This all feels a little like the morning after Christmas. "What now?" The question hangs in the air, surreal and impenetrable, following me around like these wonderstruck children. We actually did it. Well, there's still plenty to do, but a big driving force in our lives has been removed. Our organizing logic is gone. Now we just have six days to tie up loose ends, see old friends, and wring a few more revelations out of this continent. It doesn't seem like enough time, but I'm still restless to go. The week after my arrival in Canada will be my first proper vacation in six months.
The Togo trip we were supposed to take didn't really happen. We had already discovered that we couldn't receive a visa on the spot in Nyive, so we decided to road trip it to the nearest big crossing, which is at a town called Aflao (pronounced "A-plow", which strikes me as a mailbox's last words), right across the border from Lome, the Togolese capital. Our plan was to visit our chief, eat some French food, ride horses on the beach, and scoot home two nights later.
Well, we got stamped out of Ghana and approached the Togolese immigration officials, only to discover that the price for the visa was higher than expected. Considerably. Unfortunately, I didn't figure out how much higher until I had already authorized the imigration officials to give us our stamps. He quoted us a price in francs (20,000), which an obliging cash hustler offered to change into cedis for us. The problem is that the exchange rate has rocketed as the cedi has devalued in the last year, meaning that our visas were going to cost us over $100 in total (graft included).
By the time I worked out that, not only did I not have that much money with me, but I didn't have enough money to buy visas and also stay in Lome, our passports had been stamped and it was too late. In response to my lame explanation of the situation, the immigration guy stuffed our passports in a drawer and proceeded to ignore us. No choice but to pay.
By this time I was having a large-scale anxiety attack, and insisted that since we couldn't afford to stay, we should turn around and go home. Although it probably would've been both cheaper and easier to spend one night in Lome and just hightail it in the morning, I was so frantic and psyched out by the cops and customs officers that I made us go back to Ho instead. We barely made it to Nyive on the last car of the night, around 10:30 - tired, caked in dirt, and destined to be famished until morning - with only a Togolese stamp in our passports to show for it.
Luckily, our $100-visas should enable us to enter again, so we are planning a trip to Kpalime tomorrow for a nice meal to celebrate my new favourite holiday, "8/7 Day" (i.e. Sidney Crosby's birthday). While I hear that Halifax will be swamped with fans enjoying a Stanley Cup parade, sadly we will have to make do with baguettes and stir-fry. (Apparently Togo's a good place to get Chinese food.)
Needless to say, this experience, if nothing else, got me psyched for home. Only five more sleeps to indoor plumbing, six more sleeps to an airport full of absurdly handsome Arab men, and seven more sleeps to all my loved ones!
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Friday, July 31, 2009
We Did It!
I'm pleased to announce that the Nyive Community ICT Centre/Library was officially commissioned this Wednesday, July 29th, by the Municipal Director of Education, the Municipal Chief Executive of Ho, and the Regional Librarian. Friends, family and supporters...WE DID IT!
The commissioning ceremony was quite the festival, attended by several hundred schoolchildren and dignitaries, including those mentioned above. This excellent turnout was entertained by musical performances from all of Nyive's churches, as well as a dancing display by students from the junior secondary school. (They were also treated to some impromptu bad Canadian dancing by me and Jessi, at the express request of the chiefs.) After the ribbon-cutting, the schoolchildren followed the VIPs into their new library to look at the three computers and approximately 300 books shelved inside. The shouts of astonishment from the excited primary students was all I needed to know that we had accomplished something tremendous.
It was a great day, but the ceremony itself was only the cherry on top. Finishing the library was a labour of love. I use the word "finish" pretty loosely; we still have a lot of cataloguing and organizing to do, some minor purchases to make, and some training to pass on before we leave. Even after our departure, our efforts to improve the library will be ongoing. But after this past week of yawning my way through 8-hour cataloguing sessions, picking bits of cello tape out of my hair, and negotiating the expectations of our event-planners, I'm happy to sit back for a moment and look at everything we've accomplished.
To all those of you who missed my speech (i.e. everyone but Jessi), you should know that you got a warm thank-you from me and a big round of applause from the people of Nyive. They are all extremely touched that people in Canada would give so generously to help a small village so far away. And so am I. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart! You've not only made my dreams come true, but you've helped ensure that the students of Nyive will receive a better education and a better chance in life. And you've helped them feel that they, too, deserve that chance - something they badly needed to know.
I'm equally pleased to say that we finished the project within our time frame and under-budget. (Take that, every government in the world!) We will be using the remaining $500 of our budget to buy some small items for the library, such as power bars for the computers and stationary for the librarian (who is due to arrive in September), as well as some further capacity building training for the CBO, so they can move on to their next project.
Meanwhile, there's more exciting news from our personal lives: Jessi has gone through a preliminary installation as a chief of Nyive. She is now Mama Afenyo, a "youth leader" of the village. A small indoor ceremony took place on Tuesday evening. Her full public enstoolment has been postponed until next year, due to the sad death of Torbgui Kotoko, one of the village's chiefs, this past week. It is against tradition to enstool a new chief publically until the late chief has been properly buried, which can't happen for some time, due to the grandiose nature of his funeral ceremony. So Jessi will be coming back (hopefully) next summer to be enstooled, along with a new Torgbui Kotoko and a new paramount chief of Nyive, in what promises to be the triple-threat enstoolment ceremony of the century!! Anyone with the spare change for the transatlantic flight is invited to Ghana to join us in the eight days of revelry that will attend this grand event. We can dance the night away together around the borborbor drumming circle; the schnapps will flow freely and the fufu will never run out.
Some pictures of the big day (and the preparation for it) are on Jessi's blog at thespottedjessicat.blogspot.com. I'll be posting some of my own in a few minutes. Stay tuned!
The commissioning ceremony was quite the festival, attended by several hundred schoolchildren and dignitaries, including those mentioned above. This excellent turnout was entertained by musical performances from all of Nyive's churches, as well as a dancing display by students from the junior secondary school. (They were also treated to some impromptu bad Canadian dancing by me and Jessi, at the express request of the chiefs.) After the ribbon-cutting, the schoolchildren followed the VIPs into their new library to look at the three computers and approximately 300 books shelved inside. The shouts of astonishment from the excited primary students was all I needed to know that we had accomplished something tremendous.
It was a great day, but the ceremony itself was only the cherry on top. Finishing the library was a labour of love. I use the word "finish" pretty loosely; we still have a lot of cataloguing and organizing to do, some minor purchases to make, and some training to pass on before we leave. Even after our departure, our efforts to improve the library will be ongoing. But after this past week of yawning my way through 8-hour cataloguing sessions, picking bits of cello tape out of my hair, and negotiating the expectations of our event-planners, I'm happy to sit back for a moment and look at everything we've accomplished.
To all those of you who missed my speech (i.e. everyone but Jessi), you should know that you got a warm thank-you from me and a big round of applause from the people of Nyive. They are all extremely touched that people in Canada would give so generously to help a small village so far away. And so am I. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart! You've not only made my dreams come true, but you've helped ensure that the students of Nyive will receive a better education and a better chance in life. And you've helped them feel that they, too, deserve that chance - something they badly needed to know.
I'm equally pleased to say that we finished the project within our time frame and under-budget. (Take that, every government in the world!) We will be using the remaining $500 of our budget to buy some small items for the library, such as power bars for the computers and stationary for the librarian (who is due to arrive in September), as well as some further capacity building training for the CBO, so they can move on to their next project.
Meanwhile, there's more exciting news from our personal lives: Jessi has gone through a preliminary installation as a chief of Nyive. She is now Mama Afenyo, a "youth leader" of the village. A small indoor ceremony took place on Tuesday evening. Her full public enstoolment has been postponed until next year, due to the sad death of Torbgui Kotoko, one of the village's chiefs, this past week. It is against tradition to enstool a new chief publically until the late chief has been properly buried, which can't happen for some time, due to the grandiose nature of his funeral ceremony. So Jessi will be coming back (hopefully) next summer to be enstooled, along with a new Torgbui Kotoko and a new paramount chief of Nyive, in what promises to be the triple-threat enstoolment ceremony of the century!! Anyone with the spare change for the transatlantic flight is invited to Ghana to join us in the eight days of revelry that will attend this grand event. We can dance the night away together around the borborbor drumming circle; the schnapps will flow freely and the fufu will never run out.
Some pictures of the big day (and the preparation for it) are on Jessi's blog at thespottedjessicat.blogspot.com. I'll be posting some of my own in a few minutes. Stay tuned!
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Roach is Not Enough
So, if you've been keeping up with Jessi's blog (thespottedjessicat.blogspot.com), you know this week kind of sucked. We've been having ups and downs on all fronts, from library progress to homesickness to digestion to insect life. Here's the lowdown on all things Ghana this week:
The library comissioning is ONE WEEK AWAY and the scramble has begun! The CBO, bless their hearts, are trying to pull together a starstudded ceremony, including local municipal officials, the MP, and other dignitaries, with yours truly doing the ribbon cutting. At the prompting of the chiefs, they are also considering enstooling Jessi as a sub-chief of the village (exactly which position is still unclear) on the same day. Needless to say, it's going to be an eventful Wednesday!
