My Life

2008-06-06T04:20:00.003-04:00

Identity

2008-05-28T22:41:00.002-04:00

I've had an epiphany, all my life I've wanted to be really good at one thing. My fate would be sealed by my prodigy status...or at least the next couple of years. But what I really wanted was an identity because it's difficult having one when you are interested in doing so many things. The benefit of searching through inadequacies is perspective. I don't need to be defined by my music, style, talents, politics....I can now handle my identity as being more fluid, depending on the time and place and knowing that it will always be infinitely mutable as I continue to grow. I've grown into my shoes so to speak.

2007-02-05T03:26:00.000-05:00

The bright light of idealism shines harshly on eyes that see beyond yet willful cynicism binds those eyes so they do not see...rage..rage against the dying of the light

Why I hate baseball

2007-01-12T20:10:00.000-05:00

I've always hated baseball with a passion....but i never could quite figure out why. It seemed so strange that I would become irrationally irritated over a group of guys in tight pants standing around trying to catch a ball while getting paid millions of dollars....oh wait that is irritating.

But, I think what irritates me more is why people enjoy baseball. Baseball is a sport of quantifiable movements. Of cause and effect, of predictability. Everything is planned to happen and everyone is in their position waiting for that ball to be hit to them so they will be lucky enough to catch. But life is not like baseball. Life is strategic, full of chance and fluid. Kind of like soccer (lol couldn't resist).

Watching baseball is thinking in quantifiable measurements where things happen in an appropriate regulated sort of way. Where there are countless things to measure and to compare to other measurements like RBIs, bases stolen and who know what else. This is how people live life sometimes. Measuring stocks, bonds, investments in the global economy and living life according to those measurements. Measurements of success, measurements of wealth. Where instead there is so much more to life that is not quantifiable in numerical data to be compared and contrasted. Living in such a confined existence, being given security by numbers, being assured control through predictability seems like a meaningless fruitless existence. I live to be a contrast to a numerical existence. Let me hear the symphony and feel the colors.

Baseball , for some reason unknown to me, represents a blind existence of self-satisfaction and myopic thinking. Never questioning, never learning outside of what is being taught, never aspiring to more than can possibly be. Baseball is an affront to values which I hold at my core, freedom, strength of will and openness of being.

This is just a silly rant about nothing really. I don't hold it against anybody if they like baseball (well not too much anyways) I just really, really hate baseball

Change

2006-12-17T21:38:00.000-05:00

December 11th
I'm just realizing that my life is going to be changing significantly in the future....ok so Wow that's a new revelation....isn't the future always supposed to change :) But I think I'll be entering a new stage in life...moving out of the safe bubble that is York and into a new world on a new and exciting path. I feel like I'm at the top of a roller coaster where the last two years have been spent chugging my way up to the top where you see all the possibilities of the paths ahead. Well, on a roller coaster you only have one path really but the feeling your stomach of what the hell was I thinking when I got on this ride ?!! is pretty much the same. Things are going to change a lot. Next year somewhere in Africa then onto a Masters Program hopefully in Amsterdam or Monterey CA and then who knows where, UN internship? Government work, PhD. ....All I know is it's going to be the scariest roller coaster ride I've ever taken.

Ray of Hope

2006-10-01T18:12:00.000-04:00

It always seems like when I become completely disillusioned because of my own pessimism something happens to remind me that hey it's not so bad. I won the International Development Studies Honour Award for 250$ given to one 4th year in IDS. It's nice to be recognized when I'm applying to a bunch of things that might or might not want me:) Anyway, that's all for now, I'm in the midst of an application

