Diare

I have finally moved out of my compound in Gushei and into a Diare, which is about 5 km North. While I have been enjoying the people I have lived with in my compound, they all work for ITFC and I was having a difficult time finding separation from my work. In addition I wanted the experience of living with a Ghanaian family. So I am now half-way through my placement here in Ghana and still have 2 months to get to know Diare and gain another perspective of Ghanaian life.

I am still a little unclear as of the relation of the people in my compound and how they came to live here, but I try my best to explain. There is a woman named Amina who I would say is the head of the household; her husband passed away a while back. I think she has many children, but most have moved out. Her eldest daughter, Kande, works and lives at the Guinnea worm containment center down the road but she is often at the house. Kande is 23 and speaks English so it has been nice for me to be able to get to know a Ghanaian girl around my age. Kande has a 6-year-old that lives with her aunt in Tamale and she sends enough money for school fees each month. She is the first Ghanaian woman I have met who is not married and has a child so I get the feeling that the people in this house are a bit more liberal than most. There are a few men who live here that drive tractors; they leave when the sun goes up and do not return until the sun goes down. There two younger girls and this cute little boy who everyone calls “my senior” even though is his by far the youngest in the family… he is pretty hilarious to say the least.

I ride my bike to and from work so I no longer have time to go running in the mornings before work, but I have managed to go jogging a few times in the afternoons if the sun has not taken too much out of me already. Jogging is my secret to keeping healthy here; that or I have just been incredibly lucky.

I no longer have running water (still no electricity but the village itself has it), but there is a well right outside the house. There is a bucket with a rope tied to it that you use to draw the water. The other day I managed to embarrass myself by accidentally dropping the rope into the well. Luckily, we recovered it pretty fast, and I guess everyone got a good laugh out of it.

Just wanted to give you a brief update on my living situation… I hope to have more stories soon


Loading up a Tro-tro - You know how parents like to joke around with their kids that they will throw them up on the roof of the car if they do not stop mis-behaving? Well here it is no joke, it is not even punishment, people just hang onto the top of the van, sometimes with goats

The sunset one night outside of my compound in Gushei

A woman - with a baby on her back! - getting water in Janga, a village I was in for work

Hanah (compound in Gushei) allowing me to stir the Banku one day - as you can see she is using her hand to scrape the end of the pot. Ive decide that Ghanaian's hands are fireproof

Abdul (Hanah's son) decided to put on his dad's work boots one day

Update on my Work with ITFC

During my stay in Bagarugu, I was able to spend a lot of my time on the mango farms since the field assistants were there working every day. I helped some farmers intercrop with groundnuts (which fixes nitrogen in the soil), learned how to prune, and counted the number of dead trees on the new farm. Unfortunately, the rains were frequent enough that the farmers did not have to water their trees so I could not observe how effectively they water the trees. I did ask the field assistants many questions about irrigation. Once again, many of the trees did not receive water in between the rains. When I asked why this was, I was first told that the pump ran out of diesel. I dug a little bit further by asking more questions, and was told that “they don’t think that watering the trees during the wet season makes a big difference.”

Again, I am perplexed. It seems to me that the major problem is a lack of commitment from the farmers and staff. I am constantly thinking about my work-stream and how I can have the most impact on the mango farmers, but it has been extremely challenging.

Here is a re-cap on what I have been doing with my time here at the office:

I have been making step by step user manuals with many photos and diagrams for the different aspects of the irrigation system. The irrigation system varies depending on the farm. Some farms have a drip irrigation system installed, some have pumps that transfer water into large plastic tanks that are in the mango fields, and some farms receive water by trucks. In the long run, the drip irrigation system is superior both financially and in terms of labor and resources. So ITFC is in the process of expanding the drip system to as many farms as possible. I have been working on a user manual for the operation and maintenance of the generators and pumps that transport water to the mango fields, and manuals for the in-field irrigation (drip and filling of tanks). Before I leave, I will facilitate an irrigation training session with all of the zonal managers and Field Assistants (4 separate trainings – one for each zone). I am also trying to come up with a monitoring and evaluation system and would like to prepare a report on the potential threats to the system. I am hoping that my work will assist ITFC in the expansion of their irrigation program and that it will run smoothly. Hopefully less time is spent on the logistics of getting water to the trees and more time is spent on improving the project for the farmers.

