Joey Meets Americans

On Saturday I headed out with Lizzy, who is in charge of the micro-finance projects, and all four drivers to the border of Burkina Faso. We were there to pick up a group of people who were visiting the NGO’s projects in Burkina and Ghana. This trip has been somewhat of a thorn in my side since I started my internship. My first task was to create a briefing book for the group coming that explained stuff about the projects, what they would be doing, who they would meet along the way, as well as a perpetually changing itinerary. The visit was always referred to as the Bishops visit, or something to that effect. I always thought that meant that the trip would be with American Bishops, which I thought would be kind of cool. Better, at least, than the last group of visitors to the NGO. It was a church group from Seattle that had come to visit a community that they had donated money to so they could build a borehole for clean water. I thought it was great that the church was so generous to provide the money to build a borehole for this community, but how necessary was it for ten of them to spend $2,000 or more each to come and see it?

Anyway, before departing, I had looked at the 4 tapes sitting in the car. There was a reggae tape, one called “Best Love Songs” (presumably crappy American music), a Ghanaian Hi-Life tape, and another blatantly crappy American music tape. After we got on our way, Rashid, who was driving this vehicle, started to slip in one of the tapes.

“Wait!” I said, “What is that?”

“Some cools,” he said.

“What?”

“Some cool tunes.”

“No, let me see,” I said, as I popped the tape back out to look at it. Sure enough, it was “Best Love Songs”. I grabbed the reggae tape (I already knew that reggae was Rashid’s favorite music) and popped it in, and we had quite a nice journey from there on. When we got to the border, we were early, and the group coming from Burkina was late. So with the spare time, Rashid and David, another driver, wanted to get their first stamps in their new passports, and I wanted to try my luck, even though I only had a single-entry visa for Ghana. The Ghanaian immigration officials were really friendly, and while they couldn’t really give me an exit stamp and let me back in later, they did offer to hang on to my passport while I tried to cross the Burkina border.

We drove the few hundred yards to the Burkina border, and went in to the immigration office. An elderly German (or maybe Dutch) woman who I had seen going through customs on the Ghana side, speaking English, was now speaking French to the Burkina officials. None of us spoke French, but the two drivers were able to get their stamps without too much confusion. As we got up to leave, the stern official, pointed at me, and, I assume, asked for my passport. We all just kinda motioned and mumbled in English that it was in Ghana…and that we just wanted to cross the border and come right back. He pointed at the bench and spoke angrily in French (my interpretation), “Hey, you stupid Anglophones, I am so angry, and I am yelling, and you will never ever pass this border ever passport you need to sit down and be quiet, while I smoke more cigarettes!”. Pretty much I only heard the word passport. The four of us got nowhere in trying to figure out the situation, and the German lady, who could have helped us out, just ignored our little fiasco, got her stamp and passed on through. I thought this was incredibly rude. Whenever I encountered struggling non-Spanish speakers in Central America and Mexico, I would always help them out if they needed it. It is a duty that comes with speaking another language. Finally, the angry official said in English, “Go! Get passport. Come. Voila!” And simply hearing him say voila in this context was all I needed in my brief trip to Burkina Faso. That satisfied me. In other Burkina news, the biggest film festival in Africa is held every other year in the capital, Ouagadougou, and is coming up next week. French girl Liz wants me to go with her, but I don’t think I will have the time or the proper visa to get back into Ghana.

When the group of Americans arrived, I quickly realized they were not Bishops (the trip was for them to visit some Ghanaian Bishops) but were actually Seminarians from Chicago. As they reached our group of vehicles and they started to load their stuff, I heard the one woman with them call out in a very mom-like fashion, “Ok you guys, make sure you drink a lot of waaaater! It’s gonna be really hot today!” I was thinking, oh, dude, these are all pretty much adults…and of course it’s gonna be hot, we’re in freaking Africa! *Punch* The woman was a representative from the NGO, who, so far as I could see was put in charge to be the babysitter…and photographer for the trip (I thought that was my job, but it’s an assignment I would readily give to her). In the group was one priest, the babysitter, 9 seminarians, including one friar (can someone explain to me what that means other than that he has to wear a heavy black robe with a rope all the time?), and 3 Poles. It was an interesting group, to say the least. They all reminded me of Peeps, but the bunny kind (not the chick kind) because they were all kinda pink and fluffy. Except peeps don’t wear silly hats to hide from the sun, or wear cameras around their necks.

