A Moment like This

Monday- Team of MoFA agent, Adam (ADVANCE Business Facilitator for Rice) and Nick (Ghana Rice Improvement Body) come to check on rice demo plots.  They’re a hot mess, with miscommunication, lack of access to tractor services and inability to get water (AT AN IRRIGATION SCHEME) the demos are not off to a good start and are severely behind schedule.  I get a ride with them into town where a few volunteers are staying at the Tamale Sub office (TSO) for a Food Security Task Force Meeting the next day.  The group goes for “Beers at sunset” usually a Friday tradition of sitting at a rooftop bar while the sunsets.  Big bats fly overhead and the music is way too loud.

Tuesday- Although I preordered our snack of egg rolls and samosas, they’re not ready.  I do not know why Ghanaians lie to me and tell me they will do a job when we both knew they will not.  Meeting, meeting, meeting.  We discuss our activities for Operation Smile and the toolkits, kits available to PCV’s to teach things like soap making or beekeeping to their communities.  I am knighted into office with a scepter of tall grass and am given a grass tiara.  My acceptance speech includes the lyrics to Kelly Clarkson’s A Moment like This.

Wednesday- I am sick from eating beef samosas, I knew this would happen.  Call my boss who is picking me up on her way to work, tell her I’m sick, she brings me bananas and oral rehydration salted water. Today I am touring villages with the World Food Programme’s “Purchase for Progress”.  This project buys rice and they are coming to my site on Friday, I wanted to see what they were about.  Visiting three communities, I fall asleep at two, right in front of the farmers as we are conducting a Discussion Forum and I am sitting in front.  I feel terrible, I cannot stay awake, and I blame Joe Stein who was loudly playing euchre late into the night.  Tonight I stay at a hotel offered by ADVANCE, I accept this offer because the hotel has faster wifi than the TSO and I want to skype my family and friends.  I am really tired but stay up till 11:15 when I am supposed to skype Dad.  No one is on skype.  I skype my friend Padraig, he is in Korea teaching English.  11:45 email Dad, I’m going to bed.

Thursday- Hotel breakfast yay!  Taxi into town for the bank.  I owe ADVANCE money.  A couple months ago ADVANCE took women from my scheme to the Upper East Region to see a successful irrigation scheme and  to teach them how to transplant rice correctly.  It was a great training; they met and were taught by women who are an organized group of transplanters.  Anyway, ADVANCE gave me money to stay in a hotel, but they made reservations for me at a guest house, so I accidentally spent that money (money that was not mine) on Bolga baskets.  No regrets.  Problem now?  They want to balance their books and I owe them money.  ATM says I have no money even though I got an email from PC saying I was paid two days ago.  Into the bank, wait in lines; they say it is probably coming tomorrow.  Go to my previous bank, just in case the check went there.  Waiting in line to see if my ATM card ever arrived (I switched banks because the ATM card never came) and I see Josh, he is my closest PCV.  Talk to Josh, it is nice.  ATM is not there, Bye Josh, I go outside and pull money from my home account.  Get in a taxi for the ADVANCE office, wait 20 minutes for it to fill but it never fills.  I complain, we leave.  Argue with taxi driver when he drops me off, finally agreeing at the fair price, I am annoyed but proud.  I walk from the road to the office because if he drove me the extra 100 feet to the office he would have charged me double.  I have showered twice in the last 12 hours but have worn the same clothes for three days, therefore I smell like sweat, my hair is greasy and I am wearing a shirt given to me by a friend, it was bound for the free box and it is not exactly professional.  I was not planning on being in town for this long. **The previous day I bought underwear in the market for the first time.  They are great, they maybe the best underwear I’ve ever had.**

There is an USAID Environmental Officer from Washington D.C coming to my site today but no one told me when she was coming.  I have ADVANCE paper work to do, it is 10:00a.m, pray she does not come early.  Meet Adam* and Nick*; ask if they know when the Officer is coming, they don’t.  Adam, did you tell Bontanga Farmer Based Organizations that World Food Programme is coming tomorrow?  No, I’ll call them.  OK.  How are the demos?  Awful.  OK.  Alyssa, are you coming to Gollinga with us today, we are looking at rain fed rice demo plots.  No, I have to do paperwork.

 There are no free computers; I use Nick’s when he leaves for Gollinga.  I spend the morning writing reports on the Bolga rice transplanting training and the WFP discussion I witnessed yesterday.  Run around to different people at the office, printing this, sending that and giving the money and reports to who they need to go to, all the while uploading pictures to my blog because this is the first time in months I’ve had fast enough wifi to do so.  At noon I am invited to lunch with the Environmental Officer, she is awesome and we talk about the rare earth mines in Tanzania and how Ghana is recycling their Agrochemical bottles.

We ride to Bontanga together and end up talking about the dangers of the agrochemicals and discuss products on the USAID no use list.  It is fantastic talking to someone who knows what they are talking about when it comes to agrichemicals.  She talks about frog hormones.  Awesome.

We talk to Isaac, one of my favorite farmers and friends; he has a successful demo plot showing the differences in the traditional way to grow rice and the SRI (System of Rice Improvement) methods.  Environmental Officer is pleased by the new methods as it uses less fertilizer and pesticides. 

They drop me at my house.  It is dark, dirty and feels abandoned.  I have no food, so I walk to Madam Connie’s shop and buy Ramen for dinner.

At 8:00p.m I remember that World Food Programme is coming to Bontanga the next day.  Call Andrew, he has not informed anyone.  I have not informed anyone.  Getting farmers at Bontanga to meet is like pulling teeth.  This is never going to happen.  I call the WFP guy, he is coming at 2:30p.m, good the Muslims will have finished with prayers.  Tell Mr. Joe people are coming and we need to organize.  He is mad, this last minute stuff happens a lot and he hates it.  He says he will call Daniel and Daniel will organize them.  The WFP man says he wants to meet the women rice farmers I bragged about, I will have to call Rabi in the morning.

