Waddya want?

What do you want to read here?

I realized that I’m being  a little self indulgent and writing about the things that I find interesting and/or important to me. I’m also in Ghana representing you whether you’re aware of this or not so let me know if there are people you want me to interview, stories you want me to find, photos you want me to take etc.

I have one request for “A day in the life of” which I’m trying to find a way to make interesting.

Toh. Bye.

Big spender

I moved out of Director’s house yesterday.

It’s scary and exciting and stupid and expensive and the right thing.

Most Ghanaians think this is ridiculous, I was living rent free in a HOUSE, with a “toilet” and “running water”. Not to mention two 24-hour news channels, a fan in every room, a fridge, a desktop computer etc. They’re right in a way, not because of any of the amenities I just listed but because of what it cost me to move out so far

1 Month Rent: 5 GHC

1 Pot: 7 GHC

1 knife: 3 GHC

2 buckets: 6 GHC

1 light bulb: 1 GHC

2 boxes of matches: 0.10 GHC

Laundry soap: 0.50 GHC

My total thus far is 22.60 GHC or about 17 CDN. This doesn’t include the tings I’ve borrowed (mattress, plate, spoon, ladel, fork, bowl, coal port/stove) or the things left to buy  (charcoal, groceries, shelf, bigger bucket…).

In the end I’ll blow 100 GHC more that I would have had I stayed with director. The guilt comes in when the critics mention money, and they have a point. The minimum wage here (note that it exists which in and of itself is kind of a big deal) is 1.5 GHC a day which means that yesterday I spent half a month’s salary. Today, because I haven’t set up my ‘kitchen’ I’ll spend more on my lunch than the woman who will serve it to me (although she sucks at her job which takes the edge off my guilt).

So, will this keep me up at night? Not really, the mosquitoes take care of that, and I’m not that type of person. I’m aware of what I’ve spent, I recognize the foolishness and I feel the shame when it’s pointed out to me but that’s about it. I guess I’m o.k. with it all in part because I did the same thing not even two years ago when I moved out of my parents’ place. Had I been a good anglo-son-of-southern-european-immigrants-Montrealer I would have stayed home living rent free.

Instead, I went into debt to live in  a poorly insulated apartment that is kinda dirty by western standards in a neighbourhood renowned for it’s drunken tweens. In my mind the financial cost of moving out, both here and back home, is outweighed by the experience I hoped/hope to gain. I think I may have made selfish choice and one which is gonna bring down my quality of life. On the other hand, if I play my cards right I can make up for my two months of lost time and see what a more typical Ghanaians way of life is, which in a way, is part of my job here too.

Quiet day at the office.

Mr. Yahaya and No. 2 busy at work.

Stripping down to baff in the village. The reason for this photo is that I wanted to contrast it with how nasty my shower/bathroom is in town but I couldn't get a decent photo capturing its filth and stench.

Posie getting dinner ready

.

I have a wonderful knack for missing the obvious.

Ways in which I’m still clueless:

Way the first:

I was buying cloth in the market the yesterday and felt pretty savvy after some lessons from a friend in Tamale about quality and sourcing.

“This is fake! I’m not going to pay two-fifty for this? Where can I get the real one?”

Hah! Showed her.

Not even thirty minutes later, half of those spent haggling, a worn out 10 Cedi note is about to pass from my hand to a vendor’s when Papa steps in.

“Don’t buy that one.”

Sigh.

Really?

Why?

Turns out the one I had picked out should never be used as a gift (which was the plan). On top of which there was some issue about gender and colour thrown in.

Way the second:

Director asked me a number of time in the past few days “Did you see how he acted?” or else “Did you hear what he said?” He’s not testing me; he’s looking to show me that his job isn’t just implementing agric. projects.

My answers have either been ‘No’ which is fine because it just means I wasn’t paying attention. What’s bad is when I say ‘Yes’ and am asked to explain what it is that actually transpired, i.e. what was meant by the interaction. In those cases it’s clear that I’m not the sharpest cutless in the shed.

I wish I had an analogy to explain how stupid I feel when things that are obvious to everyone around me go whizzing past my head. I don’t, although chances are that a Ghanaian reading over my shoulder could point out four good ones.

Numbers

FYI I have two numbers here

+ 233 27 270 7466

+233 54 843 4657

If one is off try the other.

I’ve never called myself either from Ghana or overseas so if anyone who has sees something wrong in the way I’ve posted them let me know.

Let’s hope this is discreet enough

I have this thing where when I get stressed my b.o. changes. It’s really not that weird, I bet it happens to you too you just don’t notice it.

In other news this morning on France 24 they announced that Argentina has just passed a law legalizing same sex marriage.

“S@#t! Did director hear it? No. He’s outside hawking up a loogey. Phew! Bullet dodged.”

Two Nescafe sachets, a spoonful of sugar, too much condensed milk, stir, dunk doughy white bread:  my morning ritual is well on its way.

“Soooooooooo….what do you say about this gay marriage law?”

“Dammit”

My b.o. kicks in. This is it I guess, the moment I’ve been dreading and dreaming of. Of course I’m lounging in my boxers still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes when it happens. It could have been worse, 10 hours earlier I was three bottles of Guinness too far to exercise the necessary self control for such a conversation.

