Pictures...Best of 2010

End of 2010 musings (err..make that ramblings)...Part 1

I'm sitting outside in my compound, night has fallen..the African night is very dark but i always find the night sky here a little disappointing compared with say MDI or rural Texas..or maybe it is just that the stars one sees here are different..i have no idea.

After the heat of the day, every day, it is cool and i spend a couple of hours out here almost every evening, reading a book. I probably read more here than i ever have in my life..which is quite a statement!

I read and drink my daily beer or coke...sometimes it will be cokes for a few days, sometimes beers for a few days, and very occasionally a glass of wine or even a pastis. Wine can occasionally be be found, and it isn't really much good but has the almost-redeeming value of being pretty cheap! Pastis is just as it should be and is quite genuine..hell, the bottle even says "Pastis" not 'Pernod' or 'Ricard' and it is good (tho i recognise it is an acquired taste and might take years to acquire) and cheap (Four GH cedis is about $2.60 for a litre bottle) which is about 10% of its US price...one of the advantages of being very close to the border with Togo (French West Africa) and probably brought in without any taxes being paid.

BTW..that for 'hard liquor' still makes it much more expensive per drink than the local Ghanaian hooch...sold mostly in small plastic envelopes/sachets ..and with enticing names like Mafia and Goal. I've yet to try this stuff which might be the daily diet of other..emmmm ex-pat Americans in Ghana..and it is highly possible I will be here for my entire tour of duty without trying it..probably depends on the company I get into at PCV conferences?

It has been an interesting year when i think back. At this time last year, I had just had a long telephone interview about a possible PCV posting in Africa and was waiting to hear the result. The interview had been good but.... and no-one seemed very happy about my insistence on West Africa. In retrospect perhaps I was being tested. ho knows, who cares...i don't think I will ever have to go through the full, agonising, frustrating application process again. If i decide to stay and extend or apply for somewhere else in West Africa then it would be before I COS or right after.

I idly think of post Ghana but not seriously. I KNOW that i am going to go to London around the time of my official COS date to be at the Olympics. If i extended here for a year, i would get a month off with return airfare to/from the US included and so...that's possible.

Idly, i think it would be interesting (still) to go to a French-speaking country like Senegal or Cameroon but who knows..a lot of water and a lot of bridges before that needs to be thought through.

Once i got the Ghana invite ..a very, very happy day..although they are so pissy at PC in Washington. They're so nice and call you to tell you that you will be receiving an invite to go to Sub-Sahara Africa and it will go out in the mail 'today or tomorrow' but 'Oh, No..we can't tell you where...we have rules...' Hmmm...i know you do!

Anyway, once i got my invite, i worked hard to prepare myself and to re-examine everything i wrote and remembered from Romania so that i would ...gasp..be a better and a happier PCV!

I re-read my Romania Journals...interesting and embarassing. This time round, PC sent us a little booklet entitled "Just a few cultural adjustments.." which is really pretty good. Comparing that with my journal confessions, i realised that i had fallen into every conceivable cultural trap in Romania ..and some more than once. So much so that i had to change my Will to ensure that my Administrators in the event of... would locate said journals and deep-six without reading!

I resolved then to be better prepared before i left and to be more thoughful and aware when i finally arrived in Ghana.

As to preparation..a combination of research and reading and endlessly preparing lists of things to do before i left and things to buy. Towards the end..through April and May ..i felt that i had to get the hell out of the US just to stop buying stuff!

I did three trial packings and yes, i did bring less than than the three mule-loads that i took to Romania but, as my dear Fiona can attest, i still had too much shit when i eventually staggered and tripped (yup) my way onto the train to Philadelphia and Staging! Again, as before, too much formal, semi-formal clothing..and too many books/paper. Next time, RW, no formal stuff and ignore what is said about how PC and the Ghanaians frown on PCV's wearing shorts!!! Next time???

(Of course, Fi and I had the perfect 'we're not really Americans but we love the place sometimes' Sunday in New York before I headed off next day to Africa!! We did HCB at the Moma and the Picasso exhibit at the Met, and walked through the Park..and it was a beautiful day..sigh)

I felt comfortable in Staging...been there, done that. Let's go!!!!

Training in Ghana has been very different than in Romania..lots of reasons but mostly i think the influence of Mike Koffman, the CD. He, the ex-Marine Corps officer (Judge Advocates Office?), runs a tight ship but supports and promotes a very rigorous training regimen.

It was very different right from Day one. And one of the most interesting aspects was Vision Quest. Each PCV (ok, apart from the Teaching group ..Math, Science, Art/Visual Arts, and ICT) was sent off into the Ghanaian hinterland four days after we arrived in Ghana to find a designated PCV and spend a few days with that PCV 'shadowing' them and getting to experience what it is really like to live as a PCV in Ghana.

