Gone To Ghana

Highlights of a school day in Upper East Region, Ghana Up late, 6:30 A.M. By now all elementary students are ambling to school. I too traverse the hill upon which we live, carrying my trombone and school bag. I drop by the seamstress who has my pants to be repaired. The thread is bare in one spot. I wear them to school. As I enter the school grounds, I greet one boy, Ferdinand, an atypical name for here. He is limping, and I ask why. He injured his foot while playing football (soccer). The wound is covered with what appears to be mud. He tell me that is a concoction an old lady in the village prepared to help healing. It is excrement from a certain worm, combined with the crushed leaves of a certain local tree, and mud. People are who do not have health cards tend to try the old herbal, medicine approach. Teaching English to the Vocational Education students goes well. We are reading Ancestral Sacrifice, a required reading for the final federal examination. We get to the chapter where a traditional girl gets her ‘first blood’, the beginning of womanhood. She goes through various rituals as is the custom of the era and culture, probably 1950’s. This includes eating an egg whole. If done successfully her womb will be left ready for reproduction, and ready for husband considerations. Here in Kongo, I have heard the terminology, “she carries the seed’ which means she is able to give birth. In this same class I alot some time to teach a counter melody I composed for Stephen Foster’s “Oh Susannah”. It is in Nab’t. Hey! I only get to teach choir once a week, so one learns to do what you can to make things happen. The class has fun learning it, even if though some are not in choir. Those in choir will demonstrate what they have learned to the other choir members this afternoon. I moto to Dasabligo on a borrowed moto to teach Form 1 and Form 2 Junior High with Atarah Martin. I push the creative envelope in this scenario. Demonstrating how one can take one melody known by many and put new words to that melody, the class successfully composes a piece taking the same title as Gado’s current hit, “Kongo Tongo Bongo”. The melody used is “Are you Sleeping?”. After initial silence, and additional prompting they grab onto the idea and we now have another song to sing! I am genuinely impressed. As school day ends Martin gets his traditional This evening the Ghana version of a high school dance takes place. There is:  musical chairs ( you would never see USA kids doing this in high school!)  singing contest  dancing contest  eating contest  HIV/AIDS drama presentation  a vignette from the play “The Gods are not to Blame”( they actually listened!!)  more dancing. Yeah, not too similar to our high school dance. It lacked sexual posturing, male bravado, teenage ‘attitude’. These fifteen to 21 year olds had chaotic fun, using a very buzzy rented P.A. System and dancing on the concrete floor of one classroom and out on the covered walkway. Most were very good dancers! The foot-wounded Ferdinand does well in spite of it all. He has a girlfriend to impress. – David Stone Highlights of a school day in Upper East Region, Ghana Up late, 6:30 A.M. By now all elementary students are ambling to school. I too traverse the hill upon which we live, carrying my trombone and school bag. I drop by the seamstress who has my pants to be repaired. The thread is bare in one spot. I wear them to school. As I enter the school grounds, I greet one boy, Ferdinand, an atypical name for here. He is limping, and I ask why. He injured his foot while playing football (soccer). The wound is covered with what appears to be mud. He tell me that is a concoction an old lady in the village prepared to help healing. It is excrement from a certain worm, combined with the crushed leaves of a certain local tree, and mud. People are who do not have health cards tend to try the old herbal, medicine approach. Teaching English to the Vocational Education students goes well. We are reading Ancestral Sacrifice, a required reading for the final federal examination. We get to the chapter where a traditional girl gets her ‘first blood’, the beginning of womanhood. She goes through various rituals as is the custom of the era and culture, probably 1950’s. This includes eating an egg whole. If done successfully her womb will be left ready for reproduction, and ready for husband considerations. Here in Kongo, I have heard the terminology, “she carries the seed’ which means she is able to give birth. In this same class I alot some time to teach a counter melody I composed for Stephen Foster’s “Oh Susannah”. It is in Nab’t. Hey! I only get to teach choir once a week, so one learns to do what you can to make things happen. The class has fun learning it, even if though some are not in choir. Those in choir will demonstrate what they have learned to the other choir members this afternoon. I moto to Dasabligo on a borrowed moto to teach Form 1 and Form 2 Junior High with Atarah Martin. I push the creative envelope in this scenario. Demonstrating how one can take one melody known by many and put new words to that melody, the class successfully composes a piece taking the same title as Gado’s current hit, “Kongo Tongo Bongo”. The melody used is “Are you Sleeping?”. After initial silence, and additional prompting they grab onto the idea and we now have another song to sing! I am genuinely impressed. As school day ends Martin gets his traditional This evening the Ghana version of a high school dance takes place. There is:  musical chairs ( you would never see USA kids doing this in high school!)  singing contest  dancing contest  eating contest  HIV/AIDS drama presentation  a vignette from the play “The Gods are not to Blame”( they actually listened!!)  more dancing. Yeah, not too similar to our high school dance. It lacked sexual posturing, male bravado, teenage ‘attitude’. These fifteen to 21 year olds had chaotic fun, using a very buzzy rented P.A. System and dancing on the concrete floor of one classroom and out on the covered walkway. Most were very good dancers! The foot-wounded Ferdinand does well in spite of it all. He has a girlfriend to impress. – David Stone

Buying Dried Herring in the Bolga Market

In addition to a cold shower…..

