Training Session in Bolga

This is a long post, my apologies. I hope the story is worth the read.

Once a month, each District of MoFA provides all of the Agricultural Extension Agents (AEAs) with a training day. In an attempt to get more AEAs engaged in the Agriculture As A Business program, we asked for permission to use three hours of the training day to provide a workshop on our curriculum. We got permission on Tuesday afternoon for a training day on Thursday. Yikes! That’s not much time to prepare – thankfully Meghan has done this workshop before and had ideas of what to do. My immediate task was to get some t-shirts made, Meghan had decided that if people sign up for the curriculum, they would get a shirt…some things are universal – people like free stuff!!!

So begins the epic journey. I went out to find someone who could make 30 shirts in just over 24 hours. This might be a challenge in Canada, but in Ghana it is an adventure. I set out on my bicycle (pink helmet on head!) and start biking around looking for a place that prints shirts. I see a place and navigate my bike there. It’s about 4:30 pm and the girls sitting at the stand say that the person who prints the shirts is away and that I should come back tomorrow. But I need them done by tomorrow!

I see another place and bike over – they think they can do it, but need to see if they have all the shirts. I agree to wait until he can find out…a little boy runs to get me a stool to sit on while I wait. Since it’s about 10000 degrees and I know that five Ghanaian minutes is not 300 seconds, I sit down to wait for Peter the printing dude to return. His two brothers are sitting there and start talking to me. We go through the standard questions – bare in mind there are variations!

Them (T): Wuhtenga (Good afternoon)
Me (C): namba (response)
T: lawonie (how are you?)
C: la an son wumi an wonie? (I’m fine, how are you?)
T: La an son…hahahahahaha (I’m fine…lots of laughter!) You speak frafra!!!
C: Only small-small (ie: don’t ask me anything else because I won’t have a clue what you’re saying!)
T: Where do you stay?
C: I stay in Bolga

Then the conversation can go many ways –
But where are you from? You should marry me and take me to Canada. Can I get your number so we can be friends? How long will you stay? Etc. etc.

Thankfully, this conversation continues like this:

T: Where are you from?
C: Canada
T: How do you find Ghana?
C: Oh, it’s very beautiful. I like Ghana.
T: Then you should stay, how long are you staying? You should stay longer.
C: I can only stay for five months, until December but I am very glad to be here.
T: I know someone from the UK, his name is (insert random person’s name here!). Then look at me wondering if I know him. Haha.
T: Is it true that where you people come from, you can do (insert something that sounds amazing to Ghanaians like getting paid by the hour)?
C: I try to answer these questions as honestly as possible. Yes, we have more options in Canada, but Canada IS NOT perfect.
T: I wish I could go to Canada to see what it’s like, just like how you came to Ghana to see what it’s like and to learn about us. It’s not easy for us to go to Canada, not like how easy it is for you to come here.
C: I wish that one day you will be able to visit Canada too, but it wasn’t easy for me to come here. It took a lot of planning and fundraising to get me here.
T: Are you married?
C: No
T: Are you done school?
C: Yes
T: Then why aren’t you married?
C: I haven’t found the person I want to marry yet.
T: You could marry me
AWKWARD SILENCE
It doesn’t matter how you answer this question – they have something ready for every response. Partly I think they’re joking. If you say you don’t want to get married, they tell you that the Bible says to go forth and multiple or they ask if anyone in Canada would marry someone who doesn’t want children; if you say I don’t love you, how could I marry you they say we can get to know each other; if you say you’re married – then you’re safe! I’ve been thinking about inventing some kind, lovely person (a Brad Pitt look alike maybe? Only younger…) at home. Occasionally I say, “Yes, let’s get married. Are you ok being husband number 2?” This usually stops the conversation, we both laugh, and we get to move on to other items…like, what religion are you? An awesome thing here is that religion is really important to people but with all the different religions it seems very peaceful and nobody seems to mind what religion you are…maybe this is because I haven’t dug deeper into this topic but on a surface level, I like this.

