Culture Shock and Rural Realities

This week, I want to talk about the realities of living in a foreign country. Moreover, I want to contrast different phases that appear to come and go in a sequence. I believe that the fundamental principal which is guiding these is probably the psychology of culture shock and the waves of motivation or level of comfort which can result at various stages. 

To explain the diagram, Position A would be the initial arrival in the new foreign country. Often, then the level of motivation and positive energy are high and climbing because the new sights, sounds, customs and processes are exciting to experience and because it is new, it is a positive experience (Position B). Then, after some time, usually a period sets in when the person may come to see all the differences that were at first so exciting to be quite overwhelming and troubling because of the lack of familiarity (Position C). Then, after some time, usually the person recovers and is now on a more realistic level of excitement as he/she accepts the different environment to be normal and gradually acclimatizes to the surroundings (Position D). There may be periodic sways in motivation and energy after Position D but these are customarily only small in nature when compared to the initial significant increase and decrease in motivation.


In my own experience, I can attest that my energy and motivation has definitely undergone a similar progression as indicated in the curve. As open-minded, multicultural and diverse I consider myself, I have experienced Position C, but have since then gone beyond Position D. 


Position A to B was definitely the first 2 months or so. I was immersing myself in the local village and culture intensively. I was excited to be living there and it was like I had a positivity filter for some of the things. Of course, there were also some low days but overall, my motivation was high. Learning the local language, the daily life of the family, roaming around the village and helping my family with their work. (See picture: I am unloading a bucket of manure from the animal pen on the field to spread it as fertilizer)

The decline came around the same time that the incident with my host family occurred that I blogged about last week where I came face-to-face with the stark poverty that existed around me. I realized that even though on an interpersonal level I had great connections with many people, and felt a bit like a child to my host-mother and a brother to the children living in the compound, on some other dimensions like the amount on my bank account, the educational opportunities I have been fortunate to enjoy, and the outlook I have for the next year and the next 5 years. For me, living with the family is a temporary experience that I personally want to have in order to understand the realities of rural farmers. However, it was during this time that no matter how well I learnt the local language, immersed myself in the culture, lived according to local customs and made friends with the people in the village, my experience in the village would always be from a position of financial security and safety. I will never know what it is like to be sick and to have no money to pay for a doctor and no health insurance. I will never know what it means to farm for one season and to have part of the harvest destroyed by a drought or pests and to face the reality that I will not be able to feed my family for the next months. Even though these conclusions may seem obvious from the start, I believe that initially, I was acting on the assumption that if I did all of these things very well and immersed myself completely, then perhaps I could place myself almost directly in the shoes of a rural Ghanaian farmer.

So, how have I managed to reconcile these ideal expectations and the reality?


On a daily basis, I believe that I am now much more conscious of the differences but also of the similarities between the people in the village and me. I can see my mother doing her best to take care of her children just like any good mother around the world. I can see love, caring, support and generosity alongside the daily struggle to attain a good harvest for the next year and to keep everyone fed and happy. I have come to realize that whenever I can let go of those things that I cannot change and focus on those that I can, I am much happier. When I accept that I cannot alleviate poverty in this family, this community or in this country but that I can do the best work in my job and help my family as best as I can, life becomes quite a bit easier. In moments when I am successful in doing this, I can feel at peace with my immediate surroundings and even draw energy from it. 

Generosity and Poverty (Synonyms, right?)

Dear Readers,


This blog entry will be part letter to all of you part regular blog entry.


First of all, I owe all my regular readers, family, friends and colleagues an apology for my long absence from this major communication outlet which I hoped would help me stay connected to everyone. Unfortunately, I have allowed myself to become absorbed in the day-to-day routine, distracted by the stresses of my job here and caught by the fear that what I may write, may not be good enough. Fortunately, in recent weeks I have been doing a lot better and after some encouragement from my family and friends, I have decided to recommit to the goal of one blog entry per week. Last week was supposed to be the first week but just when the blog entry was being pushed down on the To Do list, I received a gentle reminder and am now writing to all of you.