I am still sick.

*             *             *

Friday Morning- Wake up.  No food.  I wonder if my neighbor’s chickens laid eggs in my compost pile again?  They did!!!  I take four and leave the rest.  Stealing from my own property, HELLO BREAKFAST!

Wagashi Days

Madam give me money.

I have none.

Is that not money you just put in your pocket?

Yes, but it has to go for other things.

Give me money.

Why?

Because of this (points to drum tied on the back of his bike).

Because you are a drummer?

Yes.

But you are not drumming.

Should I drum?

No.   

Okay, then bye.

Bye.

I do not consider myself clever, nor quick witted.  Therefore when faced with uncomfortable situations like being asked for things you cannot give (like money, footballs, bikes or my glasses) I do not respond as light hearted as my peers.  I’m still annoyed every single time.  But alas I have found my response; I simply demand they give me money.

Like yesterday I was in the village for Farming as a Business training.  I’m more of a face as the whole thing is done by my colleague in Dagbani, I just sit there.  Before we started one of the men came and told me to give him money.  I turned and looked and said loudly “I think you should give me money!”  I reached out  my hand and gave the give me gesture and said louder “Give me money!”  And all the other men sitting around laughed.  It is the easiest way out.

Give Me Rice Mill

Today I sat through four hours of screaming into a microphone, that is Ghana church service.  You’re gonna yell, yell.  Get happy in the spirit?  Right on.  Scream sing praise and worship for forty minutes?  Fine.  You do not need a microphone for that.

Yesterday I went into town for the last meeting before our Northern Region Food Security Youth Camp, it is being held at my site.  You never know how much you love to hang with obrunis until you are.  I am okay happy at site.  I can communicate with people, have conversations, play video games if I wanted to (which I do not).  But then when you hang out with Americans you have not seen in a while it is kinda like coming back to school after summer, except you like everyone.

Also great about the Tamale Sub Office?  The free box.  The place where volunteers put the clothes/items they have grown out of or bought in an Indian clothing pile and decided it was not worth the fifty cents.

A girl I love, Malia went home this week after six months of struggle with an agrichemical company she was supposed to work with.  In the free box I found graffitied company shirts with strong statements about large agribusiness.  Although Malia and I butted heads on this topic, I like and respect her and I took one of her shirts (the green one Malia, what you did with the sleeves and neckline is really cute!)

I begrudgingly went home even though many people were staying to celebrate a birthday and building a CHOCOLATE CAKE.  But no, my Farmer Based Organization was had finally found the time to meet with me and since I told them I was going to be there I decided I would be there.  Even though they have stood me up numerous times and I just KNEW it was going to happen again.

4:00- I’m at the offices.  There are two women here, there are supposed to be 45 people but this is Ghana and two people on time is actually pretty good, I’m happy. 

4:30- Seven more people have shown up.  I tell my counterpart we can start at 5:00 and maybe more people will be here, he says that is too late.

4:45- We are missing sixteen men and nineteen women but we start anyway because ten people is enough.

They already know me and what I am here for.  We talk about the need to have a stronger group and I tell them what makes a group a functional one.  They tell me they used to meet every two weeks and contribute money.  I ask what the money is for.

“To keep the bank account active.”

What is the money going to buy?

“We don’t know but we add to it to keep it active, but we have not for four months because we have not met.”

Okay.  So why are you in a group?  Why did you join this group?  Why is it important to be in a group?  What are the benefits?

“We are in a group because when people come to assist us, they say we need to be in groups.  And the woman, she came and said we should have a bank account and show that it is active so people will come to assist us.  That’s why we are in groups.”

Great.

600 farmers and they are not grouped by crop but by village.  So I am not really sure what their function is.  Ten Farmer Based Organizations and none of them functional because their sole purpose of forming was to look organized when aid agencies come to “assist” them.

Is the point of a co-op not to work together?  Everyone gives and everyone benefits?  In order to buy, sell and function at a higher level?  And to have power?  More power than acting alone?   The Co-op is formed, it is in a perfect setting and yet everyone acts individually and I do not know how to change that.  How do I help that?

Start small I guess, and I am trying.

Meanwhile, this group of poor farmers meets irregularly and gives one cedi with no idea why they are giving it or where it is going.

When the lights went out at church today and the microphones cut off, I actually started listening.  And the preacher was asking us “How humble are you?”  I know I am not as humble as I could be.   And LORD WILLING humility is what I take from these two years.

It is easy to judge their actions.  To think you know better.  To think something they do it stupid.  But that is not my place.  Even in this meeting when I heard they were only in FBO’s to get assistance.  Initially I am shocked then flustered because I do not even know what to do with that, then I am mad because I do not know how to fix that.  But I do not know the right way to look at it!  What is the humble way?  The “Christian” way?  The righteous?  The right?

Put yourself in their shoes I tell myself.  But I cannot.  I just cannot.  The reason for this experience is just that.  Live in the village, live as they live, and understand why they make their decisions.  I feel like as an American (esp. in Ag.) the “Get-r-done” attitude is too ingrained.  I cannot sit and wait.  I cannot understand sitting and waiting for someone to bring tractor services, when YOUR CROP depends on getting tractor services.

Calm down, if the Lord wills it, it will come.  If it does not come?  Obviously, the Lord did not will it.

And I guess that is where the difference lies.  If I had been here for the last twenty years, I would know that an NGO almost always shows up.  Someone else will arrange the tractor.  If that is the way it has always been here, then who am I to judge? 

That is a hard thing to think.  I’m trying to make myself buy it.  I’m trying, trying to make that okay in my conscience.