Just another day...

What to do on day ~61 at site? I’m taking a stay-cation, which here translates as shutting the main door and all the windows as to appear not here. I’ll be inside drying and making powder out of thousands of moringa leaves and watching Mission Impossible one, two, and three. It is now 3 days later, I’ve watched MI1 and am sad to report that most of my moringa leaves managed to mold. Deep breath. It will grow again (and soon).

Yesterday I traveled to the district capital, Nkwanta, which is only about 30km from our village of Jumbo. I woke up, saw Kris off to school, ate some breakfast and went outside to pick our bunny, Luna, some grass. I was already mostly dressed and ready to begin my journey to Nkwanta, so I was casually dressed in Jeans and a nicer t-shirt. I walked passed the borehole and greeted the small girls pumping and fetching water. I found a nice spot of healthy looking wide grass (Luna’s favorite) and began pulling. Not 3 minutes into the process I felt a sharp pain on the inside of my right foot. Mostly normal, there are a million things here that bite… mosquitoes, flies, bees, other flying insects and oh yeah, ants. I carelessly had stepped directly onto the path of some driver ants. I don’t particularly like ants. I also don’t fear them, like I do spiders, but one step in the path of some driver ants is enough to give you nightmares. They can sting, but they don’t have to because they’d rather rely on their powerful cutting jaws. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia, “Such is the strength of the ant's jaws, in East Africa they are used as natural, emergency sutures. Various East African indigenous tribal peoples, e.g. Maasai moran), when they suffer a gash in the bush, will use the soldiers to stitch the wound, by getting the ants to bite on both sides of the gash, then breaking off the body. This seal can hold for days at a time, and if necessary, the procedure repeated - allowing sufficient time for natural healing to commence.” So I was being attacked by natural, emergency sutures; too bad I wasn’t injured. I think the girls at the borehole already knew the English S swearword, but maybe hadn’t heard it used quite so many times by a white lady hopping around with tall grass in one hand and the other hand trying to pull up her pant legs to swat at something (maybe that’s why they don’t wear pants here?). It didn’t take them long to realize my predicament, so they came over to assist me. I was now surrounded by ants and six Ghanaian girls pulling at my pants and slapping my legs and feet. Eventually I had to make a run for it; the ants were too fast, and my jeans were too confining for me to catch the ones making their way above my knees. I made it into the house and depantsed myself. Luckily there were only about ten of them left at this point, mandible deep into my legs. Some of the others had been confused by the blue jean material and decided to sink into that instead.

I wrapped a two-yard of cloth around my waist and chucked my jeans outside. Someone came to greet me at that moment (typical). The person’s uncle had died (kinda puts getting bit by ants in perspective). He had come to see how my health was, and to let me know that there would be a funeral for the next few days. I gave him my condolences and told him I would try to attend the funeral. I managed to leave the house shortly after, finally starting my journey to Nkwanta. I waited to hitch a ride on a vehicle for a few hours, hoping to get lucky. It was not to be. I then walked to the police checkpoint, where one of the officers was very kind and rode his moto to the station, bought a ticket, and told the lorry driver to save a seat for me. Soon I was on the road, and finally arrived in Nkwanta around 12:30pm. 30km in 1.5 hours… did I mention our roads are really, really bad? I went to the market and bought some things I can’t get in Kpassa (cabbage, carrots, cucumber, honey bread and wheat bread). It started to rain, which is normal for this time of year and seemingly typical for when I have to walk a significant distance. I was about 1.5 miles into my walk when it really started pouring, so I took refuge under someone’s roof overhang. The residents noticed me and told me to come in out of the rain, they gave up their only un-broken chair for me to sit (this is known as the white person treatment – I experience it often).

After sitting for about 40 minutes I decided the rain was just going to have its way and get me wet. I was already about an hour late from I had informed the District Health Team I would arrive. I finally arrived, moderately soaked, but welcomed warmly. My business was to discuss progress in preparing a main building and nurse’s residence for a small clinic in Jumbo. I had been recently promised funding from the District Assembly (general funding pool not specific to health, agriculture, etc.), so I had some good news to share.

After the meeting I walked the 2 miles back to the lorry station, bought the last ticket on the lorry back to Kpassa and took my seat… in the back row wedged between two Ghanaians on one side and two on the other. By no means do average Ghanaians travel in luxury. Personal space is foreign, as is common sense like leaving the last seat in the very back of the vehicle, which to access requires that an entire aisle of people in “jump seats” get up and exit, let you in, then file back in. Luckily for me I was sharing this coveted back seat with a student from the University of Ghana, in Accra. He is from Kpassa, and is going for his degree in Psychology. So, in-between being launched by craters the driver was not taking care to avoid, we discussed Sigmund Freud, Piaget and Miller. It was one of those pleasant, “I never thought I’d be…” moments. I can’t recall a more enjoyable trip from Kpasa to Nkwanta.

The student’s story was impressive. This 20-something-year-old’s parents are farmers. They have 11 children. All of them have gone or are going to at least secondary school (high school), with many going on to teaching college or even university. Unheard of! I had found the exception to the norm here (at least in my neck of the woods): illiterate farmers keeping their kids illiterate by having them help at farm. We discussed the problems Ghana has and that we thought education would help the most with those problems. He told me that even for a poor farming family it was possible to send all of their children to school, they just had to make it a priority. Even though (per typical) I arrived back in Jumbo bruised at the knees and migraine fogged, I felt refreshed. Sometimes when you’re working in development your efforts can seem futile. Progress is slow if you can see any at all, and desperate situations somehow manage to get even worse. Meeting a young person from my greater community who is pursuing higher education in Ghana is a breath of fresh air. I had been given enough motivation to keep trying, even if at times it seems as though I’m beating my head against a wall. Somehow I will help the people in my village understand that it has the resources it needs to succeed. Maybe those resources should be in a classroom instead of fetching water and assisting some careless foreigner who stepped in the path of some driver ants.