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
Monday, January 5, 2009
Our Journey Thus Far
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.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Our new address...
If anyone ever wants to send us anything our new address is:
Kirsten Tuhus and/or J.J. Gama-Lobo
PO Box 743
Bolgatanga, Ghana
West Africa
Kirsten Tuhus and/or J.J. Gama-Lobo
PO Box 743
Bolgatanga, Ghana
West Africa
Friday, January 2, 2009
Posing with part of our host family following our swearing in ceremony. For the ceremony each language group (our group of 40 volunteers were learning 10 different languages) had to do a small performance in the language. K and I greeted each other in fra fra to the tune of the indiana jones theme song, then we beatboxed as our friend did a fra fra rap. I'm sure we thoroughly embarassed ourselves.
Where to begin? A lot has changed for us in the past couple of weeks to say the least. We are officially Peace Corps Volunteers (rather than Trainees) and in addition to performing a Ghanaian dance and beat-boxing in Fra Fra (the language we're learning) at our swearing-in ceremony, we were each given a miniature plastic Gumby by our new country director. Gumby is apparently the patron saint of flexibility and we can call upon him in our more trying times, which is nice, as I imagine we'll have some trying times these coming years. Like biking in the middle of the day during the harmattan (this is great exercise!) or having diarrhea on Christmas Eve in a city with overflowing public latrines (at least there was a latrine!) or waiting four hours for a bus to come (perfect opportunity to work on that tricky crossword puzzle!).
It was pretty hard saying goodbye to all of our new friends. There are some truly awesome people out here and I really admire them. It's hard to imagine doing this without JJ. After swearing-in we took a little trip with some other volunteers to a monkey sanctuary. Before coming to Ghana I kind of had the impression (well, the hope) that there would be all kinds of African animals everywhere. I have seen a lot of cool birds (like sunbirds, whydah birds, hornbills, and weavers), lizards, Giant African Millipedes (my years at PSC have paid off), and two snakes, but I had been desperately searching the landscape for monkeys to no avail for several months. The monkey sanctuary thankfully satisfied this need for me. In most parts of Ghana, monkeys are killed and eaten and so they tend to stay as far away from people as possible. In this village, though, the monkeys are revered as ancestors by some and so there are a lot of happy monkeys. If a monkey dies in the village, they bury it in a special monkey cemetary. There are two kinds that live there--the mona and the black and white colobus. When I worked at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, I would make regular visits to the black and white colobus monkeys there and they always looked so sad. It was really a rather profound experience for me to see this threatened species frolicking happily in the forest here in Ghana. As sad as it is to see animals in their enclosures in zoos, they really are ambassadors for their species and their lives are so important in making people care about their plight. JJ and I spent an extra day here and most if it was spent under a big monkey tree. We were eating bananas and a monkey emerges from the forest, walks right up to our bag of bananas, looks at us for a moment, then takes a banana out of the bag and proceeds to peel it and eat it! Monkeys really do like bananas I guess.
We then made our way up to our site. We were pleasantly surprised by the fact that the community had done some work on our house. They made us a little cement courtyard with a short wall that they will eventually build up more and will have a roof, which will be nice protection from the giant ball of fire in the sky. Right now we're in the "cold season" which means that it's only between, oh 10am-4pm that the sun is ridiculously hot. The nights are kind of cool I guess. We do need to sleep with a sheet over us. It's so funny to see Ghanains emerging from their homes in the morning--they are all bundled up in scarves and winter hats and jackets! I'm pretty terrified of March. I think it gets up to 115 degrees or so and even the nights are hot. Most people sleep outside because its cooler. Anyway, they also gave us some chairs, a mattress, put curtains up and sealed up most of the cracks in the floor. We are slowly but surely making it into a home--we've hired a carpenter to make us a wardrobe, some shelves, and a kitchen counter (currently our kitchen is on the floor). We painted our living room a nice shade of blue which helped a lot. Somehow the house seems bigger now than when we first saw it.
The lack of privacy is definitely something we're trying to get used to. Every now and then we look up at the window and see eyes staring back at us. Curtains are nice. For the first couple of days, and to some extent even still, every time we emerged from our house there would be children sitting in our courtyard. We would step out to do dishes or chop vegetables or just read. And they watch us like we are television. We are the most exciting thing to ever hit this village! What will we do next?! We are definitely lookng forward to getting a fence, which we claim is to keep the animals out so that we can plant a garden, but it will also be a nice way of getting a little more privacy.
I should mention that right now we are not at our site. We are actually in the Tamale sub-office (the TSO for short) because JJ wanted to be friends with a dog that turned out not to be a friendly dog. People actually like to eat dogs here and do not typically pet them or love them or even feed them regularly. So JJ got a small bite on his hand and since rabies exists here and is so very deadly he needed to get supplementary vaccinations. Normally this would be done in Accra but since we are still on lockdown because the election results are still not in we made the shorter journey to Tamale. We got here on New Years Day and will stay until Monday or possibly Tuesday. Which means four days of internet access, movies, running water, a kitchen, and privacy! And two shots for JJ, who is otherwise perfectly fine. Not rabid at all as far as I can tell!