Compared to the pace of things back home, it has been a slow process. I have to acquire the information I need through informal conversations with the staff; there are no written resources available. I meet with the out-grower manager as often as possible to discuss my progress and how to make improvements, but he is always very busy and it is hard to sit down and have a conversation with him. I am having a difficult time coming up with a monitoring and evaluation system because what the irrigation scheme will look like in the future is very vague. ITFC still needs to hire more staff, and the type of irrigation system that will be implemented in each farm is uncertain.

From living with the farmers, I have come to the realization that the major obstacle is not getting the water to the mango fields, but rather ensuring that the farmers participate and adopt the instructions given to them. I would like to somehow incorporate this challenge into my work, but I can not do this only by compiling user manuals so I have been trying to pursue other work-streams in addition to the work ITFC expects from me.

There are many links in the chain that connects the managers at ITFC to the farmers and it seems that the communication between the two needs improvement. I feel that there is frustration at all levels b/c for one reason or another the important messages are not getting through. I have attended a few work plan meetings, which is where the zonal managers meet with all of their field assistants to plan for the week ahead. I see a lot of potential in these meetings, but I have found that currently they are not very effective. The managers have a list of things to go over and the information is transferred in a “this has to happen, figure it out” sort of way to the field assistants. I want to create a more participatory discussion where field assistants are sharing their challenges and successes. I think that some great ideas could come from these discussions, and the managers will have a better understanding of the challenges in the field.

I have expressed my idea to one of the managers and he has agreed to let me facilitate one of his meetings next week. If all goes well, I will try to spend time with all of the zonal managers and facilitate at least one work plan meeting with each of them before I leave. I am not sure if the managers will adopt this new method of holding meetings (coaching versus instructing), but at least I have shown them another option.

With the work I am doing, I need to re-evaluate the way I measure my own success. At school, I know that if I attend classes, hand in my assignments, and study, I will make good grades and making good grades makes you a good student. Things are a bit more complicated here. It is hard to find those small successes that are indicators that you are doing a good job and heading in the right direction. Sometimes I feel guilty because I am not producing enough tangible outputs. I spend a lot of my time trying to learn more about how things work here and reflecting on what I have done so far. This has been a difficult adjustment, but I am starting to realize the value in it. It will be difficult for me to adjust back to “school mode” when I get home, but this experience has really pushed me to view things from a higher level. I have to think about the long term effects and sustainability of my efforts; otherwise, there is no purpose in me being here.

So I hope that you now have a better idea of what I have been doing, I would love to hear your feedback and any questions you have. I am still keeping my eyes open for other ways that I can get involved here at ITFC. This week marks the half-way point, so I only have 7 more full weeks of work. On the other hand, I still have 7 full weeks of work so a lot can happen! Time is a funny thing

Life in Bagarugu

Kneading the Shea Butter

The chairman and some of his children; we were removing the kernals from the corn husks

Breaking the shells off the Shea nuts

Women carrying sand to mix with cement for a new room

The one on the right is Adams, he is a field assistant in Bagarugu and has been a good friend

I did another week-long village stay so that I could dig a little bit deeper into the questions I have about the mango farmers and their attitudes towards farming. I also wanted to have another experience so that I can make comparisons and not make all of my assumptions based on one village stay.