We loaded all of their enormous suitcases and souvenir hats into our vehicles and headed to our first stop, the Paga Slave Camp. This was actually a very interesting, though brief, stop. It was an area where slaves from Mali, Niger, Burkina, Ghana, etc. were kept in transit to the region’s biggest slave market, 200 miles away, and eventually to the coast to be sold to Europeans. There was a group of trees which the slaves would be chained to, a rock that the disobedient slaves would be tortured on, divots dug out of a slab of rock to serve as bowls for the slaves, as well as an “entertainment spot” which would serve as a drumming and dancing spot.

After that we headed back to Tamale to get the group checked in to their guesthouses. On the way I got a call from my sister, which was great since I have not talked to her since I left. She was asking about the violence that had happened in Tamale a few days earlier, and I tried to describe it as discreetly as possible, as I did not know if our visitors had heard. When I got off the phone, the two guys in the back seat inquired about the conversation. I was surprised they had not been told, but I assured them that they would be safe. I could already tell that the group was uneasy about the frequent military checkpoints on the highway, which were always there, not just recently.

As we got the group checked in to the guesthouse (the same one I had stayed in for my first couple of weeks) there were immediate problems. Lizzy was mad because, even though she had made the reservation two weeks in advance for everyone to be on the same floor, they were now all separated. I didn’t see the big deal, but I felt that Lizzy was really trying hard to impress them. Then the woman of the group (previously referred to as the babysitter) came down and said, “there’s no towels in the rooms.” *PUNCH* I was wondering what the hell any of them were even carrying in their huge suitcases if they didn’t have a towel or toilet paper (which the hotel apparently had run out of too). The woman also told every single person about her “hilarious” bathroom situation. “Is your bathroom like this? Mine is so small that I have to step over the toilet to get to the shower.” When she finally got to tell Lizzy, her tone was of complaint, thinly disguised as good humor. Right after this the power went out, and basically that equaled all hell breaking loose. Lizzy was upset, but I told her that when I had stayed here that the power outages, which were very frequent, were never more than thirty minutes at a time. The complaints were generally, few, though I could sense a lot of tension in the air.

We all went to the hotel restaurant to have dinner, assuming that the power would be restored quickly. The dinner was good because I didn’t have to pay for it, plus it was the first western food I had since I had been in Ghana: fried chicken (mediocre) Chinese fried rice (not western, but you know what I mean) and fries with ketchup (which were to effing die for). Some of the guys asked about typical Ghanaian food, which it turned out I was much better at answering than the drivers (I mean, can you describe American food to a foreigner?) I then asked them what the food was like in Burkina. One of them replied “It was pretty much just like this. They seem to eat a lot of fries in Burkina. Must be the French influence.” *PUNCH* One reason that I love Catholics, though, is that they have no qualms about drinking, and most of them were excited to try the local beers. Lizzy was insisting on replacing empty bottles and refilling wine glasses, even though she was not drinking anything. By the time the dinner was over, they had a generator running power to their rooms.

The next morning, Sunday, we met them at the hotel at 6:30…Can I repeat that? 6:30! BAH! Anyway, we found out that the pipes had been shut off during our dinner and still weren’t on in the morning, so nobody had been able to shower. Lizzy was angry, but I doubted that this was much under the control of the guesthouse. At my house, the pipe down the street where we usually get our water has been off for two weeks, and our stash of jugs and buckets is getting quite low. This is just what life in Africa is like sometimes and there’s nothing you can do about it. Also, I heard a couple people complaining that because the hotel was running from a generator, there was not enough power for their air conditioners. My fan in my room has been broken for about a week now, but what can I do? The same thing they can do about their air conditioners: Simply understand that the discomfort will be over, and we will all be able to return to the luxuries we are used to, that most people here never get to experience.

