(written July 10, 2010)

Intro to Ghanaian Foods

Now that I am in my 5th week here, I will make a novice attempt to describe the foods I have been eating here. I also need something to do, because it has been raining for the past 23 hours and I don’t want to go outside. Yeah, it’s into the heart of the rainy season here.

While it is possible to get some of the same raw ingredients as in the US – I fully plan to cook some of the same stuff I ate in the US once I get settled in at site – there are some differences in how they are prepared. First of all, with Ghanaian food preparation the goal is to have to chew as little as possible. In the US we are trained to chew our food thoroughly, so as to minimize choking. In Ghana the strategy is to prepare the food such that minimal chewing is required. Most Ghanaian staple dishes have two main parts; the starch and the sauce. The sauce is usually a soup, such as groundnut (peanut) soup or okra. You can also get stew that is thicker and may have more vegetables in it. Hot pepper is added to most soups/stews, as is meat (fish, beef, chicken, grass cutter and goat are all common – sometimes you get cow hide or some other mystery meat), so it is moderately spicy. The starch can be anything from yam to corn to rice to cassava. It is usually pounded or otherwise softened up to meet the minimal chewing requirement, then formed into a ball. Pounding fufu can take an hour, so there is significant preparation required. So you have your ball of starch and your soup. Place the starch ball(s) into a bowl and pour the soup over the top (don’t forget the mystery meat). Then, using your right hand only, reach into the piping hot soup, pull a piece off the starch ball, dip it thoroughly in the soup, and shovel it into your mouth. Repeat. If you are sharing a meal with others, keep in mind that the faster you eat the more you get. Continue until it is all gone, then take turns lifting the bowl to your lips and drinking the soup. Congratulations, you have just eaten fufu! For boiled yam (think: potato) the process is slightly different. The boiled yam is cut into half-moon shapes and then used to dip into stew (yam is usually not served with a more liquid-like soup). Banku is the ground corn version of fufu and is allowed to ferment, giving it a sour flavor – kind of like sourdough bread only more intense.

These foods are prepared at home or served from small kitchen-shops called “chop bars.” There is also the occasional restaurant where you can sit and eat. One thing that impresses me is that Ghanaians are very disciplined in washing hands before eating. In fact, hygiene in general is very impressive, especially given that much more effort is required. But that’s another blog post.

If you are eating in the midst of others it is common to say, “You are invited,” which basically means you are offering to share your food with others. This is mainly a formality, but if you were starving you could certainly join in.

So what have I been eating? While I am staying with my host mom I have been getting a lot of boiled yam and fish stew. The fish stew usually has tomato, and sometimes cabbage, 2 or 3 green beans, carrots, and other veggies. While veggies are expensive here, they are available, and if we ask our host families will buy them for us (they do get paid by PC, so it is not a completely charitable act). Sometimes I get rice balls with groundnut soup, though instead of eating it Ghana-style I eat it with a spoon, mainly because I don’t want to have a bunch of soup left over at the end (I am not yet good at maximizing the soup that absorbs into the starch before I shovel it into my mouth, so there is always plenty of soup remaining in the bowl). Today I got kenkey for the first time. It tastes like banku, very sour, but is shaped like boiled yam (half-moon or half-disc shape). I’m going to be honest – I didn’t love it. The rest of the time (40%)I get loose rice and soup/stew, which I happily consume completely. This balance of food has taken some time to develop – I give honest feedback on every meal, per Peace Corps’ suggestion. My host mom hosted a trainee in the group last year, and so she is familiar with the routine and hosts Tricia and I very well.

Now I will stop talking about food, because I just ate lunch an hour ago and I’m getting hungry already…

Perspective

Greetings from Cape Coast!

I am here for a few days visiting a volunteer that is already one year into their service, to get an idea of what it will be like once I get to site after we swear in August 12. So far I have found it helpful in gaining some perspective on service, and has helped me to see beyond training. I have seen the volunteer's village and living quarters, and experienced travel from his small village into the city of cape coast. It is a relatively short distance, but can take over an hour due to the poor road conditions and transport available. Also, today we need to be back mid-afternoon otherwise we might not get there at all - transport quits on Sunday pretty early.

