I just found this email that I sent after I got back from Burkina Faso and Ghana in January, 2006, having spent just 2 weeks there visiting my sister Patrice, and thought some might enjoy it. It's pretty long.
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Hello. I got back from BF late Monday night. I had a great time, and I'm hoping to go back to Ghana (they speak english there) to work this coming summer. [check!]
When I first arrived, it took FOREVER to get thru customs and security--like 2 hours. And there was no line--just people mobbing the little booth and sticking their passports out for the guy to grab. This was my first impression of BF, sadly. Anyway, I finally got thru, picked up my bag, and there was Tc waiting! I was very glad to see her--she and the 7 PCVs who had come to the airport with her and I piled into a taxi and headed back to the PCV hostel. The hostel was very comfortable--lots
of bunkbeds adn old couches to hang out on. We packed for Ghana, and finally went to sleep around 2--and then got up at 6 the next a.m. to catch our bus for Ghana, along with 7 of her PCV friends. We were in Ghana for about a week--taking 2 days of "luxury" buses and tro-tros/bush taxis (basically a 21-passenger van filled to the brim with people--each seat was about 10 inches wide) to get there and another 2 days to get back. The "luxury" bus--means incredibly overly airconditioned and loud
bad movies play. Also, no people standing in the aisles. On our 14-hour trip down to Kumasi, the second biggest city in Ghana, after the capital, Accra, we probably stopped about 12 times, often for no apparent reason. Each time we stopped, we were yelled at to get out of the bus by the angry bus people. We didn't like this. We were also all freezing, b/c the air was on too high and they didn't know how to turn it off--nor could they control the volume of the movies--so it was a very uncomfortable ride down. But we finally arrived and stayed at a presbyterian hostel in Kumasi. I slept incredibly well that night, not having slept, really, for 2 days. The next day we traipsed around Kumasi a little bit, then took a tro-tro to another town, where everybody else got off, and then we bargained with the driver to take us on to our lodge, the Green Turtle, another hour and a half down the road. By this point, my opinions of african transportation were very low--but I was still very happy to be there. I loved watching the women (mostly) walk with enormous loads on
their heads, and often babies on their backs. The desertyness of BF followed by the jungleyness of Ghana were both beautiful. I was pretty leery of the food, and wasn't thrilled about drinking beverages out of little plastic bags, which is how they're sold--but I was still interested in everything.
We spent about 3 days at the Green Turtle Lodge--the main building of which was located about 100 yards from the ocean--it's run by a Brit, and very comfortable--little huts with beds in them, shared outdoor showers and toilets, limited menu from which to pick breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and otherwise much lounging beachside. Sometimes we got to watch dinner being fished for in the ocean. The Green Turtle, while not particularly african (it wasn't in a village or anything), was heavenly. We could also sleep outside in tents, which I did for 2 nights, and that was beautiful. (It was too hot for me in the huts (not air conditioned, of course), although the peace corps volunteers found them perfectly
comfortable.) The surf there was amazing--huge waves and a noticeable undertow--so violent it felt quite dangerous to go in alone, or to body surf, really. We had a great time in the water anyway. Also, it was a full moon there the first night we arrived, and it was so bright there were definite shadows--a little like standing in the middle of a well lit car dealership at night. About a half mile down the beach there _was_ a village, and Tc and a friend of hers and I walked there one afternoon,
were given an informal tour of the local castle overgrown with trees and jungle, which included a small boy climbing a palm tree, cutting down coconuts, and our guide insisting that we each eat at least 4 coconuts. The coconuts were interesting (and, for me, edible) b/c they weren't yet ripe--our guide hacked a hole in one, and inside it was filled with water, which we drank until we couldn't drink anymore, and then he hacked it in half with his machete and we scooped out a thin layer of wet coconut--it
had a yogurty consistency and was very good. Anyway, after he force-fed us coconuts and showed us the castle and it's "beautiful bomb" (a rusted out cannon) and offered to catch every lizard we happened to notice, he asked us for money, which I thought maybe he deserved, but Tc and Stephanie, the other PCV, thought not--mostly b/c he had insisted the whole time that we wouldn't have to pay. Apparently people like this have a name--"faux types", false types, and they're not to be accommodated.
Also, on the way to the village, I happened to save a sheep from drowning, to the great amusement of Tc and Stephanie.
