Trip to Ghana

On Tuesday, July 2, I crossed the border from Togo into Ghana. Dr. de Oliveira’s driver drove me to the border and helped me with my bags. I had to fill some papers to get out of Togo and fill some more papers to get into Ghana. Once in the Ghana side, about five minutes later, Peter Kyeremeh, one of the ADRA drivers showed up and picked up my things. I spent the rest of my time in Ghana being driven about by Peter, who speaks English but is rather quiet. He also helped me a lot carrying the video equipment and helping as translator. Trying to make conversation that first day, I asked him about his family. Peter has been married for 6 years and has identical twins.
“What did you name them?” I asked him.
“They both have the same name,” he told me, totally serious. “Their name is Samuel Atta Kyeremeh Jr. and Sr.”
“So one of them is Jr. and the other one is Sr.?”
“Yes, but people call them 1st and 2nd Samuel,” and a broad smile filled his faced and made his eyes shine.
After visiting the ADRA office in Accra and meeting George Baiden, the country director, I was taken to a Guest House very close to the Adventist compound.
The following day, after waiting for quite a while for the vehicle to come back from the shop, we left for Techiman, about 450 km NW of Accra. It reminded me of the trip I made to the Philippines several years ago. We were supposed to leave Manila at 8 AM. The vehicle wasn’t ready until 2 PM and it broke again before we were totally out of the city. It was taken to another shop and we left after 5 PM. This time it wasn’t so bad but we didn’t leave until 1:00 PM.
The surroundings of Accra are very similar to the area I visited in Togo: Savannah with a few trees here and there. In contrast with Lomé, the city is more alive and there’s a lot of construction going on. Some of the houses being built are rather large even for American standards and there’s lots of them. They’re all built with cement block and have tile roofs, which makes them look very Mediterranean.
A few miles outside of Accra we came upon a town that looked very much like it had been built by the British. People everywhere on the street were selling or buying something.
About twenty miles out of Accra I found the Africa I had expected: tall trees and abundant vegetation. I expected an elephant at every turn of the road. It never materialized. What came to greet us, instead, were small groups of houses that looked like they had just sprung from the ground for no other reason than there was a paved road to cling to.
From makeshift stalls people were selling bananas, plantains, oranges, corn, cassava, yams and sugar cane. Every so often groups of boys held snails or crabs hanging from a rope or a string. Grass Cutters were as popular and two groups of men had a very small gazelle, freshly killed, displayed as the only item they had to offer. The only thing that revolted me was a group of boys selling roasted rats.
I made Peter stop several times to take pictures. The scenery was breath taking. For the first time I felt like I was in Africa. South Africa was very much like Maryland and Somalia was too sandy and dry. This was the Africa of Tarzan, with banana and mango trees everywhere. I wished I could videotape everything to show back at home. The picture that was developing in front of me was perfect. I was surprised to find out that it wasn’t so hot, though it was humid.
From time to time we crossed real towns that retained traces of British colonial times. Quite a few of the buildings had been built by the British, others, more modern, tried to mimic the colonial style and fell short of their goal. Those towns usually had tin roofs that had rusted and looked the color of the Ghanaian earth. Kumasi, the next large city, showed definite signs of English influence. The contrast sometimes was too harsh between those towns and cities and the villages made up of stick and straw houses. Here and there the sticks were covered with clay but that wasn’t always the case. The only common element were the people selling something: great looking hardwood carved doors, velvet covered furniture, palm oil, coconuts (for less than 20¢ I drank the water of a fresh coconut that tasted like Africa itself), pineapples (Ghana has the sweetest pineapples I have ever tasted. Every day I ate at least a slice of pineapple, most of the time I ate a whole pineapple, and every time it was pure ambrosia), cassava flour in plastic bags, live goats and chickens or they were offering their services. Men and women sat in front of a sawing machine waiting for clients. Metal, wood, and auto shops were housed under makeshift “buildings” (four posts and a tin or thatched roof), right next to the women selling boiled corn and fried fish. Any of these things could be offered along this main road that goes from Accra all the way to Burkina, without the need of a village, a town or a city.
The grass cutter, the snails, the crabs, the gazelle, were often offered for sale right next to where they were caught. This could be miles from the next village. But the same applied to the corn, tomatoes, pineapples, etc. The road seems to be the best market.
It amazed me the way women carry their children, wrapped around on their backs, with the greatest of ease. With a child tied to her back I saw Ghanaian women shopping wood, frying fish, pounding cassava, as if the child was an extension of their body. As if the child wasn’t on her back. And the kids didn’t seem to mind at all. They behaved as if they were still in their mothers’ wombs. Only their big, intelligent eyes, following my gaze or the lens of the camera betrayed their composure. I never saw or heard a kid fuzz or cry not wanting to be on his mom’s or sister’s back.
We arrived at Techiman (Teecheeman) around 8:30 PM and met with Charles Adu-Jumfi, regional director, and Grace Oseis, the regional programs director. We made plans for the next day and called it a day. It was Wednesday, July 3. I had spent most of that day on the road, drink through my eyes, the African scenery.
Very early the next morning we began to visit the projects around the area. First we visited a school that ADRA helped build in Hansua, about 6 KM south of Techiman. When we arrived only the students were there. Most school children wear the same uniform: brown shorts or pants for the boys, brown skirts for the girls, and a beige/pale yellow shirt for everybody. Only some of the private schools have a different uniform. The children were bringing small plants in tins for the school garden. A few minutes after our arrival the assemblyman (kind of a mayor) for the region, the chairman of the building committee, and the local chief were there to meet with us. They knew the ADRA vehicles and the directors.
