I'll Alight at the This Thing (Luke in Malawi)

New Podcast Episode Up

2008-07-06T22:49:00.004-04:00

I'm back in Canada, but a podcast I made a few months ago is now up on the EWB website. It's called Audiofields, and has three different stories: one is an interview with my favourite Ghanaian reggae artist, Sheriff Ghale. Then there's an interview with Cat Dorval, one of the two Junior Fellow Support Staff, who offers her take on the difficult question "What is development?" Finally, last year's short term volunteers present their favourite Ghanaian-English expressions.

Check it out here:
http://www.ewb.ca/en/whatsnew/podcast/index.html

Saying Goodbye -- Or: "How Was Africa?"

2008-04-30T11:55:00.007-04:00

I’m sitting in the airport in Nairobi – a strange feeling of return, since I wrote a blog entry from here when I was first flying to Malawi. I’m now finished my time in “the warm heart of Africa” – at least for now, and I’m heading home.

It will be a strange experience to go back home to Canada after working in Africa for more than two years. I’m bracing for all the emotions that will accompany my reintegration into Canada, and for the inevitable questions I will face. Questions like, “So, how was Africa?”

How to answer that… I have no quick response. Only a flood of memories and feelings and thoughts:

Of the people I know: I’ve met farmers, entrepreneurs, students, the unemployed, housewives, professionals, athletes, artists. I’ve met the desperately poor and the incredibly wealthy; the whole spectrum in this diverse place.

Of my friends: From the group of youths in my neighbourhood in Tamale who “enskinned me” as a chief, to my co-worker Loti in Ntcheu, to all the amazing EWB volunteers and staff I’ve met – I’ve made too many close friends to count.

Of the kindness: I experienced some of the most heart-warming (and sometimes heart-breaking) generosity of my life here. So many times I’ve been invited into people’s homes for a meal of T.Z. or nsima. I’ve slept on the floors of farmers and in the guestrooms of “extended family” members in Accra.

Of the difficult times: I’ve been frustrated by culture shock, frustrated by the slow pace of development, frustrated by inefficient and ineffective development projects, frustrated by the continual low position of women in African society, frustrated by all the external factors that keep a boot on the neck of Africa. I’ve been sick, stomached sometimes strange food, felt like an outsider almost always (while being blown away by people’s acceptance of me).

Of the weather and landscapes: melting in the incredible March heat of Tamale; freezing in the night-time cold of Malawi. The arid, flat and barren landscapes of northern Ghana and the beautiful green jutting mountains of Malawi. The coast in Mozambique, Lake Malawi, Malawian tea plantations, Lake Bosomtwi in Ghana, the desert in Mali. There is too much beauty here to describe.

Of isolation: I’ve spent too many hours on painfully slow internet connections, or on crackly, delay-riddled long-distance phone calls, all in an effort to stay in touch with friends and family in Canada and combat homesickness.

Of sadness: Always recognizing the incredible divide in power that exists between me and the majority of Africans – in terms of financial, cultural and political power. This fundamental injustice exists, and is something we’re born into without choice. Too many times I’ve heard “It’s easy for you to come to our country, but why can’t we visit yours?” The colour of my skin shouldn’t grant me privileges anywhere, but it’s the sad truth that in the developing world, it does.

Of inspiration: I’ve been inspired by the hard work of too many farmers, scrimping and saving to send their children to school. I’ve been moved by the speeches of academics in Burkina Faso, eloquently describing the challenges their country faces; I’ve met Ghanaian development workers who are pushing every day to improve the lot of their people. I’ve met innumerable women who work throughout the day and into the night, running their households and somehow finding time to generate a little bit of money on the side, almost all of which goes towards their families’ well being.

In the end, I know that Africa is a land of immense opportunity – of industrious people, of incredible natural resources, of rich history. But it’s a land with so many challenges that need to be tackled, so many barriers that need to be destroyed. Some of these barriers are within our influence in the West to tackle (see playyourpart.ca). Some of them require significant internal political reform (see Mugabe in Zimbabwe). Some require technological innovations, some the application of existing technologies, some simple behaviour changes. It’s not simple. It never has been, and it never will be.

At the very least, there is hope: there is always hope. I’ve seen hope in all the African countries I’ve visited – in Mozambique, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo, Mali, Zambia, Malawi, Kenya. The industriousness and resiliency and dogged determination of the peoples of these countries are testament to the hope that endures despite so many obstacles.

I want to thank everyone who's supported me over the past two years -- my family (I'm indebted to them in many ways for their constant support), the people who sponsor EWB and make work like mine possible, to the dedicated staff and volunteers of EWB, and to the great people I’ve worked with in Ghana and Malawi.

This is only a farewell for me, I’m sure of it. I’ll be starting law at McGill in September, a school known for its strong human rights and international law components. I know I’ll find a way back to this continent some day.

And I know that, when I get back, I’ll be greeted by the same warm welcomes I’ve come to expect from this continent.

Until the next time.

The Final Days (or: What I’ve Been Working On)

2008-03-28T07:08:00.005-04:00

My time here is almost over. Technically I finish on March 31, at which point Megan is taking over. We’ve spent the past two weeks trying to download my brain into hers so she can pick up the work smoothly.

On Wednesday night we were in Dedza, one of the two districts that this water and sanitation project covers. The project staff there kindly brought Megan and me out to dinner as a farewell gift. Girward, the programme manager of Dedza, attended and was asked to say a few words. He spoke for a couple of minutes, and then apologized for not having prepared a song ahead of time. Undaunted, Maxwell, the project manager, clapped his hands and insisted, “song, song, song!” So Girward led the table in a rousing impromptu Chichewa song of farewell for me. It was very touching.

I’ll certainly miss the staff of Concern Universal. They have some incredible people here, and I’m proud of the work we’ve accomplished together.

Basically this work relates to monitoring and evaluation (M&E). CU’s water and sanitation project operates in over 500 villages. With such a large scope, it’s very difficult to tell whether or not you’re on track with your project. An M&E system is intended to help you keep track of this progress and make changes as necessary.

What Brett started, and what I’ve been continuing, is a process for overhauling their M&E system, in conjunction with the two M&E officers.

What is progress?

The first step was to define exactly what it is that we want to aim for. Brett worked closely with project staff to come up with a Project Framework. This is a written document which clearly outlines the targets of the project. It’s very easy to say, “We want all villages to have clean water and sanitation.” But what does that actually mean? How many boreholes does this involve? How do we know if the boreholes are being used, instead of being abandoned in favour of traditional sources of water? How many latrines are we aiming for? What qualifies as a “good” latrine?

In order to figure out if you’re making progress, you have to clearly lay out what you’re aiming to do.

Brett and the CU staff set up tangible indicators for our success, and set out a plan for collecting this information.

Tools

It’s been my job to finish designing, and then implement the tools necessary for monitoring. The tools we’re using are mainly written forms which the villages complete on a regular basis, indicating the progress they’re making in building latrines, managing their water points, and holding regular meetings with the rest of the community to discuss issues related to water and sanitation.

One big challenge with this system is illiteracy. Written forms are not the ideal method of collecting information from villages where education levels are often low. For this reason, we’ve enlisted the help of governmental health agents, called Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs). They work closely with the communities, checking on each village’s progress and helping them keep track of this progress with our forms.

A big part of my role has been to network with as many HSAs as possible, and as many VHWCs as possible. We held workshops with over 150 HSAs, working with them to design an M&E system that would be as clear and useful as possible for the villages. The HSAs went through a huge feedback process with over 100 villages. The purpose of this was to figure out what confused them about the old M&E system, as well as what they liked most about it.

Training

In recent weeks we’ve launched a huge training programme. We’re aiming to train more than 170 HSAs in the new system and over 220 villages as well. The end goal is for everyone to fully understand the forms, and feel comfortable using them. Training is going well so far, with a positive response from the HSAs. In the past they’ve often felt neglected, seeing themselves as only “information donkeys” that transport information from the village to CU. As a result of the efforts we’ve made, they seem to feel much more involved in the entire project; they recognize that their input has made a difference to the design of this system, and that they’re key players in ensuring its success.

What we hope to see

I’ve also been working on developing other tools for this M&E system, including an Access database to track the data we’re collecting, and forms to track progress in schools and overall changes in health in our project area.

In the end, we’re aiming for a system that:
• Let’s us keep track of the progress we’re making in each village
• Encourages the villages to provide feedback to CU. We want to know what’s working for them, and what’s not. Ultimately, we’re accountable to the communities, but it’s tough to stay accountable when the villages don’t have a strong and clear voice.
• Pulls together CU’s staff and gets them working closely together.

CU’s Understanding of M&E

But one of the things I’m most proud of in my work is the changes I’ve seen within CU. Smorden, the district coordinator for the project in Dedza, told me that before Brett and I arrived they hadn’t seen the importance of a strong M&E system.

In the past, staff worked very hard on their own issues. The field officers were focussed on training villages in latrine construction and encouraging good hygiene habits, management was focussed on staying on budget, and the monitoring officers were trying their best to collect useful data.

But now, according to Smorden, everyone recognizes the value of M&E. They see that M&E provides a way to focus and coordinate everyone’s efforts. By setting out clear targets to attain, and by showing everyone on a regular basis what kind of progress they’re making towards these targets, staff can collaborate and assist each other towards a specific goal.

Basically, before, everyone was playing on their own team in their own game. Now, they’re all on the same team, all playing the same sport (probably soccer).

That, in a long nutshell, is what I’ve been working on. It’s difficult to explain everything I’ve been working on succinctly, so please feel free to email me questions or post them here. But I think it’s been valuable work. I’m helping to put in place a strong system that will sustain itself long after I’m gone in this project, and that can also be replicated in future projects. And I’ve helped people become more reflective of the work they’re doing, and to realize the necessity of stronger team communication and cooperation. I’m confident this will leave a lasting effect.

Next week I’ll be off to Mozambique and then Tanzania on vacation. I’ll provide another update soon on my travels, and my final thoughts before leaving Africa.

Fredson (monitoring and evaluation officer), me, Smorden (district coordinator) and Maxwell (project manager)

Loti, me and Fredson (Loti and Fredson are the monitoring and evaluation officers)

A Ride in the Countryside

2008-03-14T02:09:00.002-04:00

This past weekend I brought one of our new volunteers, Jean Paul Portelli, out to a village. He wants to spend two weeks there to learn more about rural life in Malawi. I would have liked to stay for longer, but unfortunately I only have two weeks left of work and there’s a lot to do to wrap things up. Megan Campbell has just arrived to transition in to Concern Universal, so I’m starting the process of disengaging myself from CU.

In any case, I stayed one night with Jean Paul in Kabindiza village in Dedza district. The next day (Sunday) I made the long trek back to Dedza, going by bicycle taxi and then mini bus.

My bicycle taxi ride was a memorable one. Our friend in the village, Gift, arranged for a bike to take me to the roadside. My driver was named Mufutu, a kid about 16 years old who wore a collared shirt and blue flipflops. His bike wasn’t actually a real taxi: it wasn’t registered with a licence plate. And it didn’t have the standard padding on the rear passenger seat, or foot rests for the passenger. But it had two wheels and could move – and with remarkable (but terrifying) grace, as I was to discover.

We started out along the long dirt road that links Kabindiza to the village. I was told the ride would take about an hour. As we began our journey, I began to worry about this length of time.

The road was bumpy. Heavy rains and passing mini buses had resulted in deep ruts in the earth. Mufutu skilfully wove his way along the road, picking the smoothest spots but terrifying me with his sudden changes in direction.

We began to chat. He spoke at great length and with energy, looking back and smiling. Unfortunately he spoke only Chichewa, so I didn’t understand what he was saying. I responded in great length in English. He smiled and nodded his head, but I came to realize he had no idea what I was saying either. We continued like this for several miles, hitting it off quite well. At least, from my perspective we were. Who knows what he was saying about me.

Ten minutes into the ride, we came to a fork in the road. He gesticulated to me, asking which way to go. I had no idea, so I randomly pointed to the left, expecting us to follow the road in that direction. Instead, Mufutu veered sharply, taking us off the main road onto a narrow path, where women were walking. They jumped aside as we flew by.

Because there were no foot rests on the bike, I had to struggle to keep my sandals from bouncing into the spokes of the rear wheel. At least I had braking power, if I so needed it.

We suddenly began to move down a sharp hill. Mufutu stood on the pedals and pumped his legs furiously, aiming to build up enough speed to take us up the next incline. My feet struck the pedals as they dangled limply there. I hung on to the back of the seat until my arms ached.

Thirty minutes in, we rounded a bend around a large hill and I gasped at the vista that was revealed. Rolling green fields dotted with beautiful grey-rock mountains, covered in pine and indigenous trees greeted me. Dedza is a truly beautiful district.

I noted that we were approaching a town, based on the number of people and animals that start appearing on the previously deserted road. Mufutu’s riding was truly skilful, if somewhat frightening, with all its bobbing and weaving – like a champion boxer. By my count, we nearly struck the following things:

• 1 cow
• 1 goat
• 4 deep patches of mud
• 1 group of women standing in the road chatting
• 1 other bicycle taxi, complete with driver and two passengers. I’m sure they were playing chicken with each other.

But somehow we always stayed up. It was as though Mufutu was a gyroscope. We moved gracefully through the small town as people stood by smiling and laughing at the white stranger who was zipping through their community.

Fifty minutes in, we passed over a bridge and I knew this to be a landmark. We were almost there.

At this point I’d knocked the bike’s chain off twice with my sandal, and become convinced that I’d never be able to have children as a result of the metal seat and rutted road. But I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the M1 highway.

Mufutu dropped me off, and I paid my $1.85 fare with an extra 40 cents for a fear factor bonus.

As I stood waiting for a passing minibus, Mufutu spoke at length, saying goodbye in his native Chichewa. At least, I think he did – it was a lot of words, so maybe he was angry at me for knocking off the chain twice. I waved to him, and he sped off into the distance, significantly lighter.

Mufutu, the driver.
Some friends along the way.

The rutted road.

Ghana vs Malawi: The Hiss, the Sun and the Clothes

2008-02-28T03:34:00.005-05:00

I’m left with only 2 months in Malawi. I’ll try to step up my blogging – one per month just ain’t cutting it.

But today, I thought I’d throw out a couple of the small small differences that I’ve noticed between Ghana (still dear to my heart, still in my blood) and Malawi (my new adoptive home).

• The Hiss: In Ghana, a common way to get someone’s attention is through “the hiss,” in which air is sharply expelled through the teeth. (E.g. “Hissssshhhhh, waiter, bring me a Fanta!”). This is used in Malawi as well, but much more sparingly. And its intensity is different, too. The Ghanaian hiss is loud and cutting -- like opening a pneumatic tire pump at the gas station (indeed, many were the times I would stroll past a tire centre, hear the hiss of a pump, and swivel my head towards it in the mistaken belief someone was trying to get my attention). But for Malawians, the hiss is slow and gentle -- like a small leak in your bicycle tire.

• Outgoingness: Perhaps the phenomenon of the hiss points towards the difference in people’s outgoingness in the two countries. People in Ghana are very open and outgoing, whereas in Malawi they tend to be more reserved. In Ghana, I became used to walking down the street and being called to multiple times by curious strangers, interested in a chat. “Saliminga, hello!!” was the soundtrack to my life outside of home. It sometimes made it difficult to get anywhere without feeling rude – if I were to stop and greet everyone, a simple 1km walk would likely take the whole week. In Malawi, this rarely happens. People smile shyly, but rarely initiate contact with me – although it should be noted that, once I make contact, strangers here are as generous and friendly as anywhere else I’ve been.

• The Rains: In northern Ghana, the rains terrify people. They are absolutely torrential, beating down with a ferocity that strips away umbrellas, pelts the skin, threatens to remove clothing, and blinds the eyes. When it rains in Ghana, people run for cover and don’t emerge until the last drop has fallen. In Malawi, the rain is much more moderate. I was astounded the first time it rained here, and people still went about their businesses outside.

Rain pours down outside my room in Tamale, Ghana.

• Clothing: Local clothing is much more common in northern Ghana – likely the result of a more hands-off colonial approach by the Brits, who seem to have firmly left their stamp on the western-style of clothing adopted by most urban Malawians. Fridays in Ghana were “local-wear” day, in which Muslims would dress in long flowing prayer robes, and non-Muslims would wear smocks or brightly-coloured batik prints. And any other day of the week was still appropriate for interesting Ghanaian clothing – long-sleeved shirts with lightning bolt patterned neck holes, dresses and matching headbands made with shining green and yellow fabric.

When I moved to Malawi, I had to ship all my Ghanaian clothing to Canada. If I were to wear it to the office in Malawi, my dress shirt-clad co-workers would laugh me out the door.

A goodbye lunch for me in Tamale, Ghana. The smocks worn by the man on the right
(Director of Community Water and Sanitation) and me are typical to northern Ghana.

My co-worker, Loti, wears a sweater on a cool day in Ntcheu, Malawi.

• The Heat: It’s the dry season in northern Ghana. This means the sun is busy tearing the colour from painted walls, heating corrugated metal roof-tops till they curl against the grain, cracking the lips of all northern Ghana’s inhabitants, and dizzying those who dare venture out at midday. I recall waking up in the indentation my body had left in my foam mattress, finding it distractingly hot tub-like from my pooled sweat. I would drink a bottle of water, turn the mattress over, and settle in for another few hours. Currently in rainy-season Malawi, I’m covering myself in a blanket at night and sleeping quite peacefully.

Trevor Freeman and I luxuriate in the cool refreshing Victoria Falls, Zambia.

This is actually Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (north of Ghana). But it was hot.

Those are a few of the differences. I won’t answer the question “which do you like more?” Life is definitely more comfortable for me here in Malawi, and I enjoy it for all its beauty and quiet welcoming. But Ghana is still my first love, with so many fascinating quirks and friends that I know I’ll never forget.

p.s. I'd like to welcome the 6 new EWB volunteers in Southern Africa (John Paul, Megan, Hans, Mark, Graham and Ashley), and 5 new ones in West Africa (Jen, Nick, Jean-Francois, Mary and Shea). I’ve added links to their blogs on the right.

From Montreal to Malawi

2008-01-27T08:22:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long delay in posting. I’ve just returned from Canada, where I spent Christmas and stayed for the Engineers Without Borders conference in Montreal.

I’ve been home a few times during my work as an overseas volunteer with EWB, and making the transition back and forth is usually an intense experience. There’s the obvious culture shock – the abrupt transition from home to an entirely new environment. Then there’s the flip-side: reverse culture shock, upon re-entry to my home country. I like to think that the transitions will become easier the more I do them, but it’s still a strange experience.

This time I arrived back in Malawi on Tuesday afternoon and was met by my co-workers at the airport. They drove me back to Ntcheu, and the next day we started a three-day field visit to Salima and Machinga. So I stood, slightly in shock, in a rural village in Salima district as a group of women and children sang a joyful welcome song to us. You can imagine that this contrasted intensely to where I was just 3 days before – the Hilton in Montreal, alongside 700 other EWB
volunteers in the dead of winter.

I’m not complaining. I realize that I lead a privileged life in so many ways. This transition can be inspiring. I was able to go from a Canadian setting in which people are driving for positive change in international development, direct to one of the villages that so rightly deserves such changes.

Direct from the airport, our car stopped on the side of the road so my co-worker, Smorden, could buy mangoes. I got out of the car and we were immediately swarmed by a group of young women with baskets full of fresh fruit. There were over 20 women, all trying their best to catch our attention and earn a little bit of our money.

And it truly is a little bit of money. I didn’t know who to pick from – I finally settled on one young woman with a large basket of mangoes on her head and a baby on her back. I bought 5 mangoes and paid 30 kwatcha – roughly 20 cents.

As I handed over my money, I was struck by the simple fact that this isn’t a life of opportunity for these women. There were dozens of them on the side of a major highway, all competing for a small business transaction from privileged passers-by.

Never mind the necessities -- money to pay for school fees for your children, to cover health care costs when you or you kids inevitably get malaria, to buy extra food when the rains fail or when they come in torrential downpours. How can such a roadside livelihood provide the opportunity for advancement – capital to build a market stall and stock it, for instance?

I realize I’m operating on very few facts here – these women may very well have other income-generating activities beyond occasional fruit selling. But I can’t help but feel that so much potential wasn’t being met, and couldn’t be met, in the external circumstances that face so many Malawians – drought, gender imbalance, international trade barriers, first-world farm subsidies, disease. These barriers are stumbling blocks for the entrepreneurial spirits of so many people I encounter here.

I believe in fundamental freedom for all. When you’re relegated to the side of the highway, devoid of opportunity, your freedom is minimal.

I’m here to try to help increase the options – the degree of freedom -- available to the 85% of Malawians dependent on agriculture to make a living. It’s heartening to be able to juxtapose this with 700 young Canadians who are fighting for the same cause from across the globe.

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Here are some pictures I took from the field this past week.

Benson, a farmer, stands in front of harvested tobacco (being air-dried). Tobacco accounts for 68% of Malawi’s exports.

A small child stands in front of Benson's tobacco.

A net slung below a chicken coop collects their droppings, which are then used as fertilizer.

A boy herds goats across the road.

Malgunaa

2007-12-09T06:34:00.000-05:00

In Tamale, I lived in a neighbourhood called Moshizongo. I became friends with some of the young men who lived in this densely populated area in the heart of Tamale. We would often sit together at night, preparing tea. One of my friends was Abass, the Chief of Youth, appointed by the Chief of Tamale to oversee the activities of young people in the neighbourhood.

