Jisonayilli and Braids

Last week I moved into the new house that I’ll be renting a room in for the rest of my stay here. Our area of town is called Jisonayilli and it comes with a built in alarm clock at 4am…ie the Mosque right behind us. Haha It’s a great area of town though, the tennis courts and pool are just 10 minutes away and we are located on the same street as the army base so there are far fewer power outages here than in other areas of town. I’m about a 25-30 minute casual cycle from my house to Tamale Polytechnic now…and by the time I get to the office I’m very thankful for the air conditioning!

One of the most enjoyable parts of living in Jisonayilli is our Ghanaian “Mom”, Asiah, who lives in the house and looks after it. Asiah likes sharing her Ghanaian cuisine with us and so far the dishes have been really tasty. Her extended family lives in the compound right next to us so we always have visitors coming in and out of the house. Little kids come over to do their laundry on our driveway because we have a hose and I also discovered that they bathe in the backyard. On Saturday I was doing the dishes and realized the water pressure was really low. I looked outside and saw the kids out the window and figured they must be playing with the hose. But as I looked closer I saw that they were actually having baths in a couple of metal buckets they had brought over. I giggled a little to myself and then all of a sudden someone slapped my but from behind, prompting me to let out a yell of surprise. I turned around to see one of Asiah’s little cousins, a little girl with a couple of teeth missing, grinning mischievously and we both started laughing. She didn’t speak English but she hung out while I finished my work.

BRAIDS

On Saturday morning my “team” arrived at the house to put my hair in braids. One woman did the extensions while three girls crowded around finishing the braids. Four hours and two bags of plastic hair later, my “African Makeover” was complete. My first look in the mirror was a little shocking as I took in the image of my face framed in a mop of big, black braids that I didn’t recognize. Thankfully the women took it easy on their poor “slaminga” and didn’t pull too hard…they haven’t given me any pain at all. Apparently I don’t have to wash them for two weeks and can leave them in for the month. I’ll probably see if I can make it until Saturday…the hair seems to trap in the heat and makes me feel like I’m always wearing a plastic hat on my head.

Mole National Park-Sept.21-23

On Friday Lise and I took the afternoon bus to Mole National Park, a wild game park about 140km from Tamale. True to Ghanaian time standards, our bus was set to leave at 1:30pm but we did not find ourselves on the road until 3pm. During our time at the bus station we had an opportunity to watch other local buses loading and my stomach began to do flip flops. One bus in particular seemed to be full to the absolute brim…people were standing in the aisles, sitting three or four to one bench and yet somehow people were still getting on. By the time this bus left people had even packed into both entrance ways to the point that an attendant had to coax the doors shut from the outside. Considering my claustrophobia & tendency for motion sickness, I was having trouble visualizing how I could possibly travel 3-4 hours packed in like a sardine, flying over Ghana’s awful dirt roads. Our bus finally arrived and Lise and I took our designated seats…this wasn’t so bad, we each had a seat to ourselves & obviously the numbered tickets would allow for some level of organization…right?? Wrong! Once all the seats were filled up a third seat pulled down from the left side of the aisle, allowing a 5th person to sit in the aisle. Then as people continued to flow onto the bus, they were instructed to sit on each side of these portable seats, resulting in 6-7 people seated in each aisle. No opportunity to get up and stretch on this trip!
Slightly after 6:30pm when the savannah had been draped in darkness our headlights on the bus went out. Several of the men on the bus attempted to fix it on 2 separate occasions, but to no avail. So we sailed ahead blinking the hazard lights and honking our horn. We arrived in Mole National Park at 9pm that evening, following a motorcycle the last link of the trip to ensure we made it into the park gates. This all made a grey hound excursion seem so cushy and extravagant!! ; )
On Saturday morning we joined the 6:30 am walking safari with a number of other expats. Within a few minutes of the hike we stumbled across a herd of Kob grazing in the grass. The male looked like a deer with short, black, twisted horns instead of antlers. They were a beautiful reddish-brown colour and they moved very gracefully, like a gazelle. Next we came across some mischievous baboons that were running up and down the roof of a village compound and swinging down on the power poles. It’s so funny how human-like their actions are when you watch them, they looked like bad kids.
As we proceeded through some thicker bush we came across a group of warthogs…”Pumba! Is that you?” haha Unfortunately, they are not afraid of people and later showed up in front of our hotel room munching the grass outside (they seem a bit more intimidating than the lizards that I’ve become used to outside my door). After the warthogs we found a little monkey picking some fruit and just beyond his tree our guide spotted the elephants. We were able to track them down and were rewarded with a close up view of two elephants wrestling with their trunks. As we followed them, we were led to a group of about 8 elephants on their way to the watering hole. It was quite amazing to see these huge animals in their own environment; they seemed so peaceful & majestic.
We joined the 3:30pm safari as well, mostly just for the walk because we knew that most animals are much easier to find in the early mornings. Our guide seemed a little annoyed that a group had actually shown up for the afternoon; it was blazing hot so perhaps he figured this would keep the expats away. None the less we set out, but I have a suspicion that he had a smirk on his face as he led us deeper into the savannah. In a nutshell, what we trekked through has led both Lise and I to believe that we are completely capable of making it on “Survivor”. The rainy season had left large sections of our “trail” underwater and our guide, who was wearing rubber boots, didn’t even flinch as he led us on. All of the other girls had shown up in sandals so they had been given rubber boots to borrow, but Lise and I were just in our sneakers. At times we were knee deep in murky water and bush and the more I tried not to think about snakes and all the gross invisible things that may be making their way through my pores, the quicker my footsteps became. Two hours later as the sun was beginning to set we made it back to the hotel and couldn’t help but laugh at the awful mess we’d become. Cheers to a successful safari!!

