My Bright Green Room in Tamaligu
I'm writing from my bright green room in Tamaligu, Ghana. It's my new home. I'm visiting here for a few days before we begin the technical component of our training. This post is about my visit here in Tamaligu and is a little lengthier because I just have so much to say! And I've had plenty of down time here.
Here's the tour: in one corner of my room there's a little drain that's for my shower, more accurately known as the “baf.” Another corner has my mattress. I've hired the local carpenter to build walls for my baf, a table and this cross-bar thing to hang curtains to divide my “bedroom” and baf from the rest of the room. He's since built and installed these for 95 cedis ($38) and a few mangoes. Just outside there's this little patio thing. The patio is also green. Just down the road I have a matching green latrine that serves as a landmark when describing where I live. My latrine is the nicest and newest latrine in town, mostly because it's the only latrine that's neon green and has a mural of a woman who appears to be doing some sort of dance. My counterpart said they drew it because they were expecting a female volunteer, but I still love it. I may invest in having a seat built for it to simplify things and to eliminate the possibility of falling in on dark nights, but we'll see how Tamaliguian I become.
A family lives in the rest of the compound. There's one man who is the head of the household, his two wives and at least five of their kids that are always around. All the kids are no more than 10, and the only English word one girl knows is “bye-bye-oooo!”, and she really loves to say it, no matter if I'm coming or going. The others have caught on too. Good times. The youngest girl was terrified of me for the first couple of days, which was quite hilarious. She would start screaming and run away as soon as we made eye contact, but she's since come around and says bye-bye-ooo too. Another guy named Alhassan lives here. I've only seen him a couple of times and all I know about him is that he's a Christian. Then there's this other guy who I'm told has a mental illness of some sort. He'll start talking and my counterpart will start laughing and say he's nuts and is just speaking nonsense. Other times I'll come home from wandering around and greeting people and he'll say hi to me, and then say something I don't know. I'll look to one of the women that live here for interpretation, and they'll do the crazy motion – circling their ears. No worries, he's harmless. I do wonder what his illness is since I've never really seen it before.
The family is Muslim, as is most of the Northern Region. Christians dominate the south and have greater populations in the Upper East and Upper West Regions. I'm learning more about Islamic culture, but the ones living in Ghana swing towards the liberal end. The men dress the same as they do in the south, but the women dress slightly more conservatively and usually cover their hair. It's definitely not Sharia or radical or anything like that. They also celebrate Christmas and Easter. Tamaligu has a Baptist Church on the edge of town, which is a small little building. It serves as the church for all the neighboring communities.
We also have a dog. It's a nice dog too. The dogs seem to be nicer than they were in the south. The only issue is the dog likes to sleep in the “urinal,” or the room that's dedicated to peeing in. There's not actually a urinal in the urinal. You just sort of pee on the wall, or the floor, or a combination of both depending on your preference or sex, and it drains outside.
While we're talking about sanitation, here's finally a real example of the projects I'll be working on: I use my green latrine for number two, but it's one of just a handful of latrines in a town of 3,500 (that number may be including the neighboring communities). Unfortunately, it's not just magic for everyone else. “The bush” is the latrine for the vast majority of people here. I'll also be working on developing latrines and proper drain pits for urinals and/or bafs, among other things. An NGO came through some years back and installed the pits for a bunch of private latrines, but there are no structures for them and some have since broken or are now serving as garbage dumps, so it looks like there's a head start on developing them.
Last week, we finally finished our language training and met our counterparts in a workshop in Kumasi. Our Dagbani group and our counterparts took a 7 hour bus ride to Tamale, where we split to our sites. Our group and a cluster of other PCVs are scattered around Tamale. Tamaligu is about 1.5 hours northeast of Tamale, but that's as a defunct tro drives. It's only 40km or 25 miles from Tamale and a normal vehicle that is capable of going more than 30mph could get here pretty quickly. One road is paved and another is dirt, but still pretty nice. Just so future visitors know, we're pretty far up country – Tamale is a 12 hour drive from Accra on a bus that goes sufficiently fast. Also just be generally prepared to rough it. The north is hot and doesn't have a lot of the amenities the south does.
I got here with my counterpart, Lawyer last Friday. Lawyer is a maize farmer that lives a few minutes away from me. He's a native of Tamaligu and got connected to Peace Corps through one of the other volunteers that is in the area. He'll be working closely with me during my time here and is my first point of contact in the community.
