Field trip to Northern Ghana (album)

Field trip to Northern Ghana

Great Northern Trek, Days Two and Three: In Yendi

Ah, yes, the hotel. The only really serious accommodation problem we encountered on this (or any other) field trip. When we stayed there in 2005, on Calvin’s first visit to Yendi, it had just opened—the first and only guesthouse able to accommodate as large a group as ours. The staff were friendly and efficient, the rooms clean, each with a private bath with functioning plumbing—all in all it was a lovely place to stay, and very inexpensive. Fast-forward five years. The prices have increased nearly 400%, but most of the rooms are filthy, the plumbing is not working properly in any of the bathrooms (some have constant leaks, some nonfunctioning toilets or showers), and we all got lots of bites overnight from vermin living in the beds and rooms. (We didn’t actually see anything biting us, but whatever it was raised bright red welts that took several days to subside and stop itching.) The staff were nearly impossible to find, and when we did track them down and asked for help making plumbing fixtures work or sweeping out the filthiest rooms, they made vague promises and then disappeared again.

We wish we’d arranged our trip to spend just one night there, or none. But the visit to Yendi was immensely valuable all the same, as in 2005. And most of the credit is due again to one man: Al-Haji Sulemana Alhassan, who was one of Samuel Ntewusu’s secondary-school teachers. He is the Executive Director of BIRDS, the Bang-Gu-Mana Integrated Regional Development Society. (“Bang-gu-mana” is Dagbani for “gaining wisdom.”) It was founded in the late 1990s in response to ethnic conflicts that had flared up ten years earlier, then had been provisionally resolved in the early 1990s thanks to mediation efforts by NGO’s. But the outside organizations paid little attention to local perspectives or priorities: they conducted their meetings, spent their funds, wrote their reports, and went home, leaving most of the underlying issues unresolved. Sulemana decided to mobilize local resources instead.

BIRDS is active now in seven different areas (more than in 2005): primary education, women’s empowerment, conflict management and peacebuilding, community participation in governance, health education, environmental education, and social science research. In each area it partners with governmental and NGO agencies: he named Ibis West Africa (a German NGO focusing on gender issues and children’s welfare), Hope for Children (UK), Bayport Financial Services (in Ghana, sponsor of an annual “Ride for Peace”), National TB Control Programme, and the Ghana AIDS Commission, as well as the district assemblies and administrators. Funding comes from NGO’s, from private donations, and from farm income, but it is never enough. BIRDS now owns two computers and one motorbike, he said, but rents its offices. Someday Sulemana hopes to have a vehicle with four wheels, not two. (Though a great many Northern villages are accessible only with two feet or two wheels, not by car or truck.)

In 2005 Sulemana gave us a very brief overview of his work at his offices, with several associates and board members on hand, and then we headed out on a tour of several community projects. This time he made his presentation alone, using a low-tech Powerpoint: he had written a summary of BIRDS history, programs, governance, and staff on seven or eight large sheets of paper on an easel. And because it was a teacher training day we were unable to visit the school. So we made just one site visit, to a women’s shea butter collective, where several elderly women showed us how they extract the oil from shea tree nuts, boil it down to a dark mass, filter it and strain off the liquid, and then package and sell the rich salve that remains—much in demand for the Body Shop and every other cosmetics maker in the world. This is a major source of cash income in the north, and still a highly decentralized household industry, because the shea nut trees grow everywhere, in the forests and among other crops, but are too slow-growing and produce too little per tree to be economical as a cultivated crop. So nearly all the shea butter that Ghana exports is made from nuts that are gathered one by one by women and children, on farms and on public land.

Al-Haji Sulemana is Moslem (the title indicates that he has made the Hajj), as are most residents of Yendi, and so are most of the six members of his board (three men, three women) and staff (three employees plus five National Service workers). But he works closely with the Christian leaders in town, and BIRDS meetings always open with Christian prayer and close with a Koranic blessing or vice versa. The organization’s long-term goals, he said, are three: sustainable peace, improved education for girls, and wealth generation by improving agriculture and developing local industry. All projects are evaluated regularly: those involved are asked to complete questionnaires and participate in focus groups when a project is at its midpoint, and annual evaluations of each project are also conducted by outsiders.

