Ghana Turns 55!

On March 6, 1957, Ghana became a free country; not only a free country, but the FIRST former colony to be freed in Africa. Fifty-five years. That’s really not a long time at all. When you learn about colonialism in school, it seems like something that happened so long ago. (It is history, after all.) So sometimes I forget how recent all of Ghana’s history really is.

Just for fun, let’s travel back in time for a second..er...paragraph, to when America was turning 55. This puts us at what, 1831? I’m a little sleepy for math. So 55 years after the US becomes independent from Britain (just like Ghana), we were a mere 24 states, predominantly a rural country, and Mr. Andrew Jackson was our President. Darwin began his voyage on board HMS Beagle. Nat Turner was captured, arrested, and hung for inciting bloody slave revolts. Oil lamps were the most popular form of lighting, as gas lamps were only available in cities. Corn husking and, quilting-bees were the height of entertainment, but of course sewing machines did not exist at this point. And the price of pantaloons went up ten-fold! (Ok that last one I made up...)

I’m not necessarily trying to make a point with any of this, but I think it adds an interesting perspective. This is what happens when I’m trying to blog whilst I’m really just too tired to do so.

Anyway, back to Ghana turning 55.



Like most independence celebrations, one of the main activities is a parade. Fortunately I have one co-worker who was willing to go with me. So, at seven in the morning, we trudged down to Independence Square for the annual parade. The parade itself doesn’t start until nine, but in order to get a seat, you’ve got to get there early.

First on the list of festivities is the processional is every branch of the armed forces imaginable marching through and lining up in the square, followed by groups of students from a select few Accra schools, all while the marching band plays in the background.



After everyone is lined up, a motorcade of vehicles brings in major political figures, like the former President, the Vice President, and finally, the President himself. After they are all seated in the front, the band plays some more, marches around, and does some fancy baton twirling. One of the conductors dropped his baton, causing the whole crowd to gasp.

Then everyone rises while national anthem is played. From there, the President gives his keynote address. I honestly don’t know what the President’s speech was about. He is very soft spoken to begin with, but, according to rumors, he also has throat cancer, which makes him even harder to understand. When the President finished his speech, he got into the back of an open vehicle and drove through the lines of people who paraded in, to end up in the front of the square, where he got down and lit the goblet of fire. (Clearly I don’t know what it’s actually called.) But it is supposed to represent the flame/spirit of Ghana’s independence.



After the President is safely back in his seat, the “special forces” march through, which are basically the front lines of the army and navy. Side note—the navy has a sense of humor. Its hard to tell in the pictures, but they have snorkel masks on their heads, and flippers attached to their backpacks. Once the special forces are lined up, all of the vehicles of the various armed forces drive through the square: tanks, bazooka-looking cars, fire engines..etc.



I asked my coworker why there’s so much focus on the military, and he said that Independence Day is a chance for Ghana to show the rest of the world that they are capable of handling their own affairs. He also pointed to a number of large ships just off the coast of the square, who were supposedly protecting Ghana from being bombed? :/ My coworker told me that recently, Ghana recognized Kosovo as an independent state, which made Serbia angry. But personally I think Serbia bombing Ghana is extremely unlikely. I need to start following Ghanaian newspapers…

Ok, time for a horse tangent, because I was dying of laughter at several points during the ceremony because the horses were ridiculous. There were three horses involved in the ceremony. One of them, who was stationed next to a line of soldiers, kept backing up into the line of people. This happened several times, before someone was commissioned to come hold the horse still. About mid-way through the ceremony, they switched that one horse out for another, who did stand quietly, but also refused to move forward with the soldiers where they started marching again. The poor same guy who had to hold the last horse had to come out and chase the new horse to make it move. It was hilarious! I had summer camp flashbacks. Ghana needs a new horse trainer.



But back to the ceremony. After the armored vehicles make their rounds, canons are fired from behind the Independence arch, located at the top of the square. The everyone who marched in, had to march back out again. Two things I found particularly interesting: 1.Despite all of the police, army, navy..etc, present and marching, there was not a single security checkpoint to get in. Even though the president was there. 2. More people cheered for the former President than they did for the current President.

Just to prove I was there :)



After the morning festivities, since it’s a national holiday and no one goes to work, most people go to the beach to relax. I went to the beach for a while, but I have some friends who are part of a theater group, and they were putting on a performance in honor of independence day, so I went to that in the evening. The show was called, “Nkrumah in Love,” Nkrumah being the first President of Ghana. (I think the title is a play-off of “Shakespeare in Love”, but I’ve never seen that movie so I have no idea if the entire show was a parallel.)

