The Adventures of Kirsten and JJ

Tanzania Safari!!!

2010-06-14T02:03:00.000-07:00

So this is long overdue, but here's some pics from our safari in Tanzania. I don't even know how to begin describing how amazingly beautiful and wild and wonderful it was...so here's the pictures!

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2010-06-14T01:51:00.000-07:00

Back in January we did an HIV/AIDS Know Your Status Campaign in our community. We had a local filmmaker produce a film about HIV in the local language and it then showed it in conjunction with HIV testing and counseling and condom sales and demonstrations. Most of the implementation of the project was done by our supervisor Joe, who really did an incredible amount of work simply out of the desire to help the community. He makes our job so easy. Three hundred people were tested that day and over a thousand participated in at least some of the event, hopefully learning a little something. the film has been passed around to individuals, shown in another Peace Corps community, and will hopefully continue to be shared in years to come. We're hoping to have enough time to do another HIV event in our community before we leave.

2010-06-14T01:49:00.000-07:00

JJ with some of our neighbors.

2010-06-14T01:44:00.000-07:00

For funerals, people bring baskets of millet which will later be turned into food and alcohol and served to the guests.

2010-06-14T01:43:00.000-07:00

A guy playing a local guitar.

2010-06-13T03:19:00.000-07:00

At a big funeral, this guy comes out and starts playing with fire, breathing it out and dancing around with it!

2010-06-13T03:18:00.000-07:00

Kirsten as Wardancer!

2010-06-13T03:16:00.000-07:00

JJ as Wardancer, keeping Death from taking anyone else!

2010-06-13T03:15:00.000-07:00

One of the many dance parties that happen during the funeral season here.

2010-06-13T03:11:00.000-07:00

Random shot of a street in Bolga, the regional capital where we do most of our shopping, internet, meetings with people, etc.

2010-06-13T03:10:00.000-07:00

Baby on moto!

2010-06-13T03:08:00.000-07:00

This is Ayo, and he's quite a character. He's got style, as in he often wears safety goggles around and his bike is decorated with a stuffed elephant! He's really into planting trees and gardening and is a really really hard worker who's always happy to help out with projects.

2010-06-13T02:58:00.000-07:00

This is Akuriku, the old man who lives next door to us, and because he's the oldest person in the big compound house he's called the landlord. He raises dogs and is always very interested in all of our animals. He gets a pretty big kick out of us and all of the wierd things we do, like eat oats and occasionally sleeping past 6am. He comes over most mornings to greet us, and he's a pretty big part of our life here.

2009-12-29T01:10:00.000-08:00

Kirsent and I spent a day on an island off the coast of Zanzibar. It is a nature reserve and only open to a small number of visitors each day. We snorkled and hiked, saw the elusive coconut crab (large nocturnal crab that climbs trees and eats coconuts).

2009-12-29T01:04:00.000-08:00

stonetown

2009-12-29T00:25:00.000-08:00

zanzibar

2009-12-29T00:21:00.000-08:00

how beautiful is Kirsten?

2009-12-29T00:05:00.000-08:00

Kirsten looking all elegant in Zanzibar. Mike and Mara gave us a dinner at an amazing restaurant on a rooftop in the middle of stonetown (stone town being the main town on zanzibar, called stonetown because it is super old and made of stone/coral. The town is intersting because of it is very old and well preserved and also because of the diverse cultures that have coalsced there (omanie, indian, african).

2009-12-29T00:00:00.000-08:00

Puppies!

2009-12-28T23:56:00.000-08:00

Kirsten looking super-fine in some Tanzanian fabric.

2009-12-28T23:50:00.000-08:00

I had a neighbor of ours weave this smock for Kirsten for Xmas. It is a traditional dress that women wear for special events.

2009-12-28T23:45:00.000-08:00

Me and my new buddy Morgan Gama-Lobo!

2009-12-01T04:04:00.000-08:00

So our cat is like 9 months pregnant now (or the equivalent in cat months) and she looks ready to burst. She barely moves these days, she wakes from her near constant napping to drag herself over to her food and then back to napville. This is a pre pregnancy shot. We will get out photos of her post birth with her babies when it all goes down. We also need to get a picture out of our dog with her puppies. We just discovered that she has five puppies, we thought that only three survived (she keeps her puppies tucked away in a small crevice where its hard to see them).

2009-12-01T04:01:00.000-08:00

Just down the beach from where we stayed with the fam was a super old slave castle in the midst of a fishing village. (These pics are a bit disjointed - sorry)

2009-11-27T07:19:00.000-08:00

2009-11-27T07:18:00.000-08:00

Kirsten celebrating the Nabayeska (harvest festival) with some of our neighbors.

2009-11-27T07:16:00.000-08:00

Does it get any better than hanging out on a beach and playing in the waves?

2009-11-27T07:14:00.000-08:00

Mom and dad look happy here, mom's enjoying her pre-sickness time.

