Bats and Rastafarians

To be honest, Accra can get on my nerves after a while. It’s a busy, noisy, smelly and disorganized mass of people and concrete buildings connected by random highways and backstreets that are filled with cars and tro-tros that only add to the ambiance.

Sometimes the hostel can get that way too. Given that I still don’t feel at home at the Hostel or in my room, (my big project for next semester: stop living like I’m at a hotel and settle in!) I like to get out on weekends as much as possible. I have yet to remain in Accra for two weekends in a row!

It appears that Meghan B. and Catherine felt the same, because they went away for 10 days for a “working vacation” at XOFA, a project in the wilderness of Volta Region. The basic idea behind it was to replant a deforested area with mango trees and other crops. This eventually became an eco-tourist venture (read: hotel without electricity) that is mostly run by Rastafarians and offers lots of activities for people who want to live the simple life.

The place itself is pretty neat, with lots of nice huts, seashell walkways, beautiful flowers and Rasta atmosphere. Did I mention that it sits on Lake Volta, Africa’s largest man-made lake? The best part is that it is bilharzia-free, so you can go swimming without worrying about getting worms! The water was warm and fresh, like being in a nice pool without the chlorine. One of the best swims I’ve ever had, period.

It’s quite a beautiful place, but it’s pretty expensive by Ghanaian standards, so the budget-conscious would be setting themselves up to be disappointed with the value of staying there. So Meghan and Catherine spent over a week there planting mango trees and helping educate the children at the local village For their volunteering, they got half off accommodations and food. You be the judge of whether that’s a good deal.

Anyways, Meghan called me on Thursday and told me to bring as many people to XOFA to help out for a day… something about a “bat house”. So a bunch of the girls came with me the next evening to check it out…

(Building the bat houses)

Apparently, the school was quickly becoming unusable because of a bat infestation. Our basic project for Saturday was to 1) rid the schoolhouse of nesting bats, 2) cover the area between the roof and walls so that the bats couldn’t re-enter and 3) make alternate accommodations for the bats. It felt like a bizarre Trading Spaces / development project that had to be finished in a day. (Note to self: pitch that idea to TLC)

So we acquired netting and nails for the bat-proofing, made a butterfly net out of sticks, rope and the net and made bat houses out of branches, sticks and nails. We went over and were followed by all of the children in the village (all mud huts and no electricity), so Lisa and Julianna played with them while we went to work on getting the bats out, putting up the netting and erecting the bat houses on a pole. Able-bodied locals participated with us and it was only right to have them in on the process, since it’s for their school.

(Hilde and I relaxing)

Long story short, we did a pretty good job considering our time constraints. I don’t know if we helped solve their problems. It was my first experience with a community development project (albeit not a “real” one) and it kinda felt good to get something positive done and feel like we took an idea and made it work.

We celebrated by having dinner and drinks on the shore whilst watching lightning off in the distance. Afterwards, we shared some stories, songs and lemongrass tea with our new Rasta friends King and Cha Cha (AKA "Batman") The experience was great for the body soul and methinks I’ll take a week off next semester with Meghan to do it all again.

Tickets BOOKED. Sweet deal!

Well, it's taken about a week and a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but I finally did it... I booked my flight to London! So, I take the red-eye from Accra to London-Gatwick for the night of December 16-17. Then I'll take the bus to Heathrow to meet my darling Maleaha in the morning and then (if all goes according to plan) we shall set off by train across Wales and take a ferry to the Emerald Isle.

From there, we will find our way to Dublin and meet up with Anthony and Rob (friends all the way back from our Brother André days) and crash at their place for the next while. It'll then be three weeks of relaxing, exploring the city and even the countryside, with Christmas and New Year's there to boot! I'm really excited for this Chrismas, because I didn't want to spend it in Africa. I really wanted to go some place cold and familiar, yet still have an adventure!

This way, I'll have a Christmas abroad with my love and great friends who we go way back with - the closest thing to family I can find on this side of the pond! I know it'll be great for all of us, since Rob and Anthony are probably going to need some old friends to get them through the holidays. I'm so stoked!

Here Comes The Rain Again...