Abass and the others wanted to “enskin” me as a chief of the neighbourhood. When I decided to transfer to Malawi, this enskinment became the perfect goodbye ceremony.

This blog entry describes how I became Malgunaa: Chief of Settling Disputes.

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At about 3:20pm, I head over to Abass’s house. The ceremony is scheduled to start at 3:00pm, but a little buffer time is always in order for this kind of thing. My phone is ringing non-stop with people trying to find out where the event is to occur and at what time.

Abass welcomes me to his room in his family’s compound house, located a 3 minute walk from my own.

Abass’s role of Chief of Youth isn’t a full-time gig: he’s also trying to register with the Ghanaian army, and most days he sports a western-style outfit of t-shirt and pants.

But today, as Chief of Youth, he must dress for the occasion. He is putting on several traditional smocks: large robe-like tops worn by the people of northern Ghana. He places a hat made from a calabash on his head, a belt with horse-hair tassels around his waist and several charmed necklaces around his neck: all designed to grant him powers. (“No one can shoot me,” he once claimed. “The bullet could never strike me.”)

Outside, the drumming starts. Chief and his friends have hired luunsi, local drummers. Five of them start sounding the call to ceremony.

Chief’s friends dress me in a smock, and a handle with tassels of horse hair. I’m told that my name will be Malguuna, the Chief of Settling Disputes. It will be my duty to solve conflicts among the youth of Moshizongo.

The drumming outside is growing louder, more insistent. I ask my friend Lukman how many people he things will come. “Uncountable,” he responds.

As soon as I exit Chief’s room, I’m confronted with a throng of kids and a wailing woman. This is a ceremonial way of greeting me as a soon-to-be chief. They lead me outside to a dusty clearing in our neighbourhood.

I’m seated on a sheep-skin (the ceremony is called an enskinment due to the use of this skin), and Chief sits behind me on a chair. My friend Ishmeal sits to my left: he’s to be my sub-chief.

The crowd is gathering. There are at least a hundred and fifty people standing in a broad circle, mainly children and adolescents. Within the circle the luunsi drum and dance. A ceremonial rifle is fired into the air, startling everyone. The atmosphere, as Sarah Grant describes it, is “intense.”

The heat is also intense, especially while wearing a thick smock and sitting in the afternoon sun. A young girl is assigned to fan me. I’m embarrassed, and Sarah laughs at me.

Finally, when the heat and the energy are at their peak, the enskinment begins. A sub-chief approaches me with another smock. He bends down before me, and places the smock over my head three times. Each time he proclaims something loudly in Dagbani, the local language.

Ishmeal translates: “By the Chief of Men, we proclaim you to be Malgunaa!”

I’m then asked to stand and dance within the centre of the crowd. “You have to walk like an old man,” Ishmeal whispers. “You’re now a chief.”

As I shuffle around, people run up to me, sticking coins to my sweaty forehead. These coins are collected and given to the drummers. Dust is kicked up, the sun beats down, and my Dagomba cap is knocked from my head. After a few short moments, I’m led back to my sheep skin.

It’s now time for more dancing. The luunsi approach people in the crowd, drawing them out one by one to dance. The dancers request collect coins from all the chiefs in attendance. Then they move within the circle, kicking and twirling to the music, pushing or pulling the drummers with them.

Each dance has a particular meaning, Ishmeal explains to me. “This is called Kondoya, a dance for witches,” he says. Another dancer performs a hunting dance.

Sarah Grant and Josephine Tsui are both invited up to dance. The crowd goes crazy for these salimingas, rushing forward with coins for their foreheads.

Finally, over two hours after it began, the ceremony winds down. I’m made to stand, and a procession leads me to my house. I move slowly, as per instructions.

A final loud gunshot marks the end. I push through the crowd of people into my house, and enter the relative silence of my room.

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I already miss the intensity and rawness of Dagomba culture. In order to provide some context, I should point out that this kind of event didn’t happen all the time in my neighbourhood. Moshizongo is a generally quiet neighbourhood, filled with large family houses, motorcycle mechanic shops, food sellers and provision stores. People go about their daily business, visiting friends, heading into town to work, welcoming visitors.

But periodically something like this would happen, reminding me of the strong pride that people have in their traditional culture. I was privileged to not only have been given a close window into it, but to actively participate in it.

Chief prepares his jewellery

I'm briefed on the ceremony procedures by Ishmeal.

Chief and his friend, prepared for the ceremony.

Ishmeal and me (Chief in the background).

Chief dancing.

I’ll Alight at the This Thing – Luke in… Malawi?

2007-11-05T03:22:00.000-05:00

November 1, 2007

I’m writing this entry from the airport in Nairobi, Kenya. It’s a nice airport – clean, modern. There’s a coffee bar just to my right, a digital display showing flight times to my left. From my experience in Accra and now Nairobi, African international airports seem to be notable only for their “ordinariness” – modern enclaves for global jetsetters, positioned amongst some of the worst poverty in the world.

But I digress. The reason I’m here is that I’m in transit to Lilongwe, Malawi, in central Africa. It’s all happened quite fast, but I’ll be spending the next 5 months there working on a water and sanitation project.

EWBer Brett Stevenson has been volunteering with a British NGO called Concern Universal (CU) since April 2007. She’s now moving into a management role with EWB, and so someone was needed to continue her work with CU.

I had recently completed my diagnostic with CBRDP. I won’t go into the details here on the findings, but basically I recommended several workstreams that an EWB volunteer could pursue. Given the short time I had left (less than 2 months), it made sense to propose that a new volunteer take on these workstreams from start to finish over a 13 months placement, as opposed to me starting the work and leaving it so soon after.

So I agreed to take on a new challenge in Malawi and add on a few months to my time overseas. I’ll be helping to develop and implement a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system that Brett began.

An M&E system is basically a system used to track the progress of a project as it develops. This is necessary in order to gain the knowledge necessary to tweak (or radically change) the project for the better. It’s often tough for the management in charge to know exactly what’s happening on the ground: a good M&E system should make sure that the people and processes are in place to bring good information from the field, to the decision makers (and vice versa). For example, field staff need to be well trained, and have the right tools (both physical, like bicycles or motorbikes, as well as clear report formats and instructions) to acquire this data and provide the feedback that management needs to improve a project, or to make the changes themselves.

Brett has been working for the past 6 months to help CU build such a system for one of their water and sanitation projects. This project is intended to bring water and sanitation facilities to over 500 communities in Malawi – so it’s a project with a large scope, and thus a comprehensive and strong M&E system is definitely required.

More details to come, of course.

My goodbyes in Ghana were sad, but I’ve left the country with too many fond memories to count, and so many friends I’m glad to have met. In a future blog entry I’ll have to describe my enskinment: to say goodbye, my friends in my neighbourhood made me “Chief of Settling Disputes” (or Malgunaa in Dagbani). The ceremony involved over 150 people, 5 drummers, countless dancers, and a man firing off a ceremonial rifle.

For now, I’d better try to figure out what time it is where I am. I don’t want to miss my flight to Lilongwe.

November 5, 2007

I’ve now on my fifth day in Malawi, and I’m enjoying it quite a bit. There are some obvious (but superficial) differences between here and Ghana. In Malawi: women strap their babies over their shoulders instead of around their chests; mini-bus drivers don’t strap any luggage (or goats) to their roofs; the weather is very pleasant – balmy, almost; the food is quite different, with French fries readily available on the street; the people are much more reserved than Ghana (when stepping off the plane in Malawi, I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t confronted with cries of “Saliminga!”, or extreme but short-lived shouting matches between taxi drivers and airport staff); Ghana expressions aren’t used (“Oh, Charly!” makes no sense here).

In any case, I’ll describe these surface details in more detail in the months to come, and hopefully start getting into some of the deeper issues too: for instance, trying to understand why Malawi is at 166 on the Human Development Index, whereas Ghana is 30 countries higher.

One thing is for sure: Malawi is beautiful. I’ve included a few pictures here to prove it. (The first two are tea fields in the Thyolo district. The third is the view from my guesthouse in Blantyre, the commercial centre of Malawi.)

Sheriff Ghale on Reggae, Tamale, and Showcasing Ghana to the World

2007-10-21T13:09:00.000-04:00

I submitted this article to a reggae magazine. It got rejected. Hopefully it'll find a receptive audience here.
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Northern Ghana’s biggest reggae star is not a hard man to find, so long as you know which neighbourhood to look in. All you have to do, picking your way through the crowded and bustling backstreets where vendors sell bread and biscuits from rickety wooden tables and hens meander about, is ask to see Sheriff Ghale.

A passing shoe-shine boy becomes my guide, leading me through the labyrinthine dirt roads of this neighbourhood in Tamale, capital of the Northern Region of Ghana.

Sheriff is certainly well known, a home-grown hero in this dusty urban centre. In 2005 he gained acclaim for winning “Best Ghanaian Reggae Song” at the Ghana Music Awards for the song Sochira. He’s worked diligently since 1995 to put Tamale, and Northern Ghana in general, on the country’s musical map.

We arrive at his house, a modest pink bungalow, and Sheriff stumbles to the front door, bleary eyed. I’ve woken him from a nap – it’s midday, incredibly hot. The power has gone off again in the city, so there’s not an operational fan anywhere. He welcomes me, and then excuses himself for his afternoon prayers: Sheriff is a devout Muslim, as are the majority of people in Tamale.

Ghana, like all African nations, is made up of a diversity of ethnic groups. There exists a divide between the north and the south of the country – cultural, language, and religious. Northerners are often proud of their differences. There’s no doubt that Sheriff is a Tamale man – born and bred, he wears his pride for the city on his sleeve. “It’s a lovely place,” he says, “a social ground.”

When asked to explain the popularity of reggae in this city, Ghale pauses to gather his thoughts. It’s clearly something he’s thought about before.

“Music is a very strong instrument in this community,” he says. “In funerals, during celebrations, during everything – music is a part of it. And music is not just about dance for this community, but (it’s) also a serious intellectual instrument.” He’s referring to the luunsi, a group of musical historians in the Dagomba culture (the dominant tribe in this area). The luunsi keep and transmit the people’s history through song and drumming.

“These luunsi are seriously intellectual people in terms of the traditional set up… so music has been respected so much here, has a high place in terms of what you say in your music.” There’s an overlap, he says, between reggae music and traditional Dagomba music. “Reggae music [also] comes with that: strong musical content, lyrical substance.”

The overlap of traditional Dagomba culture and reggae music is a constant theme for Ghale. Many of his songs are sung in Dagbani, the local language, and address issues that are particularly relevant to the Dagomba people, such as recent chieftaincy disputes and political marginalization of the people of the North.

But this theme is equally a personal struggle. Ghale constantly seeks ways to broaden the appeal of his reggae music while staying true to his roots.

“I love to do reggae music, but at least reggae music has come to light. And yet I have a traditional music I have to develop, I have to keep alive, I have to show to other people.” Ghale leans back and sighs. “It’s been my conflict. I can’t move on and leave this behind because this is part of me.”

He opines on the difficulty of the musician in a developing nation. Access to musical markets is difficult, with no major distributor operating from Ghana. It’s tough enough for him to get his music heard in the capital city of Accra, let alone abroad.

“From our history we come up with something very rich – the rich traditional music. We have some good things that should be shown to the world and should be added to the development of world culture… The world might be losing so much that could have come from here.”

Still, he remains optimistic. “Sometimes I just tell myself that the only way might be that one just keeps doing – stay here… keep developing in our own way until the time that an attention might be turned to us to see what we have here, so we can put it on offer.”

Ghale has been trying to develop the music scene in Northern Ghana by encouraging live band performances. These performances died off in the early nineties, as an influx of computers resulted in what Sheriff calls “sound system shows.” These shows have young men playing cassettes of computer generated tunes and singing – or lip-syncing – on stage. “Sound system shows” are now the norm in Tamale.

Ghale goes against this trend by playing with a full band. “One may call it innovation, but [I] call it a revival because it used to be here before, now it’s gone,” he says.

“I want to perform for the people – I have to perform,” he says. “The joy is not just in having people fill up the venue and sit down so you get some money, and that’s it. No, the joy is in your performance.”

Sheriff Ghale’s next album, entitled Ninidoo, is tentatively scheduled for release in November 2007. His music can be purchased online through calabashmusic.com.

Extra Reading

2007-10-10T14:32:00.000-04:00

This is more of a pseudo-update, but I'm putting together a website listing much of the writing I've done while I've been in Ghana, as well as the other media I've produced (film, photography and audio).

If you're interested, check it out here. I'll pretty it up as I go, but hopefully there will be some interesting stuff in there for you to read/watch/listen.

I also realized that I haven't posted many pictures of urban structures in Ghana – most have been from rural communities or people in Tamale. Here are a few from Bolgatanga.

The first one is a picture from my office, showing a water tower surrounded by farmland. This is where the Regional Government is located -- people still farm the area around the governmental buildings (rumour has it that they weren't satisfied with compensation for lost land when the buildings were constructed, so they've continued to use the remaining land).

The second one is a picture from my room. I'm staying in a 3-storey building in the heart of Bolgatanga. It's unfinished (although my room is finished), so you can climb on the roof and hang your laundry there to dry.

The last one was taken from my office window. It shows a vulture flying by one of the adjacent buildings. Vultures become more and more common the further north you move -- up in Burkina Faso I've seen swarms of them.

Red Cross in Northern Ghana

2007-09-27T06:56:00.000-04:00

Some people have asked me about donations to the relief efforts in northern Ghana. I know that the Red Cross/Crescent is active here. Their donation site is http://donate.ifrc.org/. You can specify that you want to donate to the relief efforts in northern Ghana.

An Overwhelming Water

2007-09-21T14:18:00.000-04:00

Some people in Canada have asked me about the flooding in northern Ghana. I didn’t realize this was getting international coverage, but it’s certainly serious enough to warrant it.

I’m currently working on an article for the Canadian Water Network on this topic. I’ll post it once I’ve submitted it, but here are some of the details.

It’s an amazing contrast: back in June, people were praying that the rains would come. As I’ve described before, the rain was delayed this year – it didn’t arrive when expected, which is a huge problem for rural farmers who rely mainly on rain for crop irrigation. My friend Imoro, who owns a farm in Nantinga (about 1.5 hours from Bolgatanga) just showed me some of this year’s corn: its growth was stunted, and when he peeled back the husk I saw that many of the kernels were simply missing -- the result of poor rainfall.

“Early millet” is normally planted in June and depends on the June rainfall. This is a major crop which farmers rely on for both food and for selling on the market. This year, it simply didn’t grow.

But the rains eventually did come. They started in July, and came with great ferocity.

The expression “when it rains, it pours” has taken on a sinister dimension this year in northern Ghana. The rain has been so severe that low-lying areas have been inundated. Crops have been washed away, fields turned to mud, and houses destroyed.

I spoke with Anderson Anaphor-Nabia, the Regional Co-ordinator for NADMO, the National Disaster Management Organisation in the Upper East Region.

“I don’t think we’ve experienced such a rainfall for 10 years or more,” he said. “The magnitude is huge. It has really overwhelmed us.”

He listed off the damage for me, district by district. Statistics are still being gathered, but Anaphor-Nabia claims that in total, over 5,700 mud houses have been destroyed. He said that over 22,000 people had been displaced by the excessive rain in 6 out of 8 districts (the numbers for the remaining 2 districts are still being added up). The final number will surely top 25,000.

You’d think that, with such a risk of flooding, people would avoid settling or farming in low-lying areas. But Anaphor-Nabia explained that the farmers have little choice. When the rains are poor, the water will collect in low-lying areas: thus yields will be higher there. Farmers want a good harvest, so they’re willing to risk the relatively small chance of severe flooding. This year that strategy has hurt them: next year, it could mean more and better maize than in the areas on higher ground.

What I’ve described is the immediate damage. It still remains to be seen what subsequent damage will be caused by water-borne disease like cholera, or mosquito-borne disease like malaria. And the truly difficult time will come in the lean season next year, as (already limited) food stocks run out.

As I’ve said before, in Canada we have systems in place to buffer against sudden environmental shocks. Can you imagine a food crisis in Canada as a result of erratic rains? (Barring Global Warming, of course.) But one of the major characteristics of poverty is vulnerability. The farmers of northern Ghana are incredibly vulnerable, and don’t have the same kind of social or physical buffers that we take for granted.

I’m currently staying in Nantinga at Imoro’s house, and working at the neighbouring Bawku Municipal Assembly for 3 days. I thought the rain had finished for this year. But last night brought a torrential downpour. I lay in bed at Imoro’s house and listened to the rain pound against the tin roof above.

The sound was overwhelming.

New Partnership in Bolga

2007-08-23T16:46:00.000-04:00

Greetings from Bolgatanga!

Bolgatanga (or Bolga for short) is the capital of the Upper East region of Ghana. It’s a cool little city, known for producing some interesting music and having a bustling night life. It’s quite different from Tamale in many ways – geographically (it’s much hillier), culturally (a different set of ethnic groups and languages), religiously (Christianity is more prevalent than Islam in this city – apparently the result of French Canadian missionaries in the early 1900s, but I’ll write more about that later).

And Bolga is more or less my new home. I’m still keeping my room in Tamale, but I’m spending the bulk of my time here in Bolga, roughly 3 hours by public transport to the north.

I’m now working with an organization called Community-Based Rural Development Project (CBRDP), a tongue twister whether you say the full thing or its abbreviation.

What is CBRDP? It’s a big national project with an overall budget of around $86million, funded by the World Bank, the French Development Agency and the Government of Ghana. Its main goals are essentially:
1) To strengthen the government at the various levels (including Regional, District, Area Councils and rural communities) so that they can do their jobs as well as possible
2) To develop the infrastructure of the districts (e.g. construction of markets, schools, health clinic rehabilitation, boreholes, etc.)
3) To held develop small-scale business in the districts so that jobs are created
4) To encourage good environmental management

This is a pretty ambitious project, obviously, but an important one in the process of decentralization that Ghana is undergoing.

Decentralization is a fairly popular concept in international development right now. The idea is to push decision-making power away from centralized governments, and towards communities.

In Ghana in the past the central government of Accra had a significant degree of influence over development projects throughout the country: the placement of a borehole, for instance, in the northern part of the country could be determined by someone operating from the capital city of Accra, 500km away.

Under decentralization, the need for this borehole would be decided first and foremost by the community, and then its construction would be facilitated by the District level government.

(See the diagram listing the various levels of government in Ghana. Note that I’ve placed “Communities” on top to indicate they’re the most important part of the structure! Ghana has been split into 10 regions, and those 10 regions split into 138 district assemblies, and those 138 district assemblies carved into numerous more area councils.)

But this process of decentralization is incomplete, with District governments and other substructures still not fully able to take on all the responsibility that they’re ultimately responsible for. Problems like lack of facilities and technical know-how still plague the District Assemblies.

CBRDP’s strategy is to train the District Assemblies and Area Councils in project management, provide funding for infrastructure projects, and then coach them along in implementing these projects – a sort of “capacity building by doing” approach.

I was recently in a training workshop for two Area Councils. They were being taught how to plan out and execute projects. It was exciting to see these people – all members of nearby communities – so excited about improving the quality their own little piece of the district. One Area Council wanted to ease congestion in its single school, and was thus planning out the construction of a new school.

One of the Area Council members was donating land for the construction of this school. He told me that, as a child, he’d attended the existing school -- over 30 years ago. The community had grown but the necessary schooling facilities hadn’t, so he wanted to do his part to increase the quality of education in his area.

This is the kind of community engagement that CBRDP – and decentralization in general – is looking to encourage.

So what am I doing for CBRDP?

An excellent question! Right now I’m in what EWB refers to the “diagnostic phase” of this new partnership. Basically I’m learning as much as I possibly can about CBRDP, so that I can then figure out where I can best support their efforts. This is how most EWB placements begin, and the purpose is for us to provide service to our partners that is as highly customized and relevant as possible.

Right now I’m helping CBRDP carry out these Area Council trainings, as well as helping Districts complete Environmental Impact pre-Assessments – both activities are giving me a chance to figure out just what CBRDP is doing. From this knowledge, I’ll be able to choose a specific focus for the rest of my time.

To close off this blog entry, here’s a goodbye picture taken at our final Junior Fellow workshop last week. It’s sad to say bye to our 16 friends, but thanks to Kristy Minor, they’ll have fantastic shirts to remember us by.

Nantinga

2007-07-30T16:49:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the delay in posting. I’ve been away from the computer for a while, having switched partner organizations. I’ve wrapped up my work with the Community Water and Sanitation Agency. EWB requested that I open up a partnership with a new organization, and in the spirit of a new challenge and opportunity, I’ve started working with the Community-Based Rural Development Project (CBRDP). I’ll have more details on this shortly, but right now they’ve got me in the field, evaluating some of the myriad of projects they fund.

In the meantime, I thought it might be interesting to offer a pictorial display of my most recent village stay.

I spent 6 days in the community of Nantinga, part of a larger community called Missiga, which is in the Upper East region of Ghana – almost in the extreme north-east corner of the country. I stayed with a man named Imoro, a friend of Junior Fellow Ryan Case, and an employee with the Bureau for National Investigation – Ghana’s equivalent to the CIA.

So below are some pictures from Imoro’s home, and captions describing them. I hope they’ll help paint a bit of a picture of rural life in northern Ghana.

Imoro bikes his son, Raouf, to school in the morning.

This woman is weeding her field. Most weeding is done by hand using a hand hoe, hunched over for hours on end. It isn’t easy – hoeing can start at daybreak and last until the midday sun forces a retreat – but farmers are incredibly tough.