Jessi, given her library experience, has spearheaded the cataloguing process - she has us assigning call numbers and Dewey Decimals and taping the edges of books. The problem is, there are some 200 books to process and we only have a week. We're hoping to establish an assembly line of willing volunteers, but we're having some trouble coordinating it. Nails are being bitten and hair is being torn, but I think we're going to survive.
The library building itself has been painted on the inside, an expense which I was reluctant to approve but which has made an amazing difference in the feel of the place. It no longer feels like a half-finished building, held together by duct tape; it seems like a really nice place, something the community has invested in and can show off to the local officials with pride. The painter very generously donated his labour for food money, God bless his heart! Our carpenters are still at it, making furniture and installing locks on the doors. Soon the building will be ready to move computers and books into. Then it will really feel complete!
Wish us the best of luck in the meantime! Only three weeks left now!
The library comissioning is ONE WEEK AWAY and the scramble has begun! The CBO, bless their hearts, are trying to pull together a starstudded ceremony, including local municipal officials, the MP, and other dignitaries, with yours truly doing the ribbon cutting. At the prompting of the chiefs, they are also considering enstooling Jessi as a sub-chief of the village (exactly which position is still unclear) on the same day. Needless to say, it's going to be an eventful Wednesday!
Jessi, given her library experience, has spearheaded the cataloguing process - she has us assigning call numbers and Dewey Decimals and taping the edges of books. The problem is, there are some 200 books to process and we only have a week. We're hoping to establish an assembly line of willing volunteers, but we're having some trouble coordinating it. Nails are being bitten and hair is being torn, but I think we're going to survive.
The library building itself has been painted on the inside, an expense which I was reluctant to approve but which has made an amazing difference in the feel of the place. It no longer feels like a half-finished building, held together by duct tape; it seems like a really nice place, something the community has invested in and can show off to the local officials with pride. The painter very generously donated his labour for food money, God bless his heart! Our carpenters are still at it, making furniture and installing locks on the doors. Soon the building will be ready to move computers and books into. Then it will really feel complete!
Wish us the best of luck in the meantime! Only three weeks left now!
Monday, July 13, 2009
My and Roachio down the schoolyard...
For weeks now, Ghana has been abuzz over the impending visit from President Barack Obama. (And by "impending", I mean the one that just went by this weekend.) After touching down in Accra on Friday, the President held closed-door talks with the newly elected Ghanaian head of state, President John Atta-Mills, before taking the First Family to the city of Cape Coast for a tour of one of Ghana's most important landmarks. (Check out my previous blog posts for thoughts on Cape Coast castle and the slave trade.)
Anyway, seeing as we really like Cape Coast, and also really like Obama, Jessi and I decided to head down that way and see if we could catch a glimpse of the man - or, at the very least, partake of Ghana's excitement over his arrival. For those not in the knew: Obama chose to make his first state visit to sub-Saharan Africa to Ghana, rather than the more obvious choices of Kenya (his father's country) and Nigeria (the most populous and also most self-important African nation). The reason for this choice? Ghana's success at creating and maintaining a stable democracy. And if you're feeling cynical about that, I can confirm that yes, the average Ghanaian does indeed have at least as thorough and levelheaded understanding of democracy as the average Canadian. It's more than just hype, folks!
Needless to say, both Kenya and Nigeria were royally shamed by the snub. (Nigeria a little more so - see above comments re: self-important). Ghana, by contrast, was thrilled. The streets were suddenly filled with vendors selling random Obama paraphernalia. The most striking was probably the wax print cloth bearing a repeated pattern of Obama's face on a Democrat-blue background. I have been joking for days that I want to buy several yards of this cloth and make sleepwear out of them, a.k.a. Obama pyjamas. (I've spent all weekend singing Paul Simon's "Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard", with "Obama pyjama" substituted into the first line.)
Somewhat more disconcerting is the amount of swag that has not been manufactured for the purpose of promoting the Obama visit, but instead has capitalized on it by randomly attaching the name "Barack Obama" to it, like a brand name. We saw a kid in the station wearing a denim ensemble with the Obama label embroidered glaringly over wherever the embroidery for the actual brand name used to be. Jessi bought me an irresistable pair of flower-printed underwear with "Barack Obama" silk-screened over the ass. It's like witnessing the birth of the next generation of kitsch. Really moving stuff!
Meanwhile, on Friday we lobbed ourselves haphazardly into a tro=tro and took off for Cape Coast. It's minimum five-hour journey, done in three stages - first the three hours to Accra, then through Accra (which is usually congested enough to merit its own stage), and then two hours further west to Cape Coast. We did it on Friday, and then again on Sunday in the opposite direction, so we're understandably tired. However, the results were worth it. WE SAW OBAMA!
Allow me to qualify that. Our Ghanaian friend who came along with us saw Obama - as in, she actually saw his face, waving from the car. Jessi and I, unfortunately, were only able to glimpse the motorcade. However, through holding up her camera and snapping wildly, Jessi was able to get a somewhat grainy picture of the President's hand waving out the window of the car. Thus, there is genuine photographic evidence of our close encounter with the American President! (I mean "close" in the sense that we got closer to him than we did when he was in Ottawa. Our standards aren't that high.)
A fuzzy photograph might have been disappointing to me, if I weren't equally as interested in Ghana as I am in Obama. And Ghana did not disappoint. Let me say from the outset that the security forces on hand (both police and the military) were admirably restrained and very professional. Now that that's been established, let's move on to the "Holy Crap" portion of the story.
We had reserved a room in advance at Oasis, the hip hotel on the beach that we spent all our time at last week. The road on which Obama's motorcade was to pass runs right outside. Sadly, although it was close to the action, Oasis was on the wrong side of the road. All the spectators were being coralled onto elevated ground on the other side of the street. Our side, as it turned out, was being used as a parking lot for various official vehicles of the Secret Service and the Ghanaian military - including, I kid you not, an actual tank. Needless to say, we didn't find out about these arrangements until we were actually in the hotel, and by then we were no longer sure where we could walk outside without being shot. That's an exaggeration: the police never did anything other than point us away from where we wanted to walk. Also, they didn't have guns. The soldiers, on the other hand, were armed to the teeth.
Despairing of getting close to the road, we borrowed the upstairs portion of the hotel and sat by an open window. This looked like it would be a totally serendipitous position, where we could watch the President's arrival in comfort. Alas, we were a tad too conspicuous. Two soldiers wearing helmets and carrying enormous semi-automatic weapons came to secure the hotel and told us very politely that we'd have to go to the street with everybody else. Sigh.
So, contrary to every piece of traveller's advice ever issued by DFAIT, we went outside and joined a large and exuberant public political gathering. In order to get to the spectators' hill, we needed a police escort across the road. The police, again unfailingly polite and patient, were more than happy to help the white folks get into position. (Locals, although they were also treated with comparative good grace, were marginally more likely to be chased with sticks.) In the crowd, there was little chance of a good view, but luckily we managed to secure a large rock that we could stand on. Unfortunately, several other people recognized the genius of this plan, and we spent the next three hours packed like precarious sardines on our small slab of elevated ground.
Finally, helicopters flew by overhead (to enormous cheers), announcing the arrival of the President. Minutes later, the motorcade roared down the street and parked not far from the spectators' area. According to reports and assumptions, Obama got out and greeted the local chiefs, before getting back in and continuing on to the castle. We couldn't actually see him at this point. Jessi was wildly snapping photos; I was leaning dementedly off the rock on one foot, holding myself up primarily with the muscles of my neck, trying to see anything other than hordes of adrenilated Africans. I managed to hold this position for upwards of fifteen minutes. I can assure you, I felt the consequences in the morning.
The real fun started once Obama moved on to the castle. Portions of the crowd decided they'd had enough for the day, and blithely pushed past the fence the police were using to corral them. Out come the nightsticks! Suddenly our little concrete island is surrounded by a miniature stampede, as the youthful male segment of the population wisely gave way before a pair of cops in riot gear. We began to feel like Simba on the rock in the middle of the wildebeest stampede. One agitator told the lead officer to go to hell, with the result that two of the riot police chased after him into the crowd, knocking him down and giving him, shall we say, a stern talking to. Luckily, the police were very heavily outnumbered and also were not brutish Hobbesian animals; the situation was quickly defused by calmer bystanders, and no actual violence resulted. Muddy clothes and my sanity were the only casualties.
However, the reason the police got cranky was that, according to them, nobody was supposed to leave the spectators' area until after Obama had left the city. (I can't say I blame them - urban Ghana is almost impossible to secure.) This meant that we were all confined to our little hill in the hot noon sun, sans bathrooms, with only the food and water being sold from people's heads to keep us sated. Eventually, the police thought the better of it and let the city's natural porousness take over. Most people stayed on the hill anyway, hoping to see Obama on the way out.
And see him we did! He took a moment, God bless him, to lean out the window and wave to us all as he left the city. This was when our friend actually saw his face. It was an incredibly joyful moment. Our hearts were lifted, the blind could see and the lame could walk. Nobody got shot or mutilated, and Ghana lived happily ever after. The End.
