Night soil

"Hold your hair back," I called out to Rachel as I ran from the bathroom gasping for breath. It was under the guise of getting a glass of water for her that I left her to throw up on her own.

I'm such a good mom.

I've dealt with enough throw up lately even though, admittedly, we've been given a decent break. I almost can't remember those six-ish weeks my girls took turns throwing up through November and December.

Just kidding. I remember it a whole lot. Worst first trimester ever!

I've yet to throw up due to pregnancy. I've thrown up while pregnant due to stomach flu or food poisoning but I have never thrown up just because I'm pregnant. And while that sounds nice enough it doesn't mean that I don't ever feel nauseated or that I lack a gag reflex (because I sure was gagging this morning while I took care of Rachel).

I was also gagging yesterday while I cleaned out Miriam's little potty. Whether she likes it or not (and she doesn't) I've been transitioning her to the big potty for the simple reason that I can't stand to empty her little potty anymore. The only times she uses it are when she takes herself or when her daddy takes her. And maybe I'll talk to him about being devoted enough to hold Miriam on the big potty because he doesn't like emptying her potty and usually leaves it for me to do and right now it's a chore that I can hardly get through.

We've been discussing human waste a lot lately, anyway.

Recently Andrew found out what projects he'll be helping with when he goes to Ghana. They work with the church every year (last year they did some research for the Perpetual Education Fund) and also help a non-profit organization with a project (last year they did some research on market hierarchies). This year their non-profit organization is SainTerre. They'll be helping to develop marketing strategies for the Soilet, "a simple, innovative and sustainable sanitation solution built in the developing world for the developing world. The Soilet digests human waste in a...mini ecosystem."

Happy Birthday, Andrew...and a Ghana announcement!

Sheesh—I promise we'll stop celebrating Andrew soon. His birthday is officially over after today so I don't think we'll be celebrating any more. 

What is this—day 3?

As I already mentioned, my family came over for dinner last night and since we had people over and knew we wouldn't be home tonight we decided to open presents a day early. He opened Rachel's present first—she was so excited she could hardly stand it. She hand-picked his present...from the basket of Easter candy that's been sitting around since...well...Easter. She drew a card and wrote DADDY on it and wrapped up the candy and tied a nice pink ribbon around it. She was so proud.

Ghana: Everything

Since lots of my posts from Ghana were posted at random times (and some like a month late…), and because I’m using all these blog posts as my required (and graded) trip journal, here’s a list of all of them in one convenient place.

• The Journey (April 26–27)
• First impressions (April 26)
• Ghana, Day 1 (April 26)
• Client visits and the temple (April 27)
• Forward, ho!… to Ho (April 28)
• Waterfalls, nails, and monkeys (April 29)
• The Island (April 30)
• Unexpected General Conference and Tour Buses (May 1)
• Makola Market (May 2)
• Koforidua and Burro (May 3)
• The most intense market I’ve visited. Ever. (May 4)
• I looked out my window and what did I see? (May 5)
• Third world field research = chaos (May 6)
• Slave castles, jungles, and crocodiles (May 7)
• New Life Orphanage and the Ghanaian LDS Church (May 8)
• Back to Accra… with more dancing! ( May 9)
• The calm before the storm (May 10)
• Final presentations and the end (May 11)

You could also just look at the Ghana label, but you’d get them all in reverse chronological order, and that’s lame :)

Final presentations and the end (May 11)

After a fitful sleep last night (I was still completely stressed out by this presentation. I don’t know how I can convey the extent of the data that we weren’t able to collect or the lack of any tangible conclusion or recommendations for the PEF), the three people in my team that were chosen to give the actual presentation (me, Talia, and Hugh) woke up early to run through our PowerPoint a few times during breakfast.

We were scheduled to present to the PEF missionary couple, the head of the Employment Resource Center (ERC), one of the heads of PEF, and possibly Elder Sitati, a member of the Area Presidency (and member of the 1st Quorum of the Seventy) at 9 AM at the area offices in the temple complex. A few of us left the hotel early so we could get everything set up—they were supposed to provide a projector for the laptop, so we wanted to make sure everything was set up and ready to go.

