Field Work Pt. 1- Pito is Sweeto

After finishing the trip with the visiting Americans, I had a busy night preparing to leave again the next morning. First, I had to catch up on e-mail, as I had not been able to use the internet for about 4 days. Then that night I had to do a write-up discussing all that happened on the trip (not in blog form unfortunately), then pack for departure the next morning, and was still able to make time to get a beer with Liz at Pat’s place.

The next morning I got a ride to the Upper West Region to join some people at work that were in the middle of supervising a series of workshops and cleanups in various communities. The first day was basically just travel, as it is quite a long way.

Thursday morning we went to the first community to check out their clean up project that was going on. Basically it was to stimulate the practice of keeping their community clean, and a local private waste management company had been hired. Unfortunately, though, the most advanced waste removal technology is fire. So community members and workers from the waste management company swept up accumulating yard waste and plastic garbage and lit the piles on fire. Yes, it didn’t seem environmentally friendly at all, but hopefully it would help people take more pride in the aesthetic appeal of their communities, so that when there eventually is proper waste removal, it will be used effectively.

We went to the next community where they had already finished their cleanup, and were now beginning a workshop in basic sanitation. There were about a hundred people gathered under a mango tree when we arrived, and were involved in games to teach them about stuff that we take for granted. Like, wash your hands after using the bathroom, or don’t poop in the open near your water. I got a really nice photo of the guy running the workshop in the local language holding up a drawing of a little boy making bears. At the end of the workshop there was loads of pito to drink, and they brought me a big calabash of the local millet brew.

I generally really like the people I work with, but during this trip some of them have really been frustrating me. I think in my discussion of the visiting Americans I may have implied that they complained a lot, and I may have associated that with being spoiled westerners. Well, I am quickly learning that the people I work with do quite a bit of complaining, particularly the drivers. They complain about the service at our guesthouse (“Hey, the woman has not brought us water yet?!), other drivers (constantly), the “foolish” villagers that come in to town on their bikes and get in everyone’s way (I just hope that when we go to the villages they complain about the foolish city folk that come careening through blaring their horn at every pedestrian, biker, and animal on the road), the consistency of the fufu (dude, it’s fufu, get over it!), and the deaf (“the blind are very good people, but the deaf and dumb, they are so troublesome!”). A lot of their complaining, and hyper-critical attitudes toward, well, everyone else, seems to come from this sense of superiority that comes with an education and a relatively good job in such an underprivileged area. Although it hasn’t been said directly, much of what I hear wreaks of the “get a job” type of sympathy of toward the poor. Things that I see people doing in the city, that I see them doing out of difficult circumstance, the drivers seem to criticize as being foolish. I also think driving the SUV everywhere doesn’t help their attitude. If an SUV makes people feel that much more superior in America, imagine what it does to someone’s ego in a country like Ghana. But if I am so critical of their criticisms, am I just being hypocritical?

The next morning we drove to a community that I had been to before, which had a farming area set up for the local blind. This day we were in a big truck (all the SUVs were already in use) and on the way into the community we stopped at a fork and were unsure which way to go. Just then an old blind woman was waving to us, and started hobbling toward us as fast as she could. We figured she would direct us to where they were holding their workshop, but when she got to us, she started to climb into the back of the truck. The driver got out and started to yell at her, telling her she couldn’t ride with us. She didn’t speak English, and he didn’t speak her language, but she got the message. We continued left (the direction she was going) and drove a quarter mile, arriving at the farming community, which was not where we meant to be. I felt bad for the woman as we passed her on the way back. I know it is our policy not to pick up people, and I think it is a very valid policy, but come on, she’s blind and like 80, and nobody else was around.

We eventually got to the area of the community where they were having a workshop. Again, it finished with a mass distribution of pito. Some of the women came up to me and asked if we could take them somewhere on our way out. I spoke through an interpreter and told them we couldn’t. Predictably, though, several women tried to climb in before we were left, leading to our driver to get out and yell again. This was an example of when this policy is just fine. We can’t turn into a taxi service, especially when an entire community is watching.

That night we went to the local radio station to be guests on a show. I didn’t really do much. Basically the whole thing was in the local language and was to inform the people of what the project was all about. There were a few people that called in, and even a couple from the communities which we had worked int. Just being in the studio was a cool experience.

My schedule is getting increasingly busy, and every night after a long day in the field, I am going back to the guesthouse to work on photos, and write-ups for newsletters. This is because I had a solid four weeks in the office where I was unable to do almost any work. Now it is all being dumped on me in my last three weeks here.

On Saturday we went to our last community, which was by far the largest of those participating in this project. We arrived at about 8:30 and a small handful of community members were helping with the cleaning. I wrote about this community’s shortcomings in tree planting project during a previous visit. Apparently, we learned, this has something to do with a recent chieftaincy dispute causing violence and division in the community. One of the guys I am working with worried that this would make us unable to carry out the workshop. The participation in the cleanup was already pretty meager.

At the beginning of the workshop there were about 25 in attendance, mostly men. A lot of this had to do with a nearby funeral, which the women were preparing for, but undoubtedly due to the conflict as well. Throughout the meeting though, women brought out the pito to be enjoyed after the meeting. The meetings, including the pito, are funded by the NGO. Therefore, as 300 pots of the drink were accumulated by the end of the meeting, the attendance easily tripled. Most of the people that had come late did not seem to be paying attention to the discussion and were just waiting for their free drink. As the meeting ended, women started to pass out calabashes and the pito was poured. The huge volume of the drink led to immediate hoarding, and I saw one young guy who had come during the last ten minutes of the meeting to talk with his friends guarding six pots of pito. A middle-aged woman nearby had poured probably 8 pots into a bucket and was on her way out, when one of the local partners stopped her and told her to put some back. He did the same with the young guy. There was a lot of yelling in the local language, and it was sad to see it come to this. I was just glad that there was not an all-out brawl over millet beer. I mean, come on people, it’s millet beer.

We got back to our guesthouse fairly early that day, around 2:00, which I was very glad about. It was the last day of this project and these guys would be going home the next day. I, however, would be staying to join up with the micro-finance group that was also in the area. I had been told that the next day, Sunday, would not involve me, which I was very grateful for, as I had a lot of stuff to work on, not to mention laundry, and a few minutes of relaxing. Saturday would be my 13^th day in a row working. I could have done laundry with my free afternoon, but I decided that I had not seen the town of Wa, that I had now spent about 8 nights in. It was market day as well. So I just went for a walk through the market, which was super dirty and chaotic, just the way I like it, and they actually had, in my opinion, cooler stuff than Tamale. I bought a sweet hand-made clay bowl for $.20 and also spent some time bartering over some cloth. It took a lot of searching and a few rounds of bargaining, but I got three yards of some awesome blue batik cloth (supposedly imported from Mali) for about $6. When I get back to Tamale I am getting it made into some pants, and hopefully a matching hat if there’s enough fabric.

That evening I saw my first weather report. I never watch TV, but when we are at this guesthouse, there are a couple channels, and the guys were watching. The Americans that had visited had complained incessantly about the heat, which I still find pretty extreme, but have come to terms with. The local temperature in Wa was 35C (102F right?) and 37C (106F right?) in Tamale. Dang! I had no idea it was that hot. I figured it was mid 90’s at most! I think I might do ok in Phoenix this summer after all.