Anyway, seeing as we really like Cape Coast, and also really like Obama, Jessi and I decided to head down that way and see if we could catch a glimpse of the man - or, at the very least, partake of Ghana's excitement over his arrival. For those not in the knew: Obama chose to make his first state visit to sub-Saharan Africa to Ghana, rather than the more obvious choices of Kenya (his father's country) and Nigeria (the most populous and also most self-important African nation). The reason for this choice? Ghana's success at creating and maintaining a stable democracy. And if you're feeling cynical about that, I can confirm that yes, the average Ghanaian does indeed have at least as thorough and levelheaded understanding of democracy as the average Canadian. It's more than just hype, folks!
Needless to say, both Kenya and Nigeria were royally shamed by the snub. (Nigeria a little more so - see above comments re: self-important). Ghana, by contrast, was thrilled. The streets were suddenly filled with vendors selling random Obama paraphernalia. The most striking was probably the wax print cloth bearing a repeated pattern of Obama's face on a Democrat-blue background. I have been joking for days that I want to buy several yards of this cloth and make sleepwear out of them, a.k.a. Obama pyjamas. (I've spent all weekend singing Paul Simon's "Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard", with "Obama pyjama" substituted into the first line.)
Somewhat more disconcerting is the amount of swag that has not been manufactured for the purpose of promoting the Obama visit, but instead has capitalized on it by randomly attaching the name "Barack Obama" to it, like a brand name. We saw a kid in the station wearing a denim ensemble with the Obama label embroidered glaringly over wherever the embroidery for the actual brand name used to be. Jessi bought me an irresistable pair of flower-printed underwear with "Barack Obama" silk-screened over the ass. It's like witnessing the birth of the next generation of kitsch. Really moving stuff!
Meanwhile, on Friday we lobbed ourselves haphazardly into a tro=tro and took off for Cape Coast. It's minimum five-hour journey, done in three stages - first the three hours to Accra, then through Accra (which is usually congested enough to merit its own stage), and then two hours further west to Cape Coast. We did it on Friday, and then again on Sunday in the opposite direction, so we're understandably tired. However, the results were worth it. WE SAW OBAMA!
Allow me to qualify that. Our Ghanaian friend who came along with us saw Obama - as in, she actually saw his face, waving from the car. Jessi and I, unfortunately, were only able to glimpse the motorcade. However, through holding up her camera and snapping wildly, Jessi was able to get a somewhat grainy picture of the President's hand waving out the window of the car. Thus, there is genuine photographic evidence of our close encounter with the American President! (I mean "close" in the sense that we got closer to him than we did when he was in Ottawa. Our standards aren't that high.)
A fuzzy photograph might have been disappointing to me, if I weren't equally as interested in Ghana as I am in Obama. And Ghana did not disappoint. Let me say from the outset that the security forces on hand (both police and the military) were admirably restrained and very professional. Now that that's been established, let's move on to the "Holy Crap" portion of the story.
We had reserved a room in advance at Oasis, the hip hotel on the beach that we spent all our time at last week. The road on which Obama's motorcade was to pass runs right outside. Sadly, although it was close to the action, Oasis was on the wrong side of the road. All the spectators were being coralled onto elevated ground on the other side of the street. Our side, as it turned out, was being used as a parking lot for various official vehicles of the Secret Service and the Ghanaian military - including, I kid you not, an actual tank. Needless to say, we didn't find out about these arrangements until we were actually in the hotel, and by then we were no longer sure where we could walk outside without being shot. That's an exaggeration: the police never did anything other than point us away from where we wanted to walk. Also, they didn't have guns. The soldiers, on the other hand, were armed to the teeth.
Despairing of getting close to the road, we borrowed the upstairs portion of the hotel and sat by an open window. This looked like it would be a totally serendipitous position, where we could watch the President's arrival in comfort. Alas, we were a tad too conspicuous. Two soldiers wearing helmets and carrying enormous semi-automatic weapons came to secure the hotel and told us very politely that we'd have to go to the street with everybody else. Sigh.
So, contrary to every piece of traveller's advice ever issued by DFAIT, we went outside and joined a large and exuberant public political gathering. In order to get to the spectators' hill, we needed a police escort across the road. The police, again unfailingly polite and patient, were more than happy to help the white folks get into position. (Locals, although they were also treated with comparative good grace, were marginally more likely to be chased with sticks.) In the crowd, there was little chance of a good view, but luckily we managed to secure a large rock that we could stand on. Unfortunately, several other people recognized the genius of this plan, and we spent the next three hours packed like precarious sardines on our small slab of elevated ground.
Finally, helicopters flew by overhead (to enormous cheers), announcing the arrival of the President. Minutes later, the motorcade roared down the street and parked not far from the spectators' area. According to reports and assumptions, Obama got out and greeted the local chiefs, before getting back in and continuing on to the castle. We couldn't actually see him at this point. Jessi was wildly snapping photos; I was leaning dementedly off the rock on one foot, holding myself up primarily with the muscles of my neck, trying to see anything other than hordes of adrenilated Africans. I managed to hold this position for upwards of fifteen minutes. I can assure you, I felt the consequences in the morning.
The real fun started once Obama moved on to the castle. Portions of the crowd decided they'd had enough for the day, and blithely pushed past the fence the police were using to corral them. Out come the nightsticks! Suddenly our little concrete island is surrounded by a miniature stampede, as the youthful male segment of the population wisely gave way before a pair of cops in riot gear. We began to feel like Simba on the rock in the middle of the wildebeest stampede. One agitator told the lead officer to go to hell, with the result that two of the riot police chased after him into the crowd, knocking him down and giving him, shall we say, a stern talking to. Luckily, the police were very heavily outnumbered and also were not brutish Hobbesian animals; the situation was quickly defused by calmer bystanders, and no actual violence resulted. Muddy clothes and my sanity were the only casualties.
However, the reason the police got cranky was that, according to them, nobody was supposed to leave the spectators' area until after Obama had left the city. (I can't say I blame them - urban Ghana is almost impossible to secure.) This meant that we were all confined to our little hill in the hot noon sun, sans bathrooms, with only the food and water being sold from people's heads to keep us sated. Eventually, the police thought the better of it and let the city's natural porousness take over. Most people stayed on the hill anyway, hoping to see Obama on the way out.
And see him we did! He took a moment, God bless him, to lean out the window and wave to us all as he left the city. This was when our friend actually saw his face. It was an incredibly joyful moment. Our hearts were lifted, the blind could see and the lame could walk. Nobody got shot or mutilated, and Ghana lived happily ever after. The End.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The Littel Roach that Could
Now that I've regaled you all with tales from our travels (for more of these, see Jessi's blog at thespottedjessicat.blogspot.com), I'll move on to a practical update on the library.
The carpenters have been hard at work these last few weeks, taking time out of their farming schedule to do communal labour in exchange for meals. As a result, our finished ceiling now covers several chairs, tables and shelves. Thanks to a local mason/steelbender duo, the existing windows have been replaced by something with iron rods (considerably more secure against robbery). And, thanks to an electrician from the next village over, we now have wiring.
The only hiccup so far is that the library draws its electricity from the nearby school, and since the school is itself having trouble keeping up with the bills, essentially there's no power until we can get a separate meter. Even then, we need to figure out a sustainable system for paying the monthly bill. It seems likely that a levy will be instituted on students, but Jessi and I are hard at work trying to find solutions that will minimize the impact on the students. Jessi suggested we ask the local religious institutions (roughly ten churches and a mosque in this tiny village!) to give some of their collection money every month on a rotating basis. Our chairman feels this is a bit of a stretch, since the churches can barely pay their own electricity bill, but we believe it's worth a shot. Wish us luck!
After our most recent trip to Accra/Cape Coast, we now have about twenty new books for the library, as well as a fully-functional Dell laptop loaded with educational software based on the Ghana public school curriculum. (Shout out to the talented young gentlemen at PC Direct in Osu, who would very much like to be better friends with us than they ever will be, but who still came through in a pinch with their technical know-how and superior customer service.)
The members of our organization, the Nyive Development Association, are now excitedly planning a commissioning ceremony for the library. We will be inviting numerous officials and dignitaries to the event, which should be a true blowout as only Nyive can concoct. (No doubt I will end up in the news again, marking my fourth media appearance during five months in Ghana - considerably more press than I get in Canada!) The tentative date is the end of the month, before the students head out on their vacation.
That means we only have three weeks left! I think we're going to make it work. Pictures and video of the last few weeks, as well as coverage of the big event, will be appearing on this blog, so stay tuned.
Now...off to Cape Coast again, this time for Obama-spotting!
The carpenters have been hard at work these last few weeks, taking time out of their farming schedule to do communal labour in exchange for meals. As a result, our finished ceiling now covers several chairs, tables and shelves. Thanks to a local mason/steelbender duo, the existing windows have been replaced by something with iron rods (considerably more secure against robbery). And, thanks to an electrician from the next village over, we now have wiring.
The only hiccup so far is that the library draws its electricity from the nearby school, and since the school is itself having trouble keeping up with the bills, essentially there's no power until we can get a separate meter. Even then, we need to figure out a sustainable system for paying the monthly bill. It seems likely that a levy will be instituted on students, but Jessi and I are hard at work trying to find solutions that will minimize the impact on the students. Jessi suggested we ask the local religious institutions (roughly ten churches and a mosque in this tiny village!) to give some of their collection money every month on a rotating basis. Our chairman feels this is a bit of a stretch, since the churches can barely pay their own electricity bill, but we believe it's worth a shot. Wish us luck!