The students had a chance to ask questions that elicited more about the career path of this remarkable man. He was planning to study medicine, he said, but had to abandon that plan when Ghana’s education system went to pieces in the 1980s and nearly all the qualified teachers fled to Nigeria to find work. In his Yendi secondary school, with no science teachers left, he taught biology classes for his fellow students. He decided to pursue teacher training instead of medicine and returned to his hometown to teach (Samuel Ntewusu was one of his students), until he founded BIRDS and shifted into full-time community development.

What I described above was actually our programme for Monday morning. Sunday was our first day in Yendi, when we planned to attend the 7 am English-language Mass at the Catholic church, and then go out on our scheduled visits, but I turned out that there wasn’t one. So we held our own worship service at the restaurant where we went for breakfast (and also for dinner Saturday and Sunday—a new Church of Christ facility that seems to be the only place in town with seating for more than 10). And then we went off on a 20-km, one-hour excursion to Ngadi Tindang, a village about 20 km from Yendi that serves as one of six “witches’ camps” in Northern Ghana. We had heard about the camps in 2004 and 2005, but it was not til 2008 that Sulemana arranged for a visit by the Calvin group. The 2009 group followed suit, and—countering my misgivings—both Amy and Beryl strongly recommended that we do so too. Their recommendation was wise: it was a strange but in the end worthwhile experience.

What is a “witches’ camp”? Students had images of hags bent over cauldrons casting spells, or something of the sort. I envisioned beaten-down and penniless old women living under strict social quarantine. The reality: it is a place of refuge for members of several northern ethnic groups who have been accused of witchcraft, often because of an unexplained death or illness in their extended family. They cannot remain in their home villages, where they would be shunned at best, killed at worst. Relatives bring them to one of the recognized witches’ villages and leave them in the care of the traditional priest. Sometimes they are accompanied by their husbands—or their wives, since about 20% of the “witches” in the camp are men—and their children. Some younger women banished from their home communities marry and raise families in the camp, as do some children who accompany parents to the camp and grow up there. All in all it’s a lively place full of noisy children, men of every age group, and predominantly older women. One of our cultural lecturers described the phenomenon of witchcraft accusation as a misguided response to behavioral and psychological changes attending menopause, and in some cases that account fits. But younger women and men are also regularly driven out of the communities if they are believed to have caused someone’s sickness or death. On the bus afterward the students peppered both Samuels with questions about why Ghanaians continue to tolerate such superstitious practices that cause such hardship, but it became clear that, for both of these highly educated Ghanaians, witchcraft is not superstition but undeniable reality. Both recounted tales of strange ailments or economic setbacks in their families that were caused by jealous or malevolent neighbors, and both agreed that witches cannot stay in their communities once their activities are uncovered. Westerners who think this is all nonsense, and who insist that disease and death can be fully explained in physical terms, are simply ignoring half of the world that we all live in.

Before we could proceed to the camp with Sulemana and our two Samuels we parked our bus at the end of the road and proceeded on a foot trail to the village adjacent to the camp, where we presented ourselves to the chief and offered a small gift. Then we went on to the camp and greeted the traditional priest, who of course also also required a small gift. Through an assistant who speaks English, he told us that he cares for the spiritual and physical needs of the camp’s residents. For those who are truly guilty of practicing witchcraft he performs rites to expel the evil spirits that have taken residence in them: the accused buys a fowl (not just any fowl, one that is healthy and attractive and appealing to the gods), the priest offers prayers and libations and slits the bird’s throat. If it flops over to the left side, the spirits have been driven out and the individual can resume normal life. But returning home is impossible, since the village will not believe they have been cured and will bring new accusations. So the now-cured witches remain in the camp.