I want to thank all of you who are reading this post for continuing to check my blog and for having faith that I will return despite my absence. I hereby re-commit to the one post per week goal (with pictures now too)


Yours,


Reynaldo


 
Generosity and Poverty (Synonyms, right?)

Having much to talk about, I hereby begin with the most important personal realization I have had over the past months. I just spontaneously came up with the title because I want to talk about the family that I have been living with for the past 3 months and about the curious combination of juxtaposed adjectives that come to mind when trying to describe them: generosity, poverty, cold, warmth, hunger, hard working.


When I first moved at the beginning of April, I was under the assumption, that while the family was definitely not the richest, they were managing quite well. The compound, was well-kept, the rooms clean and clean, the food tasty, the people smiling and my host-mother, sister and brother, being incredibly welcoming. Added to this was the novelty of taking baths under the open sky in a garden, eating food with the hands, helping and observing things around the house which were all strange and foreign to me. There were occasional hiccups in this image such as when one girl told me that her stomach was paining because her mother had not cooked food. Going on the positive assumption that perhaps her mother was perhaps too occupied with other chores to cook on that day, I moved on. On a different occasion, I also noticed that my sister (young girl maybe 10 years old) always had a bandage on her one leg and when I asked her about it one day, she replied something in Kassem. It wasn't until much later that she removed the bandage and let me see what was a significant indention in the flesh of the muscle which apparently she has had for several years and which is not healing. She mentioned that she saw the doctor but apparently the diagnosis had not turned up anything.

In hindsight, these indications seem to clearly indicate the poverty among my family and the relatives around. 

However, I did not pick up on these clues at the time. It was not until about one month ago when I was having my breakfast and overheard a conversation between my host-mother and my sister which I guessed was about money (given my limited command of the local language, Kasem). Fortunately, a girl from a nearby house was there who speaks excellent English and I asked her what the conversation was about. She then informed me that my sister was asking my host-mother for money to buy lunch at school. I innocently asked why, and learned that it was because my host-mother could not afford to pay the 50 pesewas that her daughter needed to pay for the food at school for one month. Dumbfounded, I continued to probe and discovered that not only could my host-mother not afford to pay the 1 cedi to pay for lunch for both children for one month, but before I had arrived, the family had only eaten every second day. Since I had been there, I had been served plenty of food in the morning and evening that was prepared by my host-mother and another sister. While I had been generously giving gifts in the form of food mostly to contribute back to both, I realized then and there that all my gifts were essentially useless because the shortage of funds was so severe. I felt ashamed, embarrassed and a bit lost. I had been living in an illusion of apparent wealth for over 2 months that had been made possibly by the family using all their food stores to feed me a meal every day to make sure I was not hungry and doing everything to make sure I was ok. This stark juxtaposition of such poverty and such generosity really surprised and moved me deeply. I immediately gave them the 1 cedi to pay for the food and made a plan to contribute back in more useful ways to the family than buying food.


Ever since that day, I have looked at the family with different eyes and have been much more observant of the things around me. While this process has been very insightful and definitely tumultuous, the consequences for me have also been very significant. I realized how incredibly rich I was with my stipend here which allows me to maintain a motorcycle, eat good food, buy telephone credit regularly and give gifts to the family. These things are all normal to me but completely beyond reach for my family and most of our neighbours. For me, a trip to the nearby town of Paga (which is 5 km away) is only a maximum 15 minute motorcycle ride whereas for my mother, it is probably at least a 45 minute walk. For me, buying a meal for 2 cedis every day is completely affordable whereas my mother could not afford to spend 1 cedi to buy lunch for her two children. Eating meat or fruits to me is a necessity because I know that the body needs protein and fresh produce to stay healthy. For my family, eating meat and fruits are a rare luxury. For me, when I am cold or when a shirt is torn, I simply go to the store and buy a new one. For my family, they are often quite cold at night now. I have already given away one of my hoodies to my mother but this is where the interesting question comes in, who do you help and can you help everyone? Of course, the answer to that is: no you cannot help everyone because even when I look beyond my immediate family's compound, the problem becomes bigger and in the scale of the village, impossible for me to solve on my own.