The play was a satirical representation of the life of Kwame Nkrumah, starting with his declaring Ghana a free country at the Accra Polo Grounds. Most of the humor comes from the fact that everyone seems to have a different opinion of Nkrumah, which was also true in real life. Was he a liberator? An intellectual? A pan-African leader? A socialist? The show continually contrasted Nkrumah with people from different stratas of society, like the British nationals, the educated “elite,” the common people, and the military. Everyone did a great job--It was a pretty funny show.



Ok, I think this post is getting to be too long, and I am sufficiently tired. Quarterly training starts tomorrow, so I really need to get some sleep!

Ketchup...? Catsup...? Catch-up...?

Are you here to solve my ketchup, catsup, catch-up problem?

(I think my brothers are the only ones who'll get that one...)

Alright. Hiatus over. Let’s see how quick I can run through the past month since arriving back in Ghana. This going to be a very short, fairly boring update. Get excited?

First things first, I ended up getting a promotion before coming back, which means I am now a full-time SALARIED employee…which is terrific. I’m a big girl now, see my big girl shoes. The promotion only added to my responsibilities, so in addition to doing the job I was doing before, I am now going to stakeholder meetings (scary!), doing a lot of networking, and trying to find new local partners in Ghana = I’m a busy little babushka. But that suits me just fine :)

I was very much expecting to find an ugly-bug ball (gotta crawl gotta crawl) in full swing when I arrived back at my apartment, but I only found a few doing the cucaracha when I got back. I DID however, have a lack of electricity (I got back around 11pm), which made unpacking quite an adventure. I also arrived back in Ghana was a mere 10hr head start on my company’s President! I was soooo nervous for his visit, but everything went fine. He was only here for three days, and we had such a jam-packed schedule, full of meetings with various people all over Accra, that I just plum didn’t have time to make a fool out of myself. Oh well, maybe next time.

Let’s see. What else what else. Oh! My computer died three days after the President left (one WEEK after getting back to Ghana!), which is partially why I have not been blogging recently. And I STILL don’t have my laptop back. I’ve been using a borrowed computer. Supposedly it will be fixed by next Thursday. But I’ve heard that before.

Another cool thing that happened…well, cool might only be applicable if you’re a nerd like me. Anyway, the government of Ghana put together an AIDS Expo, where all local organizations who are working on the AIDS epidemic could put together little displays of what they’ve been doing. It was a three day event, but on the last day, the Executive director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibe, came to the expo. After he had a chance to look at various booths, he held a meeting with a small group of organization representatives; I got to be one of them. Not only that, I got to meet him! He came right up to me after the meeting and asked about what I was doing in Ghana. SO cooool. I know I’m a geek, but hey, if the UN was a rock band, Michel Sidibe would be the drummer. Or at least the tambourine player…the UN is a large organization…

Other than that it’s just been mostly work work work.

And that brings us up to the present! Or as close to the present as I have time to go right now. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep the matzo ball rolling this weekend. Happy Purim :)

P.S. I'm converting Capitals fans wherever I go! (Because everyone cares about ice hockey in Ghana...right)

A Day in the Life

It's time to for a special Christmas blogebration! Yayyyy!

A little background--my parents are always telling me that they like to visualize what I’m doing. And this doesn’t just apply to travelling. When I was in college my Dad would copy down my class schedule so he could visualize what class I was in at any given time. (Hey Dad..loooove you!) SO. To help them get a better sense of what my days here are like, I’ve compiled a series of short video clips taken at different points throughout my day!

I couldn't get the videos to upload directly to blogger, so I embedded links that will take you to the videos on youtube.

Disclaimer: Now before you watch these, I need to apologize for the awkward narration, and the random outbursts of song. I will not be offended if you watch these on mute...well…actually…I’ll never know the difference, will I? Do whatchoo gotta do.

ACTION:

Part 1-The Homestead

The first stop on our journey is a quick tour of my apartment, situated in a neighborhood called South Labadi. I’ve lived here for over a month now, but don’t judge me (mairo!) for its emptiness. I have made ZERO effort to decorate it, or make it homey. The reason for this is not entirely that I’m stingy and lazy, but because I am going to be moving in the next month or so to a different part of town. Well, I was actually supposed to move last week, but it’s been delayed, so who knows if I’ll actually move...maybe I should just suck it up and decorate, but I digress.