2009-11-27T07:12:00.000-08:00

Mo seemed to enjoy Kirsten's company, specially when he was grabbing her necklace and her cool hat.

2009-11-27T07:10:00.002-08:00

I was glad to meet my new nephew. I think we had a good time, except for when I made him cry.

2009-11-27T07:10:00.001-08:00

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2009-11-27T07:07:00.000-08:00

2009-11-27T07:06:00.000-08:00

Yay!

2009-11-27T07:03:00.000-08:00

I think Morgan is the most well travelled baby I have ever met.

2009-11-27T07:02:00.000-08:00

Hanging out at the market.

2009-11-27T06:58:00.000-08:00

Walking the road to the small market that is near us. We often go there to hang out and get some local cuisine, drink some millet beer.

2009-11-27T06:57:00.003-08:00

Garden shot

2009-11-27T06:57:00.001-08:00

Garden shot

2009-11-27T06:53:00.000-08:00

Our dog Kalulu hanging in our garden with a gaggle of Guinea Fowl in the background. Every so often a flock of Guinea fowl come tromping by, they often jump up on our roof with a loud thunk, about twenty of them .... thunk thunk thunk.....

2009-11-27T06:47:00.000-08:00

Kirsten helping our cucumbers to grow big and mighty. Our garden was a lot of fun this rainy season (and continues to be, although it is slowly dieing from lack of water now).

July through Now?

2009-11-20T06:02:00.001-08:00

So I guess it’s been awhile since we’ve posted anything. The past few months have been filled with…well, er, let’s see, tomatoes and basil in the garden, rain glorious rain that brings cool(er) weather and fewer buckets of water needing to be carried on my head and tall tall millet that gave us some privacy for a few months. In August we went to Mole National Park and hung out with some elephants while working--I'm trying to start a girls environmental camp there and I needed to do some "research", right? The camp progressed a long way and then it got derailed but I'm still hoping to make a version of it happen). September was filled with trainings—one on how to help groups function better, one on HIV/AIDS, and one for my environment group—so lots of traveling and socializing with other volunteers, including a really fun surprise anniversary party they threw for us. The Gama-Lobo’s came for a visit and while it was really awesome seeing them and meeting our new nephew, illnesses and other misfortunes sadly turned the visit into a bit of an fiasco and we spent most of their trip in Accra, instead of actually coming to the part of Ghana we know and love and live in. Accra meant tasty food, swimming pools, hot showers, air conditioning, a little wine, and some live music sprinkled in, all of which are very rare treats for us Peace Corps volunteers! Especially when in the company of family you haven’t seen for so long. If anyone else out there wants to give Ghana a try, you’re invited! We miss you all!

A few days after we got back to site we received the sad news that JJ’s grandma Rose had just passed away. She was 96. We tried to figure out a way to go to the funeral but ultimately, we’re just too far away. Instead we looked at pictures of her and listened to some voice recordings JJ had taken on our last visit to Chicago. She will be missed.

Last Sunday was the biggest festival of the year, called Nabayeska, and it’s a little like Halloween, and Thanksgiving and Groundhog’s Day all squished together. It falls at the end of the harvest and people cook and eat a lot, which makes it like Thanksgiving. Before the event, all of the women cook rice and meat while the men wander from house to house eating plate after plate after plate of rice and meat (I saw one man eat seven plates). They say that anyone, even a stranger, can go to anyone’s house and demand that that person make them happy by giving them food or drink or money or whatever (there’s the Halloween bit). Its like Groundhog’s Day in that it’s the day when the chief of the village emerges after a two month-long house arrest. He’s not allowed to see bean flowers during those two months and if he does then next year’s harvest will fail. So he emerges and the whole village comes out in their finest new clothes and celebrates.

For us it was an exciting day because it started with a rain storm! The rainy season ended about a month ago so we thought we might have to wait until next May to see some rain but low and behold a gust of wind blew and all of a sudden there was torrential downpour, which was exciting news for us and also for our tomatoes that had stopped producing since they were so thirsty.

Meanwhile, our dog Kalulu, who had in the past few weeks grown so pregnant she resembled a goat, had been missing all morning which worried us a little. After the rain subsided we discovered that she had given birth at our counterpart’s house next door (where she stays when we travel)! We went for a visit and attempted to peer into the little hole that she had chosen as her birthing place and we could see a few slimy little pups wiggling around. We later got a better view and learned that there were five, but only three survived. A friend took us to bury the two and we were encouraged to pour some pito, the local millet beer, over the ground as an offering. Another ritual that they have here is that whenever someone (a human) gives birth, for two months the mother can only eat sagabo, which is the staple food here that’s made from millet flour, and nothing else. Since Kalulu gave birth, it was necessary that she eat sagabo as her first meal so our counterpart’s mother prepared some specially for her to celebrate the occasion.