We headed to the local Seminary school to attend mass with the Seminaries. As much as I despised the hour of this mass, it was actually really cool. The music just made it unreal, and so much more enjoyable than the generally dry Catholic mass of America. I have now been to Catholic services in Mexico, Nicaragua, India and Ghana, and I love the fact that it is pretty much the same everywhere (save for the music of course). It is kind of weird, but really cool, to see people of different races, speaking different languages all over the world performing mass in the same way.

After mass we all had breakfast with the Seminarians and Priests, and I could tell that the American group was really enjoying themselves, as they had so much in common with this group of Africans (some were from Mali, Burkina and Kenya). Plus, as most Ghanaians are, they were ridiculously lively, not like you might expect of Seminarians. It was a really great atmosphere.

After that, we took them to a batik shop in town while Lizzy and Rashid frantically tried to find a new accommodation for the group after the fiasco of the night before. We ended up checking them in to a guesthouse that was about double price and then we headed out to Yendi, a town about an hour east of Tamale.

On the way out of town I saw a big black cloud of smoke rising from a neighborhood that looked the same as I had seen from a burning house just 4 days earlier. Everyone had said that things had calmed down, but you never know for sure. I didn’t say anything, as I didn’t want to scare our guests needlessly.

In Yendi we met with the local Bishop, and he was very friendly and informal. In the middle of his discussion with the group, I got a text message from Liz that said, “They are fighting again in Tamale. I almost got shot.” I know her sense of humor and assumed that she was kidding about being shot, but that left wondering if they were really fighting in Tamale. I texted her back, but her response was less than clear as to what was really going on. I figured that I would not be the first to know, so I asked Rashid, and he didn’t know anything. I stepped outside and called Liz, and sure enough, she said that there was some more fighting, and no, she was not almost shot. I found out later that during the funeral procession for the man who had been killed in the previous bit of political violence there were gunshots. Somebody was shooting at the family of the man who had been killed. Luckily, nobody was killed, but it still resulted in house burnings. I haven’t heard for sure how many. At first somebody told me two, but later I was told that it was actually seven.

After lunch with the Bishop, we went to a micro-finance community nearby. The 40 or so women involved were having their monthly (or weekly?) meeting to deposit funds into the communal cash box, report earnings, etc. Part of their meetings include some singing and a bit of dancing which was fun to see, and the visiting group really got into it. Although the group was predominantly Muslim, they asked the Priest with us to pray for them. He got up and said a prayer and then we left.

The next day we went back up north to Bolgatanga to visit a support group for people living with HIV. The group meets once a month, and they were supposed to meet on the 28, but they changed their meeting time so that our group could see the meeting. I figured it was good for the group to see the meeting, but I felt bad because the change in meeting days had caused a lot of the people to be unable to attend the meeting. The meeting opened with singing and dancing, and then we had a question and answer session. Before we had gone in there were a lot of issues about asking questions and photo-taking. The American rep. from the NGO reminded us of the no picture policy regarding people living with HIV(which apparently I was exempt from). I could understand that the people there might not feel comfortable with ten foreigners coming to visit for thirty minutes to snap a bunch of pictures of them, but at the same time, they talk so much about the stigmatization they face, I felt that treating them differently and saying no pictures just alienates them even more. I have noticed that on the NGO’s website, they never include photos of the people with HIV when they have an article about them. I know they are trying to protect them (their community might find out who they are) but I feel that it will do nothing to help the stigmatization. Also, she felt that the people in the meeting would not be comfortable answering questions about their condition. The people that worked with them assured us that they would be open. I figured that was the great part about getting a couple hundred people with HIV together to form a support group. They were no longer forced to be ashamed about their condition and they could discuss their stories freely. Some of the questions were really great and the answers were equally interesting. One person asked how their faith played a role in their condition. One Muslim woman stood up and said that when she found out about the condition she wanted to commit suicide. She had lost hope, and one night she had a dream and her late husband was there. He asked why she had stopped doing her midnight prayers. She tried to hold him, but he disappeared. After the dream, she started doing her midnight prayers and it gave her the strength to keep living.

