Ok, I'm sorry, please forgive my outburst of emotion. But really, after that cow works that hard to deliver a precious liquid, you want to drink beans. Beans?!? And fake beans at that. Why, my friend, why? If you really can't drink milk, then you're excused, and I applaud you for trying to find a substitute. But if you're blessed to be jam-packed with lactase, then get yourself a brownie and a tall glass of milk and enjoy!
This message brought to you from the milk deprived land of West Africa. I'm Lib and I approve this message.
...not all soy products are bad (she said sheepishly)... I like tofu.
The biggest event that has occurred since we returned from the North was our trip to Togo and Benin (the two neighboring countries to the East of Ghana). Emma and Carly left a day early, and then I met them with Liz, her friend Alex, and our friend Nana. It was about a four hour tro-tro (small bus thing) ride to the Togo border and it only took an hour to get across Togo into Benin. I was useless once we arrived in Togo, because, like most of West Africa, it's entirely French speaking. The benefit of that, however, was that baguettes were everywhere! Heaven. We spent the night in Ouidah, a small town in Benin that is known for its voodoo and as being a critical point in the slave trade. We took a tour of the slave trade sites and it was fascinating because it was so different from the slave trade in Ghana. Whereas in Ghana there are large forts that were controlled by the Portuguese and then English, in Benin, there were no large structures, just a path that the slaves were forced to follow.
The captives began by walking around this one tree seven times, which was supposed to make them forget all about their past, present and future, so as to make them like animals. Next, they walked to a place which was like an underground room, or I'm assuming just a giant hole in the ground. They were all piled in there and kept there for a while. It was meant to "train" them for the middle passage on the slave ships. Those who did not survive were buried in a mass grave and the rest moved on. They then walked around the "Tree of Return" (which is still there today) and it was supposed to make their spirits return to Africa if they died en route or upon arrival in the Americas. There was also a site where people go now a days to repent and ask for forgiveness for selling the slaves. Finally, we went to the beachside where a monument had been built for the "point of no return," where the slaves entered the ships. It was such a contrast to the Ghanaian slave trade because it seemed much more steeped with Beninese culture than the very European process in Ghana.
As we were leaving Benin on our motorbike taxis (most of the taxi's are motorbikes that they pack full), we saw two Voodoo spirits! Basically you couldn't see any human form, but it was like men under these colorful patterned cloths that were stooped over with people surrounding them. You couldn't see arms or legs or anything (look up a picture on Google, you might find something similar at least). It was really cool. The motorbike had to be careful to get through there quickly because if you are not initiated into Voodoo, you're not allowed to get close because there are people around that will beat you if you get close. The Voodoo is very intense there! A lot of people in West Africa, even very educated people, are wary of it.
Basically Benin was really neat, minus the initial stress of not understanding the language or conversion rate. I ended up loving the motorbike taxis. I have never rode a motorbike of any kind before then and the first night, they stuffed me on a motorbike with a driver and two of my friends... FOUR PEOPLE on a motorbike driving on sandy roads at night. Almost as scary as riding a horse. Anyways, the trip has left me with horrible, incurable cravings for baguettes.
In other news, I have been a little under the weather lately. No fever or vomiting or digestive issues, just random, assorted discomfort. The kind of discomfort you experience when you're in a tropical climate at the hottest time of year, going through a dirty, huge city, struggling to keep hydrated and finally missing the food from home (Thanksgiving will do that to you...). I really do love it here though, I'm starting to learn the city a lot better. Here's my basic breakdown of Accra for you:
I live in Lartbiokorshie, which is about as far as I could possibly live from School, in Legon, so it's forced me to get to know the city pretty well. Osu is where a lot of ex-pats live, and is therefore a good place to satisfy your western food needs. It's also just a fun place to hang out. In the city, all the roads are paved, but once you get into most residential areas, it's mostly dirt roads. Or, I should say, dust roads. My lungs are probably 50% dust. The open sewers are fine, I haven't fallen in one yet (knock on wood), but there are certain areas that really smell because of them. Sometimes you don't notice and other times, it's impossible not to. There's one section of the city that taxi drivers just looove to take us through that absolutely (excuse the language), smells like shit. There are some pretty smelly areas, but this one is bad enough that I have to plug my nose and cover my mouth to block the rank stench. The sad part is.... it's RIGHT on the ocean. In a lot of areas, this one in particular, people don't have adequate toilet facilities in their homes (poor infrastructure, lack of money, lack of government attention, poor sanitation), so they have to do all that business in the ocean. It goes without saying that no one swims in those areas. Thank god the ocean isn't like a giant connected body of water or anything, I'm sure we're completely safe from it a couple miles down the beach. City life can be hard with respect to those kinds of issues. It's easier being sanitary in the village for some people than it is in the city. From the houses I've been to here, in the city, and a lot of the bars and clubs, the bathrooms are just cement floors with a hole or a gutter running through them. Water and sanitation are constant topics of discussion here.