Church and the Country Club

On Saturday my friend Lise and I decided to head over to the outdoor pool that the power company here in Tamale recently built for its employees. At 10am it was already smokin’ hot, but I decided not to get too excited about the prospects of a dip in the pool until I actually saw the facility. Lise and I were the first to arrive at the pool that morning and we couldn’t believe our luck. The pool was quite nice with grass along the deck and a number of tables with umbrellas to sit under. The change rooms were clean and there were real toilets WITH toilet paper (oh the things we take for granted at home ; ) haha. It was wonderful to lay out in the sun and cool off in the pool and we were soon accompanied by a number of other expats who seemed to have the same idea. It seemed quite surreal that after a 10 minute taxi ride beyond clusters of goats, stands selling fruits and yams and people driving in all directions, we found ourselves at a this “country club” complete with an outdoor pool, 2 paved tennis courts and a clubhouse. Clearly this discovery will become a staple of my weekends in Tamale! : )

During the evening two new Canadian expats came over to the Jungle Bar to meet Lise and I. They are also CIDA interns but they will be here for 9 months living in some of the village compounds. I give them a lot of credit because it’s quite remote in some of those villages & suddenly my situation seemed pretty cushy, even without hot water. We were later joined by many of the regular expats that we spend our evenings with and a couple of the Ghanaian guys who also come by to visit and check out the rugby games. Our South African friend has got us all on the Rugby World Cup bandwagon so we often huddle up around the tv in the Jungle Bar and cheer on SA.