We had planned a celebration for when the Gama-Lobo’s came to visit and had arranged for someone to make a big batch of pito and another of a nonalcoholic beverage called zonko (also made from millet—are you sensing a theme here?) but since they didn’t make it up here we decided to do it for Nabayeska since the ingredients had already been paid for. I prepared a giant pot of jollof rice (basically rice with tomato paste) and boiled eggs in case friends or strangers came by asking for food. Which they did. It was fun. Then we went awandering with two of our local friends and were given some bowls of rice and some pito and eventually made our way to the chief’s house where there was a mob of people gathered. There was a singing group that promptly welcomed us by singing an “Amalatinga la Ayintara” song (those are our local names), which was fun. People were all watching a bunch of men in smocks doing something but it was loud and they were speaking Guruni and so it’s hard to say what was really going on. Finally the drumming started and there was a dance party until dark when it got, well, too dark to see anything, so we went home. And that was our Nabayeska.

Some things in store for us:
1. Kittens! Our cat is starting to look kind of goat-like and could pop any day now!
2. Thanksgiving! We’ll be spending Thanksgiving with a bunch of other volunteers in Tamale, where we’ll cook a feast. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
3. Tanzania! For Christmas we’re going to visit Mike and Mara and Morgan and giraffes and lions and bushbabies!
4. Work! We’ve got lots of little things going, the most noteworthy maybe being an HIV/AIDS Know Your Status Campaign which will likely happen in January.

2009-07-18T04:35:00.000-07:00

As many of you know we got an invite to a semi-exclusive event with Obama. He was in Ghana for about twenty-four hours and in that time managed to stir up a mighty typhoon of a Obama frenzy. Everyone seemed to be talking about Obama, songs were written about Obama and played over and over on the radio (one chorus goes Barack Barack, Barack Obama - and that is pretty much the entire song. I think he must have thought Ghana a little crazy as they played this song wherever he went and everyone around him was wearing traditional looking african dresses made out of fabric with Obama's face all over it. We even enjoyed Obama cookies, the packages of which had the american flag and Obama on them (However, in my opinion, they did not taste quite Obamaee enough).

It was actually quite a big deal in for Ghana that he chose Ghana as the one country that he visited in Africa after Eqypt. It is a testament to Ghana's prosperity, peacefulness, and the growing strength of their democracy that he made this visit. He gave two speeches, one we saw at the airport and the other was at the parliament building. His speech to parliament was long and interesting and can be found on the internet. The speech we saw was much shorter but was meant for a specific audience of american development and embassy workers in Ghana. Obama thanked us Peace Corps volunteers a couple of times in his speech, which was very cool. He also visited the cape coast slave castle for a couple hours --- I guess Anderson Cooper did a special on this visit to the castle and also some expose on modern day slavery, I have yet to be able to check it out, but I imagine you all can find it on the internet.

So the event we went to was at the airport with air force one as the backdrop. Barack and the fam entered dramatically on big military helicopters. He was greeted by traditional music and dancing and then Ghana's president introduced Obama. He then gave a short speech praising Ghana for their commitment to democracy, talking about Peace Corps long history in Ghana and how he wants to continue the partnership etc. We were very close to him (about 30 feet away) where he spoke and then we were within a couple of feet when he shook hands with the crowd. Unfortunately we were a couple people back from the front and didn't get to shake his or michelle's hands. Some of our friends shook their hands and were thanked personally for their service.

The whole event was very cool, but super tiring. We travelled 14 hours to get down there and then of course needed to stay up most of the night reuniting with friends. The day of the event most of the major streets were shut down so we had to walk and walk and walk to get around. Then we had to wait for hours at the airport waiting for him to show up. But it was totally worth it.

Then K and I spent a night at a beach near Accra, you know since we were down there and all.

2009-07-18T04:34:00.000-07:00

IT'S ME! and airforce one.

2009-07-18T04:32:00.000-07:00

The man himself.

2009-07-18T04:31:00.000-07:00

Can you find Kirsten?

2009-07-18T04:29:00.000-07:00

This pic is to show how close we were to the podium where Mr. Prez spoke.

2009-07-18T04:26:00.000-07:00

It seemed that most every Ghanian at this event was wearing some kind of Obama fabric.

2009-07-18T04:24:00.000-07:00

The after hours party when our enviro event was finished. It turned into a giant dance party with our huge speaker booming for the whole village to hear.

2009-07-18T04:20:00.000-07:00

This is the regional director of EPA speaking during our enviro event. We had a good line up of speakers from local government and environmental institutions. Unfortunately there are not too many women in high ranking positions here, so it was nice to have her there as a role model.

2009-07-18T04:16:00.000-07:00

This was part of a drama entitled "Trees are life" that the school kids performed at the event. They did a really good job with the drama, the crowd loved it, and the song they sang throughout the performace I kept being heard sung by random people over the next couple weeks.

2009-07-18T04:13:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so these guys are as awsome as they look. They are a men's acapella singin group. They struted around working the crowd during one of the many musical interludes at our environment event.

