World Water Day

In case you were unaware, the 22^nd of March was World Water Day. To celebrate the day I attended an inauguration ceremony for a water facility in Aveme, a community along the Volta River. For the previous nine months or so, my NGO and I have been working the community to prepare them for the water facility. This included forming and training a Water Board composed of community members to manage the facility. We are trained school children, food vendors, and natural leaders in the community on the importance of using clean water. We hope that the people we trained will eventually educate the rest of the community.

The water facility, provided by Safe Water Network, pumps water from the Volta River and filters it using slow sand filtration. The interesting part about the slow sand filter is that it uses a natural biological process to clean the water as opposed to other filters that use UV rays, chemicals, etc.

The water is filtered to United States standards. After the ceremony I drank some of the water directly from the tap and it tasted very pure. In fact, I think I may have gotten a little sick the next day because my body isn’t used to drinking water that pure.

Free water! Free anything will cause a mob in Ghana.

For more reading on the facility’s inauguration you can read Ghana WASH’s press release here:

http://ghanawashproject.org/world-water-day-aveme-safe-water/

Easter Weekend

Easter is a big deal in Ghana, especially in the Volta Region. It’s probably a bigger deal here in Ghana than in the U.S. For instance, the day after Easter is a Government holiday in Ghana, but not in America. Ghanaians also celebrate Easter differently than Americans. There aren’t Easter Bunnies, colorful eggs, and toffee (all candy is called toffee) in Ghana. However, Ghanaians do have unique ways to celebrate Easter.

On Saturday, the day before Easter, an annual custom in my traditional area of Abutia took place. People from Abutia dress in red and bring out their drums and hunting rifles to parade dance around the community. During the parade they play war songs, dance war dances, and fire their rifles in the air. The whole event is led by the war chief of Abutia who lives in Norway, but came back to Ghana for the festivities.

Some D&D (drumming and dancing).

On Sunday I went to church in my community. However, instead of a normal two and half to three hour service, we received a five-hour service, partly because more than 50 people were baptized. After church it proceeded to rain for the rest of the night, which was nice because the weather was cool. We also had our regularly scheduled “light off” from 6am to 6pm. Every three days the Government has been turning off our power during those times to save electricity.

Me and the pastor.

WADA Water

Here is an article about a water system Ghana WASH helped build in Asukawkaw, Volta Region, Ghana. Asukawkaw is about a three hour drive from my community.

http://ghanawashproject.org/news-media/success-stories/wada-water-asukawkaw/

I thought this part of the article is very indicative of development work:

While Cornelia and others are ready to patronize the new water center, there are still some who continue to source water from the river. Cornelia says these households know that it is the water making their families sick, but it will take time to change everyone’s behavior.

It is easy to give a community water facilities, toilets, etc. But changing people’s bad habits is very difficult. It is especially frustrating because the change is a gradual process and often occurs many years down the road. Many times you never see the fruits of your effort.

Disclaimer: I had very little involvement with this project.

Holidays in Ghana

In some ways the holidays in Ghana are similar to the holidays in America. When the holiday season rolls around the weather in America generally turns colder. Well, the same is true in Ghana. Although instead of rainstorms or snowstorms, we get dust storms. By the middle of December the Harmattan is in full affect in Ghana. Winds carry the sand south from the Sahara desert in northern Africa to create dry and slightly cooler weather in Ghana. It reminds of the “Santa Anna” weather in southern California where the weather is dry and windy. Except the Harmattan creates a visible layer of dust in the sky. It also brings cooler weather – sometimes the low temperature is in the 60s. I must be turning Ghanaian because at times I get cold!

Although the cooler weather is a nice reprieve from the hotter and humid weather during the rest of the year, the Harmattan comes with a couple of annoyances. Your throat and mouth become very dry. If you’re not careful you will get sick (maybe that’s why the Peace Corps gave all volunteers a flu shot). When travelling on dirt roads (which is hard to avoid in Ghana) you will be covered with a layer of dust.

Like in American, in Ghana everyone wants a present. I can’t walk around my community without someone asking me where their Christmas present or “Xmas bonus” is. I wrote before that when I leave my community people ask me to buy them bread. I suppose it’s a similar concept. Unfortunately my modest Peace Corps living allowance doesn’t permit me to buy a Christmas gift for everyone in my community. That said, I did buy some small gifts for people living in my house.

The day after Christmas, or Boxing Day (yes, Boxing Day is a holiday in Ghana), my landlord’s clan, the Nyive clan, met outside the house for a Boxing Day meeting. There are 8 different clans in my community, although if nobody told you would probably never notice. My community seems pretty homogenous (though maybe I’m not very observant?) I suppose since my house is on the Nyive clan’s property, I’m part of the Nyive clan by default. In short, the meeting consisted of discussing community issues and clan issues. After the meeting everyone in the clan got a bag of rice, bottle of soda, and a pack of biscuits as their Xmas bonus. Finally I took a photo with the clan elders.

Where’s waldo? Next time I’ll wear Ghanaian traditional wear.

