Tamale Life

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So I’ve been here for just about 2 weeks now and I’m really starting to get settled in. Here’s some info about what I’ve been up to:

Tamale

Tamale is a neat city, I wasn’t in Accra long, but I think I like Tamale better. There’s a big market, which we explored around last weekend, it was fun. They sell everything there from carpets to light bulbs to clothes to vegetables and meat. There’s a billion Taxis which is good because I live towards the outskirts of town. There’s goats and sheep everywhere! It somehow seems slightly less disorganized then Accra, but maybe that’s just because I now know it better. Bicycles are everywhere as well. Navid has bought one because he lives far from work and uses it to get there. I think I might still be slightly intimidated riding a bike through town, it’s a bit crazy.

Tamale has a lot of Non-Governmental organizations, so people are fairly used to seeing westerners, especially in town., but you still definetly get treated differently. Everyone wants to be your friend! Its like celebrity status almost. Everyone watches you, kids wave, run up and ask you for your address or email. I’ve only gotten one marriage proposal so far (this is pretty common) but about a billion request to bring people back to Canada with me. Its funny about the marriage thing tho, because normally one of the very first questions you’re asked, is if you’re married. And then why am I not married? Hehe I think I’m going to start getting creative with replies J

Home and Family:
My family so far is great, father, mother and 4 kids - 3 girls (Fauzia, the oldest is 24, Pamela the middle daughter is 20 and has just gotten home from University for the summer, Anda is the youngest daughter and she’s away in her final year of secondary school) and 1 boy (Nassir, whos 8 or 9 i think). they are definetly well off by Tamale standards. i have my own room and bathroom (with flush toilet!) and they have a car and two girls (their cousins?) who help around the house with meals and cleaning (i'm finding this very challenging for me to get used to) but not by Canadian standards (bucket showers, hand washing clothes etc). We have a number of goats (my best count so far has been 13) and a dog named bruno.


Food: I talked about Fufu before… I forgot to mention you eat it with your hands! Most foods here you eat with your hands… or hand actually. You only use your right hand to eat. Rice, stew, fufu, chicken, guinea fowl - all with your hands. Most dishes contain some type of dough like substance (fufu, banku, kenke, rice balls etc) with stew. Otherwise its normally rice with stew, spices and some type of meat. Navid and I have also been eating for lunch fried yam and plaintain that you dip in a bean stew, this dish is called red red. Very delicious. The diet is incredibly carbohydrate intensive and they use a lot of palm oil/ frying. Hehe maybe’ll I’ll be putting on a few pounds while I’m here.

Work:
I’m working with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. For the first little bit Navid and I are rotating separately through the departments. This week I was with Plant Protection and Seed Regulation I’m a soyabean expert now I think! Learned about all the quality tests that the seed goes through, and the cleaning and sorting of seed, how its grown and hows its distributed. The use a machine to sort by size and shape, but then women have to hand pick out all of the damaged seed. It takes a woman about 2 days to pick through one bag of seed and for this she will be paid 10 000 cedis, (less than 2 dollars). That hit home pretty hard. Going to crops this week, we’ll see how that goes.

Language:
The local language is Dagbani. I’m trying really hard to learn it, but its tough. The difference tho in the welcome you get between when you use dagbani and when you don’t is incredible! I’ve got the greetings down, that’s a start. It goes something like this
1st Person: Dasseba (Good morning)
2nd Person: Naaah (no literal translation - just some kind of agreement with the previous statement… in Dagbani, when in doubt, just say Naaah. It seems to be the correct response to most questions)
2nd Person” Tumaasuum? (How do you like the weather/ morning coolness)
1st Person Naaaah
1st or 2nd Agbihirra? (How was your sleep)
2nd or 1st Gombieni (I slept well)
There’s more, it can go on for a while. If you can answer some, people will keep going to test you and see how much you know. Its good thou because I keep learning more this way J

I think that’s about it for now, I have more to say for sure, but internet time is running out so I will have to save it for another day.

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