| Thursday, September 21, 2006 |
| Greetings From Tamale |
September 18, 2006
Let the bus stories begin! This morning we had to catch the bus to get to Tamale. This is a good example of ‘hurrying to wait’, haha. Our STC ticket said we had to report at the depot at 5:00 for our 6:30 AM departure. Banahene was at our guesthouse at 5:00 to pick us up. We get to the bus station, and we had to pay for our baggage by the number of kilos total our bags were. So we did that (mine came out to 30,000 cedis, or about $3.00). Then we waited......and waited. At about 6:30 there is a message over the loudspeaker that our bus was delayed until 9:30. So we wait some more....and our bus finally leaves at 10:30! Yep, that’s right, four hours AFTER expected departure.
Then the mayhem began. You basically had to follow the crowd that you knew was waiting for the Tamale bus, because there were no signs on the bus itself. And you had to push to ensure that your luggage made it into the baggage, cause holy, some people brought a lot of stuff!
Our seat were assigned and luckily Jeanine and I shared seats side by side. Was it ever a bumpy ride, and long! Our bus ride was about 12 hours. There were about 5 pit stops for gas and pee/food breaks.
It was a good way to see the way the countryside changed as you moved further north, at least until it started to darken. Immediately outside of the suburbs of Accra the terrain was rainforest, and there was a band of mountains, it was very beautiful. It was very green and lush, hot and humid too. Thank goodness the STC bus had air conditioning, otherwise I don’t know if I would have made it!
The at some points the road was under construction, so we had to slow down because there wasn’t much road left to travel on! At other times the bus driver was going so fast that you got butterflies in your stomach when going over a hill!
We got into Tamale around 11:30, and the driver for the Tamale office, Vasco was there to meet us. He took us to the guest house right away, but most of the rooms were already taken, so I got a pretty shady room for the night. No worries though- I just slept there, and they assured me that I would get a better room the following day.
September 19, 2006
We’ve been eating a lot of eggs for breakfast- and the Ghanaian way of eating them is in a flat omlette (not folded in half) with onions and tomatoes or peppers mixed in, and toast or bread. The staff at the guest house made this for us this morning, and then Vasco took us to the SEND office in Tamale. I already like Tamale much more than Accra- The roads are wider and in better shape, it isn’t as busy, and the people don’t harass us as much. Things are also a lot cheaper than Accra. There is a substantial Muslim population here (the guesthouse is called the Muhad Lodge), and I was woken early this morning by calls to prayer over the loudspeaker.
We met a lot of people at the SEND office at Tamale, so many that I still don’t have names straight. Their power was off this morning, and I expect it will be off regularly throughout the next few months. Right now the Volta Lake is low, which is where the hydroelectric comes from, so electricity outages are common across the country, and there are government-organized blackouts regularly. This is the first time it’s happened in about three years, or so I’ve been told. Hopefully it fixes itself soon!
We were given a detailed itinerary of our orientation at the Tamale office, and I assumed that because they had noted below that the regular hours would be 8:30 to 5, that they had a full plate ahead of us. So it was a surprise that the first meeting with Bashu and Diana took less than half an hour, and that was all that was scheduled for the day! We learned about the first projects of SEND Foundation, HIPC Ghana monitoring, and what they intended to do in phase 2 of the monitoring program.
So after that Vasco took us for lunch at the ‘G’ restaurant and bar. We were surprised when we saw other ‘obrunis’ in the restaurant, and sadly, a little excited about it. We were told later that Tamale is the expat capital of Ghana, because there are so many NGO’s based in the city doing development work in the north.
After lunch Vasco took us to the SEND Youth Office, where there is a resource centre for youth groups in the city and the Youth savings credit union. We met people in the office there, and learned more about how the credit union works in Tamale. Everyone was very friendly and excited to talk to us about what they were doing.
I think Vasco was worried about what we would do for supper so he took us to the Catholic Guesthouse, near our guesthouse, where he asked if they would make supper for us. So at 6 we walked over there, and they have a bar (surprising hey?), so Jeanine and I splurged on some Shandies (I originally ordered a Star Beer, but the last one was bad). I think it would be pretty easy to get tipsy here.....the beer bottles were huge, about the size of Powerade bottles, and 7,000 cedis, or 70 cents. But I was admonished by Banahene’s girlfriend Cassandra to stop drinking beer because it is bad for me, so I might just try to clean up a bit!
