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Published: February 24th 2006
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Dowadowa processing
This lady was showing me how they dry dowadowa seeds (local tree) as part of the process of making them into a form of spice for soups. Its a long process that takes about a week, the balls then can be sold at market. Hello hello!
Another updates, this time about my week in Yendi, a town/city about 100km from Tamale. During my tour on the first day by one of my co-workers, I was told that Yendi is “a big small town in West Africa” I laughed at the time, but looking back it’s a pretty accurate description. I really enjoyed my time there actually, and I’m looking forward to going back next week for another 5 days. Yendi is the Dagomba capital (Dagomba is the most prevalent tribe in this area), even though Tamale is the political capital of the Northern Region. It hasn’t been influenced as much by western culture as Tamale - there are no multi storey buildings, the food is pretty traditional but things are definitely changing - they have just opened their first internet café (I was happy to find that).
My work this week was really centred in the field although I did get a chance to poke around the office and investigate. In Yendi, instead of going around with a bunch of different extension agents (AEAs) and getting a bunch of different views I have focused with just one. This has given me the chance
Me and my bike
Coming back into Yendi after a long days ride to get to know his activities, opinions, communities etc. in greater detail. In fact, next week I’m going to stay in one of the villages that we were working in this week for a couple of nights. I’m really looking forward to that.
Another big difference is that the AEA I’m working with does all of his visits by bicycle! So I got a pretty good workout - if I was lucky I got a bike with 2 gears, when I was unlucky my bike had no gears or a flat tire. That makes climbing hills pretty hard and there sure were a lot of hills :P After the first day (we estimated we biked about 40km that day) I couldn’t sit down very well, but by the end of the week I was toughened up. It was actually really neat riding a bicycle, you get a chance to talk to everyone you pass (when you’re not panting up a hill at least) and the communities are normally pretty excited to see a white person on a bicycle. Normally aid workers come along in big air conditioned pick-ups, or fancy motorbikes. It’s a change that maybe helps me relate
Working Hard
Here I'm helping a farmer to weed her groundnut (peanut) field. just a tiny bit better, or breaks down some of the stereotypes.
Most of our fieldwork this week was setting up demonstrations; the AEA I’m working with is running 19 crop demonstrations this year. Most AEAs in other districts run 2 or 3 a year, but Yendi is part of a special program called the Food Crops Development Program sponsored by the African Development Bank and the Government of Ghana so they have the financing to pay for the inputs for more demonstrations. It’s exciting to see what a little bit of extra capital in a district can do : ) The week was also really good about getting me the chance to sit and chat/ask questions in the villages, which was great for me trying to understand better what farmer’s greatest challenges are. I even got to meet with the chief and some of his elders in one of the villages - and I got presented with 10 guinea fowl eggs when I was leaving!
Apart from work, last weekend Navid, Sara, Jane and I took a trip to Bolgatanga (Bolga for short) Bolga is the capital of the Upper East Region. We took an early morning bus so we could fit as much as possible into the day. After some brunch when we arrived, we headed off to Paga.
Paga is a village about 25km from Bolga, where the community has an extremely close connection to its crocodile population! For 15000 cedis (about $2 cdn) you can visit one of the ponds, they will call a crocodile for you. Oh yeah, you also have to buy the chicken that they use to call the crocodiles as well for about $3 cdn - that’s the first chicken I’ve ever owned. (Unfortunately I only owned it for about 10 min before it was eaten). Anyway, once they called the crocodile you can go up and touch it, or pick up its tail or even sit on it (see picture). As the man said “we NEVER hurt the crocodiles, so the NEVER hurt us.” And supposedly it’s true, the rumor says that if anyone kills one of the Paga crocodiles, then they will kill one of the people of Paga. In the pond that we visited there were supposedly about 500 crocodiles, all around though there were children fishing and wading like it was any ordinary pond.
We returned to Bolga and looked around there for a while (I finally bought a drum!) before heading to the Tongo hills. The Tongo hills are a series of hills with really awesome rock formations, apparently in the dry season when there are winds from the north they whistle and “sing”. We didn’t hear any singing but it was amazing to just go out and be in the middle of nowhere. The hills are pretty isolated and it turns out this has its advantages and disadvantages. We had to bargain incredibly hard to get a taxi to take us out there for a decent price (the taxi had to wait, and then bring us back because otherwise we would have been stranded) so we only had 30 min to explore. It wasn’t enough to go to the shrine/temple that exists in the hills (it is apparently a very important site in traditional religion) but just being alone in the quiet of nature for a few minutes after constantly being a centre of attention for a few months now was great. We all came back incredibly refreshed and relaxed : ) so it was totally worth it.
Whew, I think that’s about it for now, I’m off now to do some shopping, I think I’m going to try and make some vegetarian chilli for dinner for my family.
Have a great weekend everyone, I’ll write again soon!
Alyssa
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Kwasi Appiah
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You are awesome
I just happened to read your online journal. How sensitively you handle the scenes and images that filled my childhood. You are a real gem and a real humanist. Nothing appear to throw you off - not the different scenes, not the dissonance that comes with feeling different, and certainly not the 'special' treatment you are wont to experience now and then. How can I lose hope in the future of humanity when people like you are around to show the way forward. I hope you don't mind my peeking in now and then into this world of yours - which used to be mine a while back. Thanks for the memory