On Sunday I had arranged to go to church with a Ghanaian family that lives nearby. We all squished in their Nissan and bounced along to some lively Ghanaian music on our way to Saki-Saki, an area of town that’s just behind Post Office Road. My experience in church was probably the greatest level of culture shock I’ve experience to date…both in Ghana and in my lifetime. The majority of the service was conducted in Ewe, a local language spoken mostly in the eastern part of Ghana. A large gospel choir sung their way up to the front, accompanied by a band consisting of a drummer, an electric keyboard, a trumpet, and some ladies with tambourines. Everyone sang and danced, some people even left the pews to dance up to the front while others used their handkerchiefs as streamers, shaking them around in the air. I was the only foreigner (ie. the only Caucasian) in the room and felt stiff as a board trying to muster some courage to at least clap along and look less like the white girl who can’t dance. haha The whole service was more vibrant than anything I’ve ever witnessed in a church and if I had to compare it to something in Saskatchewan it would resemble a big, old school wedding in Starsbourg hall with people givin’ er on the dance floor doing the polka. A family friend around my age named Pearl was assigned to look after me and help me out throughout the service. She was very kind and nonchalantly cued me in on when to stand and sit down. But her friend on the other side of me embraced my attendance as a great source of entertainment. She made me join some of the other women on a dancing trip up to the alter and giggled as I tried to shimmy like they did when they danced up to the front again to drop their offering in a big basket. This will definitely go down in the books as an experience I’ll never forget! The 9am service finally came to an end around 1:30pm with everyone covered in sweat and merrily heading out to the patio for another half hour of chatting and munching on some Ghanaian treats that remind me of Tim Bits. I returned from church exhausted and collapsed on my bed for a solid 2 hour nap.

THE TOILET ISSUE

I almost hate providing this detail, but if I’m to be portraying what life is like for me here, then I must mention the toilet issue at Tamale Polytechnic. The pipe running out to the school is broken (I’m not sure how long this has been the case) and therefore there is no running water on campus. This means that the few real toilets that do exist cannot be used, leaving two alternatives:
1) Head to the bush- my fear here is that I’ll run into a snake or that my blinding white bum will be spotted by one of the little kids who always yell “Slaminga” at me anytime they see me.
2) Use the “outdoor toilet”- This is a concrete box with no roof, separated into two sides- one for females and one for males. When you go in you are to pee on the concrete floor which has a pipe at the end of it draining to the grass outside the concrete box. Since the floor is flat, and not angled down, I think most can imagine the number of problems that can happen.
For now I actually cycle back to TICCs at lunch to use my toilet and end my work day when I can’t hold it anymore. I’ve seen some construction on the side of the road near the school and I’m hoping that they’re fixing the pipe for when school starts in October ; )

Vehicles

What I have found most interesting here in the last couple of days are probably the things that the locals here notice the least. For example, as I biked to the post office today after work it was diffulcult to concentrate on the road. A woman infront of me carried a load of tupperware containers about 2 feet high off her head without a hand on the basket....another woman was outright walking with a full sized cooler on here head. My attention was then suddenly distracted as I heard a loud banging sound...I've come to recognize this as a vehicle or motorbike backfiring since this happens often. This particular vehicle that had backfired was an ancient 1/4 tonne pick-up truck absolutely packed with people in the back and covered with a rack that was then piled high with bikes, baskets and various other loads. The vehicle rocked and swerved to gain control, until the driver, who was actually smiling, decided perhaps his load was a little too large, and finally pulled over at which point several passengers disembarked. Similarly, another vehicle I saw today...a small nissan taxi, was loaded to the brim in the trunk with huge bags of chilli peppers and then another 4 bags ontop. I guess this is how things get done.

First Weekend in Tamale

On our last night of the TICCS course we were treated to some traditional Dagombe dancers and a big Ghanaian buffet. Many of the Ghanaian dishes consist of some kind of ball of either yam, rice, cassava, or plaintain and then various soups like groundnut and pepper with either goat, chicken, pork or beef to put on top. I can't say I love this food yet but I was delighted to find a Ghanaian version of a granola bar made from groundnuts and honey.

On Saturday morning I attended T-Poly's 2nd Congregation (graducation) since their inception. It was quite an exciting event to attend and much different from our ceremony. The dignitaries were drummed in by some young boys and a group of ladies dancing along and hooting. The ceremony was held outside with tents covering the perimeter where we sat (it's the end of rainy season right now). The students wore gowns very similar to ours and it was very touching to watch them cross the stage. Post-secondary education is very difficult to obtain here in Tamale and it was very evident what a family affair these student's achievements were.