While we are sitting there is a random sketchy looking dude who keeps coming and saying hello to me. He is dressed in a one-piece blue coverall outfit with a baseball cap. He keeps saying hello and wants my bike helmet. I almost want to get him to try it on, just because I think it would go well with the rest of his outfit, but I also really like my helmet. He hangs around and won’t leave. The men tell me not to talk to him because whenever he sees “people like you” he wants things and he won’t leave you alone. They start to call him my bodyguard and find it funny but want to make sure that I’m safe and don’t talk with him when I’m alone. I assure them that if they weren’t there I would have definitely not stay around this man.

By this point it’s getting dark and I put on bug spray. I am asked: What is that? How does it work? Do mosquitoes have malaria in Canada? Etc.

Anyway, Peter, the printing guy, comes back saying that he can get the shirts. He asks if I have an electronic copy of the logo we want putting on the shirts since it would make the quality better. Off I go on my bike to find an electronic copy to put on a pen drive. I return and we attempt to put it on his computer. No luck. The drive won’t show up on his screen so eventually we go to his brothers and try several times. No luck. With the guarantee that they will all be done tomorrow afternoon, I am escorted back to the taxi station. I am SO grateful for this because it’s dark out – and there are open sewers, motos, cars, goats, chickens, and pedestrians and so much more zooming around the roads. (BTW, I have decided that if I am so unfortunate as to fall into one of the open sewers I am getting on the next flight home. This is my breaking point). Anyway, I get to the taxi stand and put my bike in the back of the cab, and squeeze in with about 5 or 6 other people. We are packed in like pickles. The scents, like the passengers, in a Ghanaian taxi cab are quite diverse. This makes me laugh and hold my breath. The elderly muslim man beside me smells like tea and keeps smiling and calling me sister and reminding me to be grateful to the Almighty. CHECK.

The next day at noon I am waiting for my AEA to pick me up for a farmer group meeting and I get a call from Peter, he can’t get the shirts. WHAT!? This was my main task for the meeting tomorrow – panic panic panic, breathe deeply. He says he can get 16 shirts and I say, done, do it, go, please! He says they’ll be done by 4 p.m and that he’ll call me when they’re done. But then rain happened. When it rains in Bolga (and maybe the whole of Ghana?!?), life stops. I return to Peter’s stall at about 5 p.m and wait while they work on the shirts. I have never seen shirts being printed and I find it fascinating! They put one colour on all the shirts and then move on to the next colour. I wait and wait until about 7 p.m when they say they won’t be done (because of the rain) and that I should come back tomorrow morning at 8 a.m to get them.
This is what they look like when I leave:


Knowing that 8 a.m doesn’t mean 8 a.m we return the following morning to get the shirts at 9 a.m. We leave with our shirts at about 9:30 a.m.

The finished product:

Peter will work on the rest of the shirts and I hope it goes well because we will need the rest of them for the training day workshop that we will do in Paga for Nadia next week. (She’s helping me with my workshop and I’ll be helping her with hers next Friday).

The training session was great – awesome!
Here is a picture from training day:


It was great to have Meghan there since she knew what she was doing. We started with an ice-breaker of jeopardy and then broke up into three groups. They had to describe how farmer groups that are novice, intermediate, and advanced in agri-business might view several topics, such as group meetings, finances, group projects. For example, finances for a farmer group with novice agri-business skills might not have a bank account and might not collect group money while a group that is advanced in agri-business skills might have a bank account that they regularly deposit money into and everyone in the group knows the bank balance. We did this to get them thinking about the different types of farmer groups that they are working with so that they might think about which of their groups could most benefit from agri-business training. We came back together as a whole and people presented their findings. I was surprised at how much everybody discussed the group breakdowns. We then introduced the AAB program. I will blog about the Curriculum later, this post is way too long as it is…at the end of the day, I got 11 AEAs signed up! I am so excited to get to work with AEAs and see them interact with farmer groups.