The calm before the storm (May 10)

Or maybe the storm before the even bigger storm.

Today has been chaotic and extremely stressful. Because of random national holidays and miscommunication, we haven’t been able to visit the vocational schools we wanted to until today, the day before we give our presentation to the PEF missionaries and probably someone from the Area Presidency. The IDE market group has been done with their visits for a few days now and has had time to gather their thoughts and plan out what they’re doing. As of this morning we still hadn’t even finished our research.

Back to Accra… with more dancing! (May 9)

We left our paradisiacal hotel fairly early this morning and headed back to Accra for the final (stressful!) part of this Ghana trip. We’re done with all the touristy things now—all we have left is project work. All those PEF interviews that we (haven’t) done so far? Time to synthesize them into some logical report that will actually be useful for the PEF.

New Life Orphanage and the Ghanaian LDS Church (May 8)

For our second Sunday in Ghana, we headed off to church again, which was fortunately a far better experience than last week’s sleepy General Conference sauna. Because Cape Coast had done their conference rerun last week, today was fast and testimony meeting, which ended up being completely fascinating. Most of the members bore their testimonies in some mix of English, Twi, or Fante, and a few Ivorian refugees spoke in French.

I was reminded of how much I like Ghanaian English when one of the members of the bishopric praised all the mothers in the congregation (apparently it’s mother’s day in Ghana today too), saying that they “discharge [their] maternal duty with great diligence, even when it must be done with single-handedness.” I feel really bad missing out on Mother’s Day today, leaving Nancy home alone with the girls, but she’s a fantastic mother who truly discharges her duty with diligence. This evening I was able to eke out a short Mother’s Day Skype call over this hotel’s horrible internet so I could tell her. She rocks.

Slave Castles, Jungles, and Crocodiles (May 7)

We woke up fairly early this morning to get an early start on one of the busiest and most jam-packed days of the whole trip, gallivanting around the Cape Coast/Elmina area of Ghana.

Our first stop was the Cape Coast slave castle, one of the few remaining castles in West Africa. Ghana has 3ish left: Cape Coast and Elmina are both used as well restored museums, while one in Accra is used as the presidential palace (odd way to use an old slave castle…). A few partial ones are scattered along the coast.

Third world field research = chaos (May 6)

Although we’re staying in an incredible beach resort, the whole point of this trip is to do actual work and research—we’re not playing all the time. This morning we woke up early and drove an hour east along the coast to the city of Takoradi, where we did some research for both of the projects we’re working on.

We first picked up a former bishop and current head of the Takoradi stake (or region?) Employment Resource Center, Bishop Adjei, who was to be our guide and navigator for the day, along with six young single adults who would translate for us.

I looked out my window and what did I see? (May 5)

This.

The most intense market I’ve visited. Ever. (May 4)

Apart from being home to one of the largest university campuses in the country (the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, or KNUST, which is actually where we’re staying right now) and the palace of the Ashanti tribal king, Kumasi is famous for having West Africa’s largest market. And it is huge. Huger than anything I’ve ever seen.

Koforidua and Burro (May 3)

We left Accra again this morning to head north again (you can’t really go south…), this time to the city of Kumasi. On our way, though, we took a long detour on horrible roads to a smaller city named Koforidua, current home of an incredible social entrepreneur—the guy who invented Cranium, the board game.

Whit Alexander initially worked for Microsoft back in the 90s and was part of their Encarta team, which helped make digital encyclopedias really useful (helping Wikipedia out years before it even existed). He left Microsoft after a few years to start his own company, but rather than get into the dotcom craziness (which would later come crashing down), he created a board game (the ever-awesome Cranium) which eventually grew into a huge gaming franchise. He sold the Cranium corporation off a few years ago and decided to move to Ghana and start up a socially sensitive business.