I arrived on a Monday around noon and managed to have a pretty eventful day. I shared a compound with the chairman of the older mango farm, his 3 wives, and his 9 children (I think he has more but they have moved away). When I arrived the women were processing shea nuts into oil. They had grinded the seed into a powder – not sure if they used a mill or not - and were kneading it with water in a big bowl until it thickened and turned to a lighter color. I motioned that I wanted to help them knead the mixture and they were more than willing to let me give it a try. Of course I failed miserably. With everything Ghanaian women do, there is a rhythm and a lot of strength involved. They would use their hand to smack the thick substance up against the side of the bowl, causing the whole mixture to move in a wave-like motion while managing to not spill any over the side. They got a good laugh watching me try to mimic their motions.

Once the mixture has been kneaded for long enough (I think it takes a few hours) they boil it multiple times until it turns to this small clump – shea butter. Later on I learned that this was the least time-consuming part of the process. The women go everyday to collect shea nuts from the trees on which they grow naturally. They transport huge amounts on the top of their heads in these large ceramic bowls. Once they eat the thin layer of fruit on the outside (with the help of the kids) they lay them out in the sun for a while before they begin to break off the outer shells using a wooden stick – with a rhythm of course. I tried to find out a bit more on how they transport the shea butter to the market and how much profit they earn, but it was difficult because of communication. When I go home I will cringe when I see those bottles of lotion that have maybe 5% shea butter and are extremely expensive. If Ghanaians could manage to process the oil into a final product to be exported they could make so much money. This is not a new idea by any means; there have people trying improve shea nut production for years.

After attempting to help the women with the shea nuts, I was playing a bit of soccer with the kids – classic possession game: 4 on the outside passing and one in the middle defending. I could hear some drumming and singing and managed to get one of the kids to take me to see what was going on.

One of the compounds was putting in a floor… sounds like a normal household chore but here it is a cause for celebration and the whole community is involved. When I first walked inside the compound, my senses were completely overwhelmed and I was struggling to take it all in. The compound was absolutely packed with women and children in all of their brightly colored fabrics. Their entire bodies were moving up and down in unison. They were all holding these wooden sticks that have a wide flat bottom edge, striking the ground simultaneously in an effort to compact the soil before the cement is placed on top. There was a single man with a drum, keeping the rhythm and guiding the women through their pounding. When I first walked in everyone turned and looked in my direction, shouting excitedly towards me, laughing, and gesturing for me to come over. I made my presence in the village know pretty quickly. They handed me a wooden pounding stick so that I could join. I though I was doing an OK job keeping up with them when the women standing next to me grabbed my arm to show me that she wanted me to follow her motions. After she struck the ground she would come back up and rock her shoulders back, turning it into more of a dance. I did my best to keep up and she responded with a great big smile. With all of this movement they managed to sing in unison with the sounds of the drum – “Ai-yaaay… Ai-yay Ai-yay Ai-yaaay”. And that’s not all… they began to move forward in small steps. When I managed to look up and take a breath I realized that the women had arranged themselves in circles and would slowly move in towards the center as they continued to compact the soil. People were pulling me in all directions; they all wanted the white lady to try to keep up with them. Eventually someone from my compound called out my name because it was time for me to go and greet the chief and the elders.

By this point I was pretty sweaty and filthy, but that did not seem to matter. I went to greet the chief first. Before you enter his hut you must remove your shoes. When he greets you, you must squat down so that you are lower than him. He asked me a series of questions which is how the typical Ghanaian introduction goes…

How is the journey? – Fine
How is the family? – Fine
How is your father? – Fine
How is your mother? – Fine
How is your husband? – Fine (there is no such thing as a boyfriend in the villages so to simplify things here I sometimes just say I have a husband at home)
How are your children? – No children (this always causes surprise and laughter)

Of course this is all in Dagbani but someone was translating for me and I can understand simple greetings. No matter how you are truly feeling you always respond with “Fine”. The chief then asked me why I was here, welcomed me to Bagarugu and handed me a bag full of guinea fowl eggs. Next I went to greet the elders. Basically the same thing happened over again in each hut, except some of the elders gave me marriage proposals and one of them even gave me 1 Ghana Cedi with the instructions to buy Kola nuts (anyone read Things Fall Apart?)