Jaded yet Optimistic

2006-10-01T18:11:00.000-04:00

September 18th

The unltimate cruelty of development. Over the ages billions of human beings have lived and died, unconscious of the world around them and the lives of those in far and distant places. There point of reference in society was what their neighbour was doing, what was going on a few farms down the way. Sameness of activity bread a fair, equal inclusive society even though that society perhaps endured hardships beyond our imagination. Reading and writing is less important if nobody can do it or if that ability has little impact on everday life. When the average life expectancy is 50 years old or everyone dies from this particular undiagnosed disease then that's life and we can accept that. When we or they are dying at 50 and we live until 80 due to different accesses to medical treatment and nutrition, when the disease is called AIDS and you are only sentenced when you can not afford the treatment...then it becomes unbearable. The ultimate cruelty of development is making promises, whether explicity or implicitly, that it can not or does not keep. The transformation of a world full of global individuals implies equal opportunity, access and rights through necessary measures of balancing historical priviledge and deprivation. But it also creates an invisible wall between the undeveloped and developed which now both are aware of. Instead of looking inwards and changing what is in our grasp our eyes are drawn to the other side of that wall and what lies beyond. Like those bad infomercials promising extreme weightloss in 3 days we are buying into instant fix development promises instead of the lifetime gym membership full of sacrifice and discipline.

Returning thoughts

2006-10-01T18:09:00.000-04:00

September 3rd, 2006

So I’m sitting here, kind of alone although not really lonely, missing the ever present number of people coming and going and doing their daily thing. There are those same people here yet because we live in apartments with walls and solid doors and windows that look outside instead of inside you have to make a concerted effort to feel included in the mix. An effort I might add that I am horrible at actually making, call it laziness, I procrastinate on people. I’m trying to take stock of my summer, what did it mean, what didn’t it mean? Why didn’t it mean what I thought it should have meant? Did I mention I tend to over analyze things…. All I know is that when someone ask me the question of “how was your summer” I numbly and dumbly answer “Great!” and then stare at them blankly while thousands of images come into my head of people smiling, Binta the sweetest little girl in the world who would always come and hold my hand, Zenabou a friend with whom I shared many nights, and a guy named Pope, my would be husband, who could make anybody laugh. After a few seconds of reverie I silently berate myself for not having a more intelligent answer, a more EWB analytical, promotional, or clarificative answer or an answer that would make my experience mean something to those people who dare ask the question….”How was Ghana?” Reality is, I’m not even sure what spending 3 months in the upper most reaches of North Eastern Ghana really meant to me, and how I see development. Frustrating, since I’ve spent the last year and a half studying the damn subject, not to be able to come up with something that makes sense to people and most importantly to me.

The thing is…I’m sure all my professors and EWB national office staff will start to cringe….I’m not sure what development really is in the practical daily grind of it all. Is it providing services, improving communities, enhancing livelihoods, empowering women…they all sound good on paper but show up in a rural community saying “I’ve come to enhance your livelihood, improve your community, provide you with services and empower your women” and they would perk up and ask “What am I going to get out of it?” Not exactly the kind of attitude you want to promote to lead to the creation of an empowered, independent, self directed, and free society. So how do you create freedom within a society….not freedom of the individual but freedom of the society, and all those who reside within it, to self-determine their collective identity and values? A culture of ownership

I was talking to Ian Green, the master of McLaughlin College where I am currently a Don, on a boat cruise around downtown Toronto. He studies democracy and ethics in the Political Science Department at York. His ideas of democracy are the creation of a society where each individual is free to articulate themselves and an atmosphere that facilitates all members contributing to the creation of their society. So then development should be about helping create that type of society where everyone has the power, economic, political and social power to contribute and change things to their collective will. A lot easier said than done unfortunately and ever more so, I don’t think it can come from an outside influence. The energy, direction, focus, all must be organic…of course organic movements are open to influence….Circle….maybe I’m missing something.

My internet works faster, I can actually see pictures, and I don’t have to hand wash anymore but I kind of miss all that. I miss fetching water from the well and getting excited by rain because it meant free water from the sky…like a gift. There was something rhythmic and kind of soothing once you got in the rhythm of washing your clothes…not that I would actually leap to do it unless I was on my very last pair of underpants. There is also something quite nice about being disconnected, or at least not as easily connected to the rest of the world. Reality becomes simpler as you only have to deal with what is in your immediate scope. The barrage of advertisements, news, information, stereotypes is all muted, making it easier to tune out when necessary or desired and focus on the task at hand. I perpetually feel lazy here, like I’m not doing enough either because of the modern conveniences that make our lives easy or because my work here is entirely self motivated. Even though it may not seem that way, in the end it is since I’m not connected to a community or the improvement of an immediate community.