My birthday!

I definitely felt the love of my family and friends on my birthday – thank you!!! This picture shows me with my gifts – I remembered with happiness the amazingly beautiful and delicious cake Ruth made for me on her birthday in Mississauga – what I’d give for a piece of delicious chocolate cake with cream cheese icing. More than food though, I think often of my family and friends but I know that this experience will be unforgettable and that in less than four short months I will be back at home (ok, so it seems like a long way away but I’m sure time will fly!).

Work, slow!

Work has started out quite slowly, I have two agricultural extension agents (AEAs) to work with but one has gone back to school and so I basically only have one! This feeling of frustration was really getting to me – I left a job that was incredibly busy and well defined to find myself not entirely sure what to do and not really feeling like I had a purpose. Thankfully things are changing – I am co-hosting a training session on Thursday to try and engage extension agents into the program. I will also be working on a small research project that the District Director has asked me to work on. So hopefully within the next week and a half I should be able to start having an impact (even if it is small!) on farmer groups and AEAs in the Bolga District.

My first farmer group meeting:
I went with Victoria, my AEA, to my first group meeting. I wanted to find out from them where they were along the program and continue from there. I arrived on the back of the moto in one piecely (actually motorbikes here don’t go that quickly so it wasn’t that scary) and was given a chair to sit on while most of the woman sat on the ground. They decided to give me a local name, Ayinsonba, which is translated into “God’s gift to us”. Then they asked what I was going to do for them now that Aaron is gone. Yikes! Despite wanting to run away and jump on the next flight home, I kept my calm.
I realize that at home we give guests a nice seat and treat them with respect, but the name “God’s gift to us” made me feel really uncomfortable and I felt a lot of pressure. I realized later that it is a cultural difference and really, we’re all God’s gift to each other, all equally precious and valued. I spent about an hour talking with the farmer group, they were trying to decide upon a group project to work on together and to decide what they would like to do together – once this has been decided – Victoria will help them come up with a plan. It’s really important to me and to EWB that the AEA does the teaching and training and helps the farmer group with the business planning – I want Victoria to be able continue teaching AAB after I leave. I also want the groups to see what they can do – they have so much potential and I’m confident they can figure out how to make their dreams come true. I know I sound cheesy here, but this is truly the goal of the program.

Settling in

I am writing this post from my room in my new place in Zuarungu. This is where I plan to stay for the next four months. I haven’t posted in a while because it’s hard to write about what I am experiencing. Where do I start? How do I explain? I feel like an alien planted in a strange new land – for those of you who have never felt like an alien before, it is an exhilarating and slightly terrifying feeling!

Exactly one week ago I moved from Meghan’s house to my new house just down the road from her place. Meghan’s host family has hosted EWBers for the past several years since the mother, Vic, is an Agricultural Extension Agent who was involved in the Agriculture As A Business program. The next person I’d like to introduce you to is Zita, the incredible daughter who works, works, works; Mishack the funny son, Emmanuel the eldest son that I have met and who doesn’t talk much, and Issac and Peter, the two youngest kids who have slowly warmed up to me. It was really nice to come home to this warm family and I felt a bit sad to leave them, but I want to stay with a family and not be in Meghan’s hair and to be me in my own place. So here I am sitting on the floor of my new room.

My new casa. I have moved house many a time in my years, and this was unlike any move I have ever done! It was done in the dark! For some reasons that I’m not entirely sure of, I had to move in the dark (I was told that the villagers would talk if I moved in the day light) and half way to the new house my cell phone died and hence the light on my phone turned off and I had to wander around in the dark trying to find the new place. When I got here, everyone was asleep so I had to wake someone up and ask to be let into the room. This is an AWKWARD way to meet people! Especially when they speak little English and you speak little Frafra. The following morning was equally awkward, but things have quickly gotten much better.

