Four walls and a keyboard: So I am not leaving Tamale after all...for the time being!

Four walls and a keyboard

'I love talking about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.' ~ Oscar Wilde

Monday, January 22, 2007

So I am not leaving Tamale after all...for the time being!

This afternoon I called Ramond and asked him 'is everything okay'.....as in, is everything okay in terms of my survey going off in Kpandai. His reply was, 'not good, but also not bad.' I start worrying, 'Oh no! he's annoyed at me about something!' But no, he was talking about something different altogether.

If you ever have the chance to Google 'chieftancy dispute Bimbilla', or 'conflict, Kpandai' you'll see that there's a little bit of history of tribal fighting in the area I am working in. The chieftancy dispute in Bimbilla is still ongoing and apparently it's been escalating over the past few weeks. Last week a cargo truck was stopped in Bimbilla with Russian short guns (I think I got that right), and over 2500 rounds of ammunition. There's still a lot of tension between the Nanumbas and Konkombas, and on top of that, the Nanumba chief issue is still brewing, making it a pretty messy situation at the moment.

The problem isn't in Kpandai itself for the moment; the issue is that my bus travels through Bimbilla to go back to Kpandai, and Raymond informed me that some security personnel were through Kpandai this afternoon saying that the tensions have escalated in and around Bimbilla and warnings have been issued that things could get worse. I talked to Jeanine and she heard someone saying that in the villages around Salaga, Chamba and Bimbilla any vehicles seen moving through were getting stones thrown at them. She was relieved that she was done the data collection for her survey; I'm worried that I won't get the data collection done for mine.

But anyways, long story short, Raymond suggested I stay put at least for this week. There's going to be some meetings in Bimbilla over the next few days and the powers that be are hoping that the issues will be resolved. I was joking to Jeanine that perhaps we could travel around to the communities, call ourselves the White Peace Brigade, and plead with them to keep the peace and allow us to stay in our communities! We could play some John Lennon "Give Peace a Chance".....it might work!

Oh, and Raymond said everything's cool with the survey, in Kpandai at least. As for in Chamba and Bimbilla, we'll see.....

posted by angelina @ 11:13 AM

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