One goes to a PCV in the same sector...my sector is Small Enterprise Development with the accent on SMALL!

Before we leave we get mostly humorous 'training' in finding one's way across Ghana by tro-tro. (There are some buses between major cities but mostly one rides in clapped out vans, called tro-ro's, with nominal seating capacities of 10 plus the driver and 'pusher' but they will never actually depart until there are at least 15..plus everybody's 'stuff'..which can be cartons for/from the market, assorted livestock.... and small children aren't included in the count! To set out like this on your own with just the name of the town, some ideas on tro-tro hopping, and the name(and cell-phone number) of the PCV is just plain scary! I went deep into the Volta region..so two tro-tro hops from Accra ..and seven hours of bone-rattling roads with bags on one's knees!

And then, as happened to me, once you find your PCV, you get to sleep on the floor! But it was fun...an incredible intro and worth more than hours of class work and lectures/discussions would ever tell us! And fun, too...i got to visit my PCV's primary assignment, go shopping in the market, prepare meals, visit the secondary assignments...probably always a school...and then we went to visit another PCV, three more tro-tro hours deeper into the Volta Region where my PCV, Amber, was giving a talk at another PCV's school! Priceless! And my first meal in a real chop bar ...hmmmm- grasscutter (very large rodent) delicious!

Returning on the fifth day after 8-10 hours more of tro riding was like finishing your first marathon! And to see the expressions on the weary, dust-lined faces, full of excitement and pride, back at our Training site was exactly like finishing that first marathon!

I did it..i survived! I accomplished! I have to say that it made everything else so much easier!

Training, pretty much across the board, was much harder, broader and more focused than in Romania. Two unique aspects..or three or four. Training was very sector specific and so i spent most of the ten weeks with my 11 (and right after Vison Quest 10 ) SED buddies...one could tell from Grace's face when we got back from VQ that she was gone..too much,way too much..and indeed she lasted only 3 or 4 more days.

We went into our home-stay digs right after VQ and all the SED's were in one village in the lower middle of the country about 3 hours north of Accra..and maybe 2/3 rds of all our sessions thereafter were SED only. We got some initial language sessions in Twi, the most common native language and my pre-departure research/reading/listening helped there but most sessions prior to our site placement were sector-specific on Business and general on Safety and Security, PC Rules and Procedures, Health, and a bit of culture (oops, i mean Culture). Only 3 days after return from VQ we had our placement interviews with our APCD's (sector managers). Beza is Beza and difficult to ...figure out initially.. but i had resolved to be very specific about what i wanted and didn't want this time round. In the interview i was (we all were) asked to give my preferences between four types of assignment...if i remember, it was working with eco-tourism, working with native craft groups, working with agricultural co-operatives, and working with computers and business advisory opportunities... a no-brainer! I was not interested in 1, 2, or 3 mainly because (espec. after my VQ) i knew that eco-tourism, and native craft groups would be a hard slog...we've been doing it this way for years, etc and although i might be interested in agricultural it hardly plays to my skills.

One never knows to what extent the decisions have already been made but these options turned out to very accurately describe the actual SED sites and i am the only one with a computer and real small business development background! I also said that i wanted very much to be in an assignment where i could use my centuries of experience ...and oh, btw,i said, i didn't really want to be placed in the northern half of the country.

3-4 days later, we got our site placements.and it was handled beautifully!!! Kudos to Mike and the Training Staff! One afternoon, amid growing excitement and some trepidation, we assembled at the edge of the concrete at our Training site..all 72 of us..and all the training staff which must number 30 or 40 people! On the concrete was chalked a huge map of Ghana!!! And one by one, by sector, we were called out and pinned on the map...and Beza announces that Richard Kelman is going to Whuti in the Volta region and you get a packet with site assignment, etc and are led to your new place on the map....shit, holy mother, etc I'm going to spend the next two years at the beach..everybody claps and cheers..and you join the crowd in the Volta region....but i'm the one at the beach...yes!!!!!

And you're trying to read your package and also see where everyone else is going..wow, Upper West (glad it isn't me!!!) and mine says computers, library, micro-finance!!! It was so well done...it made everyone feel very special.

They do the site placement so early perhaps because each region or each part of a region has its own native language..there are 12-16 different languages taught to Ghana PCV's and it is critical that we start as soon as possible! Wow, i'm going to learn Ewe (well, in retrospect, 'learn' might be stretching it! but i did get the necessary Intermediate Mid level of competence when we were tested as the last step in Training). Five, including me, of our SED group, were assigned to the Volta Region and became an Ewe language group.

