I was glad to meet my new nephew. I think we had a good time, except for when I made him cry.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
July through Now?
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.
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.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
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.
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.
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