged in Twi that we didn’t understanding. The group started trying to wave down tro tros looking for a spot or two—occasionally one would pull over and this herd of people would run to it, literally shoving to get on. Keesha and I hung back—stifled by the hilarity of the situation, socially stunned, and not at all wanting to get separated in a tro tro shoving match. Needless to say, we were the last two to get a tro tro, but after 20 minutes or so we found one with two spots, leaving our old driver, tro tro, goat and moonshine sitting patiently in the middle of the dirt construction zone, waiting for the mate to return, hopefully with a quick fix.
We blindly headed into Accra, not really knowing what station we’d be dropped at, but knowing it was better than a construction zone. Like any big city there are many subsections- you could get dropped off in Montreal in Mile End and still be a long ways from Westmount. The mate agreed to drop us at Circle, from where we thought we could find yet another ride to our destination, but the spot we were dropped at looked nothing like the pick-up point at Circle where we’d been before. Now completely in go with the flow mode, we wandered in what seemed to be the direction of the market at circle. We wound through sturdy wooden stalls with narrow isle pathways, human traffic passing neatly left to left, shoulder to shoulder past venders. We followed the widest path, and headed toward the road running parallel to where we were dropped off. Low and behold we emerged at the back of the tro tro station we were familiar with. At this point, we were pretty impressed with ourselves. We wandered the market for a while longer, looking for tie-and-die Ghanaian fabric, and ogling the odds and ends. We then caught a shared taxi to the area called Osu where Keesha wanted to visit a store called Global Mamas to find Ghana style baby stuff for her new niece. Without an address (not that they really exist) or directions beyond “it’s in Osu” we were at the mercy of the directions we received on the street. The directions involved Keesha buying some bracelets from the guy who helped us--but we got there! After Osu it was off to Art Center- a market dedicated completely to Ghanaian arts and crafts. Unlike most American arts and crafts shows, this place is open everyday and the vast majority of sellers are not the people who made the crafts. The stalls are permanent-- each vendor has a 10’ by 10’ spot jam-packed with goods. Lots of hand carved bowls, and wooden figures, oil paintings, died cloth pictures, masks, drums, beadwork, and iron work. Pumped up on our ability to take on Ghana, we walked in well prepared for the unavoidable mobbing by the sellers. People grabbing your hands, stalking you down, telling you to come to their shop, and buy this or that. We used our Ghanaian names (Efia and Ya) as handy pseudonyms, claimed not to have phones when asked for our numbers, and told everyone up front we were window shopping… and we survived! We walked through isle after isle of stalls—all of which really started to blend together. Much of it is beautiful woodwork, but many of the all the sellers have similar if not identical pieces, such that the novelty of it starts to wear off despite the fact that it is cool African art. Not wanting to tot too much with us, we made a few mental notes and escaped Art Center without buying anything. Keesha traded five hugs for a died cloth wall hanging… but that’s a whole ‘nother story! The successful day was capped off by spotting a cluster of tro tros nearby and realizing we were near Tema Station, where we were able to easily get a ride to Korle Bu, to spend the night at the hostel.
Saturday morning we hit the road early, returning to Tema Station with Nicole (the MPH student from Brown) and Ella (a MHIRT student). From Tema we found a tro tro headed to Mampong. After a bit of anxiety caused by language barriers and an inability to confirm that we were getting on a tro tro to the closer city of Mampong, not the Mampong 6 hours away in the Ashanti region, we settled in for a nice ride. We went through a fairly well off area in Accra that we’d never been to, and then headed out into a lush valley, rising up like Blueridge foothills onto the Aburi escarpment, providing beautiful views of luscious valleys of patchy jungle, interspersed with grassy meadows. The highway up the escarpment was smooth pavement, and was even flanked with guard rails—we were floored. Scattered along the road there were fancy gaited homes, creating a ritzier feel than we’ve gotten anywhere else so far. Later, Wisdom told us that the area was previously a strong hold of British colonizers, claiming the area of such beautiful views for their own settlement. Ella had been to Mampong before, but their tro tro had taken a different route, so we were again clueless about where to get off. Worried about ending up going past Mampong, as the tro tro was continuing on, we eventually picked a spot and piled out.
In Mampong we planned to meet up with the Michigan crew, explore a guide book recommended bead factory nearby, and generally see the area. Megan, Katie and Ajab, the other Michigan Public Health students had got a bit turned around getting to Mampong, so with time to spare and hungry tummies we hopped a cab, hoping to eat at a place Ella remembered from her previous trip. The area she’d eaten in before was inside the Aburi Gardens which somehow they’d waltzed in and out of without paying the visitors fee. Not wanting to pay 5 cedi a head to just walk into the gardens to go to the restaurant, we headed into the little village of Aburi next to the gardens to try to find food. Instead, we walked straight into a funeral. All around the dirt road entrance to the hillside town were plastic chairs packed with locals dressed head to toe in black and red. A little tent was set up, and huge speakers were broadcasting to the mourners and across the town. Up onto the main road the black and red attire continued. Men in black wraps, black pants and shirts with a red tie, or something black with a gang looking strip of red fabric tied karate kid like across their forehead. Women wore red and black long fitted skirts and top set, sown in a traditional starchy material. A little thrown off by the entrance we walked up onto the main road of the town and after a bit of searching found a whole in the wall (no really a whole in the wall) spot to get food. The choices were banku or rice balls. We all opted for rice balls, which appeared in a hot red soupy sauce with a piece of chicken in a big bowl. The rice balls were basically overcooked rice mashed in ball form, which you then pitch pieces off of with your right hand and dip into the soup or grab a piece of chicken. The place didn’t have any silverware… they’ve chosen to serve two dishes that don’t require it—brilliant! So, we did our best to scrub up with the water and soap provided and dug in. With cokes all around the four of us ate for 5.7 cedi, and again, lived to tell about it. Ella even braved the bathroom… which was I guess better than peeing behind a bus which she’d resorted to earlier, but apparently was just a room with a dirt floor on a bit of a slant… no hole or anything. Dehydration helped me out this time ;)
Back on the street in search of the girls, we had to step aside as a blaring siren cleared the road for the funeral procession. The whole throng of mourners came through the town, led by several dancing and singing women, a car blasting a siren, then black ambulance/station wagon/coffin carrying car with a flashing light on top, with obviously devastated close relatives balling while holding onto the car and walking along beside it, immersed in a swamp of at least a hundred of similarly dressed followers walking along with the caravan. A very sobering and chilling site to say the least.
After finding the rest of our crew, we tried to round up a tro tro to Somanya, the town with the bead factory. According to the guide book “tro tros from Aburi to Somanya are easy to find”… I’m not sure what towns the author thought he was writing about, but he was way off. After gathering a crowd of taxi and tro tro drivers, we were told that if we wanted to go by tro tro we would need to return to Accra, and get a tro tro there… despite the fact that, again according to the guide book, this place was less than 30 minutes from Aburi in the direction opposite from Accra. A random Ghanaian who helped us find the tro tro station acted as the go-between translator telling the group of drivers where we were trying to go, while we stood befuddled. He paced between the drivers and us, negotiating a price and vehicle for the seven of us. After some serious bargaining we caved and agreed to pay 60 cedis between the seven of us for 2 cabs to drive us to Somanya, wait for us there, and then drive us back. The trip turned out to be a solid 30 minutes along ridges of the escarpment, including several switch back roads, and breath-taking views of jungle valleys. We did our best to follow our route in the cryptic guidebook map, though without labeled towns or roads, or drivers who spoke much English, it was a feat. Eventually we realized the drivers had no idea where they were taking us. I convinced the guy to pull off the road and ask for directions after some elaborate hand gestures signaling, “hey dude, I reeeeally think we passed it” (apparently Ghanaian men don’t like to ask for directions either… ;)). After more than a few times cruising up and down the road… yes, the same road over and over, we did a more significant back track and amazingly found a sign reading “Cedi Beads” posted on the roadside, pointing to a dirt track. The road was a washed out dirt path, rough enough to scrap the taxi bottom several times, but by some miracle it did indeed lead to Cedi Beads.