The first couple of days we spent going around the town greeting people. In Dagbani, there seems to be endless variations to essentially communicate, “how are you?”. The catch is that they all translate slightly differently, such as “how's the tiredness?”, “how's work?”, “how's the heat”, “how did you sleep?”, “is your wife healthy?”, and many others in addition to “good morning/afternoon/evening.” The difference is that at home, you can just say “hi, how are you?” and continue on with your conversation. Here, they will ask each of those questions, one after the other. It happens very fast. At least for me, no conversation follows, but that's because I only partly know the greetings. Most of the time, the response to each question is “naa” or “alafee.” I'm too new to know if people are just joking with me, which they probably are, but when you meet someone for the first time and formally greet them, they will rattle off ten questions as if they're testing to see if you can get your “naa's” and “alafee's” correct. By saying “naa”, you don't actually explain how healthy your wife or kids are. It's just taken as a general response. People say “na” to their own questions too, or even if you just wave to them, so it's kind of automatic.
With elders, who are defined as someone who's old enough to be your grandparent, you squat and respond to their greeting. The squatting thing is special to the north. No one did it in the south. I'm not sure if that's a formality for being the first time you meet someone because I've only seen a few other people squat to greet elders. For now I'm just imitating what Lawyer does, who is also probably being extra-formal. For someone who's typically old enough to be your parent, you do a little bow thing. Kids will do this to me when they greet me. Unlike in the U.S., greetings are a very important part of culture here. If you don't at least say “good morning” to someone, they'll be offended.
I met the chief, Chief/Na Abdulai, who is a pretty good guy and is fluent in English. Greeting a northern chief is a formal ritual. He's usually just hanging outside his house, known as the chief's palace. You approach him, remove your shoes and then squat down and clap as he greets you. When he's finished greeting you, he'll say “gafarra,” which indicates you may sit. When you meet him for the first time, you're supposed to bring cola nuts or money intended to buy some. Cola nuts (they may be spelled “kola” nuts) are a very bitter nut-like food that's a stimulant. I actually just had a couple for the first time a couple paragraphs ago. Anyways, Na Abdulai didn't accept my ten cedi cola nut offering. He said when I come back from technical training next month, they're going to have a naming ceremony for me, where they'll give me a Dagbanli name. These ceremonies are what they typically have for newborns and is their way of accepting me into the community. It should be exciting!
Na Abdulai was excited to have me here and seemed open to setting priorities for neighboring communities first. My Lawyer introduced me and we talked about the different health issues we'll be working on. Tamaligu serves as the market town for a few neighboring communities that I'll be working in. In 2008, the village had power lines installed and is only one in the area that has electricity, but most houses aren't connected. The ones that are don't turn many lights on, so it gets pretty dark at night. It's the biggest town within maybe 20ish km, and also has the best access to water. There's about seven boreholes here, most of which are working now. Some of them don't work because it's getting to be the end of the dry season.
We visited a few of the neighboring villages. One that's about a 20 minute walk away has about 1,000 people and only one borehole that's barely working. We visited another small village on a bike ride that has no boreholes. There, people walk to a river that's two and a half miles away for water. We also biked to see the river, and it's not the cleanest water to be drinking. That particular village has no school, so the kids have to make the five mile walk to Tamaligu's primary and junior high schools.
Another obvious issue was nutrition, especially for the kids. So many of them have huge stomachs, and a few looked more severe with swollen arms and legs, all signs of malnourishment. Parents will approach me and tell me that their kids are sick, or ask why their child who is old enough to walk isn't able to. Adults come to me seeking medical advice, but Lawyer usually isn't able to translate exactly what's wrong. I'll need to learn enough about Ghanaian diets to teach nutrition classes.
During this visit, I think I've had the more down time than the rest of training combined. Lawyer and I have been going out from 7-11, siesta until 4, and then wander around again until around 7. The middle of the day is simply too hot to do anything, so I think most people take it easy. The highs are usually around 100.
The night before I got here was the first rain they've had since October. Fortunately, next month the rainy season will start, bringing cooler weather! They said it can get cold enough to wear sweatshirts! I have much to learn at technical training and am looking forward to getting back to Tamaligu!