All I can say, in response to the “raised eyebrows” or “Awesomes” of me saying “I spent my summer in northern Ghana” is that I was just doing what I could to help people. It wasn’t about development or integration or even learning something, it was seeing a place where I could be of service and then doing what I could do in the space and time I had. You can get the same feeling of satisfaction by volunteering, helping out people in your own communities or others nearby. I feel no different than anyone who volunteers for Habitat for Humanity, the United Way etc. although I went all the way the Ghana to do it. This begs the question, if volunteering in Ghana is the same as volunteering at home and true change or development in society needs to be organic, then what was I doing there in the first place? I still hold on to the three things (thank you Louis) that I learned at the mid-term retreat. “Western” volunteers bring 1) Western skills i.e. Computers, organization, presentations, creativity 2) A non-partisan attitude to the work 3) Energy and enthusiasm for what they do. I just hope those things that I was able to bring to the table with my NGO, my community, and my host family were worth the 6000$ it cost to send and sustain me for 3 & ½ months and I really desperately hope that I can make it worth EWB’s time and resources at my chapter and at the national office who have invested so much in me and expect me to bring so much back in return.

2006-07-13T10:48:00.000-04:00

So I thought I'd post a little description of what I'm doing here, I should have done it awhile ago but better late than never.

ZOVFA, Zuuri Organic Vegetable
Farmers Association is a small local NGO in a smaller town that you'll
never find on the maps, although that's where I live. I'm about 100m
away from the office which is great, no commute, although they said me
to use a bicycle to get to work because they said the walk was too
far. All the staff have motorcycles and live in towns near by or along
the roadside where there is electricity. I work with 9 staff although
I see only about 6 of them regularily as the others do field work
further away from Zuuri.

There are about 9 different projects that my NGO is involved in but
since the staff overlap so much and they are in different levels of
implementation I do what I can. I'm working more right now in
capacity building with the staff itself and therefore the organisation
as a whole. I figured this would be more effective because all the
field officers are have great relationships with the farmers and
communities they work with.

The biggest constraint of the people I work with is their computer
skills. They all hand write reports, budgets, proposals and then hand
them to the accounts officer who has his own work. Often the only
reason things are late is because they didn't get typed or formatted.
I found out about a government communication centre with computers in
it and have set up training from 5-7 3 nights a week for the ZOVFA
staff. It is great fun, especially when someone laughs hysterically
when all the letters disappear because they have rested on the return
key :) I am working on a proposal between ZOVFA and the centre to
purchase bulk hours a month so that the staff can come in and work on
their reports. First though I need to build their skills in
computers, most of whom have never used one, so that they can actually
do their administrative work.

I really love the people I work with, they are such good friends and
so sincere. They call it the ZOVFA family

I also trained the staff on how to use their digital camera that they
got through a project to improve reporting. Unfortunately the NGO
that provided the camera did not provide training on how to use it or
appropriate batteries. I'm still doing an evaluation of the training
to see if the staff have all the skills to take great pictures and
download them into the computer.

I've also been assisting in writing some strongly worded assertive
letters to various Big NGO parteners such as Oxfam and Technoserve.A
lot of time the way the project is run is driven by the mandates of
bigger NGOs and donors and not by the common sense, past experience
and local understanding of smaller NGOs. The letters are letting some
of the bigger NGOs know that their practices are not always the best
practices for the implementation of the local NGO.

Hopefully, I'll be working on establishing a filing system for the
office. Right now a lot of the program files don't have a place to go
so hopefully we can figure things out a little bit. It's pretty time
consuming work though and not high on my motivation list....filing
dusty files blah!

I'm also running a facilitation workshop near the end of July, it
keeps getting pushed back :) But I think now the dates are set
because I've requested the food to be made. The meetings here tend to
go on forever!! without a break. I don't know how much of that I can
change but at least it's a start.

Communications

2006-07-08T18:58:00.000-04:00

June 10, 2006

Communication

Hi everyone, I ended up staying in Bawku town for the weekend and now it's raining Yay!!! The third time this week!!! so we can't leave the internet cafe... perfect time for me to catch up on some blogging and reporting!! Becky, the program officer working on Domestic Violence and Civil Rights at ZOVFA came so we could get our hair braided together in town. First we had to buy hair and then we ran into the Madam who braids so luckily she had time for us. Now I have a lot more hair on my head so my neck has to get used to it, my ponytail won't even fit into one hand!! I ended up staying at Becky's place last night as she lives in town and wanted to watch the world cup match between Trinidad Tobego and Sweden and then Ivory Coast and Argentina.It was hard to know who to cheer for...so today we stayed in for a while and then came out to the cafe.