If there's one thing that I really haven't gotten used to, it's the erratic weather patterns in West Africa. While the dry season will be upon us in about a month (i.e. it will be hot, dry and sunny for months on end), we're still getting all kinds of strange weather. I list today as an example:

This morning the sun was on at full blast and it was bloody hot. In fact, one of my favourite things to say on a daily basis is, "It's so damned HOT in this country!" On the upside, that is the best time to do laundry, since clothes dry in a snap. So I did a giant load before going to school to do some errands.

By 1pm, the clouds rolled in and it came down in buckets for about half an hour, with some terrific thunder to boot. Everything started flooding and it was quite mucky on campus after that. I came back to the hostel to find that my then-dry clothes had become soaked again and that the power had gone out. Jolly good.

I had one other important meeting to go back to campus for and while walking there, the black clouds rolled in, followed by showers. Thank goodness I wore a hoodie...

The one redeeming part of the day was the walk home at around 5PM, when the already obscured sky was beginning to get dark. Seeing the dark grey sky, wet leaves and smelling the post-rain atmosphere honestly reminded me of a cold, rainy October evening walking home down Sunnyside Ave in Ottawa. I felt strangely at home walking home in this weather, as my iPod played the Smiths' "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out".

And you know what? It rained today in Ottawa. Eerie.

Drunken Obruni Kareoke Party!

Last night I went with some friends to Asasse Pa, the best and cheapest vegetarian restaurant in Accra. It's run by Ratafarians and we go there pretty much every week (some even more). They've got veggie burgers, crazy apple salads, tofu kebabs and soy ice cream - and it's all delicious. All of the Carleton girls are vegetarian/vegan back home and I think they're trying to indoctrinate me. (and frankly, it's working!) It's also right next to a bar, which is just fine by us.

After dinner, we went for coffee at the Paloma Hotel. If you know where to get it, there's delicious brewed coffee to be found in Accra, but it's so hard to find. There aren't many people who can afford real coffee and so the vast majority is a crystal mix made by Nescafé, which is pretty dull. I've also been getting a taste for good coffee since I got here. Anyways, we met a UN worker from India named Jay, who had some great stories and bought us a round and some fries to boot.

Then we entered the lion's den: The British-owned and mostly-white Champs Bar. It's all decked out in sports banners and jerseys and Friday nights is the night of the fine Japanese art of karaeoke. After more new friends and more free drinks, I went up with the girls to sing "Breakfast at Tiffany's", asking everyone what their favourite movies were. Later on, I went up with my British metalhead-friend Festus and we moshed out Green Day's "American Idiot". I went pretty nuts and my neck still hurts. Next time, we'll own that place. Totally.

PS - yes Dave and Jeff, at this place, you can sing "Africa" by Toto.

African Education

Hey kids,

It's been a few days, but it doesn't mean I haven't had anything to talk about. More that I haven't been able to write as much as I'd like to. I still have to talk about all the crazy things that go around here, like taxis, Ghanaian drinks, the crazy people I live in the hostel with... but I've still got over six months left, so we'll take it at an easy pace.

So it's coming on late October and school has kicked into high gear, if you can call it that. There's maybe 3 weeks left for most of us and after that, there's maybe a few weeks before exams start in late November, so everybody's making plans to travel around. I may kick around here for a bit to study for Arabic, which is the only class that I'm genuinely concerned about. While there's a lot of newbies to the language like myself, there are also many native speakers who already know everything, but have to take it anyways (again, love that bureaucracy!). How can the only 1st year class that I'm taking be the most difficult, I ask you?

As I recently wrote to my exchange program director at Carleton, school here is pretty different. Some classes are incredibly fascinating and I'm learning a lot from them and others I couldn't care less about if I tried. The level of education here isn't nearly as high as at your average Western university, because in Africa, educational resources are scarce (the library needs an overhaul... card catalogues? Come on!), the bureaucracy can get in the way of teaching (you have to register at each individual department on paper, so one won't know what the other is doing) and the universities here simply can't afford to pay the salaries that ones back home can (average annual wage is something like $6,000 US), so truly brilliant professors are fewer and further between. The best ones are patriotic Africans like my Colonialism and African Response professor Dr. Addo-Fenning and Dr. Akosua K. Darkwah, an angry, young African feminist who teaches Globalization and the Developing World. She is scary, but she takes no prisoners, and they need that here!

