Asamankese cont'd---- Radio Stars and Children

So it is friday morning in Accra, I have finished drafting both the Strategic Plan and the Monitoring Plan. Yeah !! Next step; circulate, make changes and next week write the final reports.

I want to finish my story from the other day, before the power goes off and I lose access to internet. (three days already this week).

After spending a couple hours at the market we were wandering through town when we heard voices calling "Obruni" (white person) from above. We looked up and the young man that was sitting behind us on the Tro Tro from Accra was trying to get our attention. Our curious nature led us to respond to his invitation. We quickly learned that he had a recording studio and he wanted to tape us on his radio station. Right away Meliss and Jo-Ann were in the booth to play around with recording their voices.

Jo-Ann in the recording studio, later on Melissa, myself and Dewise all gathered in the booth to record the following message:

I am Jo-Ann, Melissa and Jan and we are from Canada. We wish Ghana a peaceful election in 2012, happy voting Ghana ...... cheering,clapping sounds..........





I can't leave Ghana without expressing my absolute delight and joy I have experienced with the various children that I have met. Everywhere we go the children call out "Obruni", they come running, laughing and full of curiosity. They absolutely love having their pictures taken and get so excited to see their image on the camera screen.

Saturday afternoon we decided it was time to have a football match with the children at a school very close to the guest house. I| know what you are thinking, does Jan play football?  No, you are right I don't, but I was the photographer and cheerleader. Melissa and Jo-Ann initially started playing against about 10-13 boys, when eventually someone came along, stopped the game and recruited a few more players for the girl's team. We gathered a large crowd and it wasn't long before the girls were scoring goals, much to the surprise of the boys!

Sunday morning we went to Church with Auntie Jo, owner of the guest house. I don't have the creative writing skills to adequately describe the beautiful fabric and dresses that the women wore to church that day, and it wasn't appropriate to take pictures. Church was three hours long and included dancing, singing, group bible study and an hour long sermon; all of course in Twi. Then all of a sudden we hear that word " Obruni" again, the minister is calling us to the front of the church to introduce ourselves, again we were reluctant celebreties.

While leaving the church everyone wanted to chat with us, have their pictures taken and then I received another marriage proposal.  hahahahah!

After lunch we walked to Melissa school, and then up the side of a mountain to visit a few families that live on the hillside.

Our trek up the hillside to visit the children

He is very curious and moment by moment he walks closer. :))

 

Pure Joy !

Look at the scowl - by the way this is how they eat oranges, peel with knife, slice of top and suck the juice out, then throw away!

Melissa brought colouring books, story books and stickers everyone was colouring and having fun.

She walked with me down the hill and to the roadside.

I am so grateful that humans have the ability to store memories and that I have a camera because I never want to forget that afternoon on the hill.

Cheers to a great weekend!

Asamankese - Markets and more !

I know I committed to updating my blog at least once a week and it is heard to imagine that three weeks has slipped by and I only have two weeks left in Ghana.

All is well, the weather continues to be hot, the dry winds blow dirt all around the city and there is still lots of traffic everywhere you go.  This statement is a fact not a complaint! I think I am too Canadian to ever adjust to extremely hot weather every day, and definitely learning some lessons around clothing that works best in hot weather.

This past weekend I travelled to Asamankese with Melissa (university student from Kingston Ontario) and Jo-Ann, a fellow volunteer at ABANTU. Asamankese is the village where Melissa is teaching for 8 weeks as part of her University Program.
  
I left the guest house at 5:30am in the morning to catch a Tro-Tro, I have mentioned before how bad traffic is on Saturday mornings. Evan the young man that looks after the guest house walked me to the Tro Tro as he was so nervous about me embarking on a journey to a place where I could not remember the name. My linguistic skills are not improving in Ghana, Twi is not an easy language to pick up as the sounds are not familar.

It is hard to imagine but it took almost 20 minutes to get a Tro Tro there were so many people out and about, finally got the right one to " Circle" where we agreed to meet. I got off at the Overhead stop at Circle but couldn't find the girls. Thank goodness for cell phones, we started phoning each other to try and figure out where we were. You would think it would be easy to spot three white women in a very large crowd of black people. Finally after 30 minutes we discovered our mutual locations, met up and bought breakfast snacks of fresh rolls, papaya and plantain chips for the long drive.




