Been Busy and Kickin It

For once in my Peace Corps experience I have actually been really busy the past month or two. In June I went up to the Northern Region of Ghana, to Tamale. The Northern Region is very different from where I live, in the Eastern Region. First of all it is a dry savannah climate, which is completely brown during the dry season. Secondly there are a lot fewer trotros driving around and more motos. The people in the north have a lot more animals: cows, sheep, goats. They have guinea fowl and donkeys, which you do not see in the south. The people seem to be calmer in the north, with less yelling at each other and white people. I’ve been told that the northerners are more likely to pull a knife in a fight though, and there have been shootings in the north. In the north when a storm is rolling in you see the sky turn orange, followed by dust blowing around in the air, getting in your eyes, nose and mouth if you open it. It only stormed twice while I was up there but I thought it was fascinating. I was up there for about two weeks and thoroughly enjoyed my time with fellow volunteers I hadn’t seen in a long time, watching the world cup, and cheering the Germans on as they won their games. The reason I was in the north was that we had a PCV Media Committee work session/training of new people. It was a lot of work but it was also a good time. All in all I was gone for about two weeks.

When I came back to site it was truly wonderful to come home. During my Peace Corps service I have had a lot of ups and downs, but coming back from Tamale has put me in an up that hasn’t gone away. Also while I was in Tamale my grant money came so I have been really busy getting everything for my beekeeping grant, but that is not the single cause of my happy state. Being away and coming back made me realize how at home I feel here with my Krobo family. Everyone knows me in the places I go, everyone is happy to see me every day, and although they do shout a lot and are very loud, I finally appreciate that they are so loud because that is the way that they are, and if no one ever shouted at me then it would mean that no one loved me here. All of the things that were annoying to me before became less annoying because they were sounds of home.

I have been enjoying my time, working on the beekeeping grant, playing with my little sisters, and doing my thing. I have finished getting all the equipment for the beekeeping group so now all that is left is training them and waiting until harvest time! I will not be around for harvest time which is unfortunate but I think they will send another volunteer here to help the group out. My mushroom farmers are doing really great. They are selling their mushrooms within the village, and also have talked to a restaurant about supplying them with mushrooms. I am working with them to get a sign outside the production site, and they said they want the sign to say “Nancy’s mushroom farm”. I really don’t want to take credit for it, I wish that they would have 100% ownership of the project. They explained it to me that they couldn’t agree on a combination of their two names but they could agree on my name. I guess I’ll let them do what they want. I will have definitely left my mark on the area then haha.

On a less happy but more cultural note, the third person that I personally knew and interacted with in the area died last month. His name was Tehteh. He was at my house joking around with me and asking me questions about America only a month before he died. He was making me laugh that day so I took a picture of him. Now he is gone. When I asked people what was wrong with him they just said Saturday he had complained that he didn’t feel well and then by Monday as they were on the way to the hospital he died in the car. That’s public transportation by the way. It’s scary to think of someone dying in the trotro…how traumatic. I kept trying to ask people what was wrong with him so that perhaps some prevention education could be done with the community. His friend said that when he went to visit him he was delirious. He had visited the local clinic and they didn’t know what was wrong, one of the nurses told me he suspected Pneumonia. At the funeral itself another story came out. It is widely believed by the people who knew him that his was a spiritual death. The story is that his wife owed someone some money. That person was not getting the money from the wife so they went to a juju man, aka fetish priest (I guess you could call it voodoo but idk if they are different), they wanted to do something to the wife since she wouldn’t pay the money. This juju guy is a guy whom everyone knows that lives among us. I actually don’t know who he is but apparently he has friends like any other normal person around here. The husband, my friend Tehteh, heard about this juju visit and also went to the juju man to try and convince him not to hurt his wife. So instead the juju hurt him. They say he was crossing the bridge next to his house and he felt something (invisible) hit his side, and that was when the illness started. This is the accepted cause of death. No one will ever know or even think of trying to find out what was wrong with him because they just name it a spiritual death. There is no arguing with them either. I don’t believe in stuff like that so I see it as a problem with the way people are taking care of themselves here. People die in the village all the time. I’ve been to more funerals in my two years in Ghana than my entire life in the U.S. They could be living healthier lives but they attribute death to magic. They think of something wrong that the person did, or that their spouse did, and claim that as the cause of death.