Oxen being used to plough a field for millet.

Here I am trying to control the oxen. It’s not a simple task.

The rows should be straight. I’ll keep practising.

These high-tension power lines skip merrily over Nantinga on their way to Benin (two countries to the east of Ghana). Ghana exports quite a bit of power to the surrounding countries, but not all communities in Ghana have electricity. Nantinga is one such example.

Obligatory cute kid and her sister.

As the sun set and the weather cooled, children would go to the borehole and pump water for their families.

This was taken at a nearby marketplace. This is a sahelian cow, bred for ruggedness in the inhospitable Sahel terrain. Lots of interesting animals get brought down from Burkina Faso and Niger, and are sold in this market.

Missiga gets traffic from Niger, Togo, Burkina Faso, and more.

This is Cool Boy. I’m not clear on how he got this name – all I know is that it involved a mysterious trip to Kumasi, and he came back a new man. In any case, Cool Boy was collecting sand for concrete – he was renovating one of the rooms in his family’s compound. Cool Boy was a bit of a wild man with his donkey cart, racing it throughout the village like a Roman chariot race.

Here, members of the community crack open groundnuts (peanuts). This is quite a communal activity – people will sit around for hours in the dry season talking and cracking open peanuts in order to sell them or cook them in food.

Nantinga is a predominantly Muslim community. Here, two men take a break from cracking peanuts for their three o’clock prayers.

As the sun sets, these children are playing a board game that’s quite popular in Ghana.

This is Imoro’s father. He was out every morning around 5am, weeding his fields. Here, he’s dressed himself up for the picture – normally he wouldn’t wear his nice smock and prayer cap to the field.

Imoro’s father and me, with hoes in hand.

An Enskinment In Black and White

2007-06-26T16:26:00.000-04:00

I’m back from my farm stay in the Upper East. I’ll post pictures and stories from that soon.

For now, here are a few photos from a ceremony I attended in my neighbourhood. I was invited out by my friend Chief. He’s an honorary chief in this part of Tamale, and also a local magician, practising traditional magic.

He invited me to this ceremony, which was part of the preparation for the “enskinment” of another chief. Enskinment refers to the animal skin on which the chiefs will sit. When they come to power, they’re said to be enskinned.

The ceremony consisted of a huge crowd of people, in the open centre of which danced at least 10 or 15 men. They all wore the traditional smocks of Northern Ghana, and danced to tomtom drums.

I decided to experiment with black and white.

My friend Chief, before the ceremony.

My friend, Chief.

The celebration grounds.

Dagomba dancer.

Dagomba dancers. They bang metal rods in time to the music.

On Water

2007-06-09T18:16:00.000-04:00

Here are some pictures of rain – that elusive, destructive, life-giving bundle of hydrogen and oxygen. The south of Ghana has had some serious flooding recently – at least 7 people in Accra died due to it. But the North is now in full bloom, with corn stalks shooting from the ground and trees glowing a vibrant green, providing food and giving life. Rain here can destroy or it can build life – it’s unfortunate that its life-building capacity isn’t more evenly distributed across the year.

I read an interesting article recently claiming that the water needs of every person in the entire continent of Africa could be met if only rain could be fully utilized – that’s how much falls from the sky.

Looking outside during a thunderstorm here, it’s not hard to believe. The rain is an incredible thing here. Drizzles are almost unheard of. The weather is binary here: either there’s not a drop of water, or else there’s a deluge, a painful, violent downpour that crashes to the ground and forces its way like a herd of bulls downhill through the streets.

Northern Ghana gets 950mm/year of rain. Compare that to Toronto, which sees 819mm/year. It’s not a paucity of water that’s affecting Ghana – it’s the distribution. This water all comes to the country over a period of roughly 4 months. The rest of the year, there’s scarcely a drop to bring life from the ground.

So if the water in northern Ghana’s one rainy season could be harvested, stored for use throughout the year, it could solve the people’s water problems.

But, like many development solutions, what sounds like a simple idea has complex implications.

Some of the problems I’ve heard are:
1) Infrastructure cost. It costs money to dig huge pits, line them with concrete and cover them, as well as installation of troughs and piping for rain water harvesting. Generally systems make use of tin roofing to channel the water to the trough – but tin roofing, in the poorest of communities, is also scarce or non-existent (thatch roofing is much more common).
2) Even if the above are all in place, the water still can’t be considered potable without some kind of filtration device – although it could still be used for agriculture and washing. But potable quality means additional money, and (often complicated and costly) maintenance.
3) Communities are most likely to make use of water that is easily accessible. If rain water is being harvested in the rainy season, the community will likely use that instead of having to walk to a distant source. Wouldn’t you do the same, too? But the problem is that the stored water disappears instead of being saved for later (for dry-season farming, for instance), and when the dry season comes, the community members -- generally women and children -- have to make the trek to that distant source.

I hate to present only the problems, at the risk of painting an overly-negative picture of Ghana’s water problems. So let me say that, on the plus side, there’s still a big donor interest in groundwater. For instance, NORWASP (a Canadian-funded water and sanitation project) was supposed to wrap up last year, but had leftover money. They’re now using this money to rehabilitate over 500 old boreholes, which draw water from the earth.

That, coupled with a comprehensive hygiene programme and the formation of community-level groups to maintain the pumps, can mean a huge increase in the community’s health. And this is a solution that’s not dependent on a source as fickle as the rain.

-------------------------------------------

In other news, I’ll be out of contact for the next week, as I’ll be heading up to the Upper East for a village stay. I haven’t done one since coming back in February, so it’s high time I reconnect with rural Ghana.

New Blood, Big Challenges

2007-05-26T15:27:00.000-04:00

We now have 16 new EWB volunteers in Ghana. They’ve arrived, fresh faced and excited, from Canada as part of the Junior Fellowship in International Development program.

Kristy, Gwen and I met them in Accra earlier this month, and we immediately sent them out to town to begin exploration. This was, perhaps, not fair given that none of them is working in Accra, and it really is a world apart from northern Ghana (where 14 of them are based). But they were very keen, and threw themselves enthusiastically into the transport yard near the hotel.

If you imagine any of the chaos I’ve described about Tamale, multiply it by roughly 20 and add in 6-lane roads, massive traffic circles, huge modern buildings, choking pollution, near-constant humidity, hoards of street vendors, beautiful cars, fashionable men and women, sprawling slums – then you’ll have some picture of Accra.

One comment several of our new volunteers mentioned is that they hadn’t realized how “modern” Accra looks – at least, parts of it.

From what I gather, African capitals almost always represent the disparity in wealth that exists in this continent. Huge, modern office buildings coexist alongside shanty towns in Accra. Certain neighbourhoods in Accra are indistinguishable from the nicest areas in Ontario. Others are unfathomable even in our poorest ghettos.

Money that makes its way into this continent (for instance, through foreign investment), and that is generated from within (for instance, in Ghana’s gold industry) proceeds directly along a hugely asymmetrical path, speeding past the poor, jumping over a non-existent middle class, and falling into the hands of a privileged few.

There’s a dual economy driven by these elite, as well as by foreigners: diplomats, business people and aid workers. Even Tamale has this dual economy, with several nice hotels and restaurants catering primarily to the ex-pat crowd.

Those who visit “Africa” and spend their time in the beautiful hotels along Accra’s beaches, who dine in the foreign-owned restaurants, who drive about in air-conditioned vehicles with the windows firmly clamped shut, will certainly not understand that just outside the city limits – indeed, often just outside the neighbourhood limits – the truer face of Ghana lies.

This face of Ghana is the millions living on less than a dollar a day. Of subsistence farmers who can’t get their produce to market because irrational, absurd and often vicious outside forces have conspired against them (e.g. trade barriers, foreign agricultural subsidies). Of the people whose lives are so intricately and delicately tied to the rains.

Too often foreign development workers and diplomats skip over this truer face.

I remember visiting Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkia Faso, last year. New ministerial buildings were being erected: huge, incredible-looking glass structures. This is in a country that is almost at the very bottom of the UN’s Human Development Index. I remember commenting to EWBer Guillaume Simard that I couldn’t imagine anyone governing a country from those buildings, given how disconnected they were from the realities of the country’s poor.

Guillaume responded that his bigger concern was for the children of the elite. At least the current ministers had come from small towns or villages, and had some conception of poverty. The children of these ministers, who would in all likelihood be running the country in a few years, had been largely born into this fantasy world in Ouagadougou. They would likely never truly know what the rural areas are like.
I’ll step down from my soap box now. In short: Accra is intense, and a reminder of the complexity of the system here. Africa is not uniformly poor, despite what World Vision television advertisements might imply. There is wealth; it just exists in incredible disparity.

This is just another one of the complexities that will certainly jump out at our 16 junior fellows over the course of their four months here.

I think I cause a lot of accidents here

2007-05-17T16:36:00.000-04:00

Life here is, from my (Western) perspective, chaotic. Of course, I don’t know anything. Well, almost nothing. As the Canadian journalist Joan Baxter has written quite a bit about, my cultural blinders are strong and ever-present, and I’m in a country, a region, a city with incredibly complex history and social and cultural customs that I know I’ll only ever scrape the surface of understanding.

Any time I feel I’ve got some answers for development, feel like I’ve got it figured out, I just have to open my eyes to the complexity of the country I’m currently calling my home. This always takes me down a few pegs. There are no easy answers, only subtle and complex situations.

For a superficial example, take the main transport yard in Tamale. At its peak hours, it’s packed to bursting with taxis, tro-tros (mini buses), buses, people, goats, sheep, kiosks (selling fried eggs, movies, pop, juice, bananas, local porridge, imported Chinese electronics, biscuits, local cheese), wheeled carts, shouting, heat, exhaust, spit, music, fatigue, etc. There is no room to move. To navigate on foot means to pick your way between bumpers (praying no vehicle starts to move), ducking under kiosks, politely elbowing your way through a crowd.

It looks like bedlam.

Yet somehow it works.

Cars come and go. Passengers debark and embark. Goods are shipped and received, food is purchased and consumed, tickets bought, money exchanged, and the process repeats without end.

It’s amazing to watch a taxi pull out of this chaos. It has to inch its way forward – literally, inches of space are all that’s allowed. Another series of vehicles around it must back up, pull forward, perhaps even slide to one side to allow for enough breathing room for the taxi. As though putting together a complex puzzle, the taxi driver moves his car through impossibly narrow spaces, around every obstacle, until he’s free onto the four-lane road that cuts through the centre of Tamale.

Daily life here often requires much more concentration than back home. I suspect that any driver put on a Canadian street would be supremely bored with the orderliness of it all. Regularly functional streetlights? Roads free of goats, cattle, chickens? Motorcycle riders avoiding sidewalks? Bicyclists without 10 foot metal poles over their shoulders? Where’s the challenge?

So I feel bad when I disrupt people’s concentration, often with negative consequences.

Take, for example, a few days ago, when I was biking home at night. I was enjoying the downhill slope towards my house, and was gazing at the three large stone stoves that are used to bake bread at night by my neighbours. They look like giant demons in the night, their mouths full of fire.

A man was biking in the opposite direction, a huge bag of charcoal perched precariously on his head. I assume that every faculty of his being was focussed on maintaining his balance, of moving forward.

Just as he passed me, I noticed a minute wobble: a terrible omen of events immediately to follow.

Sure enough, the minute wobble turned into a larger shake, which turned into a wild side-to-side motion of the handlebars, which turned into the man falling over, pinned beneath his bicycle, the charcoal bag in front of him.

I stopped, and several men immediately ran up to him. They hoisted him up, and, with their help, he walked off to the side of the road – seemingly not seriously injured.

I can’t help but think that I contributed to this. Despite the fact that Tamale is NGO central (with all the associated foreigners), white people draw a lot of attention here. Walking down the road means near constant greetings from strangers, and many unbroken stares (but very rarely hostile). This means attention is diverted from possibly more important issues – like maintaining balance.

In the few days since the bicycle incident, a man has walked into a low-hanging ceiling beam while staring at me, and a bicyclist collided with another bicyclist while moving around me.

Maybe I’m just bad luck, but it seems more likely that I’m disrupting the fine balance that exists in a city where safety regulations are not as stringent as they are in Canada.

This could be a metaphor for any well-meaning development worker who’s come to Ghana, expecting easy answers, but instead disrupting the existing fragile system. There are too many examples of poor development projects that have actually made the situation much much worse than it was before.

For now I’ll focus on avoiding causing accidents.

A Recent Night

2007-04-25T17:43:00.000-04:00

It’s 6:30pm. I’m at the office, working on my laptop.

The power goes out, the office plunged into darkness. The national load sharing program is sporadic, unpredictable. It’s now dark in my office, and the fan has stopped.

When the fans stop the heat makes itself known. It’s always apparent, below the surface, indicated by the thin layer of moisture that is ever-present on your skin. But when the fans stop, the heat truly emerges from invisible recesses. It descends, sucks your energy in an apparent attempt to generate yet more heat – you feel tired immediately, listless.

I pack up my things, and walk out of the office.

In the dusk light, the night watchman, Sadiq, is praying, his head towards east, towards Mecca. I wait for him to finish, then hand him the keys.

“Do you think that the power will come back on soon?” I ask Sadiq.

Sadiq smiles. He has a warm smile, like a young grandfather. “As for that,” he responds, “I can’t best tell.”

No one can predict the vagaries of the Volta River Authority. It’s another factor that is out of people’s control here: like the weather, although this one is man-made. If the power goes out, the population accepts it. There’s no recourse, especially given the state of energy emergency the country finds itself in.

I jump into a shared taxi, squish in next to two women. “Anawula” I say, and between laughs at my attempts at Dagbani, they respond, “nahh.”

The taxi drops me at my neighbourhood, and I wander through the darkened paths, avoiding sprawling sheep and head-level clotheslines, my eyes squinting in the half-light. “Ti deema!” neighbours call out to me – “let’s eat!” Food is shared here, always – to deny someone the opportunity to partake in your meal is an insult.

In my compound, I’m greeted by one of the old women. This compound is predominantly female – maybe 10 out of the 15 inhabitants is a woman. She takes my arm and, with a flashlight, gestures at the ground in front of my door. Written in charcoal is a message: my friend Sadik (not the watchman) has come to greet me. Greetings are a regular social ritual here, and I’m honoured that Sadik has taken the time to come to my home.

In my room, I open the windows in an attempt to drive some of the heat out into the relatively cooler evening air. I eat my TZ outside, sitting on a low stool. I can’t see the soup into which I dip the maize paste – I have to feel around in the dark with my finger, determine the level of the liquid.

I walk outside for “ataya”, tea. A group of young men is gathered around a small charcoal stove. This neighbourhood is called Moshizongo – meaning the neighbourhood of the Moshi, an ethnic group from neighbouring Burkina Faso. Some of the traditions from this country have made their way into my area, including tea. Men can frequently be seen sitting around such stoves, brewing and re-brewing green tea, passing it around in small cups.

This stove is ingeniously made from old bicycle rims – the spokes are twisted into coils which support the flaming charcoal. A small teapot sits atop it all, and the flames lick the sides of the pot as the liquid inside hisses. The whole contraption looks medieval, like it was forged in hell.

One of the men, Chief, plucks the pot from the flames with his bare hand. I wince, knowing that my uncalloused fingers would never accomplish such a feat. He carefully pours the tea into a separate cup, lifting the pot as high as possible above the cup – this ensures maximum mixing of the tea. Like a good wine, he wants as much oxygen to get into the drink.

Chief isn’t his real name. Someone walks by and greets him, calling him Abass. This is his real name, but he shakes his head and calls out to the person. He’s been granted honorary chieftancy over the neighbourhood, and wears the honour with pride.

We drink our tea, and some of the more curious in the group ask me question after question about life in Canada. I tell them this activity is one of the things I most value about life in Ghana – a communal gathering of friends.

After, I fill a bucket with water, and head to the outdoor open-air concrete stall that serves as a bathroom. I shower under the moonlight and stars, trying to get as cold as possible. As I sleep, I know I’ll be hot. I’ll rotate throughout the night, trying to expose each part of my body to the night’s air, feeling like a pig on a spit.

I use my mosquito net. I hate the feeling of mosquito bites – not for the itchiness, but for the terrible potential they carry. Will that mosquito carry the malaria parasite? Mosquitoes here are like a game of malarial Russian roulette.

So under my net, rotating in my mattress already damp with sweat, I try to catch faint draughts of air through my window. I hope that tomorrow, the Gods at VRA will grant us power.

The sounds of distant drumming (a youth troupe practising for an upcoming demonstration) move through my window slats.

I sleep.

The rains

2007-04-07T08:51:00.000-04:00

The rains have started to fall.

At the first sign of rain, all the children in my compound rushed into the centre courtyard, dancing and clapping their hands. This rainfall signals the gradual transition into the rainy season – that movement from parched, brown landscapes into lush green fields and humidity. And it’s certainly cause to celebrate.

It’s an understatement to say that the rains are significant here. Not only will they provide some respite from the omnipresent heat – more importantly, they’ll provide life to the farmers of Ghana.

The majority of farming here is irrigated by rain. In the dry season, nothing can grow (there are some exceptions – for instance, onion fields can be seen near perennial water sources like rivers). Yams, cassava, groundnuts, hot pepper, tomatoes, corn – they’re all dependent on nature, and if the rains don’t come, the crops won’t grow.

So the fact that the rains have come, and are falling more consistently early in the season, bodes well for the people of northern Ghana. People are happy, then, when the downpours come.

Another issue with rain is Ghana’s power. We’re currently experiencing an energy crisis. The majority (something like 70%) of Ghana’s power is generated through a hydroelectric dam on Lake Akosombo. The problem is that last year’s rains were not sufficient, and left the water level in the dam too low to operate at maximum capacity. Thermal generating plants are being constructed to help bolster the system’s output, but from what I’ve read, this is still a few months away.

As a result, the power company has instituted power rationing. This means that 25% of the time, my neighbourhood has no power – for 12 hours at night, and then a day later, 12 hours during the day, we have no electricity in our house.

I can’t imagine the effect this is having on Ghana’s industry – imagine a factory which normally operates around the clock, not being able to operate 25% of the time because of a lack of power.

And there’s no immediate end in sight. In the south, the rains aren’t expected to start falling until July – until then, the water level in the dam will continue to dip lower and lower.

In urban Canada, we often see rain as a nuisance, preventing us from bike riding or a visit to the park – or at best, we thank the rain for improving the colour of our lawn.

In Ghana, the rain is life: an example of how the vagaries of nature can upset the fragile balance so many people cling to. For many people here life here is precarious and uncertain – this lack of security, I think, is one of the primary characteristics of poverty.

Diversions

2007-03-24T11:17:00.000-04:00

There are five cows tied up outside my compound house – outside my window, specifically. They just showed up one day, tied to the withering trees which provide a tiny amount of shade – particularly important, given we’re at the height of the dry season, with the sun at its strongest.

I really don’t know why the cows are there. But I’ve gotten used to not knowing what’s going on. Not that I don’t ask questions – that’s the first thing that EWB teaches you to do. But questions inevitably lead to more questions, and in the case of the cows, seeking more information is just going to make me tired. Plus, I like a little mystery in life.

So I know that they (the cows) are owned by the landlord of my house. I also know that they’re being fed old dried cassava that the family has been laying out in the sun. Furthermore, I know that the cows make a terrible racket at random times during the day and night.

However, one time at which they moo like clockwork is 4am. It’s at this time that the mosque, which finds itself right next door to my house (and has always been there – it didn’t just show up) starts its call to prayer over a bellowing sound system. I’m pretty sure that the speaker is pointed directly at my window, as the sound of the muezzin chanting “Allahu Akbar” hammers me from my sleep without fail every morning.

The chanting is really quite beautiful, under most circumstances. I particularly enjoy it at dusk, as the sun is almost gone and the smoke from cooking fires rolls slowly onto the streets.

But at 4am it’s a different story -- especially now that the cows are there to add to the fray. I’ll normally press my pillow over my ears, and fall back asleep. But my co-workers insist I should start praying – I’m awake, anyway, so why not?

I may have to buy some ear plugs.

Clip here to listen to the sounds outside my room (mp3 format).

A Golden Jubilee

2007-03-14T15:06:00.000-04:00

I’m listening to a CD called West African Gold. Put out by Rough Guide, it’s a collection of West African music from the late 50s to the early 80s. The first track is by the Ghanaian high-life pioneer E.T. Mensah -- the “King of Highlife” according to the liner notes. It’s called Ghana-Guinee-Mali and is an ode to the independence of these three countries. The upbeat funky music is partly a product of the optimism of the late 50s and early 60s in Ghana.

Ghana was a trailblazer: the first sub-Saharan African country to free itself from colonial rule. Let by an intelligent, educated visionary, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana was supposed to become a model nation for Africa.

As the lyrics in the Mensah song go:

Ghana, Guinea, Mali Union
Has laid down a strong foundation
For redemption of Africa
For which we’ve been strongly fighting

It’s now 50 years after Ghana’s independence. And unfortunately, the consensus among people here is that Ghana has not met the expectations it set out in 1957. Ghana is still a developing nation, with a myriad of problems facing it, as anyone here will tell you.

But all the same, that’s not to say Ghana is without pride. Indeed, people are proud of many things about Ghana – its democracy, its peace, its exports.