Melissa and Jo-Ann with FanIce

We need this in Canada - portable icecream sold everywhere, you just tear the corner off the package and suck in the contents! Thank goodness I was only introduced to this refreshing treat recently. It also comes in chocolate or yogurt flavour and a FanDango which is frozen juice.





Although the town is less than 100 km the roads are very bad so travel is slow, we finally arrived in Asamankese at about 10:30.



 Typical building that would include residences, small business and the stand in the front is where you buy top up's for your cell phone.

Vodafone, Tiga, MTN or Airtel, they are sold at small stands everywhere from 1 cedi and up. It is very convenient, cheap and efficient!

View of the street as we are walking to the market.

Need your hair styled, these small shops are also everywhere and open at all hours.













After a short tour, some red red and grilled plantain ( soooooooo good!) we went off to explore the market. It was such a fun experience, less crowded than Accra and all of the vendors and children were so excited to meet us and have their pictures taken that we spent about three hours around the market.

Anything you can imagine needing you can buy at the market; fabric, cosmetics, kitchen and cooking tools, herbs for cooking and medicinal purposes and of course food; fresh and local. I have adapted quite well to buying my vegetables and food on a daily, based on what is available. When electricity and fridgeration are neither  available or  reliable you are commited to purchasing local and fresh or canned.                                                                       

This market woman was so excited to have her picture taken, she was dancing, smiling and laughing; it was so fun!














Different varieties of rice and beans for sale.

These two boys are selling plantain which is used to grill, dried plantain chips or cooked and mixed with cassova for fou fou.

Top right corner, bowls from coconut shells
Bottom left medicinal herbs
Bottom right, straw like materiel used for washing dishes










A variety of dried and smoked fish usually used in making the base broth for soups, stews and bean dishes such as red, red.








I have to stop now; I haven't even talked about our trek up the mountain to visit a couple of families, our football game with kids or church on Sunday morning. It takes a long time to upload pictures and while I am writing and uploading pictures I am not getting my work done.

I hope you are all well and I will finish this story tomorrow.  

Three Weeks Already ??

Akwaaba - Welcome

It is hard to believe that I have been here more than 3 weeks and I can say with certainty that people in Ghana do their best to make sure you are Akwaaba - welcome!  When I am walking back and forth to work the neighbours say good morning and you are welcome,  any new people you meet always welcome you to Ghana and they always invite you to share in whatever food they may be enjoying at the time.

I even got a marriage proposal the other evening as I was walking home from work; actually invitations and proposals happen fairly frequently so I graciously decline and keep on my way!

I neglected to include my excursion to Kakum National Forest last weekend while we were in Cape Coast. Kakum has the only Canopy Walk in West Africa and my traveling mates wanted to try out this out on Sunday morning. For those of you know me well, you will understand right away that Jan was not going to walk 50 metres or more off the ground, on a rope bridge through the forest. I don't care how many monkeys or birds I was going to see, so I chose the guided nature trail.

Our guide was such a fascinating and knowledgeable man. He guided us through a regenerated forest and old forest for about one hour. As we walked he would stop and talk to us about the history of the forest and the trees. He explained how the forest was here before anything else so the ancestors got everything they needed from the forest, shelter, food, medicine; even some parts of the trees were used to make textiles.

Even though I did not brave the canopy walk I still had a snuggle with an elephant! The guide mentioned that there were not very many animals in this part of the forest due to all of the people. However, you can reserve a tree platform for the night, deeper into the forest and then go on a guided tour in the evening. Lots more wildlife and birds to view, maybe I will have a chance to go back and visit.












Work at ABANTU 
Things are starting to come together regarding my mandate, the Director returned from the Northern Regions and we have set a date for the Strategic Planning Workshop.In the meantime I am gathering information and getting prepared. We missed two Friday afternoons due to power outages and one day due to flooding. If you remember the rock path through the water in my first blog, you can imagine what happens with a serious rainfall.