Supper was very good, it was spaghetti with guinea fowl, which is kind of like chicken but different too, hard to describe. And there was so much! After eating only a meat pie and some cookies yesterday on the bus ride, three square meals today was too much!
We got back to the guesthouse, and I watched a Ghanaian soap opera, called This Life to Live, or something like that. It was pretty interesting. This rich man comes home to his wife and daughter one day, and tells his wife that because she hasn’t been able to produce a son that he moving in the woman that bore him a son, and that she had to abide by this. So his wife relents, and this woman moves in. After the commercial break, the man comes into his house with his two wives, and tells them that his priest told him that one of his wives was trying to kill him. So he searches the women’s ‘boxes’ or suitcases, and finds bad charms in the first wife’s box. They were planted there by the other woman, but the first wife gets kicked out of the house. So the second wife turns into an evil stepmother to the daughter, and I think then the second wife kills the husband, and the episode ends with the lawyer opening up the husband’s last will and testament. OOOOOh, the suspense!
September 20, 2006
Again this morning we went to the office, and had a 20 minute meeting regarding administration and finance. They are very supportive. They are going to let us have our mail sent to their office (which will ensure that we get it quicker), plus they said we could call anytime we needed photocopying or supplies, or clarification, etc. We were also shown how to make claims for expenses incurred during our fieldwork. After that, we read....and read. I read many reports leading up to the HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Health project, which I guess I am assessing the impact of on farmer co-operatives and out of school youth. In many of these reports they had the itinerary for workshops/meetings, and it struck me again how deeply religious Ghana is. Every meeting began with a prayer. Even reading the names of shops on the sides of the street, like Jesus Blood Hairdressing, and God is Everywhere Electronics. The shop at the STC bus stop was called Except God (I think they meant to say Accept).
We spent the majority of the day sitting in the board room and reading, and listening to the animals outside. I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but it is very common to see goats and chickens running around free everywhere, grazing. Even in the city. So there were chickens and goats running around the SEND office. In Accra I asked Banahene if they ran around wild, or if someone owned them. He assured me that someone owned them because goats and chickens were very expensive to keep.
So anyway in the afternoon Vasco drove us back to the guesthouse, and we decided to walk up to the center of the city to eat and to get internet access (because we were pretty sure that the power wouldn’t be out there). On the walk up we had many people wave at us and say hello and that we were welcome. It was really cute to see the kids waving at us, and you couldn’t help waving back.
Also on the way we saw something that pretty much convinced me to give up meat, except Whop-J’s or Mac-D’s, cause their burgers aren’t really meat anyway. This one stall had some dead goats laying out, flies all around, and off to the side a man was hacking meat up with a machete, bits of meat, fat and bone flew everywhere, all over the sidewalk. Thank goodness he stopped while we walked by!
This evening we tracked down an internet café, but the service was so friggin slow! I saw that Dusty and Mat both tried to say hello, but I wasn’t able to respond back, the computer couldn’t process things fast enough for me to reply! On the way to eat we did see a newer looking internet café, so hopefully that one has better service for tomorrow evening. I intend to use the internet as much as possible over the next few days because it might be a while before I have access again!
It was funny- we grabbed a taxi back to the guesthouse, and I asked the driver how he was doing this evening. He said he was good, and then he asked us right away if we were Canadian. We said we were and he laughed and said he thought we were because Canadians are so friendly! |
posted by angelina @ 4:09 AM  |
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| Sunday, September 17, 2006 |
| What do I see outside my window tonight? |
Africa!!!!!!!!!!!! hahaha, Voellmecke said that a past intern did that when he first arrived in Ghana, so it seemed fitting!
It has been a whirlwind week since we left Ottawa. Let's see....on the way to Ghana we saw Vince Vaughn in the Toronto airport, no word of a lie. He is much skinnier in person. The plane ride from London to Accra was very exciting for me because I had a window seat, it was during the day, and the sky was clear, so I got to see England, France, and the Sahara desert, it was unreal.