Back to the point. In Accra, you are supposed to pay rent for the entire amount of time you will be renting in full the day you move in (which I think is so so silly), but since I might be moving and don’t know how long I’m going to be here, they’re letting me pay monthly. The apartment is owned by the Aunt of one of my coworkers, so they have been especially tolerant of my noncommittal ways. Water and electricity are a little spotty, but all in all, it’s a decent place to live!

To watch part one CLICK HERE





Part 2-The Crossroads

The second video is taken on the main road that runs East-West up the coast of Accra, called Labadi Road. This is where I walk to pick up a tro-tro on the way to work, and where the tro-tro drops me off on the way home.

To watch part two CLICK HERE





Part 3-The Commute

Step three in my day takes place on the tro-tro to work! Now, not all tro-tros take the same route, so I usually have to wait a little for the one I need (which goes to Teshie-Nunguo, an area East of downtown Accra). Now this video is not the greatest quality, so sorry about that. It’s another example of me pretending I’m on the phone, while I’m actually taking a video.

To watch part three CLICK HERE





Part 4-The Junction

The fourth leg of this journey brings us to First Junction, which is the intersection in Teshie where I get off the tro-tro and switch to a flat-rate taxi that takes me to the office. It is a pretty commercial area—lots of little businesses, a huge filling station, and people selling things on the street. It’s also a major transit area where you can get a car/taxi to pretty much anywhere in Accra. There’s a great shot of my shoes in the beginning…I’m a fantastic cinematographer.

To watch part four CLICK HERE





Part 5-The Return

Fifth in this delightful journey, after fast forwarding through the work day, is taken from the tro-tro on the way home. The front seat of the tro-tro, which is the vantage point of this video, is coveted by most passengers because it provides a little extra room that is not afforded elsewhere in the tro-tro. A lot of time, as a white-girl, the tro-tro stewards, or mates as they’re called, like to have me sit in the front. This is nice in theory, but I also have visions of myself flying through the windshield, because as you can see in the video, the tro-tros stop and go pretty quickly..and there ain’t no seatbelts (yes, Nathan, I punch myself in the arm).

In this video, you can also here the mate yelling “Accra, Labadi,” which is telling people in the street where the tro-tro is heading. You can also see, when the tro-tro starts to stop, a couple of girls with containers of water on their heads approach the car. Whenever a car stops, especially outside of the city, it is bombarded with people selling things. These girls are way more passive than most.

To watch part five CLICK HERE





Part 6-The Bottleneck

This rather mundane video (of me...crossing the street…?) is just showing how ridiculous traffic can be in Accra. It’s taken at the stop where I get off the tro-tro from work.

To watch part six CLICK HERE





Part 7- The Hood

The seventh tier of our journey brings us back to my neighborhood, South La. You can see a bunch of little stores and things where I can get basics that I might need throughout the week. Larger grocery runs are made at the market. But the market is a whole different ballgame. Anyway, it’s a nice, fairly quiet neighborhood, right by the beach.

To watch part seven CLICK HERE





Part 8- Three Heel Clicks Later

The final leg of the trip was taken on the street where my apartment is located. The first shot you see is of a church, and I’m NOT going to go into detail about this church because that will turn into a ten page rant, but you can hear a guy start to yell at me in the background, trying to get me to come back and talk to him, which I have done before and regretted. The short version of this story is the people who run this church are convinced that it’s their mission to save my soul and bring me back to Jesus. (Yet after professing this, the dude asked me out…I’ll tell THAT whole story at a different time.)

To watch part eight CLICK HERE


And this is where our journey ends. Back at my apartment. Roll credits.

Monkey Business

Not to build suspense, or raise expectations, but this might be the coolest thing I’ve done so far.

It started with another business trip to the Volta region. Two of my colleagues and I were going to conduct a monitoring visit with the eight new peer educators we had hired back at the beginning of November. We left Accra on Thursday, and were planning on staying in Ho (capital of the Volta region) for two days. After the review meeting, we traveled to each of the eight project sites, to see where each of the peer educators works and to get a better understanding of the Volta region in general, since it is a new project site for us. And because, believe it or not, it was our accountant’s first time there!

Now, one of our peer educators works in Hohoe (pronounced, Ho-hoy), which is about two hours North from Ho, on the other side of the mountain. So, rather than travelling two hours there, and two hours back, we decided, (with a bit of pushing on my part), to stay the second night in Hohoe. My reasoning, if you remember from the last post about Volta, was that the monkey sanctuary is near Hohoe. And we were going to be there on a Friday :)

Hohoe, as a town, is much smaller than Ho, and as it is further North, the climate is much drier and dustier than Accra. Pretty reminiscent of the red dust in Niger that always manages to get on everything. So after finishing up our work in Hohoe, my coworkers and I went to the Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary! The sanctuary is about 30 mins away from Hohoe, pretty far into the bush. One of my coworkers knew some people in Hohoe, so we had a car to take us out there.

