January

After the beach it was back to site. We arrived in plenty of time for the “Christmas/New Year” combined celebration that Konkombas do in our village. It consists of a very odd selection of Western Christmas traditions, including buying a new set of clothes (only one the kids will get all year), making a lot of rice and giving it away (like Halloween I guess), and multiple nights of very loud hip-hop music. Sound familiar? I thought not. We invited the new nutrition officer in Nkwanta to come and see it, as she had no other plans and was finding it difficult to adapt (she is from Accra). As it turned out, some leaders in the community had additional plans for the holiday. They used the main New Year’s celebration (held on the 2^nd for some reason) to announce new bylaws for the village, including no loud music after 10pm, no children and youth out late at night, etc. Not surprisingly, as these new rules were being announced, one of the youth pulled the fuse on the PA. The next moments were chaotic and a bit unnerving (especially for our guest), with arguments between elders and youth. Unfortunately for the leaders, they had not consulted youth about the rules prior to the announcement. Furthermore, most youth in the community do not receive any parenting, but are instead left to find out about the world for themselves. So they formed their own opinions about what is important, and unfortunately they chose loud hip hop, sexual activity, etc. The silver lining in this chain of events was that no loud music was played that night, and we were able to sleep soundly, guest included.

Some days later Tricia and the nutrition officer traveled to the north to visit a nutrition rehabilitation center there as research for the proposed center in Volta region. The difficultly with this travel was that it was over bad roads with very bad public vehicles. Using her powers of persuasion, she convinced the DCE to let her use one of his SUVs for the trip. For a trip that would take four full days of travel roundtrip, plus a day spent there, they were able to leave early on Friday and return around dusk on Saturday.

By the second week in January I was back to teaching and Tricia was back to preparing for training. She went for a one week “training-of-trainers” in the south, leaving me alone at site. Fortunately, when she came back, she brought her friend Tessa, who came from the US to visit. We showed Tessa our village, the market town, my school, anything she was interested in seeing. Her and Tricia then moved on to see other parts of Ghana.

In January we also learned that our village of Jumbo #1 had now been shifted to the district of Nkwanta North. What this means is that now Jumbonians can go to the town of Kpassa (5km) for support from the district, instead of Nkwanta (30km). This change has yet to take effect in the schools and the clinic, but it is a big step in that direction.

January 26^th saw the FIRST OFFICIAL BABY WEIGHING at Jumbo clinic, with over a hundred participants.

January also brought a truly sad event. Tricia’s paternal grandfather passed away after struggling with his failing health. Tricia was close with her grandfather, and was looking forward to attending his 95^th birthday party next September. To mourn the loss of a loved one is difficult. To mourn that same loss while separated from family and friends thousands of miles is herculean.