Speaking of sanitation, there are very few trash cans here and often times where there are, they are tiny and have a giant hole in the bottom anyways. So there is a company here called Zoomlion that picks up trash on the streets, which is great, but watching the process isn't quite as great. They send men around with these large wicked baskets on wheels (probably three feet wide an four feet high?) and they sweep the trash up with these brooms (a lot of straw tied together with no handle, it's what they use in almost all the houses here) and use their bare hands to pick up the trash. As someone who spent her whole summer picking up trash in Burlington parks, it really puts things in perspective. Sure they don't have to have juicy trash bags dripping on them (I hate my job), but at least I didn't have to touch the trash with my bare hands. Something is better than nothing, but what it comes down to is that the government needs to build better infrastructure to improve sanitation, which would obviously have far-reaching benefits. Anyways, there's a little random sampling of Accra for you. It's an interesting city, because it's a very peaceful and pretty developed country (comparatively), so there's always a huge contrast between the wealth that's present here and the extreme poverty (men walking around with tatters of their pants left, women bathing in the gutters, children begging aggressively, etc.). Anyways, I'm being attacked by mosquitoes, so I can't really think straight. (Don't worry, I took my anti-malarials!). I'll update again soon with a slightly better composed piece. My brain has turned to mush. Thanks a lot study abroad classes.
I didn't get a good sense of Kumasi because we were only there a short while, but I did start to get a feel for Tamale. The biggest difference that people will tell you about is the weather. It gets much, much hotter during the day, but it's also a lot drier, so I wasn't sweating for once (most of the time). It also gets a lot colder at night. The first night in Tamale, I went took of my jeans to go to sleep and I woke up at 3AM feeling very chilly and noticed I was wearing my jeans again. I think I must have gotten up while I was sleeping and put on jeans because I was so cold. It was very bizarre. But I've been known to do those things. About a month ago I woke up in the middle of the night, thought it was morning and started getting ready for school. I've done that a lot.... Anyways, aside from temperature, I was able to note a few other key differences that really made Tamale feel different than the bustling life of Accra. First of all, Tamale's population is in the thousands, whereas Accra's population is around 2 million. Second of all, the infrastructure is much, much better. Almost all the roads are paved, unlike in Accra (the innercity is paved but a lot of other roads are not) and there are significantly less potholes. Also, there are streetlights on every street and they actually work. There are also functioning traffic lights, which is a rarity in Accra, to say the least. I can't comment on running water and electricity issues because I only knew that they weren't problems in the guest house we stayed in, but I would assume it's better than in Accra, and I believe I heard a few people say that as well. The people were also much less aggressive and much friendlier, probably because there are less white people in the North and when they are there, they're there for NGO's. The North has the highest density of NGO's in the country. I noticed that the biggest difference in terms of feeling safe was that in Tamale, I didn't fear being mugged on the street at all, I just feared armed robbers in the more rural areas, because that is a problem. Whereas in Accra, I'm always very aware of where all my things are and never being alone and this and that, but I wouldn't worry about armed robbers there, because they tend to flock to the less crowded areas, obviously. The main place that you must watch out for them is on the highway going between Kumasi and Accra, and only at night. It happens very regularly that busses and cars are held up and robbed, and most people blame the Nigerians (they have a LOT to say about the Nigerians here, usually a mix between commending their strong-wills and bravery and also categorizing them all as criminals). Anyways, you can bet your bottom dollar I will never, under any circumstances, be traveling outside the city at night.
On a lighter note, I will just briefly run over a few highlights from the trip. The first great thing to happen was our visit to an NGO called TaWoDeP, which stands for Tallensi Area Women's Development Project, and it basically gives women business skills to use in the market, does some training and manages money and some micro-loans. They mainly deal with women working in Shea Butter production. We had the most incredible welcome from them. They're located out in a very rural area and when we got there there were about 50 women sitting around in a circle singing and dancing traditional northern songs and dances. It was spectacular. My friend Bernice, who is on my program and Ghanaian, pulled me and another girl out in the circle to dance with her because all the women were taking turns dancing. After that, we got to see a few women actually making the Shea Butter, which was incredible. They de-shell them, roast them (they look like cocoa) and then somehow turn it into a liquid that looks like melted chocolate. At this point, they start adding small amounts of water and beating it with their hands (really difficult looking), they do this for about an hour (we didn't watch the whole thing, they had a few different stages set up to show us), and it starts turning into a white, thick, paste. When it's at the right stage, they add a ton of water to it and it separates into a buttery mixture on top and liquid on the bottom. Then they scoop out the buttery part. I bought some of it from them also. It's pure, 100%, nothing added, shea butter. Very cool.
The next highlight was that our program coordinator set up dance lessons for us and a performance with some of her old friends from when she did the program five years ago. The dancing was really fun and watching them was in. cred. ible. So amazing.
The last major highlight is almost unbeatable. I bought fabric from a women in the market on Thursday and we started talking and she said she would teach me how to make the fabric if I came back the next day. So I went back with two of my friends and we made tie and dye fabric. Basically the process is as follows: choose wooden stamps, dip them in melted wax, shake very well and press it in the pattern you want on the cloth. Then you mix the dye and gently turn the fabric in the dye for about 15 minutes (I was sweating doing this in the hot sun, one of the few times I sweated in Tamale) and then you let it dry in the sun. After that you take the fabric and dip it repeatedly in boiling water to get off the wax and finally you wash it (by hand, duh, because that's how laundry is done here in case you forgot). Then you let it dry and ta-da! Beautiful fabric. It was so cool, we were just in a little stall making fabric for the whole day with this woman and her baby and my 12 year old friend Jason (Ghanaian) that I met and then another 11 year old girl joined us. We ate beans and rice while we waited during different steps and the women who was teaching us said we were very hardworking! So I gave myself a good pat on the back. I'll post pictures soon. Unfortunately, my camera died before we even got to Kumasi, but I plan to snipe some pictures from my friends. That is all for now!