I Believe in Yesterday

Friday August 27th 2010

My time in Ghana has come to an end—I can say it aloud but my brain still won’t compute it. Although the logical side of my head understands that this experience was never going to become longer than 4 months, I’m still struggling to understand how this is all wrapping up so quickly. These past few months have at once felt as brief as a two-week whirlwind and as long and spanning as my entire lifetime.

The goodbyes I experienced in Hohoe were both beautiful and painful. As we parted ways, I was touched by the love sent to me from the families I connected with in the Volta region. I tried to justly communicate the magnitude of my thanks to them, but often had trouble finding the words. I’ve realized that there’s no easy, clean cut way to say goodbye to this experience. It’s bittersweet: you do what you can to tie up loose ends, make trade-off decisions when necessary, and try to remember to breathe and smile along the way. My goodbyes in Hohoe already feel like a lifetime ago—a beautiful memory tucked safely in my pocket as I follow a partly confusing, partly exciting, but absolutely certain path back to Canada.

It seems like now more than ever I’m looking back and thinking about what I could have done, should have done, or would have done differently with my experience. I could have invested more time in my family. I should have worried less about the timeline of my experience and more readily embraced the pace of progress here. I think that I would have felt more at peace with my leaving had I done so. I’ve come to realize that you can spend all of your energy thinking about the things you could have done better, the things you should have done but didn’t, and the things that would have altered the course of your placement for the better. I’ve thought about it, but have come to see that going through that process isn’t the point of these concluding days and hours. I think it’s natural to have regrets; it’s indicative of my inexperience making decisions in the ambiguous environments so often encountered here, but not of my lack of trying.

In retrospect things could have gone different. I could have chosen a million and one different forks in the road. But, I think that’s okay. Realizing things could have turned out differently and learning in hindsight from past decisions can cloud your sense of accomplishment quickly, but only if you allow it. Right now I’m concentrating on coming to terms with what I’ve accomplished in these few short months and keeping an open mind as familiar life in Canada barrels towards me like a freight train. Although there are areas in which I could have done more, I’m proud to be going home feeling like I’ve been successful with my time in Ghana.

This week, on the first day of in-country debrief in Cape Coast, the JFs were challenged to depict the story of our placements. I’ll share with you now a stream of consciousness style story I wrote in response to the challenge. There have been many monumental realizations along the course of my junior fellowship placement this summer, and certainly this does not describe all of the events in which I encountered, but it does hit on many of the big peaks and valleys.

Arriving was a rush, and I was surprised by how quickly I became independent. I can see now that Medina market scared me into believing in my own abilities. I remember meeting Ben on my first day in Hohoe and thinking that he was someone so different from anyone I’d ever known before in my life. I asked myself how I’d ever honestly get to know this person and I couldn’t come up with an answer. Days in Hohoe turned into weeks. My networks expanded, I found my footing, and I started feeling like I was functioning well on my own. Not long into my placement I began hitting walls I had never anticipated or had even known existed. I was trying to take off full speed ahead, but was continually brought back down to earth by a big heavy blanket called complexity. I started questioning my abilities and losing hope in my work. I teetered back and forth between being stagnated by scale, and seeking venues for optimism. I began investing a lot of time in my family. I found their acceptance and happiness comforting. I ran myself into the ground trying to explore opportunities in too many conflicting directions. I became a little jaded and had a chip on my shoulder at mid-placement retreat. I left and regretted it. I struggled for a period of time without a clear direction when what I really wanted was a tangible win. I eventually recognized that my contributions to the project’s direction would not be earth shattering. I travelled to many different areas around Ghana, learned an incredible amount about agriculture, and fell in love with the beauty of farming over and over again. I started feeling happy with the pace of my personal development. I recognized how powerful my personal relationships were on my perception of the progress of my placement. I started regretting not making more of myself available to my community. I spent my last week re-investing in my relationships in Hohoe and learning as much as possible from my individual connections there. I finished strong with work, but left realizing the personal impact I want to measure is not found in the bureaucratic side of development.

Right now, with my last few hours in Accra, I want to table my big questions, let myself simply enjoy being in this place, and come back to Canada brave, without answers, and looking forward to the incredible potential the future holds.