All this is undertaken, the priest assured us, only after he has held a proper trial to determine whether the accusation of witchcraft was well-founded. How do you conduct the trial, we asked? The accused brings a suitable fowl, I say prayers and pour libations, I slit the fowl’s throat, and then if it flops over to the left side I know the person is innocent; to the right side proves her guilt.

I wanted to ask about the appeals procedure in this juridical system. But was afraid it would turn out to involve slaughtering a fowl.

As you may have surmised I was not very favorably impressed by the priest, even though he told us he receives no payment for his services, only a voluntary gift from time to time. Also lots of fowls. There is also a Christian pastor who looks after the residents of the camp, and in the village are a church and also a mosque that many residents attend. But they live in abject poverty, since they have very little land to cultivate—only what the neighboring villagers can spare—and no opportunities for other employment in their remote area of the bush.

And yet there was a very positive spirit among the residents—mostly women, a handful of men, and piles of children—who came to the clearing beneath a huge central tree to welcome us. Before leaving Legon Susan had purchased gifts for the women: two large cartons of laundry soap bars that we cut up and distributed, and several bags of Maggi cooking cubes. All in all we handed out gifts to more than a hundred residents.

Using Sulemana and Samuel and a man from the village as translators—we needed to cover three languages, English and Dagbani and Kokomba—we thanked the women for receiving us and told them we hoped they would soon be able to return to their home villages and their families. An old woman stood up to reply for the group. None of us are witches, she said—we were all falsely accused. But we do not want to return to our home villages. We will never be accepted there, and we have made a good life for ourselves and our families here. We appreciate the interest that you students have shown in our situation. And we are very grateful to Patrick, who came to visit us last year and is a student at your university. He gave us money to register with the National Health Service, and now we receive medical care when needed without charge. I had to go to hospital last month myself and received good treatment, and now I am well again. Our son Patrick has done so much for us!

This was a complete surprise to me. Patrick’s own account, in an email exchange, was that when he came back to Ngani for a week at the end of the semester last year he felt completely useless and spent his days just sitting around doing nothing and getting depressed. But Sulemana confirmed that he had actually done a great deal to help the “witches,” collecting several hundred dollars from friends and family back in the for the NHS registration, which costs about $8 US per person.

Despite the language barrier the students were having interesting conversations with a number of the women who came out to meet us. The men hung back and didn’t interact as much, but the children quickly climbed into students’ laps. We began cutting up the laundry soap and handing it out, trying to be sure we gave something to everyone. Then some young men standing around nearby started playing traditional drums, and the women stood up and began doing traditional dances in a circle, soon joined by many of the Calvin students. For half an hour, under a punishingly hot sun, the circle grew bigger and the crowd cheering them on pressed in more closely, and some of the Calvin students took a turn playing the drums as well. Many of the women put their laundry soap on their heads so their hands were free for dancing. It was an exuberant end to a very unusual visit.

Great Northern Trek, Day One: On the Road

It was more than a month ago that we set out on our longest and most rewarding of all our field trips. In many ways traveling to the North feels like entering an entirely new country. Many Accra residents think of it that way, never having traveled to the places we take the Calvin group such as Tamale, Bolgatanga, Paga, and Mole National Park. Our upstairs neighbor Ken, a music lecturer here at UG, commented, “I’ve always wanted to see the North but I’ve never gone beyond Kumasi.” (Kumasi is 270 km from Accra; Tamale is 380 km farther.)

IAS Senior Fellow Albert Awudoba, who provided an exceptionally thorough and well-organized introduction to the history and cultures of the North in one of our scheduled lectures, was not surprised by this. Northerners come south in search of employment, he said—in agriculture, in urban markets, as day laborers in the cities, or as professors and physicians and lawyers and bankers. Southerners do not go North to Ghana’s poorest and least developed region. But the lack of interest, he said, is mutual. When he was growing up in a village very near the border town of Sirigu (see below for more on Sirigu and its decorated houses), the three-fourths of the country that lies south of Tamale was called simply “Kumasi.” Someone who moved to Accra or Tetchiman or Takoradi or Ho (hundreds of km apart, in four different regions) had moved “to Kumasi.” And all the residents of “Kumasi,” whether they were Ewe (from the Volta Region) or Ga (from around Accra) or Fante (from the Central Region) or Akuapem or Krobo or Shai (from around the Akuapem Hills in the Eastern Region), were simply called “Ashanti.”