Of course, if we were here simply to learn, we'd be disappointed. If you want to go on an exchange simply for academic purposes, go to Europe. What's more important for us is not what we learn, but how we're learning it. I already know globalization, but seeing the view from below is so much more refreshing and insightful than reading a book. African history needs to be taught by Africans who can see how the same mistakes that were made a hundred years ago are still being repeated. Even my Management of NGOs class, which I don't particularly enjoy very much, has shown me exactly how the future bureaucrats of Ghana work and how they think. I feel that even though I may not be learning as much academically as I would be back home, I'm learning so much more from reading between the lines and understanding the African mentality.

Joe put it best: We're here for nine months and - at least for this semester - our role right now is simply to be sponges and absorb all of these experiences. Maybe next semester, we will be have enough information and experience to be able to turn it into something productive and we will be able to contribute to society, but even if we don't, at least we will have learned so much more about the world from being here.

So remember kids:
1. It's a big world, go and some of it.
2. BE THE SPONGE.

Shai Hills Adventure

Ah the fine art of wanting to get away for a weekend, picking a spot and seeing what happens. If you haven't noticed, I do that a lot...

So this time around it was myself joining the Carleton girls (Adrienne, Hannah, Lisa and Meghan) in going about 30km North of Tema (the Mississauga of Accra) to the Shai Hills Wildlife Reserve. We left Saturday morning via tro-tro and got there in a few hours.

(Above: On the road with Meghan, Hannah, Lisa and Adrienne)

We stayed at the Shai Hills Resort Hotel, a young and ambitious complex in the middle of nowhere and the priciest place I've stayed at so far. ($20 for a room? Outrageous!) Parentheses aside, it's pretty decent, with nice rooms, showers and TV - although the beds are pretty tough. After a Bollywood movie of the week, we had some lunch and kicked around for a while. Hannah and I walked to the nearest village and were mistaken as:
1. Husband and wife
2. Peace Corps workers
3. Members of the Jesus Christ Church of Latter Day Saints.

Awoken at 6AM, we headed out to the reserve for some early-morning game viewing. Unfortunately on the way there, it started to rain. A lot. Then the thunder and lightning started...

No matter, it cleared up a bit and we got a guide to take us out (ask for the student rate when you do). We saw a troop of baboons near the entrance (Meghan had her Jane Goodall clothes on, which made it even funnier) and a crocodile poking its eyes and nose out of a watering hole. We even saw cattle on the horizon... which meant that they were grazing on protected land, so our intrepid guide Suleyman left us in the wilderness for "small-small" (a bit), which after 45 minutes, we got sick of and went home. Brunch at the hotel was awesome - omlettes, oatmeal, tea, toast and jam. I totally recommend the resort for food and service, if not for their crappy beds.



Now, considering we came out for wildlife and spent all of an hour and a half seeing it, it seemed to be a bust. But hark, Hannah was told that the Bat Cave was a sight to be seen! So in the afternoon we hopped on back, got another guide and made our way down to the cave. The savannah was beautiful and it seemed like we could be anywhere in Africa. On the way, we saw a herd of Cobb's antelope on the horizon! They got spooked and all ran away, but it was something to see, regardless. A fair hike later, we got to the base of the hill and climbed our way into the bat cave, also the former palace for the Shai Hills people. Now there are bats all over Accra, but it was really awesome to be in a real bat cave... the sounds and sights of thousands of bats buzzing around, the funky guano.


And the icing on the cake: the name of our guide for the bat cave was Alfred. Get it?

Anyways, we tried to get a tro-tro back to the city at sunset and ended up piling in the cab of a guy's pickup truck. His picking us up saved us probably two hours of travelling and he took us all the way back to campus! All in all, it was a nice weekend trip and was like seeing a mini-Mole National Park for very few cedi.

Pancakes and Coffee and Toast, Oh My...