As for the region, I am gaining no perspective on what my site will be like, because Cape Coast is basically a different world from north Volta. You can apparently get most things you can get in Accra, and every time I enter a taxi they try to charge us triple the price because they think we are tourists. But it is interesting to experience. An additional perk is internet :)

So what do you do in cape coast? You go to the beach. I now know where to meet all of you that want to come visit, but don't necessarily want to endure the long, arduous, exhausting travel required to get up to our site from Accra. There are plenty of resorts, not quite like Cancun, but relatively nice (flush toilets!). So look it up. I also did a tour of Cape Coast Castle, which is one of the slave castles along the coast. I'll go into detail about that later (hopefully), with pictures as well.

But as nice as this vacation of sorts has been, it will be over soon - I'll be back in Kukurantumi for training in a few days. Tomorrow i will observe the volunteer teaching in their school, and see how they interact with the other teachers, to gain some more perspective there. For now I will take 5 and catch up with world news, then my half hour will be up!

Best,

View our photos so far!

You can view the photos we've uploaded to facebook without needing a facebook account! Enjoy!!!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028268&id=185900425&l=2edaa887c3

The Spider Incident

The following is a glimpse into what I’m growing accustomed to while living in Ghana. A wise PCV once told me to take every challenge, bad experience or bad day and give it 13 days (why 13? I didn’t ask). If at the end of those 13 days you are still upset, frustrated, depressed, angry, or fearful, go home. She said she hasn’t made it past 3 days of feeling ready to go home, I’ve had to give it 2 days so far. Every day brings new challenges, joys, and experiences. The subsequent journal is a tale of a traumatic experience I endured.

Most of you know I’m phobic of spiders. I’ve gone through a small amount of desensitization so that I can be in the remote area of a spider without completely breaking down and it has helped me quite a bit. I’ve killed spiders here! I’ve killed big ones! Hold your applause until after I tell the tale of my latest encounter.

It was a normal morning here in our host village, Kris had left for the day to get to another town to teach and I was taking my time getting ready, as I didn’t have to be in town until 0800. I fetched a bucket full of water out of our large water barrel and headed into the bathing room in the house (which is a 4-sided concrete room with semi-tiled flooring and a wooden door for an entrance, there’s also a window for light opposite the door), I was wearing my “2-yard” which is just as it sounds, two yards of Ghanaian fabric used as a towel, and my shower sandals (flip flops). I sat down my bucket, turned around to shut the door and there it was, a huge spider, just below the nail to which I would typically hang my 2 yard. Its body was the size of a half dollar and oddly shaped and its legs were about as long as half of one of my fingers.

I tired to keep my cool, which didn’t last long, as I contemplated whether or not I could kill this giant. After arguing each point to myself for about a minute I decided that I could kill the spider. Then I wracked my brain with ideas as to how I was going to kill it. I came up with squishing it with one of my shower sandals. Then I started to doubt my plan, what if I missed and it came at me, then I’m at it’s mercy, one-shoed, I’d potentially have to step on it with my bare foot! That would not be okay, on second thought, because if I killed it in that manner, I’d have to get very close to it with my hand to squish it! So plan fail.

My only other option was to go get my host mother, Momma Rose. So, off I ran, scantily clad, to my mother’s store. Next I faced a slight language barrier as I found it hard to talk slowly in my panicked sate, and no I didn’t know the Twi word for spider. I managed to take four fingers on each hand and mock the image of a spider, to which she finally understood and laughed. She said, “let’s go,” and I followed her up the path to our home. She went into the shower room and looked in the direction I told her it had last been. She said, “it is not here, it must have left.” Right (I’m thinking to myself), but I believed her enough to take a second look. Yep, there it was, unmoved and scary as ever. I told her, no no, it’s still here, kill it please. She came back into the shower room (so now I’m trapped in there with her and the spider). At this point I’m hysterical and crying, yes crying, she looks at me unsure what to do with her adult American “daughter” crying in her 2-yard over a spider, she then shooed it out. She said, “it is now gone” and “is it okay?” I responded with a pitiful “yes” as she closed the door. I was left alone mortified as I could hear her laughing and talking to herself as she walked back down to the store. It took me as long as a bucket bath takes to stop crying and to feel somewhat okay.