The taxis pulled into a secluded quiet fenced compound with a few modest single story cement dwellings, and thatched roof work spaces. Moments later we were met by a spry older gentleman, who greeted us warmly as if he’d been expecting us all day. He whisked us to a thatched roof outbuilding where plastic chairs were arranged around a table of raw materials and tools. He introduced himself as Kwadjo Gomoo, a lifelong beadmaker. He offered to lead us through the process of making beads before showing us to the shop. We learned that bead making is a Ghanaian tradition rooted with the Krobo people. Most people in the Somanya area are Krobo, including Kwadjo (whereas for example, most people in Akwatia are Akan). He then launched into explaining the different beads, and how each type is made. I’m sure I’ll badly butcher his talk, but basically, he described five bead types made by his people. They ranged from brightly colored patchy balls with the appearance of melded playdough, to frosted looking glass beads, to a variety of painted, glazed and patterned opaque types. To make most beads glass is crushed into a fine powder and sorted by colors. Then molds made out of clay harvested from termite mounds are used as the base for the beads’ shapes. Driving through the country we often see giant (5+ feet tall) ant hill looking red clay masses—turns out they are termite mounds. Kwadjo explained that the termites burrow deep into the ground and pull out well sorted red clay perfect to withstand the high temperatures. The beadmakers harvest this clay, shape it into molds (clay disks, with half sphere indents of various shapes and sizes), and then coat the molds in a finer, softer clay powder that keeps the beads from sticking to the mold. Apparently with daily firings the molds last a few months before breaking. Though it varies by bead type, essentially the crushed glass is poured into the molds (layering colors as the artist chooses) around a centered stalk of a palm frond, which burns in the kiln and leaves a hole in the center of the bead. Most of the glass used nowadays comes from discarded glass bottles, and all the tools used are scrapped together odds and ends- the side of a milo can molded into a sifter, old bicycle spokes used to prop beads up for painting, ect. Once the mold is filled it is ready for the kiln. Our group moved under Kwadjo’s instruction to another area shaded by a thatched roof. There sat two guys with the world cup cranking on the radio, squatting in front of a flaming kiln. The kiln itself was a clay dome in the center of the hut, stoked by long sticks of wood pushed in gradually as they are eaten away. The dome is open on two sides, exposing a rack, where six or so molds at a time cook to perfection. Most bead types are in the fire for 45 minutes, before a long wooden paddle is used to extract the mold patties. Quickly the two men then take small pencil like picks, poking the hole created by the palm frond, and swirling the still hot and malleable bead in its little mold pocket to make it as round as possible before it hardens. The mold patties then sit on the sandy floor for at least an hour before the beads are tapped out, and then washed in sandy water to remove clay residue before painting and stringing. Our last stop was an area where two women sat stringing beads into bracelets and necklaces. Quite a process! Having seen the whole shin-dig Kwadjo showed us a painting of women decked in beads, explaining that beads are used in many Krobo traditions, most notably marriage. Before marriage, there is a ceremony where the woman is covered in beads and paraded around, apparently to show that she is truly a virgin… though I’m not sure how the two concepts are tied. We also learned that strings of small beads are looped around girl babies’ waists, and remain with them for life… to “create a nice shape” according to Kwadjo. I actually saw a few babies with beads around their tummies and thighs at post-natal day at the clinic last week, but Doris and the moms’ said that was to help them know if the baby was gaining weight. Other beads, like the large beads at the center of many Ghanaian necklaces, symbolize someone’s wealth. These beads, called “bottom beads” are said to indicate someone’s means as the nicer and more expensive or unique your bead is the better off you must be. Kwadjo’s bottom bead was a striped nearly perfect replica Ghanaian flag. Apparently that’s a pretty bling bottom bead to which he is very attached. We capped off our Cedi bead outing at their little store, and then piled back into the taxi’s to return to Mampong, surprised and thrilled with how the day turned out.
Back in Mampong, we stayed at the swanky digs that house our fellow MHIRT students. They are staying in a lodge with a dozen or so rooms, that are empty most of the time. They pretty much have the place to themselves, including a housekeeper who has adopted them as her sons. We rented a room for a pricey 50 cedi, but split it 7 ways. The room had two twin beds pushed together with a large comforter spread over top. We sleep four in the bed, Keesha roughed it in a lounge chair, and two others stole Alex’s bed, leaving him to share with Nick.
Along with a handful of young guys they work with, we spent the evening watching England play the USA in their first world cup match. The guys are all football (soccer) nuts—as are most Ghanaians. For those of us less avid soccer fans, local spirits were provided to aid in the entertainment. The guys are working on a herbal medicine study at the Mampong center—the local alcohol they whipped out is made by the center to help to generate funds for research! Drinking for a cause anyone? I tried a little half Dixie cup of Tonic Wine and Cocoa Liquor… which tasted vaguely like cough syrup, and went down accompanied by a similar scrunchy face. The crew then capped off the night with an impromptu outdoor dance party, alternating Ghanaian and American dance hits and dance moves.
We woke up Sunday morning to our first hot shower in 5 weeks and French toast courtesy of our MHIRT student hosts! The shower in the room had a little box mounted on the wall which could be switched on to warm the water en route to the sprayer—combine with the French toast, it made it a little hard to tare ourselves away from Mampong! Accompanied by Ajab, and Wisdom (who works at the herbal center) we spent the morning on tro tros back to Accra. Every roadstop was mobbed with hawkers selling Ghanaian flags, noise makers, bandanas, t-shirts, and every other possible bit of Ghanaian paraphernalia one could possibly sport to support the country in its first world cup match of the tournament Sunday. Not only is soccer THE sport here, but this world cup is particularly special as it is the first one to be held on African soil (its occurring over the course of the month in South Africa). The hype has been strong since we arrived, but Sunday it exploded. Since Friday when matches started everytime a match is playing as we pass through towns people are clustered in crowds on tip toes outside little shops that happen to have a TV or radio supported by a rickety antenna. 30 or 40 people can be amass around a single tiny snowy TV, all completely immersed. After spending the morning attending church with Ajab in Accra, and picking up more consent forms from Kofi, we hopped a tro tro ride back to Asamankese just as Ghana started its first match, a game against Serbia. We rode with the radio blaring commentary in Twi, and just as we prepared to leave Asamankese for Boudoa the town erupted! Ghana apparently scored in a penalty kick and everyone went crazy! People jumped and honked, celebrating on the streets. We rolled out, still with the radio blasting, and later, when the driver started laying on the horn and pumping his fists out the window, we learned that Ghana had won the match 1-0. As we passed through little villages the towns people were jumping up and down on the side of their mud hut towns, signaling number one with their pumping hands, and running in jubilation alongside the honking bus! The win made Ghana the first African team to win a world cup match on African soil! Cause for major celebration in Ghana!
A little before dark on Sunday night we hop off the party bus outside the staff village. I had left a pot soaking in the sink while we were away. Upon arriving home one of the first things I did was head to scrub out the pot, plunging my hand into the water and stifling a scream when a 4 inch lizard leaped out. Apparently he was vacationing in our sink while we were away… welcome back to life in Akwatia!
Now that we’re fairly at home at the clinic, work is getting increasingly entertaining. The crew of six or seven nurses, ward assistants and midwives is the same day in and day out, giving us a chance to get familiar with everyone. The group seems to enjoy having us around, if not for the change in routine, then to razz us. To their credit they are still trying to teach us useful phrases in Twi, despite my consistent inability to use it. Sometimes I worry they’re pulling classic ‘trick the foreigner’ games— I’m pretty sure one of these days, if not already, they’ll tell me a phrase means one thing, while really having me say something ridiculous and inappropriate… not that I would know, as anytime I try to say anything in Twi people laugh! Obrunie fail.
While we anticipated the language jests, we didn’t anticipate the difference in physical boundaries that would emerge out of our relationship with the nurses. It may sound a little strange coming from me, a well known lovely and hugging friend, but Keesha and I were thrown for a bit of a loop by how non-existent the physical friend boundaries seem to be. The other 4 or so 20-something females that work at the clinic are very touchy-feely. When they come in in the morning, they often slide in very close, asking us how we are while stroking our arms and legs and sometimes poor Keesha’s belly! My week was capped off by one of the nurses cupping my boob in front of the clinic crowd and saying “small small”. Really!? I hadn’t noticed! Oh my… Anyway, the point is, the 20-somethings (all single) act similarly together… and now that I’m attuned to it I’ve noticed similar behavior between some men, and even seen several grown men walking hand and hand—all of which seems incredibly ironic to me, given how staunchly homophobic the society in general is. The two guys on our trip for example, had to rent separate rooms for the summer as two grown men sharing a room is forbidden at many establishments in Ghana. Apparently copping a non-consensual feel or a little PDA is fine, but only as friends of course.
That aside, the week was cut short as we ran out of Twi consent forms for the women to sign. Printing is a bit of a challenge. All of our printing is being done in Accra, so we ended up taking Friday off to head back that way. Our day started early Friday morning with me trying to hail a tro tro to Asamankese (Asa). The driveway to the apartment is situated on the back of a little hill. Tro tros to Asa come flying over the hill—much like hailing a cab, on rural roads you just throw your arm out as the tro tro approaches to signal wanting a ride. In addition to a driver, the tro tro is manned by a guy at the side door who has the job of spotting people flagging down rides, collecting money and making change, figuring out where people want to get off, and essentially holding the rickety side door on the van. If the van has space they’ll stop when you flag them, if not they’ll wave at you and pass. Unlike taxis there is no negotiating the price, and unlike in the cities it’s pretty self explanatory where the tro tro is going… there’s only one road. I had yet another Obrunie moment standing on the road, trying to wave down a tro tro Friday. The tro tro sped past, clearly with empty seats. The door man, referred to as “mate” by passengers, did an obvious double take as I flagged him down, very slowly realizing I wanted a ride bringing the van to a screeching halt several hundred yards later. I did my best hobble-run to the tro tro in the walking cast and off we went. In Asa we bee lined it for the same spot in the market where we picked up a tro tro to Accra last time, and sure enough, there was another tro tro to Accra in the exact same spot being jam packed. More impressive organized chaos!