Today I woke up feeling a little bit crusty, realizing that I had spent a fair bit more last month than I had realized. So for the next month, I'll try the budgeting game and see where all of this cash goes... (don't worry Mom and Dad, I'll be okay for the time being)

So what can a poor boy do to elevate his mood in the morning?

Make pancakes. That's what he can do.

And that's what I did. I used the mix and syrup bought from Koala and invited a bunch of people to the kitchen to partake. And as with Tostitos, when you have pancakes, you have a party. This one quickly escalated into an all-out brunch. Meaghan's partner Cara had flown in the night before and with her came all of the Western goods that we missed in Africa. We made coffee with fresh ground roast, enjoyed some whole wheat health bread and, la piece de resistance: my long-awaited toaster! I was so thrilled to finally have it. So we had tons of pancakes, fresh coffee and toast with strawberry jam.

It was really awesome to have everything come together so perfectly: I brought the stuff and started it off, Lisa brought the eggs and oil, Adrienne got the pancake-making system to a science, Cara and Meaghan brought the coffee and bread, Lucas fixed the toaster and we all sat around and had a great time. And to boot, I plugged my iPod into some speakers, so we listened to Broken Social Scene and Modest Mouse as we ate. We may as well have been back home!

I hope that this starts something weekly, like some sort of Friday morning pancake breakfast kind of thing.

Yum.

Two Months and Still Chuggin' Along

Alright! So I've been in Ghana for a whole two months and while that doesn't seem like an important milestone, it definitely feels good to have under my belt. The first month was all about adjusting to African life and the second was more about finding a groove. I'm still finding that groove, but I feel like I have a better picture of where I am and where I want to be in general while here.

The biggest part about the two-month milestone is that I can see the road ahead and I feel like I can get through until May. I've got about two months until I head out to Ireland for a few weeks, then I'll keep on travelling until the end of January, when classes pick up again. Then it'll be four months and I'm back in the Great White North. (just in time for summer!) So there, it looks like a piece of cake.

Contrast that with my American friends, almost all who are here for one semester. For most of them, they're at their halfway mark because they'll be returning to the US for Christmas. At least us Canadians can sit back and relax while they try and fit in all of the Africa they can in a few weekends. Either way, a lot of them have become good friends, so I want to hang out with them as much as possible. Apparently next semester it's all British students and they have a reputation for being pretty anti-social. Thank God for Canadians!

Ghanaian Food

So what the hell have I been eating all this time? The food here is a little bit different - no burgers, no nachos and no Kraft Dinner (apparently in the US it's known as "Mac and Cheese"). What is a lonely Canuck to do?

The local dishes in Ghana are almost exclusively rice-based, which is odd, since rice is not a traditionally local crop. Regardless, it's all they seem to eat here and they have a hundred ways of preparing it. For you vegetarians out there, Ghanaian dishes also tend to come with either chicken (always fried) and fish, which is cooked, fried, or dried. I might also add that the fish here is not big tasty salmon or Arctic char that you find in the supermarket. Rather, it's locally caught tilapa or something else small and not healthy-looking. We never eat the fish here. Another caveat: food is often cooked in fish oil, so you never really know. Even if you say "no meat, please" they will just smile and nod while heaping tons on.

Ghanaian food (according to my guidebook) has a reputation for being the most interesting in West Africa. And for you other West African countries, I pity you greatly. Joe stated that while he eats the local food often, he will not miss it and I'm inclined to agree, for the most part. There's simply way too much rice and not enough vegetables in the average Ghanaian diet. Anyways, here's a rundown of the basic meals, all of which can be purchased for cheap at a local stand:

Wayke (pronounced "wat-chay") - The first thing that I ate while here, it's a dark rice-and-beans combo that is quite tasty and spicy. It reminds me a bit of Trinidadian palau, which Maleaha's mom makes when I visit, so in a way it's kind of a comfort food. They put some weird fish/pepper sauce over it and shito, a tasty, spicy peper sauce (that's right... laugh it up, children, it's "shito"). I recommend adding some fried plantains, salad or a bit of chicken.