I attended the Golden Jubilee celebrations with my friends Sheriff, Stephen and Kristy. When asked about the day, Stephen: “I feel very proud to be Ghanaian. I think today is a remarkable day in the history of Ghana, that everyone will want to celebrate. It’s Independence Day!”When pressed on why he’s proud to be Ghanaian, Stephen says, “I am proud to be a Ghanaian because this is the day Ghana has been liberated from its colonial power. So we are now doing things on our own… I’m most excited because the flag of Ghana is being hoisted. It’s being raised very high.”

And the red, gold, green and black star were certainly being raised in full force. The weeks leading up to 6th March saw the streets flooded with a myriad of Ghana-themed products: key chains, flags of all sizes, shirts, posters, pendants, tags. Special fabric made to commemorate Ghana’s independence sold incredibly well.

And the people were out in full force at the Police Park, which had undergone recent renovations – a brand new stage gave the place a major facelift (although I heard part of the scaffolding collapsed during the show, injuring several people). There were thousands upon thousands of people packed into the park, there to witness marching schoolchildren and police officers, and to strain to hear the words spoken by local dignitaries (the sound system wasn’t quite strong enough).

The atmosphere was more social than formal – people walked about together, observing the masses. Vendors could be seen everywhere, selling oranges, ice cream, cakes, water. Friends chatted and laughed and ran into each other at every turn.

As the sun became so strong as to make the dusty park unbearable, the crowds dispersed. That evening, it seemed that all the city’s youths descended on the main taxi rank for a night of music – the streets were packed with thousands of youngsters. Apparently the night was capped off with an impressive fireworks display, but I didn’t see it.

In retrospect, the day can be seen as a great success. People were proud of their country and displayed this pride. It was fun – a celebration.

But despite the crowds, and despite the colours, as the day unfolded it all seemed to lack the energy that was unleashed last year during the World Cup, when Ghana beat both the United States and the Czech Republic.

That was a moment of unbridled spontaneity, when Ghana did what no one, not even Ghanaians, thought possible: toppled two of the world’s best soccer teams. It was at this time that Ghanaian pride shone brightly through its problems.

People took to the streets then, with makeshift drums and hastily drawn flags, to celebrate the great levelling that had just occurred on the international stage.

Perhaps the spectre of 1957’s missed potential is still too strong in Ghana today – too strong for people here to truly express their pride on their Golden Jubilee. Perhaps this international levelling that happened at the World Cup hasn’t shown itself enough times. Perhaps people are still waiting for the day when a World Cup match victory is not a surprise, a day when they’ll have the confidence to look back on their past and say that their dreams had, indeed, been realized.

I have faith that this day will come.

Pictures for Previous Posting

2007-02-22T13:28:00.000-05:00

If anyone would like to receive automatic email updates when I post something new on my blog, then you can subscribe to my Google Groups mailing list by going here:

http://groups.google.com/group/lukes-ghana-blog?lnk=gschg

Here are a few pictures relating to my last post.

A removal order for a road-side shop

A new street sign in Tamale -- this is the road my office is on.

Kintampo Falls, during an EWB retreat

Another removal order for a road-side shop

Return to a (slightly) Changed Ghana

2007-02-19T08:40:00.000-05:00

It’s taken many hours of movement (and many hours at a standstill) but I’ve arrived back in Tamale, in northern Ghana.

It started with a 21-hour voyage from Toronto to the Ghanaian capital of Accra (including a stopover in Amsterdam – I got to wander the streets and buy a pair of Che Guevara socks and I found a world/indie music store with excellent West African CDs).

I was surprised by how much the return to Accra hit me – it was very strange, coming back to Ghana after an almost two-month absence.

I think this is in large part due to the fact that Accra is very foreign to me – as Tom Owen has pointed out, with its streets congested with cars, mini buses and motorbikes, its sidewalks congested with hordes of people and stands, its pollution, noise, and heat, Accra is much more intense than Toronto. Last year whenever I would travel south from Tamale, I would feel like quite the small town boy rolling into the big city.

This time around, I stayed in Accra for two nights at a friend’s home, and then caught the 8am bus to Tamale. It left relatively on time (8:45am), and we rolled along towards Kumasi, the first major city on the way. We made it an hour and a half out of town, when the bus starting producing death-throe grinding noises and pulled to the side of the road. Four hours and one bus technician later, we were back on the way, with people grumbling about the STC (the state owned transportation company) – this kind of thing is the rule more so than the exception for STC. After a few more minor breakdowns and 2 hours of repair time in Kumasi, we finally made it to Tamale. The time: 3am. By the time I finally made it to my friend’s house (my old room is full of my landlord’s rice now) the mosques were firing up their sound systems for the call to morning prayer – sleep was difficult.

Tamale has changed a bit in my two month absence. There are now street signs up on the larger streets, revealing names I hadn’t know about before. However, the word Tamale is written in colour, with “Tam” in blue and “ale” in red – giving the signs a beer ad flavour (I’ll get a picture up soon).

The main street in the centre of town is being “decongested” – all the local shops, which are set up on the side of the street in small shack-like buildings, are being cleared out. Apparently they’re being relocated to two satellite markets in town, but I don’t know the details on this (nobody seems to), and I’m dubious about how effective these markets will be. The main strip was a major commercial hub for the city, and I worry that relocating all these shopkeepers will put a major dent in their sales.

Today I also drove by the foundations for a new fountain, near to the brand new stadium being constructed by a Chinese contractor. A fountain in Tamale seems more than a bit quixotic – my neighbourhood only has water once a week, so where they’ll find enough water to power a fountain all week, and why they’d want to when so many people are without potable water in town, is beyond me.

In any case, this all seems to relate to Ghana’s 50th anniversary – the 6th March will mark 50 years of independence for Ghana from British rule (the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain this status), and they’re sure to celebrate. Beautification projects are ongoing across the country.

Ghana will also be hosting the Cup of African Nations 2008 – an African soccer tournament. It’s for this reason that the new stadium is being constructed.

These two events are certainly exciting, but I can’t help but wonder if the preparations leading up to them are doing more harm for the people of Tamale than good.

One thing that certainly hasn’t changed is the warmth of the people – my friends in Tamale, people at the internet café in Accra, the food vendors I frequented last year. I’d forgotten how great it is to be made to feel so welcome in a foreign land, and for this, Ghana is unparalleled.

A Global Update

2006-12-28T00:50:00.000-05:00

After 36 hours of travel, I’m back in Canada. I’ve gorged on nachos and family company. I’ve called my friends in Ghana, and over crackly time delays I’ve told them I’ve arrived safely. I’ve pined for non-existent snow. Reverse culture shock hasn’t knocked me down – yet. But I guess I’m honeymooning on the reverse wave, so ask me how I’m doing in a few weeks.

In any case, I’ve uploaded a bunch of pictures to my photo album – check it out if you’re interested in seeing pictures from the homes where I was staying, from my work, village stay, vacation, the Governor General’s visit, and more.

Not so final farewells

2006-12-14T15:19:00.000-05:00

I’m pretty busy running around now – just over 24 hours until I fly out of the country. Tomorrow (Friday) will be spent with a 10-hour drive down from Tamale to Accra, immediately followed by 20 hours of air travel to Toronto, where I’ll have a two-day debrief with EWB’s returning volunteers.

So I find myself running from place to place – buying a few more cassettes, picking up a few more gifts for friends and family, dodging sheep, typing up final reports, laying the groundwork for my return to Ghana in February (I’ll be coming back for a 2nd placement), packing up my room, scaring Ghanaian babies, and most importantly in as social a culture as Ghana, doing my rounds of goodbyes.

I’ve been quite touched by the goodbyes I’ve received so far. In West Mamprusi, the District Chief Executive (the top dog) made me an honorary chief of West Mamprusi District Assembly, and gave me a traditional smock. So now when anyone greets me, I expect them to crouch down and clap their hands (the traditional greeting to a chief in the Mamprusi culture).

Last week, my friend Al Hassan proudly announced to me that his wife had given birth to their first son. He said the “naming ceremony” would be held soon to give the child his name. I jokingly suggested the baby should be named after me. Lo and behold, Al Hassan now has a son named Lukman (my Muslim name).

And the staff of NORWASP (the Canadian-funded water and sanitation project under the CWSA) held a farewell lunch for me yesterday. My good friend Mashood, the office manager for NORWASP, insisted that each person at the table say a few words about me. I wasn’t embarrassed when he ended up talking about the digestive problems (growing pains for any EWB volunteer) I went through when first arriving. Diarrhea is not a taboo topic here, even for the dinner table – I think that, given the lack of sanitation facilities, it’s not possible for bowel movements to be an issue of intense privacy, and thus they’re not off-limits for discussion. In any case, the lunch was excellent, and I truly appreciate everything that Nancy Cosway and her NORWASP staff have done to help me in my work here.

I don’t have time to get into anything more in depth here, but suffice it to say that my 10 months in Ghana has had a profound effect on me. It’s been quite the journey so far, and I want to thank everyone who has been reading my blog and posting comments. I hope that my writing has helped demystify Africa a little bit, and present a side to it not often seen in Western media. I’ll continue writing when I return to Ghana in February 2007, but perhaps throw in a few more entries between then and now.

In short, thank you for reading, and thanks to Ghana for having welcomed me with open arms to this country.

West Mamprusi District Chief Executive, me and Salifu (DWST Team Leader). Latifa, in the family compound where I stayed in Walewale

Wisdom, in my Walewale compound.

The family I stayed with in Walewale.

A Royal Visit

2006-12-03T15:40:00.000-05:00

The GG has come and gone in a blur of motorcades, dust, singing children, free lunch, important people, overprotective soldiers, dancing, kind words… At the end of it all, I was left impressed by the Governor General’s sincerity and passion, but still unsure of the value of such a large delegation to Africa. The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean’s visit to Tamale was an impressive whirlwind. She flew in to the Tamale airport from Accra in the late morning, stayed for about 6 hours, and then returned to Accra before nightfall. This was all part of a 5-day visit to Ghana, which in turn is part of a 5-country African tour she’s embarked upon.

Around 60 Canadians took part in the official luncheon at the Gariba Lodge, Tamale’s fanciest hotel. As I left work to bike to the Lodge, my shoes freshly shined and my shirt cleaned of the koko I’d spilled all over it that morning (maize/millet-based porridge wipes off surprisingly well), I could hear a siren sounding the passing of the GG’s parade of cars on the main road. By the time I got to the main road, I could only see the last of the 20-vehicle motorcade moving toward town: they were visiting a charity founded by a Canadian nun, which teaches skills like sewing and tie-dye to at-risk women.

As the sun beat down on me through a cloudless sky, I was thankful to have recovered my Bolga hat (bruised and battered but still fully functional). I met up with fellow EWBer Christian Beaudrie on the road, and we pushed our way through the radiant sun to the Gariba Lodge.

There, we stood around, making idle chit chat with each other and nervously wondering how to properly address the Governor General, as well as worrying that, conditioned by months in Ghana, I’d thrust my hand out in greeting to Her Excellency (she has to offer her hand first).

The air was also thick with the strangeness of it all – who would have thought that here, thousands of kilometres from Canada, volunteering to fight against global poverty, we’d be meeting Canada’s de facto head of state. I never thought that I’d be worrying about royal protocol on the streets of Tamale, but maybe I’m just not imaginative enough (reality once again proves stranger than fiction).

About an hour later, Mme Jean arrived to the sounds of a children’s choir and drums, surrounded by members of her Canadian entourage (mainly people involved in the development sector, including George Roter, our co-CEO for EWB).

The EWB delegation (made of Christian, Kristy Minor, George and me) got to speak with Mme Jean briefly before the lunch began and have our photo taken. She seemed genuinely interested in us, in what we’re doing here in Ghana.

According to Nancy Cosway (who heads the NORWASP project in the Northern Region), an aide approached the Governor General and told her they were running short of time, and that she needed to enter to begin lunch. She responded, “I’m here to learn from these people; that’s the reason I came here,” and continued to converse.

During the lunch, she spoke passionately about what she’d seen and experienced so far on her trip – focussing especially on inspirational women she’d met in Mali. Her sincerity was refreshing, and I was happy to see that, indeed, the GG has a heart, and it’s a big one. She asked further questions of the volunteers at the table, and a healthy discussion on the role of a Western volunteer overseas ensued.

The head of CIDA in Ghana was at our table. I was put on the spot when he said, “Luke, what do you think is the value of Western volunteers overseas is?” I won’t go into my response here, but I think it went over well enough. The lunch ended abruptly with the GG’s handlers whisking her off on a community visit before racing her to the airport to fly back to Accra.

The reaction among my Ghanaian co-workers to the GG’s visit was overwhelmingly positive. People were very happy to have seen Mme Jean on television as she got off the plane and started dancing to local drumming and dancing. They’re also very impressed that she’s black – a question I often get from people here is, “Are there black people in Canada?” It’s been a point of pride for me to be able to say that, yes, there are – indeed, our Governor General herself is black.

Mme Jean definitely projects a very humble, human face to people here – something that is rare in visiting officials, and something that I think is very important to reduce the paternalistic image of donor countries. As one of the secretaries in Walewale said to me, “The relations she had with the people were very good. She made a positive impact. Her human relation was very good.”

But that’s the big question I have – her degree of impact. At EWB we’re always encouraged to maximize the scope and quality of our impact, and I was left wondering if this trip was an effective use of resources. With all the money spent financing this trip, how many development projects could theoretically have been funded? Furthermore, does this trip encourage Canadians to simply pat ourselves on the pack and say “job well done?” with respect to our development projects (see this website for an example of such self-congratulatory feeling) when we should be saying “what MORE can we do?”

Of course, this trip can and will have benefits – bringing to light many of the problems facing the developing world so that we might be encouraged to act; humanizing and presenting a different, more positive side to these countries (by showing the Governor General celebrating many of the accomplishments in Africa); strengthening our official ties to the developing world. It’s just difficult to gauge the degree and effectiveness of this type of impact, and it’s difficult to weigh it against the potential problems.

In any case, the trip is underway. If it has to happen, I’m glad that it’s Michaëlle Jean leading the way.

Some more pictures

2006-11-26T16:36:00.000-05:00

Me riding a new ZoomLion garbage bike -- part of a new national strategy to clean up Ghana's streets (the bikes are part of the strategy, not me riding them).

Helen, Mary, Me, Asana, Rufai and Salifu -- the DWST team.

Louis and Jean-Luc showing off our new goat, purchased in Burkina Faso to celebrate the end of Ramadan during our EWB retreat.

Me dancing in the sand dunes in northern Burkina Faso. (Forgot I had my camera with me. It no longer works. Photo credit: Kristy Minor.)

Winding Up to Wind Down

2006-11-26T16:13:00.000-05:00

It occurred to me that I haven’t posted any pictures in a while, so here are a few (descriptions below).

Work is moving along quite well as of late. I’ve been working with the DWST for almost 4 months, delivering workshops on topics like team coordination and communication, proposal writing, and scheduling of monitoring visits. I’ve also been helping them with their database system, so that they can keep track of all the water and sanitation facilities in the district. They’re very keen, and have great ideas to improve their operations, so it’s been a pleasure helping them develop these ideas into an action plan. We also now have two National Service volunteers working in the office (Mary and Asana). These are recent graduates from a college and university in Ghana, who are placed with the DWST for 8 months in order to gain work experience. They’ve been a really great addition to the team, and will hopefully continue my work after I’m gone.

Speaking of leaving, my time is now running very short here. I have only a few more weeks in the district, and about a million things to wrap up. Furthermore, the Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, is coming to Tamale as part of her African tour, and I’ve been invited to a luncheon that she’ll be attending this Thursday. Apparently I’ll be sitting at her table -- stay tuned for pictures and updates from that.

Besides that, I’ll also be travelling all over the country in the next couple weeks for an EWB retreat down south, and then to fly out from Accra. So I suspect I’ll be pretty exhausted by the time I leave in mid-December.

Finally, people have occasionally posted questions for me on my blog. For my last few weeks here, I’d like to invite anyone with questions to email me directly, and I’ll then respond to them in a blog posting. If you’re curious about anything here (e.g. the food, the animals, my host families, my work, the weather, the environment, the music, the transportation, the festivals, the artwork, the water situation, etc.) then please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Mary, Asana and Helen during refresher training for Water and Sanitation Committees.

A child at the refresher training.

Mary at the refresher training.

Obligatory cute kids shot.

Dusty cassettes and inspired music

2006-11-19T15:30:00.000-05:00

“I’m looking for a cassette by Alhaji K. Frimpong” I say to the shop-keeper. I’ve been biking throughout the city, trying to track down music by an elusive Ghanaian recording artist.

I don’t know much about Frimpong: only that I heard one of his songs on the radio in a taxi cab, and I liked it. It was a strange mix of jazz, Caribbean and Afro-beats, no vocals, and made me feel like I was sitting in the room with the artists as they laid down the track. I find out later that he was one of the leaders in development of Ghanaian highlife music.

The shop-keeper nods. The store is a small and cluttered – three walls of shelving crammed top to bottom with cassettes, and the fourth wall a plate-glass window, before which sits an elaborate sound system. The power is off in town, the system silent.

“He’s old, right? Just died.” the shop-keeper says. This man looks like an archetypal used record store owner. He has a razor thin beard running below his lower lip, and the wizened look that only dozens of years of careful musical fanaticism can bring.

Crouching down, he begins scouring the lower shelves of tapes, fingers moving quickly from label to label. He moves through Ghanaian gospel, Jamaican reggae, American country, Cote d’Ivoirian hip-hip, Céline Dion (so popular in Ghana she deserves a category to herself). Pulling cassettes from the shelves in stacks, he shuffles and shifts, moving top to bottom, side to side. The place is a maze of music, a heap of tapes so convoluted it’s nearly overwhelming.

After ten minutes of intense searching, he pauses. “I’m going to get my spectacles,” he says to me. As he walks away, I read his t-shirt: “Ask about laser eye surgery!”

Finally, many minutes more, and another cloud of dust detonated from shelves long untouched, he triumphantly hands me a cassette. It’s labelled “Alhaji K. Frimpong: Kyenkyen Bi Adi Mawu.”

After parting with 12,000 cedis (approximately $1.50) I’m on my way, wondering where I’ll find a tape deck.

Having regular access to new music is definitely something I miss from back home. No longer can I head into CHRW and start pulling CDs at random off the library shelves.

However, here in Ghana I’ve been exposed to a whole other world of music, one that I’d never known before.

While you may not be able to easily track down any Frimpong, you can almost certainly find some excellent West African music in Canadian stores. Keep an eye peeled for the blind Malian recording duo Amadou and Mariam. Their album “Dimanche à Bamako” is a very accessible – and lovely – mix of traditional Malian instruments and styles with Western-style guitar.

Also out of Mali is Ali Farka Touré, who is rumoured to have developed his own style of blues guitar playing independently of any American influences. The album “Talking Timbuktu” is a fantastic collaboration with Ry Cooder. Touré apparently became the mayor of his hometown in 2004. He died earlier this year at the age of 67.

When I get back to Canada, I’ll try to upload a few songs by local reggae star Sheriff Ghale. Based out of Tamale, he sings in the local language, Dagbani, about topical issues like political corruption and the Chieftaincy Crisis (a problem stemming from a debate over the rightful leader of the Dagomba people). He’s also a local school teacher (who taught my Ghanaian sister, Fadilla).

Some other artists worth searching for, both out of Mali, are Afel Bocoum and Toumani Diabaté.

Let me know if anyone can track down any of the music I’ve listed. It’s certainly worth a little searching. A cool blog to check out is here, listing many great African acts.

Mangan Diversity

2006-11-05T12:46:00.000-05:00

Another interesting experience I had during my village stay in Manga was getting to meet Dicko Issa. Dicko is a Fulani man, one of only four Fulani families staying in Manga. The Fulani are a distinct ethnic group in West Africa – they’re pretty easily identifiable by their colourful robes, ornate jewellery and unique hairstyles. To most volunteers, the Fulani are a somewhat mysterious people – they’re one of the few “different” groups of people in Northern Ghana (the majority being indigenous Ghanaians), speaking their own language, with their own customs and culture. We don’t get to interact with them very much, as they don’t spend much time in the city, preferring to live and move through the countryside.

Traditionally the Fulani were a nomadic people, moving cattle and other animals across their territory. Today, they’ve mostly settled in communities but still seem to maintain their pastoral practices. For instance, the Fulani in Manga are responsible for caring for the community’s cattle.

Dicko is from Burkina Faso, near the Niger border. He worked in Burkina Faso for the government, helping calculate and collect taxes – he’s pretty skilled at long multiplication, as he demonstrated to me on a scrap of paper. He settled in Manga with his family roughly two years ago.

It was interesting for me to note was that the four Fulani households in Manga were the only ones without latrines – latrines have to be partially paid for, and are often a status symbol. This lack of latrines could have been a sign that the Fulani houses were less prestigious than the Mamprusi houses (the Mamprusis are the predominant tribe in this area). Dicko’s home was certainly the poorest one I saw, with a few crumbling huts containing corn, not wall around his compound, and all-thatch roofs (the wealthier households had tin roofs).

Nicholas, the farmer who I was staying with, told me that the Fulani families were accepted as part of the Manga community. However, they all lived on the outskirts of the town. Furthermore, one day there was an altercation between a Fulani woman and two Mamprusi youths – apparently the woman refused to stop her cattle from cross a footpath so that the boys could continue along the path. The conflict ended in a physical altercation, although I’m unsure how serious it was. This case was brought before the village chief, who ordered the boys to pay a small amount of money to the woman.

But this indicated to me that relations may not be completely problem-
free between these two groups. Indeed, tensions between different ethnic groups can be a major barrier to development. Traditional enemies and allies and alliances have to be carefully analysed – the issues can be incredibly subtle, almost invisible to an outsider. Just one more complication in the field of development.

