Blog.. 09AUGUST2010

Sorana...much impressed by my blogging and Facebooking..such signs of youthful life from one so old...asks some good questions......the people of Ghana (to the extent that i know..)....how do they live, what do they do every day, what are their activities, rituals.

Rituals might be hard except to the extent that their rituals are the way that they do things as they must have been doing them for hundreds of years

I have been living ..as PCV’s do pretty much throughout the world (the PC-occupied world, that is..) for the ten+ weeks of Training in a small village/town, called Maase, in the Eastern Province, about 70kms north of Accra, the capital, on the coast ....70kms that takes 3 hours by vehicle, tro-tro or whatever, to cover such is the state of the roads...and in case, you’re wondering there are basically no railways in Ghana..used to be..now they’re gone.

Like everywhere else in Ghana, Maase’s population size is an estimate (read..guess) so maybe 5,000-7,000?

It really has no industry although there is a small plant employing maybe 4-5 people ‘filtering’ water and putting it into the ubiquitous water sachets which have become Ghana’s/West Africa’s symbol of progress. It has schools...kindergarten through grade school but no senior secondary. Like pretty much everywhere else I’ve been in Ghana, people farm on bits of land surrounding the community but there is no commercial farming in Maase Most families would appear to do some veggie growing but mostly for their own consumption. The market..and stands, etc by the side of the roads..might sell fruit, veggies, etc but most are probably brought in for resale rather than being local.

I live in a typical compound ..a square of I-shaped, L-shaped single storey ‘buildings’ ...mostly just room + room+ room. Two extended families live in the compound..plus me and another ‘lodger’ a man who works as a ..hmm, don’t know...but it isn’t a 9-5 job. There are no other adult males in the compund.

My host family is grandmother, aged 83 but still fairly chirpy, my host ‘mother’, Jennifer, and, currently, three of her five daughters....Comfort, Patience, and Faustina.

The other family in the compound is headed by Jennifer’s younger cousin and she has four children, including the 10-year-old Dancing Queen who has featured in many of my Maase pictures ....and another one on the way.

Both of the mothers in the compound have had more than one husband and both currently are married but their husbands live (..and work) elsewhere..away from Maase.

Jennifer is a teacher’s aide and her cousin is a petty trader, selling whatever she can sell to make some money ..used clothes, used shoes, etc. She survives (we guess) on money from her husband who is a tailor in Accra (except when he’s not..)

Jennifer supplements the family income with produce from the ‘farm’ which is a small plot carved out of the jungle about 40 minutes walk from the compound.

Patience has a small shack as a beauty salon in the compound but it isn’t much of a business and she has been sick almost my whole time here with a stomach ailment which doesn’t get much good treatment..a stomach ulcer, a kidney infection...opinions vary ..and believe me, there are a lot of opinions from the many local (all probably unqualified) medical practitioners and informed visitors. She is 26 years old.

Comfort, who is 24 years old, is married but... She lives in Ho, in the Volta Region, and is a teacher there. She came back to Jennifer’s about six weeks ago, three weeks before she was to have her first baby, and has stayed ever since. The baby was born while i was on the road..site-visit, etc and despite it being full-term and Comfort’s seeming good health and spirits in pregnancy, she died after only five days. She had a birth defect which apparently prevented her from feeding properly. It was seen as God’s will. Ghanaians are seriously religious..Christians of many different flavours in the south and centre and Muslim in the more sparsely-populated north.

Death seems to be an ever-present in Ghana and none of the family seemed overly upset about it. Funerals here are very elaborate affairs..celebrations of life really, with a wake, a lying in state, a funeral service and burial, and culminating in a ‘party’ out in the open air, some large space, with music and everyone dressed up in their funeral finery..mostly black but often white and these outfits may be the most elaborate and stylish outfits they have. Hmmm, yes there are men in attendance but one way or another there always seem to be a lot more women. Two weekends ago, there were nine competing funerals in the Maase area ..running from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening..six women and three men..women ranging in age from 90 to 33. They are ‘advertised‘ as ‘Going Home’ or ‘Called to Jesus’ with big posters and sometimes billboards..all very informative on the family connections, etc. Funerals are big business in Ghana and people must save or borrow a lot to pay for them!

