5:18PM, on a Tuesday

I could lie to you about why I haven’t been blogging. I could say I’ve been busy with work and grad school applications. I could say the internet has been spotty. I could even say that I don’t have much worth writing about. All of these things are partially true, but the real reason is that I’ve turned into an addict. That’s right, I’m a total junkie. I just can’t stop! Someone needs to take away my stash before it’s too late. I’m addicted...to “Lost.” (The TV show, for those of you that haven’t flicked the idiot box on in a few years.) I never watched it while it was running, and some evil mastermind at ProGhana put seasons 1-5 in the office library. A couple of weeks ago, I made the mistake of borrowing the first disc. Since then, I could not put my laptop away. It’s a sickness, really. Thankfully, I have watched every single disc now so the madness is over.

Anyway, it’s true that I have been on the busy side. I have finished all of my surveys and based on the results, it seems that there are two problems with children’s protein intake. The first is that meat, the obvious source of protein, is far too expensive for many families. The second is that the mothers don’t seem to recognize other sources of protein. So the intervention I am designing is two-fold. The first part is the fortification of gari, a local cassava product that is cheap and ubiquitous but devoid of nutrients. Sympathy International owns gari processing equipment and actually used to run a production program as an income-generating activity for poor women, but the funds have dried up. Therefore, I not only have to work out the fortification system, but I also have to raise funds and rehire workers for the processing plant.

The second part is an advocacy campaign for better child nutrition. I am still designing this element, but I am working on incorporating facts and advice on protein supplementation on the gari packaging. I would also like to work with the schools to disseminate information to the parents. Something else must be done for the illiterate population; I am thinking of some kind of community ambassador program where we can train a small number of women about child nutrition and have them orally convey the information back to their family, friends, and neighbors. Of course, this all requires a good deal of money. I have identified a few foundations whose funding interests might align with such a program, and the rest of my time here will be spent creating grant proposals and calculating a master budget. Because of how long the grant processes can take, I wouldn’t be surprised if nothing happened for 6 months or more, but I plan to keep up with the project as best I can from the US. It would be so amazing to make this really happen.

JD, the baby in my homestay, came down with malaria last week. He was feverish, weak, and unwilling to eat. They took him to the hospital several times and came back with new medicines each time; it turned out that not only did he have malaria, he also had an eye infection, a sore in his mouth, and a new tooth coming in. Poor thing! He’s much better now, though he still has a cough and has started itching at his ear for some reason.

We missed the Christmas church service because of JD’s recuperation, but went on Sunday. It was three and a half hours long. One of the reasons was because everything was said in English, then immediately repeated in Fante. There was also a special collection having something to do with a cardinal (it was a Catholic church), a baptism, and a ritual for something they called Priest Appreciation Day. About 40 people processed up the aisle with gifts for the priest, ranging from envelopes stuffed with cash to a large crate of Cokes to a 12-pack of toilet paper. Because nothing says “I appreciate your religious instruction” like toilet paper...?

After the service, we went to my homestay father’s father’s house with the extended family; the party was probably around 20 people. I had a nice time, although I was sore from sitting on a hard wooden bench all morning. JD was very shy, with so many people he barely knew trying to hold him and talk to him. When his parents went inside to eat, he clung to me and cried when anyone else took him. I’ve discovered I feel the same way about babies as I do about dogs: I tend to like them on an individual basis, and I like them best when they belong to other people.

Things are even slower at work right now with so many holidays; apparently most business-people in Ghana take off two weeks for Christmas and Boxing Day and New Year’s. Boxing Day this year was funny because it fell on a Saturday, but was celebrated the following Monday so the Ghanaians wouldn’t be deprived of their hard-earned holiday! Another instance of their determination to enjoy life. Anyway I’ve been spending a lot of time working on a Fante handbook for future volunteers, which I presented to Lawrence today. He was incredibly pleased and told me he thinks we could sell it! I’m just happy that he feels his teaching has been worthwhile. I get the impression that not everyone is as interested in the intricacies of Fante grammar as I am.

I’m including pictures from a wedding to which my homestay family invited me. It was very interesting – especially because I’ve never even been to an American, or any other, wedding before! Both the wedding and the church service featured a live band with singers and a church choir. I think the singing and drumming and dancing (yes, dancing) help maintain the congregation's attentions for those long services!

