See How My Garden Grows

Here are two pictures along the west side of the house that I share. In the foreground of the first picture you see groundnuts, with corn in the background. In the second picture, you see more corn in the back of the house as well as more of Susan’s side of the house. The tree in the background is a mango tree, which produced some lovely fruit eaten back in April and May. As you can see, the house is quite nice and the garden is growing well, thanks to Akolgo our night watchman.



The past week was pretty slow again. The big excitement in Ghana has been the success of the Black Stars in the World Cup 2006. This is the first appearance for Ghana in this prestigious football championship, and they have so far made it through the first round robin portion of the tournament, against some tough teams including the USA, and are now in the Round of 16. The next match is this coming Tuesday, and I imagine that everyone who is able will be glued to a television somewhere for the two hours or so of the match.

Ghana won two of three games in the first round, against the Czech Republic and the USA. I happened to be riding through town shortly after the first victory and so was confronted by a massive celebration that had traffic almost at a standstill. I have to admit that I was a little nervous in my exposed position on the motorcycle when I had to come to a complete stop for a minute or so. The crowd was pretty rambunctious, but well behaved. After the second victory, I had a couple more hours before leaving work so the celebrating had died to almost nothing by then and it was no problem getting through. Since Canada has not yet qualified to participate in the World Cup and I am currently living in Ghana, I feel honoured to be able to support the Black Stars, and hope that they will continue to win. They have played very well in every game so far.

On Thursday my housemate left for Accra. She has been suffering from malaria and a dodgy stomach for more than two weeks prior to the decision to travel. She was going soon to meet people coming to visit her, and decided that she would go early to take advantage of better medical facilities there. So, I currently have all the house to myself for the next three weeks. It isn’t really any different as the halves are totally separated. But we have enjoyed the opportunities to sit and chat often in the evenings, so her absence is noticed.

Thursday night I ate some “western” food that I wasn’t used to and went to bed feeling ill. When I woke on Friday morning, I was really sick. Luckily a rainstorm came about the time for leaving for work and so I was able to stay in bed for an extra hour or so. I finally went into the office out of obligation. I am still acting as the office admin person, and I knew that Celina, the cleaning person, would be there waiting to be let in despite the rain. Sure enough, when she the rain was coming she hurried in to work to be there before the rain started. I thought of the same thing, but wasn’t feeling well enough to rush about.

I actually spent the day in the office sleeping on the office couch fighting stomach problems. I ate nothing that day and came home a little early that night. I went straight to bed and slept almost constantly from then through the morning. Saturday I was feeling some better and went to town for breakfast. But I decided when I got home, that the best thing for me to do was to rest. So I spent the day on the couch sleeping, reading, and watching videos. Sounds pretty luxurious, doesn’t it. I am glad that it hasn’t been quite so hot, so the day under the fan was bearable.

And I am glad to report that the problem seems to have been related to the food that I ate and not to some mysterious parasite or bug. I am on the mend and eating my normal “Ghanaian” food again and feeling stronger by the minute.

I continue to do a little work with the local education office on the computers they have, both from VSO and their own. I am ready to start training so have decided that I will use this team as my guinea pigs and will finish setting up their computers and start their training this week or next. So next week I hope to provide an update on training, as well as other activities.

19 June - Pikworo Slave Camp, Paga, Upper East Region

This past weekend my friend from Tamale stayed over. He was in Bolgatanga to conduct some workshops for his employer on Friday and Saturday. Because our time was limited, we were only able to visit the Pikworo Slave Camp in Paga after he finished on Saturday afternoon. Though I had been there before, I enjoyed the second visit and seeing it through the eyes of someone from India who has a different perspective even from my own.

This is the music rock. The men bang on the rock with different size stones and sing along. It turns out to be quite melodious. We were told that he song that they sang was telling the slaves to be happy because they were going somewhere that would provide them with new jobs. The slaves were held in a field below this musical rock and were forced to dance and sing along, whether they wanted to or not.

This was a little further along in the tour. As you can imagine, the slaves often tried to escape, but the slave traders were very watchful and did not lose many slaves to running away. When a slave was captured, the slave would be bound to this rock where our guide, Simon, is sitting. A chain would fasten their legs to their arms and they would lie on this rock face up from dawn until death, in most cases. They would be beaten and would not receive any comfort, food or water while the sun beat down on them. The base of the rock is worn from the movement of the chained prisoners. When I first saw this, the temperature was above 40C and I couldn't imagine surviving long. This weekend the temperature was a more enjoyable 33C or so, but I still cannot imagine that very many slaves lived through the ordeal.

We had a good weekend and enjoyed doing something different. The weekend ended with rain on Sunday morning that cooled things to a cool 26C in the house, and some of us wore fleece jackets to keep warm (not me, by the way). It was cool, for sure. At church, the Ghanaians closed the windows against the breeze because they were chilled. And I found it quite comfortable, which shows how much I have adapted to the higher temperatures here.

Work is still slow as the districts are struggling to bring their new computers from Accra to their own offices. I contacted most of them and they promised to have the computers by the end of this month, so I hope to be busy in July. I also know that I have said that more than once. Eventually it will come true. I know the project teams are anxious to get started with the training as well.