2009-07-18T04:10:00.000-07:00

2009-07-18T04:06:00.000-07:00

Another women's group we work with performing some songs and dances at our enviro event.

2009-07-18T04:02:00.000-07:00

One of the Women's groups we work with on their way to our environment day event. These ladies usually make a dramatic entrance to any event they attend by gathering together in matching shirts singing, clapping, dancing. They are a sight to behold.

2009-07-08T04:08:00.000-07:00

2009-07-08T04:00:00.000-07:00

The storms come in fast and crazy intense here. This a statue of the patriarch of the compound house we live next to.

Trees, Hippos, and Stars

2009-07-08T03:41:00.000-07:00

We’ve now been in Ghana for over nine months and life seems somehow normal. Being stuffed inside dilapidated cars like clowns, carrying a bucket of water on my head, and brushing past a leg of cow while grocery shopping are all a part of my everyday existence here. We’ve had a few noteworthy events this past month so I’ll recount them.

Sherigu Environment Day 2009!!! On June 20th (the same day as my cousin’s wedding which I sadly missed) we held an event at our local school to raise environmental awareness. We worked with the primary school, the junior high school, and the two community-based organizations that brought us here to make it all happen. The Municipal Chief Executive, the Regional Directors of the EPA and the Ministry of Forestry, the Chief Fire Officer, and a moringa farmer were our guest speakers. The primary school put on a drama entitled “Tree is Life” which was really adorable. We held a poster contest and an essay contest for both schools and awarded someone the title “Environmentalist of the Year” for planting a lot of trees in the community. The headmaster at the primary school, Asoeh, has been an amazing person to work with these past few months. We worked with the students to nurse about 500 seedlings so far, and hope to nurse about 1000 more before the season is finished. The students will take them home and plant them. Using the internship program I worked with at the Mercer Slough as a model, my Environment Club at the Junior High went into all of the primary school classes and taught them a fun lesson about the need to preserve our natural resources and plant more trees. We had the Ministry of Forestry donate 500 seedlings for our event, some of which we planted at the school and the clinic, and others were given away as prizes. We had local groups sing and dance.

The event had a few glitches, like when the chairman didn’t show up and we started two hours late, but overall the event went well. We’ve really become quite the tree enthusiasts and it seems that maybe just maybe the enthusiasm is spreading through the community. We had some other volunteers come to stay with us for the event which was a lot of fun, especially when it started pouring while JJ and I were sleeping outside and the house leaked all over most everyone inside.

While trying to print certificates in Bolga I felt stress for the first time in a very long time, and as I went from copy center to copy center while my friends were all meeting for dinner, I realized how much I love my “job”. I honestly had not felt work stress since coming here. I never have to hear an alarm clock, I set my own schedule and activities for the day, I spend a lot of time outside, I work with really nice people, I have enough free time and enough to keep me occupied when I want to be productive. Life is good.

Having invested so much time and energy into this event, it seemed appropriate to take a vacation. Or friend Nicole came to our event and then convinced us to go back to her site in the Upper West with her. I was planning on going to Accra in a few days but we decided I could easily do that after visiting her. We stayed with Nicole for one night, and her accommodations made me realize how nice our house is. She was given one small room for sleeping, cooking, and living in, and she had a leaky roof with no ceiling, and a lot of biting ants. She’s an admirably positive and tolerant person and seems pretty happy despite her conditions.

Another volunteer, Sinae, has a site 20km from the Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary. Many people in her community have never actually been to the sanctuary so she organized an event for a few schoolchildren and community members to run to the sanctuary and then take a boat tour and sleep at the guesthouse there. And that’s how we saw our first real live hippo in the wild. I know you’re all gaping right now at the idea of us running 20km. But alas, we have not changed that much since coming to Ghana and so we (and a bunch of other PCV’s and participants) biked it. The bike ride was beautiful. It seems greener and more savanna-like in the Upper West. The grass is always greener… The path was a bush path and at one point the ride got so bumpy we had to walk the bikes. The culprit? Hippo tracks. We also saw some monkeys off in the distance. The boat tour was pretty cool. We boarded a 6-person canoe and set off into the Black Volta River (which separates Ghana from Burkina Faso) in search of the elusive hippopotamus. Hippos are said to be the most dangerous animal in Africa, and the river is also home to crocodiles, snakes, and who knows how many microorganisms that want to make my insides do weird things, but we were ensured that this was a perfectly safe thing to do and that the hippos here are actually very friendly. They took us out for about 15 minutes or so and then we saw in the distance the head of a hippo! Apparently a lady hippo! We watched her disappear into the water and emerge a few times and then we headed back.

