Ghana Day 3, 8/5/14

We started our day with breakfast at 8am, which I thought was really early if we weren’t going to leave until 9:30. Most of the other girls went to run in the morning or did yoga with Deanna, but I thought that journaling and getting rest was more valuable than that, so I slept in until about 8 instead.

The main purpose of our day was to tour three communities that Global Brigades was already working in. on our way, we saw beautiful landscapes. The green immersed the view until the land reached the top of the hill and dipped back down and included corn stalks, trees, grasses, etc. There was a small cemetery along the way, and I thought that it was interesting that they didn’t just have headstones; they have body-length stones that stretch the length of the person.

The first community we visited was Ekumfi Ejyankwa, the smallest of the three with about 650 people with mostly farmers. It had already had medical, water, public health, and microfinance brigades working in the area. As we came into the area, I could see that everything was covered in dirt and clay and the buildings were built in stone but had significant decay around it. There were much less people walking around, and most of those who were looked like children or more elder community members. Many of the children were playing with a stick attached to a little wheel and driving it around.

We first saw the bank that had been set up by the microfinance volunteers, which was centrally located but in a really tiny room. It was only open 6-9am and 4-6pm every day, which is exactly opposite of ideal hours for Americans. However, this setup is perfect for the farming lifestyle to accommodate the fact that the main chunk of the day is spent in a farm several kilometers from the main community. The president of the community development fund came to open the room for us and showed us all the paper documents that they had. They had account books printed from regular paper for regular savings accounts or children’s, loan applications, a binder with the details of each transaction, and a small pocketbook that contained the general information of the transactions of the fund with the local regional bank. That was extremely simple with only date, withdrawal, deposit, and total columns; however, there were several other interns who didn’t know how to read it, saying that there was no need to because everything was digital now. That was a small sort of shock to me because it was a skill I learned in elementary school and one that I consider basic math, but I guess it’s not my place to judge. The president also mentioned that they only keep a maximum of 1000 cedi (the Ghanaian currency) in their locked box at once before they bring the money to the regional bank.

The next thing that we saw was a community water tank that had been built by a water brigade that had come about 2 years ago. There was a very large wooden structure (much like something you would see covering a basketball court at a local park, but completely wooden), with a slanted rooftop that directed water into a pipe with several filters and into two large water storage tanks. Now, during the wet season, the tanks fill up and should be enough for at least a good amount of the dry season when it comes. To cover the rest of the dry season, they charge 10 pesewas for a bucket of the clean water that looked to be between 2 and 3 gallons. For reference, pesewas are the “cent” equivalent of the Ghanaian cedi, and one USD converts to about 3.7 cedis. It’s not much, but it keeps the people accountable and allows them to pay for water delivery when they run out. It’s a great way to keep the system sustainable year-round. Even though it seemed to be really great in concept, we could see how difficult development work is. When we saw the original water source of the community, we saw that it was stagnant and looked to be at least 50% dissolved dirt/clay, completely opaque. There were mosquitos all around the area, and the area around it was used for defecation, which is then brought into the stream when it rains. As this was being explained to us, one of the older men from the community came and started talking to us about how he thought that it was silly to stop drinking from the little pond because no one had ever died from drinking that water. I guess he did not know about the benefits of not having diarrhea, or having to take care of kids who are constantly getting sick, but those are assumptions. It was interesting to see that even two years later, there was still resistance to the provided rainwater supply. 

Under the structure of the water collection tank were four tables with people encouraging the community members to register to vote. They said that they had only been there for the second day, but only 5 people had registered to vote on day 1. When we talked to them, no one had registered yet on that day, by about 11am, even though life starts at sunrise (between 5 and 6 am). Just like in the United States, the results come from the thinking that a single vote doesn’t matter, so there is no point in voting. I hope that if you’re reading this, you take advantage of the opportunity and freedom to vote, at least every 4 years.

The last thing that we saw in Ejyankwa was an area that actually had a government-sponsored clean water spout. It looked very new and had water that looked very clean come out. We were told that the water was measured the same way the water from the rain collection system was, 10 pesewas for one bucket. I was curious as to why there was this faucet along with the rain collection system in the same community, but did not yet get the answer. Deanna mentioned that it might have been because GB arrived first, or the government faucet was not 24/7/365 the way the rainwater system was, but that was pure speculation. The kids around the spout were casually washing their own clothes and the dishes, which is something that you would almost never see in the US without intensive nagging by parents.

I loved the bus rides to and between communities because all the people that could see us would wave enthusiastically when they saw us, smile, and then go right back to what they were doing.