I appreciated getting to talk with Dicko. We had a long conversation in French – his English wasn’t strong, and French is the official language of Burkina Faso – and he taught me a few sentences in Fula. Definitely an interesting window into a world I hadn’t had much contact with before.

(Pictures -- Above: Dicko Issa's daughter and grandson. Below: Dicko and his family)

STANDing in Tamale

2006-10-19T13:00:00.000-04:00

Engineers Without Borders had our STAND UP Against Poverty event this past Sunday in Tamale. It was a success, with over 300 people coming out as part of a global effort to set a Guinness Record for the most people standing in support of one cause on the same day. But it didn’t go off without a hitch.

The event was coordinated by EWBers Christian, Kristy, Gwen and me, in conjunction with Christian’s Ghanaian brother, Rafik, and some other local cultural informants.

What we’d planned out was basically a cultural show at a local outdoor dance bar, made up of two different dance/drumming troupes. We also invited the Regional Gender Desk Officer (a government officer in charge of gender affairs at the regional level) to deliver a speech.

The show was scheduled to begin at 10:00am. By 11:00am, we could still count on our fingers and toes the number of people (mainly children) in attendance. However, our Ghanaian friends tried to reassure us by reminding us that time moves at a different pace here than in the Western world. Indeed, by around 11:30am the crowd had thickened significantly, although our keynote speaker was still nowhere to be seen.

But we declared that the show must go on.

So as the sun beat down (and I cursed having lost my dear Bolga hat – although I suspect it will yet come back to me. It always does) the performers took the stage.

The dance troupes were a huge success with the crowd, performing traditional Dagomba dances (the Dagombas are the principal ethnic tribe here in Tamale). This included five drummers sporting drums slung from shoulder straps, and about 10 smock-wearing dancers who moved in a circle around the drummers (the smocks are elaborate poncho-style garments used in traditional ceremonies and dances). The dancers also held metal rods, which they could clash to add to the thumping of the drums. I’ll post pictures of this soon.

And finally, as it began to look more and more like us EWB volunteers might have to provide an impromptu speech on the state of poverty in Ghana and the world (not something that I, as an outsider, wanted to attempt), our keynote speaker arrived.

She delivered a thoughtful and moving speech, captivating the crowd with a 15-minute oration that incorporated the theme of gender equality in poverty reduction.

At least, I assume that this was the case. The whole speech was in Dagbani (the local language). But from the expressions on the faces of the crowd, I’m pretty sure she did a bang-up job.

After that was the most important moment of the event: the time for the whole crowd to stand up while a pledge was read out over the sound system. This pledge was designed to send a clear message to the leaders of both the developed and developing worlds that we won’t stand for global poverty. The crowd was primed, ready for the climax of the show.
Then the power went off.

After a brief argument with the manager of the dance bar (complications arose over the use of their generator), she recommended I make a mad dash to the customer complaints office for the electricity company. We had nothing to lose, so I went to the office, just down the street from the venue. Almost immediately after entering the complaints office, the power came back on. I had no idea it was that easy.

So the pledge happened, more dancing ensued, and the event ended around 1:30pm. The organizing committee was exhausted and sunburnt but satisfied. And hopefully the world is one more small step towards the end of poverty.

Learn to love the local food -- then stop eating

2006-10-14T13:55:00.000-04:00

A brief aside from the village stories.

It’s currently Ramadan across the world, and this is pretty strongly felt in the Northern Region of Ghana (where approximately 60% of the population is Muslim). Ramadan is the holiest month in Islam, and it’s considered the religious duty of all adult Muslims to fast during this month, from sunrise till sundown.

While I had many Muslim friends back home in Canada, it had never occurred to me to give fasting a try during Ramadan. But here in Tamale, I’ve been given the perfect opportunity for a completely different cultural experience. Since I live with a Ghanaian Muslim family, it’s almost expected that I try to fast along with them.

People at work are also pretty adamant that I join in and avoid food or drink during the day. “How’s the fasting?” is a common greeting this month. Or, “Are you fasting?” (asked in a semi-accusatory tone of voice) is also heard.

So while I haven’t maintained a stringent schedule of fasting, I have managed to do 9 days’ worth.

The day usually starts around 3:30am, when a man patrols the neighbourhood with a drum, playing loudly to wake up households to prepare food to be taken before sunrise. It’s not unusual to hear the pounding of fufu shortly thereafter.

I’ll get up at 4am, and bike out with my Ghanaian brother Samed to a food stand that has opened at this (un?)Godly hour to provide sustenance to observant Muslims. There, I have a three-fried-egg sandwich, and drink at least a litre of water. After that, I usually head back to bed, while Samed heads to the mosque for the first round of the days’ prayers.

The next phase of my Ghanaian family’s plan for me is to get me into the mosque. “It’s good that you fast,” my house-father said to me, “but your head also has to touch the ground!” So far I’ve tactfully dodged conversion.

It’s surreal to be awake at 4am and see the city coming to life: people on bicycles or on foot on the streets, lights coming on in houses and the sounds of food preparation drifting across the town. The other day, I was looking at the night’s (early morning’s?) sky and saw the most brilliant shooting star I’ve ever witnessed, burning up in the atmosphere.

Hunger and thirst usually aren’t too bad throughout the day, so long as I’m not sweating excessively. There have been a few days where I’ve had to bike across the city in preparation for our STAND UP! event (see below), which left me pretty thirsty by the end of the day. But I have it really easy compared to people who work outdoors in the sun all day, performing manual labour – I can’t imagine being a Muslim farmer for this month.

At 6:10pm my Ghanaian family breaks their fast, usually with oranges (which are generally not eaten completely here – the flesh is too tough –, but rather sucked through a hole in the rind). Dinner then comes later on, once the stomach has expanded enough to allow for solid food.

On another note, fellow long-term EWBers Christian, Kristy, Gwen and myself are preparing for tomorrow’s STAND UP In Support of the Millennium Development Goals event. This is a global advocacy effort, in an attempt to set a Guiness World Record for the most people across the globe standing in support of a cause. In this case, the cause is the eradication of global poverty.

We’ve lined up traditional dancers and drummers for our event, as well as a few guest speakers and a DJ. We’re hoping to have several hundred people come out in support – stay tuned for pictures and an update.
STAND UP events in your own area can be found by visiting www.standagainstpoverty.org.

Pulling my weight (in weeds)

2006-10-08T17:01:00.000-04:00

“Yes, tomorrow we’ll farm,” Nicholas says to me. He’s the farmer with whom I’m staying in the village of Manga, about two hours away from Tamale. I’ve been badgering Nicholas for two days now, trying to get him to let me lend a hand on his farm.

Nicholas is roughly 60 years old, a short man with a gap-toothed grin that reveals his sly intellect. As his guest, he doesn’t want to encourage me to work. Furthermore, I’m white – I’ve clearly come from a different land, a land where its inhabitants don’t know how to manually wield a small hoe to do hours of labour. He’s right, of course, but I still want to try.

Nicholas announces that he has to leave the house with his wife, but will be back shortly. Suspicious, I ask him where he’s going. He hesitates before answering.

“We’re going to the pepper farm. I’m going to weed and my wife is going to harvest them.”

I ask again to come along, and finally my persistence pays off. Nicholas laughs and agrees to let me tag along.

We walk to his pepper farm, roughly 15 minutes from his house. People stare unabashedly and without pause at the outsider who’s carrying a hoe on his shoulder – not a regular occurrence here.

This chilli pepper plot is small – perhaps a tenth of a hectare – and the peppers are starting to turn red on the vine. It’s our job today to weed in between the rows of plants, clearly away shrubbery and other plants that are growing.

Nicholas explains that this is important to allow airflow through the rows of pepper plants, as well as to expose them to sunshine. The other plants could also sap the soil’s nutrients, reducing the chilli pepper plants’ yields.

We get to work, hoes in hand.

The bulk of a farmer’s work in the field is done bent over at a ninety degree angle, slashing away at weeds, sowing seeds, or harvesting. It’s a difficult and tiring position to stand in, as I discover after about ten minutes of scraping across the soil with the hoe, pulling away any non-pepper greenery.

“You should take a rest,” Nicholas says to me. But, perhaps inflamed by the chilli pepper-infused air, my pride rockets and I stubbornly shake my head. Nicholas shrugs, and continues on with his work.

My hands begin to ache as the sun, periodically bursting forth from behind cloud cover, pelts me with its radiation from above.

An hour passes, and Nicholas again suggests I take a break. My face set in grim determination, I force a polite but firm “no thank you” from my parched throat.

Another hour later and I’m exhausted. I worry that my body will forever be locked into this right-angle position, my hands cemented into a mould of the hoe handle and my liquids depleted from the sweat that’s drenched my t-shirt.

I decide to take a break.

Nicholas carries on, and I feel shame. As I walk toward the shade of a nearby mango tree, Nicholas looks up at me.

“Luke!” he says, “I didn’t know you could farm!”

I’m redeemed. A man who’s spent his life at this labour, who at the age of 60 is clearly stronger, more agile and has greater stamina than I do, has acknowledged my effort. I feel like the student who’s been given a nod of approval from the master teacher.

Nicholas continues his weeding, and I look on, admiring a man whose strength and determination have helped him carve out a life here in this remote community in northern Ghana.

Pictures: 1) blistered hands; 2) an old man in Manga; 3) Nicholas and me.

To Manga and Back

2006-09-26T14:28:00.000-04:00

I’ve just returned from 6 days in the village of Manga. I’ll give a bit of background on the community in this post, and some pictures. Then in a future posts I’ll describe some of my specific experiences.

Manga is a small community of around 450 people, located about a 40-minute motorcycle ride away from Walewale down barely passable dirt roads. Isolation is one major cause of rural deprivation – it makes it a lot harder to get produce to and from the community, it’s tougher to contact the outside world, harder to get electricity in, harder to access health services, schooling, etc.

However, Manga is situated in an area of fertile soil. So long as the rains cooperate, they should be able to produce quite a lot of the local crops: groundnuts, pepper, cotton, yams, millet, shea nuts, cowpeas, soy beans tomatoes, green pepper. If the rains fail, though, the crops won’t grow, and people will be left to scrape by on meagre savings from the past year, and whatever they can coax from the parched ground.

Thankfully, Manga had clean water: two boreholes provide enough potable water for the entire community. They also had latrines, which can have an incredible impact on the health of a village (the number one health enemy to a village is disease passed through fecal matter, so controlling this is pivotal).

I stayed with a farmer named Seini Nicholas. He is respected in the community – he’s literate and has completed secondary school. He’s also travelled outside the community to Kumasi, among other places, and he’s the head of the water and sanitation committee in Manga. He’s also the grandson of Manga’s former chief.

So for 6 days I slept on the floor in Nicholas’ room in his family compound, headed out to the farm to help him weed and collect peppers, carried water on my head, and played barefoot soccer with the local kids.

I was an enriching experience, to say the least. Stay tuned for the details.

New article in Free Press

2006-09-16T11:25:00.000-04:00

I’ll be going to stay in a small community for about a week, so I won’t be able to update my blog for the next two weeks (when I get back to Tamale). Until then, here’s an article that I co-wrote with fellow EWBer Jason Teixeira on Bill C-293, published in today’s London Free Press. This bill is going for its second reading in parliament at the beginning of this week. I’ve got my fingers crossed that it makes its way through -- Make sure to visit www.playyourpart.ca to help it along.

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The promise-keepers: Making Canada accountable to the world’s poor
By: Luke Brown and Jason Teixeira

There’s a local bar in the city of Tamale, Ghana, West Africa. Its name is Point 7. To many people here, it’s a place to relax with friends over a local Ghanaian brew. To Canadians in Tamale, it’s a stark reminder of one of our major failures on the international stage.

In 1969, a commission led by Lester B. Pearson recommended a target for international aid: 0.7% of a country’s Gross National Income should go towards development aid. This standard was agreed upon by the United Nations’ General Assembly member countries: including Canada.

Yet Canada never met this obligation. Despite being the nation from which the goal was born--a country (ostensibly) passionately dedicated to the global good--we currently contribute a mediocre 0.34% of our GNI to the world’s poor.

However, it’s not too late for us to partially redeem ourselves by demonstrating a commitment to the world’s developing nations. This can be done through new legislation that is making its way through parliament: legislation that, while not boosting our aid, would at least make it more effective.

Bill C-293 (the Development Assistance Accountability Act) is a private member’s bill put forth by Liberal Member of Parliament John McKay, and will go to its second reading in parliament early this fall. This would mean making a few key changes to the way Canada helps other countries on their path to development.

First of all, the bill would enshrine in law that the raison d’être of our development aid is to help the world’s poor get a leg up on the development ladder.

Second, a petition system would let citizens of beneficiary communities comment on the effectiveness of the money we’re sending overseas. This means that if the aid is not truly geared towards poverty reduction, or if it’s not taking into account the perspectives of the poor, or if it’s not in line with Canada’s human rights obligations, then we’ll be sure to hear about it.

And who better to help keep our government accountable in aid spending than the people who are receiving the aid itself? Who better to let us know whether or not our dollars are actually having an impact?

Development efforts don’t always benefit everyone. As volunteers on the ground in Africa, we’ve seen first-hand the frustrations that people here can have with these projects. For instance, Helen Ayaro, a water and sanitation officer in northern Ghana, describes the effects of a dam project in neighbouring Burkina Faso. The Bagre Dam was constructed to allow farmers in Burkina Faso to irrigate their land when the rains are sparse.

“Authorities (in Burkina Faso) are in charge of opening and closing the dam. When they open the dam it can cause flooding along the White Volta River, which destroys crops and damages communities in northern Ghana.” This dam, designed to help some people work their way out of poverty in Burkina Faso, has had the opposite effect on other people in Ghana.

She laments that Ghanaians have little voice in preventing such problems from happening, whether the problem originates in another country, or in their own backyard. While the Bagre Dam wasn’t funded by Canadian money, we can still take a valuable lesson away from it to apply to the projects that we do fund. As Helen says: “We need to know, was what they brought to your community actually what you needed, or was it against your will? Is it making an impact, or is it violating your rights?”

Bill C-293 is in the spirit of empowerment: it gives a voice to, and ensures opportunity for those who need it, helping to pave the road towards independence.

"We may need some help and inputs to get started but we are doing it for ourselves now,” says Dorothy Kendulo, as she prepares her fields to grow mustard in rural Malawi, in southern Africa. “We can use technical advice and working together we can do things for ourselves - we are working."

We believe Canadians are a benevolent people. Ask your government to represent this on the global stage. Rather than making empty promises and half-hearted commitments, let’s prove to the world that we truly do care.

We may be far from reaching the 0.7% pledge, but we can still demonstrate that our moral duty to the world’s poor isn’t just an empty promise. Let’s make sure that Bill C-293 is passed. For more information, and to encourage your local Member of Parliament to vote for positive change in Canada’s role on the global playing field, visit www.playyourpart.ca.

Luke Brown and Jason Teixeira are both Londoners and graduates from UWO’s Engineering program, and are now volunteering through Engineers Without Borders in Ghana and Malawi, respectively.

Helen Ayaro, water and sanitation officer

The Lake Volta Lights Out

2006-09-09T11:40:00.000-04:00

Ghana is experiencing an energy crunch right now. Akosombo Dam, located in Lake Volta (one of the world’s largest artificial dams) isn’t producing enough energy to meet the country’s needs. Lake levels are just too low this year to generate enough power for Ghana, in addition to its export requirements (some say that contracts with Ghana’s neighbours, like Togo to the east, are given higher priority than supplying its own citizens with electricity).

So as a result we’re in a state of power rationing. That means that every forth night in my neighbourhood in Tamale, the power will be out from 6pm-12midnight. Some days, the power will be cut from 6am-6pm.

Last Saturday night, during the “lights off,” I sat outside with my Ghanaian brother, Samed, and his cousin, Faisal. We made green tea using the method popular in much of French West Africa, and which I learned in Mali. This involves making three separate pots of tea by steeping the tea leaves three times. The first pot, with the strongest flavour, is called “bitter like death.” The second pot is “soft as life”, and the third pot – the weakest – is “sweet as love.”

It was certainly relaxing to sit in the near darkness, with the weather quite cool in the evenings, making tea. Samed’s favourite was the third pot, the sweet one. In fact, he insisted we brew a forth post, christening it “sugary as lust.” At the risk of making a sweeping generalization, I’ll go ahead and make a sweeping generalization. Relative to Canada, Ghana is not a land of moderation. This can be seen in the coffee here (four heaping spoonfuls of sugar, followed by four spoonfuls of condensed milk is the norm). Oil, when used in cooking, is added by the cup-full: my egg sandwiches in the morning are usually 30% oil by mass. Music is played at full volume, even if it means that speakers are vibrating in protest (visitors might be forgiven for thinking that all Ghanaian music contains a level of distortion – this is actually the result of having the volume knob cranked almost to the point of falling off). Friends are visited frequently and with great energy. Criticisms are delivered without hesitancy (I’ve been told that I’m getting fat too many times to count). The maximal number of people will be crammed into any public vehicle, and then three more will be added for good measure. The weather is incredibly hot in the summer time, and cold and incredibly wet in the rainy season.

And it’s all quite refreshing, really. I like being in a country where people are willing to go all out. Where people don’t allow Western-style social norms to prevent them from discussing bodily functions. Where, if you care about someone, you express it unequivocally (“Luke, I’ve missed you so much!” is a common sentence to me). Where you don’t allow such apparent roadblocks as lack of space to prevent an additional bag of yams to be passed deep into the recesses of a public tro-tro – indeed, lack of space isn’t a roadblock: what would cause most Westerners to give up, is merely a minor setback here. And where “lights off” is taken in extreme stride: a fact of life here in a developing nation.

It’s certainly different. And I’m sometimes shocked by the differences (see my last blog entry), but I’m more frequently pleased and impressed, delighted to see a slightly different way of life. These differences aren’t fundamental, to be sure – but they make life interesting.

I’d better go now. It’ll soon be lights off, and I’ve learned not to be terribly bothered.

The Complexity of an Accident

2006-08-20T16:12:00.000-04:00

Ghana has quieted down significantly with the departure of our 23 short-term volunteers. They’re flying out of Accra on Tuesday, back to Canada to continue working on global poverty alleviation from home, through their chapters. I’m sad to see them go, but such is the transient nature of friendships over here – Western volunteers frequently come and go. It’s similar to backpacking, where you meet new friends and lose old ones in every city you visit and depart. The problem over here is that the friends generally stay long enough (several months) to form a close relationship with you, which makes their departure sting a bit more. But there are still lots of great people here – Ghanaians and Westerners alike, so I’m not too worried about loneliness.

Last night I witnessed something that bothered me. I’d just arrived at a bar near my house to meet some friends for a beer, around 9pm. As I was entering the bar, I heard the sound of metal grating against concrete, and turned to see a motorbike lying on the ground roughly 20 metres away from me. I rushed to it to see the rider lying unconscious on the ground, his right arm and leg straddling the concrete divider that separates the road from the bike path. A dark liquid was pooling near him – thankfully just motor oil, I realized.

A crowd of people quickly gathered, and I felt powerless to help. I took a first aid course before coming to Ghana, but in that moment the rules seemed completely different – how do you call an ambulance when there is no ambulance system to be called? How effective are instructions given in English in a high-stress environment when English isn’t the native language?

Several people in the crowd tried waving down one of the many taxis that were passing by. We were on Tamale’s main road, and Tamale has plenty of taxis, so it wasn’t tough to spot one. What was tough, it turned out, was getting one to stop.

At least five taxis went by, some slowing briefly so the driver could survey they scene, some whipping right by.

Finally a tiny taxi pulled up behind the unconscious man. After several frantic hand gestures from the crowd, the taxi hesitantly pulled up closer to the man, and he was loaded into the backseat. I didn’t see any signs of serious cuts on him, but I was pretty worried about head trauma -- he wasn’t wearing a helmet. He regained consciousness in the cab, and ended up sitting upright in the backseat.

However, the taxi didn’t move. The driver refused to leave until someone from the crowd agreed to come with him. Finally, someone climbed into the front seat, and the car left for the hospital.

I asked one of the people in the crowd why it had taken so long for a taxi to stop, and then why it had taken so long for the taxi to leave.

“The drivers don’t want to stop for casualties,” he said. “Too often they drive to the hospital and then don’t get paid. So they won’t stop to help, forgetting that they could be saving a life. That’s why he wouldn’t leave until someone got in to the car. This man guaranteed he would pay for the ride.”

This shocked me. I know I’m using simple stereotypes here, but Ghanaian culture generally puts a huge emphasis on the importance of family and community, and downplays individuality (more so than North America, at least). It can be as simple as the social norm that you must offer to share your dinner with anyone who happens by as you eat it (possessions are to be shared). It can be more complex, like when a well-to-do Ghanaian must support his immediate family, as well as many members of his extended family who need it.

So to see taxi drivers pass by a seriously wounded man -- a shockingly selfish move – was almost incomprehensible to me, not to mention terribly frustrating. I had to stand there as people who could help get the man to the hospital simply moved on.

I’m sure that this kind of callous disregard happens across the world. This was just my first real taste of it in a country that I had, until now, seen as always valuing a sense of community above a sense of individuality.

I know this is a theme that keeps popping up in my blog, but it’s worth noting that I’m still developing an understanding and appreciation for a place that is obviously complex, obviously multi-dimensional. It was a wake-up call to keep me thinking critically, to appreciate the good, but not be afraid to confront the bad. Unfortunately, it’s easy for an optimist like me to focus only on the good.