After our most recent trip to Accra/Cape Coast, we now have about twenty new books for the library, as well as a fully-functional Dell laptop loaded with educational software based on the Ghana public school curriculum. (Shout out to the talented young gentlemen at PC Direct in Osu, who would very much like to be better friends with us than they ever will be, but who still came through in a pinch with their technical know-how and superior customer service.)
The members of our organization, the Nyive Development Association, are now excitedly planning a commissioning ceremony for the library. We will be inviting numerous officials and dignitaries to the event, which should be a true blowout as only Nyive can concoct. (No doubt I will end up in the news again, marking my fourth media appearance during five months in Ghana - considerably more press than I get in Canada!) The tentative date is the end of the month, before the students head out on their vacation.
That means we only have three weeks left! I think we're going to make it work. Pictures and video of the last few weeks, as well as coverage of the big event, will be appearing on this blog, so stay tuned.
Now...off to Cape Coast again, this time for Obama-spotting!
Monday, July 6, 2009
Slumroach Millionaire
Wow, ladies and germs. Sorry for the prolonged silence. The network here in Ho (provided by VODAFONE, curse their name) has been a total mess for the last week and a half. We had some vital IT activities to take care of, so we made a quick trip into Accra in search (yet again) of a hotel with wireless. Unfortunately, I was so busy trying to register for my courses, I didn't get a chance to blog. Sigh.
Since the last note, we've been to Cape Coast for a short holiday. There are a lot of attractions to Cape Coast, but the biggest draw was its bookshop, Black Star Books, which from the looks of things thrives on the patronage of local university students. We picked up an excellent selection of classic literature for all ages to put in the library, including the complete works of William Shakespeare for around $30. (Gotta love that foreign currency market, provided you aren't actually an African.)
Aside from books, Cape Coast has many other positive points. For one thing, it's on the coast. This meant not only beautiful ocean views, but lovely cool ocean breezes. We spent three nights at a guesthouse that had no mosquito netting (we were absolutely eaten alive; ocean breezes also mean ocean-loving mosquitoes), but while we were awake, we spent most of our time at the local hotspot - Oasis Beach Resort. It's a restaurant and bar on the beach that recently expanded into a hotel, and is now the go-to spot for any foreigner in town, as well as any local who wants to meet them. After so long in the village, it was strange to spend so much time hanging out with expats, NGO workers, upper middle-class Ghanaians, university students, and the bevy of stoned rastafarian Burkinabe griots that wander around the tourist sites making friends and selling handicrafts.
The major site in the city itself is Cape Coast Castle, which for centuries was the seat of British power in the region. It is a striking whitewashed fort, extremely European but with a very tropical-coastal feel to the architecture - probably Portuguese influence (or it may have been built by the Portuguese and taken by the British, I'm not sure). It stands on an ocean escarpment, right above the water and right beside Cape Coast's most chaotic stretch of working beach, where the fishermen are continually untangling their nets and hauling in their catch out of their boats. But in order to get to the beach from the castle, you have to pass through a door - one with special significance. It's called the Door of No Return.
This is because, in addition to being a nice piece of architecture and a formidable military installment, Cape Coast Castle served for years as a giant depot for the trade in human beings. Our tour of the site took us into the most appalling, dark, squalid dungeons, where hundreds of Africans were regularly crammed into small rooms and made to live without daylight, sanitation, food, dignity, or hope. This was a life where women who were removed from the dungeons to be sexually abused by colonial governors were the lucky ones. Literally thousands of people passed through the Door of No Return to board ships to Brazil and the Caribbean. Most of them died on the way; many more died within a few years of arriving, crushed by the harsh conditions of slavery in the New World.
At one point, we stood in a place called the Room of the Condemned. There are three small chambers underneath the castle where insurrectionists would be locked and left to die of starvation and suffocation. The tour guide led us in, and then closed the door. We were wrapped in total darkness. Suddenly, I was seized by the terrible reality of it all. Every horror story from my history books leaped into life in front of me. People died in the room where I was standing. On a regular basis. And in this land where ancestor worship forms a major part of spiritual belief, I was forced to face the fact that my ancestors were the monsters responsible for this. And what's more, it isn't over. People are still standing in that room, all over the world.
Afterwards, I stood for a long time on a balcony overlooking the courtyard, weeping. I wasn't expecting it to be that moving, that troubling. But then, through my tears, I looked across at the Door of No Return, and saw a group of Ghanaian school children, laughing and chattering and running in their bright blue uniforms as their teacher led them on their class trip through the Castle. They were walking back in the door, from the beach, and so were fishermen with tangled nets, and masons who were repairing the outside walls, and small boys still wet from playing in the ocean. All of them walking back through the door. Returning.
Since the last note, we've been to Cape Coast for a short holiday. There are a lot of attractions to Cape Coast, but the biggest draw was its bookshop, Black Star Books, which from the looks of things thrives on the patronage of local university students. We picked up an excellent selection of classic literature for all ages to put in the library, including the complete works of William Shakespeare for around $30. (Gotta love that foreign currency market, provided you aren't actually an African.)
Aside from books, Cape Coast has many other positive points. For one thing, it's on the coast. This meant not only beautiful ocean views, but lovely cool ocean breezes. We spent three nights at a guesthouse that had no mosquito netting (we were absolutely eaten alive; ocean breezes also mean ocean-loving mosquitoes), but while we were awake, we spent most of our time at the local hotspot - Oasis Beach Resort. It's a restaurant and bar on the beach that recently expanded into a hotel, and is now the go-to spot for any foreigner in town, as well as any local who wants to meet them. After so long in the village, it was strange to spend so much time hanging out with expats, NGO workers, upper middle-class Ghanaians, university students, and the bevy of stoned rastafarian Burkinabe griots that wander around the tourist sites making friends and selling handicrafts.
The major site in the city itself is Cape Coast Castle, which for centuries was the seat of British power in the region. It is a striking whitewashed fort, extremely European but with a very tropical-coastal feel to the architecture - probably Portuguese influence (or it may have been built by the Portuguese and taken by the British, I'm not sure). It stands on an ocean escarpment, right above the water and right beside Cape Coast's most chaotic stretch of working beach, where the fishermen are continually untangling their nets and hauling in their catch out of their boats. But in order to get to the beach from the castle, you have to pass through a door - one with special significance. It's called the Door of No Return.
This is because, in addition to being a nice piece of architecture and a formidable military installment, Cape Coast Castle served for years as a giant depot for the trade in human beings. Our tour of the site took us into the most appalling, dark, squalid dungeons, where hundreds of Africans were regularly crammed into small rooms and made to live without daylight, sanitation, food, dignity, or hope. This was a life where women who were removed from the dungeons to be sexually abused by colonial governors were the lucky ones. Literally thousands of people passed through the Door of No Return to board ships to Brazil and the Caribbean. Most of them died on the way; many more died within a few years of arriving, crushed by the harsh conditions of slavery in the New World.
At one point, we stood in a place called the Room of the Condemned. There are three small chambers underneath the castle where insurrectionists would be locked and left to die of starvation and suffocation. The tour guide led us in, and then closed the door. We were wrapped in total darkness. Suddenly, I was seized by the terrible reality of it all. Every horror story from my history books leaped into life in front of me. People died in the room where I was standing. On a regular basis. And in this land where ancestor worship forms a major part of spiritual belief, I was forced to face the fact that my ancestors were the monsters responsible for this. And what's more, it isn't over. People are still standing in that room, all over the world.
Afterwards, I stood for a long time on a balcony overlooking the courtyard, weeping. I wasn't expecting it to be that moving, that troubling. But then, through my tears, I looked across at the Door of No Return, and saw a group of Ghanaian school children, laughing and chattering and running in their bright blue uniforms as their teacher led them on their class trip through the Castle. They were walking back in the door, from the beach, and so were fishermen with tangled nets, and masons who were repairing the outside walls, and small boys still wet from playing in the ocean. All of them walking back through the door. Returning.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Terminator: Roachination
A molasses-like internet connection has prevented me from updating before now. Operation Accra was a success on all fronts! Not only did I get so see the game (which, as I'm sure you all know, the Penguins won in glorious style), but we were able to purchase some additional books for the library. Although our attempt to buy some adult-level history and politics books at the University of Ghana bookshop was foiled, we found a place downtown that sold an excellent selection of children's books. We stocked up, filled a new suitcase with African literature, sampled some of the finest fast food Accra had to offer, and jumped on a tro-tro back to Nyive - for my part, feeling less homesick and more patriotically Nova Scotian than ever before. Cole Harbour represent! (Just to note for clarity's sake: my hockey-induced flights of fancy are financed by my own travel budget, not the money that was donated for the library.)
About the library: the carpenters have put their heads together and agreed to spend this Thursday and Friday building the shelving and furniture. We are currently negotiating with an electrician, who feels it will take him and his team five days to do the necessary wiring. Fingers crossed, we may be looking at an end to construction by early July, well before I expected. So far we're on budget, and there should be some money left over after the renovations to supply more books, even possibly another computer. Once again, thank you all for contributing to this project. It's really animating the village and the volunteers here who've worked so hard these past years to make it happen.
