Favorite things in Ghana

I have to thank Laura Hattrup for the Prompts and asking me about my experience. I am not good at writing about myself just to do it. I am better at answering questions. If you want to hear more just ask more questions. Thanks for reading.

Favorite thing to do is actually two things: First is dancing here it is a whole lot of fun and so easy. The drumming and enthusiasm everyone has makes it impossible to remain seated. They all love to see the crazy white dancing. They tell me I am pretty good but I cannot tell if they are being nice to me I just know it is fun and it has brought me closer to the people. Second thing is simply taking my afternoon 3 o’clock walk around town. It takes me about an hour because I have two places where I like to sit and watch people and the lagoon. I like it because I have to greet maybe 30 to 40 people as walk around. They just love to hear me speak the local language Ewe. Another thing that is fun is that there are about 10 to 15 different little kids who see me while I am walking around. They have one of three different reactions. First reaction, complete terror even though I have been here for almost a year and see these kids on an almost daily basis some of the little ones are still terrified of me. They think there is something wrong with me because I am white. Second reaction, they are playing or doing something and they just yell Efo Yao(My Local name) and wave really big. Third reaction, this is probably the most common one they see me and yell my name an run towards. When they get to me they are jumping up and down. They want me to lift them in the air all I have to do is lift them in the air once and they are happy as can be. One little girl lift up by her head because she always grabs my arms. One little boy I pick him up and shake him upside down because it scares his little sister. Another little I just lift her up in the air and when she is the highest she has a look of complete terror. Then when I put her down she turns around and runs away. It is hilarious. There will never be anyone in my life that is happier to see me than those kids are on a daily basis. Favorite new food is Akple which is ground corn that is cooked and stirred into a giant ball of starch with the consistency of slimy mashed potatoes it is really hard to describe it because I have never had anything else like it. You take a piece of Akple with your hands and dip it into a stew which is made up of fresh cut tomatoes and onions. It also has ground Peppay in it which makes it really spicey and delicious. The protein comes from tiny fish maybe two inches long that have been fried whole and are very crunchy. I know it may not sound that great to you but it grows on you and I guarantee when I get back to America I will be craving it.
Favorite people that is the hardest question to answer there are many many of them but I will narrow it down to three and not include any small children. First, The Old Man I call him that because I do not know what else to call him. He is the oldest man in town and he is my neighbor I use his latrine and his house to bathe in. He is probably 90 + years old speaks no Ewe and can barely walk. He is however the most respected man in town and even though we have two chiefs in my town if there is anything that needs to be decided they go to him first. He is like the godfather who he sits in his house all day and people just come to him to say hello and talk to him about the village. I would say on average 50 different people come to his house every day just to talk to him. He has told me I need to learn Ewe better so we can talk with having a translator which would be awesome but I do not think my Ewe will ever be that good. Second, is the old lady who lives at the house of the people who cook my. There are three women who live in the house with some children but I like the old lady the best. Again I do not know her name and she does not speak English but she is really sweet and nice to me. She says we should marry so she can follow me back to America and cook for me she has been telling me this since the first time I met her. Third Person is Winfred he is my counterpart, supervisor, coworker, best friend and cultural liaison. It is pretty safe to say if it was not for him my service would not be near as fun or fruitful. He is a really good person to work with and with him we have gotten a lot of work done and have big plans for my next year in Ghana. I really cannot say it better than that he is very important to my work and life here.
My job, very good question I do not know exactly what I do here but I have been keeping very busy. My job is to promote tree growing and Agro-forestry techniques in Ghana and also promote alternative livelihood projects to help people find other sources of income. What I have done is start a tree nursery and we have nursed over 7000 trees. We have had amazing support from two villages. To nurse them we first had to collect and cut water satchets wich are small plastic bags filled with pure water. We cut the tops off them and cut holes in the bottom for water and roots. So we had to cut them and fill them with dirt and place them in beds of 600 then we planted the seeds in them. After we nursed them for 3 months we have started to transplant them in a field we have transplanted about 3500 with the help of about 100 people from the village I live in. The people have been great. We hope to get some support from and NGO called Trees For The Future and be able to promote Agro-forestry with our trees next year. Agro-forestry is a technique of planting trees on your farm to help improve soil and yields. Another thing I am doing is working with a group of farmers and fishermen/women to start a cooperative to get some help to start fish farming. This is more difficult to do but potentially really exciting. I have made some good contacts but we are struggling to get some help but I think help is coming from a new worldwide initiative about food security. The third thing I am doing is I want to build a public latrine in my community. The current one is really disgusting and one of them has no roof and the waste either is released in the lagoon or eaten by the pigs which roam free around town. I am going to ask my friends and family help and donate some money and we hope to build a new 10 seat latrine that is better for people and the environment. This project is only in my head and I hope it gets more attention when our trees are planted.
Most beautiful scene has to be coming in to my village when the water is high. It is a picture that is on my facebook page. It really is awesome and I cannot believe I have been lucky to get such a cool village. I call it Peace Corps Paradise.
Best moment was probably two weeks ago when we decided to transplant our trees. We had been talking to my village for 3 months and telling them we will need their help to transplant our trees. I did not know if anyone would help us. When the day came over 100 people men, women and children came together to help us plant 1500 trees in one day before 10 AM. It was awesome and probably my best moment and Peace Corps. I cannot tell you how rare and awesome that is for a community.Most interesting situation, about two months ago there was a funeral in town for three people. These people where not Christians they were as we call them traditionalists who believe in native African religion. Most people in my village fall in to this category but not everyone has a funeral like this. In the morning I heard them coming into town they were singing, drumming and dancing. I saw three women coming with idols on their heads. There was also a few traditional priest following them around along with a group of about 40 people. These women represented the dead people and they and the group wondered around town for about an hour visiting every shrine. They acted crazy and wondered around without rhyme or reason. Then everyone in town came together and drummed and danced for about 4 hours in front of the idols. While they where drumming about 10 women began cooking in four pots that where placed near the dancing ground. They gave the food away and when they were done cooking the put oil into the pots and lit them on fire. The same women who were cooking then walked around the pots and waved at the fire until it went out which took at least an hour. It was one of those holy shit I live in West Africa days and it was really cool.

