A little about what we do here

A little about what we do here. As for me, the male half of this dynamic partnership, I was hired on by the Peace Corps to be a health, water, and sanitation volunteer. This means that I am supposed to focus my projects and energies on bettering the health of this village through education, and community organization and mobilization. Many volunteers go into villages that have had volunteers working there for years and sometimes decades, some volunteers end up in villages that have ngos that use volunteers to assist in their projects. We are the first volunteers to be working in this village, and therefore we are starting from scratch. And starting from scratch is intimidating, it’s hard to know where to even begin. So that is basically where we’re beginning, trying to figure out where to begin.

Before I continue, a little more background about the general approach and mission of the Peace Corps. We are here for two major reasons: 1 --- For us American folk to learn about the Ghanaian folk, and for us to impart a little sumthin sumthin American (maybe deconstruct some stereotypes that fly both ways. Many people here think of America as a place where money falls in great monsoons each morning and Americans grow fat and happy splashing around in it. They think that there lives would be much better if they could visit America or live there. Through the relationships that we forge over here we hope to dispel myths we all carry around with us. 2 --- Give support in areas of development that the Ghanaian government and our village has deemed important to them. So we are here for two years to try and figure out what Ghanaians need to develop positively and sustainably, and help them work towards that.

So how do we do these things? Well we don’t know exactly, but I’ll tell ya what we are trying. Most importantly right now we are trying to get to know the village, build relationships and trust with people, and learn how to communicate with people. And to be honest all those things are a lot more difficult then you might think. To suddenly move into a village that people just don’t suddenly move into, a place where one stays in their family’s house of 80 some odd people that follow a generation that follows a generation of family that lived much like they do, farming the same crops, following most of the same traditions around marriage, death, celebration, and worship. To have a new person just move into this place that has been a world unto itself, is a bit jarring. So here we are. Well I should explain a bit more that this village has changed some in recent years, that it is not untouched by time. Electricity came here a few years back, although many to most still don’t have it. They live near a large town that has seen a lot of ngos come in and bring white folk talking about development. So many people here want development and they want better lives for themselves. Many are choosing to turn their backs on the traditional ways of religion and make new lives in Christianity (although the more you get to know this place you come to understand that traditional religion is so much a part of the culture and who these people are that adopting Christianity doesn’t just suddenly cancel out their beliefs that still surround them, their new beliefs seem to add a new layer to the foundation.) So here we are. We are like some kind of mystical creature from a fairy tale come to life. Most people knew about Americans, and have seen some white folk walking around the near by town, but most people here had never really met one. Many of the children’s first reaction to us was abject terror. Like we were ghost people come from a nightmare to terrorize them. And there are a few children who have been living around us for three months now who still quiver at the site of us. The adults aren’t frightened of us, just endlessly amused by us. Most everything we do is funny. The way we pronounce their language, the way we cook our food, the way we wash our clothes, the way we sweep, and on and on. So we step out of our house each day to be greeted by laughter, and an endless series of laborious conversations, where we try out new words that we have learnt that they often don’t understand, that are confusing and usually go nowhere. We sit with people while they are weaving baskets, breast feeding their children, preparing food, trying to figure out what they are saying and how to make ourselves understood in some way. And then the sun seems to get super angry with us and we dissolve into sweat, trying to muster up energy to cook our food, but then someone stops us asking us something that we don’t understand, does he want to know what we are cooking, where we are going, if he can have my wife, what happened to the ancient maya, who knows? --- So we are super hot, tired, confused, so far away from home. We enter our house to try and rest, but we hear our names being called outside and who’s that at the window? The children are watching us and trying to get our attention. The children can watch us for hours everyday. Watch us like the tv, like our lives our some broadway production come to town. But we are so tired and the children are there again and they will not respond to our pleas for solitude. Yikes. But we set about doing this each day and slowly we are getting know who people are, what they do, how we can maybe be of some assistance to them.