Between Christmas and New Years I went to a monkey sanctuary about an hour drive away from my community. The big attraction at the sanctuary is to by able to feed bananas to mono monkeys. If you’re lucky they will even crawl on you while eating. Unfortunately a group of tourists had just left as I arrived, so the monkeys were full from the previous group.

I was worried the monkeys would steal my camera.

New Years seemed like a bigger deal than Christmas in my community. On New Years Eve I went to church and it turned out to be a marathon session. I arrived at 7pm and the service lasted until 1am. To some people that may sound like a torturous way to kick in the New Year, but most of the time was spent singing and dancing so it was actually fun and entertaining. Another reason I was happy to be in church for New Years was because the shopkeepers in town will sell fireworks to anybody and I’d rather not be in town with ten-year olds wielding explosives. After the service we paraded around town with more singing and dancing. I spent most of New Years day recovering from the previous night. I usually hit the sack before 9pm, so staying up until 2am was a big shock to my system.

LPG

I read that there was a “gas crisis” recently in California. Gas can be problematic in Ghana as well. Every now and then while in my regional capital, Ho, I’ll see a line of taxis at least 2 kilometers long at a single gas station in town. I wondered why all of the taxis were parked in a line at this particular gas station. Later, I discovered that the taxis are in line for Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), otherwise known as propane. This is because most of the taxi-drivers in town have converted their vehicles to run on LPG and there always seems to be a shortage of LPG in Ghana.

This photo doesn’t do the lines justice, but it’s the best I could do while sticking my head out of the window of a moving car.

Why would taxi-drivers convert their vehicles to run on LPG? It’s cheaper to run your vehicle on LPG than petrol. Why? The Government of Ghana is subsidizing LPG to encourage its use for cooking, rather than firewood and charcoal. However, a large portion of the gas is being used for transport rather than cooking. This is part of the reason LPG is in short supply in Ghana. In fact, if you’re unlucky and your propane tank runs out of gas at the wrong time it might take weeks to get it refilled. So you will have to go back to cooking with charcoal and a coal-pot, which is what almost everyone in my community uses to cook with in the first place.

Just because many of the taxis run on LPG, doesn’t mean every car in Ghana does. Most private vehicles run on standard petrol. The “gas-station experience” is slightly different in Ghana. First, there is almost never a line for petrol, even though stations usually only have a handful of pumps. Second, each pump is manned or womanned with an attendant that will pump your gas. You don’t ever have to leave your car. So as long as you’re not buying LPG, getting gas for your car is stress-free in Ghana!

Crickets

In Ghana summer, fall, winter, and spring don’t exist. The only two seasons are the “rainy season” and “dry season”. You can also think of the two seasons as REALLY hot and hot. We have been in the rainy season here for the last couple of months.

You can imagine how loud these things are.

During the rainy season there is an abundance of critters. The other morning some of the children in my village were digging small holes in the ground with machetes. After some investigation I discovered that they were hunting for crickets. Back in America some children like to play with insects. However, these children weren’t just having a good time, they were hunting for their lunch. Later that day the children came to my house with about a dozen huge crickets in a bag.

I wasn’t ready to try grilled cricket, especially one prepared by a child.

Volta Regional Spelling Bee

Two weeks ago I volunteered at the Volta Regional Spelling Bee in Ho. Each region in Ghana, except the Western and Upper West regions, has a regional spelling bee. After the dust settles the top spellers from each region compete in the Ghana National Spelling Bee in Accra. The winner in Accra will represent Ghana at the 86th Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. (not sure why it’s called  “national” when there are foreign countries competing). In fact, last year the top Ghanaian speller came from the Volta Region and won himself a trip Washington D.C.

When I agreed to volunteer, it wasn’t very clear what I was going to do. I don’t have any experience with spelling bees besides elementary school class competitions and being disappointed by ESPN televising the Scripps National Spelling Bee instead of an actual sport. At the event I was thrust in being a word recorder. My job was to transcribe each contestant’s spelling of the word, mark whether the contestant asked for any hints (part of speech, definition, use in a sentence, etc.), and mark whether the contestant got the word right. I was surprised that the spelling bee coordinators entrusted this job to a random Joe off the streets who has no experience with spelling bees. Though, on the other hand, many Peace Corps volunteers have worked with the spelling bee before, so I supposed I wasn’t just any random Joe.

You could cut the tension with a knife.

Coming into the spelling bee I thought it would be a grueling event comprised of many rounds. However, after the first round exactly half of the spellers were eliminated. We started with 52 and by round two we were left with 26. The words get more difficult after each round and it showed during round two. After two rounds, only five spellers remained. Since the Volta region could send at most six spellers to the national competition, the spelling bee ended after only two rounds and the five remaining spellers were invited to Accra for a chance to represent Ghana in the Scripps International Spelling Bee in Washington D.C.

The top 5 spellers from the Volta Region. They will be competing in Accra in February.

The spelling bee is a great opportunity for children living in rural villages. It provides them with a fun way to learn English and gives them the opportunity to compete in regional capitals and potentially Accra. Most village children never get the opportunity to visit a large city. Hopefully I can get the schools in my village interested in the spelling bee so next year I’ll be talking about how students from Abutia Teti competed in the Regional Spelling Bee.