At any tro tro station (a market or alcove where various tro tros clear out their cars and pick up a full load of passengers) there’s a whole throng of sellers that mill around the tro tro as it fills, trying to sell water, snacks and various odds and ends to passengers. My purchases at Asa was a delightful surprise—there are these cold pink plastic packets that I’d seen people buy (the size of popsicle packages), and in the rising sun I decided to give them a go. The packages turned out to be Fanyogo—essentially frozen strawberry yogurt. You bite the corner of the packages off, just like with the bags of water, and then suck the contents out. Fanyogo is my new favorite Ghanaian thing. I can’t believe I missed out on the closest thing to yogurt for the first five weeks! In addition to eating street food with the bravery of someone who has yet to suffer from traveler’s diarrhea (knocking on wood hard!!), we’ve now switched over completely to bag water (oh sush, hear me out on this one mom!). Not only is it far more available (pretty sure we almost bought the stores in Akwatia out of bottles…) but it is much cheaper and readily available! For one cedi, we can buy enough bag water to fill 11, 1.5 liter bottles, saving us 10 cedi—there are even bags made by the same company that we were buying bottles from! The revelation that the good bag water doesn’t taste bad has probably strangely helped my health as I’ve gotten back to drinking a lot more water, and cured the afternoon headaches and drowsiness that plagued my dehydrated pre-bag water self. It’s also really handy to drink in tro tros, as at any town or junction, sellers, often girls, have bowls of bag water on their heads for purchase. Often the tro tros start moving during the buying of the water, and the girls run ago side the tro tros somehow balancing the bowls on their heads while fishing out bags and handing them through tro tro windows, while the passenger passes out a 5 peswae piece or drops it for them… it gets even more complicated when they’re dashing along making change. The bags are 500 mls, and always cool, kept that way by the stocking coolers on the roadside. Two fill my nalgene bottle and I’m ready to roll!
The tro tro we picked up at Asa made a roadside stop a few miles into the journey. The driver and mate opened the back doors and jimmed three large barrels of liquid (smelled like moonshine?) and some palm nut clusters behind the back seat. As one might imagine there isn’t exactly ample cargo space in a tro tro, and in many situations, including this one, the load stick out far beyond the bottom floor, so ropes are used to tie the back doors around the cargo. Once we started moving we had an added surprise… Keesha felt something move under her seat, and we realized we had a new passenger—a little goat! The poor guy bumped and bounced all the way to Accra standing splay legged under the back seat, facing backwards, getting even more of a thrill ride than those of us in the real seats! I’m starting to think the appropriate souvenir from Ghana would be a goat…
So we’re trucking along with our little goat friend, passing through the tiered construction zone I described in a previous post when the tro tro pulls over. A few people get out and I’m thinking it’s just a typical drop off. Then more people get out… then it’s just Keesha and I who are urged to follow suit. I still don’t know exactly what happened, but our best guess is that we ran out of fuel, either way the whole boat load of us was mid-construction zone, a good 10 miles outside Accra without a ride. Words were exchanged in Twi that we didn’t understanding. The group started trying to wave down tro tros looking for a spot or two—occasionally one would pull over and this herd of people would run to it, literally shoving to get on. Keesha and I hung back—stifled by the hilarity of the situation, socially stunned, and not at all wanting to get separated in a tro tro shoving match. Needless to say, we were the last two to get a tro tro, but after 20 minutes or so we found one with two spots, leaving our old driver, tro tro, goat and moonshine sitting patiently in the middle of the dirt construction zone, waiting for the mate to return, hopefully with a quick fix.
We blindly headed into Accra, not really knowing what station we’d be dropped at, but knowing it was better than a construction zone. Like any big city there are many subsections- you could get dropped off in Montreal in Mile End and still be a long ways from Westmount. The mate agreed to drop us at Circle, from where we thought we could find yet another ride to our destination, but the spot we were dropped at looked nothing like the pick-up point at Circle where we’d been before. Now completely in go with the flow mode, we wandered in what seemed to be the direction of the market at circle. We wound through sturdy wooden stalls with narrow isle pathways, human traffic passing neatly left to left, shoulder to shoulder past venders. We followed the widest path, and headed toward the road running parallel to where we were dropped off. Low and behold we emerged at the back of the tro tro station we were familiar with. At this point, we were pretty impressed with ourselves. We wandered the market for a while longer, looking for tie-and-die Ghanaian fabric, and ogling the odds and ends. We then caught a shared taxi to the area called Osu where Keesha wanted to visit a store called Global Mamas to find Ghana style baby stuff for her new niece. Without an address (not that they really exist) or directions beyond “it’s in Osu” we were at the mercy of the directions we received on the street. The directions involved Keesha buying some bracelets from the guy who helped us--but we got there! After Osu it was off to Art Center- a market dedicated completely to Ghanaian arts and crafts. Unlike most American arts and crafts shows, this place is open everyday and the vast majority of sellers are not the people who made the crafts. The stalls are permanent-- each vendor has a 10’ by 10’ spot jam-packed with goods. Lots of hand carved bowls, and wooden figures, oil paintings, died cloth pictures, masks, drums, beadwork, and iron work. Pumped up on our ability to take on Ghana, we walked in well prepared for the unavoidable mobbing by the sellers. People grabbing your hands, stalking you down, telling you to come to their shop, and buy this or that. We used our Ghanaian names (Efia and Ya) as handy pseudonyms, claimed not to have phones when asked for our numbers, and told everyone up front we were window shopping… and we survived! We walked through isle after isle of stalls—all of which really started to blend together. Much of it is beautiful woodwork, but many of the all the sellers have similar if not identical pieces, such that the novelty of it starts to wear off despite the fact that it is cool African art. Not wanting to tot too much with us, we made a few mental notes and escaped Art Center without buying anything. Keesha traded five hugs for a died cloth wall hanging… but that’s a whole ‘nother story! The successful day was capped off by spotting a cluster of tro tros nearby and realizing we were near Tema Station, where we were able to easily get a ride to Korle Bu, to spend the night at the hostel.
Saturday morning we hit the road early, returning to Tema Station with Nicole (the MPH student from Brown) and Ella (a MHIRT student). From Tema we found a tro tro headed to Mampong. After a bit of anxiety caused by language barriers and an inability to confirm that we were getting on a tro tro to the closer city of Mampong, not the Mampong 6 hours away in the Ashanti region, we settled in for a nice ride. We went through a fairly well off area in Accra that we’d never been to, and then headed out into a lush valley, rising up like Blueridge foothills onto the Aburi escarpment, providing beautiful views of luscious valleys of patchy jungle, interspersed with grassy meadows. The highway up the escarpment was smooth pavement, and was even flanked with guard rails—we were floored. Scattered along the road there were fancy gaited homes, creating a ritzier feel than we’ve gotten anywhere else so far. Later, Wisdom told us that the area was previously a strong hold of British colonizers, claiming the area of such beautiful views for their own settlement. Ella had been to Mampong before, but their tro tro had taken a different route, so we were again clueless about where to get off. Worried about ending up going past Mampong, as the tro tro was continuing on, we eventually picked a spot and piled out.
In Mampong we planned to meet up with the Michigan crew, explore a guide book recommended bead factory nearby, and generally see the area. Megan, Katie and Ajab, the other Michigan Public Health students had got a bit turned around getting to Mampong, so with time to spare and hungry tummies we hopped a cab, hoping to eat at a place Ella remembered from her previous trip. The area she’d eaten in before was inside the Aburi Gardens which somehow they’d waltzed in and out of without paying the visitors fee. Not wanting to pay 5 cedi a head to just walk into the gardens to go to the restaurant, we headed into the little village of Aburi next to the gardens to try to find food. Instead, we walked straight into a funeral. All around the dirt road entrance to the hillside town were plastic chairs packed with locals dressed head to toe in black and red. A little tent was set up, and huge speakers were broadcasting to the mourners and across the town. Up onto the main road the black and red attire continued. Men in black wraps, black pants and shirts with a red tie, or something black with a gang looking strip of red fabric tied karate kid like across their forehead. Women wore red and black long fitted skirts and top set, sown in a traditional starchy material. A little thrown off by the entrance we walked up onto the main road of the town and after a bit of searching found a whole in the wall (no really a whole in the wall) spot to get food. The choices were banku or rice balls. We all opted for rice balls, which appeared in a hot red soupy sauce with a piece of chicken in a big bowl. The rice balls were basically overcooked rice mashed in ball form, which you then pitch pieces off of with your right hand and dip into the soup or grab a piece of chicken. The place didn’t have any silverware… they’ve chosen to serve two dishes that don’t require it—brilliant! So, we did our best to scrub up with the water and soap provided and dug in. With cokes all around the four of us ate for 5.7 cedi, and again, lived to tell about it. Ella even braved the bathroom… which was I guess better than peeing behind a bus which she’d resorted to earlier, but apparently was just a room with a dirt floor on a bit of a slant… no hole or anything. Dehydration helped me out this time ;)
Back on the street in search of the girls, we had to step aside as a blaring siren cleared the road for the funeral procession. The whole throng of mourners came through the town, led by several dancing and singing women, a car blasting a siren, then black ambulance/station wagon/coffin carrying car with a flashing light on top, with obviously devastated close relatives balling while holding onto the car and walking along beside it, immersed in a swamp of at least a hundred of similarly dressed followers walking along with the caravan. A very sobering and chilling site to say the least.
