Toto - Africa

October 27, 2012

I have been in Ghana for 25 days.  Today is the first day I choose to blog, though many note worthy things have happened.  Here is long over due update of life here:

I am living with a Muslim family, Sista Vic, Mr. Adams, Aziz 12, Ibreheem 8 and Mustafa 4.  Yes I said Mustafa, not to be confused with Mufasa and no, they have never seen The Lion King.

In the first week there was a spider the size of my fist in my room.

Umbrooni is the word for white person, everyone calls you that. It is usually accompanied with “WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!”  And I say “School!”  or “HOME!”  This happens twice a day with every person you pass going to and from school.

I live in a small village.  Addo Nkwanta.  I have cell service and can call/text to the states relatively cheap but have to go into town for post or internet.  I only have Sundays off so I never get to go to the post office.  But PC staff brings us our mail, so send me letters! 

I am learning Dagbani, a Northern Region tribal language.

I had to post today because I just fetched water for the first time.  The boy showing me to the boar hole said

“Where is your rag?”

“Rag?  I don’t have a rag.”  So we walked to the other side of the village (I think the village is about the size of Purdue campus.  It is a series of small houses and shacks.  No running water and electricity is sporadic) I can make out three roads in my village, everything else are small paths cut through peoples courtyards, latrines and around houses. 

FETCHING WATER IS HARD.  And I was made to carry it on my head.  I thought that was optional but it really isn’t and honestly, the best option is on your head because although I spilled A LOT (all over me)  I spilled more when I tried to carry it with my hands.  By the way, I used my bandanna as my rag.  Bandanas: not just your head band.  Oh and by rag I mean a rag that you put on your head when you carry water.  I had to walk across two what I call “planks” on my way home.  With a bucket on my head!  There are lots of planks that serve as bridges as it rains a lot and there are many hills and deep valleys the water has cut in the red clay.  I think I can get 3-4 bucket baths out of the one bucket I fetched today.  I spilled everywhere.  You have to laugh at yourself though because Ghanaians are laughing at the Umbrooni constantly.  Get used to it and take it in stride because laughing with people is so much more fun than getting any negative feedback like dirty looks or silence.  That does not happen here, the silence bit.  As much as I wake up homesick somedays and just want to put in my ear buds and walk to school in my own world…you can not.  That is really rude and I would not dream of doing it.  But by the second interaction:

Me: Mache! (Good morning.)

Them: Mehoye, Wo ho te sen? (Good morning how are you?)

Me: Mehoye, na wo nswey? (Fine, and you?)

Them: Mehoye!

Me:  Yooooooh. (Ok.)

There are hand gestures that accompany this, I think I will vlog later.

This is the perfect place for me.  I am happy here.  People, meeting people makes me happy.  Everyday when I come home from school I am accompanied by children.  At the first house there is always a group of 4-5 boys about 3 years old.  They never have pants on.  I have taught them to high five so now every time I see them, we do a couple rounds of high fives.  Then I wave like mad and say “Good bye!  Good bye good bye!  And run away.  I pass Adam, another umbrooni’s house and greet his family, the house behind his is another group of kids, they are friends with my brothers. There is one little girl that comes running every single time and screams “MADAME ALYSSA!  MADAME ALYSSA!“  To announce my presence to every child in hearing distance.  By the time I reach home, I have an average of two children holding my hand on each side.

Last week I was on my phone in the backyard and Ibreheem yelled “Ubrooni” at me from the window and I said “Ibreheem!  You know my name, why are you calling me that?!”  And I think Sista Vic heard because the next day when I left for school and all the kids yelled “Ubrooni bye bye!”  Sista Vic yelled at them and told them my name was Madame Alyssa.

There is one little store that sells something close to ice cream.  (Dairy products do not really exist here.)  Some of my fellow ubroonis frequent this store for other umbrooni items like groundnut paste (peanut butter) and t-roll (toilet paper).  One of the women there is friends with Sista Vic, so she calls me Victoria because I am Victoria’s daughter.

I really like Sista Vic, we get along great.  She knows very little English but we get by and laugh really hard when we fail miserably to communicate.  This week she said “Alysssaaaaaa ma baby girl.  Ma baby girl Alyssaaaaaaa.  I have three boys and a baby girl.  Alyssaaaaaaa."  Then yesterday I was studying at a friend’s house until 6.  When I came into our courtyard, Sista Vic was walking my way and communicated to me that she was coming to find me, I was late.  It was six and I got out of class at 5.  I laughed and said “Sista Vic!” and she said “MY PRECIOUS!”  Aaaand then I really laughed.