I've been meaning to write a follow up on the Oxfam situation and then also include another story concerning MYAP the Multi Year Approach Progam.

The MYAP program is another interesting story is large NGOs following their own agenda without much consultation at the ground level. ZOVFA submitted an annual budget and action plan to MYAP almost 6 months ago detailing the activities they would carry out and have yet to receive feedback or funding. Yet MYAP has been visiting the communities that ZOVFA works with, without their knowledge, and implementing some of the things on their plan. The greatest uproar was caused when MYAP wanted to introduce a trial of hybrid maize on one hectare of a farmer's land.
Hybrid seeds contain a terminator gene which does not allow the plant to produce seed for the next year meaning that the farmer always has to buy the seed from the company.

They said they would supply all the fertilizer, pesticide and seed that the farmer would need for the first year to do this trial hoping that when the other farmers saw the higher yield they would want to follow suite. ZOVFA, being an organization
opposed to the use of agro-chemicals, was opposed to these trials and said they would not support them in the communities. This is the classic story of how GMOs and hybrids were advertised in the 1970s which is what makes this story even worse. Large companies would supply everything for the first year for free. The farmer would get a higher yield that year but the following year they would have to buy all the input- seeds, chemicals etc- to grow their crops. Fertilized crops deplete the soil so every year the farmer would need to buy more and more chemicals to have the same yield. After a few years, if they could not afford to buy all the chemicals and such the land is so depleted that the farmer cannot switch back to traditional farming means. The farmer is then dependent on chemicals or has to go through a long process of returning the nutrients lost to the soil. This is a very brief explanation of the complex issue of agro-business and how the world market has monopolized the farming resources of the world but as you can see it is a serious issue. Worse yet is that MYAP wanted ZOVFA to select communities for them to initiate this hybrid maize trial
without actually consulting with them or the communities. If you can imagine being a farmer struggling to make ends meet someone willing to give you even a year's worth of seed seems like a good idea. Within ZOVFA we are trying to make a song telling people about the danger of using hybrid and GMO crops. The song can be preformed at community meetings by Jango singers to get the word out so that farmers can make informed choices

Anyway, so on May 25th Philip and ZOVFA called a big meeting between Oxfam, ZOVFA and all the suppliers concerned. This included ISP (the supplier of the carts and ploughs), ITFC (the supplier for the organic mango initiative including the large Polytanks), New Energy (who were responsible for digging wells), one of the project officers for Oxfam, the ZOVFA staff and respresentative from each of the four communities. It was quite an interesting meeting to say the least as each partner had a different story of what was happening. The Oxfam director seemed at least to be very responsive to the concerns being raised and admitted making some mistakes. Unfortunately for ZOVFA Bernard Azure, our program officer for the Oxfam ILP Integrated Livelihoods Program was not at the meeting.

Concerning the price lists for all the materials, they had been emailed to Bernard (Ben) whose email account had gone inactive because he had not used it. Therefore all the info emailed had not been received by ZOVFA. A total price list and inventory list had not been sent out though which is something that ZOVFA was requesting. They also wanted to know what the supplies were being used for and how they should be distributed because often supplies would come without any instructions on who was going to pay for them, either the farmers or Oxfam. Now they are going to be emailed to both Ben and Philip so at least someone will get them. I also went with Ben to set up a new email account but I'm not sure if Oxfam has that account yet. As far as the supplies were concerned it was great to see the farmers sticking up for themselves and showing the supplier what was wrong and what they wanted. The ISP supplier didn't admit to anything and said (as expected) that all the supplies were fine but at least Oxfam saw some of the problems. It also came to light that alot of the transportation issues were because of the supplier so it was the first time that Oxfam was hearing the complaints.