Whuti (my site) will be the same. When i visited a month ago there was a big funeral.taking place .actually outside the new library/community centre ..taking place on the weekend.

Faustina, who is 19 years old, is the one in the compound whom I know best and perhaps the most interesting.

She seems quite bright, speaks the best English of anyone in the compound, prepares most of my meals, helps me (does) with my laundry, and pretty much all the other things i need help with....like starting a charcoal fire on the little stove to make expresso, etc.

She finished high school and got all the necessary passing grades in the summer of 2009 and has a life-long dream to become a nurse. So why did she fail to turn in her application to go to nursing school..somewhere in the country...in March??? Nobody knows..the only explanationI’ve heard is from last year’s PCV with Jennifer who suggested that Ghanaians have such a fear of failure that they refuse to venture. Doesn’t seem like enough reason for Faustina. She says then that she will definitely (..not maybe) file her application this time. I hope she does and wish i had some leverage to help her get over this acceptance hurdle. She is a good happy person and deserves to move ahead.

How do they live then..what’s their daily life like? Well, daily life seems highly predictable and has a set of activities that seem to fill the day.

More time is spent in the compound than away from it for all members..including the goats and chickens..and most of the daylight hours and some of the evening hours are spent outside..sitting, talking, napping, doing stuff, preparing food, eating.

It’s all pretty basic..

Life begins about 5.30..the cocks crow, the chickens fuss, the goats awake and forage for food..and everyone..with me, last, at 6.10-ish..gets up and starts the day. The day begins with sweeping the compound and its surrounds..including the open-to-the-air shower enclosure which lies just behind the compound..‘shower’ means bucket bath..you take your bucket and plastic pail in and douse yourself..with cold water, of course... and the enclosed and roofed pit latrine area also. Sweeping is accomplished by three or four compound members and involves tied bundles of dried twigs held in one’s hand//not a broom. Sweeping is the process of smoothing the sand that is the compound floor and gathering up all the leaves, bit of stuff/food, plastic bags (that magically appear on the ground..i swear sometimes it seems to rain plastic bags) into a pile and then sometimes shoveling it all up and throwing them out back. This compound sweeping ritual would appear to be done all over Ghana every day..dirt street in town included..there you go,Sorana, a ritual!

This sweeping ritual is repeated a couple of times during the day.

Whilst this is going on the first food preparation begins..people eat at odd times realtive to each other it seems but generally three times a day.

Food prep in the morning might be porridge making ...called ‘oats’..and boiling of water. This is done on one or more charcoal stoves..different sizes according to need. Charcoal is delivered in big bags and is very cheap. Charcoal stoves require some work..fanning..and so that is sit-down work for someone.

My breakfast evolved over time to be a boiled egg..which eventually was soft-boiled ..some toasted white bread (Ghanaians seem to eat a lot of bread..it is for sale all over the place..haven’t quite figured that out yet.)..and i drink some tea. The others in the compound work on porridge and sometimes tea.

All compound meals are taken outside..sitting somewhere, on something and are predictable noisy and lively. But it isn’t as if everyone always sits and eats together..it is as befits life in the compound a somewhat disorganised and disjointed affair tho Grannie always gets first bite!

