An Event-full Week

June 17, 2018

This week was our last week visiting the rural communities that we worked with this cohort. After looking at the budget we also decided we were able to do events in one of mine and one of the previous cohort’s communities. We visited them earlier in the placement and education for girls (aka girl child education to Ghanaians) was still a major issue so we went back to see if we could challenge some views and promote a healthy debate. Facilitating a discussion for community members to talk about important issues might seem an obvious way to tackle this but ask yourself – when did you last sit down with your neighbours and discuss issues in your community?

So, we visited Nwagu on Tuesday, the main roads leading us to the dirt one that took us further out into the bush looked unchanged. However, the transformation from the end of January to now in the rural areas was breath-taking. The sky was blue, the small sparse scruffy patches of grass had changed into ankle high carpets of miscellaneous greenery and even the orange dirt on the road seemed brighter now it had all this colour to contrast with. Trees had ben cut down, fences had been made from whatever was available, land had been cleared of rubbish and the people had worked hard to till the soil and plant crops such as maize and tomatoes for the looming rainy season. I mentioned the sky is blue, which is common place in Ghana, it’s very rare that I look out my window of a morning to see what the weather will be like …. sunny and hot with 100% chance of sweaty humidity. However, back in January, Tamale was still experiencing the Harmattan (the dusty winds from the Sahara) so the sky had an eerie grey fogginess most days.

We had a warm welcome in Nwagu and the session went well, the women recognised me and hoped we would come back soon. On that note, ICS volunteers don’t always agree with every aspect of the projects we undertake. Each cohort we are meant to work with 3 new communities. However, the first visit, they often think we are there to invest or build infrastructure (stereotypes in NGO heavy areas) and it takes the subsequent visits to build that positive relationship which is then stopped too quickly to cross another 3 places off the list. I love my work here, but I don’t have the patience for international development politics in the long term.

On Wednesday, Nanna went to visit her old community from cohort 9 (2 cohorts before this one). To wrap up the week, we visited our 3 new communities on Thursday to deliver our last session on sanitation focussing on water conservation for when the rains come, open defecation (no personal or public toilets in these areas) and preventing the spread of germs. We try and focus on sustainable education and hope our peer educators and empowered PAGSUNG women will continue the work.

On Thursday night we waited with bated breath to see if the moon would appear as this would mark the end of Ramadan. Spoiler alert, it did so on Friday we feasted and celebrated Eid al-Fitr with my host mum and some of the volunteers. As I work with Muslim children for my actual job and am currently living with a Muslim family here, I decided to fast with my host mum and Muslim volunteers for this Ramadan. This meant that for last 30 days I have had no food or water between sun up and sun down. My days started with breakfast from 4-4.25am and then breaking the fast at approximately 6.25pm. It was an eye-opening and humbling experience to help me build empathy and understanding. It was also nice to feel part of something bigger than myself. Eid Mubarak!