Jollof - is a similar rice dish that is light brown-coloured, less spicy and interchangeable with wayke.

Fufu - is a gelatinous rice ball that is served in a meat or fish sauce (ask for without fish heads). Making it is actually suprisingly difficult: someone fills a small bucket of it, pounds it for a while with a log and lets it ferment for a while before serving it. It's mushy and sticky at the same time and the locals eat it with their hands, so dig in if you don't want to look like an idiot!

Banku - is largely the same deal, but a little more solid and dry on the inside, so it absorbs the soup/sauce better than fufu.

Kenke - the most solid member of the pounded rice family (although I don't believe it has a latin name yet), it's served in a giant leaf with the sauce, for some reason. A friend from Vermont compared it to mashed potatoes... whatever makes it go down easier!

Red-Red - can be any colour of the rainbow, but the gist of it is that it's beans and some mystery soup that's mixed together. What makes it special is when they add some powdered cornmeal, which makes it more solid and forkable. The icing on the cake is the fried plantains that they add to it, which makes it sweet. Red-red is considered a lunch food, so early afternoon is the best time to get it.

Kellewelle - is fried plantain that's chopped up into little bits for a snack. For you obrunis, plantains are like giant bananas that aren't really tasty until you do something crazy like fry them in palm oil.

Yams - A traditional staple of West Africa, they're giant African potatoes that are either boiled (not bad, like boiled or baked potato), or - of course - fried. The latter method is my favourite, because fried yams taste like thick french fries, so when I get them, I bring salt and ketchup with me and feel like I'm back home! Now, if only they had hamburgers here...

Fried Egg on Bread - Basically an egg sandwich, for some reason, they eat it here morning, noon and night. They scramble it, add bits of tomatoes, peppers and onions, fry it all and put it on a bun. BYO Ketchup.

There's a basic rundown of local dishes here. Some are pretty decent and some aren't good at all. But hey, chacun son gout, as the French say. Ghanaians love this stuff, which is evident since nobody seems to make anything else. Even my roommate Patrick gets banku from his mother, makes his own rice and loves it! Actually, to be fair, like any dish, it does taste better when it's homemade.

If these foods don't strike your fancy, one of the great things about being here is the cheap and delicious fresh fruit! Depending on what's in season, there are local bananas, oranges, tangerines, papaya ("paw-paw"), pineapples, apples from South Africa and - my ultimate favourite - mangoes, AKA my 5,000 cedi-a-day addiction. They aren't in season from Septemeber to November, so I've been in a deep funk for a while now, but it'll be a beautiful day when I can get my hands on one...


So there's the basic rundown on Ghanaian cuisine. I haven't even talked about what they have to drink here and where us Westerners frequently go to for "comfort" food (heck, even for "nutritious" food). Those posts will come soon. I hope you enjoyed this one, Kashina!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, today is Canadian Thanksgiving, our oddly-timed answer to American Thanksgiving. Back home, it's always been a big deal for my family and we'd all get together and have the traditional dinner: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans and of course: apple and pumpkin pie with ice cream. This year I was conspicuously absent, but at least I had a great weekend with Joe and got to talk to everyone on the phone, hearing their voices for the first time in two months.

So I guess being in Africa, while Thanksgiving doesn't have the same meaning that it does back home, I definitely feel like this year I have the most to be thankful for: loving family, devoted girlfriend, great friends in two cities, all of the amenities that Markham and Ottawa have to offer as well as a luxurious standard of living. The Creator has most definitely blessed us beyond comprehension.

In Accra, you realize that only a microscopic fraction of the population gets to enjoy a life as privileged as we have in the West. Even someone "just scraping by" in Canada really has it made by Ghanaian standards. Here (especially in the city), people are hungry and often living on under $1 per day, many children can't afford to go to school and electricity and sanitation are for the privileged. I can't stress how thankful I am this year to be living the life that I do.

On top of this, Maleaha called me today to say that she will be meeting me in Ireland for Christmas! I've been on Cloud Nine ever since. I truly have a wonderful girlfriend that I wouldn't trade for anything. Could this perhaps be the best Thanksgiving ever? I think so.