When I went back to the compound I was pretty exhausted, both physically and mentally. I ate some TZ and bra soup with the women and then the husband called me over to share some meat with him. I wanted so badly to just give the meat to the children, they need the protein much more than I do. I have the comfort of knowing that soon I will be home where I have the ability to have a nutritious diet. These children eat nothing but starch and oil. But I would insult him by not eating the meat so I thank him generously and just eat everything. The same thing happened each night I was in Bagarugu.

One night I saw the chairman dumping some dust into his bag of maize that he was going to sow. Luckily there was someone nearby to translate when I asked him what it was. In the Muslim religion there are 99 names for God. He has memorized them all and writes them down in ink on a wooden board in Arabic. When he cleans the board he preserves the dust. If the dust is poured onto the seeds, the plant will survive even if the rains do not come for a month. I’m not sure but I think this was a form of JuJu (kind of like voodoo). In northern Ghana most people genuinely believe in witchcraft… something I would like to learn more about.

I stayed in Bagarugu until Saturday. I had some pretty frustrating moments here and there but this time around I could laugh them off more easily. Overall, I genuinely enjoyed my stay. The things that brought me down were the difficulties I had communicating and dealing with people constantly asking me for things. One man even sat me down for half an hour, the first thing he says is “In Africa we are poor country”. Then he went on to ask me to find him work and get him a visa. Not once did he ask me questions about myself or what my life was like back home; he just wanted things from me.

In the villages I’ve stayed in, I often compare them to the poverty I’ve seen at home… in Atlanta, New Orleans, Montreal, and various places that I have traveled. I think about the stories I have heard or read about where children grow up with abusive families, and are exposed to drugs and violence on a daily basis. In my experiences here, the “poor” people are always laughing and smiling and seem to enjoy the daily chores that make up their day. More importantly people know that they are safe, they have a family and community that they can rely on, and I get the sense that everyone feels a sense of love and belonging. I would never want this life for myself; I am fortunate enough to have been exposed to so many things and need more out of life. I want Ghanaians to be able to have more opportunities and be able to choose the life they want, but I want Ghanaians to understand that life is not perfect in other parts of the world. We have our problems too, they are just different. I have been learning more from Ghanaians than they will ever learn from me and I hope to take some of the great things about Ghana back home with me to share.

I think I have written enough… congratulations if you have made it this far! I would like to sum this up with another Dagbani proverb that I recently learned which is pretty appropriate for the post:

In Dagbani: “A yi bi gberi nopoyu ni a bi mi ni nohi nyeri binfam”

Translation : If you haven’t spent the night in the hens’ house you won’t know that the hens fart

Further Translation: It is only by being closely involved with the life of a community that we get to know what goes on inside.

"The white people peeked"

The other day I was riding in the truck with the general manager to check on one of the dams that has started to erode. He told me that he had just seen a truck that stole diesel from one of the company’s generators and was selling it to the villagers. My co-worker and I had an interesting conversation on why this is happening.

In Ghana, it is considered a very serious crime to steel from another person. If some one is caught in the act, they could possibly be beaten to death. It is sad that the punishment is so violent but Ghanaians simply do not steal from one another because of the repercussions. I ask my co-worker, why then do Ghanaians think it is OK to steal from a company?

He told me a very interesting story that he has heard from a few Ghanaians who genuinely believe it to be true: When God created the Earth he told the white people and the black people to close their eyes so that they could not see what he was doing. The black people kept their eyes closed and the white people peeked. This is why white people are cleverer than black people and therefore are less poor. So it is OK for a black person to steel from a white person because the white person stole from God. (I might not have mentioned this yet, but 4 of the managers at ITFC are white so some Ghanaians view ITFC as a “western company”)

This is not to say that every Ghanaian believes this, in fact I doubt many do. This story could have also been altered by the time I heard it. But I think it sheds light on some of the complex issues with development work. There is a long history of development work here and it has affected the mentality of many Ghanaians. They have this idea that life is so much better and easier and that we do not have any problems to deal with. Some also think that westerners should just give them things without having to work for it. It is only when people start to realize that change comes from within themselves that real progress will be made. It seems to me that part of development work involves reversing the damage that we have caused by giving handouts that were not warranted.