Lastly, a shout-out to my brother David who just turned 26. Even though he won’t be reading this, Happy Birthday Dave! I love you.



The interior of the church, trimmed in purple for Advent.


Priest giving an opening speech on love and marriage.


A woman on her cellphone during the priest's opening speech.



The hats were spectacular: Western-style hats that would put the ladies at the Kentucky Derby to shame, and Ghanaian-style hats that looked as if they were made from wrapping paper.


The priest preparing the wafer and wine for communion.


The altar being blessed with incense.



The bride converted to Catholicism and took her first communion as part of the wedding ceremony. I gather this is not uncommon. Another note that my homestay mother told me: in Ghana, men "court" women up until the day of the wedding; they only get engaged on the morning of the blessed event.


The main duty of the maid of honor and best man were to mop the sweat from the brows of the happy couple.


Taking their vows.


I now pronounce you man and wife!


Sheep grazing in the front yard.



JD at the church and outside the house with his dad.


I couldn't resist: the live chicken in front of the ready-to-eat chicken!

4:25PM, on a Monday

So here are the pictures I meant to put up with the last post:


These are some vultures attacking each other in the landfill close to Symi. They are seriously huge.


A funeral procession. But for the casket, you would think it was a picnic procession, especially with the clapping and singing. The dress code was red and black, but I don’t know if that is universal in Ghana.


The sky during a particularly beautiful sunset.


The entrance to the National Museum. It looks like a public library entrance to me.


This was Kwame Nkrumah’s official chair of state, used in his presidential inauguration.


A necklace of human teeth.


Daggers and such.


A huge wooden mask that I can’t imagine would have been easy to carry around on one’s head.


Ashanti fertility statues.


An ancient comb. If you look closely, you can see the meticulously detailed carvings in the wood.


A rack of different kinds of spoons and ladles. Apparently some spoons are symbolic but some are purely functional.


Various musical instruments. Note the prominence of drums.


And you thought only Vikings worse those!


A picture of warrior belonging to a particular kind of cult fascinated with piercings, knives, and the like.


A man with several “charmed” snakes in his mouth.


Warriors. The garments that look like patchwork are actually covered in protective amulets. While less aesthetically pleasing, I think Kevlar is probably more effective.


A rug and cushions of typical African design. I saw an almost identical set last summer in my friend Shannon’s apartment, which she was subleasing from a girl who had brought them back from her own travels in Africa. Or maybe she and the National Museum curators shop at the same IKEA...


A leopard-skin bag. Made of actual leopard skin.


A revered and powerful priestess.


Stools are very big in Ghana. The thing that holds the actual seat of the stool is almost always symbolic in some way. The elephant, for example, represents strength…I think. There was a poster in the gift shop that detailed all of the symbolism, but I was too cheap to spring for the dollar it would have cost me.


Traditional Ghanaian textiles have meaning to their patterns. Apparently, brutal truth is the motif woven in this particular cloth.




Some arrowheads and fish hooks that could be as old as 4000BC.


What African museum would be complete without the bust of Marcus Aurelius?


Mummy? This one was unlabelled.


A human jaw fossil.


The Ashanti would measure gold using weights that were formed into any number of different shapes, from plain little blocks to tiny, intricate statuettes.


A model of St. George’s castle, which I visited in Elmina, complete with moat.




Pictures from the beach at Anamabo, where I retreated to escape the horrors of no electricity.

5:30PM, on a Thursday

I apologize for the delay between entries; as my life here becomes more “routine,” I feel like I have less to say.

Last week I made several market visits with Victoria. We were supposed to have finished by tomorrow, but unfortunately she slipped and injured her hand on Monday. Yesterday, the town had no electricity again, and my homestay ran out of water – I will never take functioning utilities for granted again – so a 2-hour walk in the sun without the promise of a cold shower and a fan at the end was out of the question for me. We have completed today’s visit, but Victoria told me that since tomorrow is a public holiday (Farmer’s Day), we will have to do the rest next week. By then, 5 weeks will have gone by and I will just be wrapping up my field research. The progress of my project seems achingly slow and, coupled with the communication issues over the survey that Victoria and I have been having, has proven to be a great source of frustration for me.