16 June 2006 Update

I came home last night a little bit late and thought the electricity had been taken. The whole area seemed darker than normal, and when I got to my house the outside lights were not on. But other lights were. We had a huge rainstorm in the morning and I think that affected the outside light switches and Akolgo was not able to get the lights to work. I fiddled with it for a minute and the lights came on and I went in the house. I have had bugs accumulating on my bedroom window at night and I think it was because of the lights there. I showed Akolgo that without the lights there were no bugs.

A little later I went into my bedroom and heard something at the window. I looked out and saw that the screen was covered with these insects. I went outside to have a closer look and saw perhaps a thousand of these fluttering around on the wall, in the light, on the screen – just everywhere. I called Akolgo over to have a look and his first comment was that he would “chop” these. Sure enough, he came back with a bucket of water and started sweeping all of these bugs up and into the bucket. A neighbour came over later and said that these were edible. So Akolgo had a feast.

We left the lights out for a while and Akolgo said that the bugs would not return until the next time that it rained. The neighbour said that these were termites. They flew in, and then shed their wings and started crawling on the ground in pairs and triplets. It was very strange and interesting. This morning, when I left for work, I found two guinea fowl in the compound having a feast on whatever Akolgo had not collected the previous night. I am sure they will find their way out when the food is gone.
I asked the cleaning lady at work how to prepare these termites for eating and I will provide the recipe, in case any of you are interested in trying them. First you fry them without any oil because they have their own oil. Then you remove any of the remaining wings. Then you fry them again to dry them out. And now they are ready to eat, just like groundnuts (peanuts). I am not sure that I will try this, but might if Akolgo was to offer me some so that I would not offend him.

This is Akolgo. After the rain yesterday morning, the temperature was quite cool, by Ghanaian standards. I met people wearing their quilted jackets to go about town. People were wearing jeans and flannel shirts. I could sense coolness in the air, but I could also feel the humidity that kept me from actually feeling cold. This morning, the temperature in my bedroom was 27.4C, and that is probably the coolest temperature since I have been here.

Not much else has happened of interest. I planned to travel to Sandema this past weekend and Susan was going to go along for the experience. She had been diagnosed with malaria, though, and had some accompanying stomach problems so we decided that travel was not the best idea at that time. Her problems have continued through all of this week, and even today I will bring her to the doctor to check for any serious bugs that might be causing her stomach problems. She has not been able to eat hardly anything for more than a week now. That has been good for me, since she often offers me her leftovers. But it has lasted long enough to be a bit of a concern.
I am still waiting on the arrival of the computers. I have spent quite some time with one office and he is pressing me to start training his team. I have no reason not to go ahead, other than my thought that I would keep all of the offices in sync throughout the training. But it would be good to get started with the work that I came to do. Another office now has a couple that are here to support the Ghana Education Service, do some teacher and management training, etc. They will be an integral part of the interview portion of my project and they are ready to get started. One drawback is that the school year is about to finish so that might delay the collection of relevant information for the finishing school year. 

Tumu, Upper West Region, Ghana

On this past weekend, Susan and I made a motorcycle trip to Tumu in the Upper West Region. Susan had planned to go and thought about going by motorcycle but didn't want to make the trip alone. I remembered that my plan was to do a bit more travelling while in Ghana so that I wouldn't leave and wonder what I had seen. So, I decided to go along.

We left home about 6:00 on Saturday morning. I had been warned that the road was very bad, with potholes big enough to swallow a motorcycle. Susan had made the trip once before by tro-tro (mini-bus) and said that it took over three hours, assuming no breakdowns. Travelling on our own, we expected to make better time.

However, travelling on our own meant that we could stop when we wanted for as long as we wanted. About 70 km of the 140 km was dirt track. It wasn't as bad as I had been warned it would be, but we did have to slow down a bit to make the ride comfortable. We passed a couple of places that were filled with the flowers that you see above. They were just growing wild. We finally stopped at one field. The farmer came up and dug up a couple of the bulbs for us to take to Tumu to the volunteers there. It was good that we stopped here because it was the last field that we saw like this, and we didn't even notice the flowers when we returned on Monday.

If any of the horticulturists out there can tell what kind of flower this is from the picture, please let me know (david.perry.ghana@gmail.com). They were very pretty. We were able to pick up another bulb on the way home for our own house, so I hope that it survived the trip.

We stopped for a few pictures on the way home on Monday, even though we were more focused on getting back to Bolgatanga. This is a bridge over some small river before we reached the paved roads. It was really picturesque and the trip was enjoyable. The roads were not nearly as bad as I had been warned. I would not want to make the trip in the rain, though.

I would have posted a picture of Susan but did not feel right about putting someone else's photo on my blog. Susan followed me all the way, both going and coming. As a result, she got pretty dirty. From the picture you can't see much dirt on me, but my legs were looking pretty red from road dust by the time I got home. Susan's face was covered with dirt and her clothes were red from the dust she had picked up on the way. When we got back to the Bolga office, she had to take a picture of herself because she couldn't believe how much dirt was on her face.

So that was the weekend. As far as work is concerned, I am still waiting to get calls to work on the computers. I have spent too much time working on the three that I know are here. It has been a challenge because of their age, memory, speed, technical level, etc. One computer has now got a bad hard drive so is not of any use at all. It is hard to start training when I have to spend so much time just getting the computers to run. But, we are managing.

So, that is it for another week. I hope that everyone is enjoying summer, wherever they are.