Thanks for reading,

Erin

Listmania

Friday August 13th 2010

10 Things I’m Surprised to Say…

1) I’ve made more solid friendships in 4 months overseas than I have in my entire time thus far at UNB
2) I’m more excited by thoughts of returning overseas than by thoughts of going home
3) I think that I’ll miss the taste of palm oil in all of my food
4) In only 4 months I’ve learned an incredible amount about management and organizational change
5) I’m more empathetic than ever to Ghanaian individuals who ask me for money
6) Cheesy R&B music now has a whole new meaning to me and I love it
7) Coming to Ghana has made me a more patriotic Canadian
8 ) Hohoe and its vibrant character feels more like home than ever I thought possible
9) Coming to Ghana has made me a (slightly) more relaxed person
10) I’ll miss Hohoe market, even if it does smell simultaneously of smoked fish, fermented maize, and urine

10 Things I’m looking forward to in Canada…

1) Choices
2) Re-connecting with the Canadian side of EWB, especially my chapter
3) Drinking delicious real coffee and tea without truckloads of sugar and condensed milk
4) Having access to multiple sources of credible information 24/7
5) Watching all of the EWBBC episodes I’ve missed
6) Spending time in New Brunswick with people and things I love
7) Recalibrating my healthy food meter
8 ) The crispness of the Fall season and all of its beautiful colors
9) Fast internet, tabbed browsing, regular email access
10) Living life with a relative level of anonymity

10 Things I won’t miss about Ghana..

1) The stink of sewers, open defecation, and street butchers often within a few meters of each other
2) The lack decent of customer service everywhere you go
3) Eating and drinking so many preservatives and artificial colorants
4) The more-often-than-not sketchiness of trotro travel
5) The general disregard for punctuality and time management
6) Disrespectful male Ghanaians who heckle me because I’m a young white female
7) Travelling on dusty roads for long enough that you arrive at your final destination covered in red dirt
8 ) The fact that the lights always seem to go off when I’m in a rush and quickly need to find something
9) Being an anomaly 24/7 and attracting ridiculous amounts of attention everywhere I go
10) Bathing with cold water day in and day out

10 Things I’m Thankful for..

1) My Ghanaian family and their openness to sharing, concern for my safety, and willingness to accept me for who I am
2) My coach/friend/mentor/ right hip, Colleen
3) The opportunity to work with so many different types of crops across Ghana
4) My miraculously good health over the past few months
5) Helpful Ghanaians. From navigating trotro stations, to getting a bike lift from a complete stranger, I’ve been incredibly blessed to meet SO many honest and helpful people
6) People back in Canada who have kept me grounded throughout this process
7) Foundation Learning and pre-departure training. Looking back these were both incredibly useful
8 ) My awesome counterpart Ben: at once a teacher, guide, role model, and friend
9) The opportunity to visit so many diverse communities across Ghana
10) Amazingly supportive friends

Thanks for reading,

Erin

Networks and Needs

Wednesday August 11th 2010

Q: If you had to pick one thing about Ghanaian life, culture etc. to bring back to Canada what would it be? In other words what can Canada learn from Ghana?

I’d like to start by saying that this was a really tough question for me to answer, for a multitude of reasons for that I’d prefer not to raise online. If you want to explore this question further, simply find me and ask when I’m back in Canada and I’ll be thrilled to continue the discussion. Also, hat tip to Duncan and Kaitlyn, both of whom helped me sort my thoughts out on this topic prior to posting.

A: Social networking: a phenomenon millions of Canadians think they know a lot about. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn— those places online where “friend” is more of a verb than a noun. In this post I want to talk about a different kind of social networking. One in which the friends are live and animated, the networks encompass entire communities, and the purpose of the network is multifaceted.