Thanks for reading
Derek

Thanksgiving at the Ambassodors

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving because I had by far my best one of my Thanksgivings spent away from home. All of the Peace Corps volunteers were invited to the Ambassador’s residence for a pool party. It was awesome we had free drinks for two hours before the dinner. We got a chance to see everyone we had not seen in a long time and it was really cool. It was the first pool party slash Thanksgiving day that I have ever been too it was also the first time had been somewhere it was 90 degrees on Thanksgiving. They had fans out in the yard so you could sit in the shade with a fan on you. So I played catch with a football in front of a fan which was another first for me. They also put us up in houses of Americans working at the embassy so we got to take hot showers and use an actual toilet. It was like being in America for a day. We even went to sports bar in Accra and played a trivia game and watched some football to really awesome things at the same time. This bar was just like being in America they oddly enough had a power cat flag up in the bar which I thought was awesome. It was just like being in America for a day without the 12 hour flight. Thanks for paying taxes everyone!

Torgbui Hatsu Festival

There has been a festival going on in my village the past two days for our chief. It is being put on by a woman from Togo who wants honor one of our chiefs Togbui Hatsu. It is only to honor him and his position. It has involved the whole town. The first day started with a ritual sacrifice of some animals. The first dug a hole in front of the chief’s palace. Then they dragged the cow in along with a chicken, turkey and Guinea fowl. The slit each animal’s throat and then poured the blood into the whole. The most disturbing was seeing the cow as it was trying breath and you could see the air being sucked in and out of its lungs. We actually had to move because blood was spraying. It was pretty crazy to see. They then butchered the animals and gave out the meat to different people in town. This took pretty much all morning long. Then after the meal was cooked they took some of the food and put it in the same hole and covered it with a basket and later with dirt. This is all for the gods of the land which were brought to the community at its founding. This was all followed by drumming and dancing pouring of libations and large amounts of Akpeteshie which is the local booze and gin being drank. It was a lot of fun. They are continuing today but I missed the sacrifices to the gods of two goats. The festival was meant to celebrate the one year anniversary of the death of the last chief. It was pretty cool and hopefully I will be able to put some video of it online.

Swearing in and Saying Goodbye to Addo-Nkwanta

Well we finally made it to swearing in, training is at times fun but mostly it was brutal. It lasts so long and there is so much stuff they try and teach you but it is impossible to teach us everything. I swore in as a Peace Corps Volunteer on August 13 and it was quite the celebration I have put some of the pictures up online I suggest you check those out. The shirt I am wearing was given to me by my home stay and she made a matching dress in the same cloth so we could be wearing the same thing it is something else. We had a big party that night and I said goodbye to everyone that I had seen virtually every day for 3 months. Personally I was looking forward to not seeing some of them so I was excited. I did however have to say goodbye to Auntie and my adopted family in Addo-Nkwanta it was sad but I am pretty sure that I will go back to visit someday. It was pretty sweet when I was leaving I think Auntie was crying a little bit because she was sad that her “son” was leaving. I ended up going straight to site after swearing in some of my friends took trips but I was ready to get everything started and I was tired of most of the people.