All in all my first experience discussing sexuality went well. It was light hearted and jumped around like any good debate. It also happened to be with one of the most open minded people between the Gulf of Guinea and Burkina which helped, that’s not to say we agree on this issue.

Whatever was achieved this morning is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I’m not going to change one man’s views over breakfast and certainly not a whole culture in three months. That being said at the very least it has set in motion my final mission (which may lead to the destruction of many a relationship for me in Ghana):

Operation Meet Carlo.

Ti daba ayi.

“It’s been two days.”

That’s how you greet someone you haven’t seen in a while. The Dagombas and Nanumbas aren’t sticklers for accurate time keeping apparently so I won’t be either. My point is that I’m sorry for the long absence. I’m a moron and used up all my internet credit then I travelled for a meeting that lasted a week and didn’t have my computer.

Anyway, last night, after a bus ride that took six hours instead of three which involved my friend Maclean being sneezed/drooled and/or peed on by a goat riding above us, I made home. I was greeted by Papa who full-on hugged me which was unexpected and nice. Public displays of affection aren’t common around here. I ate, chatted, took a bucket shower under the stars and then I crashed into a sleep brightened with Larium tinted dreams.

It’s weird, I’ve been wanting to move out of this house since I got here but it’s managed to become home.

It was a dark and stormy morning…

Ominous.

It’s about the best word to describe the feeling in Bimbilla today. The clouds are eerily low and look more like smoke from a war movie than storm clouds. The thunder keeps rumbling in the south, the power in the office is coming in and out and the wind is relentless.

I love it.

The rain  just started and it’s amazing how much noise it can make on the tin roof. It rises and falls like any good soundtrack but even at it’s softest I can only make out the thunder and nothing else.

Fuzi should be happy. Just this morning he stopped bye the house to greet me (people do that in Ghana, it’s kinda nice) and he mentioned he was worried that it would be too dry this season. Fuzi is a random guy I met in the street while I was trying to find my way to the mill one Saturday morning. We started talking about schools and his application process to European universities.

It was really great talking to him, it was nice just chatting with a  local other than my host family that I felt I could relate to and didn’t see me as a species so distantly related to them they could only barely make the connection.

I wonder if it’s possible to ever really develop a true friendship with someone who’s life experience has been entirely different from your own. Maybe it depends on the individuals in question.

My friend and fellow JF Sarah was saying how she and her host mother had this connection despite the significant language and cultural barrier. As I started this post I was going to say that I’m not that type and that I don’t connect to people in that way. I think I’m full of it. I did connect with Papa even though his calling was to be in the priesthood and has the conservative views of a rural Ghanaian fifty years his senior. With Fuzi there’s something there too.

My next half formed thought was that with these two people there’s a certain exposure and education level that allows me to make this connection, but that doesn’t hold for everyone. Take Razaq, my village brother (Ibrahim’s relation of one sort or another) for instance. We usually only understand a third of what we say to each other yet I really like the guy.  He even went and confided in me some family issues which I took to mean he likes me too (although he may have been trying to leverage the Siliminga advantage should I be brought into a future argument).

I don’t have much of a point, it’s more just a realization that people are people. I don’t connect with everyone in Canada. The people I do connect with happen to have lived similar lives to mine but that probably has a lot to do with geography more than anything else.

You? What’s the strangest connection you’ve made that you never anticipated?

Photomania

The yam farm I helped weed this week.

I didn’t sleep last night, sucks for me, but for you this means that I had several hours to upload photos.

The house and farm belongs to Suleh, the landlord of the home I stay at. He’s “retired” which means he’s not up to farming anymore. Three of his sons work the farm for him.

I managed to weasel my way into joining them and weeded 5 rows of yam the first day and a whopping 1.5 the second day. It’s the kind of work that when you wake up the next morning the first thing you think is “Who knew that muscle was there?” and then you go to move it and curiousity gives way to prayer:

“Sweet lord make it stop hurting!”

The sad thing is that we did the second round of weeding which is the easiest part of yam farming.

Last thing. Do you know anyone who eats yams? The kind that are here on the left, not the sweet orange ones. Sumailah (Suleh’s youngest son) is convinced white people are fanatic about yams, that they come and buy them up to make oil and fufu out of. I explained that we don’t really eat them although they can be found and that I doubt that you’d get much oil from a tuber that’s all starch and water. That and no one outside West Africa has heard of fufu.

Whoa la!

Before too many people get the wrong idea, the compounded relationships names I used in the last posts is because I have no idea of the term we would use to describe their relationships. You  need to press someone hard to find out if their “brother” is in fact related in any way.

I’m off to the village for a few days since no one from the office is in town and I’ll just putz around online if I stay in Bimbilla.

An interesting note, my 1oL bag which is stuffed to the max, probably holds more than what 3 people in the household I’m visiting own combined. That may be an exaggeration but I’m pretty sure the monetary value is way beyond their combined assets…it makes me feel shitty to realize this and then go and explain (again) that I’m not that rich.