Now, for another taste of life in Nyive. As I may have mentioned, the village is full of more-or-less stray goats, which, in addition to the free range chickens, make up about 80% of the traffic on all the footpaths. A particular family of goats (possibly the possessions of our host) have taken to hanging around our house - specifically the front porch. There's a fat black nanny goat - presumably the mother - and two kids, one black and one tan. The kids are virtually inseperable, and like to take shelter from the rain on our front porch, where they have unlimited access to our dustbin full of cookie wrappers and mango skins. These babies have no shame. We've named them Rebo and Zooty (a reference that will probably go past everyone except our fellow sci-fi geeks). Zooty, in particular, is very sociable and possibly not that bright. Jessi caught him with his head in the dustbin yesterday and managed to trap him and bring him inside. It was captured on video, but unfortunately we'll have to wait for a faster connection to upload it. Possibly the next trip to Accra.
As for the bathroom, I sprayed it again in a moment of weakness, and the result was another roach buffet for the local chicken population. Thus ensuring generations of two-headed roosters.
About the library: the carpenters have put their heads together and agreed to spend this Thursday and Friday building the shelving and furniture. We are currently negotiating with an electrician, who feels it will take him and his team five days to do the necessary wiring. Fingers crossed, we may be looking at an end to construction by early July, well before I expected. So far we're on budget, and there should be some money left over after the renovations to supply more books, even possibly another computer. Once again, thank you all for contributing to this project. It's really animating the village and the volunteers here who've worked so hard these past years to make it happen.
Now, for another taste of life in Nyive. As I may have mentioned, the village is full of more-or-less stray goats, which, in addition to the free range chickens, make up about 80% of the traffic on all the footpaths. A particular family of goats (possibly the possessions of our host) have taken to hanging around our house - specifically the front porch. There's a fat black nanny goat - presumably the mother - and two kids, one black and one tan. The kids are virtually inseperable, and like to take shelter from the rain on our front porch, where they have unlimited access to our dustbin full of cookie wrappers and mango skins. These babies have no shame. We've named them Rebo and Zooty (a reference that will probably go past everyone except our fellow sci-fi geeks). Zooty, in particular, is very sociable and possibly not that bright. Jessi caught him with his head in the dustbin yesterday and managed to trap him and bring him inside. It was captured on video, but unfortunately we'll have to wait for a faster connection to upload it. Possibly the next trip to Accra.
As for the bathroom, I sprayed it again in a moment of weakness, and the result was another roach buffet for the local chicken population. Thus ensuring generations of two-headed roosters.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
News Roach
DUDE! I completely forgot to blog about what I meant to blog about. I was so busy swerving off into emotional philosophy, I forgot to relate what I was writing to the title of the post. Here's another go - this story is one more reason to love Ghana:
Yesterday, we went to visit the Volta Star Radio station to get some video footage and pictures for Farm Radio International. Volta Star is part of Farm Radio's AFRRI research project into the usefulness of radio in supporting and educating African farmers. The station puts on radio programs for farmers in Ewe and Akan, with help from Farm Radio, and then they go out into their selected research communities and find out what impact the programs have. Most of their programming at Volta Star is focussed on something called New Rice for Africa, a hybrid form of rice designed to give high yields in African conditions.
After some brief interviews with the AFRRI team at Volta Star, they invited me on a tour of the studio, where I was encouraged to take pictures and film. However, their idea of a tour also involved leading myself, Jessi, and a Ghanaian friend who accompanied us into the studio, sitting us down, and putting us on the air for a live interview...without warning! We were suddenly called upon to explain our purpose, say a few words about Farm Radio, and in Jessi's case, discuss the need for education to prevent bushfires. Yes. You read that right. Following up on a totally random conversation we had had earlier in the day with the radio announcer, Jessi was asked about forest fires in Canada and how we can prevent them. She did remarkably well, especially given that neither of us had a clue what was going on.
Volta Star isn't a small radio station by any means, and a lot of people in Ho and the area must have heard us. When we got back to Nyive, we were minor celebrities...all over again.
This isn't unusual at all here. I end up in the newspaper every time I appear at a public event, it seems. My enstoolment as Queenmother in 2007 was covered, as well as the time I was randomly dragooned into presenting awards to students at a local school. Plus, it was just so charmingly go-with-the-flow...why not do a live interview, as long as you're here? Thoroughly Ghanaian!
Yesterday, we went to visit the Volta Star Radio station to get some video footage and pictures for Farm Radio International. Volta Star is part of Farm Radio's AFRRI research project into the usefulness of radio in supporting and educating African farmers. The station puts on radio programs for farmers in Ewe and Akan, with help from Farm Radio, and then they go out into their selected research communities and find out what impact the programs have. Most of their programming at Volta Star is focussed on something called New Rice for Africa, a hybrid form of rice designed to give high yields in African conditions.
After some brief interviews with the AFRRI team at Volta Star, they invited me on a tour of the studio, where I was encouraged to take pictures and film. However, their idea of a tour also involved leading myself, Jessi, and a Ghanaian friend who accompanied us into the studio, sitting us down, and putting us on the air for a live interview...without warning! We were suddenly called upon to explain our purpose, say a few words about Farm Radio, and in Jessi's case, discuss the need for education to prevent bushfires. Yes. You read that right. Following up on a totally random conversation we had had earlier in the day with the radio announcer, Jessi was asked about forest fires in Canada and how we can prevent them. She did remarkably well, especially given that neither of us had a clue what was going on.
Volta Star isn't a small radio station by any means, and a lot of people in Ho and the area must have heard us. When we got back to Nyive, we were minor celebrities...all over again.
This isn't unusual at all here. I end up in the newspaper every time I appear at a public event, it seems. My enstoolment as Queenmother in 2007 was covered, as well as the time I was randomly dragooned into presenting awards to students at a local school. Plus, it was just so charmingly go-with-the-flow...why not do a live interview, as long as you're here? Thoroughly Ghanaian!
Only You Can Prevent Roach Fires
(N.B. Awesome pics and videos of us feeding monkeys on Jessi's blog: thespottedjessicat.blogspot.com)
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Sometimes I feel I give in too easily to the temptation to turn Rome into a mini-Canada. For the past week, Jessi and I have endured some unfortunate stomach upset (familiar to any traveler), stranded in our house, unable to venture out in search of entertainment beyond watching Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt try to shoot each other on a pirated DVD collection. It left us longing for the familiar, especially in terms of food. We spent a couple of lazy hours flipping through our various travel guides, hunting down the most promising venues for international cuisine in West Africa.
This has galvanized us into a quest to Accra this weekend, where we are bound and determined to consume some form of food invented by the Lebanese. (The trip to the city also happens to coincide with my desperate hockey-related need to get back in touch with the world of satellite television and live streaming feeds from the CBC.) We're justifying the trip by also going book-shopping for the library. We repeat this to ourselves and others often. But in the back of our minds, we're really, really looking forward to mixed drinks and swimming pools.
Here's the thing: I feel like this blog has turned into a venue for my complaints, especially regarding the local fauna. That's unfair; it's mostly the result of cabin fever. The reason why I get so twitchy when I have to spend many days in the village is that I absolutely love travelling around Ghana. There's nothing I enjoy more than throwing myself into the back of tro-tro (the shared minibuses that crisscross the country) and spend several hours watching the scenery go by. Our trip to Peki two weeks ago took us through the remarkable mountains of Volta Region, showing us views of the Ghanaian countryside that I thought were reserved for paid photographers in helicopters. Even crammed into the back of a station wagon with six or seven other people, jostling and jolting along the unpaved road from Ho to Nyive, I am in my happy place. Enjoying a breeze, watching life go by, pulling as much of the country into myself as I can while I pass through.
That's the real reason, I think, that I'm excited about going to Accra. I've spent almost all my time in Ghana in Nyive and the surrounding area. It will be great to see another side of Ghana - urban Africa, in all its curious energy and complication. We're travelling with a local friend of ours, so hopefully we will see a bit more than the average tourist. But we're also pumped to meet some other expats: if Accra's one and only sports bar has a way of showing the hockey game, we may even run into some Canadians.
In the meantime, I'm hyper-focused on all the things that make life in Nyive wonderful. Eating fresh mangoes, straight off the tree. Feeding the dinner scraps to goats. Bathing outside in the fresh air, with rainwater heated by a day in the sun. Going slowly deaf from the clatter of rain on the metal roof at night. Enjoying a cold beer or soft drink with dear friends.
And, of course, hitting the road.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Sometimes I feel I give in too easily to the temptation to turn Rome into a mini-Canada. For the past week, Jessi and I have endured some unfortunate stomach upset (familiar to any traveler), stranded in our house, unable to venture out in search of entertainment beyond watching Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt try to shoot each other on a pirated DVD collection. It left us longing for the familiar, especially in terms of food. We spent a couple of lazy hours flipping through our various travel guides, hunting down the most promising venues for international cuisine in West Africa.
