Blogs from Kumasi, Ashanti, Ghana, Africa - page 9

on july 23rd we drove to kumasi from bolgatanga. i think it took about 6-7 hours. on the way we stopped at the water falls & a monkey santuary. we were able to feed the monkeys, so i got some really great pictures. we stayed at the kumasi catering guest house. it was really nice except in our room the hot water didn't work & the other night kim and i stayed up til 2am trying to kill these huge spiders that were taking over our room. we went to bed without killing the really big one. i woke up the next morning, opened my suit case and there it was... i freaked out. thank god kim killed it. so the 24th we went to the weaving center, a school (finally!!!), a print/weaving place, the craft ... read more

The challenge was answered. Here is a cool little Google Earth snapshot of the communities, although Google did not get Krobo or Nkwanta's locations right, but other than that it is a good portrait of where we traveled for the two weeks of market research. As you'll notice the communities further north are in more brown-colored (dry) terrain, and that meant more poverty too with less agricultural options. This has been confirmed this past week, as I have started to do data-entry for questionnairres gathered by both my teams in Techiman (who traveled in the Brong Ahafo region) and the research teams based in Kumasi (who traveled in the Ashanti region). The Ashanti region is lush and contains gold and other mineral deposits, which has made it one of the richer parts of the country--it is ... read more

This week one of the comments left here came courtesy of the official gardener of this blog, whose tomatoes are the stuff of blue-ribbon legend back home, and it mentioned giving Google Earth a workout tracking our village hopping over the past two weeks. That got me wondering just how many of these little dots on the map we've been visiting show up on the web, so if someone has the time, I'd love to know how many of the following towns/cities show up on Google Earth: Krobo Tromeso Nkoranza Subinso Chiraa Sunyani Berekum D. Nkwanta Ejura Nsawkaw Wenchi... read more

As the copying machine whirs along with copy after copy of housing finance questionnairres, it almost feels luxurious to be sitting still here typing again, just an hour away from being free from work until our research team meets at the bus station tomorrow afternoon. As I mentioned in yesterday's apology, this week has been insane. We spent the week in a place called Samaritan Villa, a Catholic retreat outside of Kumasi that was a great backdrop to four days of training students on how to do focus groups and surveys, and develop our questionairres and various other complicated little Excel charts. The kids were really well engaged, and asked great questions, as well as constantly using the very Ghanaian trait of making a "the line is drawn here!" statement, fully standing and almost shouting over ... read more

Or something like that. I always worried about starting a blog and following the "post, post, post" then "nothing, nothing, nothing" pattern of 99% of these things. But while it looks like that has happened, I have not had access to internet all week, and have been working more than almost any week in any job I've ever had (still not done for the day) Tomorrow I rest, so expect some updates.... read more