After finding the rest of our crew, we tried to round up a tro tro to Somanya, the town with the bead factory. According to the guide book “tro tros from Aburi to Somanya are easy to find”… I’m not sure what towns the author thought he was writing about, but he was way off. After gathering a crowd of taxi and tro tro drivers, we were told that if we wanted to go by tro tro we would need to return to Accra, and get a tro tro there… despite the fact that, again according to the guide book, this place was less than 30 minutes from Aburi in the direction opposite from Accra. A random Ghanaian who helped us find the tro tro station acted as the go-between translator telling the group of drivers where we were trying to go, while we stood befuddled. He paced between the drivers and us, negotiating a price and vehicle for the seven of us. After some serious bargaining we caved and agreed to pay 60 cedis between the seven of us for 2 cabs to drive us to Somanya, wait for us there, and then drive us back. The trip turned out to be a solid 30 minutes along ridges of the escarpment, including several switch back roads, and breath-taking views of jungle valleys. We did our best to follow our route in the cryptic guidebook map, though without labeled towns or roads, or drivers who spoke much English, it was a feat. Eventually we realized the drivers had no idea where they were taking us. I convinced the guy to pull off the road and ask for directions after some elaborate hand gestures signaling, “hey dude, I reeeeally think we passed it” (apparently Ghanaian men don’t like to ask for directions either… ;)). After more than a few times cruising up and down the road… yes, the same road over and over, we did a more significant back track and amazingly found a sign reading “Cedi Beads” posted on the roadside, pointing to a dirt track. The road was a washed out dirt path, rough enough to scrap the taxi bottom several times, but by some miracle it did indeed lead to Cedi Beads.
The taxis pulled into a secluded quiet fenced compound with a few modest single story cement dwellings, and thatched roof work spaces. Moments later we were met by a spry older gentleman, who greeted us warmly as if he’d been expecting us all day. He whisked us to a thatched roof outbuilding where plastic chairs were arranged around a table of raw materials and tools. He introduced himself as Kwadjo Gomoo, a lifelong beadmaker. He offered to lead us through the process of making beads before showing us to the shop. We learned that bead making is a Ghanaian tradition rooted with the Krobo people. Most people in the Somanya area are Krobo, including Kwadjo (whereas for example, most people in Akwatia are Akan). He then launched into explaining the different beads, and how each type is made. I’m sure I’ll badly butcher his talk, but basically, he described five bead types made by his people. They ranged from brightly colored patchy balls with the appearance of melded playdough, to frosted looking glass beads, to a variety of painted, glazed and patterned opaque types. To make most beads glass is crushed into a fine powder and sorted by colors. Then molds made out of clay harvested from termite mounds are used as the base for the beads’ shapes. Driving through the country we often see giant (5+ feet tall) ant hill looking red clay masses—turns out they are termite mounds. Kwadjo explained that the termites burrow deep into the ground and pull out well sorted red clay perfect to withstand the high temperatures. The beadmakers harvest this clay, shape it into molds (clay disks, with half sphere indents of various shapes and sizes), and then coat the molds in a finer, softer clay powder that keeps the beads from sticking to the mold. Apparently with daily firings the molds last a few months before breaking. Though it varies by bead type, essentially the crushed glass is poured into the molds (layering colors as the artist chooses) around a centered stalk of a palm frond, which burns in the kiln and leaves a hole in the center of the bead. Most of the glass used nowadays comes from discarded glass bottles, and all the tools used are scrapped together odds and ends- the side of a milo can molded into a sifter, old bicycle spokes used to prop beads up for painting, ect. Once the mold is filled it is ready for the kiln. Our group moved under Kwadjo’s instruction to another area shaded by a thatched roof. There sat two guys with the world cup cranking on the radio, squatting in front of a flaming kiln. The kiln itself was a clay dome in the center of the hut, stoked by long sticks of wood pushed in gradually as they are eaten away. The dome is open on two sides, exposing a rack, where six or so molds at a time cook to perfection. Most bead types are in the fire for 45 minutes, before a long wooden paddle is used to extract the mold patties. Quickly the two men then take small pencil like picks, poking the hole created by the palm frond, and swirling the still hot and malleable bead in its little mold pocket to make it as round as possible before it hardens. The mold patties then sit on the sandy floor for at least an hour before the beads are tapped out, and then washed in sandy water to remove clay residue before painting and stringing. Our last stop was an area where two women sat stringing beads into bracelets and necklaces. Quite a process! Having seen the whole shin-dig Kwadjo showed us a painting of women decked in beads, explaining that beads are used in many Krobo traditions, most notably marriage. Before marriage, there is a ceremony where the woman is covered in beads and paraded around, apparently to show that she is truly a virgin… though I’m not sure how the two concepts are tied. We also learned that strings of small beads are looped around girl babies’ waists, and remain with them for life… to “create a nice shape” according to Kwadjo. I actually saw a few babies with beads around their tummies and thighs at post-natal day at the clinic last week, but Doris and the moms’ said that was to help them know if the baby was gaining weight. Other beads, like the large beads at the center of many Ghanaian necklaces, symbolize someone’s wealth. These beads, called “bottom beads” are said to indicate someone’s means as the nicer and more expensive or unique your bead is the better off you must be. Kwadjo’s bottom bead was a striped nearly perfect replica Ghanaian flag. Apparently that’s a pretty bling bottom bead to which he is very attached. We capped off our Cedi bead outing at their little store, and then piled back into the taxi’s to return to Mampong, surprised and thrilled with how the day turned out.
Back in Mampong, we stayed at the swanky digs that house our fellow MHIRT students. They are staying in a lodge with a dozen or so rooms, that are empty most of the time. They pretty much have the place to themselves, including a housekeeper who has adopted them as her sons. We rented a room for a pricey 50 cedi, but split it 7 ways. The room had two twin beds pushed together with a large comforter spread over top. We sleep four in the bed, Keesha roughed it in a lounge chair, and two others stole Alex’s bed, leaving him to share with Nick.
Along with a handful of young guys they work with, we spent the evening watching England play the USA in their first world cup match. The guys are all football (soccer) nuts—as are most Ghanaians. For those of us less avid soccer fans, local spirits were provided to aid in the entertainment. The guys are working on a herbal medicine study at the Mampong center—the local alcohol they whipped out is made by the center to help to generate funds for research! Drinking for a cause anyone? I tried a little half Dixie cup of Tonic Wine and Cocoa Liquor… which tasted vaguely like cough syrup, and went down accompanied by a similar scrunchy face. The crew then capped off the night with an impromptu outdoor dance party, alternating Ghanaian and American dance hits and dance moves.
We woke up Sunday morning to our first hot shower in 5 weeks and French toast courtesy of our MHIRT student hosts! The shower in the room had a little box mounted on the wall which could be switched on to warm the water en route to the sprayer—combine with the French toast, it made it a little hard to tare ourselves away from Mampong! Accompanied by Ajab, and Wisdom (who works at the herbal center) we spent the morning on tro tros back to Accra. Every roadstop was mobbed with hawkers selling Ghanaian flags, noise makers, bandanas, t-shirts, and every other possible bit of Ghanaian paraphernalia one could possibly sport to support the country in its first world cup match of the tournament Sunday. Not only is soccer THE sport here, but this world cup is particularly special as it is the first one to be held on African soil (its occurring over the course of the month in South Africa). The hype has been strong since we arrived, but Sunday it exploded. Since Friday when matches started everytime a match is playing as we pass through towns people are clustered in crowds on tip toes outside little shops that happen to have a TV or radio supported by a rickety antenna. 30 or 40 people can be amass around a single tiny snowy TV, all completely immersed. After spending the morning attending church with Ajab in Accra, and picking up more consent forms from Kofi, we hopped a tro tro ride back to Asamankese just as Ghana started its first match, a game against Serbia. We rode with the radio blaring commentary in Twi, and just as we prepared to leave Asamankese for Boudoa the town erupted! Ghana apparently scored in a penalty kick and everyone went crazy! People jumped and honked, celebrating on the streets. We rolled out, still with the radio blasting, and later, when the driver started laying on the horn and pumping his fists out the window, we learned that Ghana had won the match 1-0. As we passed through little villages the towns people were jumping up and down on the side of their mud hut towns, signaling number one with their pumping hands, and running in jubilation alongside the honking bus! The win made Ghana the first African team to win a world cup match on African soil! Cause for major celebration in Ghana!