My new host family. This place is buzzing! I’m not entirely sure who actually lives here as there is a constant stream of woman coming and going, nor am I entirely sure who is related to whom and how they are related. Families live together in compounds (basically like houses only they’re usually rooms placed in a circular shape to create an open space in the middle), and when a son gets married, his wife moves into the compound and they expand the compound if needed…and then if a daughter gets married she leaves the compound to move to her husbands compound. When I figure out who is related to whom, I will give you more information, but for now – they’re kind and helpful and every day that I spend here feels more and more comfortable. I’m sure they feel the same way about having me here. For the first few days the kids called me “somiya” but when I said, “Hey! You’re talking about me and my name is CLAIRE, not somiya!!” They laughed so hard (they didn’t think I knew the word…but when everyone yells it at you when you walk down the street, you quickly figure out that you are a somiya!) and decided that I could be upgraded from somiya to sister. I am now “Sister Clara”. It seems that Claire is unpronounceable to most so I am embracing the new name. I would like to do an entire blog about my family when I know them better, but for now I will just say that the women make baskets to supplement their families income – they said they’d teach me how to make a basket!!! I’m very stoked about that.

I have now done laundry twice – it’s hard! For all of you back home, be grateful for your clothes washer. Doing them by hand is hard and definitely takes talent and time. To be honest, I’m not actually sure if my clothes are actually any cleaner after I wash them  Thankfully the women I live with laugh, ask me how we do laundry at home and help me to clean my clothes.

Bucket showers are my favourite! It’s so hot out that after the initial shock of pouring cold water on your head it feels quite nice. Unfortunately you can’t shower without water – and getting water is NOT my favourite! Wow. I have gone twice to help get water (two trips each time) and am in awe of the strength of the woman here. The borehole is about 1 km away from the house and you have to cross the main road to get to it. On my first morning with my new family, I went to help get water. The three youngsters at the house came along to watch and all the neighbours seemed to magically appear just in time to watch the “somiya” attempt to carry the water. As we walked to the borehole people called out and I knew they were all talking and exclaiming about the white girl going to the borehole. NO PRESSURE! My pail is much smaller than most but it’s still hard – and I spill water all over me. About half way home, I gave up with my head and carried it by hand, they think this is funny, especially when I say we carry it by hand at home.

I bought a bike from one of the JFs and I absolutely love it! It’s no Cervelo, but it has a lot of character, three speeds, a light, a lock and a basket. I love the freedom the bike gives me, I can ride to my office in about 10 minutes and I can ride into Bolga in about 30-40 minutes. Riding my bike in Bolga is terrifying. You really have to focus on the chickens, goats, motorbikes, cars, and pedistrians that seem to operate on any side of the road and there are no stop signs or traffic lights! I have become friends with a few Peace Corp volunteers and one of them had an extra bicycle helmet and I am now the proud user of it. It’s hot pink. 

Bolgatanga

After three days of learning in Tamale, me and two EWBers went to the tro-tro station. The inside of a tro-tro is a lot more peaceful than I first expected. Bolgatanga (called Bolga) is a smaller and more manageable sized town than Accra and Tamale. We hopped into a taxi and went out to our village, Zuarungu, to meet Meghan’s family and to spend the night there. WOW! It is truly beautiful outside of the city especially since it is so green at this time of the year. I will try to post some pictures soon so that you can see. Since it is the rainy season, it is very green and I am surrounded by tall millet and maize plants, there are chickens, goats, and pigs, and cows roaming freely around the village. I have been staying with Meghan and her family for the past few days but should be moving in with my family sometime early next week.