In Ghana, social dynamics are extremely important, and community member’s lives are often highly intertwined. Extended family networks are much more integrated into one unit than in Canada– it’s as fundamental as the physical layout of compound households. Multiple families live in the same place, so right away you have many people relying on each other every day to accomplish tasks. Kids grow up fast here, and are given responsibility at a much younger age than in Canada. On any given Saturday at my compound, you can find every member of this multi-family household sharing the burden of weekend chores. Young children will be fetching water and fanning charcoal stoves for the women who are making lunch, teenage girls will be washing everyone’s clothing from the past week. Often, 1 year old baby Akwa runs around, largely unattended, giggling and playing. When she gets into trouble or starts crying, it’s never her mother who rushes over– it’s Jessica, her 7 year old cousin. Jessica spends a disproportionate amount of time taking care of Akwa because both her mother and grandmother are too busy tending to other aspects of the household to do it themselves.

Social networking here is like weaving fabric. The more people you involve in your network, the more threads you weave into your social fabric and thus the more resilient and reliable that fabric becomes. One of the most prominent driving forces behind social networking here is financial security. Most people don’t have bank accounts with savings to draw on when someone dies, when someone is sick, or when a big purchase needs to be made. More often than not, you visit members of your community and they help you deal with these types of situations. People generally feel that what goes around comes around. They’re obliged to help their community members out now, so that when they need help down the line they’ll be able to receive it. Playing into the needs of your social network doesn’t always have to be in the form of leading money. It’s just as equally when a store owner hires his nephew instead of hiring whomever has the skills bests suited for the position, or when church members choose to patronize fellow church-members shops, regardless of the fact that those shops may have poor selection or low quality goods. People here depend on each other for success, and for better or for worse, that isn’t perceived as a weakness.

Most of the Ghanaian’s I’ve met have an inborn sense that values community, whereas in Canada I think we put limited emphasis on social fabric. It’s more like social patchwork, where the patches generally only encompass our immediate family. Someone in Canada is largely free to act however they wish in response to risks and shocks, taking into account the needs and wants of only their immediate family. This provides a greater amount of space in which the individual can realistically act without repercussion— people can change professions, move to far away places for school, or take time off from work to focus on other areas of personal development with their actions only directly affecting their immediate family.

I’m not trying to say that in Canada we should learn to let 7 year old children babysit toddlers or that we should start distributing our personal wealth to extended family members. However, I do think that there are lessons we can learn from communal living. People here don’t try to do it all, to be everything to everyone, to control each and every aspect of their lives. Social networks share burdens– be it a weeks worth of washing, school fees, child rearing, or funeral costs. In Canada, we’re quick to try to do it all– in our own personal cars, with personally hired babysitters and nannies, with pre-made dinners and individually wrapped lunches. Maybe if we slowed down enough to really know our neighbours, colleagues, and community members we’d find that we can improve each other’s lives by sharing the weight of our commitments. Maybe efficiency doesn’t always have to mean doing things on your own.

Thanks for reading,

Erin

An International Achilles’ Heel

Tuesday August 3rd 2010

In this post I’d like to share some of the big picture issues I’m seeing in development as well as some of the recent questions I’ve been asking myself. These thoughts are my own and aren’t necessarily shared by EWB Canada, my Ghanaian partner organization, or any of the other individuals with whom I’m working. Also, keep in mind that the opinions presented in this post are reflective of three months of personal experience with agriculture value chain work in Ghana, and may not be aligned with the experience and/or opinions of individuals in other segments of the development industry.

I’m working on a small piece of an agriculture development project, which in itself represents a very small piece of the development industry. Because of the nature of my placement, I’ve been able to learn a lot about three different levels of this project’s hierarchy– field realities, middle management nuances, and overall project implementation. I think this has been one of the most exciting aspects of my placement, as I’ve been able to learn from different sources of information, triangulate, and form my own hypotheses.

Now that I have three months of learnings under my belt, I’ve started to compare and contrast these different sources of information. When I look at the operating conditions and assumptions for both the agriculture development industry and my field-level work, however, I see very different, disconnected pictures. Recently, I’ve found this tension confusing as I’ve struggled to map out and attempt to understand some of the complexities of Ghana’s agriculture development industry.

Development projects occupy a small sphere within the larger sphere of the development industry. I think of it using a Russian doll analogy, where the development industry is the largest doll, implementing organizations are mid-sized dolls, and development projects are one of the smaller dolls stacked inside. Sticking to this analogy, the differences I see between the big doll and the smaller dolls is perplexing. It’s like someone has taken multiple different Russian doll sets and mixed them all up, such that the outside doll is stacked with multiple mismatched smaller dolls inside.