We arrived in Accra late on the 12th, sans clothes, as my luggage didnt make it. That turned into a fiasco, actually. I was at the airport every night this week pretty much trying to get my suitcase. It finally arrived on Thursdday night, and British Airways did compensate me 35 pounds for my incovenience, not too bad!
In the meantime SEND's driver, Banahene, and his girlfriend Cassandra took me to Makola Market for clothes. Cassandra did my bargaining for me in Twi, because I would have had no clue. It was seriously crazy there! People everywhere trying to sell me stuff because I am an obruni (white person). And there was so many shops, vendors, and things to see. But the prices weren't bad- I got three shirts, three skirts a pair of capris and two pairs of underwear for about 200,000 cedis, or about 20 bucks. So it didn't break the bank!
The money has been taking some time to get used to. The other day I took out 800,000 cedis, about 80 bucks, and it came out in a huge wad. Today I paid my guesthouse bill and it was about 1,600,000 cedis, so you could imagine how long it took me to count it out in 20,000 bills, haha.
Most of the week I've been stressing about my luggage, but we've also had the opportunity to get to know people that work for SEND Foundation, and to learn more about the work we'll be doing. Mr. Kumara is the CEO of SEND, and a very interesting character. He created SEND and he is doing some very good work in the Northern Region of the COuntry, and in Liberia. We've also made friends with some people in the office like Banahene, the Driver, Noah, the watchman, and Hanny, another intern from Ghana. There's some Nigerians at our guesthouse who are taking courses so we've spent some time chatting with them.
SEND's main office is not directly in Accra, but in Tema, basically a suburb of Accra. So any business in the main city we've had to take the main highway along the coast, and if you thought you've seen congestion, holy cow it is crazy here! It's so bad that this whole market around selling thiings to people in their cars has popped up, and you'll see kids walking on the side of the road selling toilet paper and oranges.
Everyone has been very friendly and nice though, and I've been welcomed to Ghana a few times.
The weather has been extremely hot and humid, and it rained pretty much all day yesterday. Tema and Accra are right on the coast, lots of palm trees, and although we haven't had time to find the closest beach, we've had plenty of opportunity to see it when travelling into Accra. We're still in the brunt of the rainy season, but there've been some power outages because the Volta Lake is low and Ghana's power is hydro electric. So most of the day today was spent without power.
Joanie, and Nicky haha, you'll get a kick out of this. The other day we walked to a gas station/fast food restaurant to get some money and food and on the way back two guys gave us their phone numbers. And at the market I got a marriage proposal. A Canadian passport must be a powerful aphrodisiac!
What else to say, the food is good, there's a lot of chicken and rice, and chili oil, which I LOVE! The chocolate is awesome, and so is the ice cream.
Early early tomorrow morning we head out for Tamale, on a 12 hour bus ride. It is super early but it's a great opportunity to see what the rest of teh country looks like. We'll be in Tamale for a week and then I'm off to KPandai, Jeanine is off to Salaga.
I've still to figure out how to post pics but once I do i'll send them out.
Well it's late here and time for bed. Over and out! |
| posted by angelina @ 1:13 PM |
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| Monday, September 11, 2006 |
| update |
okay....so i can't post pics right now and the shift key sticks. so no caps and no pics for now..
right now i am in the cca office, that's the canadian co-operative association for all you non co-op folks. we just got back into ottawa from our week of training out at stillwaters wildnerness retreat.
there were no telephone or internet connections out there, so i wasn't able to get in touch with some of you, my apologies.
training at the camp went very well- we learned many things about acculturating, about the foundations, and about the countries. the food was awesome and very very healthy. it was almost too healthy- it kind of cleaned me out a bit, hahah
we are supposed to be on the plane in three hours, eeek! i am still excited but scared at the same time.
today has been so rushed- i will update more when i get a chance to sit and relax at an internet cafe.
over and out. |
| posted by angelina @ 1:41 PM |
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| Me, Myself, and I |
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Alias: angelina
Where I'm at: Kpandai, Northern Region, Ghana
In 500 words or less: I am now done my schoolin' and you may all call me Master! I'm currently livin it up in a small town in Northern Ghana, and it's a blast being the only 'obruni' (white) in town!
Step into my mind, if you dare
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