Makola Market (May 2)

I woke up to history this morning—Osama bin Laden was finally killed by American special forces in Pakistan. Nancy already posted about it, and the ongoing debate on my Facebook page (which I can’t really even participate in, given the slow internet out here), pretty much sums up my feelings about it. Yeah he’s gone, but he hasn’t done much with al-Qaeda in the past few years and the branch of al-Qaeda he actually had influence on is tiny (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al-Qaeda in Iraq are largely unaffiliated, for example). He was evil, yes, but over the past decade our propaganda has elevated him to the status of a satanic demigod; the pure embodiment of evil. The endless war on terrorism will continue to be endless—there just won’t be a scary, universally recognized name attached to it. Oh well. And all the chanting of “USA! USA!”; kind of embarrassing. Again, oh well.

Unexpected General Conference and Tour Buses (May 1)

Rather than wake up super early in time for 9 AM church, we decided to sleep in (ahhh…) and attend at 11 AM at the stake center at the temple compound. Our original plan was to go to all three hours of church and then meet with any members who either had a vocational or technical (VOTEC) degree or were interested in getting a PEF loan to complete their tertiary education. We were going to ask the bishop to make an announcement during sacrament meeting so we could have lots of people to interview.

We got to church 20 minutes early so we could arrange all the details with the bishop, but to our surprise, the ward was already all gathered in the chapel. They were halfway through the Saturday afternoon session of the most recent General Conference, which they apparently missed when it was broadcast a month ago. This presented a big problem for our PEF/VOTEC research—they weren’t going to have sacrament meeting or normal church, and we didn’t even know if the bishop or any other leader was there to help us organize everything. Eek.

The Island (April 30)

Although I’ve been in the country for 5 days now, half of our group has been here for a lot longer. Six of the people in the study abroad came a few days early to stay with some village families in Pediatorkorpe, the final island before the Volta river meets the ocean (and henceforth known as the Island). Ben Markham, a BYU graduate and founder of Empower Playgrounds—the company that uses merry-go-rounds and swing sets to generate electricity for villages—has close connections to the Island, which has one of the early playgrounds. For the past couple years BYU students with the MPA trip have been going early to get a taste of rural Ghanaian life.

Waterfalls, nails, and monkeys (April 29)

Ho (the villagish city where we’re staying) is the capital of the Volta region—the incredibly green and luscious area around the Volta river and lake near Ghana’s eastern border with Togo. In the mountains that form the border between the two countries is Wli, West Africa’s highest waterfall.

There’s a little village at the trailhead, full of freely roaming goats, chickens, and even a huge ostrich. I picked up some leaves and attempted to be brave and feed it, but it started snapping, so I totally panicked and dropped them all on the ground. Silly me. :) Some kid came up to rescue the scared American, although the ostrich started biting him too. He didn’t mind being mildly attacked by a gigantic bird, though, oddly enough.

Forward, ho!… to Ho (April 28)

Just as I was kind of getting oriented in Accra, we had to leave for a fun weekend of tourist stuff today. We spent the morning taking care of lots of the mess of the bus theft. We left the hotel and took the people who lost their passports to the US embassy so they could start the replacement process.

While we waited for them we went and visited the offices of Acumen Fund. The purpose of our trip is actually three-pronged: (1) see cool touristy things, (2) work on our projects, and (3) visit nonprofits and NGOs to get a taste of real development work. (Did I really just do a list with parenthetical numbers? This business writing stuff is getting to me… grumble… :) )

Client visits and the temple (April 27)

Our plan for today was far less touristy than yesterday, followed the schedule far more precisely, and involved far fewer incidents with the police or thieves (none). Phew.

We started off by driving one whole block to the LDS church temple compound, which has a temple (obviously), a temple hostel, a stake center, and the area authority offices.

Ghana, Day 1

Our original itinerary for our first day in Ghana had us taking a grand tour of the main sites of the Accra. True to third-world form, nothing went as planned today. Nothing.