One colleague illustrated this dilemma quite well in a story. Imagine that one morning you were driving your car along the river and you happened to see a baby drowing in the river. Of course, anyone would slam the brakes, dive in the river and save the child. If the same situation happened the next morning, probably the reaction would be the same. However, if it occurred day after day or the number of children became too many to save all at the same time, saving the children becomes impossible and the question then becomes, why is this happening, what is the root cause. This is what I have come to realize over the past few months and even though the challenges remain, it now becomes easier to see how my work with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture is hopefully helping to alleviate some of these problems in the long-term. 


As I now finish with this blog post, I am getting ready to ride my moto home to my family where I know, I will be received warmly, will feel completely safe, secure and like part of the family. It's been a good day and I feel very grateful for the opportunity of being here.


This image shows my mother Abapa, my small sister Alice with the blue-yellow dress and a girl from another part of the compound called Ama having breakfast and drinking tea. Missing in this picture is my brother Kuesi.

Stakeholder Forum, Dry Season Farming, Kassem, and a weekend of reunions

This week began with a Stakeholder Form organized by MoFA on behalf of the Root and Tuber Improvement and Marketing Program (RTIMP).  MoFA had invited sweet potato farmers, processors, traders and transporters to come to Paga to hear about the details of the program. 

In principle, the idea to apply a value-chain approach to a particular commodity such as sweet potatoes is not new in the international development industry and several NGOs and Ministries have approached this topic from various angles.  This particular approach involved a cross-value chain dissemination of information with hopefully many synergies being created by the presence of various market actors in the same venue.  A man from RTIMP came from Tamale to talk about the program and many of the AEAs from the area were in attendance as well.   The project focussed mainly around encouraging the production of sweet potato in the area and helping farmers overcome challenges by providing them with financial assistance that was divided between a farmer contribution, an NGO contribution and a loan that the farmer would have to repay. The second aspect of the project was a micro-enterprise fund to enable ice-cream sellers who had access to electricity to learn how to make potogurt (yoghurt made from sweet potato) and to give them assistance in purchasing a deep freezer to store it. 

The other highlight of this week occurred on Wednesday when I joined the Director and an AEA called Wisdom to visit a Dry season farming site very close to the office.  Having seen only the dry and brown fields the view of green, lush vegetation was quite a surprise even though I had been expecting it.  This particular area had been fortunate to receive a dam a few years ago as a result of a communal project.  The dam stored rainwater during the rainy season and enabled farmers to do dry-season farming.  I saw Maize plants, Pepe, many other crops that I could not identify in the distance.  Having had first-hand experience with fetching water from a hand-dug well, seeing the irrigation channels that enabled farmers to irrigate large areas simply by opening and closing channel gates was quite astounding.  This is again contrasted with my experience when I visited Sirigu the past week and when I was told that even dry-season vegetable farming is not possible due to a general absence of water in the ground. These three levels and then obviously the large-scale mechanized irrigation that is prevalent in the developed countries being the spectrum of irrigation techniques it was quite stark to see the difference that this has for farmers. 

This weekend, I concluded my meeting with the Director in Navrongo and then went to visit Rebekah, who is a voluntary teacher at the primary school in Sakaa.  Her story is definitely inspirational as well and so I will just briefly digress from the narrative of the week.  

In a rural setting, there is generally a shortage of teachers.  Sometimes there simply are not enough teachers assigned to a particular school as is the case with Sakaa.  However, even when there are sufficient numbers of teachers hired by the Dep’t of Education, sometimes they do not come to school due to distance, lack of funds to drive, and a disinclination to teach in a rural setting which is more challenging than in more urban centres.  Sometimes in Sakaa, there were simply not enough teachers there and the children would go to school but some of the classes simply could not be taught.  In the case of Rebekah, she has volunteered to teach the kindergarden level of the Sakaa primary school.  Practically, this means that she takes her bicycle and rides it the about 30 km to Sakaa.  The trip takes her just over an hour.  She teaches the children and then returns to Navrongo to resume her job as a hairdresser.  I don’t know how or when she started teaching in Sakaa but regardless, I believe this is such an example of dedication.  Especially when contrasting this to the case of salaried teachers who do not come to the school. 