Let’s zoom in on a piece of what I’m working on. A portion of my work advocates for competitive advancements within the agro-input industry in Ghana. This means that we seek out willing partners amongst the many unspecialized, small-scale agro-chemical entrepreneurial initiatives, and support their adoption of competitive business tactics. Ultimately the goal is that the success of the few entrepreneurs with whom we’ve partnered will prompt industry copycats to shift their business practices similarly in order to stay in the game. Over time, the hope is that the agro-input industry will move towards a state where behaviours like risk taking, innovating, and searching for strategies that benefit their clients, are rewarded and result in an industry that sees continual business upgrading as a competitive edge. Despite the setbacks I’ve seen in my work, I believe in the approach and am optimistic about the scale of its impact.

Now, let’s zoom out. Picture the entire agriculture development system in Ghana– inclusive of everyone from big donor agencies like CIDA and USAID, to small local NGOs, to the Ghanaian government. International development practitioners rarely seem to fully agree with one another, but from my experience one topic goes without debate: human development is complex, context-specific, and dynamic. Additionally, development is further complicated by the ineffectiveness of the aid industry. In Ghana, agriculture focused aid initiatives distort aspects of the private sector, making it less likely actors will engage in commercial trade. Initiatives like free seed to maize farmers or subsidized fertilizer to rice farmers are examples of this.

The aid industry is rife with ‘entrepreneurs’—splinter organizations who write project proposals filled with new jargon to appear innovative to the big donors, who often distribute funding based on the organization’s perceived level of sophistication, creativity, and willingness to be flexible. However, it appears to me that are no overarching mechanisms in place through which implementing organizations compete based on their results. Because this isn’t happening, comparable data is often unavailable to members within the development system, thus removing our ability to classify and interpret industry-wide results. And thus, in my estimation, it’s currently extremely difficult to tell what approaches have or have not worked. If our industries aren’t learning from each other, valuing knowledge sharing, or feeling pressure to upgrade approaches, I have a hard time seeing wherein lies the incentives to improve the development industry.

If the system is not complimentary to its components, it’s not surprising to me the industry is often ambiguous, and that failed projects tend to outnumber the successes. In my opinion, the enabling environment for success in agriculture development projects is absent– innovation and upgrading aren’t going to happen organically because no one (both internal and external to the system) is putting consistent, unified, unwavering pressure on the industry to value context-specific, knowledge driven interventions, to be accountable to its mistakes, or to dynamically manage the course of its trajectory such that the probability of project success increases over time.

I have a few questions to share that I have recently been exploring. Feel free to respond to any of the following:

Set One: Is international development a service based industry? If so, what services are being rendered and to whom? If it is a service based industry, what has allowed industry progression such that the service recipients have little choice what types of services are rendered or how they are delivered, and such that recipients lack the mechanisms to provide critical feedback to the service provider?

Set Two: Is the aid industry both too complex and too distorted to repair, or are there solutions to the system’s challenges that haven’t been explored/implemented/supported? Do we have too many cooks in the kitchen, and if so what would streamlining aid look like? Alternatively, what effect would increasing competitiveness amongst actors internal to the aid system have on our beneficiaries? What are the set of incentives that would help translate competitiveness into to better service delivery?

Set Three: What can and/or should we do to address the systemic flaws within the development industry that stand in the way of making real, sustainable, healthy progress at the community level in Africa? What are the trade offs in working from the bottom up verses from the top down in agriculture development? Realistically, where is EWB best positioned for impact?

Thanks for reading,

Erin

Life Just Happens

Friday July 30th 2010

A miscellaneous update of noteworthy things that I encountered this week while spending time with field staff. This week’s theme: encounters with animal friends.