The SED group had its very own instructor who was with us all the rest of the way. Ours was very, very good and a great guy. Instructors are not PCV staff but hired on a temporary basis for training. Ours was a local native Ashanti chief (but actually there are quite a few chiefs in Ghana, both male and female) who was very well educated..to a Masters level in Business, had taught at University, had been in local and Ghanaian government, and ran a couple of businesses, including a school! He also believes that there is a lot of business and entrepreneurial potential in Ghana which we could help unlock.

Given the disparate experience levels of our SED group a lot of his training was pretty basic Business Development skills which i often didn't love but he also had a strong interest in the value of MicroFinance and so we had some good chats. Our chief (in the Ashanti Region, a chief is called 'Nana') lived temporarily in our little village of Maase and so he would often stop by in the evening to chat...nice.

The language training was tough ..our five Volta region SED's had one instructor, John, and we had language sessions every day..often from 0800 to 1600. There are two basic problems..or maybe three...first, there is nothing intuitive about native languages. you can't guess a meaning from looking at it or hearing it ...no Latin roots here, and then you can't build on understanding one word to get to three or four more..adjectives from nouns, nouns from verbs, etc.

In fact to this day, i still have no real notion of grammar..are there nouns or just thoughts, concepts, activities?

Second, outside class, no-one in our home-stay village spoke Ewe so no after-class exposure. Third, we travelled around the country a lot and so were constantly uprooted and language training on the road was frequently an afterthought.

However, we were constantly assured that as long as we didn't just give up on learning we would get through the Proficiency Test.

We also worked very hard..we very rarely had a full day off..and i'm including weekend days. That was a surprise. We moved three times in our nine weeks after site placement, including once for our site visits...and we had moves within moves for Job Shadowing also. Moves were by sector, so our SED group would up and head off in a PC tro for eight days in Ho, as an example. A lot of togetherness.

In these out-of-town sessions we would have lectures by visiting groups...on Advocacy, on PCV's secondary assignments, on Tourism in Ghana, on Export Support groups, relevant/interesting NGO's ..and we visited organisations of interest to SED vols..the MunicipalAdministration in Ho, a commercial bank to learn about loans/credit facilities, a small microfinance organisation...very interesting, of course! They were all interesting and gradually we built up a fairly good understanding of what business life might be in Ghana. Language sessions on the road were generally an afterthought and we began to worry about our language tests.

A feature of training in Ghana is the use of experienced PCV's as session facilitators and we were forever doing group sessions (hugs, presentations, discussions, etc)....not my strongpoint

My site visit which came on the back of our meet-your-counterpart sessions was phenomenal. The 'Meet-the Counterparts and Supervisors' conference was a bit of a mess simply because the group was too large. It was for all of the non-Teaching sectors so SED, WatSan, Env, Health, AgroForestry ..almost 40 vols plus counterparts, supervisors (at each site a PCV has one of each) plus assorted staff and trainers..almost 200 people! But after two days of mostly milling around we headed off to our sites...much excitement.

8 hours of tro riding later via Accra with Cephas (c-part) and Michael (spvr)... and too much baggage as ever, i fell out of the tro outside my designated digs in Whuti...to be greeted by a dozen or so chiefs and elders all of whom wanted to show me my accommodation..a blur! Then we solemnly and slowly all walked 5 minutes down the road ..what is going on here...to the new Whuti Library building which will be my primary assignment..there to be greeted by 300 or 400 of the assembled citizens of Whuti. I'm, rightfully so, in a daze but they have chairs set up on the library steps and various groups in native costume eagerly awaiting the PCV's arrival ..shit, that's me!

And they have dancers and drummers and lotsa music, etc...and speeches and introductions (secret handshakes!)..and they give me a special bracelet (subsequently stolen in Tamale)..and endless speeches..and i have to say a few words (NOT in Ewe) about how happy i am to be in Whuti ..and more native dancing and more speeches...and then my honour guard of chiefs and elders walks me back to my house, with its nice sandy compound and we sit around under the mango tree for more speeches. Don't these people have homes to go to!

The rest of the visit was a blur too...up early to run each day, on the beach..and what a beach....endless,with rolling surf and 'quaint' fishing boats pulled up out of the water. I run along the edge of beach, scrubland between the last of the houses and the water. Hey, i can do this for a couple of years, can't I?

Next day at the Library..very nice new facility ..my place of work for the foreseeable future..the computer room is nice tho not brilliantly designed and i get a chance to hook up my laptop and try out the network connection. Hmmm..might be a problem. So slow it makes my MDI connection look superfast and it is very unstable. Can't run an interenet cafe on this...but they know that. Just don't quite have the solution yet. The library is very big and lots of nice new wooden bookshelves. The books however ...donated by the World Bank-Book Project are mostly sitting in boxes..and i'm not sure that i understand the plan for actually opening the library. Chiefs and elders drop by to chat more and I'm hearing that the Library's (and community's) benefactor from the US, the person who funded the building of the Library, etc, is arriving the following evening for two weeks in Ghana and we will have some overlap then before I get back to Training in Ho.