After the graduation I went with Razak to get a bike. This has been a wonderful addition to my life here in Tamale...it's so much easier to get around now. It is difficult to get used to the disorder on the roads and sidewalks though. I told my Dad that I feel like getting off my bike and yelling into a big loudspeaker: "Okay people, from now on, no motorbikes should be driving on the sidewalk at all...you belong on the roads. Cyclers, please keep to your right and to all the cars out there, stop honking at everything!" haha But Dad and I both agree that I would conjure much more laughter than any sort of serious consideration for these solutions.

I would be cheating if I didn't share my most embarrassing moment to date. When I went to pick up my bike after it had been serviced I was wearing a long cotton skirt. I showed up at this little shop infront of the Central Mosque which was populated by a number of men-young and old fixing bikes and other metal objects. As I waited for the man to bring my bike forward I heard one of the others hiss at me. This happens a lot, so I thought nothing of it as I turned to see what the guy wanted. Apparently as I exited the taxi I had arrived in, my skirt had slid up and was able to affix itself to my upper thigh since it was so hot and humid. I was suffering from nearly the same exposure as one who had tucked their skirt into their underwear. The kind gentelman who hissed at me managed not to laugh as he told me "Miss, your skirt is up high" and pointed up. An excellent way to draw attention to myself at the bike shop ; )

TICCS Course and a Visit to T-Poly

On Monday I went out to Tamale Polytechnic (T-Poly) to see my office and meet some of the staff out there. The school is located about 5km south from me and will be very easy to get to by bike. I was first greeted by the principal who has quite a resemblance to Shaft and spoke in the same slow, low tone. From there I was passed on to the Registrar's "right hand man" who took me all throughout the "campus" introducing me as "Miss Shawna from Canada" with a big smile. T-Poly is a large collection of open-air buildings where they offering everything from accounting to fashion design to welding.

On Tuesday I joined the group at the Tamale Institute for Cross Cultural Studies for a week of training on Ghanaian Culture. It is so very fascinating and has been very helpful to quickly gain at least a small understanding of this new world I'm living in. It has been particularly interesting to learn about their understanding of the gender roles which Dagombe (the tribe here in the North) people describe in the following equation: Men= Food Women=Soup. It is the man's job to get the food and keep away the evil spirits and it's the woman's job to make the food into something "sweet" and look after the children. Our two professors are very interesting and I'm already gettting very fond of their Ghanaian accents and expressions. Dr. James always asks us "Are you gettin' me?" in an accent that has a bit of a Jamaican flavour to it and Dr. Salifu always adds "So waz da matta?" with a big grin when he explains parts of the culture (like the concept of time) that boggle a Westerner's mind.

Our mornings consist of 3 related lectures and then we spend the afternoons travelling to various places throughout the city that correlate with the lesson. We have visited the "economic activities" which I briefly described in my last blog, we have been to Dr. David Abdulai's free medical clinic on the outskirts of town, we have gone to seek the "spiritual advice" of a local divine and dined out at a traditional village compound. All of these trips blow my mind as I witness things that I have never seen in my lifetime......I've never seen a crocodile hide concoted with natural chemicals to become leather, I've never visited a leper's residence or gone through an HIV hospice, I've never watched a divine work his fingers through a pile of sand and foretell the future....nor have I used my right hand to eat a big huge clump of mashed yams (fufu) with a Ghaniain village boy, surrounded by mud huts. I'm constantly amazed.

All in the all one of the highlights so far was the village children who were absolutely elated to have our group out to the compound. As soon as we got out of the van they came to hold our hands and asked "Hello!What's your name?Will you be my friend?" in one long string of questions....at which point they smile and we quickly learned they can't understand English. I think all the kids here are going to have me wrapped around their little fingers...they're SO cute!

I begin work on Monday and hope to write again next week : )

TICCS Course..Quick Pic

I will elaborate on this picture very soon but wanted to share what I have been seeing in my first couple of days here. Our theme yesterday was "Ghanaian Economics" and we visited 3 examples of traditional Ghanaian forms of economic activity: a weaver, a tannery and a potter.

I'm doing well and can't wait to describe these last two days...it's been incredible!