5 Days in Gbanga

I just spent a week in a farming village that has two mango farms. The name of the village is Gbanga (pronounced ban – ga). The reason I went to this village is b/c their mango yields have been low and we believed that they were not properly irrigating their fields. ITFC provides each farm with water tanks which the company fills regularly so that the farmers do not have to go and fetch water to irrigate the trees. I was supposed to monitor how the farmers use the water that is provided to them.

I spent most of my time in the compound with the other women. None of them spoke any English so it was extremely difficult to communicate with them. They could not pronounce my name so they gave me a Dagbani one… Yemaha.

I woke up with the sun around 5:30 but the women were already up pounding maize for the koko (porridge) and fetching water from the borehole. To pound the maize (or corn) they throw the kernels in this big wooden bowl and then use these big long sticks to pound it down. Sometimes there are four women pounding at once, they get a pretty good rhythm going so they don’t bump sticks. I tried it out for a bit but there is no way that I could do it for as long as they could.

Then to cook they have to fetch the firewood. I never got a picture but it is incredible how much they can carry on their heads; girls begin carrying things on their head from a young age so their necks and backs have developed so that they can carry such large loads like this. In Gbanga, they always had plenty of food but it is all starch and not very nutritious. The staple food in this village was TZ (pronounce Tee-Zed) which is just pounded maize and water that has the texture of play-dough. They serve soup on top of the TZ but it is not very substantial. They always cook the TZ in vary large pots and as it thickens they have to stir it continuously… you need some strong arms. They also use their hands to wipe the excess TZ from the rim of the pot. Their hands have somehow become fire resistant over the years, there is no way I could cook over the fires like they do.

Other things that take up their time are doing laundry, taking care of the children (no need to be private when breast-feeding here), cracking groundnuts shells (basically peanuts), processing shea nuts into soap, helping at the farm, transporting things to the market to sell, and I’m sure there is much more that I am leaving out.

Then men did not do nearly as much work as the women, but they do go to the farms. I went with a farmer in the morning and I was helping him weed for about 20 minutes when I realized I had a big blister on my hand that had popped so I had to stop… turns out I’m not much a farmer, next time Ill bring gloves.

Every evening some of the school boys and young men go to the soccer field to play before it gets dark so I finally got to play some soccer. It was so refreshing to find something that was familiar to me that I could participate in. Well things were a little different… not only was I the only girl but I was the only white person, there was only one other person who was wearing shoes, the field was mostly dirt and rocks, and the goals were made out of sticks. But the game was still pretty much the same. I was looking forward to playing soccer every day but on my second day the ball ripped so we could not play anymore. I will have other opportunities to play while I am here, but I just hope the village can manage to get a new ball.

In terms of what I was supposed to find out about the mango farms, I was a bit disappointed and frustrated. ITFC dropped off water for the farmers on a Wednesday and they were supposed to water the fields the following morning. One of the farmers was sort of the “boss” of the mango farms and he spoke English so I would go and talk to him in the morning to get an idea of what the people in the village were doing that day. He kept telling me that they would water the fields “tomorrow” b/c the ground was still wet from the last rain. I asked “How long does the ground stay wet after it rains?” And he responded “About 3 days”. So then I asked “How long has it been since it rained?” And he said “1 week”. So I asked him “So why do you not water the trees?” and he replied “well the ground, it is still wet”. It eventually rained again so I never saw the farmers water the trees.