Returning to the narrative, I coincidentally met Tina when I was visiting Rebekah.  To any new readers, Tina is my host mother from Sakaa.  I had planned on visiting her later that afternoon in any case and so meeting her at exactly this spot in Navrongo was quite good indeed.  We left Navrongo and drove to Sakaa and I spent the afternoon sitting under the sun shade eating, playing with the children and talking to her.  Just spending time with her made me reflect about how almost luxurious my living arrangement in my village Navio is.  I also thought a lot about how to incorporate more of the rural realities that farmers face into the work in the office.  I felt such a disconnection between my days in the office and the challenges of farmers like Tina and even in more remote parts of the district.   I drove home full of energy and motivation to bring field realities back into the MoFA Office with initiatives.

That weekend in Navio, I got another taste of rural realities as I helped my friend Aaron repair the fence of his garden that cows had threatened to tear down the night before.  All herbivores such as cows, goats, sheep etc are significant threats to the farmer’s vegetable gardens and the maintenance and defence of the garden is a constant activity.  Throwing stones at the animals when they are close and keeping the fence in good condition are absolutely essential.  So, by noon I was quite tired but happy as I now knew how to repair the fence.   So, the reason why the fence needs to be repaired constantly is because it is not a wire fence as you might find around the garden in any developed country.  Rather, it is made of long relatively straight wooden sticks and the stems of the maize plant that the farmers collect after the harvest and then dry to be used as fencing material later.  Two sticks are driven into the ground next to each other after digging a hoe with a machete.  Then, the stems of the maize plant are woven through the space between the two sticks and tied to the sticks with bark rope that is also used for the roof construction.  The problem is that even these stems are palatable for the animals since they cannot find much food and so they begin to chew on the fence which can tear holes into the structure and leave the valuable pepe, tomatoes, okro, beans vulnerable to intruders.

That afternoon, I had an experience of quite a different sort.  I joined the local dance group as they were heading off to dance at a funeral.  My understanding of the ceremony is still a bit fuzzy but I believe that all the daughters’ families of the woman who had died had to bring a dance or music group to honour her death.   Having been at several funerals now ranging from quite small to medium, this was definitely an extra-large one.  This demonstrated the wealth of the family who was apparently quite influential.  At a funeral, the men usually sit outside and the women are inside the compound.  Mourners are invited by the family of the deceased, and are welcomed by each member of the family and thanked for coming.  Water is offered to the guests and then the members of the family come back to see the mourners off with a series of verbal exchanges.

In addition to the intricacies of the funeral, there was another interesting element to this which is the dance that the dancers performed.  The dance group, as I understand it, performed a series of pre-defined dance routines, with the head of the family in the seat of honour and everyone else standing around in a circle.  The dance movements are too complex to put to words and the music is also beyond description.  The adjectives that most describe this event are loud (the music was extremely loud), sweat (the dancers were performing a dance that quite obviously was extremely physically exhausting in 40 + degree weather), extraordinary (the skill of the dancers and the appreciation of the crowd in the forms of cheers and one-cedi notes and coins that people would press against the forehead of the dancer you wanted to honour and which often stuck there because of the sweat.)

The next day, after responding to several inquiries from various family members about whether I would go to church with maybe, I finally decided to go.  The length, heat and lack of comprehension due to the language barrier of the first two church experiences were quite strong deterrents but I finally decided to go and see.  We arrived a little after 9:00 to a kind of a bible study and the first question was, do you have a bible?  I had definitely not brought one and so it was a bit of an awkward moment as everyone looked in disbelief that I did not have one.  Then, I looked for the verse and tried to make some sense of the Kassem of the religious education teacher.  At around 10:00 maybe, the church service started.  The beginning was characterized by deafening music and singing and energetic dancing by many members of the congregation.  There was a group of 5 women standing at the front who were singing, two drummers and the entire congregation sang at the top of their throats in a small church that was packed full with people still standing at the back and children sitting on the ground.    Thankfully, the religious education teacher was very kind and translated the readings and the sermon of the deacon to me.  This made the service much more appropriate and I enjoyed it a lot more.  I found that the soft voice of the religious education teacher was in stark contrast with the sharp, almost yelling voice of the preacher and the Master of Ceremonies.   At around 12:00 the service was over and we all headed home.   