The next day we headed to Wa (the capital of the Upper West Region) and spent the day wandering and sitting and drinking and eating with some friends. We went to a fancy hotel restaurant where we ate Chinese and Indian food(!!!!) and then watched a soccer match that I hear was an important one between the US and Brazil. I’m trying to learn to like watching soccer. We’ll see how that goes…

The next day JJ headed back home and I began my 12-hour bus ride to Accra. The purpose of this ridiculously long voyage was to visit a planetarium. It’s the first planetarium to open in sub-Saharan Africa, and my PSC/Zoo friend Kyle told me about it and put me in touch with Jacob, the founder. He insisted that I come down for a visit to see if I could offer any assistance to their project. I’m pretty sure he tried to convince my Peace Corps supervisor to move my site to Accra to help him, but we compromised on a couple visits per year. After my 12-hour ride, Jacob insists on picking me up from the bus and taking me out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. For someone who makes about four dollars a day and has a hole in the ground for a toilet, this is very exciting. Jacob is a 73-year old Ghanaian who splits his time between London and Accra and is very passionate about science education. Over the next two days we ate pastries, pizza, mashed potatoes, and grouper, and brainstormed ways that I could maybe assist them on a small level. The planetarium is digital, so nothing like what I worked with at the Willard Smith Planetarium in Seattle, so I couldn’t really offer much assistance there, but they also have a portable planetarium, which I have worked with, so I’m going to develop some programs that they can take to schools. Jacob also wants a science center and some hands-on activities for kids to do, so I’m going to start a small science club in my community to test some activities out. He might be able to get me some telescopes for my community and we can start an astronomy club.

I left Accra and went and visited my friend Casimir in the Eastern Region. He took me on a grand tour that involved seeing an eco-friendly model home, a six-fingered palm tree (a botanical oddity), and a failed attempt to find a Deep Deep Well. The next day we went to the bead market in Koforidua which is always a dangerous place when you only make $4 a day, and then I went to my friend Lisa’s site, also in the Eastern Region. She made me some delicious homemade pizza and took me into a bamboo forest, a moringa farm, and a tiny snail farm! The next day we went to Kumasi and stayed at the Peace Corps sub-office.

There’s 67 new volunteers in training now and ten of them (the environment group) were heading to our site for a field trip, so I hitched a ride with them. It was great meeting the new volunteers, especially Ama, who will be moving relatively close to me in about a month and is therefore my new best friend. We spent the night of fourth of July at a drinking spot which was fun despite the appalling lack of fireworks or even a sparkler. The next day we took a surprise trip to Paga, home of the sacred crocodile pools. I got to sit on a 78 year old crocodile who, like the hippo, was very friendly. Then we went to our site where I was reunited with JJ, Kalulu, and the Moose (the cat’s name these days). We brought the trainees to the garden and showed them what we’ve been up to and we held a meeting with our supervisors and some of the women from our women’s groups. It’s nice having visitors.

So that’s been our excitement lately. Now its time to get back to work. We’re working on helping the school get a computer lab and resource center and next week we have someone from Trees for the Future coming to our site to do some agroforestry trainings for our groups. It seems like a really good organization to be working with, and our site was selected to receive seeds and tools and trainings from them. Hopefully we can keep the tree-planting craze that we’ve started alive.

2009-07-08T03:38:00.000-07:00

Kirsten is super awsome as you all know, but you may not know that she is a badass. She carries heavy containers of water on her head a couple hundred yards to our house. I use my bike to carry water, but I aspire to be as badass as Kirsten someday.

2009-07-08T03:27:00.000-07:00

This is our wonderful wall that we spent a few months constructing. It bends around the side of the house and encloses a nice garden area. The cool looking grass wizard hat looking things is a house for our dog to hang out in when it rains. We began gardening in earnest a couple of weeks ago. We have planted about twenty tomato plants, many soy beans, peanuts, squash, sun flowers, and peppers. We plan to plant a bunch more in the next couple weeks.

2009-07-08T03:18:00.000-07:00

God bless the rainy season and all the greenery that it has brough us. The landscape has really transformed over the past month. The tall crops that look like corn are actually millet (the staple food here). Kalulu, our super cute and awsome dog friend, is featured in this photo. She has taken to following us everywhere and protecting us by barking at strangers. The other day she followed me on a lengthy bike ride into the bush, comically ambushing unsuspecting goats and chickens all the way.

2009-07-08T03:08:00.000-07:00

Scenery around our house.

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The millet has grown up all around our house, cloaking us in glorious privacy. We only now have to greet a few hundred people outside our house, and not the usual few million.

Funerals and the war dance

2009-05-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

It’s funeral season here, in the Upper East region of Ghana. Everything seems to have its season in this part of the world, and they are all new to us. There’s rainy season, dry season, harmattan season (when cool winds blow on down from the Sahara and bathe us in their cool glory), sowing season (many different ones for different crops), growing season, harvesting season, festival season, a season for raising guinea fowls, mango season (a particularly delicious season), and on and on……

So funeral season is not a particular time of the year when everyone decides to drop dead, it’s actually a period of time during the dry season that everyone puts on their funerals. Burials and small ceremonies happen immediately after a death, but then you need to follow that up with a lavish, several daylong eating, drinking, dancing, singing, sacrificing – sleeping very little – and then drinking, dancing, dancing, drinking party. Some families need to save money for years before they can put on a proper funeral for their loved ones.

