Into the Upper Wild West

Oh the joy. The old Fokker plane of Antrak Air ( I'm not joking, this is really the name of the local airline) is being serviced till later notice. Therefore I had no other option than to fight my way in to a replacing plane. Fight, because the airline had sold 40 tickets (amount of seats on the usual plane) but this was a 12 seater, also known as ‘the coffin’ or ‘the trotro’. For your information: trotro’s are the little minibusses used here. Most of the time they look like they have been in a severe accident, the doors are duct taped and they have no lights, windows nor brakes. The little plane seemed fine, but I was scared to death and cried a little. My seat was just behind the pilot who looked like he was no older than 16 and had never been kissed. Or flew a plane before.

But alright, it was worth it. The Upper West Region of Ghana, close to Burkina, is beautiful. And once again being in the field was disturbing yet enlightening. You can read all the books you want about how economic development can be achieved, how health and education systems could be put in place, but you will never realise how incredibly complicated things are, unless you see it. It probably goes beyond what many of the readers of my blog are interested in, but in short: just the simple fact that at least 20% of the kids in high school can not read. The fact that politicians say education is for free, so parents don’t want to contribute to the school anymore. But those same politicians provide the school with less then 0.30 Euro per term per child. Little money that leads to absolutely nothing as headteachers usually use it for their own transportation. Or for buying a generator and tv so the kids can watch tv at school (and teachers don’t have to teach). School furniture piled up in the district offices, as nobody thought about budgeting for distribution, meanwhile the kids are lying on the classroom floor.

But before I’m accused of being negative or cynical, I saw some great things too. An NGO supported 9 months mob-up programme for children who have never been to school and through intensive training can fit into the normal school system afterwards. A wonderful teacher who taught the children how to resolve conflicts in the classroom, family and community.

And of course there was the delight of being in a completely foreign world and situation. I learned how cashew nut trees grow. How you can officially change your birthday here in Ghana (easy, just buy a new birth certificate and you are 5 years younger). I learned that if you die in the Upper West Region, your body is put in a chair on the road side for 3 days. So people can grieve. Men are put facing the east, as they have to know when the sun comes up and they have to go farming. Women face the west, as they have to know when it’s time to cook dinner when the sun goes down. And I learned about witchcraft. If anything bad happens to you (sick, death, bad harvest, small airplane instead of big one), you can just blame an old woman. She will be chased away from your village. Maybe if she is pretty and her husband still wants her, she might be able to come back if proved innocent. But if not, too bad. I better get out of here before I’m old. Today is my one year anniversary in Ghana. I’ll stay till I’m 31, but that’s it. Taco, I promise.

Opening Prayer

“Who is volunteering to do the opening prayer of the meeting today?” During this question I’m always very busy finding something unknown in my purse under my table. It’s the question I fear the most. I even prefer: “ who is volunteering to write the minutes of the meeting today?”. Technically I shouldn’t be scared, as praying is pretty straight forward and pragmatic here. It goes more or less like this:

“Heavenly Father, thank you for bringing us together in this meeting today. We pray that you will guide us to work hard for the benefit of Ghana and Ghana’s beautiful innocent children. Lord, we pray that we will make great progress on the education district plan today. We also pray that Unicef will sponsor us further in the future. Some more money is needed for fuel for the education district offices and refreshments during meetings with the school management committees. Father, we pray that you will enlight our path and fill our hearts today with commitment and passion for our work. Thank you Father. Amen.”