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.