The four hour delay at JFK put us behind our tour schedule before we landed. After clearing customs, reporting someone’s missing suitcase, and loading up the little 20ish passenger tour bus, we drove to the hotel to meet the other half our group. There are 17 people on this trip: 2 professors (one with his wife and youngest daughter), 1 TA, and 12 MPA students. Six people flew out a week early to spend some time in a tiny island village named Big Ada—location of one of the first Empower Playgrounds. Beyond the terrifying food (fish soup and oysters, complete with heads and eyes and other nastiness… every single day), they had a blast and regaled us with tales of horrifying seafood as we had a brief orientation at the hotel.

After checking into our rooms at the hotel we headed out to lunch at some super local restaurant. They had fish heads. I didn’t eat one. I ate this instead:

First impressions

Getting off the plane in Accra was awesome. I walked from the cold recycled plane air into a wall of solid humid heat, which instantly brought back memories of Egypt—it feels just like June or July in Cairo. I had forgotten about the constant, overbearing, debilitating African heat. I keep wanting to chicken out and hide in air conditioning, amazed that anyone can even survive in this heat, but then I remember that I survived (and loved) this crazy hot weather. We walked all over the place in the Egyptian heat. We went mosqueing in Islamic Cairo in July. We even went to the Pyramids at noon in August (stupid, yes).

Now that I’ve been here for a while (two whole days!) I think I’m reacclimatized and have fully accepted that my clothes will dripping wet for the next two weeks. I’m loving the heat again and have missed it horribly. Come on future State Department or USAID hiring staff—send us somewhere hot and exotic!

The heat hasn’t been the only thing to make me homesick for the Middle East. So much of Ghana is like Egypt. The hordes of taxi drivers outside the airport (although not nearly as many as their Cairene counterparts). Empty plots of land with “This property is owned” or “This land is not for sale” spray painted on the wall (هذا الارض ليس للبيع). Taxis and buses overloaded with local decor or religious stuff.

Middle Eastern vehicles are plastered with Islamic sayings (الحمد لله, الله اكبر, Praise the Prophet, etc.); Ghanaian vehicles rival their Islamic counterparts with phrases like “Victorious Triumphant Jesus,” “O Lord Deliver Me,” “Holy Ghost Fire,” “God is good,” and other evangelical Christian phrases. Members of the Church even get into it—some members’ cars have “Priesthood” or “Book of Mormon” decalled on the back windshield. Like the Middle East, even corner stores get into it. We drove by the “Satan is vanquished” cell phone store today. Awesome.

The interior of our little tour bus is even identical to the big AUC commuting buses, which is kind of uncanny.

Unlike the Middle East, there is almost no visible police or military presence. No police with ancient AK-47s picking their noses while guarding speed bumps. There is also far less visible corruption. I have been asked for tips, but it’s nothing at all like the stupid Middle Eastern baksheesh. I’m sure there are required tips for getting official government documents, but I doubt its as extensive (and painful) as the Mugamma.

On the other hand, the poverty in Ghana is overwhelmingly worse than Egypt. It actually seems to break my theory my statistical research from last semester, where we posited that good governance drives economic growth. In our measurement of governance (which ranged from -12 to 12; -12 meaning horrible governance and 12 meaning fantastic governance), Egypt scored stinking -2.5 while Ghana almost scored a 1. Although it’s better governed, Ghana’s economy performs horribly compared to Egypt—its 25 million citizens are by far poorer and less healthy than the 80 million Egyptians up north.

And you can definitely tell. The outskirts (and the inskirts(?) too) of Accra are filled with village-like slums with open sewers, tons of livestock, and unpaved orange dirt roads. The rooftops aren’t covered with satellite dishes—just antennae. It’s like if every tiny village in Upper Egypt were transplanted into downtown Cairo and were 10 times poorer and less developed.

The poverty here is incredible.

Accra also feels less safe than Cairo, Alexandria, or Amman. Every relatively well-to-do compound has walls covered in razor wire and broken glass. Our bus got broken into in broad daylight. There seems to be more of a visible problem with drug and alcohol abuse (which I’m sure goes on in the Middle East, but is far more muted since it’s haram and everything…).

I’ve heard from a few people that Accra is their least favorite part of the country, so I’m excited to see some more of Ghana. It’s a fascinating place and I’m totally jealous of all the diplomatic and development expats here. Someday…