On Wednesday I got to see my first snake in Ghana. Now, being one who really doesn’t like snakes, I was relieved when I found out it was dead. The men crowding around it didn’t disclose that at first, though. They simply said: “Obruni, I have a surprise for you!!!!! Please, won’t you take it back to America?” I was walking along the side of the road, talking to Duncan on the phone when I was hastily introduced to my 6 ft long python friend. I promptly hung up the phone, corrected them on the fact that I’m not an American, and snapped these photos:

They wanted to chop off a piece of the python for me to eat, but I really wasn’t up for that so I politely refused. If you look closely at the photos, you can see that they killed the snake by strangling it with fishing line. I’m still trying to figure out how they went about doing that.

This week I spent a lot of time out in rice fields. After a few months in Ghana I’ve realized that rice fields are where I’m the happiest, so it was wonderful to be out learning and exploring. Every time I’m on a new rice field I fall in love again with the stunning shades of vibrant green.

The fields I visited in Ashaiman were about one week away from being harvested. As you can see from the images, the grains of rice are fully mature on the rice stalks. Farmers are now waiting for the rice to dry under the sun– a task made more complicated by the presence of birds. Now, to an inexperienced wannabe farmer like myself, these birds are really interesting. They are incredibly beautiful, with bright red and yellow feather, and are quite mesmerizing to watch. But, according to my farming friend Dieumaime (literal translation from French to English: God loves me), these little birds can “chop an acre of rice in 30 minutes”. Bad news! Basically, the birds swoop around eating lots of rice grains, and the farmers really don’t appreciate it. So, what do they do?

They make little balls out of clay, load up their sling shots, and shoot at the birds to scare them off their fields. They do all of these things while yelling “AWAY!” frequently and loudly. I witnessed about an hour of this process and can report that it works with only marginal success, as the birds just flock to a neighbouring field until the neighbour shoots at them, and then they fly right back to the original field.

Pictured above is my first canine friend in Ghana, Goldie, looking lovely on the beach. She lives at the guesthouse I stayed at in Prampram. Definitely no rabies here, just an incredibly friendly, happy old girl. The guesthouse owner, featured in the 3rd picture with his dogs, spoke to me briefly about his life and how he came to start this guesthouse. Apparently they had high hopes that this area of Ghana would become a tourist center in the 90s, so he and his family took a risk and built this guesthouse. However, poor maintenance of the beach conditions have kept tourists away, and subsequently he hasn’t made the fortune he dreamt of. He lives on site with his wife, their children, and their grandchildren, most of whom are employed at the guesthouse. They enjoy the peaceful lifestyle of living on the coast, and have continued hope that in the coming years Ghana’s tourism industry will pick up.

Thanks for reading,

Erin

Pockets of Wonderful

Saturday July 24th 2010

Tongor-Dzemeni is the most fascinating place I’ve been to in the world. Located about a 90 minute trotro ride south-west of Ho, it’s the largest open air market in the Volta region.

Walking around I felt like all I could see were stark contrasts. At times I was surrounded by white sand, petrified wood, and hundreds of people trading bulked supplies and livestock. The desiccated landscape had a brutal, industrial feel that make me feel as if I was walking through a conflict zone. Of course I wasn’t, but it somehow felt that way.

As you walk through the crowd of merchants towards toward Lake Volta, the scenery nearly does a 180. The sky is a perfect cerulean blue over the crystal clear body of fresh water. The shoreline is dotted with colourful wooden boats packed with everything and everyone, from oxen and sheep to bags of charcoal and market women. The market is a busy hub of commerce, and many individuals from Eastern region travel to participate. This involves making a 3 hour trek by boat across Lake Volta, which separates a portion of Volta and Eastern regions, to take part in the business. I can only imagine what an adventure the multi-hour journey in a cramped fishing boat with livestock, foodstuffs, and household goods would be.

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The Tongor-Dzemeni shoreline was alive and energetic. Wherever you looked, the vibrant colors of busy people doing business would meet your glaze. Women approached boats as they arrived at the shoreline, selling the tired passengers sachets of water, fried dough, or salted fish. There were scores of oxen, sheep, and goats tied to branches bidding their time before an inevitable slaughtering. Women selling beautiful material, used clothing, and handmade sandals had shops lined in the sand.

Being so close to sand and water reminded me of summers spent in Shediac, New Brunswick, which was for a moment mildly comforting. It was interesting to connect to Lake Volta based on my upbringing in Atlantic Canada, because culturally, the two locations are worlds apart.