Anyway, then we walked thru the village, where all the children followed us and tried to talk to us and took our hands and insisted we take their pictures. Very cute. African children, at least in that region, are very different from american children. They are not coddled at all--when we were in BF, some babies would cry when we came near b/c they had never seen white people before--and the mothers, instead of comforting the babies, would shove them at us. This is perhaps representative of the
general attitude toward raising children. Tc's theory about this was that life there was so hard (there's so much poverty, and babies and people in general die all the time, etc. etc.) and you have to be able to take it, so they do not keep hardship from their children. While I was there, I saw _one_ child with a toy (a white baby doll, as it happened). All the other children just played with what they found (in one case, a bunch of kids were playing "marbles" with bottlecaps and a flipflop for the big marble).
Anyway. We left the Green Turtle reluctantly, and only out of a sense of duty to see some of the rest of teh country. My entire 3-day stay at the Green Turtle, including housing (PCV rate), every meal, and drinks, amounted to about $40--but it's about a 8000 cedi (ghanaian money) to $1 ratio, so that was about 320,000 in cedi. (We changed money at hte border and for $200, I got a big pack of money about 6 inches thick, more than a million cedi--people there carry money around in black plastic sacks.) So from there we proceeded to Busua, an actual town, where we spent Xmas day. Tc had had her tailor make Xmas stockings (and 1 Hannukah stocking) for all of us, and Santa did indeed manage to find us down there, very kindly including some delicious Nebraska chocolates. Ghana was pretty hot (prob. in the 90s) and very humid, although while we were next to the ocean it was very comfortable. Busua was fine--nothing particularly spectacular, although the waves were much calmer and I could ride them over and over and over. At that point we started eating in restaurants, which was usually frustrating. Menus tended to be more like wishlists for what they'd like to have on the menu, and often they wouldn't tell you that
they didn't have something that was on the menu until an hour after you'd ordered. In our worst restaurant experience, some people had not yet gotten their food 4 hours after they'd ordered--we ended up walking out. Apparently any seafood you order, for instance, has to be caught--so it's good to order it in the morning, when you want it for lunch. Anyway, we nevertheless had some very good food there. Good pancakes. I went to mass with one of the other PCVs on Xmas day, to see what it was like. It
took place in a schoolroom; we sat at desks. It was almost entirely in the local language, and lasted about 2 hours, so I was pretty ready to go when it ended. The sermon was probably 40 min. at least, and the congregation was quite active in it--it seemed like the priest was asking individuals personal questions. The singing was really the best part--they had drums and clapping and harmonies and it was quite
beautiful. They sang only one song I knew--Gloria in Excelsis Deo--but it was nice to listen and clap along with the others. Originally, aside from the other PCV and I, there were about 5 women in the congregation, but as the mass went on, many more women and children came in and out and in again.
After Busua, we took a tro-tro to Cape Coast, which was known for many things, none of which did I get to do b/c at that point I got wicked diarrhea. Tc, though, went to see a castle that was used for holding and shipping slaves. It sounded brutal, but she should tell you about it. We left Cape Coast earlier than we thought, mostly b/c we were concerned about being able to get bus tickets back to Ouagadougou (BF capital), because every single bus person we talked to gave us different times and
different days for when the bus actually left. So we took a tro-tro back to Kumasi (Ghana), tried to go shopping in the market there (but I was too sick, so I took a nap on a bench in the middle of the market instead, while Tc shopped), and then left at around 5pm for Ouaga.
This time, the bus took about 18 hours b/c they close the border betw. BF and Ghana at night, so we just sat at the border and waited for it to open. On the bus back, it wasn't nearly so cold as the bus down, but we were still treated to very terrible african movies, The Good Samaritan and the Good Samaritan II (which we watched twice). The quality of these movies is so bad that the volume varied incredibly--although sadly it seemed to more often be extremely loud than extremely quiet, which we would have preferred. The excessive volume bothered no one but us
Americanos--the africans seemed to have no trouble at all sleeping through it. But finally the movies were over and we all slept. We got to OUaga around 2pm the next day, and just went back to the hostel and relaxed, watching movies and reading, till the next day at 2 pm, when Tc and I split up with the rest of teh PCVs and went to catch a bus to her village.
