Another reason that September flew by is due to “waiting” for school to start through most of the month. There is a nationwide census in Ghana right now, and out of the various government service sectors the education service chose the short straw, and so teachers are the ones that have to conduct the census. But wait, what about school and teaching classes? Turns out actual education is fairly low on the priority list. So at my school, a junior high, we were supposed to start September 13th. But they delayed one week and one day to September 21st so that teachers could attend a workshop to learn how to do the census, which will take place during the next two weeks or so (I’ve gotten as many answers as the number of times I’ve asked this question). September 21st is a government holiday, so we finally started on the 22nd. The first two days there were no classes, just weeding and sweeping the school grounds (with minimal supervision from teachers, due to the ongoing census). On Friday Sept 24th, I taught my first class. The other math teacher is MIA because he was in a minor motorcycle accident (he’s ok, just needs to rest and keep his road rash clean so it doesn’t get infected), so while I only prepared a lesson plan for Form 1 (7th grade), I had to teach Form 2 and Form 3 on the fly. It was the same story this week – two to four teachers attending, with students getting only two classes a day, (compared to five or six). I was looking forward to the school term as a good source of structure for my daily life here, but I’ve been having to create my own amongst the chaos. So while I was dealing with these recent events, September has escaped.
As for the earlier portion of September, we have kept ourselves busy by becoming full-time chefs. For any of you that are worried that we are not eating well, behold Figure 1 through Figure 4:
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| Bean burgers with fresh tomato slice, lettuce, HEINZ KETCHUP, and mayonnaise (with a side of seasoned yam fries) |
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| Close-up of bean burger (seasoned with Weber burger seasoning – thanks Mom & Dad!) |
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| Chicken thigh and leg (from rooster gifted by a chief and freshly butchered by yours truly), with tomato sauce and mashed yam (both made by Tricia) |
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| Tuna and avocado pie (courtesy of Tricia), with biscuit topping |
Additional dishes we have made include spaghetti sauce from scratch (with corned beef added), guacamole and homemade tortilla chips, potato salad (made with yam instead), peanut sauce over yam, chicken and rice soup and various other hodgepodge sauces served with noodles, rice or yam.
We’ve also made some desserts, including cornbread, banana crisp, and M&M cookie bars. And for afternoon refreshment we have made plenty of limeaid (lime trees are everywhere).
We have discovered some unlikely sources for some of the foods we have been craving since arriving in Ghana. One of these is meat. Meat is butchered and sold much differently here. Where you go depends on what type of meat you want. There are “cold stores” (small shops with a chest refrigerator) in town that sell chicken and fish (mostly smoked, not fresh), albeit for a steep price (out of reach for most Ghanaians in this area except on special occasions). You can also get plenty of smoked fish in the market (fear not - they don’t charge extra for the diseases left by flies). Though we have heard about it, we have not yet found a source for fresh fish. Stay tuned. Or, if you are welcomed into the community like we were, by being given two live roosters, you can butcher chicken yourself. This can be the more sanitary option, as you know how it has been butchered and that the carcass hasn’t been sitting outside for hours. For goat meat, the easiest source is your neighbor, when they are butchering one. It’s not very sanitary…but we don’t really like goat meat anyway. There is also some bush meat (grass cutter, rabbit, etc.), but it is being depleted rapidly, and some of the hunting methods are wasteful (i.e. burning bush to force animals out and then shoot them), so we won’t be eating any of it. In fact, we will probably do a rabbit project where we sell babies from our rabbit and teach people to raise domestic rabbits. We have also seen domestic turkeys and pigs running around our village – we hope to get more information on that (turkey for Thanksgiving???). Then there’s beef. There is plenty of it in northern Volta, but you don’t go to the cold store to get it. You instead go directly to a butcher shop. Keep in mind that none of said butcher shops are protected from flies. Sometimes they even take a hock and hang it outside so that people know the butcher has it. So not sanitary at all. Did I mention I have bought beef once so far from a butcher? The trick is to go there very early in the morning, just as they are doing the slaughtering. Then you point to an area on the carcass where you want meat from. In my case I pointed to the tenderloin/sirloin area (couldn’t tell which). The way I found out the price was by saying I wanted 4 cedi of meat, and then later finding out that I was given about 2 pounds. So the price isn’t bad. I don’t think they butcher the cows until they are old (read: chewy), so the best thing to do with the meat is grind it. Unfortunately the meat grinder I bought is missing some pieces, so I’m going back to the store in Hohoe to hopefully get them. So instead I cubed the beef and sautéed it, and combined it with brown gravy and mashed yam. It was delicious.
Another exciting source is for milk. Yes, that’s right, milk. Fresh from the source – so fresh, in fact, it’s still warm from being inside the cow’s udder. There is a tribe of nomadic people in the area called the Fulani that have a settlement nearby. Apparently the previous volunteer at our site had been buying milk from them, because one day they stopped by with a warm bowl of milk. We could tell they were different, from the elaborate and beautiful clothing and facial tattoos, and from the fact that they did not speak a lick of English, Twi, Konkomba, or any other language we knew. They are apparently originally from Nigeria and have migrated here with their bovine in search of better land (i.e. land where rain falls more consistently). So through hand gestures and other non-verbal, we were able to negotiate a price for 5 cups of milk. Since then they have been delivering milk about twice a week. We do pasteurize it, just to make sure it is safe. It’s an amazing feeling to drink a cold glass of milk in the hot afternoon, or even spread a bit of real butter (not the 2-year shelf-life margarine) on some bread (shake a cup of milk in a jar for 20 minutes and you’ve got about one tablespoon). One fascinating aspect of the Fulanis is their appearance. Literally straight out of a National Geographic magazine. We hope to get some decent pictures soon, because attempting to put it into words is more than I am capable of.
And, just in case we don’t cover all of the essential nutrients, we are taking a multi-vitamin every day. Tricia’s taking a calcium supplement; no need for the combo calcium + vitamin D, there’s sun to be had.
One more shout out to fall, and those enjoying it; we miss it terribly. But we may not miss what follows fall nearly as much.