Peace, love and understanding, y'all...
Mr. Obruni

Adventures with Joe

So Saturday morning I'm awoken at 4:30AM by my roommate Patrick and his girlfriend Meredith, who boisterously burst into our bedroom after a prayer vigil that clearly went far into the morning and must have been pretty nuts. (Oh those crazy evangelicals!) How lucky was he that I had set my alarm for 4:45AM to get up in time to catch a bus to Winneba (Westward, halfway to Cape Coast). So I got up and left without incident. Regardless, I'm currently looking into a single room for next semester.

The bus is for the Student Representative Council of the University (or SRC for those in the know). It was free - and an hour late, of course - but we arrived with plenty of time until the ceremony began - which, was also late. The big event? The swearing in of the new president of the National Union of Ghanaian Students (NUGS), kinda like the CFS back home. The new prez, a firebrand named Samuel, had a great speech and really threw down the gauntlet, using taboo words like "comrades" and making it clear that he was staying out of politics. (The outgoing president having been in the pocket of the ruling party) Afterwards, I met up with Joe and we had some fufu for lunch, checked out the beaches, and went to a celebratory beach party.

At the beach party, we sat around a table and had Guinness with activists, former politicians and the new women's issues executive on NUGS. We talked on everything from student issues to abortion and it was the most intellectually stimulating conversation I've had with Ghanaians in two whole months of being there. It appears that Joe and I have been firmly entrenched in the student activist movement in Ghana, all in the span of about 10 days. This looks to be an exciting year!

As dark came, we rode Joe's moto (i.e. scooter) and stayed at the Lagoon Lodge in Winneba. It's a nice place, looks kinda like a Florida beach house and they have good drinks (try the pineapple-orange juice, it's fantastic), although food was a bit pricey. We talked with Germans, an Austrian and Dutchwoman, the latter of which is volunteering in the Liberian refugee camp. I might check that one out... In the morning, we explored a nearby beach and vowed to later climb the local mountain.

We took the moto down the empty highway to Kokrobite and sang some tunes. I must say that I definitely get why Joe and Jon have motos, because they're a blast to ride. I got a lesson from Joe and I'm pretty decent on it. Anyways, we checked into Big Millie's resort, a cheap, well-decorated and environmentally-friendly Rasta resort. It's got so much character that the nearby hotels have no business, really. They have huts, but we opted for the cheap outdoor mosquito-net platform. The beach there is the best I've seen so far in Ghana and it wasn't too busy for a Sunday afternoon. Joe and I played in the waves, sat on the beach and read into the evening.

Dinner was bruschetta and pizza over deep conversation at the nearby Italian-run hotel. We spent the evening back at Big Millie's with a box of wine. It being Canadian Thanksgiving, my entire family was gathered at my Aunt Patty and Uncle Sean's with me being the black sheep in Africa. Phone reception was terrible, but I got to speak with everyone for about 5 minutes and that's all I needed. If there was any time and place that I could talk to them all and not feel homesick, it was after a great evening with the sea breeze in the air.

We woke up after sunrise and had an early-morning swim, a great big breakfast (they have everything) and took the moto back into Accra, weaving through traffic jams all the way there. Any trip with Joe is an adventure and this one was no different. A little education, a little relaxation. Sweet.


Oh and by the way, the Ghanaian football team beat Cape Verde something like 4-0 in the final World Cup qualifier, which means that they will be going to the big show in Germany next year. Go Black Stars!

Oasis In My Desert pt. 2

While I did go to the Koala Market today for the first time in two weeks (bought: "New African" magazine, butter, pita bread, Aunt Jemima pancake mix and syrup: all for about $10), the big event was this evening at the Canadian High Commission...

In an attempt to find out if they were going to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday, I called the High Commission (embassy in a country of the British Commonwealth) and asked what events were going on these days. They said that tonight (the first Thursday of every month) there would be a "Canada Club" party, open basically to anyone. Sweet.