So much from Navio this weekend.  Till the next time.

First Week in Navio

After spending the entire Easter weekend in the village, my universe had indeed shrunken quite significantly and it was interesting to observe that when I went to Paga and to Navrongo that Monday afternoon, it felt like I was entering civilization again.   The difference between the town of Navrongo and small village of Navio is so stark that it really hit me quite strongly.   I reflected that when I first came to Paga with an implicit comparison to Tamale in mind, I was surprised at how small Paga was.  Coming from Navio, I felt like my short trip to Paga and Navrongo was quite extraordinary and I was even a bit overwhelmed by the bustling activity of the market and the traffic on the streets.

The next day, I took an even bigger leap as I drove to Bolgatanga, the Regional Capital to take part in a meeting of the Regional Director and the District Directors. Again, this same difference hit me and even going to the EWB office there were there was air conditioning, a fan, and even a refrigerator was another moment of surprise.  Overall, the day was quite informative and after soaking up lots of information at the meeting, I returned to Navio that evening. 

Later that week, I was fortunate to attend a meeting of farmer group leaders in a town called Sirigu that is about 24 km away from Paga and at the very eastern end of the district.  My very attentive readers may note a slight discrepancy here as I am working in Paga at the Kassena Nankana West District Office but I was visiting a community who is part of this district but is at the very eastern end of the district.  This difference is still a bit confusing to me but so far I have not completely understood the reason for this oddity.  The meeting was very informative though.  The AEA I was visiting had assembled about 20 farmer groups together and they held a meeting to review quarterly goals for the last quarter and to set quarterly goals for the next quarter.   They asked me several challenging questions and especially because the previous volunteer from EWB, who had been working in Paga, had been focussing on a different area than I would be.   

At the time, I did not realize the truly exceptional aspect of this meeting.  I thought that this process may be common with other AEAs as well.  However, I later learnt that actually this type of meeting is a completely new phenomenon even to more senior volunteers who have been working with communities.  Part of the challenge now is to find out more about this practice, to see how well it is working and whether it may be a procedure that may be applicable to other groups as well.

The next day, Saturday, I was involved in constructing a room for a relative who lived next door.  Once again, I saw the power of communal labour in a village.  There were two expert builders but everyone else was helping out.  We started levelling the ground with hoes and then setting down the first level of blocks.  Since the soil here is very suitable for building, you can make blocks (earthen bricks) by using soil just directly from the ground and adding water.  In other regions, you may have to add concrete to add more strength to the soil but in Navio apparently, this is not necessary.  So, these blocks were prepared in advance and were ready and waiting to be used that day.

After the first layer, we needed to make mortar.  To do this, you simply take a hoe, a lot of water and then remove your shoes.  You pour the water onto the soil, stamp the soil with your feet and then use the hoe to mix the water with the soil.  After doing this for a bit, you will be able to make quite a strong mortar.  The other neat aspect about building this way is that you can actually reuse all your old building materials.  In this case, the new room we were building was to expand the compound so previously, they had destroyed the old rooms.  The remains were lying there and after adding plenty of water and hacking at it with the hoe, the old walls and blocks had become mortar that we used for the new room.  Perfect recycling!  I was very impressed.

The other impressive aspect about this building project is the teamwork that I had already alluded to before.  Once the foundation was laid and everything was ok, everybody joined in to mix the mortar, carry the mortar to the various parts of the wall and then apply the mortar join the blocks.  Essentially there were five types of tasks:  Mortar mixing, mortar carrying, mortar application, brick laying and water fetching.  First, about 10 or more women fetched the water from the well and filled a large container.  From this, the mortar mixers took small buckets to spread the water over the new mortar area.  They took off their shoes and then were stamping the newly moistened mortar and using the hoe to add more earth to the mortar-water mixture.  The sections of mortar that were ready for application were shovelled onto empty bags that two people would carry from the mortar mixing site to the different points on the wall where others were busy applying the mortar.  The mortar application was done by hand as well with the first task being to make sure that the slots between the blocks were well-filled without any gaps.  The second step was to add a new layer of mortar onto the top of the bricks.  Once the new layer was ready for the blocks, the mortar appliers would form a human conveyor belt to bring the blocks from the block pile to the various points on the wall. Throughout this process, the two builders made sure that the wall was straight and inspected and corrected brick positioning.  