This has galvanized us into a quest to Accra this weekend, where we are bound and determined to consume some form of food invented by the Lebanese. (The trip to the city also happens to coincide with my desperate hockey-related need to get back in touch with the world of satellite television and live streaming feeds from the CBC.) We're justifying the trip by also going book-shopping for the library. We repeat this to ourselves and others often. But in the back of our minds, we're really, really looking forward to mixed drinks and swimming pools.
Here's the thing: I feel like this blog has turned into a venue for my complaints, especially regarding the local fauna. That's unfair; it's mostly the result of cabin fever. The reason why I get so twitchy when I have to spend many days in the village is that I absolutely love travelling around Ghana. There's nothing I enjoy more than throwing myself into the back of tro-tro (the shared minibuses that crisscross the country) and spend several hours watching the scenery go by. Our trip to Peki two weeks ago took us through the remarkable mountains of Volta Region, showing us views of the Ghanaian countryside that I thought were reserved for paid photographers in helicopters. Even crammed into the back of a station wagon with six or seven other people, jostling and jolting along the unpaved road from Ho to Nyive, I am in my happy place. Enjoying a breeze, watching life go by, pulling as much of the country into myself as I can while I pass through.
That's the real reason, I think, that I'm excited about going to Accra. I've spent almost all my time in Ghana in Nyive and the surrounding area. It will be great to see another side of Ghana - urban Africa, in all its curious energy and complication. We're travelling with a local friend of ours, so hopefully we will see a bit more than the average tourist. But we're also pumped to meet some other expats: if Accra's one and only sports bar has a way of showing the hockey game, we may even run into some Canadians.
In the meantime, I'm hyper-focused on all the things that make life in Nyive wonderful. Eating fresh mangoes, straight off the tree. Feeding the dinner scraps to goats. Bathing outside in the fresh air, with rainwater heated by a day in the sun. Going slowly deaf from the clatter of rain on the metal roof at night. Enjoying a cold beer or soft drink with dear friends.
And, of course, hitting the road.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
When Harry Met Roach
So the roach situation has largely settled down. I may have mentioned earlier that they were replaced by a swarm of mosquitoes (all of which seem intent on biting me, rather than Jessica). Perhaps I should also mention that the bathroom has been infested by hordes of buzzing flies, which spiral up out of the toilet when you open the door like something from "The Mummy". I might be exaggerating a little, but still, it seems like a neverending adventure! It was especially rough this weekend, as Jessi was sick. Things seem to have calmed down, but for a while there we were afraid to get too far away from our facilities. Instead we stayed in the house, reading, studying Ewe, and watching terribly pirated movie collections we bought on the street in Ho (including several films starring Angelina Jolie...hurray!).
Work has ground to a halt, more or less. The major dynamo of this project is Mr. Numado, the headmaster, and he's had his attention hijacked by some event this week having to do with the National Identification Authority. Details are sketchy, but apparently the government has camped out at his school to do some sort of registration. Anyway, we got a quote from an electrician to hook up the library, but the quote is currently sealed in Mr. Numado's mind...he hasn't gotten around to telling us yet. It's okay, we forgive him: he's an excellent host and a sweet friend.
So to pass the time, I am embarking on the other half of my work here: producing some video footage for my friends at Farm Radio International of their partner here, Volta Star Radio station. I'm headed up that way this afternoon to try and get some footage...I'm a tad nervous, since I've learned to expect the unexpected (especially when you have a video camera in your hand), but hopefully it will all go well.
Meanwhile, I lay awake last night during the most tremendous thunderstorm I've ever experienced (a three-hour extravaganza of near-constant lightning and simultaneous deafening thunder), contemplating the dream I had on Monday night. Traditionally, I dream on the day before I take my next dose of mefoloquine, my malaria preventative; I'm not quite sure why. This Monday I dreamed that the Senators were in the Stanley Cup final, but I was in Ghana and couldn't see them. I was in an internet cafe, trying desperately to get the score, but I couldn't remember how to use Google. Then I opened up a newspaper and tried to find the sports pages, but instead it was page after page of comics and articles written in gibberish. Finally, I somehow learned that the Sens had won, but when I tried to shout for joy, my voice was gone.
I'm no expert, but I think when you start having hockey-related nightmares, you're probably in over your head. My surprise was great when I discovered that there will be a Game 7, and I'm now planning to call every hotel in Ghana to find out if any of them have NBC on their satellite TV menu. I may end up dragging Jessica away for the weekend so I can see the game. A fool's errand...wish me luck!
Work has ground to a halt, more or less. The major dynamo of this project is Mr. Numado, the headmaster, and he's had his attention hijacked by some event this week having to do with the National Identification Authority. Details are sketchy, but apparently the government has camped out at his school to do some sort of registration. Anyway, we got a quote from an electrician to hook up the library, but the quote is currently sealed in Mr. Numado's mind...he hasn't gotten around to telling us yet. It's okay, we forgive him: he's an excellent host and a sweet friend.
So to pass the time, I am embarking on the other half of my work here: producing some video footage for my friends at Farm Radio International of their partner here, Volta Star Radio station. I'm headed up that way this afternoon to try and get some footage...I'm a tad nervous, since I've learned to expect the unexpected (especially when you have a video camera in your hand), but hopefully it will all go well.
Meanwhile, I lay awake last night during the most tremendous thunderstorm I've ever experienced (a three-hour extravaganza of near-constant lightning and simultaneous deafening thunder), contemplating the dream I had on Monday night. Traditionally, I dream on the day before I take my next dose of mefoloquine, my malaria preventative; I'm not quite sure why. This Monday I dreamed that the Senators were in the Stanley Cup final, but I was in Ghana and couldn't see them. I was in an internet cafe, trying desperately to get the score, but I couldn't remember how to use Google. Then I opened up a newspaper and tried to find the sports pages, but instead it was page after page of comics and articles written in gibberish. Finally, I somehow learned that the Sens had won, but when I tried to shout for joy, my voice was gone.
I'm no expert, but I think when you start having hockey-related nightmares, you're probably in over your head. My surprise was great when I discovered that there will be a Game 7, and I'm now planning to call every hotel in Ghana to find out if any of them have NBC on their satellite TV menu. I may end up dragging Jessica away for the weekend so I can see the game. A fool's errand...wish me luck!
Friday, June 5, 2009
You picked a fine time to Roach me, Lucille
The hospitality of the Ewe is without parallel. My good friend Emmanuel, the schoolmaster in the neighbouring village, has generously put us up in his house in Nyive. We arrived two weeks ago to find the sitting room and one of the bedrooms decked out for our use, apparently on standby for any moment I may arrive in the future. It seems I now have a home base in Ghana. There is a mango tree in the front yard, a ceiling fan and sound system in the main room, and some very polite and helpful house staff have been hired on for us (over our very, very Canadian protests). In fact, we often feel acute egalitarian guilt over the fact that so much is provided for us - all our chores and a good deal of our food included. But the laws of hospitality makes it almost impossible to refuse their largesse.
There's one drawback to the house. We share it with another boarder, with whom we have limited contact, but who has still managed to make his presence felt. He occupies the room next to ours, which has a separate door and no access to our part of the house, except for a gap in the ceiling that allows sound to pass back and forth freely. When our neighbour arrived home from his week of travels, the first order of business was to subject us to his vile taste in music. I'm talking the complete works of Michael Bolton, for starters. Also terrible gangster rap, and inexplicable country music ("You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille" a case in point).
The roaches in the bathroom have been finally defeated, and replaced instead with monster mosquitoes. I have bites in so many interesting places. Jessi has not been bitten yet at all; however, she sunburns with extreme ease, so we both have our own crosses to bear.
We braided our hair on Wednesday! Pictures will follow shortly. For now, some pictures and video from our previous weekend's adventures in Tafi Atome are on their way.
There's one drawback to the house. We share it with another boarder, with whom we have limited contact, but who has still managed to make his presence felt. He occupies the room next to ours, which has a separate door and no access to our part of the house, except for a gap in the ceiling that allows sound to pass back and forth freely. When our neighbour arrived home from his week of travels, the first order of business was to subject us to his vile taste in music. I'm talking the complete works of Michael Bolton, for starters. Also terrible gangster rap, and inexplicable country music ("You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille" a case in point).
The roaches in the bathroom have been finally defeated, and replaced instead with monster mosquitoes. I have bites in so many interesting places. Jessi has not been bitten yet at all; however, she sunburns with extreme ease, so we both have our own crosses to bear.
We braided our hair on Wednesday! Pictures will follow shortly. For now, some pictures and video from our previous weekend's adventures in Tafi Atome are on their way.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Star Trek: The Wrath of Roach
Our journey through life in the village continues. As you may recall from my last post, we were having some problems with cockroaches in our outhouse. In fact, the English language has not yet adopted the words necessary to describe the monstrosity of these roaches. (Neither has our local language, Ewe, despite more extensive exposure.) They were each as long as one of my fingers, and there were upwards of forty of them living in our long-drop toilet at any one time, lurking out of sight during the day and emerging each night for a lawless poo-fueled bacchanalia in defiance of our bodily needs. Apologies to my younger readers.