A little before dark on Sunday night we hop off the party bus outside the staff village. I had left a pot soaking in the sink while we were away. Upon arriving home one of the first things I did was head to scrub out the pot, plunging my hand into the water and stifling a scream when a 4 inch lizard leaped out. Apparently he was vacationing in our sink while we were away… welcome back to life in Akwatia!
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Settling Into Akwatia
We’ve completed our first real week of work and are starting to settle into a routine here in Akwatia. Each morning we wake up at 6, greeted by wet red dirt, inevitably watered by the evening rains. Even at 6, the air is humid despite the rain. I boil a cup of water in the tin mug we found in our cupboard, use a towel to pick it up off our two burner gas counter-top stove and then add a coveted packed of Nescafe to make a mixture resembling morning coffee. After a quick meal, often groundnut paste (peanut butter –ish) on toast or eggs, we’re out the door to meet the bus to the hospital campus, which leaves at 7:05 sharp. We ride into the hospital with a mix of staff that stays in the St. Dominick’s ‘staff village’ where we live, as well as a bunch of ridiculously cute tiny children dressed in their school uniforms—yellow shirts tucked into green shorts for the boys, and yellow dresses for the girls. Each school has their own bright and distinct uniform, so as we drive into town we’re met by a collage of children- some in pink and purple, other in checkers, heading one way or another, depending on their level in school and destination.
Our apartment is surrounded by what I thought were forest like orchards of limes- turns out they are oranges in lime’s clothing—they don’t turn orange, but are a pinky color inside. After a few minutes, life other then the jungle and oranges builds slowly. The sky is well lit by the time we’re headed to work but morning fog still hangs over the jungles that rise up to our East. Aside from the homes and road side stands scattered on the road, just beyond the road the surroundings fade quickly into dense jungle- no clearings aside from what touches the road. A valley falls to the East of the road, giving us a beautiful view of a horizon of rising hills, appearing wild and untouched from afar, covered in a cascade of wild palm trees, eucalyptus trees and rich green foliage, soaking up the daily rains of the rainy season.
To the west, the forest is thick, but without a valley our view is limited to the roadside. We pass a sign in a clearing that says “Ghana Diamonds Consolidated” marking a path leading to a gate, beyond which are the small hills containing the Diamonds that brought Akwatia into existence—making some foreigners or government officials wealthy with money that the average citizen from Akwatia will never see. We hear the mines aren’t running at the moment. After dropping the troop of children at a school on the edge of town where structures start to cluster along the road, we enter into the town of Boudoa (pronounced Bode-dwe-ah). Boudoa flanks the hospital grounds to the East, sandwiching St. Dominic’s between it and the slightly more populous Akwatia, a mile or so to the West. Boudoa is really just a T junction—our bus turns West at the T toward St. Dominic’s, whereas if it continued Northward in 5 or so miles it would run into the town of Kade, a larger town with a market we’ve visited. Like most towns we’ve seen, larger than villages reached only by footpath, or clusters of mud huts, Boudoa’s structures line the road for a block or two on either side of the T junction. Homes and vendors are short ground level buildings made of scrapped together wood, or cement blocks, with well rusted patchy sheet metals roofs. The doors are barely a stone throw from the road, sunk down in the red dirt, a few feet below the level of the road. The edges of the structures are eroded away by strong rains, separated from taxi’s and tro tros by only a cement ditch. We pass a few spots where old cars or taxi’s are being worked on in lots, a shop where four or so women sit at sowing machines under an overhang hard at work, and some building that have obviously changed hands—like ‘God’s Grace Beauty Salon’ painted on the ledge below the overhang of a roof from which greasy auto parts hang.
At 7 am a number of people are out and about—kids off to school, vendors settling up shop, adults loitering on stoops, fixing taxi’s on the roadside, balancing bundles of wood on their heads, and heading off to work. We pass a small gas station at the T, a rough and tumble bike repair shop, with twenty something age boys sitting on crates surrounded my old tires, patched tubes, and well greased and gunked spare parts. I keep threatening to buy a bike, but without a helmet for hundreds of miles, and given the road conditions, I should probably steer clear of that as I don’t really think I can stand to be on crutches again! Past the bike shop, there is a little worksite on one side of the road with piles of a brown substance that people shovel into big cylindrical grates which are then spun… from the looks of it, the churning goat droppings…. I’m assuming for use as fuel?
We turn West at the T, and continue another half mile or so, up a gentle incline, to the hospital entrance, poised at the top of the hill. Across the road from the hospital entrance women line the road, manning our version of grocery stores. Stalls with shelves with a scattering of canned goods, buckets of loose rice and beans, bottled water and minerals (pop), and the typically smattering of plastic buckets and odds and ends. Just outside the hospital gait, a cluster of tro tros clutter the roadside, dropping off visitors and patients, and shouting out their destinations to pack their seats on the way out. An overhang next to the gait is clearly labeled “Visitors Lounge”—aside from the strict visiting hours a few times a day, the lounge is filled with waiting relatives. Mostly women, clutching small baskets, covered in towels, carrying food for their loved ones at the hospital. Goats and chickens weave in and around the waiting crowd, stealing scraps from the pregnant woman who peels watermelons and pineapples next to the roadside… she gets a lot of business from me! Our bus, honks and the pedestrians slowly saunter out of the way, as the guards open the gait to the hospital—only a few vehicles are allowed to actually drive onto the grounds.
We’re dropped just inside the gait at the entrance to the main hospital building. Most wards are separate free standing buildings—most probably 60’ by 100’ or so in size. The antenatal clinic is off the main road, behind the children’s ward, in front of the overflowing nursery school- throughout the day and on some of the recordings you can here shrill voices singing “this is my neck, this is my nose, this is my stomach! Etc”. The clinic is open air on the two long sides of the building, with walls, and two cubical style rooms at either end. Wooden benches line the middle open air portion, where women sit waiting their check up. When we arrive at 7:15 there are always a good 15 or 20 women already seated. The nurses, midwives and ward assistants set out their things—wiping off the large main table at one end of the clinic, covering it with plastic, and setting out biscuits and bagged water for purchase, as well as the clinic record books. The women carry their antenatal pregnancy booklets with them—their records from each visit are kept in identical red booklets, containing a bit of information about pregnancy and notes from each check up. The women stack their booklets, and one of the nurses sits and makes note of each women in attendance. Each morning starts with a sing song prayer, led by a nurse, then a silent prayer, followed by an educational talk on some aspect of antenatal care, and then a chance for the women to buy the various supplies they are expected to bring with them for delivery. Through all of this Keesha and I sit in our little cubical area, observing the routine, offering to help set up, writing, attempting to get our USB internet stick to cooperate (which it does relatively frequently), and setting out our things for the day. The women are called up one by one to be weighed, and on Monday’s the throng of post-natal women line up to weight their 2 week old naked babies in a hanging sling suspended from the doorway. A table in the corner acts as the vaccination station, which one of our supposed translators (who is in theory a nurse on vacation, but is definitely working) sits at giving women and infants shots, just outside the door to our cubical. The women are at the clinic for hours—many arrived well before 7 AM, and at 9 are just starting to be weighed. They are called one by one to each station, seeing a midwife for a physical exam, then being sent to the lab for urine and blood tests. Midwives can write referrals to a medical doctor or to the dispensary if they detect a problem, but a medical doctor is not on hand and typically women have to come back in a day or two to see them if they are not admitted.
We work in our little room, with cement walls and windows on two sides, our window shutters oscillating between wide open hoping for a breeze, and shut in an attempt to drown out the noise that muffles our tape recordings of the interviews. Our room doubles as a storage space, houses the freezer with vaccines, a pile of old records, and I think normally serves as an education station. Instead, while we are here, when a women more than 27 weeks pregnant finishes her physical exam, she is funneled toward our room, where she is asked to take part in an interview—often by the time women start funneling toward us it’s well after 9 AM. The women come in quick succession, much faster than we can interview them, frustrating our translator who struggles to understand that we want to have quality interviews, where we take our time and really hear all that the women have to say, not just as many interviews as possible. The back to back interviews, in our little room, without a fan, heating as the sun continues to rise, go until around 1 PM, when we try to call it quits to avoid decreasing quality with increasing exhaustion and hunger!
We leave the clinic, picking up water or any needed and available groceries outside the hospital, catching a taxis back to the apartment for 2 cedi. The afternoon usually involves a much needed shower, while the cold water still feels good on our sweaty selves! A break for some reading or writing, and then a few hours of transcription work: re-listening to the day’s interviews and typing them out. By 9 or 10 I’m flat out in bed!