No place is uniform, homogenous. Such oversimplification can lead to misleading conclusions and conflict. For example, big problems don’t have single root causes (African poverty isn’t simply the result of corrupt politicians – it’s the result of a myriad of interlocking and separate factors, not all of which are understood). Furthermore, Africa isn’t a uniform continent, and its countries are by no means uniform (the cultural and economic differences between northern Ghana and southern Ghana, for instance, are glaring).

I suppose we’re used to polarization, to simplification in the media (“you’re either with us or against us”). It allows us to digest complex issues, to feel some measure of control over them – and it’s easier to report the news this way. But this can be a dangerous tack to take, and it’s certainly not a frame of mind that should be adopted when doing development work.

I needed a wake-up call to remind me – I’m just sorry that it took a man’s injury to accomplish this.

Project Progress (and some elephants)

2006-08-11T14:45:00.000-04:00

Things have calmed down significantly here. Two weeks ago we had a visit from Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, the high-level academic and former UN Human Development Report director and co-editor. It was a bit of a hectic time preparing a presentation and handout for her, and scheduling a day’s worth of events, but it went off really well. After her visit, Sakiko said she was impressed by the effort we’d put into our project, and thought we were on the right track. This was validating – nice to hear that a person with over 30 years of experience thinks you’re doing something right.

We also had Sara Erhardt come visit us for over one week. She’s a master’s student at Harvard, and as part of her programme she’s chosen to evaluate Engineers Without Borders: specifically our impact model (how are we making a difference in the world?) and the gender component to our programming. Sara was a big help in going over the structure of our project, and helped us lay out the next few months (essentially until I fly home in December!).

So in project-specific news, Sarah Takaki and I are pretty excited. We just presented our project proposal to the director at the Community Water and Sanitation Agency, and he’s agreed to give the CWSA’s backing to it. This means that next week I’ll be heading out into one specific district (West Mamprusi) to work closely with their District Water and Sanitation Team (DWST) for a period of almost four months. Unfortunately Sarah will be leaving Tamale next week, heading back to Canada. She’s been a huge help in this project, and I’ll miss having her here.

The specific areas we’ve identified as needing strengthening with the DWST are:
1) Data management: this primarily means computer training so that the DWSTs can keep better track of all the information they collect from the field. They collect quite a bit of it (for example, the number of water sources in each community in their district) and this information is important in district planning – they need to know how many people have water, who still needs it, and who needs it most.

2) Monitoring: helping the DWSTs develop effective techniques for monitoring the communities in their districts.

3) Stakeholder coordination: There are a lot of NGOs digging boreholes, and they don’t always communicate all that effectively. As a result, certain areas may get a lot of water, while others are left out in the cold. Helping to develop the channels of communication between NGOs and local government can help make sure that the people who need water and sanitation facilities actually get it.

So these are the potential areas – however, this could all change when we get out to the district. In the interest of sustainability, we’re going to work on the areas that the DWST decides are most pressing.

In non-work related news, last weekend I went to Mole Game Park to check out some elephants. See a few photos below, and click here to see some more.

Podcast!

2006-07-31T14:07:00.000-04:00

If anyone is interested in listening to a podcast that I made for Engineers Without Borders, you can listen to it here.

For those of you unfamiliar with podcasts, it's basically an internet-based radio show. It comes as an mp3 file that you download to your computer -- pretty simple, just download the file and then open it.

The show is called Audio Fields, and the first episode features village songs about soya, tips for a village stay, and running into cows while jogging in Mali. It also has a contest featuring my most despised animal, the sheep.

Here are a few more pictures from my vacation.

Back

2006-07-26T04:30:00.000-04:00

Just a quick update to let everyone know that I made it back from vacation. And yes, I got to Mali, although not far enough north to see the beginnings of the Sahara desert. But I did witness the most spectacular natural scenery of my life in Dogon Country, in southern Mali. See below for a few teaser pics; a more detailed account of my trip should come soon.

Right now work is a little bit hectic. We currently have one guest visiting Sarah Takaki and me at the CWSA, and we’re expecting another guest at the end of this week. The first guest is Sara Ehrhardt, who was integral in the formation of EWB way back in 2000 and is now doing a master’s degree at Harvard University. She’s come to Ghana to visit EWB volunteers and evaluate our impact strategy (how are we helping to effect change for the better in the lives of the poor here?) and help determine how to better incorporate gender issues into our work.

The second guest is Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, who’s on EWB’s Advisory Board. She’s a prominent academic in the development world, and is the former director of the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Reports. She’s currently doing a fellowship at Harvard University and is interested in learning more about EWB’s impact model, so she’s also coming to Ghana to meet with some EWB volunteers (including Sarah and me). So I’m a little freaked out about this, but at the very least we should get some excellent feedback on the project that we’re developing.

More updates to come soon.

The Road to Damongo…

2006-07-13T18:25:00.000-04:00

…is heavily striated.

I’m in Damongo, the capital of the district known as West Gonja, where I’ve travelled to analyse the District Water and Sanitation Team (see description in last blog entry). This analysis involves meeting with many people, including the DWST, the District Chief Executive (the top dog at the district – kind of like the mayor), the Planning Officer, and visiting a community with the DWST to see how they’re engaging in monitoring – basically how they’re making sure that the communities’ water and sanitation needs are being met.

A big problem here is that the DWST doesn’t engage in monitoring of small communities very often. “We don’t have fuel,” Issahaku, the team DWST team leader tells me. “There’s no money.” Issahaku, a short plump man with over 10 years’ experience at this job, is clearly frustrated. With no fuel for their motorcycles, they’re basically stranded in Damongo, the district capital. “And the district is too large. This means that when we do have fuel, we have to travel very far, on bad roads. Our motorbikes wear out too quickly.”

The roads are certainly rough, even though Damongo is a frequent stop-over for tourists on their way to Ghana’s largest game reserve, Mole National Park. After an afternoon on the back of Issahaku’s motorcycle, my legs are aching from trying to keep my feet on the footrests as we crawled along over the hundreds of bumps in the road.

So why doesn’t they have money for fuel? There’s a host of reasons for this, but a big one is a lack of funding at the district level. West Gonja receives some money from the central government (called the Common Fund) and some money from taxation (called Internally Generated Revenue [IGR]). The problem is that the amount of Common Fund money they get is directly proportional to their IGR.

“The more money we generate through taxation, the more money the central government will give us” explains Janet Al Hassan, West Gonja’s District Chief Executive.

So they just need to get more taxes, right? Unfortunately, large chunks of the West Gonjan population are “overseas”. This means that during the rainy season, rivers and flooded areas cut large swaths of the district off from the rest of West Gonja – they become completely inaccessible.

The farmers in these overseas areas can’t get their produce to market, so their produce can’t be taxed, so the District can’t increase their IGR, so their Common Fund won’t be increased by the central government.

This is a catch-22: the district doesn’t have enough money to build good roads and bridges to the overseas area, and their revenue won’t increase until the overseas areas are linked by good roads and bridges.

“The rich get richer while the poor get poorer,” says Janet Al Hassan. She, too, is clearly frustrated.

This example is to illustrate how some problems here are institutional, things that I’ll never be able to help with. It’s also to illustrate the complexity of many of the problems that are facing Ghanaians – the problems are almost never a simple matter of “rains fail: people go hungry.” Development, as any EWBer will tell you, is complex and frustrating.

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Sidenote: I won’t be updating my blog next week – I’m heading up to Mali for a vacation. At least, I think that’s where I’m going. Given my sense of direction I’ll probably end up in the Atlantic Ocean. Maybe even the Pacific. But I’ll take pictures no matter where I end up

Pictures for this week:
1) My first wild scorpion sighting.
2) Obligatory cute kids shot.
3) Confusing painting on wall at guest house where I’m currently staying.

Ghanaian Soccer and Canadian Celebrations

2006-07-04T16:42:00.000-04:00

World Cup fever has definitely died down since Ghana was unceremoniously dumped in the 1/8th finals in a match against Brazil that was decidedly poorly refereed, with a Ghanaian offence that decidedly lacked the ability to score. However, although it’s reduced, the fever is still here – take the wild jubilating that apparently broke out across the country on Saturday after Brazil’s exit at the hands of the French. And today’s Daily Graphic has front page photos of Ghana’s president John Kufuor bestowing the Order of the Volta upon the Black Stars.

The whole experience has certainly left its mark on Ghana. While I was biking home after Ghana’s defeat nearly two weeks ago, I was angry and saddened that my favourite team’s chances had been cut short in such a frustrating match. However, it was Ghanaians who ended up consoling me. “It’s okay!” more than one person yelled to me, “2010!!” they said, an allusion to the next World Cup to be held in South Africa.

People here are incredibly proud of their team’s performance, which, on the whole, was definitely impressive. President Kufuor is quoted in today’s Graphic saying: “Over the past few weeks Ghana has been experiencing a new wave of confidence, patriotism and goodwill which we have never experienced in this country before.” Adjusting for the healthy dose of hyperbole in that statement (I wasn’t around in 1957 when Ghana gained its independence, but I imagine that similar words were spoken then), there’s certainly still much truth to it. Ghanaian flags can still be found hanging throughout Tamale – flags that weren’t there just one month ago. People are talking excitedly about the 2008 African Cup, to be held in Ghana. The Black Stars have given Ghana something big to look forward to in the future.

In other news, this past weekend some of us EWBers celebrated Canada Day by setting up camp in a small community outside of Tamale. We invited along our Ghanaian friends to partake in a campfire, guitar playing and hotdogs roasted on sticks. It was just like back home, except for the 30 or so children who gathered around our campsite and silently stared at us for hours on end. It was kind of like a seen out of an African version of Children of the Corn.

In work news, Sarah and I are currently in full diagnostic swing. We’re not doing any kind of exciting tangible activity like measuring well depths or taking GPS coordinates, but I have high hopes that the work we’re doing will yield some very positive impact.

As a bit of political structure background: Ghanaian regions (like the Northern Region, where I live) are subdivided into Districts, with their own administrative governments. Ghana is undergoing a process of decentralization, meaning that much power is being downloaded from the national and regional levels to the district level. In theory, this means that the district level should be assuming quite a bit of responsibility for its water and sanitation facilities. (See the picture below for a basic outline of the government structure in Ghana.)

Sarah and I are working out of the regional level CWSA office, but we’re currently performing a diagnostic at the district level. We’re travelling to six different districts in the Northern Region in order to analyse the capabilities of the District Water and Sanitation Teams (DWSTs). These DWSTs are made up of governmental officers who are responsible for monitoring the quality of all water and sanitation facilities in their districts – this basically means travelling to every small community and ensuring that boreholes are functioning properly, that latrines haven’t collapsed and that proper hygiene practices are being followed.

The DWSTs are an incredibly important link between the communities and their district government. For instance, the DWST is supposed to dispatch a mechanic to any community where a problem arises with a pump. Another example is in district-donor advocacy: when a district is fighting for funds from a donor (like UNICEF, for example), they need detailed statistics on their current water coverage rates. They have to be able to make their case that their district needs additional water facilities, and they have to know which communities need them the most.

However, decentralization is moving in stops and starts in Ghana, and the DWSTs often aren’t getting the proper support from their districts – they don’t have the money or, in some cases, the training necessary to do their job as well as possible.

Sarah and I are looking at the possibility of working with a DWST in order to help boost their monitoring and computer skills. As unsexy as it sounds, if the DWSTs can increase the quality and amount of their water and sanitation information, it could have big implications for people in small communities throughout their district.

Finally, I’d like to wish a happy Independence Day to any Americans reading this. Sorry about the World Cup thing.

See below for some before and after photos from the Ghana-Brazil match.

The Black Stars

2006-06-22T17:09:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday, Ghana surprised the world, and foremost itself, by beating the second-ranked team, the Czech Republic, 2-0 in the first round of the World Cup. I suppose that Saturday was the day of the underdog, with the Edmonton Oilers also upsetting the dominant Carolina Hurricanes 4-0. However, I suspect that the implications of Ghana’s win are more far-reaching and profound.

After Ghana’s disappointing 2-0 loss to Italy the Monday night before, Ghanaian hopes were not high for a victory on Saturday. Most people I spoke to about the forthcoming Czech showdown would shake their heads slowly and say, “It will be difficult.”

But Ghana’s very spot in the World Cup – its first ever – is a source of pride for many people here. Ghana is among three West African countries (the other two are Togo and Cote D’Ivoire) to make the cut, and among five African nations in total (Angola and Tunisia being the others).
Ghana has found its way to the world’s stage, in this planet’s biggest and arguably most famous sporting tournament. Tiny Ghana is playing on the same fields as the world’s most developed nations – the same fields where the United States, Germany and France are facing off against opponents. To have made it to a select group of 32 teams world-wide is certainly something to make a country’s people smile – especially when the country sometimes feels it can’t hold its own on other international stages.

With a ranking of 138 on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (Canada is 5th), and with a constant bombardment of images of Western world ostentation pouring in through the information channels of an ever interconnected world, it’s not difficult to understand how some people here could have developed an inferiority complex.

I’ve had more than one conversation with people here who have claimed the superiority of the Western nations. One friend, a mechanic, told me that “the white man is never a fool” (as a side note, I’ve made it my mission to personally prove him wrong. It shouldn’t take too much effort). He was referring to the advanced German engines he’d occasionally see in cars – engines he lacked even the proper tools, let alone the mechanical know-how, to fix.

That’s why Ghana’s participation in the World Cup is so meaningful – it’s giving this little African nation the chance to shine on an equal global playing field.

And on Saturday, Ghana’s Black Stars shone with an incredible intensity. With their first goal only 70 seconds into the game, my Tamale neighbourhood erupted into cheers – I was reminded of my dad’s stories about his apartment block exploding in excitement at Paul Henderson’s last-minute goal against the Russians in 1972 – and I was given another taste of Ghanaian pride. This is the same pride and excitement I’d seen at the Independence Day celebrations back on March 6, and it was just as refreshing.The emotions continued to run high as Ghana dominated the game, firmly controlling the ball with superb mid-field playing, and intense rushes at the Czech’s net. Their persistence finally paid off again late in the second half, and Ghana secured its victorious position.

The Tamalean streets detonated with a rush of jubilance after the final whistle. Youths paraded through the dusty streets, with ad-hoc homemade drums, shouts of “Ghana!” and dozens of car and motorbike horns providing the percussion to their movement. Just as it had been impossible not to clench our fists and jump from our seats at each Ghanaian goal or near-goal, it was impossible not to join in the fray. My friends Louis and Robin and I jumped with the kids, danced among them, and shouted “2 nil!” until our voices were hoarse and our ankles aching.

And after the match, history had been revised somewhat. The mood was retroactively optimistic, as though Ghana’s win was a foregone conclusion reached long ago. Ghana’s strength – ever-present but perhaps sometimes called into question – had been revealed clear as day.
“It’s really bringing the country closer,” says my house brother, Samed. When asked if he had faith in his team beforehand, he responds: “For real! I knew we were going to win.”

(Note:I wrote this last night. Today, Ghana beat the United States 2-1, securing their spot in the next round of the World Cup. It’s quite the time to be in Ghana!)

Part III - How to get to Accra

2006-06-11T16:59:00.000-04:00

(If you haven't read the first two installments, make sure to scroll down and check those out first.)

In our promised land of Abo Toase, as the rain poured down and Robin and I dashed for cover, we were beckoned to the car of some kind men from Accra. They invited us to a restaurant for a warm beer and some fish soup while we waited for the rain to pass. There were three of them – an interior designer, a teacher and a taxi-cab driver (you have my permission to use this as the opening line of a joke) – who were in town for a funeral. They told us that we could easily find a car to the city of Kpandu, so our serendipitous friendship was short-lived, and our stay in Abo Toase was fleeting, as we quickly moved to Kpandu (a city which was listed in my guidebook). Our intent was to immediately move from Kpandu to Accra, to complete our voyage that same day. But Kpandu, as it turned out, wouldn’t allow this.

Or rather, we wouldn’t allow ourselves to flee this city. We were immediately struck by the beguiling character of Kpandu’s streets. They were lined with well-kept two-storey buildings, and bustling with the kind of life I’d come to expect from most streets in Ghana. However, unlike Tamale, this life continued on into the night, past 10pm. People stayed out, barbecuing corn and steak on the street-side, heading to one of the many drinking spots, or simply enjoying the night’s air. At a random street kiosk, we discovered our new favourite fruit: sweet apple, a spiky, roughly avocado-sized green fruit filled with a white flesh that tastes something like sour apple (perhaps also called custard apple).

Another factor we found refreshing and surprising was the lack of attention that Robin and I drew. We’d become accustomed to cries of “Saliminga!” in Tamale; despite the high number of foreign development workers and volunteers there (we’re not a rare sight), foreigners are still often worthy of vocal comment. In Kpandu, we seemed to be invisible, as though our white skin were transparent – I don’t even know the local word for white person, since it wasn’t uttered. While I generally love the outgoingness and openness of Ghanaian culture, being a frequent focal point of attention while walking down the street can sometimes wear on my nerves (although I accept it – I’m the stranger in this land, and have to follow the social conventions of the land). But Kpandu was a break from this, and we felt free to explore the city’s streets in near anonymity.

The next day I attended mass, conducted entirely in the local language of Ewe, and held in a German-built cathedral from the early 1900s. After mass, I still wasn’t feeling religious enough, so we decided to visit a local cult.

The Blues of Ur was founded by a local man named Mr. Appaw who claims to have witnessed a bright blue light fall from the sky. As I understood it from the guide, this light led Mr. Appaw into virgin forest, where he discovered a message from the Virgin Mary. Indeed, she’d sent him to this planet to spread a holy message, to lead people to heaven by helping them break free of the cycle of reincarnation that traps sinful souls. Since then, he’s has built up an impressive meditation centre in the woods, complete with towering statues of Mary and Jesus, prayer grottoes, and a crucifix that overlooks a beautiful wooded valley: all designed to help Mr. Appaw fulfil his role as the Bearer of the Vessel and Neutral Messages.

As I gazed out over the lush green forest from a precipice upon which a large crucifix stood, I was filled with the beauty of the Volta region of Ghana – the rolling hills and ancient trees and blue sky, without a sign of human intervention anywhere, inspired something akin to a spiritual experience. Perhaps there’s something to Mr. Appaw’s centre and teachings after all? Perhaps they should pass the sign-up sheet?

Alas, tempting as it was to stay and discover the Vessel and Neutral Messages, we needed to leave, needed to move on. We were, after all, travelling – not seeking spiritual fulfilment (although I suppose many people would argue the former leads to the latter), which would certainly come another day when we were feeling less transient. Plus we needed to get to Accra, where we’d be greeting 23 fresh-faced EWB volunteers the next day.

We pulled away from Kpandu in the most beautiful tro-tro I’ve ever seen – working speedometer, uncracked windows, seat-belted driver, 3 people per row in a vehicle designed for 3 people per row – and I was reminded again that my generalizations about anything Ghanaian (be it tro-tros, the food, outgoingness, etc.) are just that: generalizations. They’re intended to help me, in all my limited capacities, navigate this strange and foreign cultural terrain, just as I’d been navigating its physical terrain the past few days. But I need to remember that my observations are not rules – the only rule being that exceptions are bound to appear, and that your heart and mind should be ready for this. I hope that, when I leave Ghana, I’ll have kept this rule paramount in my mind, and that I’ll have spent my time here being amazed at the diversity of experiences (both positive and frustrating, although perhaps the line between the two is blurred?) that are open to those who seek them out.

We were finally driving into our destination, but the only thing I could think of was what lay beyond.

End

Part II: How to get to Accra

2006-06-03T16:23:00.000-04:00

(Sorry for the delay in this posting. If you haven't read the first installment yet, make sure to scroll down and read it first!)

Kete Krachi is a city half-submerged – literally – by history. In the 1960s part of it was inundated after the building of the Akosombo Dam, leading to the creation of one of the world’s largest artificial lakes: the Volta. Some Kete Krachi residents who were unfortunate to be living in the low-lying parts of the city had to relocate, and began building what is now called the New City, which is now the northern part of Kete Krachi. But many of the residents simply left, and the city’s population dropped. It’s an eerie sight to see a grassy area abruptly end at the water’s edge, with no beach transition – it smacks of human intervention in the natural world, and is a permanent reminder of what once was. This sight is further compounded by the graveyard of half-submerged trees that project from the water, grey, withered and gnarled.

But our goal was to take advantage of Lake Volta, to float south down it, so Robin and I began wandering along the shoreline, searching for signs of a boat that could transport us. We were directed to a nearby home, and told to ask for The Captain – who was not difficult to find. He was a large and boisterous man, and announced that his motorboat would be leaving at 4am sharp the next morning, carrying passengers and cargo to a city called “Abo Toase.” I had to write this out phonetically in my guidebook, because the name wasn’t already in my guidebook. Indeed, the book was useless at this stage, which is liberating in a sense. And really, in macro travel (i.e., travel between cities), all you need is a vague direction and a healthy amount of time. We knew that Abo Toase was southward, and we knew it was on the appropriate side of the lake. This is all we needed to know. We told The Captain we’d be there.

So we found ourselves, at 4am the next morning, standing on the shoreline, scanning for a ship that would carry us away from Kete Krachi. Straining out eyes against the darkness, we finally spotted a wooden vessel, maybe 20 metres long and three metres wide at its centre, into which cattle were being loaded.

