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.