Although I spent only a few hours getting to know this open air marketplace, I left knowing it was the most complex, dramatic, interesting place I’ve ever been.

Thanks for reading,

Erin

An Inconvienient Truth

Thursday July 22nd 2010

“Ben, look up at the sky! It’s an incredibly clear night; you can see so many stars.” I say, half in awe, half excited by the buffet of stars before my eyes. My counterpart Benedictus and I walk down a pothole-filled path outside of town, blackened by recent nightfall in the absence of street lights. As often occurs in unsuspecting moments such as this one, I’m struck by the natural beauty around me. “Oh really?” Ben replies, in his usual tone: a mix of playful humour and innocence. “I wouldn’t even have noticed.”

I’m constantly surprised by how little attention Ghanaians pay to the beauty of their country. Easy for me to say though, as I’ve been lucky enough to see various different countries of the world, and thus have multiple reference points. Many Ghanaians I’ve met have little to no travel experience within their country, let alone internationally. But, these things aside, I’ve seen that Ghanaians put little thought into the environmental consequences resulting from their actions and habits, and subsequently don’t prioritize environmental upkeep and protection.

If Ghanaians really knew what a jewel they had, would they be less likely to throw plastic bags of trash out of trotro windows? Would it be less common for me to walk home from work smelling the sickly sweet smell of burning plastic? Would community members push harder for environmentally conscious behaviour changes?

When I first came to Ghana I was shocked and, quite frankly, appalled by two things: lack of environmental regulations, and the apathetic attitudes and behaviours often exerted by Ghanaians towards their natural habitat. I distinctly remember whizzing through Accra in a taxi, nauseated by the thick layer of exhaust fumes seemingly floating over the road, and thinking to myself: “This can’t be real. A country where millions of citizens rely on the environment for the success of their agriculture projects, and this is how we’re treating the environment!?”

Where do these unsafe, environmentally compromising vehicles come from? Why are they allowed here? I’m certainly no expert, but I do know that they come from rich ‘developed’ countries via exportation. Exportation is a complex industry unto itself– one that I can’t claim to understand now, but that I’m eager to learn more about.

I picture car exportation this way– it’s sort of like if you were to buy a sweater you love and decided to wear it every single day for a year. At year’s end, your sweater has seen better days and you’re tired of wearing it. So what do you do? You give it to your younger brother, who is small enough that the sweater will fit, albeit probably not well. He also isn’t likely to complain about how nasty your sweater is, having been worn for 365 days. He’s probably just going to put it on and go play in a sandbox, happy to be covered from the elements. Meanwhile, you’re quite relieved to have gotten rid of your dirty old sweater, and are likely already on your way to go replace it with a newer, cleaner, more stylish version. To me, rich countries dumping used cars in Africa is kind of like you giving your soiled clothes to a younger sibling. And so it goes, Ghana ends up with a plethora of junky cars spitting out thick, black smoke across its countryside.

This year Ghana’s farmers have been incredibly frustrated with the changes they are seeing in the weather patterns, and how it is negatively impacting their yields. These two extremes, one of thoughtless destruction and one of heavy reliance, currently co-exist in Ghana. But, I have to ask myself how much longer they can afford to sweep these pressing environmental issues under the rug.

Ghanaians are proud people who love Ghana, that’s certainly true. But, much to my dismay and heartbreak, protecting their environment doesn’t factor in to that. I can’t help but wonder how different things would be if it did.

Thanks for reading,

Erin

Slow Glass

Saturday July 17th 2010

I’ve been silent for a while. There have been a few reasons behind that, and I think it’s about time I try to explain why. I want to open up about the less romantic, less pretty, less digestible side of my overseas experience so that you have a more accurate representation of what I’m going through. But first, I’ll start with a visual representation where the past two weeks have taken me.



The first reason behind my online absence has been purely logistical. The past few weeks have seen me spend more hours in busses than ever before in my life. If memory and my calculations serve me correctly, I’m closing in on my 50th bus hour in just over two weeks. Now, I’m not actually complaining about this– I’ve spent many quality hours with EWBers lately because of these bus trips. But, travelling frequently has resulted in me not having had much personal time to think and write for my blog.