While this process is quite simple to describe, in practice doing each one of the steps carries its own challenges either in terms of skill, strength or insects.   For instance, the mortar mixing is quite hard work and then sometimes you happen upon an ant nest and then your feet can be quite sore with ant bites. The mortar carrying is also not an easy task and especially learning how to swing the sack in coordination with the other person and to deposit the mortar at the desired place without losing half of the mortar to either side of the wall is a challenge.  Also, the higher the wall becomes, the more difficult the lifting of the mortar and the bricks becomes. 

Overall, it was quite an amazing experience of communal labour but also quite an exhausting first day in the village.  The evening, was taken up by a soccer game and after a very long day, I lay down and was asleep almost instantly.

A rough beginning with a good conclusion

The next week began with a bit of a rough start as I was quite sick.  I was not sleeping very well, and feeling unwell with headache and stomach pains.  The heat became more of a problem and it took me two days to be fully functional again.  However, I did use the time to meet with Extension agents and to go into the field to visit another potential site for the Block Farms.  This visit was quite similar to the first.  We first met with the Chief of a village named Kazugu.  Co-incidentally during this visit, I learned that there was a German volunteer staying in the Chief’s house whom I briefly met and greeted in my first language, German.  This brief interaction made me reflect about the history of development in the area.  I realized that I was not the first white man to stay in the village and that I would not be the last.  I became quite thoughtful about my plans for living in a village and it started an inner dialogue that continued until Thursday.  Overall, the rest of the field visit was quite challenging for me because it was all in Kasem and I did not understand much of what was said and also because I was having an AEA ride on the back of the Moto while driving across very bumpy fields, through sandy conditions and all in all having much trouble balancing the bike with the increased weight.  However, we returned safely to the Chief’s palace to bid him goodbye and then we returned to the office. 
Thursday was Holy Thursday and so in the afternoon, I was invited to attend the church service at the Catholic Church.  I had plans on going to see a colleague in Bolgatanga who was celebrating his birthday that night but having been assured that the mass would not take longer than 1.5 hours, I agreed to come.  The service was very thought-provoking but unfortunately also much longer than 1.5 hours and so I missed the chance to go to Bolga as it would have been a very late night.

The next day, I had plans to move out of the compound and into a village called Navio.  Before the move, I had weighed the pros and cons extensively but eventually decided to do it.  I did not feel like Paga was truly a home and missed living in a village, learning Kassem, and living with a family.  I knew that the compound in Paga where I stayed was quite nice.  It had running water, a shower, electricity and was literally 1 minute walk away from my office and 5 minutes away from the market.  However, I made all the arrangements and moved out that day with some apprehension but also hope for being welcomed into the family just like I had experienced it the last time. 

Indeed, I was not mistaken.  Even though I was a bit scared, the reception I received was very very warm and I was overwhelmed by the level of hospitality and generosity that everyone showed me.  I was not used to this at all and was even unsure of how to receive it at times.  For instance, I decided to move into a room that did not have electricity yet.  The cables were there, but it had not been connected yet.  The man who had invited me to stay there was called Anas and he immediately went to call an electrician to get the placed wired for electricity.  There were many other things he and my new host mother, Abapa, did that I did that were so generous that I did not even understand.  I also met a very friendly youth called Aaron who spoke very fluent English and was living in the neighbouring compound.  That Thursday afternoon, I spent talking with Aaron and his friend Calvin under a tree, relaxing and just trying to learn a bit of Kassem.  In the evening, Anas came by and we went to a small general store in the village where we watched some Nigerian Movies.  It was quite interesting to be part of it.  Since not many people have TVs, the community comes together to watch.  The store owner apparently had a TV and people were sitting on chairs, standing and sitting on the ground to watch.  It was quite different than watching TV at home in Canada.  Also, the plot and the sense of humour in the movie was quite interesting and totally different than what you may find in a North American movie.

