Perspectives

I’ve now been living with my family in Tolon for two weeks now. Although I am a long way away from being able to identify most of the people in my compound by name, I have started to recognize and know many of them by their faces. My host father’s first wife, Adisa, lives in the compound and she has four children. The youngest is a three year old girl named Sala. Sala is almost as round as she is happy. The next oldest is a nine year old boy named Baba. I don’t know Baba very well; he spends most of his time with other young boys. Arysha is thirteen and she is the second oldest. The oldest is Mineara who's seventeen, but who I don't interact with much.


Just some of my compound's residents. Adisa is in black, behind the pot. Arysha is in yellow, behind her. Sala is in the redish dress in the front row.

Arysha and I are still good friends. People have started saying I will take her back to Canada with me. While I hope this is purely humour, I have tried hard to stress that it is not an option. Besides, once most Ghanaians hear how cold it gets in Canada they seem to loose interest. I will consider stressing this point further in the future.

The other day I was asking Arysha questions and discovered that she’s never been further than the neighbouring town of Nyankpala (about 10 kilometers). This was pretty mind blowing for me. Although I hadn’t really put a lot of thought into it, I had assumed almost everyone in Tolon had been to at least Tamale (a 45 minute bus ride costing fifty cents). In effect, this means that she’s never seen a traffic light, a gas station, a computer (probably not anyway) or a restaurant. If her father didn’t send her to Nyankpala for school she would have never seen a paved road. Interestingly, she’s had plenty of experience with television, coca cola and cell phones. The wildest part is that her family is relatively well off, her town is a district capital and her country is one of the most developed on the continent. I can’t even imagine what the world must look like to a young person living in a remote village in a country not so developed as Ghana.


Arysha has never been more than 10km from her home in Tolon.

This new understanding has helped explain a number of things. Arysha refers to Canada as “my village”. To her everyone lives in a village because this is all she has ever known. I once tried to explain where Canada is and how I flew to Ghana, but she has absolutely no context. The entire concept of large distances is foreign. I don’t think she even understands the idea of an ocean. When I showed her some of my pictures from home I was confused by her lack of interest. She asked a few questions, at first she thought the Westminster Church in Winnipeg was my house, but other than that she flipped through them quickly without paying much attention. Even snow didn’t spark her interest. My new theory is that she simply can’t understand the content. Perhaps she doesn’t even know where to start asking questions.

One of my goals in coming to Ghana was to get to know some of the many people in this world who are working to lift themselves out of poverty but who face overwhelming obstacles. In EWB we use the name Dorothy to symbolize these individuals and they become the ultimate motivation for the work that we do in Canada and overseas. Recently I’ve been thinking about whether I’ve found a Dorothy in Ghana. While Arysha isn’t particularly poor, her future rests heavily with that of her nation. In many ways she is a product of successful development: she’s well fed, she’s happy, she goes to a good school and she even has health insurance. Her ambition is to become a nurse and there’s a pretty real chance she may realize this goal. At the same time it's far from a sure thing and there are many obstacles to overcome. There are also many many young people with futures that are far less bright. In short, I find her story motivating because it's a reminder of what is possible but also a reminder of how far there still is to go.


Arysha is a reminder of what is possible.

On a slightly lighter note, I’ve been working on my Dagbani. Just about everyone I meet is keen to teach me (which is somewhat overwhelming) and I’ve managed to obtain some Dagbani children’s grammar books. Although I’ve never put any serious effort into learning another language before (French clearly doesn’t count), I’ve noticed some interesting things about language in my area of Ghana.

People say “sweet” when something tastes good. This caused some confusion at first since people would offer me food and ask “is it sweet?”, to which I would cautiously reply, “not really, is it supposed to be?”.

There are two methods of preparing food: “cooking” and “frying”. Cooking essentially means boiling.

Dagbani, as do most African languages, has a specific word for white person: “seminga”. Apparently the first piece of English children learn is “hello seminga”, which they enjoy chanting at me as I walk by. Maybe children just aren’t my thing, but I find this particularly annoying. My annoyance sparked some further investigation. Apparently “seminga” can be used to describe basically anyone who isn’t black (Chinese, Middle Eastern, etc.). Although Indian people seem to fall into a bit of a gray zone (or should I say brown haha), I don’t think most would hesitate to use the term. To me this further emphasizes people’s perspective on the world: there are African people and then there are other people.

There is no differentiation between genders in Dagbani pronouns (there is no “he” or “she”). As a result, I’ve noticed my host sister Arysha (who is still learning English) will often use the two English terms interchangeably. This doesn’t seem to bother anyone else, but tends to confuse me greatly when she’s talking about a man and using “she”. It didn’t help that at first I couldn’t differentiate between younger male and female children.

Time is another interesting subject. As anyone who’s traveled knows, not all parts of the world are quiet as time oriented as Canada. Simply put, people aren’t as concerned about being late. When talking to farmers, questions such as “how much time do you spend doing this?” are fairly ineffective. People simply work while it’s light out and there’s work to be done. Also, the concept of “an hour’s walk” was fairly incompressible to Arysha, although it may have been more of a language barrier than anything.

I expected to be learning another language, what I did not expect was to be re-learning the language I already knew. I will continue to work on my Ghanaian English as well as my Dagbani. My goal is to be able to carry on a somewhat complex conversation in Dagbani before I return to Canada in August.

I realize I haven't written much about my work. I've actually been pretty busy visiting villages and talking to farmers about rice production. I hope to prepare an entire blog post on this for next week, but thought I'd start by sharing a few interesting pictures from my village adventures:


Notice anything unusual about the shirt this woman is wearing? Ever wonder where all the used clothing that no one buys goes? Now you know.

Used clothing is sold to the developing world by the tonne. While your gut reaction might be positive (surely poor people need clothing), this practice is quite hurtful to the domestic textile industry. At the same time, I'm not sure what the alternative is, should we just pour all of our used clothing into Canadian landfills? Just like the electronics industry, I feel like this is another example of the western world dumping its waste in developing countries.


Although more expensive construction utilizes concrete blocks, the majority of buildings are still constructed from mud bricks.


I believe this man is constructing part of a grass roof. Grass roofs are still very common, although there are some who can afford metal roofs.


Gineau Fowl (kind of like chickens) are often transported in baskets weaved from what I believe are sorghum stocks.


Shea nuts. Many people have probably heard of the Body Shop and their use of shea butter in skin products. The butter is made by boiling and drying the stone (shown above), cracking it open and grinding the seeds inside. The green part is also quite tasty.