North To Bolgatanga

Early Tuesday morning I travelled two hours north to Bolgatanga with Mike Wyse, one of the Project Management Team members visiting from Canada, and our T-Poly driver, Ziblim. The DREP project is a partnership between 3 polytechnics in the north and NSAC, so I was excited to meet the team members in Bolga and get some things moving up there.

Luckily the Bolga Road is one of the better highways in the north, so it was a pretty smooth ride. We started the morning off with a breakfast meeting with Dr. Batchia, one of the PMT members from Bolgatanga Polytechnic. He was an incredibly interesting man and helped us immensely over the next couple of days. He completed his masters in the UK and lived in the US for 7 years before returning home to Ghana.

Next, we had planned to do a classroom visit to one of the B-Poly classes and were anticipating approx. 50 students. But when we arrived, we were greeted with an auditorium of 200 first years. Mike and I quickly revised our game plan and got some activities started. The DREP teaching model is competency based and differs from most models here in that it is very participative. Students are sometimes shocked to find they can be loud and move around while they’re learning.

After our classroom visit Dr. Batchia took us to one of his favourite local restaurants where I gave fufu another try. Fufu is a big lump of pounded yam served with either okra soup (slimy and green) groundnut soup (think peanut soup) or light soup poured over it. The groundnut soup was delicious! (On a quick sidebar, I have to describe my favourite Ghanaian dish so far. It’s called Red-Red and it is a plate of spicy beans in tomato sauce served with chicken and fried plantains. The sweet taste of the plantains is a delightful combination with the spicy beans!)

Our next stop was a visit with one of DREP’s pilot program graduates, nicknamed “Professor”. Professor did the training in November 2005 and developed a business plan to raise guinea fowl and sell them commercially. We had an opportunity to visit his small farm and try some smoked guinea fowl. I was brave enough to try the meat even though the bird is smoked with the head, beak and talons all still attached. Grandpa would be proud!

Professor’s farm was about 30 minutes out of Bolgatanga so we had an opportunity to observe the damages that the September floods caused in this region of Ghana. Parts of the road were completely washed out with crevices up to my knees in some parts. The more devastating site was to see how dry it has become already. The land is parched and brown, the soil is cracked and baked dry from the sun and most of the baobab trees no longer have any leaves. We saw a wide stream completely dried up with nothing to indicate it had ever held water except for the curved markings in the sand. It is only the beginning of the dry season and I can’t imagine what things will look like come December. The rain will not come until April, and this is one of the areas where the food security NGO’s try to bring in food and water to prevent people from starving.

Despite the hardships that Professor’s family is facing, they were extremely lively and kind when we came to visit. I had a great time taking pictures of everyone and showing them the image on the screen. Some of the older women had probably never seen themselves in a picture. We could not understand each other but smiles, laughs, and handshakes went a long way. Professor showed us the homemade incubator he’s made by stacking small rocks all together where the sun can keep the eggs warm. He showed us the little mud huts the birds are kept in and the small mango trees he’s planted to provide shade and food for the farm. He rides his bike all the way from his mother’s house in town to the farm and carries the eggs back in a crate and transports the guinea fowl he will smoke in town with a contraption that looks like a big lobster cage.

We returned on Wednesday night in time for a quick shower (mine was a bucket shower…the water was off again) and then proceeded to the High Commissioner’s reception at the Mariam Hotel. It was a really nice, relaxed event with many of the same guests who were at the Thanksgiving celebration. The HC (Darren) and his wife, Heather were really interested in hearing about our internships and they had many stories to share themselves- they have previously lived in Malawi, Egypt, and Central America to name a few and they have just begun their three years here in Ghana. They have also just adopted a child from Haiti so she will soon be joining them in Accra.

I’m very thankful we have such a nice expat group here. Though we are all from various places in Canada we share a common bond to “home” and a common goal to try to make a difference.