Yesterday was a big Muslim holiday.  Before I went to school I noticed the large goat tied to our clothes line but didn’t think anything of it until Sista Vic asked me if I eat goat and I hesitated but said no.  When I came home for lunch at noon, my dad had all the intestines sitting on coconut tree leaves and the skinned goat was hanging in a tree.  Little kids were fanning both with palm fronds to keep the flies off.  As I sat observing Mr. Adams braiding the intestines I found myself recalling ANSC221 material, the omasum, abomasum and the defining characteristics of the different rumen compartments.  They cut up everything.  I mean I think everything, I didn't watch all of it but I’m pretty positive they cut up all the organs and put it in a pot.  They did all the rumen compartments and the intestines.

Mid December after I swear in and become an official volunteer, I will leave this village for my site where I will start my real service in my own community with my own projects.  I can already tell that I am going to miss this place very much and saying goodbye will prove difficult.

This is becoming a very long post but I must mention Elizabeth and Hannah, 14 and 12 respectively, they are the oldest of four girls and they live across the courtyard from me.  They are very, very smart girls and they help translate when I cannot manage.  Sometimes they hang out on our porch and read out loud in English “The Watch Tower” a publication given to me by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, it is about how they can be successful in school.

Last week I had to visit a farm and they took me to their friends.  We started walking on the main road, then we walked across a plank and into the forest.  We walked for a half hour through a low canopy of coco trees.  I felt stupid to not know what they were at first.  Coco are so funny with the fruit growing right on the trunk like!  Children of all ages carry machetes.  We call them cutlasses and I have come to use it as a verb, like when I wanted coco, they would cutlass one off a tree no problem, cut it open and we would walk sucking on coco seeds.  They taste a little like mango with a consistency of snot.  We came to our farm, but they wanted to play in the river first so they splashed and played for a long time in a paradise of a hidden river under palm and coconut trees.  The girls told me of a boy, Timothy “He goes there,” points “It is very deep!  He fears nothing!”  Soon, Timothy came down the path and dove into the water where it was quite deep, at least five feet.  Lots of splashing then some crying and we were on our way again to go farm.  Farming was sending Timothy up an orange tree where he threw oranges down to us, we filled my backpack and a bucket.  They were very impressed by my ability to catch oranges with one hand as they only catch with two.  I told them about baseball.  Then we planted some cassava. 

To plant cassava you have to find it growing.  It looks like a long stick, you cutlass all its twigs off and chop it in about 12 in segments and bury it vertically about three inches deep.  PC training says 3 nodes have to be in the ground.  We were eating oranges the whole time.  They were also impressed that I use my nails to peel oranges, they NEVER use their nails, they peel with a cutlass.  Always.

Then we found a palm tree.  Took some of that.  We is Elizabeth, Hannah, their two little sisters ages 8 and 3, Ibreheem, Timothy 14 and a couple other kids we picked up.  My morning farming was seriously hanging out in a tropical forest eating oranges with machete swinging kids.  It was probably the best day in my life.  On the way home, Ibreheem carried my backpack and I carried on of the little girls on my back.  Elizabeth, Hannah and I cutlassed a tree down and they chopped it for firewood.  Then they took palm fronds, and made rope, used it to tie their firewood into bundles and carried it on their heads the whole way home.  I was so impressed with them.

American women, you have it made.  Ghanaian women do so much work.  So so so so much work that it blows my mind.  They are so strong.  And so smart.  And so very capable.  The entire time, the girls were pointing out crops to me.  This is plantain.  This is cassava.  This is garden egg (it is like eggplant but little).  This is sugar cane. This is maize. 

Then!  They asked me if I wanted to get crabs.  I was so confused.  We were not near the river.  One of the girls knelt near a hole and started pulling out mud until she bam!  She pulled out a crab, a good sized one too.  Then they showed me how to fix them so their pinchers so they could not pinch and they put them in my backpack. 

As we walked back into the village everyone we passed told us “Good work,” in Twi and we thanked them.

I like the village life.  I like the Ghana life.  Yes sometimes I wake up homesick and craving breakfast cereal.  Yes, I wish I did not bath in the place I am supposed to pee, but it’s all good.  It is all good, and honest?  I wish you were here to experience it.