This bus was _not_ luxury, which meant that they sold more seats than they had, so many people were standing in the aisles, very crowded, no a/c. Happily, one of the bus dudes helped us get seats, so we didn't have to stand for the whole 5+-hour bus ride. However, the bus left very late (like 2 hours late), and so it was especially crowded. this also means that we did most of the driving in the dark, as the sun sets there rather promptly around 6pm. This was more problematic than it would be in the US b/c 1, there are no streelights, and 2, only a part of the road was paved.
Another part of it was in the process of being paved, so buses weren't allowed to drive on it, and it wasn't like there was any detour options--which meant that we off-roaded, in a bus, in the pitch dark. This was terrifying. there were many times when I was convinced that hte bus was going to tip over. Also, sometimes the driver would slow down from his previous speed of 10mph to consider his options--which Tc pointed out probably meant he was trying to discern the least dangerous route.
Very fun. We finally got to her village around 11, I think, very happy to arrive. It was so dark there (no electricity), that we needed flashlights to get to Tc's house. Everyone was very happy to see her, and one dude helped us carry stuff to her house, and gave me a nickname in the process--Aminatta, which I thought was very pretty. (Tc's nickname is Wend Puiri (no spelling guarantees), which means, in the local language, Shared by God.)
Her house is made of cement, has I think 5 or 6 windows, and 2 rooms, her bedroom and the kitchen/living room. She has a very private patio surrounded by shades made out of twigs and brush, so no one can see in (unless they walk in, which they do all the time). She has a campstove, bookshelves, wicker-like chairs for which she has made cushions, a little table, a big table where she prepares food, a big bed, and lots of hooks to hang things on. Also, a PCV friend of hers who lives nearby has hooked up electricity for her from a generator, I think. So she gets electricity from 6-10 at night, which makes a huge difference, i think. Otherwise, she uses flashlights and kerosene lamps. Unfortunately, in attempting to charge my Ipod, I detached one of the wires, so her friend will have to come fix it. She has speakers, which she hooks up to a cd player, so she has music too. Her water is brought to her from a well by
a little girl, who claims to be 14 but who looks about 9, just a little older than Emily [my niece]. This little girl, Zara, brings water on her head from god-knows-where in a container that Tc and I can barely lift. She puts it in a gigantic trashcan, essentially, from which Tc takes pitchers-full and puts it through her water filter (which gets particulates out), along with a little bleach (which kills the bacteria). From this she gets all the water that she drinks, cooks with, or washes her hands and food. Her bathroom is a little walled-off area with a cement floor with a hole in it, under which is a very deep hole in the dirt. You pee in the hole, and then you "clean up" where you missed the hole with a little bleached
water--this keeps cockroaches down, apparently. In this same area is the "shower"--basically you get a bucket of water and take a bucket bath. Tc has gotten herself down to 3 little pitcherfuls (about 3 cups per) of water (washing hair included)! I had to use many more than that.
So--we arrived late at night, and pretty much went directly to sleep. The next morning we took very leisurely--I sat outside and read, while Tc swept and otherwise cleaned the house (it's so dusty there that the dust gets in every day, even when you're gone and teh doors and windows are closed). That afternoon we went to the market, which occurs every three days. It's a particularly good market, according to Tc, b/c it's arranged in a grid and has everything you could possibly want. We bought some fruits and vegetables, and then I went a little crazy buying pagnes. A
pagne is a measure, like a yard--you buy cloth in those measures, and the cloth has taken on the name of the measurement. Tc has a very beautiful pagne that she bought when she first got there, and she uses it for a towel, or to keep dust from her mouth, or to keep warm on cold buses, or whatever happens to be useful. It's now threadbare. anyway, the designs of the fabric vary incredibly, and can be quite beautiful. They can also have quite silly-seeming objects on them--like sewing machines or the picture of the dude who's been president tehre for the last 30 years,
Blaise Campaore. Anyway, I bought a bunch of them, and the next morning we took some of them to her local tailor to have made into clothes for she and I and others. That was a very hectic visit--we had, I think, 8 pieces of clothing we wanted him to make, and many different instructions. Some of them did not, in the end, turn out as well as we'd hoped, but some of them were beautiful. So now, for instance, I have a new dress, which cost about 3 dollars to buy the material and 4 dollars to have made. So
anyway, after the market we went back to her house and made dinner, and ate it. That night was New Year's--a quiet one for us. We went to the village party, which was at an outdoor bar, with lots of very drunk men and dancing (mostly just the men) and loud music. We stayed long enough to be polite and then were in bed by 11:30. The next day was rather hectic. It was my last day in Yalgo, her village, and we wanted to get everything done that we hadn't yet done--in the end, some things had to
drop by the wayside. But we did manage to get our feet henna'd, very beautifully by a local woman, go to the tailors, take an aborted walk (I lost one of my camera batteries, so we had to look for that instead), and then walk out to her school. The walk was very lovely--all deserty and filled with dried up white shrubs--according to Tc, when the hot season comes in March, all the dried up plants will blow away and it will be just red dirt everywhere. anyway, we walked out to her school, but by that time it was getting dark, so I didn't get as clear a view of it as I might have
otherwise. One of the wives of one of the other professors then put my hair in braids--using fake hair too--but alas it was not really what I had asked for and was pretty uncomfortable--so then next day when we got back to Ouaga we spent a couple of hours taking them out. But it was fun to have done, and I know that if I get it done again that I need to be more clear when I ask. The ladies doing it found my painful screeches very funny. That night we were quite exhausted, and so were sorry to miss the anniversary party going on next door for the couple that lived there--I think it was 50 years? Anyway, it sounded like a much more fun party to attend--there was drumming and singing and ululations that lasted until the morning. We were worried that it would keep us awake, but I, anyway, had no trouble.
