DESPATCH #5

My Year of Abundant Wealth (Portrait) & 5 Other Short Stories.

(1)

Meet Angela*. She’s a giggly, bubbly schoolgirl, who requested I took her photo. A lot of the girls here love posing for photographs - & of course as soon as the camera turns on them, it’s hand on hip, & out comes the pout. Tyra would be so proud, there’s an excellent example of smizing going on here**.

* Probably not her real name. A lot of people play around with a couple of names: an African name, & then another (usually Western) name. One of the kids who helps out at The White House bar & restaurant calls himself Gilbert. I love the playfulness of it!

** Reference to America’s Next Top Model lingo: smiling with the eyes.

(2)

The main street at dusk.

A little different to my usual view of Balham High Street. Ho is situated between 2 mountains; Adaklu to the South is regularly hiked by tourists, something I plan to do my final weekend here.

(3) Hillview.

A popular chop bar, located at the end of the main street towards the hills in the North. One thing you notice here is that there is little to none outside lighting. You have the street lights lining the streets, but the restaurants will usually be lit up by the light from the bar or kitchen. This makes it somewhat difficult to see what you’re eating, especially when you’re eating sans cutlery! I had my second serving of banku here, reckoning I should give it another try after my first attempt. It came served with a spicy tomato & okra stew, plus a sizeable portion of tilapia fish. Already on the table were a number of bowls, plastic carafes filled with water, & squeezy soap. After the hand washing, you get stuck in: unwrap the banku & twist off a portion, dunk in the stew, & pull apart the fish. It’s a messy job, but totally worth it! The fish flakes off the bones so easily that the concept of a fish knife would clearly be redundant here.

Again, another couple of kids keen to have their photo taken, getting a little star-struck in the light of the flash!

 (4)

The Wli (Agumatsa) falls.

Reportedly the highest in West Africa. Situated within the village of Wli Agorviefe, & on the border with Togo, the trek to the falls took us through a rainforest abundant with fruits, wildlife, & lots of ants!

Coffee beans, & cocoa:

Mind the gap! (please excuse the mosquito bitten feet: the reason I should have packed 2 cans of Deet!)

The main attraction:

Numerous bats hang off the cliffs by the falls. The Agumatsa Wildlife Sanctuary, in which the falls lie, was initially set up to help protect the bats. Their high-pitched shrieking greets you alongside the crash of the water into the pool below.

Our guide informed us that this particular tree is the type that gets transformed into the beautiful & sturdy wooden furniture crafted by the locals.

(5)

Cuteness overload, at the Tafu Atome Monkey Sanctuary.

With a bag of bananas in hand, the monkey-whisperer kid led us out into the trees & began making monkey calls, a tight, pursed-lip sound. Shadows in the trees soon shifted shape to become mona monkeys, who reside exclusively in this part of Ghana. Climbing & swinging delicately between the leaves & down the branches, the monkeys came out for their fair share of breakfast. We took turns holding the banana at arms length; I didn’t hold mine too strongly, so it was gone pretty quickly! Such expressive little faces, you can’t fail to fall in love with these friendly creatures.

(6)

Miscellany. 

Fast food, Ghana style. Ghana time = when it’s ready, & certainly not before. After 2 weeks of pretty heavy food - rice, fried plantain, roasted yams, meat & fish, stews & sauces – a guilty indulgence at local ‘fast food’ hangout KCS. After a 40 minute-expected wait, I wolfed the pizza down, indigestion not once crossing my mind. It was super delicious, much nicer than Domino’s, & I’m pretty sure this was independent of any external circumstances!

{all photos by me}

DESPATCH #4

On Budgets, Gizzards, & Witchcraft.

Today was a slow-ish day at work. One of the obstacles, which both the director & board are keen to resolve, is that only one computer has the Quickbooks software. As well as being high-risk (subject to computer virus, or Millicent being away for example), it also poses practical problems. Over the next few days we will be uploading the budgets (by class & project) into the system, & then on Saturday I will be meeting with the Finance sub-committee to talk them through how to extract reports themselves. Before I leave, I’ll have set up different user profiles for the software, so as well as having access via different computers, both the board & the director will have viewing rights to reports without going through Millicent first. This is the plan anyway..

I caught up with Zoe this evening - of Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen - who I met a week or so before coming to Ghana, sampling a taste of Ghanaian cuisine over at her pop-up restaurant at the Skyroom in London. Headed to the White House, a bar/restaurant not far from my hotel, we tried some of Mary’s gizzards & the odd beer. Can’t say I’m too fond of the meat (extremely chewy!), but the flavour embedded within it made it worthwhile: gingery, fiery & peppery. Chatting to a gentleman who works in Ghana during the week (managing Airtel, one of the popular telecoms networks here), we gained pointers on some of the top bars & popular hang-outs in Ho (to be honest, the “nightlife” seems fairly subtle, to say the least. I think a lot of people eat at home, & not too many drink.. Even this guy swore he would never go over a 4-bottles-of-beer limit; and the White House, promised as a lively hotspot by Brandt, was populated by I think only 3 other people..)