We got there in the evening and the security guards (Ghanaian) were happy to let us in. The CHC is pretty well-funded, so there are lovely gardens, a tennis court, a pool, patio furniture, stereo and even foosball table. Tonight, they were barbecuing burgers and hot dogs. And it's been damn near two months since I had a hamburger. It was overpriced (as a taxpaying citizen, shouldn't I get my burgers for free?), but it was sooo good.

There were many Canadians of there from many walks of life (diplomats, students, NGO workers, businesspeople) who had been in the country from a week to two years - and even some Americans, Brits and Germans. We met two Army advisors from the US assisting the Ghanaian Armed Forces (yes, they're legit) and we're going to make Mexican food with them sometime very soon.

The moral of the story: When travelling, check out your local embassy for events. We had a great time and even though there's nothing going on for Thanksgiving, I'm glad we went.

Fair Trade and the Fair

This one has been a little late in the making, but a rainstorm last night cut our internet connection...

So Monday night was the first night of a week-long Food Fair at the basketball courts on campus. All kinds of vendors set up around them, selling food, fruit, ice cream, shoes and even Ghanaian designer clothing (which, since it's made in Ghana, is worth a second look). However, the big attraction for me was the main event for the evening:

The big show was a forum for the Ghanaian Peasant Farmers' Association, the main farmers' union in the country. Leaders have been travelling around Ghana, talking to peasants in giant forums (apparently an uncommon event here, so attendance was huge in the villages) to hear their grievances about how unfair world trade rules and practices have been hurting them. The leaders were on the "Road to Hong Kong", which means they came to Accra with all of these farmers' proposals for how to make their lives easier. Their goal is to speak with the Ghanaian Minister for Trade, who will be at the next World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Hong Kong this December. Hopefully he will listen to them and with other Ministers of Trade for impoverished nations, try to change the rules for trading to help them.

The speakers were great and I'm definitely learning so much more from hanging out with them than sitting in class (Joe introduced me to them and we had some chats). Unfortunately, there was no advertising for it whatsoever, so attendance was sparse (most of us found out from Joe, who had told us earlier in the day about it). On the upside, it was very informative and when I closed my eyes and breathed in, it smelled like the Markham Fair back home... popcorn and hot dogs! No livestock, though...

The next day was the big rally in Holy Gardens near Nkrumah Circle (the main traffic circle in town). I waited around for a long time until it started (as mentioned), but when it did, there was a brass band on a flatbed truck, dozens of cyclists and two busloads of pumped-up students that arrived and filled up the park. I'd say there was between 300-400 people there and while it wasn't a big rally in numbers, the media came out in full force to cover the event. So we can be sure that the Minister for Trade DEFINITELY knows that they're here. On the way home with Benji (a really cool guy from Arkansas who is all about the fair trade) and the students on the bus, we talked, chanted and let on only other students on the way back to Legon. It was quite the party.

Anyways, if the ideas of fair trade aren't yet clear to you, I'll try to articulate them more clearly in the coming months as they become relevant. If you want to learn more about it, Oxfam UK has a good introduction to fair trading. And always great is Fairtrade Carleton's super-fantastic website.

Learning to Take it Easy

I've been here for about 8 weeks or so, but something I'm still adjusting to is the pace of Ghanaian life and...

Case in point:

Exhibit A - I have a presentation on Thursday for Management of NGOs class. My group was supposed to meet yesterday (Monday) to iron out the details of the presentation. Yet I was the only one who made it to the meeting. I didn't need to take that crap from those future bureaucrats, so I'll let them take care of it.

Exhibit B - Today I was supposed to have my big meeting with a fellow at Third World Network Africa, an NGO that deals with issues like trade policy, gender issues and the environment. This excites the development student in me greatly. Unfortunately the contact that I spoke with 10 days ago to book the meeting for today is apparently on vacation for the entire week! Brilliant. I only cut two classes and walked for over a 1/2 hour both ways to see him. So what did I do about it? Shrugged my shoulders and made a note to come back next week.