I would here the same story in every school we visited: The old building was a hazard to the children, they had to meet under a mango tree, they had a hard time getting teachers to come to their school… They had approached the local government and were told to talk to ADRA. They did and an ADRA team went to survey the area. Within four months they had funds to begin construction. In other places someone had heard what ADRA had done someplace else and they approached our offices directly.
Wearing the traditional African attire the message of the chief was: “Thank you ADRA.” The teachers, the principals, and the local government representatives had the same message. And then a request: “We need books for the students.” The cost of a book is 5,000 cedis (around US$3.00) each. I figured that US$50.00 would buy books for a classroom and another US$25 would provide notebooks and pencils.
In every case they kept the old building, not as a reminder of where they’ve been, but as a classroom, kitchen, storage space, etc. They were very happy with the new building. Children were now able to learn and didn’t stay home when it rained. Teachers were applying to come to their community. This seemed to make everyone very proud. They are poor, subsistence peasants, barely surviving from year to year, with the food they are able to grow from their plots. As in Hansua, every community consisted of about 500 adults with lots and lots of children.
ADRA has built 15 schools in the Techiman area, that serve 135 communities with close to 4,000 students. In Ghana, ADRA has built 287 schools, serving 861 communities with close to 44,000 students.
As part of an agrarian community, the schools curriculum includes agriculture and every school had a garden planted both with decorative plants and with corn, bananas, plantains, cassava, and beans. Hansua, for example, has 5 teachers and a principal. One of those five is the agricultural teacher.
From kindergarten up, children are taught in English and the local language (in Ghana there are 5 major languages: Ga, spoken in the Accra area, Brong-Ahafo, spoken in central Ghana; Twi, spoken in the Asante region; Ewe, in the Volta; and Fante, in the central and western region), with heavy emphasis in English, though I had to be translated from time to time by the teachers because the children didn’t understand me. Grace, who remained with us the rest of the trip and wore a dress with the ADRA logo imprinted all over, translated for me from time to time.
The children were thrilled to be in front of a camera and they made all kind of acrobatics and gestures to catch my attention. Only very few showed to be camera shy. The problem was to get them to act normally. They wanted to mass in group in front of the camera as if I was taking group portraits. Either that or they had never seen a Mexican before.
After a short recess for lunch, where I ate probably two whole pineapples, we went to Kursue, close to Sunyani, a regional capital, to visit a well dug by the community with ADRA’s help. The people in this community used to drink water directly from the river, but when it got flooded they couldn’t approach the river. They knew that the water caused diarrhea and guinea worms. They had heard that ADRA helped communities with well projects so they went directly to our offices. Three months after they approached ADRA they began to dig their own well. The well was hand dug and about 30 meters deep. ADRA provided funds for cement and a pump. The community did all the work and provided the sand. The assemblyman is now responsible to make sure that the area stays clean around the pump. Now they always have clean water.
Then we drove to the Wenchi district to see a KVIP (Kumasi Ventilated Improved Pit), a community latrine, in simpler terms. These latrines were developed by Kumasi University students and ADRA is one of the main users of this system. This was a novelty and the people I talked to about it recognized that, though they were smelly, they were a great improvement to the local hygiene. Before the KVIP (the ADRA people love to use the term) the population would relieve themselves anywhere. This made it very smelly and difficult to walk.
“It smells because it’s designed for 500 people and it serves more than 1,000,” Grace told me. “They need to build more KVIPs.”
ADRA Ghana has built 86 KVIPs in the last four years, 11 of them in the Techiman area. These KVIP benefit close to 65,000 people.
On the way back to Accra we stopped several times to buy bananas and pineapples. Grace also bought green tomatoes and a gallon of palm oil. We visited a couple of schools as well. In one of them the students were planting a flower garden and boiling corn for lunch. While the boys plowed with a pick ax, the girls carried manure for fertilizing the ground where they then proceeded to plant seedlings. They took their task very seriously and it was the only place they didn’t run to pose in group in front of the camera. After a few minutes the chief came to greet us. I took some pictures and bade them farewell. Everybody waved good bye with big smiles on their faces.
At another school older students were “mowing” the lawn in front of the classrooms with machetes. As soon as they saw me, they ran to where they figured the camera was shooting and began to wave and clown around. I chatted with the principal for a few minutes and continued our journey back to Accra.
I have failed to mention the great number of car cemeteries that pile by the road, like everything else. In some cases it’s because a body shop is nearby and they are waiting for repair. A lot of them seemed destined to be cannibalized for parts. But in some cases they were just there, in the middle of nowhere in different stages of decomposition.
Before we got to Kumasi we came upon an accident between a transport van and a logger truck. The accident looked “fresh,” it may have occurred a couple of days before. The van was so badly twisted, as well as the truck, that somebody must have died (if not everybody in the van). Those vans tend to be terribly loaded with people, produce and animals while the logger trucks carry big logs from 4 to 6 feet thick and forty foot long or more. They bring the logs from the North to the mills in Kumasi. I saw several of them carrying green bananas and cassava on top of the logs.
Back in Accra I was taken to the same guest house I stayed before. The next morning Peter came to pick me up and took me to church. I guess it’s the only church in the area where everything is in English.
The next morning Peter took me to visit Valley View College. The dean of men showed us around while I took pictures. On the way back from the college Peter took me up to some nearby mountains where I bought some boiled corn and pineapples. Back in Accra, we went to eat and had the restaurant peel and slice the pineapples for us. They were delicious. A few hours later Peter picked me up and took me to the airport.