We were very fortunate this year to have two Northerners—both named Samuel—as our guides for the trip, at least for the first few days. It wasn’t hard to persuade Samuel Ntewusu to take a couple of days off and accompany us as far as Yendi. He had some business to attend to in Tamale, from which he would return by bus. This year’s logistics coordinator Samuel Abokyi, whose family is in Tamale, had worked on all the lodging arrangements with us and was glad to share responsibilities on the road. The two Samuels could hardly be more different in temperament: Ntewusu is gregarious, loud, opionionated, and overflowing with amazing stories from his childhood and tales of remarkable recent events. I was sitting far ahead of him on the bus and could hear most of what he was telling the students. Abokyi is quiet, unassertive, always ready to help when asked, but content to sit on the bus for hours among the students without speaking, unless they ask him a question. And he speaks so softly that it can be difficult to catch what he says even if you are sitting right beside him.

Traffic between Legon and the Kumasi Road, and on the first section of that road, is very heavy in the morning, and we had a grueling 14 to 15 hour ride ahead of us, so we scheduled our departure for 5 am on Saturday. We managed to pull away only twenty minutes late—a record, I think, for any of our out of town trips. (There always seems to be one student whose alarm didn’t go off, or some similar excuse—but it’s seldom the same one twice.) We had been so happily surprised by the now-excellent road to Cape Coast that we hoped for the same on our drive to the north. No such luck. The main highway connecting Ghana’s two largest cities, Accra and Kumasi, is in far worse condition than in 2005. A stretch of 20 or 30 km between Nsawam and Bunso, when we had been underway only an hour or so, is now a barely passable construction zone, with long stretches of deeply rutted dirt track, gigantic piles of gravel that blocked half the right of way, and one section where we drove right through a blasting zone with huge chunks of rock littering the roadway. All in the name of progress, of course: we could admire the half-finished highway interchanges and dual carriageways as we bumped and jounced past them. But there was a reward at the end of this ordeal: halfway to Kumasi is a roadside rest stop. We remembered it well from previous visits, and here’s how I described it in 2004:

Along the way we stopped at something we hadn’t known existed in Ghana: a highway rest stop! It is a large dirt courtyard surrounded by vendors of fruit, snacks, and cooked food from about 20 different booths. In one corner are the toilets, and a hand-painted sign directs visitors: Gents this way, Ladies that way, ¢200 fee ($0.22). Susan handed over ¢4000 to pay for all 20 visitors, which caused some confusion, because there was another bus making a stop—but it really wasn’t hard to identify the only 19 white patrons. But this, it turned out, was the fee for the urinal, a concrete enclosure with a tiled trench to stand or squat over. If you wanted an actual toilet—for the sake of privacy or because your needs were more complicated than urinating—you had to pay ¢1000 and go to a different area. None of our students were willing to part with eleven cents for more privacy, although the women found the communal nature of the urinals daunting at first. They wanted to use the facility a few at a time, but the passengers of the other bus pushed past and overruled that plan.

In 2010 the place is completely transformed: a large tarred car park, a spacious covered pavilion with tables and chairs and several cafeteria-style food providers around the sides, with lots more food and fruit and coffee vendors outside. The food is varied and tasty—traditional Ghanaian dishes, “beef sandwiches” (a loose adaptation of the burger concept), baked goods, fruit, beer and soft drinks, coffee and tea, with prices a bit higher than in Accra. And the bathrooms! Two large facilities with flush toilets, toilet paper, and—something we’ve never witnessed except in a few posh hotels—paper towels by the lavatories! The charge is now 20 pesewas, which represents a 1000% increase, but it’s worth it. The students got to know this rest stop very well: we made four stops there in all, in each direction on our Northern and our Ashanti Region trips. If they made a ranked list of “toilet facilities in Ghana” it would be at the top, I’m sure. And you don’t want to hear about what would be at the bottom.