Aside from a few outings to the markets that pretty much sums up the week! Aside from accidently telling an old lady selling fabrics “I love you” when pressured by Doris to converse with her using our four sentences of Twi, the outings were fairly uneventful. We’re spending this weekend in Akwatia, saving a bit of money (things in Ghana are cheaper than at home, but it’s adding up!) and catching up on a bit of transcription. Hopefully next weekend we’ll be off and about. My only venture out today was to go into Boudoa to get water, as we were down to a liter between the two of us. Given that we live in the boonies, separated from town, it’s a bit of a challenge to catch a ride from here. The tro tros and taxis that go by are typically packed full—they don’t leave a town until all the seats are taken, so unless someone jumps ship before the major drop off, there isn’t room for an extra passenger. I stood out at the roadside for a good 30 minutes today to no avail, and finally hitched a ride when someone in the staff village who has a car drove past me with an open seat and offered me a ride on his way in! In addition to flubbing up my attempt to greet the watermelon lady in Twi, I was able to pick up four large bottles of water, a loaf of bread, 4 eggs, a paw-paw (papaya), and half a pineapple at the roadside stands—should do the trick until the weekend is over!
Our apartment is surrounded by what I thought were forest like orchards of limes- turns out they are oranges in lime’s clothing—they don’t turn orange, but are a pinky color inside. After a few minutes, life other then the jungle and oranges builds slowly. The sky is well lit by the time we’re headed to work but morning fog still hangs over the jungles that rise up to our East. Aside from the homes and road side stands scattered on the road, just beyond the road the surroundings fade quickly into dense jungle- no clearings aside from what touches the road. A valley falls to the East of the road, giving us a beautiful view of a horizon of rising hills, appearing wild and untouched from afar, covered in a cascade of wild palm trees, eucalyptus trees and rich green foliage, soaking up the daily rains of the rainy season.
To the west, the forest is thick, but without a valley our view is limited to the roadside. We pass a sign in a clearing that says “Ghana Diamonds Consolidated” marking a path leading to a gate, beyond which are the small hills containing the Diamonds that brought Akwatia into existence—making some foreigners or government officials wealthy with money that the average citizen from Akwatia will never see. We hear the mines aren’t running at the moment. After dropping the troop of children at a school on the edge of town where structures start to cluster along the road, we enter into the town of Boudoa (pronounced Bode-dwe-ah). Boudoa flanks the hospital grounds to the East, sandwiching St. Dominic’s between it and the slightly more populous Akwatia, a mile or so to the West. Boudoa is really just a T junction—our bus turns West at the T toward St. Dominic’s, whereas if it continued Northward in 5 or so miles it would run into the town of Kade, a larger town with a market we’ve visited. Like most towns we’ve seen, larger than villages reached only by footpath, or clusters of mud huts, Boudoa’s structures line the road for a block or two on either side of the T junction. Homes and vendors are short ground level buildings made of scrapped together wood, or cement blocks, with well rusted patchy sheet metals roofs. The doors are barely a stone throw from the road, sunk down in the red dirt, a few feet below the level of the road. The edges of the structures are eroded away by strong rains, separated from taxi’s and tro tros by only a cement ditch. We pass a few spots where old cars or taxi’s are being worked on in lots, a shop where four or so women sit at sowing machines under an overhang hard at work, and some building that have obviously changed hands—like ‘God’s Grace Beauty Salon’ painted on the ledge below the overhang of a roof from which greasy auto parts hang.
At 7 am a number of people are out and about—kids off to school, vendors settling up shop, adults loitering on stoops, fixing taxi’s on the roadside, balancing bundles of wood on their heads, and heading off to work. We pass a small gas station at the T, a rough and tumble bike repair shop, with twenty something age boys sitting on crates surrounded my old tires, patched tubes, and well greased and gunked spare parts. I keep threatening to buy a bike, but without a helmet for hundreds of miles, and given the road conditions, I should probably steer clear of that as I don’t really think I can stand to be on crutches again! Past the bike shop, there is a little worksite on one side of the road with piles of a brown substance that people shovel into big cylindrical grates which are then spun… from the looks of it, the churning goat droppings…. I’m assuming for use as fuel?
We turn West at the T, and continue another half mile or so, up a gentle incline, to the hospital entrance, poised at the top of the hill. Across the road from the hospital entrance women line the road, manning our version of grocery stores. Stalls with shelves with a scattering of canned goods, buckets of loose rice and beans, bottled water and minerals (pop), and the typically smattering of plastic buckets and odds and ends. Just outside the hospital gait, a cluster of tro tros clutter the roadside, dropping off visitors and patients, and shouting out their destinations to pack their seats on the way out. An overhang next to the gait is clearly labeled “Visitors Lounge”—aside from the strict visiting hours a few times a day, the lounge is filled with waiting relatives. Mostly women, clutching small baskets, covered in towels, carrying food for their loved ones at the hospital. Goats and chickens weave in and around the waiting crowd, stealing scraps from the pregnant woman who peels watermelons and pineapples next to the roadside… she gets a lot of business from me! Our bus, honks and the pedestrians slowly saunter out of the way, as the guards open the gait to the hospital—only a few vehicles are allowed to actually drive onto the grounds.
We’re dropped just inside the gait at the entrance to the main hospital building. Most wards are separate free standing buildings—most probably 60’ by 100’ or so in size. The antenatal clinic is off the main road, behind the children’s ward, in front of the overflowing nursery school- throughout the day and on some of the recordings you can here shrill voices singing “this is my neck, this is my nose, this is my stomach! Etc”. The clinic is open air on the two long sides of the building, with walls, and two cubical style rooms at either end. Wooden benches line the middle open air portion, where women sit waiting their check up. When we arrive at 7:15 there are always a good 15 or 20 women already seated. The nurses, midwives and ward assistants set out their things—wiping off the large main table at one end of the clinic, covering it with plastic, and setting out biscuits and bagged water for purchase, as well as the clinic record books. The women carry their antenatal pregnancy booklets with them—their records from each visit are kept in identical red booklets, containing a bit of information about pregnancy and notes from each check up. The women stack their booklets, and one of the nurses sits and makes note of each women in attendance. Each morning starts with a sing song prayer, led by a nurse, then a silent prayer, followed by an educational talk on some aspect of antenatal care, and then a chance for the women to buy the various supplies they are expected to bring with them for delivery. Through all of this Keesha and I sit in our little cubical area, observing the routine, offering to help set up, writing, attempting to get our USB internet stick to cooperate (which it does relatively frequently), and setting out our things for the day. The women are called up one by one to be weighed, and on Monday’s the throng of post-natal women line up to weight their 2 week old naked babies in a hanging sling suspended from the doorway. A table in the corner acts as the vaccination station, which one of our supposed translators (who is in theory a nurse on vacation, but is definitely working) sits at giving women and infants shots, just outside the door to our cubical. The women are at the clinic for hours—many arrived well before 7 AM, and at 9 are just starting to be weighed. They are called one by one to each station, seeing a midwife for a physical exam, then being sent to the lab for urine and blood tests. Midwives can write referrals to a medical doctor or to the dispensary if they detect a problem, but a medical doctor is not on hand and typically women have to come back in a day or two to see them if they are not admitted.
We work in our little room, with cement walls and windows on two sides, our window shutters oscillating between wide open hoping for a breeze, and shut in an attempt to drown out the noise that muffles our tape recordings of the interviews. Our room doubles as a storage space, houses the freezer with vaccines, a pile of old records, and I think normally serves as an education station. Instead, while we are here, when a women more than 27 weeks pregnant finishes her physical exam, she is funneled toward our room, where she is asked to take part in an interview—often by the time women start funneling toward us it’s well after 9 AM. The women come in quick succession, much faster than we can interview them, frustrating our translator who struggles to understand that we want to have quality interviews, where we take our time and really hear all that the women have to say, not just as many interviews as possible. The back to back interviews, in our little room, without a fan, heating as the sun continues to rise, go until around 1 PM, when we try to call it quits to avoid decreasing quality with increasing exhaustion and hunger!
We leave the clinic, picking up water or any needed and available groceries outside the hospital, catching a taxis back to the apartment for 2 cedi. The afternoon usually involves a much needed shower, while the cold water still feels good on our sweaty selves! A break for some reading or writing, and then a few hours of transcription work: re-listening to the day’s interviews and typing them out. By 9 or 10 I’m flat out in bed!
Aside from a few outings to the markets that pretty much sums up the week! Aside from accidently telling an old lady selling fabrics “I love you” when pressured by Doris to converse with her using our four sentences of Twi, the outings were fairly uneventful. We’re spending this weekend in Akwatia, saving a bit of money (things in Ghana are cheaper than at home, but it’s adding up!) and catching up on a bit of transcription. Hopefully next weekend we’ll be off and about. My only venture out today was to go into Boudoa to get water, as we were down to a liter between the two of us. Given that we live in the boonies, separated from town, it’s a bit of a challenge to catch a ride from here. The tro tros and taxis that go by are typically packed full—they don’t leave a town until all the seats are taken, so unless someone jumps ship before the major drop off, there isn’t room for an extra passenger. I stood out at the roadside for a good 30 minutes today to no avail, and finally hitched a ride when someone in the staff village who has a car drove past me with an open seat and offered me a ride on his way in! In addition to flubbing up my attempt to greet the watermelon lady in Twi, I was able to pick up four large bottles of water, a loaf of bread, 4 eggs, a paw-paw (papaya), and half a pineapple at the roadside stands—should do the trick until the weekend is over!