Site Visit

So I finally got the chance to visit my site the place where I will live for the next two years. It started by us going to workshop where we met our counterpart and supervisor (C&S) to discuss the Peace Corps and everything that goes along with it. So the first night we got there we had not officially met our C&S yet. So some of my friends and I went to supper and there were some Ghanaians who had showed up but no one knew who each other was. So when we sat down we started to eat and then two men sat down at our table. We asked them where they were from and it turns out they were my C&S and when we figured it out they ran to me and both gave me a huge bear hug. It was really cool and could not have worked out better. They showed me a map of the area and that is when I figured out that I was going to be living on an island. It was really cool and all of my friends were jealous at how cool my C&S were. Then we finally got to site it was awesome. The first thing I did was meet about 15 of the elders of the community and I was introduced to them. Then we walked around it is a really beautiful place and it was the rainy season so there really was water everywhere. It actually is not a true island there is a road to it but it is a man made road so I call it an island. The next day though was perhaps the most interesting thing I have seen in Ghana. It was nothing special until about noon when I heard all kinds of drumming and chanting. I then went out and saw this group of people dressed up in their traditional clothes walking around the community. They were going around to the different idols or the statues to the gods on the island. At each place they would perform a little ritual. First the fetish priest would take a bowl of palm wine and make three pours of it in front of the shrine. Second he would take baby powder and spread it all over the shrine. Then he would take some gun powder pour some out and light it on fire. When the gun powder flamed and went up in smoke everyone would stop singing and do a little yell and raise their arms in the air in a grandma Burke Neato Neato sort of way. I really cannot describe how crazy it was I hope I will be able to get some video of online some time and let you know about it. It turns out that this area is one of the most traditional areas in Ghana and they have many people who still believe in shrines and their ancestors as gods. It is really cool and as it turns out it is much quieter than all the Christians. They do pretend they are catholic sometimes but I do not think anybody really believes here. Well since I will be writing much more about my site and you will get to know it well I will end this post.

Happy Obama Day

Well as you may or may not know President Obama chose Ghana as the first sub-saharan African country to visit as President. We were lucky enough to be invited as Peace Corps trainees because we were not volunteers yet to go and watch him and the President of Ghana speak before he left on Air Force One. It took us 12 hours for all of us to get to Accra and clear security before we actually got to see him speak. It was totally worth it. It was really amazing to see our First black President on his first visit to a black country. His speech only last about 15 minutes and it was interrupted twice by us because he mentioned the Peace Corps. It was awesome my goose bumps were about the size of golf balls listening to our President talk about how proud he was of us and what we were doing. It was really amazing and I wish I could describe it better but again like always the vocabulary is not there for me. At the end of his speech he and Michele did go around and shake hands but I could not get close enough and the push of the crowd was already too much. Some of my friends shook both of their hands and I shook their hand so I guess I was one removed from shaking their hands. It was an amazing experience and one that I will never forget.

Field Trip

Well on our field trip to see various sites I got a chance to go with my fellow environment trainees to see different parts of the country and what volunteers are doing there. It was good to see the volunteers sites but I am going to talk about the fun parts. We started out by traveling clear to the north of Ghana it took us about 12 hours to get to the Upper East region. It was much different than where we were staying it reminded me more of back home because it was flatter and there where less trees. We got to go to a crocodile sanctuary in a town where they are revered and it is illegal to kill them and the roam the streets freely. Then just by chance we ended up going a little farther north to eat lunch and we noticed that we were literally on the border of Ghana and Burkina Faso. So we asked the border guard if we could just step across the border without our passports turns out that was no problem so technically I got to go to Burkina Faso on our field trip. We then went back south the next day and ended up staying at a Benedictine monastery in Techiman. It was a nice quiet place on a beautiful piece of land with trees and enormous rock formations to climb on. It was really awesome and the monks were really cool and they were amazing cooks. They were vegetarians and they had a huge organic garden. It was nice to be somewhere that was so quite because compared to the village where there are roosters, goats, and children and churches it was heaven. We then went to a monkey sanctuary where just like the crocodiles they are revered and protected. It was fun to feed the monkeys because they would come and take groundnuts right out of your hand. The next day we went to the Techiman market which is supposed to be one of the largest markets in West Africa. We played a fun game that one of my friends heard about. At these large markets they have tons and tons literally of clothes from America that were donated to someone and are now being sold at these markets. The locals call it Obruni Way wu which translates as dead white man’s clothes. So these shirts as you can imagine can be pretty interesting. So the game is that each one of us picked another’s name out of hat just like you do for Christmas and we had to buy a T-shirt for 50 Pesawas or less which is about 35 cents US. It was a lot of fun and the shirts were hilarious. These shirts are hilarious because most Ghanaians do not care or do not know what they say so you can see some funny things. For example one day I saw and old man with a shirt that said “I can only please one person a day and today is not your F#%&ing day” then there is a kid in my village who wears a shirt that says “It is all about me” but he is rarely wearing pants. It leads to some funny situations. Well that was our field trip at least the fun parts anyway.