Bebeh, the local businessman, told us that one reason why the people of Ho were so friendly was the superstition of witchcraft that hung over the region. Steal someone’s girlfriend? Swipe a stranger’s bag? Then you’d better beware of your stomach swelling & the evil spirit taking hold. Witchcraft, as he saw it, was as real & omniscient as truth or religion. One time, he saw someone drop a coconut, & right before his eyes grew a tree, as quickly as you could imagine. Of course, from a Western-scientific point of view, we know this is impossible, but it almost brings to mind the old adage, if the tree falls in the forest & no-one is around to hear it fall, did it ever really make a sound? If one person hears it fall & tells another, does it then enter into history? Things become true if we need or believe them to be: or myth becomes truth, existing only through social discourse & semantics, rather than in the individual psyche. On questioning, Bebeh went on to say that no, he hadn’t actually seen the tree grow, but someone he knew did.

And to him? That’s as good as being a witness.

DESPATCH #1

Heathrow -> Istanbul -> Accra -> Ho

 

The flights were fine. I couldn’t get my bag wrapped in the end as it was too early in the morning (commonly advised when travelling to Africa or Asia, in case someone tries to slash your bag/smuggle something inside), but thankfully this wasn’t a problem. The three and half odd hour transfer in Istanbul went super quickly, largely due to a minor panic when I logged onto my emails to discover that the Guardian hadn’t received my acceptance email! One person’s hotmail is another person’s junkmail. (Thanks to Craig and to Dad for forwarding on my reply!) The food onboard Turkish Air was pretty good: salty cheese filo pastries, beef kebabs, & the somewhat clichéd but not unwelcome cube of Turkish Delight...

I packed L'Occitaine Lavender soap from home :)

air con, yay!

my iphone mosquito app :)

Light office-wear: blouse & loose trousers:

Now I’m all settled into my little annex room on the church estate. Voice Ghana is stumbling distance away, so fortunately my morning commute isn’t too troublesome in this tropical climate. Breakfasts are all inclusive; there’s a menu, but it’s possibly more for interest only, as you get what you’re given in the mornings: instant tea or coffee (ah, THANK GOD for coffee! I didn’t have time to get any the first day!), a rolled-up egg omlette, & 2 bread buns. The bread here is doughy and sweet & heavy, & they serve it with jam, just in case it isn’t sweet enough.

There’s been a somewhat culture realignment that I’ve experienced, but I think I channeled it into 2 things that bothered me most (and less so now): the foreign exchange rate is a lot better than I thought: for some reason, I just assumed the rate in the Brandt guide (edition mid-2012) would be about the same as it is now. The Ghanaian Cedi however is fairly tumultuous. Just a few years ago it was redenominated by a factor of 10,000, and the currency is prohibited from leaving or entering the country. What I had assumed, as per Brandt, was 2GHC to the pound; instead, as per google today, it’s 3GHC J

The other thing was the internet. I’m pretty much always, or not far from being, within an online radar (Instagram! Twitter! Facebook! Hotmail! Blogreader!), & found it pretty hard not having internet in my room. I knew I’d be like this, & it’s just something to get used to having a hiatus from! I’m typing & editing pictures when I get the chance, & then I’ll upload them to the interwebs/dropbox during a break in the work day.

Everyone’s friendly, but mostly they stare a lot! Next to our office, an elderly man in crutches sits in a hut & makes chalk. He asked for my email address & was keen to know that we could be friends. This is completely au fait as per Brandt: the authors carried out a few amateur experiments, giving out their true email & postal addresses when asked: some got many replies, others concluded that it was just a promise of friendship, not a contract to make good (although apparently with the latter, the author had particularly illegible handwriting, which may of course have played its part!)

Millicent walked me to the bank today. On our return, she remarked that I walked very fast. I thought I was trying my best to keep her pace! I explained that in London, we even have codes for overtaking someone on the stairs; Londoners are so busy & harried & stressed so much of the time! It’s not until you take yourself out of the equation that you realize you’re one of the busy & harried & stressed rat-racers yourself: it’s good to have a break!

I’ve read through the past 3 years audited accounts, the policy & procedures documents, & have started to look at Quickbooks. The next few days will be where we really start to look at how Voice Ghana has been using Quickbooks, & whether we can improve processes/confidence in the system.

Only 1 mosquito bite so far: I’m taking plenty of precautions: malarone tablets, together with Deet spray applied morning & night, a blanket activated by human movement that I wrap around my pillowcase, & an app that I use when my iphone is plugged in to ward away the flies. I haven’t hung up the mosquito net over my bed yet as it seemed a bit too bothersome, & I think it might get a bit tangled if I hang it on the ceiling fan. Things may change of course. I also put in earplugs when I sleep; they certainly dull the background noise, but I still wake up at the cock’s crow – literally – at 3.30am...

Haven't really taken my camera out yet, but hope to soon...

{all photos by me} 

T MINUS 12 DAYS

I'm currently sitting in a brightly lit kitchen, the FT folded beneath my netbook, listening to the dreary rain dance along the window ledge. In thirteen days time, I'll have touched base in Ho, the town & capital of the Ho Municipal District, & in the Volta region of Ghana, West Africa... where it's only 1 hour behind Greenwich Mean Time, but 20 degrees hotter...

I'll be working with Voice, in coordination with AfID. Follow what I get up to here!

I'd love to know of any tips/travel advice/geeky touristy things to do - leave a comment or pop me an email :)

(you can also see more over on my other blog, where I'll be sharing foodie-related snaps & my sartorial fashion choices for coping with the heat in a tropical climate!)