So far I have spent my time learning more about what I will be doing…are you ready for it? The long awaited job description!!! I will be replacing a JF named Aaron and continue the work that he has started here. I will be working at the District Office of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (Municipal Office in Canada) with Agricultural Extension Agents (AEA). AEA’s work with farmer groups on various programs and tasks. One possible program that the AEA’s can bring to their farmer groups is the Agriculture As Business (AAB) program that EWB has developed over the past several years.
My job will have several tasts.
1.) Continue meeting with the two AEA’s that Aaron has been working with on the AAB curriculum. He has two main AEA’s that he works with, Bizmac and Victoria. Both have two farmer groups who are interested in the program, and all four farmer groups are woman groups!!! I have met Bizmac and Victoria and can’t wait to work with them and their farmer groups.
2.) Promote the AAB curriculum in my district and try to get more AEA’s interested in the program and therefore reach more farmer groups.
3.) Try to improve the Curriculum of AAB so that it’s even better!
4.) Maybe there will be more – this is what I gather so far from my limited time in the office.

My address in Bolga is:
Meghan Dear (Claire Allen)
c/o Ministry of Food and Agriculture
PO Box 3
Bolgatanga
Upper East Region
Ghana

Please don’t forget that it’s gotta be airmail or I won’t get it!

My phone number is: 054 338 8523
It is a four hour time change between Ottawa and here. Please be mindful of that :)

There is so much that I could write about, so please let me know what you’re interested in hearing about so that I can make this blog as useful as possible.

I went to the Crocidile Pond in Paga with several JF's and the director of the Agric. College that we work with in Pong-Tamale.

In-country Training in Tamale

We were given some time in Tamale to rest and get our bearing straight, hard to do when you wake up on the beautiful and exciting planet AFRICA (yes, it feels like I’m on another planet). Our first main task was to go to the market in Tamale and buy several items – cloth for after bathing, a “sponge” for bathing, a strange/cool item, a cell phone, and a few other items. We also had to find out the answer to several questions – basic greetings (although there are so many languages that everything I learned will be relearned when I go to Bolga), what Ghanaians think is important to have when you set-up a room, what they think about politics, the government, and development work, what they think is most important for me to do in Ghana. In Canada I would be very nervous to do this, talk to strangers? Especially to ask random strangers what they think of politics. It’s generally the subject you don’t talk about! Additionally, we had to do this alone. It was such a blast – Ghanaians love to talk and help you and they love politics. I met so many wonderful people during my four hours in the market (I could do a whole post on markets and their craziness but will try to do this later with pictures! For now, markets are insane!). It was quite easy to find men to talk to you but more difficult to find a woman to sit and chat. However, I did meet an incredible young woman named Fadila. I was walking past her stall and a kid grabbed my hand and said “hello!” and laughed. She was so sweet that I had to stop and say hello. Along came Fadila (her older sister) and we started to talk and half an hour later we were sitting together telling each other about school, politics, social structures, bucket showers (she taught me how…apparently you don’t stick your head in the bucket to get ride of the soap!), part way through I was handed a baby to hold for someone and it took one look at me and started to bawl! We talked for an hour and a half and then sadly I had to go. As I left she asked what I would like from her store, I felt badly for not thinking to support her mum’s store after she had been so warm and kind to me. I decided to take two things as an apology/thank you for being so awesome, but Fadila insisted that they were gifts and then I felt badly for taking two things! GAH! It’s so hard to know what to do. It’s hard to be gracious sometimes and just say thank you.

The rest of our in-country training was quite useful and helpful and even included a game of ultimate Frisbee outside the city…think HOT!