The ultimate aim is to develop partnerships with people in the village, to really understand what they want and need, and to figure out a realistic and sustainable way to help them get that thing. What we hoped to do is more about empowering people to help themselves than actually doing anything for them ourselves. The idea is that if given education and the knowledge about how to and where to find what they are after that they can do it for themselves. And that thing they did will be more meaningful to them and the benefits of that thing might inspire others to do things for themselves as well.

So on a day to day basis I go out into the scary world out there and try to get to know people and figure out what’s going on. I often go to the nearby health clinic and get to know the nurses, the mothers who attend the clinic with their babies, the problems that face the community. I sometimes have someone translate for me while I talk about malaria, HIV with people. I will interview mothers, asking them about their knowledge of health issues, what problems they face, what they want to improve in the community, etc. We also have put a lot of time into our house. When we got here it basically just had walls and a roof. Now we have furniture, linoleum on the floor, kitchen, painted walls, a courtyard area, ¾ of a wall built, electricity, and most exciting we are borrowing a freezer from a neighbor, so we will be able to have cold drinks and Kirsten will try and make ice cream (our quality of life just spiked big time). Also I just began an art club at the local school. Hopefully we will be painting murals, and doing some kind of musical dance performance for the community (but we have a long way to go).

Before I make this too long I will give this over to Kirsten to write a little something about Kirsten. Hopefully this wasn’t too scattered and gives a bit more insight into what we are doing.

Hi there! It’s me the lady part of the partnership! So I am an environment volunteer and my purpose in being here is to help the community ensure food security for future generations and to prevent the environmental degradation that would make food security impossible. My official title is Agroforestry and Alternative Livelihood Facilitator. Pretty exciting title huh? What does it mean, you ask? Agroforestry, generally speaking, is a sustainable method of farming that promotes the growing of trees in farms. Trees reduce soil erosion and flooding, create windbreaks, and many species will bring more yummy nitrogen into the soil. Not to mention the fact that they provide things like food (mmm…mangos…), fuelwood, fertilizer (the leaves of many species improve the soil), animal feed, medicine, shade (mmm….shade…), and building material. So I act as a tree enthusiast here in our village. The other half of my title involves working with small groups of people to develop alternative livelihood projects, or ALP’s. The major reason why people do not have enough food here is because they can’t afford it. So if they can make money by doing sustainable activities such as beekeeping, shea butter extraction, grasscutter rearing (rodent that people say is really tasty),or moringa or mango tree farming, then they will make enough money to feed their families.

About a month ago I started an environment club at the JSS. Although I kind of pride myself on having a lot of experience with leading groups of kids and teaching them, it’s a little bit more challenging when there’s 55 of them and they barely speak English and I barely speak Fra Fra and they are not used to things like inquiry-based teaching and playing games. It’s been fun and rewarding though. I gave them an assignment to bring in seeds for us to nurse and they brought in SO many different kids of seeds. We planted them and each of the kids is caring for a couple of them at their homes. JJ and I and the club are planning an Earth Day event right now, and we’ll plant the trees at the school, have a few contests (essay, poster, and garbage art), maybe have some kind of speaker, and have a dance party.

So what do I actually do here? I spend most of my working hours at a community garden where women from about 8 women’s groups are doing dry-season gardening (sweet potatoes, and two types of yummy greens that they use in soups) which means they have to carry all of the water for the garden on their heads. My role so far at the garden has been to simply help out where needed and by doing that I learn how gardens are done here, since I have no previous experience with gardening. I learned a few things in training, like how to make organic fertilizers and insecticides and I will be demonstrating how to do those. My other role at the garden is to motivate people to nurse and plant trees. We have so far nursed about 1500 seeds, and we will hopefully nurse about 1500 more. Sadly, about 500 of the saplings got eaten by chickens (another one of my duties at the garden is to make guttural noises at chickens and goats, and sometimes throw small rocks in their direction to make them go away).

So thus far we have been focusing mostly on integrating. In a couple weeks we'll both go to trainings where we will learn how to get grants for projects, so hopefully we'll be starting some bigger projects soon.