2.5 weeks to go!

Time is winding down and before you know it i'll be exiting a plane in Toronto. I'm feeling about a 50/50 split between excited to come home and sad to leave. Luckily, or rather thankfully, there will be another volunteer replacing me for another 3.5 months and she's arriving really soon so I'll get a chance to show her around Paga and introduce some good people. I feel pretty good with my placement on the whole, sure there's plenty of things I "should, could would" have done which I'll be sharing in my final report, but I'm very thankful for the opportunity to meet all the incredible people, see-hear-feel all that I did, good and bad, and I'm thankful for all the learning. Being far from home help me appreciate all the wonderful people I'm lucky to have in my life, and I truly mean it when I say thanks for all the different types of support.

I don't know if I'll get a chance to post a couple more times before leaving, I'll put in the effort though, as you probably guessed I'll be quite busy finalizing all that I'm doing. Whatever the case, when I get back to Canada I'll put up a lot more pics, blog writing, and of course the videos I spent hours trying to upload here. When I head back south to Tamale in a couple weeks I'll try to prepare another post about my work and hopefully some pics about the people from the compound and work.

Until then...

Village stay part deux

Here’s photo of the family I stayed with left to right: Tony, Peter, Alice, and Robert in the back then the two kids Gertrude and Solomon in the front.

One of the things I noticed from my short stay in the village is that Alice and her daughter Gertrude do a lot of work. Alice, the mother, works as a seamstress sowing women’s dresses and garments that are commonly worn by women, but before starting work she is up very early (I woke up at 545am one morning and she was already up and moving) and fetches water, sweeps, and prepares food for everyone, which is pretty labour/time intensive. After returning home from working the whole day sewing at the market she began to prepare dinner which took a couple hours or so, served everyone, then sat down to eat. By now it is dark, after eating she washes all the pots, pans, and dishes before resting and retiring for the night. From what I saw she’s the first one up in the morning and the last one to relax at night, basically working double shifts within and outside the home. Her young daughter (probably around 10yr plus or minus 2) does much of the same work. She’s also up very early helping her mother with everything I mentioned above before and after school, and she also weeds people’s farms to gain money for the family- either after or before school, I’m not sure, I just saw her leave in her school uniform with a hoe in hand and was told how she weeds on peoples farms. This young girl works hard, like a grown woman, and if I were to do her work for a day I’d be pretty exhausted and sore. She also help to take care of the small boy Solomon, she helps him bath and prepare for school in the morning, and plays with him in the evening. I kept thinking that Gertrude, a young girl plays the role of a mother while attending school and working on the farm here and there.

Here’s photo of Solomon, or as Tony calls him ‘Sulu-macho’. He’s the son of Peter and Alice’s daughter and was he was pretty apprehensive and shy around me for almost the whole time I was there, on the last day I was taking a lot more snaps and he opened up a little and I caught him smiling a couple times – he usually has a somber and shy look on his face.

I spent a lot of time with Peter’s son Anthony (Tony) who is a year younger than me and home for the summer holidays. He studies at the University of Ghana in Accra and is doing a BA taking sociology, religion, and Swahili. He showed me around and we talked about many things, I asked him many questions about village life. It was good to hang out with someone my age who speaks good English, he made my stay a lot more comfortable.

His friend and relative (although in our culture they wouldn’t be related) Samuel or Sammy was a good character to chat with and have around; he’s a local teacher and was working on the farm with us the one day.

I had a great time in Kandiga, learned through experience how difficult farming is, met a number of kind friendly people, learned about people’s culture and way of life and was able to experience a small part of it. I also learned that the term “village” evokes many preconceptions and expectations, but here in Northern Ghana there’s so many different types of villages with different cultures. For instance, another JF/friend Spencer took a small boat to his villages stay, met the chief, went hunting and gathering, and the village was like a big compound and semi-isolated in the bush. You can imagine the large contrast between my stay with a solar panel, concrete courtyard, sparsely located family compounds, and located about 20 mins from a paved road. Basically there’s not one type of village that we’ve seen in movies or pictures. Anyways, I’m planning on heading back there by the end of this week with some pictures I told them I would print, I can’t wait!