Later I called Kris on my walk into town to tell him about the incident. I started crying again in reliving my feeling of terror and vulnerability. Freaking spiders, I hate them; they scare me senseless and make me cry. Kris has been extra vigilant since the described incident, killing (not just shooing them out of eyesight) anything with 8 legs. I’ve also been killing them myself, much more in my element with multiple weapons (i.e. shoes) to kill them with and wearing much more protective clothing. I’ve even spit my toothpaste out on one on purpose while brushing outside. I hope this incident is a rarity, I hope the big spiders just leave me alone and that my future cat at site would rather eat spiders than any other thing I could feed it. I am typing this in my safe zone, which is in our bed enclosed in a mosquito net. I fear malaria, which is a real threat here, but it doesn’t scare me to tears like spiders do, so for now I shall rename it my spider net.

What's Tricia Been up to?

What has Tricia been up to? I’ve been told this is a common question among people back home, so here’s a brief description if I can conjure one. My second week in Ghana I left for “vision quest” where I had the opportunity to travel and visit a current Peace Corps Volunteer at their site. I went to a town called Tampion in the northern region of Ghana. The days of travel were trying to say the least, total it took about 16 hours to reach my volunteer. The roads here are quite different than in the states, as is the physical terrain. There are mountains and valleys, poorly maintained roads and poorer maintained vehicles. Personal space is a luxury not a typical standard in any vehicle in which I’ve ridden. Air conditioning is having the windows open. There is no such thing as a double yellow solid line here, passing the car/truck/tro/bus ahead of you is left up to when you feel lucky or sense that an oncoming car is not just ahead or beyond the top of the hill you are climbing.

Due to the danger of traveling at night I stayed one night each way in the Tamale Sub Office (in Tamale). Once in Tampion I visited with the currently serving volunteer, ate good food, rested and walked around her village. We observed a math class, the village’s market day, and normal daily activities such as fetching water from the nearby crocodile infested dam. We greeted all of the elders in the community and even met with the chief. We were invited to a baby naming ceremony and I got to hold a 7-day-old infant girl. The lorry ride back to Tamale was made more special because of a live bull I was able to share it with. No one got hurt, but it was yet another example of things that are done differently here that may take some adjusting.

When we made it back down to Kukurantumi (where we are currently staying), I stayed in a local hotel for 3 nights. The hotel had running water and an air conditioner, after a week in “the bush” I took full advantage of the amenities. During my time staying at the hotel I had separate classes from Kris, mostly stuff I had missed while on vision quest. Then I got to meet my host mom and move into her home with Kris. Since moving to this smaller community my days are comprised of 6 hours of language training and 2 hours of technical training. My technical training has been related to learning tools that will help me assess the community where we will be located. We’ve also done quite a bit of walking around our small village talking with the community members and gaining an understanding for what their health/water sanitation needs are. Most of the issues in the community are related to sanitation, i.e. refuse dumping and latrines/open defecation (sorry) and standing water (mosquito breeding ground).

We’ve had a few sessions related to malaria, hand washing, and family planning. We also have four presentations to present before the swearing in ceremony in August so I’ve been gaining ideas for two of them. One will be a lesion/teaching moment. I’ve made up a little ditty about hand washing and am working on translating it to Twi. I’ll then teach the song to some kids and do some education about why we wash our hands as well as a hand-washing demo with them. For my second project I plan to meet with the local traditional birth attendant to talk with her about what she does, I’ll then present my findings to fellow trainees. I met with her the other night just to introduce myself. She’s a spitfire ~80 year-old woman who doesn’t speak any English except for thank-you. She was thrilled to meet me, and tried to convince me to stay and learn from her for 3 months (all translated by a young boy who was in the immediate area when I sensed I needed some assistance communicating). I’ll go back to talk more with her in 4 weeks, she can’t wait J. Starting Sunday for the next 3 weeks I will be first visiting our future site (yay!) and then doing more hands on technical training in the north. I will once again get to experience the joys of traveling, which I’m gaining confidence in quicker than I’d imagined.

Besides being in class or traveling we try to do our laundry (which resulted in about 20 mosquito bites this morning), visit with other trainees, hang out with our host mom, and “relax.” We’re looking forward to when we’re at site and can control our own schedules, but for now are appreciating every bit of preparation that is available.