Not much to say about the remainder of the bus trip except that it went on and on and on, with many short stretches of potholed and rutted road but nothing close to the chaos we had already come through. Night fell as we drove through Tamale, the trade center of the North, and on to the small town of Yendi, our first destination. We were all thoroughly tired of the bus by then, getting a little cranky, when our attention was suddenly riveted on an amazing show unfolding outside: a light rain began to fall, clouds rolled in, and we found ourselves in the middle of one of the most spectacular lightning displays I have ever seen. Some bolts illuminated vast tracts of clouds, others snaked down from zenith to horizon, others darted across the sky horizontally in brilliant, jagged forks. We looked left and looked right, hoping to catch the next display, and when it came gasps went up from the entire bus. The storms were still rather distant, and with windows closed we did not hear the thunder, til suddenly a great rumble seemed to roll right over our heads. Then the rain came more and more heavily—unseasonably, since the single rainy season in the North usually runs from May to early September—and we saw no more lightning bolts, only repeated flashes of blinding brightness. We were glad now that our trip had lasted so long: if we had been inside our hotel we’d have missed the show entirely.

David's busy month

More than a month has passed since I last wrote anything for the blog, a month with so many demands on my time that Susan has done all the picture organizing and blog postings. Some of these demands were anticipated, and were rewarding in every way: having 2011 director Stephanie Sandberg with us as a houseguest for ten days, for example; and planning and setting out on our Ashanti Region field trip. (It’s going to be a great program next year, and we had a wonderful time laying plans with Stephanie—we only wish we could all three be here together next year!) Others were unanticipated and less enjoyable, such as attending to a student who came down very suddenly with the most severe case of malaria we have ever seen in any of the groups we have brought to Africa. She spent four nights in the hospital, and it’s only now, nearly three weeks after the initial crisis, that she is getting back to her full strength. And this is someone who is hardly ever sick, very attentive to hygiene and food safety, faithful in taking her prophylaxis, and probably more widely traveled than anyone else in the group, including Susan and me. There has been no rational pattern to our several serious illnesses!

But this is the week when we allow the students to organize their own travels in small groups, so I suddenly find myself with some time for other matters besides class prep and grading essays and program planning—and nobody is ill just now either, thank God. We had grand plans of making a visit to Dakar or Bamako or Ouagadougou, in Senegal, Mali, and Burkina Faso, respectively, to experience the world of l’Afrique francophone. But airfares are outrageous: $1100 to $1300 round trip for any of these one- or two-hour flights, the same as flights to Europe. Way beyond our budget. So we’ve pared down to a two-day drive back to the Volta Region on Thursday and Friday.

Half the students are off having adventures: some of them braved the 12+ hour bus rides and returned to the North to volunteer or explore, others are chilling out at beaches and small coastal towns in the Western region. The other half stayed home for part of the week and are heading out tomorrow for the West-except two who decided they will do all their exploring in and around Accra. At our weekly dinner last night we could all sit in the living room together and chat, much less crowded than usual. We borrowed a projector and showed several recent slide shows (the same albums recently posted here, plus the Northern trip I will post later today).

Our time together here is nearly at an end.  On November 22  Susan will leave Ghana and land in Philadelphia for a visit with Klaas and Krista and our anticipated granddaughter. The students and I will remain for two more weeks. But everyone is now aware of the shortness of time remaining. Some of the plans we made, especially those for extensive visits to a village in the Ga District, are clearly not going to be fulfilled this year, though we are still trying to revive some elements of the plan. Other plans have been more than fulfilled, as students have fanned out on free days to visit the homes of friends they have made in the hostel or in the markets, for cooking lessons and wedding celebrations and shopping expeditions. Whether the homestay we scheduled for October will still happen next week is still uncertain—I hope to learn more today—but frustrations over this part of the program have been more than outweighed by all the things that have been even richer and more valuable experiences than anticipated, including each of our field trips.