The people we live amongst just put on a funeral for a man who was the oldest community member. It was a fulneral-palooza lasting over a week, full of dancing, drinking, and soothsaying, you know – everything good in life. I collected music and pictures from the funeral and I interviewed a couple people about the rights and traditions of the funeral. So, what follows is that collection. You only have to read a little more before you can watch the slide show and listen to the music below.

After attending a couple of funerals I still don’t really know what’s going on fully. There are traditions o’ plenty, and unfortunately we are usually unable to communicate well enough with those around us to demystify the whole process. The most conspicuous part of the funeral is the war dance. People come from different communities and perform the old old traditions involved in the war dance you will see in the pictures below. They dress in animal skins, wear traditional helmets, carry bows and arrows and they go to war in the style of their ancestors. There are drummers, singers, and then the warriors and they dance in the style of warring, fighting. And I forgot to mention that most of these warriors had been drinking for a couple days at this point, serving to inject a large dose of mayhem into the scene. During and after the performance of the war dance the other people at the funeral join in, and the drumming and dancing will go on all night. They will light fires, roast goats, donkeys, and cows. They will shoot gun powder into the air and drink pito (local alcohol drink made from fermented millet – kind of tastes like beer). Hundreds of people come from all around to honor and to celebrate the life of the deceased. The funerals are kind of like weddings in the states (but with more animal sacrifice). We would wake up in the morning and the funeral faithful would still be awake, taking some morning drink.

The origins and meaning of the war dance were explained to me: Generations ago the people of this area were scattered into small tribes, and deaths during these days were more often a cause of a tribal conflict than natural causes. And after such a death the tribe would ready themselves for war and the act of retribution. As generations progressed tribes became more intertwined and with this twining peace laid its roots into the foundations of life. The war dance was an extension of that warring tradition, a way to honor the bravery of the deceased.

In the midst of all this celebration, there are many traditions and rights performed. We have caught glimpses of many of these, but they still remain a bit shrouded in mystery. We saw the widow of one man being enclosed in a small thatched area with various objects and her children. We were told that she needs to spend the night in this enclosure. At the funeral we just attended in our community we witnessed the part of the funeral ceremony when the family consults the soothsayer. A family member sits with the soothsayer surrounded by various ceremonial objects. The soothsayer holds a stick, fashioned from wood from a particular tree, and the family head holds the other end. The family asks questions concerning the death of the family member, and the questions are answered by the motion of the stick they are both holding. If the stick falls on a particular spot the answer is yes, if on another spot the answer is no, etc. Neither person is supposed to direct the motion of the stick, the movement is supposed to be a result of the spirits involved in the consultation. The soothsayer is mainly consulted to find out the cause of the person’s death, and to find out what precautions they should take to protect themselves from further suffering. The soothsayer will make recommendations about what animals should be sacrificed to ensure the strength and health of their family. An interesting part of the soothsayer consultation is the testing of the soothsayer. The family will test the soothsayer by taking a small object and placing it near a random tree, and the soothsayer will need to divine the tree. If the soothsayer fails at this they will know that he doesn’t speak the truth, apparently the soothsayer we saw picked the right tree. (How embarrassing would it be to pick the wrong tree?)

So I will let you get on to the slide show now. I have also included a small portion of an interview with a local fra fra man (fra fra = the name of the tribe in this part of Ghana). The man is talking about the soothsayer’s role in funerals and in general. It may be a bit hard to follow, but the info from above will give you an idea of what he is talking about. At the end of the interview is an audio recording of the soothsayer saying his soothe (the soothsayer shakes a rattle throughout the ceremony, supposedly it has the eyes of a bird called a kite in it to help the man see far….. Enjoy.

War Dancing

2009-05-18T05:10:00.000-07:00

2009-04-22T06:10:00.000-07:00

Kirsten decked out in her funeral dress (I got a shirt made out of the same material - it was chosen as the fabric our community would wear to the funeral).

2009-04-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

Kirsten and Kalulu! I picked up our new puppy from a friend when I was traveling down south. The dog was found abandoned in a pile of bricks and was in need of a home. The nine hour bus trip with her was not nearly as bad as one might imagine. Kalulu seems at home now and has even started barking at strangers that come over. She is extra cute when trying to play with the cat (who wants no part of her), and when she interacts with the goats and chickens that stop by. She is not so cute when attack our feet while we sleep.

2009-04-22T06:01:00.000-07:00

Work party building our wall outside our house. Unfortunately the wall still isn't finished, but we are getting there. So this is the same process that most people use for building their houses and the same that built our house. You roll mud into balls and stack them up and mush them together (its actually really hard work and more complicated than that, but that's the general idea.) When its finished we can start work on a garden and get chicken to live in the chicken houses.