I tell you all of this to give you an idea of both “Ghana time” and the difficulties of fieldwork. The pace of life is simply slower here, and there are so many good excuses for suspending work: no power, too hot, too rainy, slow internet, etc. But unlike the Americans, the Ghanaians are unruffled by such disruptions. Life is to be enjoyed, not stressed over. I can’t say I find the extension of this mentality to the workplace terribly efficient or one that I will adopt as my own, but I find it interesting and somewhat admirable and, most of all, so different. As I was discussing with one of my fellow American volunteers yesterday, it’s one thing to know that other cultures with different values exist; it’s quite an eye-opening experience to actually be immersed in a totally foreign way of life.

The best lesson I have learned so far is about the imperfections inherent in the nature of fieldwork, particularly in a foreign language setting. Working with a translator is much more difficult than I would have imagined. It’s not simply the vocabulary that causes problems, either – one of the more challenging struggles has been the idea of a hypothetical question, which is hard for Victoria to communicate and even harder for the market women to understand. I had tried to anticipate the kind of information I would need and formulated my survey questions around those ideas when I began, but it was not until I started conducting the surveys that I discovered certain questions needed to be added, tweaked, or omitted. Every day is an adjustment to what I learned the day before; this kind of research is almost a living thing. Flexibility and focus are equally vital (and equally challenging) to its successful execution.

In addition to work, I have been playing a little. At 6AM on Saturday, I caught a TroTro (a hot, crowded, rickety van stuffed to the gills with people that careens along without regard to the fact that suspension systems don’t seem to exist in Ghanaian vehicles) to Accra. By myself. It was simultaneously terrifying and gratifying. Once in Accra, I found a taxi to the National Museum, where I occupied myself for a good hour looking over all the exhibits. It is on the small side, but engrossing nonetheless. It displays items not just from Ghana but from all over the African continent. Pictures can be found at the end of this entry.

After the museum, I attempted and failed to find the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial and a giant outdoor market of arts and crafts. By that time, I was so hot and sweaty and lost that I chartered a taxi to the Accra Mall 20 minutes away. The Accra Mall’s biggest draw for me is that it is air conditioned. I spend an hour in the Western-style grocery store, Shoprite, half shopping and half just enjoying a little taste of home. I picked up a few things for Tuesday’s ProGhana group dinner, which I had been enlisted to cook, and a few things just for myself. Then I took my purchases to an American-style Chinese restaurant (you have to find comic irony in an African version of an American version of a Chinese eatery), where I enjoyed a leisurely lunch solo. Briana met me soon after and together with her Lebanese friends, we ran a few errands before driving back (in a spacious, air-conditioned SUV – this girl has the hook-up!) to Cape Coast.

Back at home, we arrived just in time for a post Thanksgiving banquet, Lebanese-style, with Briana’s friends, the ProGhana group, some Ghanaian friends and some random Germans working on their year of nationally required foreign service. Grilled chicken, mashed potatoes, pita bread, hummus and garlic spreads, and French fries were on the menu. Dinner was followed by singing and dancing to both American, Ghanaian and Lebanese music. The poor Germans in attendance must have felt a little put out to be the only group not represented but they were very good sports.

In other news, I am about to be abandoned by the Americans. Steve went to Accra yesterday and is flying home tomorrow; Zach is going to Accra on Saturday and taking his plane home at the end of next week; Briana is leaving on the 15th for a two-week stint at her parents’ home in Arizona. I am excited about experiencing Christmas and New Year’s in a different culture, particularly one so deeply attached to religion, but also nervous about handling this isolation during such a family-focused period. Hopefully being drawn into Ghana’s holidays will help me miss my own less.

Pictures will have to come later because I'm out of time! Well maybe just one...


I know it’s crass but the humor of this was too much for me. Of course Flowers Gay Schools would be known for their fruits! Coincidentally this is where my homestay mother wants to send JD – right after his 18 month birthday. Kids start school very, very early here.

3:05PM, on a Monday

11.22.09
Saturday dawned bright and early for me. I had to meet everyone with ProGhana for our trip to Elmina, a town about 15 minutes away, at 9AM. Steve, Zach and I met on time but Lawrence was running about 40 minutes late. I have learned that Ghana (and, I am told, Africa in general) runs on a very different, relaxed sense of time. It is both common and generally acceptable for people to be tardy by a good hour or more. Anyway we finally got to Elmina for our tour of St. George’s Castle a little after 10AM. Promptly upon opening the taxi door, we were swarmed by hawkers trying to sell us beaded jewelry and other knick-knacks. They asked each of us our names, including spelling. Steve, who has visited Elmina twice already, warned us to lie about our names and origins. I became Stephanie from Saskatchewan and refused to buy anything. After a good heckling, we entered St. George’s and began the tour with a group made up mostly of European tourists. (I have encountered very, very few Americans here – Brits, Scandinavians, and Australians are much more common.)