My digs are OK..tho not quite ready. There is supposed to be a water hook-up soon for the toilet and the shower(nice..) and there are no cooking facilities. Actually, come to think about it, i only have a bed with a lovely white mosquito net hung over its four posts (...sexy!) and a small table and two plastic chairs...hmmm, maybe i should ask about more furniture and some way to cook?

Next day, i'm doing a tour of the farming community with Cephas as my guide and we're walking along the road from one veggie farm to another...the farms are really small plots 1/4-2 or 3 acres and heavily irrigated with pop-up rotating sprays or by hand with buckets from theshallow wells that seem to be everywhere in the fields..and like the one in my compound..where they grow tomatoes, okra, hot peppers, carrots, onions, shallots and some corn when quite literally we run into a young white bloke out running! Very unexpected but it turned out to be one of the luckiest moments of my year as when we chatted with Blake Strickland we learned that he was a student at the University of Washington, studying international business, and was over here with other students for a few months as part of a work/study program with a new, young Seattle-based NGO operating as a MicroFinance operation in this area! I got his e-mail and cell number and promised to be in touch. He said that they had just leased a house in Anloga, the next community up from Whuti, on a multi-year basis!

Farming was interesting but like much of what i saw in Whuti, as, for example, Fishing, the work is very labour-intensive and not obviously lucrative.

Outside of these two occupations there doesn't seem to be much work of any other kind in Whuti and it doesn't appear to have a market.

The community's benefactor, Jim Lancaster, showed up late in the evening and so we didn't meet until the next day...my last full day. It was spent with Jim and with various different audiences and in different locations. I get an idea of what the general plan and schedule is. Jim has high expectations of the local Ghanaians and expects them to be able to organise and operate the library and figure out how to get the computer centre up and running...and profitable-especially now that there is a PCV to help!!!

There is much work to do and there doesn't seem to be any real plan for any part of it yet...and Jim looks to 'Whuti' to come up with the plans!

There's more to the community's expectations than just the Library and computer centre. Jim has been encouraging them to put together a business proposition that can get funding from the US Ambassador's Self-Help program..and this could be a high priority when i return as Whuti's very own PCV.

And all of this to be done in the first six months on site!!!

Jim is a very interesting and experienced guy..a PCV in Nigeria in the early 60's ..scholarship Master's in Economics from Harvard who worked for the Federal government all his life in the CBOE and the Treasury..and whose State Department wife, Harriet, was the Peace Corps CD in Ghana from '94 to '97 so they both lived here during that period! He has been working to help Ghana since that time and has been working almost exclusively with Whuti since 2004/2005. He also talked briefly about a microfinance operation he set up a few years ago and his desire to get things sorted out there and leverage its work for the community of Whuti.

On the final morning of my site visit we met again and tried to map out some plans for when i return in a month or so to Whuti.

The place and the assignment, etc., are, of course, absolutely perfect for me and my skills and experiences. I return to Training very enthused and ready to get back to Whuti!

The final couple of weeks after the site visit and the rest of our training were somewhat anticlimactic ...the only important stuff was final prep for the language tests and preparation for swearing in which was a big deal...learn drumming, learn dancing, do little language demos... I designated myself as official swearing-in photographer but got roped into an Ewe language demo! Everything about the end of our training and being invited to become a PCV and the swearing in ceremonies was different form the Romanian experience.

The Language Proficiency Exam was ok...i survived. I had learned, parrot-fashion, a couple of pages of 'story'....me, my family, and my time in Ghana, home-stay, food, daily routine....and my site, my assignment, how to get to my site, where i would shop. The stories would be prompted by the examiners asking known simple questions which would give us our cue to recite...and since the interviews were fixed length, the longer the 'story' the less time for interaction and other Q&A. My recital was pretty good (and even in Ewe!!!!) long and so we had very little time for Q&A!! I passed..i survived, thank you, yes, i would love to be sworn in as a PCV again!

Swearing-In was colourful and fun..with our home-stay families and us, new PCV's, mostly decked out in Ghanaian outfits...yup, even little ole me..me and my 'family', mother Jennifer and sister Faustina all dressed up in matching shirts.! And PCV's dancing and drumming and some of the language skits were quite funny...not mine, i think....and speeches, more speeches..and then it's over. Time to go to site..and not via the beach, thank you, i've got my own!!!

..and this concludes Part 1..if anyone has reached the end. I will now look through my 2010's pictures and post my 10-12 favourites...and maybe i will take a different slant on Part 2 of this epic post.