So that was what we did--I should also mention the people I met there. Tc has lots of friends. Most of them are middle-aged men--the women tend to be less educated and too demure to have much conversation with. One of her friends was Esuf (sp?), who owns a store near her house and who is very sweet. He likes to give candy presents. His wife, Marietta, is also quite sweet, although more aloof, and has a very cute little baby named Abdourasmani (I think). At one point she let me wear Abdou on my back like the ladies there--this is fun, but also dangerous--Abdou and most other babies don't wear diapers. I guess when they pee or whatever, the mama just shifts the pagne holding the baby on to a drier spot. There is also Valentin, the telecentre man--he's very kind and seems very helpful--the sort of person who will know the best way to get something done and is very willing to help Tc out with things. I met many other people, mostly men, but since I was only there for a few days, it was very hard to keep anyone straight. Greeting people is very important--there are blessings to exchange and proper responses to the blessings, and you have to ask how the person is and then their family and then half a dozen
other things. This all happens in Moore (pron. MORay), the local language, which Tc has an impressive handle on (in addition to the French, of course). Tc and I couldn't walk down the street without _everyone_ shouting to ask how we were. After hearing so much about locals' requests for gifts, I expected it to happen a lot more than it did. It definitely happened, but not all the time, every moment, especially in comparison to the hello-how-are-yous that we received everywhere. The
hello-how-are-yous, though, were exhausting enough in themselves--it was hard to go anywhere in a hurry w/o appearing rude for not stopping to chat.
So after 2 full days there, we left the next morning on the bus back to Ouaga. This was in the daylight and so I could see that even though the bus was off-roading, it was following a path of some sort. This trip would have been uneventful, but instead it wasn't--instead, a wheel fell off and there was a terrible grinding noise and teh bus came to a stop, all tilted to one side. This was quite alarming to most of the people, but I had just assumed that it was yet-another-bus-weirdness, so I wasn't
particularly alarmed at all. Tc knew it wasn't normal, though, and so she was very scared. Anyway, the bus didn't flip over, and we all filed off, and then Tc and I caught a ride with a beer truck for the remaining 1.5 hours to Ouaga. When we got back, we took out my braids, relaxed a bit, did some gift shopping from a man named Omar who brought his wares to the hostel, and then went out to a delicious dinner of pizza and tomato/mozzarella salad. Then we went back to the hostel, packed up my
belongings, and went to the airport. I had hoped to check my bags and then join Tc and her friends at the airport bar, but alas the checking in and checking my bags took so long that I then had to board. We said goodbye and I stood in line for the next 1.5 hours to get thru security (it took that long for approx. 50 people to get thru--my passport was checked 6 times before I went on the plane). The plane left an hour late, I flew to Paris, then to Zurich, and finally back in New York. The end.
The other PCVs that I met are all really great people--we had a terrific time in Ghana and Tc's close to them. I really like being able to know who she's talking about and visualize where she is etc.
I had a great time, and I hope to go back to Ghana this summer, as I said above--as soon as my stupid research paper is done I will start researching my work options there. As this has been probably the longest email I have ever written, I think I will end it now, although I am sure I have forgotten some stuff.
love, anne
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