2009-04-22T05:59:00.000-07:00

The wall inside of our handsome abode. I painted a mural over the door and another painting of mine is on the left.

2009-04-22T05:55:00.000-07:00

The beautiful beach at the green turtle lodge on the western coast of Ghana. It took a couple days of travel to get there from our desert home, but man was it worth it. After not seeing a body of water for months, swimming in that ocean was glorious. We played in the waves for days until we were thoroughly beaten down by the surf and our hearing began to suffer because of all the sand in our ears.

2009-04-22T05:53:00.000-07:00

Good times at the beach bar.

2009-04-22T05:46:00.000-07:00

Kirsten looking all good at the hotel we stayed at near to cape coast and karkoum national park. The hotel was interesting, it looked like a place that was probably elegant and nice at some point in the distant past, but is now crumbling and a bit rundown, though still nice. It is built on stilts over a lagoon full of crocodiles. We were eating lunch and saw a guy touching one of the crocs, so we thought we would join him. A hotel employee ensured us that they were freindly crocodiles and that they dont like to eat people. So we touched its tale. And I totally recommend touching a croc to everyone the next time the opportunity presents itself. You get a sort of rush of adreneline being so close to a reptile with such a big mouth full of sharp teeth.

2009-04-22T05:44:00.000-07:00

Had to take this picture of the real croc hanging out with the croc statue.

2009-04-22T05:37:00.000-07:00

Karkoum national park canopy walk was super cool. Karkoum is the biggest rainforest preserve in Ghana, and unfortunately one of the few. Most forests in Ghana have been logged and over hunted. As a result you don't see a lot of wildlife around in general (except for lizards, ants, bats, spiders, scorpions - yay!) In the bush around where we live there are still many hunters who go into the bush with their bows and arrows, sling shots, clubs and kill monkeys, antelope, etc. As a result you dont really see monkeys or cool animals unless you go deep into the bush and are good at tracking animals - sad. Karkoum has a healthy population of cool animals (monkeys, forest elephants, antelope, etc) but unfortunately we did not see them.

2009-04-22T05:35:00.000-07:00

View of one of the bridges on the canopy walk.

2009-04-22T05:33:00.000-07:00

Kirsten and giant tree she befriended in Karkoum National Park.

2009-04-22T05:20:00.000-07:00

A view of Cape Coast castle, on the coast of the town of Cape Coast. This castle was mostly built by the British in the early 1600s (although it was begun by Portuguese and taken over by dutch before British took it over and built most of it). It was mainly used as a store house and market for the slaves they were taking out of West Africa until the slave trade officially ended in Britain in 1807. Altogether some two million West Africans went through this one castle, over half of those died while in the castle or on route to their destinations. It was especially unnerving and emotional when the tour took us into the dungeons where the slaves were kept, conditions were unspeakably bad for them.

2009-04-22T05:18:00.000-07:00

2009-04-22T05:17:00.001-07:00

Inside the castle. A pile of old cannon balls.

2009-04-22T05:16:00.000-07:00

2009-04-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

A view from the upper part of the castle overlooking a stretch of the coast.

2009-04-22T05:08:00.000-07:00

Cape coast is a big time fishing town, here are a group of fisherman doing their fisherman things. While Kirsten and I were staying on the beach we walked over to a small fishing village and came across a group of twenty or so men pulling a giant net out of the ocean from the shore. We joined them for about twenty minutes pulling and pulling and singing the work song they were singing. They must have been pulling that net in for over an hour. It was full of all kinds of fish and a couple of sea snakes, which one guy thought would be funny to take and thrown down at our feet.

2009-04-22T05:04:00.000-07:00

Kirsten looking super african (or as african as she can get) in front of our house. The cement looking area she is on is where we usually sleep. However, the rainy season is fast approaching and that will bring us some cooler nights.

2009-04-22T05:02:00.000-07:00

A view of our wall in progress on the side of your house. We plan to have a garden and then a chicken hangout area in this space.

2009-04-22T04:58:00.000-07:00

Our super cute puppy is extra super cute when she is hanging out in the little mud cubby hole built for our future chickens.

A little about what we do here

2009-03-14T05:17:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-02-23T06:49:00.000-08:00

This is a rock snowman Kirsten and I made while visiting the village of tenzuk for my birthday.

2009-02-23T06:48:00.000-08:00

A house in the village of tenzuk.

2009-02-23T06:42:00.001-08:00

Inside the cheif's palace in Tenzuk. The cheif of this village has more than twenty wives and they all live with their respective family groups inside this vast maze of rooms and corridors that is called the cheif's palace. This is a room that is reserved for the oldest woman in the family, or special visitors.

2009-02-23T06:35:00.000-08:00

An alter in the village of tanzuk. Traditional religious practices are alive and well in this area of Ghana. It is all very interesting.

2009-02-23T02:18:00.000-08:00

Kirsten and her little special buddy Tonga. She loved to perch on her shoulder when she was still small enough, not she is getting more mature and independent. She stays up nights hunting bugs, lizards and plays with other cats, instead of curling up with us and sleeping like she used to.