Throughout the day there is always someone doing something..fetching water from the nearby artesian bore well which is busy for 16-18 hours a day, boiling water, getting wood from the forest, big limbs which are then cut up with an axe for firewood for the cooking pit, preparing food...chopping up plantains, cocoa yams, vegetables, adding peppers...chopping up fishes..and then two or three times a week we make banku or fufu ....pounding kasava, etc..and then boiling it when it is ready. With so many people in the compound and water used not only for cooking and bathing but for washing clothes they use a lot of water. When it rains, water is collected as run off from the roof in a big tank but when that runs out water is brought from the bore hole well nearby of which here are four or five in the village. Water is brought from the well in pretty large tubs, metal containers carried on the heads of the womenfolk ...girls learn from a very young age. They carry everything, including btw my luggage on their heads and so they put a small roll of cloth on their heads to cushion the weight and provide stability. it is amazing how much people can carry on their heads!

I have to say that Ghanaian cooking means a lot of stewing...whatever is going to go with the plantains or fufu..with lots of peppers and garlic, onions and so it tends to be quite spicy. It might even be said that they over-stew everything ...but what do i know!

Preparing the evening meal which seems to vary for the different members of the compound is a major activity. Jennifer, Comfort, and Faustina are all involved as are most of the other compound members. There always seems to be something that needs to be done. and preparing and eating will stretch over a couple of hours. Most people eat with their hands...you pretty much can’t eat fufu or banku any other way..i say ‘hands’ but, of course, i mean right hand only....and don’t give me any of this ‘i’m left-handed’ guff! There is an acquired technique to eating fufu and banku with your hand. Part of the technique is the eating part ...one doesn’t chew, one simply swallows and so fufu/banku ‘bites’ tend to be quite small. I’m learning. Washing one’s hands before and after one eats is a very important part of the dining ’ritual’ and before eating in a chopbar (indigenous food restaurant..often just one or two dishes..whatever is being cooked that day) at the family-style tables/benches one is offered a communal bowl of water, a plastic bottle of washing-up liquid soap and a tea-towel.

I take what i’m given...and by and large i’ve been OK with that! Do I love fufu or baku? Probably not but i will continue to eat them and perhaps take to some variations. I’ve never eaten as much rice as i have since i got here! It’s a major part of the diet. I don’t get the impression that people are going hungry here and there is always lots of food being prepared at the side of the streets in Maase...pretty much all day but more towards the evening..even a little stand that makes scrambled egg sandwiches! Walk through town in the late afternoon or early evening and there will be families pounding away, making fufu, stewing the evening’s accompaniments.

With so many people in the compound (..but this is typical here it seems..and families are much larger..and are of the extended variety) clothes washing is an almost daily activity. Not down by the river...wherever it is..but sitting in the compound ...scrubbing and kneading the clothes, etc, then rinsing and hanging up to dry on the web of clothes lines criss-crossing the compound. It’s the equator and although it isn’t breezy it is hot and stuff dries in a matter of hours. With so much sandstone dust in the air and from the paths and roads, etc everything, including PCV’s, gets very dirty very quickly..my day pack, my running shoes..truly everything!

We share the compound with six goats (including the newly higher-pitched one), an unknown number of hens and chickens, and a black and white cat...no dogs. Ghanaians in general do not favour dogs..dirty, spread disease..works for me! I have learned a lot about and perhaps even from these animals in my ten weeks in Ghana.

Finally, life in a Ghanaian compound is very different. It might vary form compound to compound but ours is generally a hive of activity in the evenings. there is a constant stream of visitors...commiserating with Gran on the recent death of her older sister;

offering advice on Patience’ health; just stopping by to chat; selling stuff collected from the jungle and borne on someone’s head...corn, wood for firewood. coconuts, charcoal; and on occasion, a wandering minister or two for a short prayer session. My teachers would often stop by to see me or to see my host ‘mother‘ also! It is all very social and so i would bring my chair (plastic, of course) outside to sit in the evenings also and be introduced and welcomed by all the visitors...Akwaaba, Akwaaba!

So that’s it..life in my village, life in my compound. Obviously women do pretty much all the work but i’ve turned my hand to pretty much every aspect of the work involved...from early-morning sweeping to late-evening socialising!