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
The 'Harry' Adventures of Efia
Keesha and I have been all over the map since my last post. When the intrepid adventurers last checked in we were in Akwatia trying to figure out our next move while the IRB finalized their approval for the study. We ended up finding out that official data collection date was on hold until Monday (yesterday), leaving us five days to play with.
We spent an afternoon at Kade market a few miles North of Akwatia. We were toured around by a young girl named Fransisca that we met at the apartment—she wound us through the wooden stalls housing sellers and their goods in crooked rows along dirt isles. Between piles of yams, yards of gorgeous hand died fabric traditional to Ghana, and of course the perquisite goat or two running loose, Francisca showed us treasures like the wooden tub and mallet used to mash fufu, giant snails good for roasting (shish-kabobs!), and a cold cocoa drink served in plastic baggies with straws sticking out, bought for 5 peswaes from kids running around the market with buckets of treats balanced on their heads. Wednesday morning, bright and early, Keesha and I were out on our street to attempt our first tro tro trip back toward Accra. Given our newly granted mini-vacation, our plan was to spend a few days at the beach and then a few days in Accra, where Keesha wanted to celebrate her 21st birthday (which is actually today!). The vague plan was to get a tro tro to Asamankese, a town about 15 miles from Akwatia in the direction of Accra, and then to find a tro tro headed either to Kokrobite or Accra. In Ghana, all roads lead to Accra, or so it seems, so the prospects of getting a ride out of Akwatia weren’t bad. By 7 AM we were in a tro tro Asamankese bound. In Asamankese, where a busy and aggressive market lines the main road, our tro tro unloaded and after a few “Obrunie obrunie where are you going?” and me answering “Accra” we were directed to the line for a tro tro to Accra. A tro tro pulled up, and we were signaled to get in first though we were clearly at the back of the line—one of the many times on the trip in where I really couldn’t tell if I was being treated differently because I am white, had crutches, or was being ridiculed or taken advantage of. I’m pretty sure we had a solid mix of all three going at various points. We piled in… fairly sure we were going to Accra, and vaguely hoping that when I asked the driver “Barrier junction” and he said “yes, yes” that that meant we might be dropped at the junction to Kokrobite. Either way we had secured a ride! A point for the travelers!
Our driver took a different route into Accra than the one we’d traveled before. This route featured a lot of beautiful hilly jungle scenery and skirted several large towns in greater Accra like. Keesha and I were squished into the first row of seats behind the diver, with our knees pressed up against the metal sheeting of the floor boards in front of us, making room for the 30 or so other passengers in the small van. The van made good time, and only caused me to grab Keesha’s arm and see my life flash before my eyes a few times. Poor Keesha, she was fairly traumatized by the trip, though I can’t say it was much different than I expected. In one of the large town near Accra, major road construction was being done to continue a nice road we’d traveled on for 10 or so miles. In America, in order to do road work, we construct an elaborate paved alternative routes. Not so in Ghana—I mean, the whole point is to pave the original road! The road work diverted traffic off the road onto dirt paths surrounding the construction in tiers, a lane or two going one way or another, then a step up a few feet and another dirt tier with more traffic. It seemed that traffic was going both ways on the tiers, but not in any order, as everyone is trying to avoid giant pot holes, and just get through the few miles of construction. There were times both leaving and getting to Accra, where we were the only vehicle on a particular tier going in whatever direction we were going—all the other cars were coming toward us. Ya know the cop shows where the bad guy goes the wrong way on the highway in a car chase? Kinda like that. But no worries mom, I’m alive and well to tell about it! All day it had looked like a storm, just before hitting Accra after 3 hours on the tro tro, the wind went Wizard of Oz, and the second we stepped out the sky opened in a torrential downpour. It made for a rather grumpy traveling duo, but after getting our bearings (as we were dropped in an area of town we didn’t know… definitely not at the junction the driver had said ‘yes yes’ too) we got back on track to the beach.
We attempted to go to a different town on the beach called Bojo, but discovered that it was a ritzy tourist day-destination with no place to stay and complete seclusion from anything beautiful beach that cost 5 cedi just to walk on—it was completely barren in the rain following the thunderstorm. Down on our luck, we paid a taxi driver a fee exceeding our combine fare by tro tro all day, to take us and my crutches a few miles down the road to our stand by beach spot, Kokrobite. My new Ghana “Happy Place”. We stayed at Big Milly’s Backyard where 26 cedi a night bought us a room with a double bed, mosquito netting, and an attached open air hideaway for showering by bucket. We happily stayed two nights, reading and walking on the beach, playing with the menagerie of adorable feral kittens, searching for sea shells, enjoying the bar and failing to apply enough sun screen. Though my shoulders are likely to be peeling until we leave, and my bum will have the outline of my bikini bottoms scorched into it for months, spending time on the beach was worth it. We met a few Brit’s doing great charitable work, got to play in the sand, and cleared our minds of the frustrations of waiting to get started on our research.
Friday morning, we headed back into Accra, where we crashed at the hostel and I ventured out for my first night on the town in Ghana. Keesha was geared up to celebrate her 21st, so along with fellow MHIRT students Jennifer and Ella, we hitched a ride with some medical students to a karaoke bar in Accra called Champs. Inside we found an entertaining mix of Ghanaians and foreigners, dressed up and clamoring to belt it out on stage. The enthusiasm was intense—I’ve never seen people dance with that much vigor to karaoke music! The medical students that drove us bought the table a round of ‘Obama’ shots for their new American friends (absinth and amaretto) spurring us on to sing, and make sure to taxi home rather than riding with them! Ella and I picked an American karaoke classic- Journey’s Don’t Stop Believe… we made it through, and made the cultural revelation that Journey isn’t really a karaoke classic in Ghana. You learn new things everyday eh?
We capped off the weekend by scouting out cake to finish off the birthday festivities. The oven at the hostel doesn’t work, and most ‘cake’ in Ghana is flat, as attributed to the general lack of ovens I suppose. I found a store bought cake with the help of a newbie at the hostel, Nicole, an MPH student from Brown who is here on her own doing TB research at Korle Bu. We stuck a few matches in the top as candles and called it a success… despite the fact that the round-about off-road taxi ride home from finding the cake took so long that all the icing melted off into the box. Hehe. All the same it was delish!
Sunday morning we set out for Kenashie market in hopes of locating a tro tro back to Asamankese. I was lugging my crutches and Keesha had a load of groceries to restock us in Akwatia. Through the maze of blocks and blocks of wall to wall traders and tro tros, we traipsed back and forth, following directions from tro tro solicitors— I’d say “Asamankese?” and they would consult one another, or tell us with certainty, that tro tros headed in that direction could be found across the pedestrian bridge, or on the road down the way, etc. After a few dead directions—us showing up at the indicated spot, and then promptly being told to turn around—one trader told us we needed to take a tro tro to circle market to get a tro tro to Asamankese. I thought Keesha was going to punch the guy, but somehow we kept our frustrations to ourselves, amazingly found a tro tro to Circle, using the sign language parsed from glancing at a guide book (in Accra circle station is indicated by rotating our hand with fingers pointed down, as if around a ball), and from circle, only traded hands a few times before finding a tro tro to Asamankese. Ten points for the travelers! The system of tro tros is really quite amazing—as far as I can tell, they are independent entities, yet their location of pick up and drop off at major stops is relatively well known by those who work the system. In all honesty, it would be harder to get from one place to another in the rural states. Imagine wanting to get a bus from Alaska Michigan to Brighton. That would be a nightmare! You’d definitely need a car for parts, or a map, but here, where individual transport is an extreme luxury, the public transport that has cropped up may be a bit round-about and hairy, but it can get you anywhere!
We’re now safely back in Akwatia. Yesterday and today we had our first real days of data collection. Hooray! So far no major glitches, we have heaps of women to interview—far more than we anticipated getting, and it looks like we’ll end up with some interesting information to show for it. Though most of the women don’t share as openly as one might be used to in the states, what the women have shared has been really interesting so far. Today the clinic started a bit late, so Doris, our main translator, was teaching us more Twi. I’m essentially hopeless at languages, but I’m trying! Today’s lessons included a review of “Hi my name is” “How are you” “I am fine” and a few other small words. When the women came in we’d try out our Twi (phonetically) “Akwaaba ma’ma/autie, tenasi. Me den-dee Halley.” And then “Wa-hun-ti-sane?” – “Welcome ma’am, have a seat. My name is Halley” “How are you?” Ta-duh! I actually think that greeting them in Twi, and the laughing that incited, did a great job of breaking the ice and making them comfortable—works for me!
In Ghana, everyone has a given name, and their Ghanaian name which is determined by the day of the week you were born on and your sex. I was born on a Friday, which makes me an Ah-fee-ah (Efia), whereas if I was a male I’d be Kofi. Anyway, Doris is starting to call me Efia as she really struggles with Halley. Though she’s heard my name a bunch she’s convinced my name is Harry (Harriet?) and causes Keesha to bust up laughing by saying, Harry, Harry!