The second community we visited today was Ebuakwa (also spelled Ebuakua) and had a population of about 1000 people. Like Ejyankwans, they were mostly farmers and had medical, microfinance, and water brigade work done. The water volunteers had built water harvesters for individual homes to account for the lack of ownership of the community harvester in the Ejyankwa community that they saw. Because the system requires periodic maintenance, it was difficult to ensure that it would be taken care of if there wasn’t a compensation system in place for the cleaners. The individual systems made it much easier for families to feel motivated enough to work. The community smelled a little bit like being in a zoo, but I noticed that they had a PA system with two speakers tied to the top of a pole in several places around the community that was used for big announcements. It resembled the air strike notification systems of WWII, but I was surprised to see them there.

One of the main areas of focus was a bakery that had been built with funds from the Community Development Fund by GB in the area that had opened just about 3 weeks ago. As we walked there to see it, we stopped by a lady’s property. She was sitting on the ground under a storage structure that held all the corn her family owned in front of her house (it also had a padlock on the entrance!), cooking some fish. She was using the same stove structures that were used in Anamoba from yesterday, with three clay pegs so that the fire could have access to fuel but the pan would be held up by the pegs around it.

When we arrived to the bakery, one of our in-country coordinators set off the alarm trying to get into it. I thought that it was great that they community valued the bakery enough to alarm it, and felt a little proud that it was that way because the community had asked for a bakery from the CDF. We eventually had the person in charge come and open the door, and walked inside. The bakery is made of concrete walls with some holes where the walls meet the metal ceiling. It was the size of about two dorm rooms, with the oven on one side and the shelves for finished bread on the other. The oven was essentially four metal china shelves connected to each other and fueled with propane tanks. There was a single incandescent light bulb on the ceiling next to a shotgun that looked to be so old that it wouldn’t work anymore. The other side of the bakery was shelves that held the finished bread that was ready for sale. The three ladies in charge of baking told us that they bake about once a week and sell loaves for anywhere between 50 pesewas and 3 cedi, depending on the size. People from the community and surrounding areas come to them to buy it; otherwise, it sits on the shelves until it’s sold and another batch is made. All the profits that are made are reinvested in more ingredients (flour, nutmeg, sugar, baking powder, etc.), especially now that the bakery business is just starting out. The little bit that we were able to try was absolutely delicious. Very light and fluffy with just a hint of sweetness, way better than loaves that I could buy off the shelves of HEB.

In the third community we visited, Nanaben, we only saw the medical brigade that was going on. The University of Birmingham from the UK was there and one thing that I really liked about their setup was that they were all wearing matching shirts and made name tags for themselves and the children that came through. The key difference between their setup and the one that I participated in in Nicaragua was their dental station, which was staffed by an actual dentist. He told us that most of their dental work is referring patients to doctors and dentists due to the mobile nature of the clinic, but they could still remove teeth if need be. For their education station, it looked to be led by GB staff rather than students, which I also thought was interesting, since there were several students hanging out in the pharmacy without anything to do. When we talked to them a little bit, they kept asking us about NYC, which is apparently the most highly regarded tourist destination in the US. Our tour guide kept saying “We cool?” to ask if we were keeping up with him.

Because I’m particularly interested in the cultural influences of religion, I have noticed that in most situations, Christianity is honored with written references to Jesus or God, rather than a cross. Islamic references, by contrast, are scarcer and represented by the quarter moon and star, or Arabic words on their mosques. Christianity looks like the dominant religion, and is easily expressed in the community, which is actually very similar to what I saw in London.

We ended up coming back to the compound (which has a family that put a cute little scarecrow in their farm!) and walking to the beach for a reflection and to buy coconuts from the local family that lived there. They apparently get them by climbing the palm trees directly, and though we weren’t able to see it, Deanna told us that she had seen one of the men scale a tree in about a minute. The men took coconuts straight from the tree and cut it open for us to drink, and then cut open the fruit for us to eat after we finished drinking. Coconut flesh is actually really good, even if I am not a fan of regular shredded coconut, and the best part of it is that it only cost about $0.35. When we were done with the fruit, we could drop it on the ground for the chickens to come and devour it immediately. While we were eating, there was a little incident in which the family’s dog starting to do what looked like attacking the chickens, and the man that was helping us ran over and starting yelling, “Calm! Calm!” at the dog to get it to stop. He had a little bit of a skeletal deformation that Deanna said came as a result of a bout of polio when he was younger.

We ended the day with a couple lessons, but the most interesting was “asset mapping,” which is a technique that focuses on what a community has rather than what it lacks when you are looking to develop a community.