The second reason behind my silence is more complicated, and took me a lot longer to figure out. I’ve found myself in an emotional and mental funk recently, and it has affected my ability to feel like I can connect with my in-Canada audience. Up until this point, I’ve made a point of communicating back my big realizations and success stories. I’ve felt less comfortable talking about the murky transition space, with both high and low moments, which occupies the path between each clean, crisp story. I’ve realized that I haven’t been giving my audience enough credit, and that I’m ready to be a little more vulnerable with my writing when I feel like communicating about the harder aspects of being overseas.

I didn’t recognize it right away, but recently I’ve been actively looking for hope. The problem was, I was looking for a big piece of it. I was inadvertently making things harder on myself by feeling like I had to find a big, cathartic external source of hope to re-clarify my motivations for being here. The longer I searched, the closer I felt to two very big, very scary D words: disengagement and disillusionment. I was still going about my life as I normally would, but I felt a bubbling sense of urgency inside me that really bothered me, but I couldn’t nail down why.

After giving myself the time and space to seriously reflect on what has been triggering my sense of confusion, I’ve made progress towards bridging the emotional gap between where I’ve been recently, and where I see myself being the happiest, most productive, and most engaged. As is normally the way with periods of searching and reflection, I’ve learnt a lot about what I need in my life to feel balanced, and what type of tensions result in my feeling out of whack. The realizations I’ve come to know are quite valuable to me, but the path towards reaching them has been a messy, long, and tiring one. It has resulted in me missing opportunities recently— both with connecting back to Canada and with connecting to people in Ghana– and for that I’m really sorry.

Anyway, all of this just to say that I’m mentally back in the blogging game, and hope to continue posting consistently from here on out.

Thanks for reading,

Erin

Twofold

Friday July 2nd 2010

This post will be broken into two segments– the first for the two questions of the week, and the second for a photo-guided update of a few fun things that have taken place recently.

Questions of the Week

Q: What do you look forward to when you wake up?

A: I look forward to the fact that I’m working off of a clean slate, that I can anticipate new interactions with people to learn from, and that, as long as I keep an open mind, I’m unbound by yesterday’s challenges and frustrations. I also look forward to the small pleasures each day undoubtedly brings, like trying new food from interesting street vendors, shaking hands with colleagues that I trust and admire, and meeting new and exciting value chain actors through work. But really, I think most of all I look forward to the moments, the people, and the stories that occupy the unpredictable space in between what I woke up expecting to see and do, and what I realize I’ve actually experienced at the end of the day.

Q: What’s your favourite food in Ghana?

Ghana has lots of interesting foods (see Amir’s recent post for details), but I think my favourite so far has been a dish called Red-Red. Red-Red is composed of two things: kidney beans in a palm oil and pepe sauce plus a side of delicious fried plantain. Sadly I haven’t been able to find it consistently in Hohoe, so it’s a rare treat when I travel to a larger city and can order it. Most days when I’m cooking my own dinner I eat beans and gari (shredded, roasted cassava) with an onion, pepe, and tomato stew.

Small Small Update from Ghana

Last Wednesday, Trevor, the JF program manager, came to visit me in Hohoe. We had a spectacular time exploring the Wli Waterfalls outside of Hohoe, and climbing Akpafu Mountain. Besides acting like a tourist for essentially the first time since I’ve arrived, I also had a chance to share what I’m currently learning, some of my challenges, and receive new ideas for moving forward. Great time overall.

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We travelled down to Accra on Friday to watch the Ghana vs. Uruguay game with my coach Colleen and a few other EWBers. Accra was absolutely wild with excitement and nervous energy leading up to the game, which was pretty neat to experience. We watched it on a big screen in Osu, in a crowd of about 500 people, decked out head to toe (literally.. there was face paint!) in Ghanaian gear. Despite the games heartbreaking outcome, it was really fun to enjoy the festivities and to soak up the atmosphere in Accra.