Their method of cattle loading was interesting (at best) and inhumane (by my standards, more accurately). The cows were led to the side of the boat, where poles were braced against the ship, and used to leverage the cows up and over the side, where they were unceremoniously dumped to the bottom. This happened six times, and was followed by the dumping of several sheep and goats. Finally, the humans began piling in: roughly 40 of us at this early hour.
The boat began its slow trek to the south, and promptly stopped 10 minutes in at another port to load more passengers, livestock, and agricultural goods. I experienced a flashback to the first tro-tro ride of our trip – stopping and going was the theme. Indeed, this would be the trend for the duration of the boat trip – following the coast, and stopping every so often at makeshift “boat stops.” The proximity of the coast was reassuring – a quick swim away – given that the boat was becoming more and more loaded down with people and animals and inanimate objects; and with every cow, the water level appeared to be rising just a bit, as the sun’s rays pressed down with increasing strength from above.

It became apparent that our destination, Abo Toase, was having a market day. The people boarding the boat were transporting their goods to market. It was a fascinating sight to see people taking advantage of what seemed to me like a strange and overloaded mode of transportation -- something that I would use only out of interest -- in order to conduct their daily lives. But as I sat wedged between a basket of yams and a bag of rice, feeling the hot breath of 10 cows on the back of my neck, and desperately covering any exposed skin from the sky’s UV light, I realized that such experiences are an integral part of travel: they drive home the point that while the normal aspects of life here may sometimes seem quite unusual (and conversely, your way of life could seem quite bizarre to others), we’re all still trying to accomplish roughly the same goals in life. In this case, these people were making their livelihoods by moving the goods they’d worked so hard to produce to a place where they would be saleable. Definitely not a foreign concept to most people in the world – it’s just the little details that differ, the mechanics of the process.

The boat continued its slow and steady voyage. It was guided around the graveyard of trees by a first mate who stood at the front of the boat and, through a complex series of hand gestures, directed the captain (at the stern) who controlled the boat by its outboard motor. This system worked well enough (we stayed afloat), although a few scrapes were incurred.

Eleven hours later, heated by the sun’s rays and by our passengers’ body heat (tro-tro levels of human super-compression had developed), we finally approached the final shoreline. The sun above was slowly becoming obscured by black clouds rolling in from the south, and in the distance the sky was painted with murky dark brushstrokes. This was the backdrop for the remaining trees that were desperately forcing themselves out of the water, beyond which were rolling hills of green forest. In the forest, small bush fires emitted plumes of smoke like signals guiding us to our next destination.

Just as we pulled into port, the dark clouds reached us, and the sky began to fall; water from above meeting water from below as we desperately scrambled from the boat. This scramble involved walking precariously along the edge of the boat and jumping as close to shore as possible, trying illogically to avoid the water under our feet as we grudgingly accepted the sky’s water. It really didn’t matter. We were soaked, and had arrived to our new and previously unknown destination freshly baptized and ready to start our travels anew.

To be continued!

How to get to Accra (in seven easy steps)

2006-05-21T15:58:00.000-04:00

If you’re travelling from Tamale (in the Northern Region of Ghana) to Accra (the capital city, which lies on the coast in the south of Ghana) you can certainly take the easy route – hop on a state-run bus and head south for 12 hours. You’ll be treated to lovely scenery at times, frequent rest stops and, if you’re feeling particularly extravagant, air-conditioning. But, as Frost would agree, the most interesting experiences occur when you take the least direct, most uncomfortable, and occasionally most unadvisable routes to your destination. So that’s what fellow EWBer Robin Farnworth and I did two weeks ago in order to wind up at Accra Airport, where we were to welcome with open arms 23 short-term Engineers Without Borders volunteers.

Our journey began in the sweltering heat of the Tamale tro-tro yard, crammed into rows of five people in a minibus (the rows were designed to seat four), and vehemently fighting off the vehicle’s first mate, who was trying to stuff an additional sixth person in to each row. We sat, motionless, for almost an hour, until our bodies were drained of sweat and even our solid body parts began the slow process of evaporation (or sublimation, for you thermodynamic dorks). At one point, the tro-tro driver faced a near bloody coup after asking us passengers to switch vehicles – for the second time. But I’ve learned not to ask too many questions while travelling through Ghana, and that your energies are best directed towards three things:
1) Ignoring the heat
2) Trying to locate small pockets of personal space that might exist somewhere between your compressed skin and that of your fellow passengers
3) Forgetting about number two, and instead concentrating on the warm communal feeling that develops when you and your fellow passengers have anti-personal space

So this I did, and eventually we passengers persevered. Amid cries of “We are not bread, why are you baking us?!” our tro-tro finally started up, and pulled out of the yard. It then promptly pulled into the nearby petrol station, which was an anti-climatic anti-surprise – another part of the Ghanaian travel dance. After fuelling, we were off for real.

This tro-tro stopped in the city of Salaga, formerly a central West African hub for the slave trade in the 19th century. The slave market is now the tro-tro station, and instead of slaves being shipped by Ashanti traders to the south, you now have tourists, itinerant Fulani people, and travelling Ghanaians passing through.

After heading through Salaga we found ourselves careening down a rapidly darkening road towards Kete Krachi, a city on a peninsula in the northern part of Lake Volta. We’d heard a rumour of cargo ships departing from Kete Krachi, ships which follow the lake to its southernmost point at the Akosombo Dam. From there we’d catch a vehicle to Accra, and be able to claim that we’d made it to the capital city via a combination of tro-tro, car and cargo ship.

Our tro-tro driver had obviously driven this route before: he navigated the potholes as though he were playing a video game that he’d already beaten many times. However, upon arriving, at nightfall, in a city with a name sounding akin to the noise a sheep makes (“Boorah!” – we don’t actually know the name as it’s not on our map), we were told the driver would not be continuing on to Kete Krachi, to the fabled land of cargo ships. We were staying in Boorah, in a city that, as far as we could tell, consisted of a single darkened intersection and one kiosk that was selling coca-cola and uncertainty. We were told that there is no guest house, no hotel, in Boorah. We were told, in essence, that there is no hope in Boorah, and that we really shouldn’t have ended up there on an ill-defined mission filled with fanciful dreams of cargo ships and large artificial lakes. It’s at times like this that hopelessness can take over: this must be quelled by the Zen-like belief that, in travel, patience is paramount, and that following the streams of destiny will always lead you to a destination which has been your terminus all along (whether or not you knew it). So long as you believe that the journey is the destination, you can maintain a peaceful state of mind. All the same, I didn’t want to sleep on the streets of Boorah, and knew that my Buddhist travel mantras would give way to despair if I was forced to camp out in a deserted city whose name I could only approximate by channelling the noise of my most detested animal.

Luckily, while talking to the few lone survivors in this seeming wasteland, it came out that we might be able to stay at the local health clinic, which was only a few minutes’ walk away. It was there that we were greeted warmly by a community health nurse, who had no problem finding us beds to sleep in. My Buddhist travel philosophies had been challenged and, like a fine debater, had conquered and come out not just intact but strengthened. I sometimes worry where this laissez-faire attitude could lead me, but then I remember that I’m not allowed to worry, and so I keep moving.

The next morning I was greeted by the sounds of goats (goats are good – they’re spry and intelligent), and the vibrant feeling of a market day. Market days are always a sight to behold, with hundreds (or thousands) of people from surrounding communities converging on a city to sell their produce and other goods. We stepped out of the clinic to see the true city revealed to us in the light of day. We had been wrong – Boorah is not a ghost town. Our night-time assumptions had led us astray (we were truly in the dark), had prevented us from seeing that our little intersection was simply the outskirts of a city that was most certainly full of life, and on this beautiful early morning we were seeing real evidence of the city’s character. Women and men walked in to town, or came in on tro-tros, and began setting up stalls in the market area. Animals were led in on ropes, and carts of yams rolled in. Bushels of groundnuts appeared, and bags of spices were transported in on hundreds of heads. I was reminded again that Ghana is not a land of the hopeless, despite characterizations of Africa from back home.

But we didn’t have much time to stay and explore. We were off that morning, with the same driver as the night before (who had decided the time was now right to complete the voyage), to Kete Krachi.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Quick update

2006-05-15T17:13:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that I’m still alive, and riding a massive sugar high – my dear family sent me a 1.1kg bag of Jelly Bellies (delivered by Sarah) so I’ve been gorging on that – after a hearty meal of T.Z., of course.

The Junior Fellows (short term EWB volunteers who are here for 4 months) have arrived in Ghana, and they’re quite the enthusiastic and energetic bunch. They demanded we throw them into the market the night they arrived in Accra, and we were more than willing to oblige. It’s nice to have some fresh faces in Ghana, especially since Tom has just left to chase Kurtz (he’s going on a Niger River Voyage in order to raise awareness about the efforts that people living in rural African communities are putting in daily to improve their lives).

In my next post, which should be quite soon (and will hopefully make up for this short one), I’ll describe in detail how Robin and I travelled from Tamale down to Accra – a trip that normally takes around 12-15 hours by bus, but for us took roughly four days, and involved 6 cows. I have included a teaser picture.

Work right now is going quite well. I’ve been going out to rural communities to assess the status of their wells. I basically need to check if the wells are dry (there’s quite a bit of variability in the water table level, so during the dry season many of these wells end up bone dry), ensure the construction of the wells is sound (e.g. no cracking in the cement), take the GPS coordinates, and – most importantly – interview members of the community to determine their level of satisfaction with the well, and what could be done to improve their situation. Making sure that the voice of the beneficiary is heard loud and clear back at the regional office is one of the best things I can do on this project. After all, at the end of the day, they’re the ones using the well: they’re the reason this project exists, and their needs come first.

A restaurant at night

2006-05-03T16:17:00.000-04:00

I’m in the city of Gushiegu, about an hour and a half north-east of Tamale – depending, of course, on the rains, which can render the roads near impassable, transforming them into a sloppy stew of red dirt and grey gravel that can spell disaster for rural communities throughout the north.

I’m sitting in a restaurant here, jotting down notes in my daily planner, trying my best to capture the experience of what should be the most mundane of activities – like eating. But it’s not mundane, and it never is, and that’s part of the magic of travel.

The restaurant is small and open-air. It consists of a white plastic table surrounded by dining room chairs, another table with picnic coolers filled with drinks and day-old food, and four young women who are making the feature dinner. They’re gathered around a single large pestle, and each strike of their mortars pounds boiled yams into a submissive starchy paste – the staple food of fufu. The pounding is perfectly timed, each blow striking an empty spot in the pestle. As a result of this coordination, they inevitably form a beat; or maybe it’s more accurate to say that they form an inevitable beat, given the omnipresence of music in Ghanaian culture – there’s always music, and when there isn’t, there really is: it’s there, hidden in the daily activities, drifting down the streets, permeating the air. As if to further back up my train of thought, the sounds of evening prayers begin to float into the restaurant, mingle with the pounding, merge with it, and a new song is born.

One of the women, without interrupting her pounding, starts speaking loudly to her companions. Her words emerge in time to the beat. I’m unsure if she’s complaining or singing – but I think the answer is somewhere in between. She is, in effect, reinventing hip-hop (or is it that hip-hop is predated by the music of fufu pounding?).

Another woman calls out to me, “Saliminga! How much?” I hesitate, then throw out a random number. A steaming plate of fufu – 4,000 Ghanaian cedis worth, to be accurate – quickly appears before me, and I tuck in. Fufu, itself, is a starchy non-entity – it’s simply the tasteless vehicle for the accompanying soup’s flavour. In this case the soup is my favourite, peanut, and my fingers scoop with gusto. Slurping is not just allowed, but encouraged – required, in fact, to keep the soup from running down your wrists.

My colleague from work arrives from prayers, and sets his own bowl of fufu on the table. His meal contains an additional component: entrails. “What are those?” I ask him. He responds, “intestines.” I ask what animal these used to belong to. “Oh, cow,” he says, then pauses in contemplation, reconsidering his answer. “Or goat. Or maybe sheep.” I secretly hope they’re sheep, but refrain from asking the woman to top up my plate with them.

I finish my meal, wash my hands in a large bowl on the table, stand, pay the woman, and walk out of the restaurant, all the while trying to perform these actions according to the ambient beat. But I know I don’t get it. It can’t be consciously performed with, least of all by an outsider. That’s fine, though. As much as I want to learn and integrate, I’m still an outsider. That certainly won’t lessen my appreciation of the organic music of Ghana. I walk down the street, and open my ears for the next song.

Pictures 3

2006-04-17T17:41:00.000-04:00

1) My Ghanaian brother Samed (I live in his compound) eating the pancakes I made him
2)A small girl at World Water Day 2006, in Savelugu (north of Tamale)
3) The crowd at World Water Day 2006
4) A motorbike with chickens on top of it in my compound

Pictures 2

2006-04-17T17:38:00.000-04:00

1) Women pounding fufu in the small village of Kambonayili, where I stayed for one night
2) Me verifying latrine construction in the field
3) Two boys in a small community I visited for latrine construction verification
4) A meal of pancakes and Canadian maple syrup I made for my Ghanaian family

Pictures 1

2006-04-17T17:27:00.000-04:00

People have been requesting pictures, so here are a few!

1) My brother Alex, my dad Bruce, me and my mom Gail at the airport shortly before takeoff from Toronto, February 7, 2006. Ian had to work unfortunately (watch those fingers, Ian).
2) Kids in the tro-tro yard at Atebubu.
3) A baby in Kambonayili.
4) Me and Ibrahim, the farmer I stayed with in Kambonayili.

To Burkina and Back -- Or, I Went to a Church Service and Six Weddings Broke Out

2006-04-17T17:03:00.000-04:00

I’ve just been told that whistling at night is taboo – it brings out the evil spirits. Unfortunately I have the song “Don’t worry, be happy” stuck in my head. I think the spirits will be swirling about my head tonight. But I’ll be happy about it.

Yesterday, Easter Sunday, I went to one of the Catholic churches in Tamale for mass. It turned into a mass wedding, which was surprising. The general structure of the service was roughly what I know from Canada, and the prayers were almost identical. One difference was that the hymns were sung with the accompaniment of a bongo drum, which made them a lot livelier – it was pretty cool to hear these songs start out quite solemnly, until the beat of the bongo drum broke in and the choir kicked up the energy level. And at one point in the mass, six couples went up in front of a crowd of roughly 700 people and exchanged vows and rings. Initially I thought they were just taking part in some kind of pre-wedding ceremony, but I was wrong. They were getting hitched, and in one fell swoop, the number of weddings I’ve attended jumped by 150%.

Last week I travelled to Burkina Faso, the country to the north of Ghana, for an Engineers Without Borders retreat. It was a successful retreat, and it was great to see many of the people from my training, although it was strange to see them in this context, and see how they’ve adopted African garb and hairstyles – we’re a far cry from the streets of Toronto now.

Although lower on the human development index than Ghana, Burkina has the feeling of a country in motion, one that’s worked itself further out of poverty than Ghana – at least, this is in the two major cities I visited (the capital, Ouagadougou, and Bobo-Dioulasso). The streets were incredibly clean – they have garbage cans dispersed throughout the cities (unlike Ghana), the buildings well kept and large, and the people friendly and often dressed quite well. However, this drives home to me the sometimes subtle face of poverty – that the truly needy are the ones least likely to be visible, and that some of the indicators of poverty can’t be easily seen with the naked eye. For example, Burkina’s adult literacy rate is only 28%, and in 2000-2001 only 10% of secondary-age students attended school – not things we could see in a 5 day visit. And we didn’t even visit a rural community, while a huge percentage of Burkina’s population lives outside of urban centres – 92% of the Burkina workforce is engaged in agriculture. I have to constantly remind myself that, although the people I interact with on a day to day basis may not have obvious signs of poverty, their true story below the surface may be an incredibly sad one – with children unable to attend school due to a lack of money for school fees, with relatives suffering from treatable diseases while they lack access to the proper medicines, with illiteracy slamming the door to opportunity shut on them.

But I don’t like to end on negativity, so I’ll just mention that today I went to an Easter “picnic” at a park in an army barracks. There were thousands of people out, playing music, dancing, eating and drinking, and generally showing a pretty incredible indomitable spirit, and demonstrating the universal human desire to have fun and celebrate. I’m sure those six newly married couples are pretty happy right now.

Mosque building and the hardness of fruit

2006-04-07T08:48:00.000-04:00

In an effort to integrate into my community, I decided to help out with a local community project: mosque building.

Sounds as bit strange, I guess. There is a new mosque being constructed in my neighbourhood – right next to the old one, incidentally. It’s funded by a woman who lives nearby, and being built by the men who live around it. I can’t really imagine this happening in Canada – I’m trying to picture all the men in my Canadian suburb kicking in to make a place of worship. Then again, I can’t imagine all the homes in my community in Tamale picking a day on which to sell off all their junk out in front of their homes, so I guess every community in the world has its particularities.

So on a Sunday morning, I found myself out on the mosque grounds, wearing my trusty Bolga hat, praying (how appropriate) for a gentle breeze, and shovelling concrete. Right now they’re laying the foundation, which involved shovelling two types of sand together from two big piles (one coarse, one fine), then mixing cement into it, piling the mixture up in a separate pile, then pouring water into it. This is all done by shovel and bucket. The concrete is then moved by wheelbarrow, and dumped onto the foundation.

The men at first kept insisting on helping the white guy with his tasks: encouraging me to take a break, or stealing my bucket away from me to cart water. But after I repeatedly turned down their offers, and indignantly re-stole my bucket, they let me do my thing without interference. And it seemed to earn respect. Now all the guys in the community know me as the “saminga” who kicked in to help. I caught a taxi home one evening, and the taxi driver asked me if he’d seen me working on the mosque the other day. I told him that was me, and he was very impressed – so my actions have had pretty widespread results. I want to be seen as a member of the community, and not just a strange outsider, and this seems like a solid step in that direction. Although I still get stared at a lot.

I’ve included a picture from my trip to Togo. This trip wasn’t actually planned. Last week, I was in a city called Gbankurugu, which is on the border of Togo. I was there to interview the members of the District Water and Sanitation Team, and after our interview, they asked me to have a mineral (pop) with them. I suggested we go to Togo for the mineral, since it was right next door and I wanted to practise my French (Togo is a former French colony), and add another country to my “visited” list. So we drove down a rutted road, barely passable, bumping and lurching along for almost 15 minutes, before finally arriving at the border. The border actually had a really nicely constructed customs building, demonstrating that infrastructure development in Ghana isn’t all happening at the same pace – you can’t really drive any merchandise across the border, since the roads aren’t there, but you can definitely get inspected by the nice customs facilities.
The guys I was with got out of the truck and talked to the border guard, then came back and told me that the border guard wanted us to go to immigration, which was somewhere back up the road. I didn’t have my passport with me, and had been told I wouldn’t need it – the border supposedly isn’t very strict. So instead, I asked if I could just walk around the barrier separating Togo from Ghana, and have my picture snapped in Togo. When the border guard saw this happening, he resumed talking to the DWST men. He then waved us through – apparently the men explained that we just wanted to check out Togo for about an hour, and we promised to come back. Life is pretty easy going here a lot of the time.

So I got to go to a small village in Togo, speak French to a few people (including the guards to the town, who were having their hair cut by the side of the road), and bring back this funky looking fruit. I’m don’t actually know what it’s called – if someone can find out, I’d appreciate it. It’s about the size of a large coconut, and comes from a tree that looks a lot like a palm tree. It’s bright orange, and has a hard outer shell. The way I was taught to eat it is to bash it against something hard, then tear the shell off with your teeth, and then do your best to pull out some of the stringy insides. They’re quite sweet, but eating it is a lot of work. The person who taught me how to eat it said that it’s “hard as a monkey’s anus” (pronounced “eh noose”). This is my new favourite expression.

Article in London Free Press

2006-03-26T16:32:00.000-05:00

Here is the text and pictures from an article I wrote that appeared in the Forum section of the London Free Press on Saturday, March 25, 2006. Not sure what the headline was -- perhaps someone in London can let me know!

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Eight months after graduating from Engineering at the University of Western Ontario, I found myself leaving a country beset by rashes of criminal violence on its city streets, where charges of corruption were running to the highest levels of government, and worries about the outbreaks of killer diseases were weighing on the minds of many. This country was Canada, and I was leaving for another continent, for Africa.

I’ve been in Ghana, West Africa, for over a month now, having been sent by the Canadian organization Engineers Without Borders to work on a water and sanitation project. While I’ve barely started to scratch the surface in terms of understanding the challenges and opportunities this country faces, I have learned a great deal in my first month in Ghana. Perhaps the greatest lesson learned thus far is the destructive and misleading power of generalizations.

Just as my opening paragraph presented only negative imagery of the Canadian political and social landscape, painting a rough picture of a land that is plagued by innumerable problems, so does, I believe, the western media present a portrait of African countries as being without opportunity, without potential, and most saddening, without hope. We frequently see articles on corruption, on war, on human displacement, on death. We see television ads begging us for our financial support to help end hunger in Africa. We hear of the deepening cycle of despair in this continent.

Of course, it would be foolish of me to claim that the African continent, by and large, does not face massive challenges. I will not argue that the opportunities available to the average Canadian citizen are of the same quality or quantity as those available to the average Ghanaian. However, to focus entirely on the negative is to do a great disservice to the millions of Africans who are working towards a better and brighter future. This negative focus paints an image that is vastly distorting, and encourages inaction on our parts.

March 6 was Ghana’s Independence Day, marking the 49th anniversary of their secession from the British Empire – the first sub-Saharan African nation to break away. To celebrate, I went to a large park in Tamale, northern Ghana, where huge crowds gathered to watch students march and reaffirm their faith in their country. I spoke to some of these children and was struck by how similar their outlook on life was to that of Canadian youth.