Washing, Visiting Tina and Church

The weekend started very well.  I did laundry on Saturday morning and fortunately had some help from a friendly neighbour who showed me how to do laundry by hand in a way that actually cleans your clothes.  I have done laundry by hand for an entire summer when I was in India but my clothes  never became truly clean.  After some quick tips on washing techniques and the right tools, I was set to go.  After washing the whites twice and rising, I was very happy to discover that they were perfectly white!  It reminded me of all those TV ads that compare the brand being marketed to a competitor and the one they promote is obviously white and the other still a bit brown.  Quite an amazing experience.  However, there is one caveat.  Since I wasn't used to the intense rubbing that is a key part of the getting clothes clean formula, I had a few sore spots on my fingers now where the skin has just been agitated and it burns quite a bit.  After this, I decided to visit my host mother Tina in Sakaa to give her the yams I had brought from Tamale and to see the children.  It was a bit of an adventure to find the place because I did not know exactly where the village was located but I just went for it and eventually found my way.  It was a very enjoyable afternoon spent sitting under the sun shade, talking, enjoying some of her food, fetching water with the children and showing some pictures I had brought with me from Canada.   I was very sad to go home actually and when I drove away, it felt like I was leaving home. 

I also want to write about another interesting observation I had when I was there.  During the time of my village stay I did not have a Moto and I did not even know how to get back to Paga on my own. I felt as if I was in a sort of microcosm where Paga, EWB, and especially Canada was infinitely far away.  However, when I returned that weekend, I made that connection between Paga and Sakaa and it put Sakaa in relation to the larger picture.  However, it also made it easy to forget that in Sakaa, you only see  a Moto maybe once a day and never any cars and that when sun sets, there is no light and no electricity.

Returning back to Paga, I went to church the next day.  It was Palm Sunday and I went to the local Catholic Church with a friend from work.  After a procession that involved a lot of singing and dancing, we arrived at the church and the mass began.  Fortunately, it was in Kassem and in English which enabled me to understand parts of it.  Everyone was dressed in beautiful clothes and enthusiastically singing along to the songs.  The service was rich in ceremonies and procedures.  For instance, the collection of money was done similar to the way that communion is distributed in Canada.  However the key difference was that it was accompanied by a song and that many danced to the front of the church, dropped a few coins in a basket and then danced back to their seat.  At the end of the mass, the pastor also invited any visitors to come to the front of the church to introduce themselves.  Since I was the only white man in the church, it was plain to see I was a visitor.  I improvised a short introduction that was translated into Kasem but I began and closed with a Kassem greeting.  Overall, the mass was a very moving experience but it was also quite tiring because it was so hot in the church and the entire ceremony took 4.5 hours.

The weekend was a very rich and refreshing experience and I was highly motivated to learn Kasem and to find a permanent place to live. 

Start of Work

After a quick trip to Tamale for an EWB MoFA Team meeting, I returned to Paga the following Monday.  The weekend was quite productive from a work perspective albeit a bit of a shock given that I had spent the week with no running water, no electricity and sleeping outside to sleeping in a nice guest house with running water, a fan, light and everything.  Before leaving Tamale, I purchased 3 yams for my host mother, Tina, as a gift to thank her for allowing me to stay at her place for the week. 

After a very uncomfortable and long tro-tro journey back north from Tamale (I was sitting on a seat where the spring protruded from the cushion and was constantly poking me), I arrived back in Bolga.  After having had the village experience of sleeping on a straw mat for a week, I decided to purchase a mattress so as to avoid the sore muscles that sometimes prevented me from getting enough rest. 

I then proceeded to find a temporary place to stay in Paga because I ultimately wanted to live in village for the longer term.  There were some complications with the living arrangement but somehow it worked out and I managed to get a room in a compound just across the MoFA Office.  It was the compound where previous EWB volunteers have lived in the past. 

The first week of the office consisted of me introducing myself to the district at the weekly meeting on Wednesday, looking for a place to live with a very friendly Extension Agent, learning how to drive the motorbike and meeting other MoFA Staff members.  I spent most of the time in the office working on the computer but I was also fortunate to go into the field with AEAs to visit a field.