This coming Tuesday I’ll head up to Tamale for the JF mid-placement retreat at Mole National Park. I’m super pumped to reconnect with the other JFs, and to spend time diving into how I can make the second half of my placement even more impact-filled than the first. I likely won’t be updating until the retreat is over, but guaranteed I’ll have tons of new pictures and stories to share once I return.

Remember that I’m looking for you to send questions for me to answer next week, so please feel free to do so!

Thanks for reading,

Erin

All in the Family

Tuesday June 29th 2010

When I stop and think about how much my life in Ghana has changed since my arrival, I can’t help but feel really happy. I, like many of the other JFs I’ve spoken to, feel like I’ve finally found my niche in Hohoe. It’s inevitable to feel like an anomaly when you’re first exposed to a new culture and a new way of life, but I think one of the most rewarding aspects of the JF program is being able to surpass that, to feel like you belong, and to ultimately recognize the importance of understanding the realities of those we work for if we hope to be effective development workers.

When I first moved into my compound home in Hohoe, I felt quite out of place. Everyone was watching my every move. Women would talk amongst themselves as I attempted to wash my clothes, and eventually would come over to show me how it was properly done. If I gave even the slightest indication that I was about to start cooking, the kids would rush into my room, grab my charcoal stove, matches, and fan and begin setting everything up. These are kids, all under the age of 10, telling me I didn’t know what I was doing and that I should watch how it was done. On top of these theatrics, women would periodically come and check my cooking to make sure I knew what I was doing– turns out, most times I didn’t. I often felt like I had reverted back to a former childhood state whereby I had to be taught absolutely everything all over again.

There were many occasions where I had to bite my tongue to refrain from saying “I know what I’m doing; I’m not incompetent at taking care of myself. If you just gave me two seconds to prove it, you’d see what I mean.” Thankfully I never actually blurted this out, and instead mustered up as much patience as possible when other people interjected their methods into my life.

Now, I’m happy to say things have changed. I feel like I have a place to come home to after work where my presence is truly appreciated. The kids call me Sister Erin as opposed to Yevo. We play games together and read books on dinosaurs and the Titanic. I feel like I’ve grown into my role as their older sister– when the kids are being too loud or disruptive, I tell them to quiet down like their mothers do. When someone starts crying and their mother is absent, I try my best to remedy their situation. Granted, I still feel like I have a long way to go before fully gaining the trust of everyone in this giant multi-family household, but I can tell now that I’ve taken steps in the right direction.

The only girl my age in the compound, Zina, helped me immensely in making the transition from outsider to insider. She immediately took me under her wing, and has proven indispensible on many diverse topics, such as how to dance in an Evangelical church, where to buy a cooking pot for GHC5, and how to walk past the washing bay without having Ghanaian boys disturb you. Finding simple topics to bond over with Zina and her family instantly took me from feeling like a science experiment, to feeling like a long lost friend.

When I first arrived, my coach gave me a great piece of advice: Act like you belong, and eventually you will. If you’re someone who will find yourself immersed in a new culture in the future, my advice to you is to re-read that line and commit it to memory.

In general people will treat you like you don’t belong until you give them reasonable evidence to the contrary. This isn’t to say that people will be unpleasant to you– Ghanaians are among the most welcoming and selfless people I’ve ever met. But, if you don’t show genuine interest in building real relationships with those you meet, you’ll never advance past the visitor barrier and won’t truly feel a sense of belonging. Purposefully investing your time in the lives of your family members goes a really, really long way towards getting you comfortable with your surroundings, building honest, trusting relationships, and letting those around you see who you are and what you value.

If one thing is certain, it’s that coming to Africa doesn’t make you an African. I’ve come to realize that even if I commit my life to development in Africa, it will never surmount that I was born and raised in Canada. Because of my upbringing, I will always have more options available to me that my African counterparts. But, coming here has also reminded me that no matter where you go, you take yourself with you.

When I reflect on this, I realize that this is an incredible opportunity for connecting Canadians to Africa. We spend time learning about Ghana– enjoying the culture, listening to stories, and becoming appreciated members of our families– so that when we return home, we can share the beauty and stories of Ghana: a new facet of the ever changing, multidimensional people we are.

Thanks for reading,

Erin