Anyway, we dealt with this problem with a grossly North American solution: a giant can of RAID. For the environmentalists among us, I'm sad to report that the poison worked like a charm - our toilet stall was littered with dead bodies within minutes, while the trickle of twitchy refugees that escaped were hastily eaten by velociraptor-like lizards. We live in fear of finding a pile of dead lizards any day now, done in by a combination of gluttony and second-hand chemicals. In the interests of posterity (i.e. the two-headed child I have as a result of insecticide poisoning), the whole genocidal massacre was capture on video. At the moment, Jessi is struggling to post it to her own blog, for all of us who enjoy morally ambiguous humour.
Now, on to happier topics...the library!!!! Work is well under way, going at a pace that would have surprised me if I wasn't already familiar with the spirit of Nyive. This project is dear to the hearts of so many people in the village, especially the youth (who were the driving force behind starting the project).
Just to recap for everyone: when I first arrived in Nyive in 2007, they had partially constructed a small building near the school complex to eventually house a library. The interior was unfinished, and there was no prospect of books, computers, or personnel on the horizon without outside funding. After helping the local organizers to put together a complete project proposal and budget, I agreed to help them raise money. Enter you, gentle readers!
The first step is to make the building physically secure, which in this case means a finished ceiling. The buildings here are made from cement blocks, and have corrugated iron roofs. However, there's often a wide gap between the iron and the walls, leting in mosquitoes, bats, dust, and sometimes the weather. The simplest solution is a finished wood ceiling, made chiefly of plywood - simple but serviceable.
We bought the materials for this work last week, and the village carpenters were urged to donate their skills through communal labour. Now, not to be disrespectful, but anyone who's been to sub-Saharan Africa is familiar with the concept of "African time". Things just move at a slower pace here; it's a side effect of a laid-back approach to life, along with Ghana's admirable emphasis on analysis and consensus. No problem...I came prepared to watch work progress at a snail's pace.
Well, apparently, the snails in Nyive are racing snails. It took our seven carpenters one day to put up the ceiling. They had to build and take down scaffolding made of 2x4s throughout the building in order to do it, and they worked from morning until sundown, all for the price of a meal at the end of the day.
Seeing the progress they're making, and everyone's commitment to the library, is incredibly moving. For me, it's literally a dream come true. We're even going to buy some books today, partly to hoard for the library and partly to hand out to the school children who stopped by our house a few nights ago to ask us for storybooks. With luck, we will soon find a way of uploading the pictures and video we've taken so far, so we can share the experience with everyone who made it possible.
As for life away from work, we've been having some adventures with cooking! Jessi made a reasonable facsimile of rice pudding last night, which was probably the most interesting cultural exchange we've yet had. Several friends watched us cook, and were introduced for the first time to cinnamon, as well as the concept that mixing spices produces really interesting flavours. I know I sound like I'm being flip, but I'm perfectly serious. Aside from hot peppers, Ghanaian cuisine is light on the spices, partly because of the expense. We also got into a big mix-up over the term
"milk", which here refers to what we call condensed milk. They also have something here called "condensed milk", which appears to be even more condensed than what we drink. Both beverages come in small cans, cost an arm and a leg by local standards, and bear little or no relationship to the stuff that comes out of a cow's udder. They are not drunk straight, or really used at all, except in tea. Hence, there was some surprise when Jessi announced her desire to put some in our rice. Anyway, the result was delicious.
We spent the weekend relaxing in Peki, a town about an hour's drive away. It is higher in the mountains than our village Nyive, meaning a cool breeze blows there. In Nyive, the only genuine cool breeze is the rising wind that precedes a thunderstorm (yet another reason why we love the rain here!). My good friend, the local member of the municipal assembly, Veronica Anai, took us to visit her mother's family in Peki. We made an excursion to the Tafi Atome monkey sanctuary, a community eco-tourism project initiated by a Canadian in the 1990s. Visitors are led by a guide through the forest and get to hand-feed the Mona monkeys that live there. I had been there once previously, on a very dismal Canada Day weekend in 2007, when I awoke at 5:30 in the morning to be bitten by mosquitoes and led aimlessly through the woods by a surly young guide. This time was much, much better; in fact, the whole place has improved.
Along with Veronica, we took along her uncle Komla and his five-year-old son Edem, a precocious tot who had already expressed his desire to marry me. ("I knew you were coming, so I swept the house for you," he told me in Ewe when we arrived in the morning, to general laughter.) Edem boasted loudly in the car of catching monkeys, but when faced with the prospect of letting one get close enough to eat out of his hand, he freaked out and crawled screaming to safety. Safety, in this case, was Jessi's neck and shoulder region, where Edem accidentally jammed a banana into her ear before lobbing it at the indignant monkey waiting below.
Good times...
Anyway, we dealt with this problem with a grossly North American solution: a giant can of RAID. For the environmentalists among us, I'm sad to report that the poison worked like a charm - our toilet stall was littered with dead bodies within minutes, while the trickle of twitchy refugees that escaped were hastily eaten by velociraptor-like lizards. We live in fear of finding a pile of dead lizards any day now, done in by a combination of gluttony and second-hand chemicals. In the interests of posterity (i.e. the two-headed child I have as a result of insecticide poisoning), the whole genocidal massacre was capture on video. At the moment, Jessi is struggling to post it to her own blog, for all of us who enjoy morally ambiguous humour.
Now, on to happier topics...the library!!!! Work is well under way, going at a pace that would have surprised me if I wasn't already familiar with the spirit of Nyive. This project is dear to the hearts of so many people in the village, especially the youth (who were the driving force behind starting the project).
Just to recap for everyone: when I first arrived in Nyive in 2007, they had partially constructed a small building near the school complex to eventually house a library. The interior was unfinished, and there was no prospect of books, computers, or personnel on the horizon without outside funding. After helping the local organizers to put together a complete project proposal and budget, I agreed to help them raise money. Enter you, gentle readers!
The first step is to make the building physically secure, which in this case means a finished ceiling. The buildings here are made from cement blocks, and have corrugated iron roofs. However, there's often a wide gap between the iron and the walls, leting in mosquitoes, bats, dust, and sometimes the weather. The simplest solution is a finished wood ceiling, made chiefly of plywood - simple but serviceable.
We bought the materials for this work last week, and the village carpenters were urged to donate their skills through communal labour. Now, not to be disrespectful, but anyone who's been to sub-Saharan Africa is familiar with the concept of "African time". Things just move at a slower pace here; it's a side effect of a laid-back approach to life, along with Ghana's admirable emphasis on analysis and consensus. No problem...I came prepared to watch work progress at a snail's pace.
Well, apparently, the snails in Nyive are racing snails. It took our seven carpenters one day to put up the ceiling. They had to build and take down scaffolding made of 2x4s throughout the building in order to do it, and they worked from morning until sundown, all for the price of a meal at the end of the day.
Seeing the progress they're making, and everyone's commitment to the library, is incredibly moving. For me, it's literally a dream come true. We're even going to buy some books today, partly to hoard for the library and partly to hand out to the school children who stopped by our house a few nights ago to ask us for storybooks. With luck, we will soon find a way of uploading the pictures and video we've taken so far, so we can share the experience with everyone who made it possible.
As for life away from work, we've been having some adventures with cooking! Jessi made a reasonable facsimile of rice pudding last night, which was probably the most interesting cultural exchange we've yet had. Several friends watched us cook, and were introduced for the first time to cinnamon, as well as the concept that mixing spices produces really interesting flavours. I know I sound like I'm being flip, but I'm perfectly serious. Aside from hot peppers, Ghanaian cuisine is light on the spices, partly because of the expense. We also got into a big mix-up over the term
"milk", which here refers to what we call condensed milk. They also have something here called "condensed milk", which appears to be even more condensed than what we drink. Both beverages come in small cans, cost an arm and a leg by local standards, and bear little or no relationship to the stuff that comes out of a cow's udder. They are not drunk straight, or really used at all, except in tea. Hence, there was some surprise when Jessi announced her desire to put some in our rice. Anyway, the result was delicious.
We spent the weekend relaxing in Peki, a town about an hour's drive away. It is higher in the mountains than our village Nyive, meaning a cool breeze blows there. In Nyive, the only genuine cool breeze is the rising wind that precedes a thunderstorm (yet another reason why we love the rain here!). My good friend, the local member of the municipal assembly, Veronica Anai, took us to visit her mother's family in Peki. We made an excursion to the Tafi Atome monkey sanctuary, a community eco-tourism project initiated by a Canadian in the 1990s. Visitors are led by a guide through the forest and get to hand-feed the Mona monkeys that live there. I had been there once previously, on a very dismal Canada Day weekend in 2007, when I awoke at 5:30 in the morning to be bitten by mosquitoes and led aimlessly through the woods by a surly young guide. This time was much, much better; in fact, the whole place has improved.
Along with Veronica, we took along her uncle Komla and his five-year-old son Edem, a precocious tot who had already expressed his desire to marry me. ("I knew you were coming, so I swept the house for you," he told me in Ewe when we arrived in the morning, to general laughter.) Edem boasted loudly in the car of catching monkeys, but when faced with the prospect of letting one get close enough to eat out of his hand, he freaked out and crawled screaming to safety. Safety, in this case, was Jessi's neck and shoulder region, where Edem accidentally jammed a banana into her ear before lobbing it at the indignant monkey waiting below.
Good times...
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Good morning Roachetnam!