2009-02-23T02:04:00.000-08:00

For my 31st B-day Kirsten and I journeyed to a place called Tenzuk, not far from our site. The village and surrrounding area are sacred to many of the traditional believers in Ghana because of the ancient shrines tucked into caves in the surrounding hills. The area reminded me of Joshua Tree nat. park with the crazy looking rock formations, and had a sort of an ancient feeling to it with the homes of rounded mud formation and the prevelance of traditional religious practice. This is hyena cave that Kirsten is in. A Peace Corps volunteer was stationed at this village a few years back and she used to sleep in this cave. Longer ago Hyenas used to sleep here.

2009-02-20T07:17:00.001-08:00

I will put up more photos in a few days.

2009-02-20T07:12:00.000-08:00

This is the view from our house (looking straight out the front). That is a large compound house with 25 or more people in it. The tree is the tree that is used in religious ceremonies by our neighbors to give thanks to ancesterol spirits and offer them gifts. In the rainy season this burnt, barren ground will be all covered in millet stocks.

2009-02-20T07:07:00.000-08:00

That is our house in the background. I will need to get some more detailed pics of our house up soon. We just painted our kitchen green, got a table, bookcase, kitchen counter.

2009-02-20T07:02:00.000-08:00

Doesn't Kirsten make Camel riding look like a good time? My advice: The next time that a stranger shows up at your door with a camel and offers you a ride, take him up on it. I mean who know when another guys will show up with a camel for you to ride?

2009-02-20T06:54:00.000-08:00

This is one of our super awesome neighbors. You can get an idea of the tribal scarring that people have on their faces and stomachs. The markings identify them as belonging to a certain tribe and people, and are given to them when they are very young. Some people's faces are covered in a spiderweb complexity of lines. People are moving away from marking their children these days. However, most children still get a couple of small scars on their faces and sometimes on their stomachs. These lesser scars are givento the children along with traditional medicine to protect them against certain diseases and dark spiritual forces.

Interesting Things That Happen Here

2009-02-17T05:49:00.000-08:00

Most of you know that I've desperately wanted a cat for years now. The going rate for a kitten these days is one chicken and 10 pesewas (10 cents) so we went into Bolga on our bikes, bought a live chicken, strapped it to our bike and then rode back and exchanged it for our kitten. Tanga is an awesome kitty. When we first got her she was super-snuggly and sweet. Her favorite toy was a nail and her own tail, both of which she would chase around the house endlessly. We are struggling a little bit now because we go to a different house to sleep outside and so Tanga now lives there so we don't see her much during the day. She's growing up. She's got a cat friend who's been showing her the ropes. Once we get a wall built we'll bring her back home but for now she's happier over there. But I miss her a lot.
I was doing laundry outside the other day when I looked over and saw two men on camels approaching us. We didn't share a common language but they gestured for me to get on the camel so what was I to do but climb up on the camel? So I sat on the camel. Camels are really tall! I gestured that I wanted the camel to walk around but instead they had me get down. Then JJ got on the camel and they let him ride it around.
We live in a compound where about half the people are Christians and the other half are traditionalists (they practice the indigenous traditions). There is a tree in our front yard that is believed to house their ancestors and so there are often sacrifices performed there. Usually it's a chicken or a guinea fowl, but sometimes it's a goat or a sheep.
Most people here have facial scars. Generally, the older they are the more elaborate the scarring. One person explained it to me as a tactic against being taken during the slave trade, and others say it is for tribal identification. It is actually against the law to do it today but many still do. Just about everyone (Christians, Muslims, and traditionalists) has a small scar on their cheek to ward off the ninga, which is a nocturnal bird. If a baby cries at the same time as the ninga the baby will fall ill, and so the scar offers the baby protection.
The moon and the stars are awesome. We sleep under the stars (and our mosquito net) most nights because it's unbearably hot inside. It's been nice being so aware of the moon all of the time. When the moon is full you don't even need a flashlight top see your way around.
I'm out of time here at the internet cafe. Once we get electricity the posts will become plenty.

Gold Mining

2009-01-05T09:01:00.000-08:00

We have heard that there are gold mines near our site which are pretty dangerous. On our site visit a mother was mourning the loss of her son because the roof of the mine collapsed. The other day we visited a place where they grind up rocks and extract the gold. We were startled to see an adolescent put a drop of mercury on hand. The mercury attracts the gold like a magnet and then they use a blowtorch to burn away the mercury. I was curious about the health impacts of this and I discovered this article about bush mines in West Africa, which is exactly what is going on in our community. I would encourage you all to read it as it it pretty enlightening about where a lot of gold comes from.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-08-10-104690609_x.htm

Our Journey Thus Far

2009-01-05T04:58:00.000-08:00

I married an amazing photographer. The size on here doesnt quite do the pictures justice, but you can get a sense of what Ghana looks and sounds like.