That’s all the news that’s fit to print. Time to transcribe some of our interviews
Much love,
Halley/Harry/Efia
We spent an afternoon at Kade market a few miles North of Akwatia. We were toured around by a young girl named Fransisca that we met at the apartment—she wound us through the wooden stalls housing sellers and their goods in crooked rows along dirt isles. Between piles of yams, yards of gorgeous hand died fabric traditional to Ghana, and of course the perquisite goat or two running loose, Francisca showed us treasures like the wooden tub and mallet used to mash fufu, giant snails good for roasting (shish-kabobs!), and a cold cocoa drink served in plastic baggies with straws sticking out, bought for 5 peswaes from kids running around the market with buckets of treats balanced on their heads. Wednesday morning, bright and early, Keesha and I were out on our street to attempt our first tro tro trip back toward Accra. Given our newly granted mini-vacation, our plan was to spend a few days at the beach and then a few days in Accra, where Keesha wanted to celebrate her 21st birthday (which is actually today!). The vague plan was to get a tro tro to Asamankese, a town about 15 miles from Akwatia in the direction of Accra, and then to find a tro tro headed either to Kokrobite or Accra. In Ghana, all roads lead to Accra, or so it seems, so the prospects of getting a ride out of Akwatia weren’t bad. By 7 AM we were in a tro tro Asamankese bound. In Asamankese, where a busy and aggressive market lines the main road, our tro tro unloaded and after a few “Obrunie obrunie where are you going?” and me answering “Accra” we were directed to the line for a tro tro to Accra. A tro tro pulled up, and we were signaled to get in first though we were clearly at the back of the line—one of the many times on the trip in where I really couldn’t tell if I was being treated differently because I am white, had crutches, or was being ridiculed or taken advantage of. I’m pretty sure we had a solid mix of all three going at various points. We piled in… fairly sure we were going to Accra, and vaguely hoping that when I asked the driver “Barrier junction” and he said “yes, yes” that that meant we might be dropped at the junction to Kokrobite. Either way we had secured a ride! A point for the travelers!
Our driver took a different route into Accra than the one we’d traveled before. This route featured a lot of beautiful hilly jungle scenery and skirted several large towns in greater Accra like. Keesha and I were squished into the first row of seats behind the diver, with our knees pressed up against the metal sheeting of the floor boards in front of us, making room for the 30 or so other passengers in the small van. The van made good time, and only caused me to grab Keesha’s arm and see my life flash before my eyes a few times. Poor Keesha, she was fairly traumatized by the trip, though I can’t say it was much different than I expected. In one of the large town near Accra, major road construction was being done to continue a nice road we’d traveled on for 10 or so miles. In America, in order to do road work, we construct an elaborate paved alternative routes. Not so in Ghana—I mean, the whole point is to pave the original road! The road work diverted traffic off the road onto dirt paths surrounding the construction in tiers, a lane or two going one way or another, then a step up a few feet and another dirt tier with more traffic. It seemed that traffic was going both ways on the tiers, but not in any order, as everyone is trying to avoid giant pot holes, and just get through the few miles of construction. There were times both leaving and getting to Accra, where we were the only vehicle on a particular tier going in whatever direction we were going—all the other cars were coming toward us. Ya know the cop shows where the bad guy goes the wrong way on the highway in a car chase? Kinda like that. But no worries mom, I’m alive and well to tell about it! All day it had looked like a storm, just before hitting Accra after 3 hours on the tro tro, the wind went Wizard of Oz, and the second we stepped out the sky opened in a torrential downpour. It made for a rather grumpy traveling duo, but after getting our bearings (as we were dropped in an area of town we didn’t know… definitely not at the junction the driver had said ‘yes yes’ too) we got back on track to the beach.
We attempted to go to a different town on the beach called Bojo, but discovered that it was a ritzy tourist day-destination with no place to stay and complete seclusion from anything beautiful beach that cost 5 cedi just to walk on—it was completely barren in the rain following the thunderstorm. Down on our luck, we paid a taxi driver a fee exceeding our combine fare by tro tro all day, to take us and my crutches a few miles down the road to our stand by beach spot, Kokrobite. My new Ghana “Happy Place”. We stayed at Big Milly’s Backyard where 26 cedi a night bought us a room with a double bed, mosquito netting, and an attached open air hideaway for showering by bucket. We happily stayed two nights, reading and walking on the beach, playing with the menagerie of adorable feral kittens, searching for sea shells, enjoying the bar and failing to apply enough sun screen. Though my shoulders are likely to be peeling until we leave, and my bum will have the outline of my bikini bottoms scorched into it for months, spending time on the beach was worth it. We met a few Brit’s doing great charitable work, got to play in the sand, and cleared our minds of the frustrations of waiting to get started on our research.
Friday morning, we headed back into Accra, where we crashed at the hostel and I ventured out for my first night on the town in Ghana. Keesha was geared up to celebrate her 21st, so along with fellow MHIRT students Jennifer and Ella, we hitched a ride with some medical students to a karaoke bar in Accra called Champs. Inside we found an entertaining mix of Ghanaians and foreigners, dressed up and clamoring to belt it out on stage. The enthusiasm was intense—I’ve never seen people dance with that much vigor to karaoke music! The medical students that drove us bought the table a round of ‘Obama’ shots for their new American friends (absinth and amaretto) spurring us on to sing, and make sure to taxi home rather than riding with them! Ella and I picked an American karaoke classic- Journey’s Don’t Stop Believe… we made it through, and made the cultural revelation that Journey isn’t really a karaoke classic in Ghana. You learn new things everyday eh?
We capped off the weekend by scouting out cake to finish off the birthday festivities. The oven at the hostel doesn’t work, and most ‘cake’ in Ghana is flat, as attributed to the general lack of ovens I suppose. I found a store bought cake with the help of a newbie at the hostel, Nicole, an MPH student from Brown who is here on her own doing TB research at Korle Bu. We stuck a few matches in the top as candles and called it a success… despite the fact that the round-about off-road taxi ride home from finding the cake took so long that all the icing melted off into the box. Hehe. All the same it was delish!
Sunday morning we set out for Kenashie market in hopes of locating a tro tro back to Asamankese. I was lugging my crutches and Keesha had a load of groceries to restock us in Akwatia. Through the maze of blocks and blocks of wall to wall traders and tro tros, we traipsed back and forth, following directions from tro tro solicitors— I’d say “Asamankese?” and they would consult one another, or tell us with certainty, that tro tros headed in that direction could be found across the pedestrian bridge, or on the road down the way, etc. After a few dead directions—us showing up at the indicated spot, and then promptly being told to turn around—one trader told us we needed to take a tro tro to circle market to get a tro tro to Asamankese. I thought Keesha was going to punch the guy, but somehow we kept our frustrations to ourselves, amazingly found a tro tro to Circle, using the sign language parsed from glancing at a guide book (in Accra circle station is indicated by rotating our hand with fingers pointed down, as if around a ball), and from circle, only traded hands a few times before finding a tro tro to Asamankese. Ten points for the travelers! The system of tro tros is really quite amazing—as far as I can tell, they are independent entities, yet their location of pick up and drop off at major stops is relatively well known by those who work the system. In all honesty, it would be harder to get from one place to another in the rural states. Imagine wanting to get a bus from Alaska Michigan to Brighton. That would be a nightmare! You’d definitely need a car for parts, or a map, but here, where individual transport is an extreme luxury, the public transport that has cropped up may be a bit round-about and hairy, but it can get you anywhere!
We’re now safely back in Akwatia. Yesterday and today we had our first real days of data collection. Hooray! So far no major glitches, we have heaps of women to interview—far more than we anticipated getting, and it looks like we’ll end up with some interesting information to show for it. Though most of the women don’t share as openly as one might be used to in the states, what the women have shared has been really interesting so far. Today the clinic started a bit late, so Doris, our main translator, was teaching us more Twi. I’m essentially hopeless at languages, but I’m trying! Today’s lessons included a review of “Hi my name is” “How are you” “I am fine” and a few other small words. When the women came in we’d try out our Twi (phonetically) “Akwaaba ma’ma/autie, tenasi. Me den-dee Halley.” And then “Wa-hun-ti-sane?” – “Welcome ma’am, have a seat. My name is Halley” “How are you?” Ta-duh! I actually think that greeting them in Twi, and the laughing that incited, did a great job of breaking the ice and making them comfortable—works for me!
In Ghana, everyone has a given name, and their Ghanaian name which is determined by the day of the week you were born on and your sex. I was born on a Friday, which makes me an Ah-fee-ah (Efia), whereas if I was a male I’d be Kofi. Anyway, Doris is starting to call me Efia as she really struggles with Halley. Though she’s heard my name a bunch she’s convinced my name is Harry (Harriet?) and causes Keesha to bust up laughing by saying, Harry, Harry!
That’s all the news that’s fit to print. Time to transcribe some of our interviews
Much love,
Halley/Harry/Efia
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