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.

Dress ups

My aunt Marie sent the girls a package full of wonderful surprises: flamenco dresses from Spain and a set of costume jewelry. Rachel is a finicky dresser-upper. Sometimes she loves it and sometimes she doesn't; when we opened the package she was excited but it took some convincing on my part to get her to try the dress on. 

Pinewood Derby

I've never been to a Pinewood Derby before, though I have been to several Kub Kar Rallys. They amount to basically the same thing. A bunch of excited 8, 9, and 10 year olds bring cars that their parents helped them make and send them down a little racetrack to see whose car is the fastest. 

We had some great looking cars and every excited boys. It's fun being the wolf leaders during the week but teaching the bear den at church—that way we know all the boys when we get together at pack meeting. 

Part of my assignment was to make numbers for the boys to wear around their necks so that we could remember which boy went with which car. We combined with another pack so we had about six boys that we simply didn't know by name or by face, thus the introduction of the number system. 

We made an announcement that all the boys were to come over to me to get their numbers and the boys started crowding around me. I told them that I needed them to line up so they started forming a neat little line—they were not even close to military standards with all their pushing and fidgeting but it was a nice enough line. Suddenly, though, their formation broke. 

Boys went scattering left and right. At the epicenter of the havoc stood a lone little boy, who was busy vomiting impressive amounts. First it was just a little bit—that caused the scattering—but then he just kept on going. He heaved again and started spewing out a waterfall of throw up. 

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:

Gone to Germany

My dad left for Germany this morning. He'll be doing an internship with the Department of Defense in Heidelberg as an Equal Opportunity Assistant with the Army. He did a similar thing with the Hill Air Force Base last year. He'll be in Germany until October so we spent a lot of time on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday over at my parents' house in order to get in some good "Bumpa time" before he left.

Easter Sunday

Before Rachel went to bed we made the mistake of telling her that the Easter Bunny would be coming in the morning. After we put her to bed we realized that we meant to say that the Easter Bunny would be coming while we were at church because there was no way we were doing Easter baskets before church. Rachel, unfortunately, forgets nothing so we knew we were going to be in trouble in the morning when there was no Easter basket to be found.

Luckily, Grandma set out a communal basket of candy before she went to bed and Rachel found that in the morning and was as happy as a clam even though we told her that it wasn't all for her.

Church was lovely; we struggled through sacrament meeting, but the parts that I heard were nice, and then we taught primary. We sang two Easter hymns, which was nice, but seriously...what is with people here and not enjoying seasonal hymns while they can?! Why didn't we sing Easter songs last week?! I know no one will want to sing Easter songs in May, but seriously, there are so many pretty songs that we ignore for the rest of the year so I think that we should sing them all at least once during the Easter season!

Anywho...we also sang with the choir but had neglected to arrange other people for our girls to sit with while we did so. I just plopped Miriam on Phillip's lap when I walked past his family and she wasn't too happy about that so James ended up taking her into the hallway. Rachel chose to sit with my mom's cousin Burt and his wife. For some weird reason she boycotted the Gillespies and I can't understand why because she adores both Phillip and James. Whatever.

We sang There Is A Green Hill Far Away, which was fine...but, again...not an Easter song. I realize it speaks of the atonement and that's what Easter all about but I miss Easter songs. I crave them like I crave Christmas carols. Why won't they just sing them in church?

After church I herded the girls into the backyard to colour with chalk while the Easter Bunny hid their baskets.

Some of us have issues with chalk and prefer to chew on it more than draw with it unless we're drawing on things we're not supposed to, like the screen door or Mommy's back.

Easter Egg Smackdown 2011

Things were busy on Easter so we didn't do our annual Easter Egg Smackdown until Monday. Daddy didn't participate since he was on an airplane on his way to Ghana (spoilsport!) so it was just me and the girls. We did a very small bracket, competing with only four eggs, because I wasn't sure how long the girls' attention spans would last. They actually seemed to rather enjoy it so I'm glad that we did it even though keeping traditions alive is hard work.

Rachel placed two of her eggs in the competition: Miriam and Piggy. One of them was yellow and one of them was pink but she kept switching around the names and the colours so eventually I just decided for her—Piggy was yellow and Miriam was pink. It seems backwards but I think it was because it was the last combination that she said so I took it as her final word and wrote it on the bracket.

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…