After that there was some drumming and dancing. Women would take turns coming up to the front of the meeting hall, where the visiting group were sitting in a semi-circle, and do a crazily energetic dance. Eventually one of them grabbed one of the seminarians, and he hopped up, looking nervous at first, but quickly lost all inhibitions and did a very impressive crazy white boy dance, that led to deafening shouting and laughter from everyone. Different women came up and pulled up a couple more of the seminarians for a dance. It was all really fun to watch, and the seminarians were quick to have a good time and really…cut loose…footloose.

We left the meeting soon after and headed to the local crafts market. It felt a bit like New Market in India the way that so many people were there to jump on foreigners and force them into their shop. One guy, whose shop was the first one on the left side of the strip of shops, actually convinced one of the seminarians to leave a different shop and come into his by saying, “excuse me, sir, the first shop is over here. You have to come to this shop first, ok?” He followed obediently. I kept my distance, but I also wanted to help these guys get better deals (to serve my own bartering pleasures) as the prices they were being quoted were ridiculously inflated. I helped one guy get a drum for less than half the initial price, and somebody else get a mancala board for even cheaper.

That night we had dinner dinner with the Bishop and several local priests. Throughout the course of the meal, several of them gave some very inspiring little speeches. I sat next to the NGO’s rep. during the meal and talked to her about other places she has taken groups to visit projects. Nigeria, Madagascar twice, Rwanda, Guatemala thrice, India, Israel/Palestine. I was impressed, but I couldn’t bear to ever do what she did and take a group of ten people to these countries for less than two weeks. It is great, though for all of these people to see how people around the world live. I realize that I have been fairly critical of this group of visitors, and I feel really bad about it. They were all extremely friendly and enthusiastic people with good intentions. I have been judgmental of these people, and why? Because they wore big hats and were overly excited that we had a stash of chilled Coke in the vehicles? Not everybody makes international travel a priority like I do, and I should have been more welcoming to the group of Americans, many of which were seeing extreme poverty for the first time. While they were not actively improving the situation of the people they visited, the understanding of how most of the world lives (in poverty) is incredibly valuable. I believe that a visit of this nature would be beneficial for any American, and our world as a whole, even if those visitors don’t have to live a little more simply than they are used to during their trip.

As we dropped the group at the border back in Burkina Faso, everyone gave me a warm handshake and wished me luck with my journalism career. When I went to say goodbye to the representative from the NGO, I was surprised that she gave me a big hug. We had been getting along a lot better the last two days as she told me about the places she has taken groups to. And while it is the kind of travel I could never do, she was perfect for it, as she is a knowledgeable and responsible guide, and will undoubtedly keep her groups out of trouble better than someone like me ever could.

On the way home from work yesterday I had to take a taxi, and it was just starting to get pretty dark. As the taxi was cruising down the main road at a good clip, a guy started to try to cross the street quite a ways in front of us. The driver honked his horn continuously, expecting the guy to get out of the way. He just slowly proceeded right in front of us and I was sure we would just destroy this guy. Finally the driver slammed on his brakes, making an awful screeching noise, and the pedestrian casually stopped walking. We barely missed him, and he was just standing there, so close to us that he was slammed by the side view mirror on my side, and folded it in. The guy barely flinched. The driver said we didn’t hit him because he always prays before he starts driving every day. I find this to be quite common here, to give a prayer before setting out on a journey.

Today I am leaving back into the field. I will be spending a few days in the Upper West Region working the water and sanitation team, and then will spend a few days working with the micro-finance project. I will be gone for about a week. My last few weeks, unlike my first half of the internship will be incredibly busy. Aight. Later!