Exhibit C - Later today I went to Holy Gardens near Kwame Nkrumah Circle to see a large rally for Ghanaian peasant farmers (more explained in the next post). It was supposed to start at 2pm and I got there early. The place was literally empty and I kept making calls to Joe and Ken the activists to find out where the hell the rally was. I walked around for over an hour making conversation with some interesting individuals and freaking out. Then a bit after 3, suddenly a giant convoy of cyclists, busloads of students and a truck with a brass band in the bed roll onto the field! Suddenly it was a party in less than 5 minutes and everyone was going nuts.

The moral of the story? Relax, Ghanaians have their own pace of life. Maleaha says it's the same in Trinidad. Frankly, with this lax and carefree attitude, I can see why Ghana is behind the developed world!

...but maybe it's not my place to say. At least they seem to enjoy it!

The Hills Are Alive With The Sound of Ghanaians...

I just got back to the University of Ghana's production of the "Sound of Music". The acting and singing were pretty good, but there's only so much you can do on an empty stage and modest budget to recreate 1930s Austria. To be honest, it could have used more Alps.

An unexpected treat: Given that the musical is set just before World War II, it was interesting to see black Nazis, something Rogers and Hammerstein probably never thought would happen.

Lisa: The university is putting on a production of the "Sound of Music" this week.
Me: So... there's going to be black Nazis?

On the future

I haven't been this scared
In a long time
And I'm so unprepared
So here's your valentine...
-Blink 182

Hey everyone, I know the updating has been kinda thin lately, but it's not because I've been bored, but quite the opposite! To be honest, I've been getting busier, spending more time studying at the library for Arabic and a few small assignments due for next week. I've been spending entire days on campus doing work and sifting through Ghana's infamous bureaucracy and it's all stressing me out, but I think that's part of the process of integrating here...

I'm getting stressed out about a lot of things, I find. Since I've been in Ghana for about six weeks, I've had a lot of time to learn and grow (and I'm definitely doing both), but also a lot of time to contemplate my future here, when I get home and what I want to do with my life. And I've been probably thinking too much!

The thing about the future is that you can't see it, no matter what sort of educational or vocational path you try to take. I think that a lot of university students feel somewhat like myself on this one. For me, it's terrifying, but sometimes it's that healthy terror (like what one gets when riding in an African taxi) that makes life interesting. For example, I've got my heart set on getting a Masters degree one day, which I can probably afford. Where do I want to go to get it? Do I really want to study development? I still have a very small list of accomplishments that can be useful in the world of development as it stands, but I need more to be considered for a job. I'd love to have a job with a group like OXFAM or Engineers Without Borders and help people in whatever capacity that I can. Will I ever get a job doing something like that? I really can't say. I'll bust my ass to try and get to that point, but if that falls through, what else could I put my talents to? What talents do I even have?

I also worry about how I will provide for myself and family. Maleaha is studying social work, and between the salaries of a developer and social worker, we wouldn't exactly be living the high life! But if that wasn't sustainable, I'd be fine having a job in the Canadian government doing policy or doing whatever, as long as I could provide for my family's needs. My parents did such a fantastic job with me that I feel an obligation to do just as well - and that's a tall order!

Going to Africa was the right decision, for sure. While I deeply miss Ottawa, Markham, friends, family (my heart aches for you all) and the comforts that I've enjoyed all my life, I'm learning by leaps and bounds about how the world really works - and it's mind-boggling. I also believe firmly that I'm being called to be here. Many Christian missionaries talk about a "calling" and I'm starting to understand how they feel, even if I don't think that God is giving me a comprehensive plan to follow.

The important thing for me to do now is not think too far ahead, because then I just get anxious. I have to take it a little bit at a time and now worry so much, because while I can steer myself in certain directions, I can't write out a script for my life. Maybe my calling is to help third world development, but maybe I'm just here to see things and be aware of them. Besides, I have to remind myself that I'm only 20 years old. I'll probably graduate at 22 and I don't think I'll rush myself into grad studies so soon. I have a lot of time to figure things out, in reality, so I shouldn't be putting so much pressure on myself.

On the upside, I have a meeting with a man from a group called Third World Network Africa, which deals with policy on trade, gender issues and the environment. I told him that I want to get involved and hopefully he'll be able to find me something. Is this what I've been waiting for? Maybe so, maybe not. I guess we'll see. Tomorrow never knows...