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.