Keeping this blog up to date is a challenge here. The nearest Internet cafe is in Ho, the capital of Volta Region, which is 24 km from our village of Nyive. The road is made of poorly graded dirt and rock, although some of it has been recently surfaced. I don't want to exaggerate the progress, but it seems to my lightly educated eye that the conditions here have improved a little in the last two years - more roads, more banks, more phone coverage, more shops. Small but palpable changes.
First, an update on the library itself. We're off an running, thanks to an unexpected donation from a Nyive citizen! At the moment, the library is an empty building, with a partially finished interior, which is doubling as the kindergarten while the community and local government are busily rebuilding the actual school building. In order to house computers and books, the building needs to be made secure from the elements and from theft. That means a finished ceiling to keep out rain and bugs, secure windows and doors, shelves and furniture.
On Monday, we came to Ho to shop for materials, with a detailed estimate of our needs put together by some members of the Nyive Development Association, our partner organization. (Several members are also professional carpenters.) We decided to take our business to a man named Owm Delali, originally from Nyive, who runs a successful lumber business here in Ho. It also turns out he's the most miraculously generous man I've ever met. He gave us our materials for a third of the market cost!
Thanks to this, I can say that virtually all of the donations made by my friends and family in Canada will go towards actual books and computers for the library. Thank you all for helping the village so much! They are incredibly grateful and very excited about the library being finished. None of it would be possible without you all! A full list of donors will follow, along with pictures of the site.
Before I go, let me quickly explain the title of this post. We're staying at a house here, hosted by Mr. Emmanuel Numado, a local headmaster and a very good friend. The accomodations are very comfy: we have a living room, fans, a fridge, electrcity, and a giant mango tree in our front yard! But the plumbing is all outdoors. Bathing from a bucket it quite relaxing at the end of a long, hot day, but the outhouse is a challenge after dark. During the day it's not so bad, but at night it's home to the biggest cockroaches I've ever seen. They appear to have extablished an advanced civilization in the toilet, which is a little unnerving, to say the least.
For more thoughts on this and other subjects, visit my friend Jessi's blog at thespottedjessicat.blogspot.com.
More to come!
First, an update on the library itself. We're off an running, thanks to an unexpected donation from a Nyive citizen! At the moment, the library is an empty building, with a partially finished interior, which is doubling as the kindergarten while the community and local government are busily rebuilding the actual school building. In order to house computers and books, the building needs to be made secure from the elements and from theft. That means a finished ceiling to keep out rain and bugs, secure windows and doors, shelves and furniture.
On Monday, we came to Ho to shop for materials, with a detailed estimate of our needs put together by some members of the Nyive Development Association, our partner organization. (Several members are also professional carpenters.) We decided to take our business to a man named Owm Delali, originally from Nyive, who runs a successful lumber business here in Ho. It also turns out he's the most miraculously generous man I've ever met. He gave us our materials for a third of the market cost!
Thanks to this, I can say that virtually all of the donations made by my friends and family in Canada will go towards actual books and computers for the library. Thank you all for helping the village so much! They are incredibly grateful and very excited about the library being finished. None of it would be possible without you all! A full list of donors will follow, along with pictures of the site.
Before I go, let me quickly explain the title of this post. We're staying at a house here, hosted by Mr. Emmanuel Numado, a local headmaster and a very good friend. The accomodations are very comfy: we have a living room, fans, a fridge, electrcity, and a giant mango tree in our front yard! But the plumbing is all outdoors. Bathing from a bucket it quite relaxing at the end of a long, hot day, but the outhouse is a challenge after dark. During the day it's not so bad, but at night it's home to the biggest cockroaches I've ever seen. They appear to have extablished an advanced civilization in the toilet, which is a little unnerving, to say the least.
For more thoughts on this and other subjects, visit my friend Jessi's blog at thespottedjessicat.blogspot.com.
More to come!
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Breakfast over Baghdad
When we found our flights to Ghana via Dubai online two months ago, we were excited about the price. I wish we'd thought harder about the amount of time we were going to spend in the air! Thirteen hours nonstop from Toronto to the United Arab Emirates, followed by twelve hours loose in Dubai for the night, followed by eight more hours backwards to Accra...we're wiped!
It's hard to believe the journey's begun. The first moment it really sank in was when I woke from another catnap on the flight to Dubai to eat my breakfast (which they served at night, because of the time difference). I checked the live map on the screen in front of me to see where we were. The nearest city: Mosul.
Oh my goodness. There's Fallujah. And there's Baghdad.
Breakfast in the sky over Iraq. Wasn't expecting that.
Dubai itself is hard to describe. We've come up with various attempts, none of them reflecting how cool it actually is. Jessi says it's a it like Vegas, without the gambling, strippers, or booze. I compared it to a giant Arab South Keys (for those of you who are up on your Ottawa shopping malls). Needless to say, we're speaking of the tourist areas. We had a hard time navigating (due mostly to our total failure to read the guide book), so we spent most of our time at the Deira City Centre mall, which is exactly like every mall in Canada except with Arabic writing. We did make an excursion to the Gold Souk, where we dodged handbag hawkers and ended up wandering down a side street into some decidedly male-only territory. We ended up hanging out at Dubai Duty Free in the airport for several hours, buying gifts for friends in Ghana. I definitely want to go back to Dubai sometime (possibly during the day) and really experience it. Maybe I'll wait for Dubailand to open.
Meanwhile, we've already made it from Accra (the capital of Ghana) to Ho (the regional capital of Volta Region, the easternmost region of the country). Our next stop is the village itself - Nyive, about 25 km outside Ho, hugging the Togolese border. I'm expecting a warm welcome, probably followed by a lot of sleep. Then our work will really start.
Salaam everybody!
It's hard to believe the journey's begun. The first moment it really sank in was when I woke from another catnap on the flight to Dubai to eat my breakfast (which they served at night, because of the time difference). I checked the live map on the screen in front of me to see where we were. The nearest city: Mosul.
Oh my goodness. There's Fallujah. And there's Baghdad.
Breakfast in the sky over Iraq. Wasn't expecting that.
Dubai itself is hard to describe. We've come up with various attempts, none of them reflecting how cool it actually is. Jessi says it's a it like Vegas, without the gambling, strippers, or booze. I compared it to a giant Arab South Keys (for those of you who are up on your Ottawa shopping malls). Needless to say, we're speaking of the tourist areas. We had a hard time navigating (due mostly to our total failure to read the guide book), so we spent most of our time at the Deira City Centre mall, which is exactly like every mall in Canada except with Arabic writing. We did make an excursion to the Gold Souk, where we dodged handbag hawkers and ended up wandering down a side street into some decidedly male-only territory. We ended up hanging out at Dubai Duty Free in the airport for several hours, buying gifts for friends in Ghana. I definitely want to go back to Dubai sometime (possibly during the day) and really experience it. Maybe I'll wait for Dubailand to open.
Meanwhile, we've already made it from Accra (the capital of Ghana) to Ho (the regional capital of Volta Region, the easternmost region of the country). Our next stop is the village itself - Nyive, about 25 km outside Ho, hugging the Togolese border. I'm expecting a warm welcome, probably followed by a lot of sleep. Then our work will really start.
Salaam everybody!
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Movie Mayhem
Good morning friends!
What do you think of when you think of development? I bet I know the answer. When you think of literacy, when you think of opportunity, when you think of community effort and global solidarity, the first thing that you think of is: killer clowns.
Or at least, it will be, after you've been to BAD MOVIE, GOOD CAUSE, our movie fundraiser happening at the University of Ottawa this weekend. Come to Montpetit 203 on Sunday, March 29 at 7:30 PM for a special screening of KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE, a classic 1988 B movie in which klowns (yes, with a "k") attack a small town and bump off its residents in amusing and ironic clown fashion.
Tickets are $5 (although larger donations are always welcome). Admission also gets you free popcorn, perfect for throwing at the screen. Plus real butter - take that, Bytowne!
Hope to see everyone there.
P.S. Thanks to everyone who came out this weekend for Killer Tomatoes. :-)
What do you think of when you think of development? I bet I know the answer. When you think of literacy, when you think of opportunity, when you think of community effort and global solidarity, the first thing that you think of is: killer clowns.
Or at least, it will be, after you've been to BAD MOVIE, GOOD CAUSE, our movie fundraiser happening at the University of Ottawa this weekend. Come to Montpetit 203 on Sunday, March 29 at 7:30 PM for a special screening of KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE, a classic 1988 B movie in which klowns (yes, with a "k") attack a small town and bump off its residents in amusing and ironic clown fashion.
Tickets are $5 (although larger donations are always welcome). Admission also gets you free popcorn, perfect for throwing at the screen. Plus real butter - take that, Bytowne!
Hope to see everyone there.
P.S. Thanks to everyone who came out this weekend for Killer Tomatoes. :-)
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Welcome!
Welcome, everyone, to the blog for the Nyive library project - summer 2009! Thanks for visiting this blog to show your support. Jessi and I will be posting here from time to time to update you on our progress in raising money for the library...and after we get to Ghana, we will keep you all posted on the creation of the library itself.
Details on how you can donate or otherwise support us will be coming soon. We're just getting started here, so check back often!
Details on how you can donate or otherwise support us will be coming soon. We're just getting started here, so check back often!
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