The holidays were pretty weird. There are quite a few Christians that live here so they celebrate Christmas but it's definitely different. They do not have Christmas trees, for example. We felt that we needed a Christmas tree so JJ went and found us an ocra stalk that kind of resembled a Charlie Brown tree. We made ornaments out of paper and yarn and it turned out really nice. The Ghanaians thought JJ was pretty strange for taking a dead ocra stalk, but once we were able to communicate to them what we were doing with it they liked the tree and only thought we were a little strange. Cultural exchange! On Christmas morning we exchanged gifts--I got a machete (an essential farming tool), a beautiful basket woven by a women in our community, and some fabric that I will have made into a dress. JJ got a hat with the South Park characters on it, a necklace, and some fabric to have a shirt made. We then went to church. One of these days I will write a whole blog about church in Ghana because it is quite an experience. We went to the catholic church and it was actually kind of similar to Catholic church in America, in that there is a lot of sitting and standing and kneeling and recitations, but it lasts about three hours, none of it is in English, there is more dancing, and there is much more emphasis on giving offerings. Our commnuity is very poor, especially this year because of a bad harvest, so they could not eat chicken meat, which I guess is the customary thing to eat on Christmas, and the children did not receive any presents. Very different experience. And I had diarrhea for most of it as well. Needless to say, we were both feeling pretty homesick.
My 30th birthday on the other hand was fantastic. JJ presented me with a beautiful sculpture he made out of sicks and seed pods and brass bangles. He also made me oatmeal with apples in it for breakfast and spaghetti for lunch, both of which were very exciting believe it or not. There is a garden where I will be spending a lot of my time and I went there and planted some vetiver grass, which is used to prevent soil erosion and can also be used for weaving, as animal fodder, and as an essential oil used in the perfume industry (Haiti's a huge producer of this oil). Then we went for a long bike ride and had a nice picnic where we ate laughing cow cheese (the only cheese we get here) and cucumber sandwiches. I cannot express to you how happy the cucumber made me. Fresh, crunchy, watery things are absolutely amazing. We then went home and shared a box of wine and watched the Big Lebowsky on our laptop. Good times.
For New Years Eve we didn't do too much. In the middle of the day we went down to the social center (there's a tiny provisions store, a drinking spot, and people selling pito, the local beer made out of millet, and cosi the tasty fried bean patties) and each drank a callabash full of pito with a bunch of people that had been drinking a lot of pito already, which was a kind of overwhelming experience. We're slowly learning the language but it's tough. We both have decided we need to put a lot more effort into learning the language if we are going to be successful here. Later that night we rode our bikes to an area where we could lay and watch the stars. The stars are so incredibly amazing out here. We had kind of hoped to stay up until midnight but ended up passing out around 10 or so. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the latrine and I am so glad I did. I stepped outside and after noticing the ridiculous amount of sheep that make our yard their bed (which would explain all of the poop) I immedately saw the Southern Cross and Alpha Centauri! Until this point I hadn't really seen any new big southern hemisphere constellations. I then looked north and saw the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and the North Star, which I also hadn't seen in Ghana, and reminded me of home. as an ex-planetarian, this was a really great way for me to start the New Year.
I hope everyone is doing well and we wish you all the best for this coming year!
It was pretty hard saying goodbye to all of our new friends. There are some truly awesome people out here and I really admire them. It's hard to imagine doing this without JJ. After swearing-in we took a little trip with some other volunteers to a monkey sanctuary. Before coming to Ghana I kind of had the impression (well, the hope) that there would be all kinds of African animals everywhere. I have seen a lot of cool birds (like sunbirds, whydah birds, hornbills, and weavers), lizards, Giant African Millipedes (my years at PSC have paid off), and two snakes, but I had been desperately searching the landscape for monkeys to no avail for several months. The monkey sanctuary thankfully satisfied this need for me. In most parts of Ghana, monkeys are killed and eaten and so they tend to stay as far away from people as possible. In this village, though, the monkeys are revered as ancestors by some and so there are a lot of happy monkeys. If a monkey dies in the village, they bury it in a special monkey cemetary. There are two kinds that live there--the mona and the black and white colobus. When I worked at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, I would make regular visits to the black and white colobus monkeys there and they always looked so sad. It was really a rather profound experience for me to see this threatened species frolicking happily in the forest here in Ghana. As sad as it is to see animals in their enclosures in zoos, they really are ambassadors for their species and their lives are so important in making people care about their plight. JJ and I spent an extra day here and most if it was spent under a big monkey tree. We were eating bananas and a monkey emerges from the forest, walks right up to our bag of bananas, looks at us for a moment, then takes a banana out of the bag and proceeds to peel it and eat it! Monkeys really do like bananas I guess.