More of my time this week is bound to mean more of yours, faithful readers: you will now have to endure my prolixity, in contrast with Susan’s conciseness. Deal with it.

Kumasi trip photos (album)

Kumasi trip photos

Odwira festival (album)

Odwira

Odwira festival (Picasaweb slideshow)

Kumasi: Commerce, Congestion, Crafts

Our last big excursion with our students was this past Thursday through Saturday. We travelled to Kumasi, which has been the center of trade in West Africa for centuries. One of the highlights of the trip was the hours we spent in the Kejetia market in the center of town, winding our way through multitudes of shoppers and workers, along rows of market stalls selling food, cloth, shoes made on the premises, used clothing, housewares, hardware, rope, etc.  Our first purchase was a length of green rope for a clothes line.  Our last was sunglasses for David.  In between, we bought cloth and more cloth, mostly batik.  Our hotel was only about 3 blocks from the market and was in a neighborhood full of commerce, with shoes spread out on parked cars and merchandise like sunglasses arrayed on boards.  In Kumasi the vendors won't let you walk away if you don't like their first price.  Shopping is a conversation, with lots of humor involved, and the interaction matters as much as the sale.

We also spent time in the center of Kumasi learning about its history by visiting the palace of the Asantahene, the traditional king of the Asante people, and the military museum.  The Asante are a pretty fierce bunch and brag of defeating the Italians in Ethiopia and the Japanese in Burma during WWII.  

Our third focus was on traditional crafts, with visits to several villages that broke up our arduous trip north—on the main highway linking the two largest cities in Ghana, which right now does not deserve the name “highway.”  There are about 20 kilometers of the worst road construction we’ve encountered this time in Ghana:  we were on dirt tracks through a blast zone with huge rocks on both sides, and another section felt like driving through a gigantic gravel pit, with 2 story high piles of gravel partially blocking what remains of the road.  Even on the smoothly paved sections we were nearly forced onto the shoulder by overloaded trucks coming right at us:  the highway is two lanes wide at best, and often there are large chunks of asphalt missing on the sides. 

As we approached Kumasi, we left the main road to visit three villages where beads and crafts were made.  The artisans in these villages originally produced goods for Asante royalty and continue to create work to high standards.  My favorite was the first village, Abompe, where we learned bauxite bead making by following a guide down narrow paths from home to home, visiting bead makers and polishers.  Bauxite—the mineral from which aluminum is made—was reportedly found by a hunter in the hills nearby more than a century ago, and villagers still make twice-weekly treks on foot to dig it up.  In that village, we also visited a compound where several young men have a workshop making bamboo bike frames.  We had no idea before we arrived that bamboo bike making was a cottage industry in rural Ghana!  As I expected, David is now looking into getting a bamboo frame in his size that he can ship home.  We also watched cloth being made in small villages near Kumasi.  The next day we spent two and a half hours at the National Cultural Center in Kumasi, where several different crafts were being demonstrated by artists who have workshops on the grounds and produce work for sale and on commission. Most of the artists we met were working on large orders to be shipped off to customers, in Ghana or abroad, and there was little pressure to buy.

On our return to Legon, we avoided the worst stretch of road by taking an alternate route, but then ran into horrible traffic through Adenta and Madina, in our last 20 km or so.   When we finally arrived on campus about 7:30, we dropped the students at the dorm, changed our clothes, and immediately headed down into Accra for a concert featuring Adja Koo Nimo, one of the greatest figures of traditional high-life, and George Darko, a more contemporary musician who leads a terrific dance band.   It was a great way to top off the visit by next year’s Calvin in Ghana program, Stephanie Sandberg. I think she got a good overview of the work involved and the good times available here.

As of today, I have only two weeks left in Ghana, which does not seem long enough for all the things I want to do.  We are thinking that we will not do much traveling during our free time but instead spend a little time up on the ridge, relaxing in Akropong, and some time getting things organized and packed up here, so that David will not have too much to do on his own in the two weeks that remain before he and the students depart.  It will be hard to leave, but worth it, since I am leaving early in anticipation of the birth of our first grandchild in Philadelphia.