The purpose of the field visit was to inspect whether a particular plot of land in a village called Chania was suitable for growing rice in the dry season.  MoFA has a project entitled Block Farms whereby they will supply inputs, tractors for ploughing, and combine harvesters to farmers for large-scale farming of an area of around 80 acres.  Simply getting to the area was a journey in itself.  The place is about 3 km away from Paga.  First we went to the chief’s house to obtain permission to visit the area and to inform him about the latest status of the project.  This was a chance for me to practice my Kasem greetings.  After a brief discussion, we mounted on the motos again to drive to the location.  The road became smaller and smaller and the soil more and more sandy which made driving quite challenging.  I certainly learned a lot about handling a moto in the sand.  After some 5 km driving through fields and small paths, we arrived at the place.  The place was actually on the border of Burkina and we could even see some houses in the distance which the local farmer told us were inhabited by Burkinabes.  80 acres is indeed quite a large area and since we arrived there at around 1:00 in the afternoon, the sun was at its peak.   Both of these contributed to me being quite tired after the walk around the area.  However, I learnt about rice farming, and about some pre-requisites that you need to do large-scale harvesting with a combine harvester.  For instance, there were many trees scattered between the fields to provide shade for the farmers during their work.  However, when harvesting with a combine harvester, the area should be as flat as possible to avoid damaging the machine.  Also, the land is subdivided into many smaller plots that are owned by individual farmers which complicates harvesting everything since it is difficult to determine how much each farmer is entitled to receive.  Also, given the poor quality of the road that made it even difficult to reach the location by moto, it seemed that it was virtually impossible to bring inputs, tractors or combine harvesters by the same path.  After a closing discussions with the farmer, we returned to the Paga district office. 

This was my first week in the district in a nutshell.  I was quite tired by the end of the week and looking forward to the weekend.

Village Stay – Short Stories

To give you a bit of an overview of my village stay, I have decided to write a few short stories  from different moments that I particularly remember and to give you some idea about my thoughts and actions during this time.

Story 1 – Roof Repair

On my first day in the village, I witnessed a few men repairing the roof of the turkey stall.    When constructing a roof, there are two options: straw and tin.  There is a cost difference between the two with the straw roof being cheaper to construct in the short term but also requiring repairs every two or three years.   The roof we were constructing was made of straw and to do it, three men were volunteering their time in what is commonly referred to as communal labour.  They did not receive any financial renumeration for the day’s work but they did receive food and drink from my host mother Tina. 

Before beginning the roof construction, you need to collect several meters of bark from the Canfef tree (Jude family) that can be used as string to tie everything together. (See Picture 1).  This bark has to be kept moist at all times to ensure its flexibility and strength.

You also have to either buy or make two types of straw mats.  One type is cross-woven straw and the other type is straw that has been all arranged in the same direction and is then tied together.

To begin roof construction, you first need several strong branches that can be erected in a manner similar to a wigwam and then tied together at the top with the bark rope.  Then, you need to make the cross-members.  To do this, take pieces of old roof and tie them together with the bark rope to make one long piece of straw rope that you then wind around the wigwam structure.  (See Picture 2).  Then, you apply the first level of cross-woven straw that you then tie down to the structural elements with the bark rope.  Once this is secured, you spread the second type of straw mat over the roof and then tie it down in a similar manner.  Once these two mats are secured, add a second mat of the second type for added coverage and then secure the top with some kind of pot or bag so as to prevent water from entering the top of the structure. 

This is just one story of my village experience.  I will list titles for short story topics that I can write about in future blog posts about this experience.  Please write in your comments which story you would be most interested in and then I will publish it in future posts.

Story 2 – Helping around the house (Getting water from the borehole and the hand-dug well, sweeping the compound, preparing lettuce, getting termites for the young turkeys…)
Story 4 – Ghanian Hospitality – The reception of an honoured guest.
Story 5 – When the sun goes down - Living without electricity
Story 6 – Intense Heat – Afternoons in the shade
Story 7 – Funeral Rituals here