The sanctuary itself is in a teeny little village, in the middle of the jungle/forest/large grouping of trees and other vegetation…I’m not sure what the proper term is. I’m going to call it jungle. It sounds cooler. But anyway, you basically just grab a guide and a bunch of bananas and walk straight into the jungle. After about 10 minutes of walking, our guide started making loud kissing noises. And then. Just like in Jurassic Park, you hear a distant rustling of leaves that gets closer and closer and closer, encircling you, until (!), you are surrounded by monkeys!

This particular species of monkey is called the Mona monkey. According to our guide, the Mona monkeys live in groups of about 30-40, and there are at least three distinct herds/gangs/flocks/tribes (again, I don’t know what the correct word is…) that live in this particular jungle, each with its own male leader. The guide also told us that the monkeys are not afraid or shy, but they know when people don’t have any bananas, and won’t approach unless you do. (Or maybe they would if you had a big yellow hat).Bananas don’t grow in this particular part of the jungle, only plantains do, which is why they are such a treat. Usually, the Mona monkeys just eat berries, insects, and nuts. But fortunately, we had our banana offering for the monkey chief.

And now, brief tangent for my brother, who insists that I bring him a monkey as a souvenir:

In Southern Ghana, there are a lot of palm tree that produce a sticky white sap, that when fermented in the hot African sun, becomes a fairly alcoholic drink called palm wine. Now, palm wine to me is pretty nasty, its a little sour and a little pungent, but, because it's natural and comes from trees found in the monkey sanctuary jungle, I'm thinking a monkey would drink it. This was confirmed by my guide, who afterwards, watched me rather suspiciously.

But anyway, I'm thinking, silly brother of mine, that if you come visit me, we can go to the monkey sanctuary, get one of the monkeys drunk off of palm wine, and then sneak it back to my apartment. THEN we can train it sit on your back and look like one of those stupid animal backpacks that people seem to be wearing these days, so you can take it on the plane. Or we can just tranquilize it and stuff it in your suitcase. Either way, you can take it back to your apartment to be BFF with Bowser. Sound like a plan?

Ok. Tangent over.

To feed the monkeys, you are supposed to hold the banana firmly at the base, and then the monkey, or monkeys, peel the banana, and grab little fistfuls until the banana is gone. If you don’t hold the banana firmly enough, the monkey will take it from you and run away, to keep from having to share with any of his monkey friends.

After about 10 minutes, there were at least twenty monkeys surrounding us. Which meant you couldn’t keep an eye on all of them at once. Which lead to the following progression of pictures:

First, this little guy jumped on me from behind when I wasn’t looking. In the picture, I think I look scared, but really I was just surprised.

Second, the monkey crawled onto my shoulder and began eating the banana that I was holding.

And then, my vision was obscured by monkey fur. At one point, I had three monkeys on my shoulders, playfully squabbling over the banana. Now that’s what I call have a monkey on your back (ba dum chshhhhhh).

We only had one bunch of bananas, which is about 8, so after we ran out, the monkeys got bored and moved on. My coworkers, the guide, and I continued to walk through the jungle for a little while. In addition to monkey business, it turns out the guide also knew a lot about the different types of trees and stuff. He also kept telling us to look out for snakes, which made me nervous, but thankfully we didn’t come across any. (Ghana has a lot of scary snakes, including the black mamba, the largest venomous snake in Africa!)

After goofing around in the jungle for a while, we got back to the village, only to discover that our car engine had died. There’s not even a doctor in that village, let alone a mechanic. Our poor driver popped the hood and did his best to make the car run, but since it was getting late in the afternoon, and we figured it would be much trickier to get back to Hohoe in the dark, we decided to abandon the car for the time being.

Now this village, like I said, is very small and sort of out of the way, which means that there are no taxis, or trotros, at least not regularly. So, we had to hire three guys with motorcycles to transport us the 6km back to the nearest town, Logbe. It was a bumpy, dusty journey, but fun nonetheless. From Logbe, we were able to catch a trotro back to Hohoe.

And the sun set on another awesome day in Ghana. (a cheesy ending for a fruity story..who doesn't love corny wordplay?)

Happy Monday!

Clearly, we're all hard at work here...

Quick Updates

Since it’s been a little while, I thought I would give some updates on what I’ve been doing for the past three weeks...which is mainly just working. But I have been doing a few other things as well...