We then made our way up to our site. We were pleasantly surprised by the fact that the community had done some work on our house. They made us a little cement courtyard with a short wall that they will eventually build up more and will have a roof, which will be nice protection from the giant ball of fire in the sky. Right now we're in the "cold season" which means that it's only between, oh 10am-4pm that the sun is ridiculously hot. The nights are kind of cool I guess. We do need to sleep with a sheet over us. It's so funny to see Ghanains emerging from their homes in the morning--they are all bundled up in scarves and winter hats and jackets! I'm pretty terrified of March. I think it gets up to 115 degrees or so and even the nights are hot. Most people sleep outside because its cooler. Anyway, they also gave us some chairs, a mattress, put curtains up and sealed up most of the cracks in the floor. We are slowly but surely making it into a home--we've hired a carpenter to make us a wardrobe, some shelves, and a kitchen counter (currently our kitchen is on the floor). We painted our living room a nice shade of blue which helped a lot. Somehow the house seems bigger now than when we first saw it.
The lack of privacy is definitely something we're trying to get used to. Every now and then we look up at the window and see eyes staring back at us. Curtains are nice. For the first couple of days, and to some extent even still, every time we emerged from our house there would be children sitting in our courtyard. We would step out to do dishes or chop vegetables or just read. And they watch us like we are television. We are the most exciting thing to ever hit this village! What will we do next?! We are definitely lookng forward to getting a fence, which we claim is to keep the animals out so that we can plant a garden, but it will also be a nice way of getting a little more privacy.
I should mention that right now we are not at our site. We are actually in the Tamale sub-office (the TSO for short) because JJ wanted to be friends with a dog that turned out not to be a friendly dog. People actually like to eat dogs here and do not typically pet them or love them or even feed them regularly. So JJ got a small bite on his hand and since rabies exists here and is so very deadly he needed to get supplementary vaccinations. Normally this would be done in Accra but since we are still on lockdown because the election results are still not in we made the shorter journey to Tamale. We got here on New Years Day and will stay until Monday or possibly Tuesday. Which means four days of internet access, movies, running water, a kitchen, and privacy! And two shots for JJ, who is otherwise perfectly fine. Not rabid at all as far as I can tell!
The holidays were pretty weird. There are quite a few Christians that live here so they celebrate Christmas but it's definitely different. They do not have Christmas trees, for example. We felt that we needed a Christmas tree so JJ went and found us an ocra stalk that kind of resembled a Charlie Brown tree. We made ornaments out of paper and yarn and it turned out really nice. The Ghanaians thought JJ was pretty strange for taking a dead ocra stalk, but once we were able to communicate to them what we were doing with it they liked the tree and only thought we were a little strange. Cultural exchange! On Christmas morning we exchanged gifts--I got a machete (an essential farming tool), a beautiful basket woven by a women in our community, and some fabric that I will have made into a dress. JJ got a hat with the South Park characters on it, a necklace, and some fabric to have a shirt made. We then went to church. One of these days I will write a whole blog about church in Ghana because it is quite an experience. We went to the catholic church and it was actually kind of similar to Catholic church in America, in that there is a lot of sitting and standing and kneeling and recitations, but it lasts about three hours, none of it is in English, there is more dancing, and there is much more emphasis on giving offerings. Our commnuity is very poor, especially this year because of a bad harvest, so they could not eat chicken meat, which I guess is the customary thing to eat on Christmas, and the children did not receive any presents. Very different experience. And I had diarrhea for most of it as well. Needless to say, we were both feeling pretty homesick.
My 30th birthday on the other hand was fantastic. JJ presented me with a beautiful sculpture he made out of sicks and seed pods and brass bangles. He also made me oatmeal with apples in it for breakfast and spaghetti for lunch, both of which were very exciting believe it or not. There is a garden where I will be spending a lot of my time and I went there and planted some vetiver grass, which is used to prevent soil erosion and can also be used for weaving, as animal fodder, and as an essential oil used in the perfume industry (Haiti's a huge producer of this oil). Then we went for a long bike ride and had a nice picnic where we ate laughing cow cheese (the only cheese we get here) and cucumber sandwiches. I cannot express to you how happy the cucumber made me. Fresh, crunchy, watery things are absolutely amazing. We then went home and shared a box of wine and watched the Big Lebowsky on our laptop. Good times.
For New Years Eve we didn't do too much. In the middle of the day we went down to the social center (there's a tiny provisions store, a drinking spot, and people selling pito, the local beer made out of millet, and cosi the tasty fried bean patties) and each drank a callabash full of pito with a bunch of people that had been drinking a lot of pito already, which was a kind of overwhelming experience. We're slowly learning the language but it's tough. We both have decided we need to put a lot more effort into learning the language if we are going to be successful here. Later that night we rode our bikes to an area where we could lay and watch the stars. The stars are so incredibly amazing out here. We had kind of hoped to stay up until midnight but ended up passing out around 10 or so. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the latrine and I am so glad I did. I stepped outside and after noticing the ridiculous amount of sheep that make our yard their bed (which would explain all of the poop) I immedately saw the Southern Cross and Alpha Centauri! Until this point I hadn't really seen any new big southern hemisphere constellations. I then looked north and saw the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and the North Star, which I also hadn't seen in Ghana, and reminded me of home. as an ex-planetarian, this was a really great way for me to start the New Year.
I hope everyone is doing well and we wish you all the best for this coming year!
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