This tells me that he knows that the trees need water but he just neglected to do it. I have some hypothesis for why this is:

Mango trees are unique from other crops the farmers are familiar with because they require care throughout the year; their usual crops are only farmed during the wet season. So when the wet season comes around, the farmers shift their focus from the mango trees to their other crops. They know that the mango trees will not die during the wet season b/c it rains about once a week, but I do not think they make the connection that watering the trees less in the wet season when reduce their yields in the harvest season.

All the farmers know is subsistence farming, and working on the farms enough so that they have enough food to get by during the dry season. Farming as a business is a new concept to these farmers and until they start to see the benefits from it, they lack the motivation to work hard for it.

I am still confused as why the farmers do not perform to the best of their abilities. The community I was in was hardworking, but there is also a lot of sitting around. I know that they could do a better job but they just do not seem motivated. But I have to try and put myself in their shoes. Many of these people have never even been outside of a village and this way of life is all they know. I am self-motivated because I have been exposed to so many different ways of life and have been given many opportunities. I think that maybe these farmers have never been exposed to anything that would give them the self-motivation that I want them to have.

One of the women in the compound making TZ

My Room in Gbanga, I slept on a plastic mat on top of concrete. You can see a drain in the corner which is where I would take my "bucket showers"

Pounding maize with the women to make Koko

Some of the children in the compound. The tallest girl with the orange shirt is Sakina, she was always so energetic and smiling. I noticed she would not go to school every day so that she could help with the daily chores.

Inside the compound, this little boy would follow me around all day

Life in Gushei

So to try and give you a better idea of what life is like here, I will describe some of the people I live with in my compound.

I have been interacting with some people in the compound more so than others. There is only one woman, her name is Hanah and she works at the mango packhouse. I have been trying to get to know her better because most of my co-workers are male and I would like to get to know the Ghanaian women. Her husband, Mohammed, is a Field Assistant (provides technical training to the farmers) and they have a little boy named Abdul who is extremely cute. At first he was a little scared of me but now he always gives me high fives and waves to me. One day he was even comfortable enough to throw a cup of water on me… kids are really the same everywhere. Abdul can take any object, attach a string to it, and it becomes a toy. I have been giving Hanah food to cook with so that I can eat the meals she cooks for her family. ITFC provided me with a gas stove but my room gets boiling hot if I use it and it is difficult to cook in the dark. Mohammed is always reading textbooks in his spare time. In September he is taking an exam so that he can go back to school. When I get home from work I have been helping him with his mathematics and statistic. We have worked out a deal where I will tutor him if he teaches me Dagbani.

This is
Mohammed
and I, working
on some math

Here is Hanah and Abdul

Another person I have come to know and trust is Salman, a field assistant and irrigation supervisor for the Gushei farms. He has been a great help with my work; I’ve gone around with him to the farms and the pump houses to learn how everything works and take photos so that I can compile a user manual. In the morning we always walk together to buy porridge in the village. He has also been sort of a cultural informant for me. I can ask him questions when I am frustrated and confused about the culture here and he helps me to look at things with a different perspective.

Most Ghanaians in the Northern region are Muslim and practice polygamy; someone told me that the chief of Gushei has 30 wives and over 100 children. I’m not sure if this is true but it is common for a man to have 3 or 4 wives. Most of the villages I enter I receive at least one marriage proposal or am told “I love you”. It is hard to tell whether or not they are joking. I usually laugh and say “I already have 5 husbands” or “Only if you give me 4 goats and 2 bags of maize”.

I have had some pretty entertaining conversations with my co-workers regarding gender roles. I was in the truck with one of the field assistant managers and told him that I thought if a man could have multiple wives then a women should be able to have multiple husbands. He made this funny noise that Ghanaians often make where he sucked his teeth and then he said “oh no! I could not imagine that!” I know that I can not win anyone over in one conversation, but I’m all about the small victories here. I hope that just by sharing my perspective and using myself as an example (a female engineer traveling alone) that I can at least open up their minds to the thought of equal opportunities for men and women.