Updates:

1.Work stuff (Feel free to skip) -- My company just submitted a grant proposal to USAID that would give us about $400,000 over two years, to scale up programming in Ghana. And since I’m currently the only one on the ground here, a lot of the legwork fell to me. Right now, we are only partnered with one Ghanaian CBO (Community Based Organization) but we are trying to expand to work with five new ones. SO I’ve been running around meeting with potential local partners, and helping to write out the 40 page proposal. But we finished (yay!), and turned it in on Dec 1. Just in time for World AIDS Day! (more on that below).

2. My apartment – I’m still in the same place for now, but I’ve been told that I’m now going to be moving in Dec. But we’ll see. Other updates: There was something wrong with my water tank for a while, so I just recently got running water again. I’ve also recently developed an increased problem with roaches. It’s starting to feel like that scene in Men in Black (squish ..“Oops, was that your Auntie? Then that means, this must be your Uncle”.. .squish “You know all of y’all look alike to me.”) which would explain why I keep having nightmares about mammoth alien insects. I will say, though, that whoever said it’s hard to kill a cockroach clearly didn’t try just chopping the damn thing in half with a butcher’s knife (hassann-chop!). Or maybe they just didn’t have my ninja speed…

3. Exploration! -- Because Accra is such a huge city, I started by exploring the “bubble” around my apartment, and since then have slowly been increasing the radius of this “bubble” each week. This week’s “bubble” happened to extend to Independence Square, and the National Museum.

Independence Square is pretty self-explanatory. Constructed under Ghana’s first President, Kwame Nkrumah, it commemorates the independence of Ghana, March 6, 1957 (the first country in Sub Saharan Africa to achieve independence!) The square is right by the ocean, and is used for gatherings/demonstrations/parades on many different holidays. You can see in the picture that there are a bunch of tents and things being taken down—the tents were put up for Tabaski, so that Muslims could gather and pray without being liquefied by the hot African sun.

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The National Museum was constructed in 1960, and is mostly ethnographic exhibits of different cultural traditions in Ghana. It’s a little bit small and at the time, my friend and constituted half of the people there, but overall it was a pretty interesting visit. Some of the highlights—

Snake charmers hold the snakes between their teeth in a contest to show who has more spiritual power and superiority. (This will probably be the subject of my next series of nightmares.)

These papier-mâché mannequins are showing a traditional dance of the Ewe people. The point of the dance is literally to look as ridiculous as possible. Also please notice the posterior on that woman. You could use that thing as a shelf. Or maybe even an umbrella.

They had a really cool exhibit on the evolution of African music, where you could listen to clips of everything from traditional chants to modern hip-hop. I think I’m jamming to some sweet Jazz in this picture…

This is a necklace made entirely out of human teeth. I don’t know what the reasoning behind it was, but you have to admit it’s pretty badass. Anyone want to venture a guess as to how many mouths it took to make this?

4. World AIDS Day – In celebration of World AIDS Day, my company organized a night of interactive theater for some of the communities that we work it. The theater performance was called “HIV Demystified,” and that’s about all I understood, because the whole thing was performed in Ga. I asked my coworker sitting next me, “What’s happening?” His answer, “It’s about HIV.” Great, that’s so helpful. Because HIV ISN’T in the title. (sidenote: It was actually about myths and stigma, but I didn't learn that until later).

Apparently it was funny, because everyone was laughing, but I had no idea what was going on. Which made it all the more awesome when they pulled me on stage (and let’s face it, as soon as I said interactive, you knew this was coming). But the fact that I had no clue what was going on only made the show all the more entertaining for the rest of the audience. Yelling at me in Ga is everyone’s favorite pastime around the office, as I think I mentioned in an earlier post.

Anyway, after the show, there was food and drinks, loud music and mingling. It was a fun evening. As the event was coming to a close, I happened to turn around and notice that a bunch of neighborhood kids had gathered behind us and were dancing to the music. It was pretty hilarious. The video is dark, but you get the idea. The entire event turned into one big dance party at the end anyway. No, I’m not joking. I have picture proof. Gotta love Africa!

Apologies

I sincerely apologize for the recent lack of updates. I had an entire entry mapped out, showing video clips from daily life here. However, I severely underestimated how long it would take to upload eight different videos. (Stupid internet ruins everything..grumble grumble.) So stay tuned for that full entry at some point in the future.

Here is the only video I have managed to upload so far. Which was supposed to be last in the mini-series. Le sigh..0h wellll. If nothing else, living in a developing country teaches you how to be flexible.

But I hope everyone had a marvelous Thanksgiving!