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.

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!

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 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!

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.

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...