This building is the Portuguese Church. St. George’s was established by the Portuguese in 1482 as a trading post, but as the slave trade proved to be most lucrative, this became the castle's function. It was later taken by the Dutch who also used it in the international slave trade. After Great Britain abolished the slave trade in the early 1800s, the Dutch sold the castle to them for use as a military base. Anyway, when the Protestant Dutch took over from the Catholic Portuguese, the tower which used to sit atop the church was razed and the building was thereafter used, in some combination, as a trade center and as further space for soldiers to meet, drink and eat. Today it is a small museum dedicated to Elmina’s past and present.


This is the administrative portion of the castle directly across from the Portuguese Church. Between them lies a large, open square flanked by imposing castle walls on each side.



Signs for the male and female slave dungeons.


The passageway to the female cell block as well as to the point of entry for newly captured slaves.


A low, narrow door at the top of a steep staircase (now barred for tourists' safety). The boats of slaves would anchor at the base of the stairs and they would be forced up into the castle single-file. The transport of slaves was always conducted single-file to reduce the risk of escape.


This is the first female cell we visited. It smelled dank and musty. I am sure it smelled a whole lot worse packed with a hundred unwashed women forced to relieve themselves in corners, not to mention the odors of disease and death when their health failed.


This is a well in an open courtyard, surrounded on three sides by cells for female slaves. The fourth side is the back wall of the administrative section.


Soldier’s quarters above the cells.


This is an overpass famous for its use by the governor. Dutch women were generally not present at St. George’s, so the governor picked a hapless female slave to satisfy him. The women were brought into the courtyard and the governor, standing on the overpass, would choose one. Soldiers would wash her with water from the aforementioned well, then force her up a rickety ladder (pictured below) and through a trapdoor to the governor’s quarters.





Another female cell, followed by a window between this cell and the neighboring room. The window was installed to give the cell some ventilation. How humanitarian, right? Unfortunately, the adjoining room to which the cell was thereby connected happened to be the room for ammunition storage. The sulfuric fumes from the ammunition would waft into the women’s cell, poisoning and ultimately killing many.


This ominous-looking door led to a cell for soldiers who were victims of various epidemics. To save the other inhabitants, sick soldiers and those believed to have been exposed to disease were locked in this cell and left to die (thus the skull and crossbones).


The door to an adjacent room used as an isolation cell for unruly soldiers.


Our tour group filing through the passage to where boats would have been waiting to ship the slaves to wherever they had been sold.


The other side of the passage. As you can see, the doorways were miniaturized to force single-file passage.


The narrow doorway called the Door of No Return. This was the slaves’ final exit point from the castle.


Next to the quarantine cell, this structure (and its twin on the other side of the square) was built in the castle’s later years to buttress its walls. When the British began using the castle as a training ground for soldiers (many Africans were sent to fight in World War II for the Allies), railings were installed to condition the men with climbing drills. This little boy would have gone all the way to the top if our tour guide had let him.




More views of the castle’s interior.



Ancient cannons.




Ocean views from St. George’s.



Views of Elmina from the castle.

After we exited the castle, the hawkers magically reappeared, running towards us and calling our (fake) names. We were each presented with a shell inscribed with a Fante verse as well as the names we had provided. The hawkers insisted the shells were free, but Steve had already told us the truth. They will give you the shell, then demand you make a donation to their “soccer league” which you can be sure does not exist. They will show you the donation record, each made-up entry boasting no less than 20 cedis. If you do not consent to donate, or at the very least to buy their trinkets, they will verbally assault you until you manage to escape. Steve and I wisely refused our shells, but Zach got suckered into taking his (addressed to “Chris”) along with a few items of beaded jewelry.

After Elmina, we spend the rest of the afternoon at Anamabo, relaxing on the beach shaded by palm trees and playing in the ocean. My camera battery ran out of power or I would have pictures of a gorgeous sunset over the water for you. Next time!