I asked one boy, Joseph, what is good about Ghana. “Ghana produces a lot of things,” he said, “like gold, silver, cocoa, cotton. The gold and the silver, we use them to make money, and then the cotton to make t-shirts.” Joseph is only about 12-years-old, but has learned a lot about his country from school and the radio. I pressed further to find out what else he likes about Ghana. “There is peace in Ghana,” Joseph responded. “We don’t like fighting in Ghana.”

Then a large group of children gathered around to examine the strange “saliminga” (white person). I asked them what songs they sing in school. One small girl began singing ‘God bless our homeland Ghana,’ and almost immediately the entire group chimed in, singing in unison. After the song, they then launched into their pledge of allegiance. This, I realized, is the same patriotism I’ve seen back home. It’s the same sentiment I experience when a Canadian hockey team takes gold and every patron in a bar explodes in feverish pride.

I spoke to another young man, Sadik Yakubu Osman, who is studying agricultural technology at the University for Development Studies in northern Ghana. After graduating, he hopes to work with farmers in Ghana – agriculture employs almost two thirds of the Ghanaian work force – to help increase their crop yields. “I’m fascinated by the challenges of agriculture,” Sadik tells me. Many of these challenges are clearly defined – degrading soil quality, a short rainy season in the north, lack of access to markets (an underdeveloped infrastructure being a big culprit). “For example,” Sadik says, “micro-irrigation projects are needed.” These projects help farmers bring water to their farms when the rains fail, and Sadik is learning how best to apply such technology. People such as Sadik are training themselves to be able to effectively address some of the factors that lead to poverty. These people are beacons of light, and deserve our attention, support, and respect.

After visiting the Independence Day celebrations, I knew that people here are proud of their home. They’re proud of its exports and its peace, and the children have hopes for future careers as pilots and soldiers and nurses. This is not the same land I’ve seen on television commercials back in Canada, one in which a child without hope for any sort of future stares plaintively out of the screen. To be sure, those people are just as real; the extreme poor should never fall off our radar screen. However, this is not a representative cross section of Africa. Ghana has a diversity of people who play a diversity of roles. To create an archetypal African out of stereotypes of poverty is to misrepresent millions of people.

Furthermore, focusing only on negatives encourages a culture of defeatism in the West, a culture unprepared to support those working themselves out of poverty. While the greatest strides towards development will be initiated and carried out by the citizens of the developing world themselves, the West still has a role to play. This is a role we should play with optimism, not with dubious hesitancy. For instance, up until the late nineties, Ghana spent more on external debt repayment than on health care. Thankfully, this debt should be extensively reduced this year under the IMF’s Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative. Actions such as debt cancellation should be approached by the western nations as necessary steps forward, and not as futile attempts at improving the world.

Another example is in restructuring our own farming system, for instance in eliminating massive agricultural subsidies that lead to “dumping” of western products on the international market, which can suffocate the farmers of developing countries. The western nations continue to drag their feet on the international stage, most recently in the Doha World Trade Organization talks. I’m sure that if the citizens of Canada had faith in the developing world’s ability to work their way out of poverty, to empathise with their common human goal of moving forward, then we would put more pressure on our government to act in their favour. As it stands, it’s easy for Canadians to shrug off responsibility to the South, since the situation can seem so hopeless, and the people so distant and different.

I have found here a more subtle understanding of a country that I knew very little about before arriving. I hope that the decision makers in the West will always strive towards a subtle understanding of the world’s poorest countries – towards empathy and compassion, and away from the trap of destructive generalizations. The Canadian public can also do its part, by pressuring our government to act on the international stage in as pro-poor a manner as possible. By playing our part to the best of our abilities, and recognizing and encouraging the efforts of the citizens of developing nations, we will help them bring about the complicated solutions needed to end the complicated problems of development.

Our country has its problems, to be sure – worries about gun violence and corruption and Avian flu are perfectly valid. But we don’t define ourselves by our problems – we’re proud of our strengths. Here’s hoping that we’ll port this mindset to the world stage, and use our privileged position to help minimize the world’s problems, and -- more importantly -- amplify its strengths.

A message from the intergalactic overlord for World Water Day 2006

2006-03-26T16:09:00.000-05:00

Well, World Water Day has come and gone in a flash of blinding glory, and I’m left to deal with the fallout – creditors demanding their bills be settled, random Ghanaians haranguing me for free t-shirts (apparently Ghanaians absolutely LOVE free t-shirts, and unfortunately we did not have the budget to supply one for every person in the country), and children who need their paintings returned to them. But the day was a good one, and the experience valuable.

WWD started with a parade through town, which started approximately an hour and a half late. This parade consisted of several pickup trucks carrying placard-waving people (the placards read “Water is Culture!” and “Protect our water bodies!” among other things), and a flatbed truck carrying a brass band. As I’ve mentioned before, Tamale doesn’t technically have water. As a result, we had a few people on the street angrily fist-waving at us, and I was left wishing that our police escort has shown up. I slunk down into my seat and avoided eye contact with the crowd. However, violence did not manifest itself, and the parade proceeded to the small town of Savelugu, north of Tamale. It was quite the spectacle to see the truck careening down the highway at 80km/h, with the drummer of the brass band still going at full tilt.

We’d also hired a few buses to transport the pressmen and children from the various schools participating in the painting competition. The day before, we’d gone to the schools to collect the children’s paintings. I was given a lesson in participatory development when I was told that painting is not actually a part of the curriculum at most schools here – I assume that the cost of materials is just too high. Too many development projects haven’t relied on the input of the beneficiaries – these bad projects are based on the knowledge and expectations of the development worker and his/her NGO. This has resulted in, for example, “graveyards” of broken down pumps and agricultural equipment that just weren’t suited to the community into which they were introduced.

So in my case, had I had enough time, I would have been able to speak with the teachers and students to establish their skills and abilities, and then plan accordingly. But, like a bad development worker, I simply forced my preconceived notion of a good project on these people, and dropped off the paints and bristle board. Anyway, my experience has a happy ending – the kids worked their butts off and taught themselves to paint, and produced some pretty awesome pictures.

I also had a lesson in how free-flowing life is here in Ghana, when we asked if we could take the kids away from school for the activities in Savelugu the next day. The response from the headmaster at each school was the same in every case: “No problem” (this is a really common expression here). In Canada, I can’t imagine how many permission forms would have to be sent home, not to mention insurance problems worked out.

In total, there were probably about 500 people at the festivities in Savelugu. This included several hundred school children from Savelugu, as well as dignitaries and random people from the public. The event was pretty packed, and included a cultural dance/drum show, a song by a local singer named Kaeba, a drama presentation by a local acting troupe, a quiz on water and sanitation for several high schools and several speeches.

I didn’t have much time to watch the events, since I was running around the whole time, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it. One funny thing was the song by Kaeba. Some background info: Concerts here are often lip-synched. Apparently people like to hear the songs they love exactly as they know them; i.e. straight off the CD. So Kaeba lip-synched a song he’d written about water and culture. The problem is that we’d made him include passages in Dagbani, the local language. Kaeba doesn’t speak Dagbani (he’s from the south) so I think he had someone write the lyrics for him. So his lip-synching the Dagbani lyrics was decidedly not Milli Vanilli quality. But the song was really good, and the crowd liked it.

After the public symposium was a lunch for about 300 people, which happened an hour and a half late, but was delicious when it finally came.

So that was World Water Day in Tamale. Definitely an interesting experience, and one that taught me many things about Ghana (for example, my co-organizers specifically factored in “African time” to their event planning), and allowed me to meet many people who could be quite useful for the future of my project.

Just hope that no t-shirt crazed person gets violent with me.

What the hell do I do?

2006-03-02T16:32:00.000-05:00

So people are curious about my job. I’m pretty curious about it too, and am still in the learning process – when that’s complete, I’ll be better able to define the role I’ll be playing for the next while. But I’ll provide some background here.

I’m working for the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), which is a governmental body dedicated to providing safe drinking water to rural towns and communities throughout Ghana. Ghana is split up into regions, similar to our provinces, and I am based in the largest of these, the “Northern Region.” In the Northern Region, there are three main water projects going on that are overseen by the CWSA: one is funded by CIDA (this is the largest project), another by the European Union, and the last one by the AFD (the French development agency).

Basically, the idea behind the projects is to provide these communities with access to safe drinking water, and to couple this with education on health and sanitation, and the installation of latrines. The overall goal is to improve the health of these communities.

The water comes in a few forms: it can be from boreholes (which are deep and narrow holes dug by a machine), from hand-dug wells, or from mechanized systems that use boreholes to distribute water to small towns. Ground water is generally very safe and free of contaminants, although high fluoride has been a problem is certain regions. Without point sources, communities will often seek their water from sources that are at high risk for contamination (e.g. bacterial, Guinea Worm), such as rivers or ponds. The members of the community (notably women) also must often walk huge distances to collect this water, which is a pretty massive drain on time that could be used in other ways.

The education component seeks to teach proper sanitation techniques: such as hand-washing after going to the washroom, keeping borehole sites clean, good kitchen cleanliness, etc.

This is a very brief overview of what the CWSA is aiming to do. Their role is basically that of a facilitator in this process – they make sure that all of the stakeholders are working together and communicating effectively. They also help to ensure that standards (e.g. water quality, latrine construction quality) are set and maintained. The projects themselves are implemented by many different levels of people, from the grassroots to the private sector to the district level to the CWSA.

My role thus far has been primarily doing monitoring and evaluation of the performance of one of these stakeholders – local non-governmental organizations called “Partner Organizations.” They’re responsible for helping communities set up accounts to pay for operation and maintenance of their water point, as well as for some hygiene education. I’ve been travelling to meet with various PO’s in order to determine how effective they’ve been, and what problems they’ve encountered that need to be addressed.

I know, doesn’t sound too technical, but EWB volunteers are more often than not involved in improving the deliverables of a given project, instead of tinkering with pumps and motors. I’ll keep everyone posted on the direction I take in my project!

In other random news, I visited a village yesterday and ended up carrying a large bucket of water on my head back to the village from their borehole, just to see what it was like. I’m not going to lie – it was ridiculously hard work, and I was made to feel pretty emasculated when I saw children as young as seven carrying comparable buckets on their heads without even breaking a sweat. I don’t think my neck is used to this type of work. I was also given a gift by the chief of the village: two live birds (kind of looked like pigeons). I probably won’t eat them.

Oh, and I’ve moved into a family compound. One of the sons, Samed, runs a little movie rental place out of the house. Him and his friends like sitting around their shop listening to music. Today I came home from work to find them listening to Dolly Parton and some 90s-era boybands. I was pretty horrified, so I went to my room and got a CD by the Scottish indie pop band “Ballboy” (A Guide for the Daylight Hours – one of my favourites!), and had them put it on. So they were blaring this Scottish pop music onto the streets of Tamale, and seemed to like it. I kind of felt like an indie cultural imperialist, but I figured that I was battling the much more nefarious foe of American Corporate Rock, so I’ll sleep soundly tonight.

Full of surprises

2006-02-21T16:06:00.000-05:00

Ok, I lied. I haven't totally gotten settled in. I was just out biking and I had to break to let a motorbike pass by. It was carrying two human beings, and four (live) goats. No sidecar. They did not teach us how to do this at motorcycle training in Canada (something to think about, Dad). I also purchased a bike lock and tried to install it but I am mechanically inept and just ended up hurting myself.

But on the way home it was dusk, and evening prayers were beginning. The air was filled with the smoke of a thousand wood stove fires, and the rhythmic singing of prayers was drifting through the streets. As I weaved my way among the humans and cars and bicycles and animals, I was reminded again of the strange and unique and raw beauty of the city. I hope I never lose sight of this.

Rural farming and wise goats

2006-02-19T15:02:00.000-05:00

Anayula!

Last Tuesday I went and spent a day and night in a small village on the outskirts of Tamale, called Kambonayili. It's a farming community of roughly 207 people, where they grow crops like peanuts (called groundnuts here), yams, and maize. I was taken in by a kind and friendly farmer named Ibrahim, who spoke some English (and was quite excited to learn more!). I spent the first afternoon with some of the men of the village, shelling peanuts, which were to be processed by the women later on. So we sat in the shade of a mud-clay building, protected from the brutal heat of the afternoon sun, and I tried mastering the art of peanut shell removal (which I got pretty good at). I also entertained the local kids, who were pretty excited to have a foreign visitor among them. My whole visit actually ended up being with the men of the village, who stayed pretty segregated from the women, so I really didn't get much insight into their lives.

That evening, after a dinner of TZ (a starchy ball of paste made from flour of sorghum or other grains, which you eat with a soup or sauce), we sat around outside as the sun went down. It was really quite tranquil outside -- Kambonayili is off the power grid, so there weren't any traffic lights or blaring CD players to distract us. I stared at the stars as they emerged, and Ibrahim spent a good hour and a half reading through my "Dagbani for Beginners" book, reading out English sentences and their Dagbani equivalents. I was reminded of time at the cottage back in Canada (near North Bay), sitting outside and watching the sky in the evening, surrounded by trees and fresh air. At one point, some kind of insect ran into my shorts, only to emerge a few minutes later. It was a fairly large spider that would run a few steps, then hop a few times, then repeat. It dashed/hopped off into the bushes. If anyone can look up large hopping Ghanaian spiders, and tell me if it was highly poisonous, I would appreciate it (although maybe I'd rather not know).

The next morning people awoke before sunrise for morning prayers (Islam is the predominant religion in this area), and after breakfast it was time to start working the field. Ibrahim, his younger brother, another young farmer and I all walked roughly twenty minutes to Ibrahim's yam farm. It's the dry season, so there's not much growing now besides some grass and weeds, which need to be removed before planting season begins. So we all got down into the dirt with hand-held hoes, and hacked away at any greenery around, stacking it into piles.

It was pretty extreme work. After a few hours my hands were blistered, my throat was parched and my energy levels had basically dropped to zero. Keep in mind that temperatures go up to around 40 deg C at this time of year! Thankfully we had a slight breeze blowing through every once in a while -- I don't think I've ever experienced so much relief from a gentle breeze before.

But this experience really drove home how difficult farming is in this area. I was exhausted after one morning, but the next morning Ibrahim and his brothers will be up again and out in the field, and they will keep doing this. Imagine how disruptive an illness can be to this type of livelihood -- farming requires huge amounts of human exertion. If a farmer or his family fall ill at a critical time, then the fields will not be tended to and they run the risk of losing a crop, and thus a significant amount of food and/or money.

Ibrahim was, at least relative to his village, pretty well off. I have included a picture of him sitting proudly on his motorcycle in his home. I now have a much better appreciation for the type (and difficulty) of work that has gone into earning his standard of living.

As a thank you gift, I gave him my "Dagbani for Beginners" book. I think he'll get a lot of use out it, and I'll pick up another one to make sure I can keep learning the local language.

I am settling into Tamale now. I've gotten used to the goats that wander the streets (I was told that they are wise so they will not be stolen or hit by cars), the cows, the bicycles racing through the crowds of people (sometimes motorbikes too), constantly being honked at by taxis (white people are seen as pretty viable customers), and being greeted by every child I walk by. It's a town that full of a lot of life, and there's definitely a ridiculous amount of stuff left to discover.

I have included some pictures from my time in Kambonayili, as well as a picture of the aftermath of my hair removal surgery.

Thank you to everyone for the comments you've left!! I appreciate them all. And it looks like I have a lot of support for this pink bike idea... I should also mention that almost all the bikes in Tamale are women's bikes, so I would be riding a pink girls' bike with a basket. I'm up for it. (Sorry, Dad.)

First posting from Tamale

2006-02-13T05:34:00.000-05:00

Hello from Tamale, Ghana. It has been a long and exciting trip to get here, and I’m incredibly happy to finally be getting settled into the city that will be my new home for the next 10 months!

On Wednesday, Monica and I flew from Toronto to London, England, where we had a several hour layover. We left the airport and met Monica’s friend for a cup of coffee before continuing on to Accra. This definitely made for a surreal situation – I went from a Canadian winter, to drinking tea and coffee in a British park while drunk people yelled at us, to landing in the sensory-stimulating city of Accra… all in the span of 22 hours.

Accra is Ghana’s capital city, with an official population of about 2.2 million – but this could be much higher. Suffice it to say that Accra is full of life and energy. However, I think that my emotional reaction to the city would have been a lot stronger if it hadn’t been for the month I spent in Bangkok’s largest slum, Klong Toey. I had already been exposed to a community with open sewer systems, dogs roaming the streets and tonnes of street vendors selling everything under the sun, so in a way I’d been given a bit of a buffer to this experience. Monica agreed, based on her experience in East Timor, and seeing Accra actually made her a bit homesick for Timor.

Tom met us at the airport, and showed us around. We didn’t stay too long in Accra, spending only enough time to visit Monica’s office and for me and Tom to get a haircut. In an effort to make a good impression on my new employers, I have shorn off my shaggy mop of hair. I hope it eventually grows back to its full lustre, although the barber did a very good job with us.

Another thing I am trying to do in the name of integration is avoid handing people things with my left hand. As is the case in many countries in the world, in Ghana your left hand is supposed to be used for cleaning your bottom, and so it is not polite to use it in other day to day activities. This is tough, since I’m left-handed. The word “left” is derived from a word meaning “sinister”, which I guess many Ghanaians will think I am as I hand them money from my disgusting left hand, but I’m making an effort to change this habit.

From Accra we went to the city of Kumasi, north-west of Accra, where we spent another night before continuing on to the small town of Atebubu. From Atebubu we took a combination of bus, station wagon, boat and truck to get to Tamale. If you are interested in checking on a map, the cities we went through were: Atebubu to Yeji, over Lake Volta by ferry to Makongo, then to Tamale. It was a pretty long four days of travelling!

So now I’m getting settled into Tamale. Today Tom and I went out and found me a bicycle. Many people ride bikes here – the city’s main street has its own dedicated bike path going both directions! We found a pretty sweet ride – maroon, single speed, basket on the front – in the market. We were given help bargaining from Tom’s brother Lukman (it’s pretty common for EWB volunteers to refer to the family they are staying with as their actual family members). There are no connotations with men and the colour pink here, so I might trade in my maroon bike for a pink one just for the hell of it – a cultural experience!

The best part of coming here so far has been the beginning of my demystification of Africa. Up until my experience with EWB, my knowledge of Africa was largely limited to what I read in the news, and what I saw on World Vision commercials. The picture they paint is, by and large, a fairly hopeless and victimised one. However, this picture is obviously a grossly over-simplified one. Yes, poverty is a powerful force here, but by focusing on the negative aspects of this continent, the media presents a very one-sided image of Africa. I feel blessed to have been given the opportunity to meet and talk with normal people living here, to understand that, just like anywhere else in the world, people here go to the store to buy food, go to work, spend time with friends, bike through the city, care for their children, fall in love. I am not denying that Africa is a continent facing incredible challenges; rather, I want to convey how visiting Ghana has helped me gain an appreciation of the universal humanity that is present here.

So in closing, I’ve posted a picture taken in Atebubu of tro-tro* drivers. They are sitting in the shade in the tro-tro station, collecting fares and preparing to transport people across the country. This is an example of one type of day to day life in Ghana, and is an image that I feel is important to better understand a country that is a world away, and largely unknown to many of us in Canada. It’s a very welcoming country, and a country full of incredible energy, and I hope to be able to share some of this energy with you through my blog!

*Tro-tros are any form of transport other than taxis or buses, such as vans converted to squeeze in many people.

Departure Imminent!

2006-02-06T14:19:00.000-05:00

Ok, so this thing works. Thank you for the lovely comments in my test posting, dear friends. You are ever so wonderful.

So basically, I'll be trying to update this blog as often as I can, instead of sending out mass emails that people may or may not read. I figure this way, if you're interested, you can check out the blog, and if you'd like the whole series of updates, they're right here for easy consumption.

Just to recap: I've been living in the Engineers Without Borders Training House (sometimes referred to as 'Chez EWB') for the past month. It's been simultaneously zany and rewarding, and I'm quite sad to see everyone drifting away to airplanes.

There were nine of us in training, with another contingent of about six people who came and went in the house. We all became quite close, have shared some crazy times, and have definitely helped each other's learning process. I feel I've come away from training with a lot, and that's due in large part to how great our group was. Here is a group shot of us at Niagara Falls (back row: Sara, Rachel, Jean-Luc, Veronic, Dave, Louis, Chad and Monica. Front row: Mike, Me, Kathleen and Sarah).

Tomorrow, Monica and I will be flying from Toronto for Accra, Ghana. There, we’ll be met by an overseas EWB volunteer, Tom. Tom is going to take us on a bit of a trip across Ghana, eventually depositing me in Tamale, which is in the Northern Region of Ghana (see the map). This will be my home base for the coming year. Tom will then take Monica back to the capital city of Accra, where she’ll be based.

I'm definitely getting the butterflies now, but that's tempered by the knowledge that I've been given an incredible opportunity. This is an opportunity both for personal growth and learning, and also an opportunity to do work that will have a positive impact on people's lives. This is quite exciting, and as depature date rolls closers, I'm more and more glad that I decided to fill out the EWB application way back in August!

This is just a preliminary intro posting. Please check back regularly, and feel free to leave me messages. I will definitely appreciate it, and I'll be thinking of all of you tomorrow as I'm being hurled across the ocean. Kaloo kalay!

First test posting

2006-02-05T14:46:00.000-05:00

First test of my blog.

FIRST TEST!