From Accra to Tamale

The notoriously long journey to Tamale began bright and early with us being at the bus station at 7 a.m. Since it was hot (ok, so apparently this isn’t the hot time of the year…but I’m having trouble believing that it’s possible for it to be hotter! It’s like living in my hot yoga class.) We bought water in water sachets – this is one option for how Ghanaian’s get clean water. You buy a 5 cent plastic bag that contains 500 mL of cold “pure water” (I say “pure water” because that is what the vendors call out as they walk around with it). It is so refreshing with a nice hint of chlorine. I have trouble opening and drinking from them at first and people watching have a good chuckle. I chuckle too- imagine water splashing up onto your face when you open your juice container! I have even more trouble disposing of my sachet onto the ground.
Anyway – the bus got full at about 8 a.m so off we went, hoping for a 13 hour trip. Shortly after Kumasi, the bus broke down on the side of the road. Luckily for us we broke down right near a village so there were lots of kids to play with and things to see. I became friends with a man who works for “Right to Play” in northern Ghana and had spent 6 months living in Canada. He was an awesome example of the warmness of Ghanaians. He showed us all the food that was being sold and told us what it was and explained what was happening. The kids seemed to be pouring into the village to check out the stranded bus riders. We had fun showing them Canadian games and learning some of their games and songs, however getting their picture taken seemed to excite them more than playing games! Nightfall came and it started getting dark…just as the fun awesomeness of being stuck on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere began to wear-off, the replacement bus arrived and we were back on our way. We made several stops where vendors would run up to the bus with their produce and you could buy it through the window. We arrived at about 2 a.m at Tamale station. I felt like I was in the twilight zone and needed to go to bed.

Arriving in Accra

It’s hard to believe that I left Canada one week ago. Time has flown by but I feel that I have already been gone for awhile. There is a lot to share about the past days-
We landed in Accra and were welcomed by some serious (to my standards) heat. We were met by a fellow EWBer, Wayne, and helped to find a taxi to our guest house. As soon as we left the airport we were flooded with friendly greetings, handshakes, willing hands, and more than enough advice of what to do (and then to be charged for it!), so I was grateful that Wayne was there to guide us. The drive to the guest house felt like a movie – we were seeing a lot but weren’t really connected to it. There were woman in colourful traditional clothes, business suits, large baskets being gracefully carried on top of a woman’s head while she carries a baby on her back, people selling food and other items on the corner and to cars when the lights were red, honking horns, the hustle and bustle of Ghana’s capital, and shanty towns next to big walls and large houses. We shared the road with bikes, pedestrians, tro-tros carrying people that were packed into the car like pickles, and motorbikers. It was nice to arrive at the guest house and set-off on foot. Walking, although much more connected to the sounds, scents, and action of Accra, was tricky with the open sewers and moving vehicles to contend with- yikes! Although the population of Accra (and other cities as I later discovered) is comparable with many other cities that I’ve been to, it seems like there are way more people! I was delighted to find out that mango season is coming to an end and therefore I would get the chance to taste a few. We were all quite sleepy and went to bed happily under our mosquito nets.

Pre-departure Training in Toronto

It's my last full day of training in Toronto -the past two and a bit days have been jammed packed with learning. I wonder if I feel ready to go overseas. I wonder if you ever feel fully prepared for something so new and different from what your normal reality? I guess at some point you've just got to jump on in. It's so weird to think that a week ago I was paddling my way down a river in Quebec and now I'm living in a house with about 18 super nice semi-strangers learning about the work I will be doing overseas and in Canada when I return and that tomorrow I'll be on a plane to Ghana.
In terms of logistics, I now know that I will be located in the Upper-East of Ghana. I'm still not entirely sure where I will be but at least it has been narrowed down to two possible locations in the Upper-East (I'll let you all know more when I know!). When I get to Tamale my coach will let me know where she thinks I'm better suited to be...I'm glad we're waiting to place me because I want to be where I will be most useful. However both locations are relatively close to each other and I know that my friend and co-EWBer will be in the other location so we will be close by. yippee!!
A bit about training. Our days are long - it's a 30 minute walk and "class" starts at 8 or 9 a.m and is suppost to end at 6 p.m but we have so much to do and talk about that it typically doesn't end at 6. From here we walk home, eat, relax for a bit and work on our assignment for the next day...sleep! We've been covering the basics about health and well-being but have been really focused on learning about "development work". The more I know, the more I wonder about what it really is...we've been learning a lot through the use of case studies - it's difficult to think of all the factors that affect something. On a surface value one could think, "seems like that could work" but I sometimes forget to look at the details and think about what people haven't told me to think about.
I have to go back to school for another session so I've gotta jet. I'm sorry for such a rushed post.
I hope everyone is doing well and hope you keep in touch :)