There was a huge down pour last week last week which caused major flooding in parts of Accra, 43,000 people were displaced and 9 people died. It is not as serious as the problems in Bangkok right now but serious enough for the people impacted. The problem is more complicated than just too much rain, as in most countries hundreds of people are migrating to urban areas because the rural lifestyle is not life sustaining anymore. They arrive in the cities with no money, build shelters in crowded areas which are often in areas where the water typically flows during the storms. There is often so much waste and garbage in the gutters because there is inadequate waste disposal systems, so then when the rains are heavy the water overflows in the gutters. This of course leads to problems with contaminated water and crops that ultimately provide food and income for the market vendors. It is a very challenging  problem for the government to prevent people from settling in these areas and it is even more difficult to develop the services and infrastructure at the same pace as the population grows and migrates.

ABANTU hosts a coalition, Gender Action on Climate Change for Equality and Sustainability, they are building capacity to influence climate change policies from a gender perspective. For the last month they traveled to three Northern Regions of Ghana to create awareness and generate ideas regarding the impacts of climate change on women and gender and disaster recovery. Women are most impacted by disasters as a result of climate change; they do the farming, carry water, take care of children and shelter but they are not involved in decision making and finding solutions.   

Today I attended a meeting of the coalition members, despite a lack of funding they are working hard at increasing awareness of climate change,providing educational opportunities in schools and in the local communities on subjects such as alternatives to wood fire burning and recycling waste instead of burning waste. There is so much to learn and so little time!

Day Trip to Bojo Beach
On Saturday of last weekend we decided to find our way to Bojo Beach, highly recommended by Adusei one of the ABANTU team. Being a Saturday we thought we would get an early start so we arranged for the taxi to pick us up at 9:00am. I am not a quick learner, this city wakes up at 5:00am and is really busy on Saturday the most popular market day. It took us 2 hours to travel about 30km, but it was worth it.

Diana -CCI volunteer(left)
Attaah-friend staying at my guest house

You cross a fresh water lagoon by boat to reach the beach.This was Attaah's first time on a boat,she giggled all the way across.

View from the boat to the beach, the shelter also provides cold drinks and food. We shared Malt Guiness (soft drink) pizza, jollof rice and grilled red snapper for lunch.

Local fishermen were close by throwing nets into the water, catching very small fish. They did not speak English and the fish looked too small for eating, perhaps bait?
Did you know that there is as superstition about fishing on Tuesdays? They believe if you go in the water to fish or swim you will drown or have an accident. Yesterday was Tuesday and there was not a boat to be seen on the water for miles.


Home Pride
I have now spent more than two weeks at this guest house. Most of the guests come and go so I don't get an opportunity to meet everyone. However, Attaah and her Mother Beatrice have been staying at the guest house for awhile. They are Ghanaian and Attaah is home for her break from University in China, she is studying Medicine. Beatrice is staying at the guest house with her daughter, she is  in the  process of  moving to Accra. What a small world, Beatrice is a tax inspector and has worked with the Ghana Internal Revenue Authority for thirty years,we had lots to share. They are two beautiful people and everyday I look forward to our conversations in the evenings.

I also want to introduce you to Evan, hopefully by my next update I will have a photo. Evan replaced Micheal last week as the manager at the guest house, he is very conscientious, professional and always working hard. He came to Accra from a small village in the Central Region of Ghana. His mother is on her own raising 5 children, she is a farmer and deaf mute. I believe Evan, although young, is a storyteller. His grandfather was a chief in the village before he passed away and in the evenings he would pass on stories from the ancestors to Evan.

In the evening Evan shares life lessons with me through these ancient stories.  He starts with asking me a
question; If you could only rescue one of either; a human being, a lion or a rat from a pit which one would you rescue?  I said,"I would rescue the human so he could help me rescue the others.

The  Story:
An old man in the village is walking through  the bush when  he comes upon a very large pit in the ground. Deep in the bottom of the pit a human being, a lion and a rat are trapped.The old man is afraid of the almighty lion so he decides to rescue the rat and the human being. Being the kind person that  he is the old man takes the rat and the person back to his home and he takes care of them.

The rat decides he should help the old man so he burrows a tunnel to the rich King's castle.Every week he comes back with food or money for the old man.Eventually the other person finds out that the rat is stealing from the King, so he tells the King about the old man and the rat. The King banishes the old man from his home and the kingdom.

The  lesson: You can't always trust mankind!

Keep healthy and happy,I will write again soon.

Jan