There are small things that one grows to appreciate in equatorial Africa  -  the happy coincidence of shade and a breeze at 2:00 in the afternoon, three meals a day under clear, blue skies on the your patio, cooling off as you splash dirty clothes in the wash-bucket, the price of tomatoes (20 cents for 2 dozen), the omnipresent, distant thunk-thunk-thunk of mortar and pestle as yam and cassava are pounded into fufu for dinner, the strength and willowy grace of women walking from well to home with a full basin of water settled atop the head, perpetually contented babies sleeping while tied on mother’s back, the absorption of three toddlers playing together with a a single spoon and bowl.

Thanks to a good harvest this fall, families have enough food to keep the hunger pangs at bay for a while.  The result is a sense of contentment in the knowledge that this should not be a particularly difficult dry season, but a year where most families will have enough food for two meals per day in the hottest and dryest months of April-July.  Market days are bustling with women in the market selling surplus beans and grains to raise money for children’s school fees/uniforms. In  this area of subsistence farming, many children must wait to start school until some of the harvest is sold. In addition, if at all possible, money is often set aside for the purchase of Ghanaian health insurance cards. Health insurance for one year costs $20/family; a challenge when average annual income is $400/year.

Chiropractor needed!

Throw your soggy down jackets and snow skis away!  Escape the winter blahs!  Busy (weary) volunteer chiropractor providing free treatment in the sunny, hot, dry, and impoverished Upper East Region of northern Ghana urgently needs unpaid associate to share the patient load.  Good potential for growth, with more than twenty new patients weekly.  All patients afflicted with pain of many years duration in most joints of the body, guaranteed to keep you busy for the foreseeable future.  No other chiropractors within 400 miles.  Bring mosquito net, sunscreen, consider taking lessons in Ghanaian tribal languages  (especially Fra Fra), and get motorcyle license before departure.  Inexpensive and wholesome housing available at the nearby Catholic Mission.  Bustling village market days, the Sunday church service, and terrific funerals all provide local color and entertainment.

Horse, Colts and other ‘tings’

A rare sight here … a horse. In fact, in the four weeks here, I have seen two. This rather undernourished horse is owned by the esteemed chief of Yakote, a village not far from Kongo where we are settled.  A horse is just about as rare as seeing a camel, which is a seasonal event when the wandering nomads from Berkina Faso go south for a visit in March.

Keeping on the subject of horses …. I introduced a book to the Senior High students about a pioneer family moving west in the 1840’s to seek better farmland (my subliminal intention was to work to destroy the myth of Americans all being rich and having the easy life, without really saying it).  As we read aloud this story,  I was assessing the student’s ability to read, comprehend and pronounce. We came upon the word ‘colt’. I said I would dance if anyone knew what a colt was. Well, my dancing shoes remain in the box. Nearly everyone knew of the white horse of Yakote, but no one knew of a baby horse being a colt, and why should they? The vocabulary we develop is determined by our environment , esp. when one has no books to read. Yes, good books are hard to find here. Lisa found one in Bolga, so things have improved from last time. Kids need good , easy entertaining books. I will leave it at that.

“That”, the last word in the above paragraph. The ‘th’ sound is probably the most difficult sound to teach a Ghanaian student. It is fun for all to try it out without saying ‘ting’ for ‘thing’ and ‘dat’ for ‘that’.

In choir class – hey! 60 strong! – we are singing what I naively thought would be an easy song for non-English speaking audience to appreciate. It is “Thank You Very Much” from the musical “Scrooge”. When we got to the phrase “That’s the nicest thing that anyone’s’ever done for me!” , I realized I was was putting my students through a diction nightmare. But, these students know hardship, it is just part of life. We will approach it with humor and get as close as we can. They will get it. In fact we will record our show ready to show the whole world should they choose to listen.

There! How’s that? Moving from horse talk to things that start with ‘th’. Might be the heat.

- David Stone

 Everyone seems to love the authentic Bolga baskets and we are right here at the source.  Considering the importance of every dollar contributed for projects here, it seems reasonable to offer our friends the opportunity to pre-order baskets for $25 each, with profits going toward the food projects* we oversee.  By asking people to pre-order, we have the advantage of better knowing our full financial abilities for local food purchases on this trip.  Because the baskets are lightweight, we can easily bring baskets back to the US when we return in January 2010.

If you want a basket:

Email revellstone@yahoo.com to let us know the number of baskets, shape, color scheme, and handles. 

We will deliver baskets and collect money when we get home in January 2010. 

                   Shape - 3 choices 

1. large round

2. large oblong

3. small round

                 Color scheme-1. Green/orange

2. Green/blue

3. Purple/ orange

4. Rose/blue

5. Natural (no dyes, straw color)

6. green/yellow

                Handles

1. Dark red leather (this is traditional)

2. Natural straw

*The majority of our financial resources are directed toward two food projects for under-nourished children: 

 Project #1. School lunch at selected schools for the early primary grades during the lean season.  School lunch plans for Guaware school (see prior entry) are underway. 

 Project #2. Food for a nutrition center providing daily feeding, as well as nutrition education, for children identified at the clinic as malnourished.  Mothers bring the children daily, prepare the food, and eat with the children for breakfast and lunch.

(In addition, we have raised funds for an ongoing farmer project involving guinea fowls and a limited number of college scholarship/loans.  These projects are going well.)