All in all the ISP guy looked very bad because he was the cause of some of the worst problems. Because things were contracted out the way they were it allowed for a situation like this to materialize where the way things are supposed to work rarely happens. Just a couple days after the meeting even Philip got a call in the evening that they were going to receive 985 bags of poultry manure for the mango trees!!! 985 bags!! ZOVFA had no where to put them plus you can't unload things in the village after dark because there are no lights and the roads aren't made for trucks! They had to scramble to find people and agreed with the truck driver for the material to be delivered early the next morning but all in all another small daily disaster.

There are so many more things to look at here like the unrealistic expectations of record keeping to qualify for organic certification and the well diggers wanting to dig wells in the rainy season when there is a danger they will collapse. There was also a miscommunication about the ploughs...in the West they use one sided ploughs and call them ploughs in the East they use two sided ploughs that the supplier called
ridgers. Oxfam just ordered ploughs and delivered the same ones to everyone creating frustration among the farmers because in the end they are going to have to pay for things. As far as the rejected supplies, ZOVFA has still not received any replacements and Oxfam has said there is no more money in this year's budget to buy more. Oxfam had already paid for the supplies ZOVFA rejected so now they are sitting in storage somewhere and I don't think Oxfam is pressuring ISP to take them back. Meanwhile, Oxfam is going ahead with the program without the supplies that they assessed would be necessary for the success of the project!!

I'm not sure if these things are all that interesting individually but how they were dealt with was really good. People anywhere are generally afraid to hold meeting where all the interested parties are present because the issues that come out might become tense. But is it not better to have everything out in the open and talk about it openly assuming that people are going to behave well. Using this approach you also avoid a lot of misunderstanding that can happen when you have meeting only between a select group. When everyone is present you reduce the risk of people making assumptions about your character and your opinions. As of now, June 17th,the situation has moved forward slightly althout none of the inputs have been resupplied. Five wells have been dug in one community for the mango plantation and Oxfam has given some more info about the prices of each item - an area of contention as I mentioned before. Recently, I assisted in writing a letter to Oxfam's national office detailing our concerns and requesting that they provide us with more frequent communication and that they revise their price list which was generally about 40% above market prices. So we'll see what happens with that and how far it goes... I think the most important lesson here is that communication between partners is essential.

For me, it's really strengthened my resolve to be open and honest with what I'm doing and make a genuine effort to think about the messages I'm sending day to day. Poor communication can so easily degenerate relationship and create situations that then need to be dealt with. My conclusion before was that greater trust needs to be invested into the local NGO for them to be able to carry out their activities more effectively and independantly. Now, I also see that this trust can never be built without serious efforts to keep communication lines open even when you may feel that they are redundant. Somewhere along the line someone will appreciate it.

July 8th

Wow, I've been here for 2 months, it seems like no time at all, there is still so much I want to learn and understand. I currently at the EWB summer retreat in Tamale...hence the catching up on emails. The connection was down in Bawku for a while and the mouse on the work computer I use was broken...leaving me rather computerless. Today for the retreat we went South to Kintampo falls, which involved a rather long 2hr tro tro ride each way. The falls were beautiful, we went swimming and walked up the falls as they went from plateau to plateau. We eventually got to the top where there was this cross mounted on a platform looking out over the whole fall. It felt absolutely wonderful to swim, something I never thought I'd do in Ghana. All that water around me made me sort of giddy!!!

So a follow-up to my follow-up about Oxfam...part of what I've been doing is assisting in writing letters to partners of my NGO such as Oxfam detailing ZOVFA's concerns about their operations. We did a market survey to demonstrate that their prices were too high etc. We've currently written 3 letters which we sent to the director for final approval. The letter for Oxfam was emailed out last Thursday and Bernard, the program officer for the ILP got a call that same day from a very worried Oxfam employee. They are in a really bad spot right now as their funding year has ended and their money is gone but realistically they did get themselves in to this situation. There was a lot of cheering when it was announced that Oxfam had received the letters and seemed worried....one small victory for the team. We now have a bargaining chip to force them to take action and get us our supplies or either reply difinitively that they are not coming. MYAP has yet to respond to the letter they received officially.

Rain Rain come again

2006-06-07T13:57:00.000-04:00

June 6th 9:52

I've been increasingly obsessing over rain, thinking about it on a daily basis. It rained once since I've been here in the middle of the night for about an hour and a half. It rained really hard, the clattering on the aluminum roofs alerted me that it was raining. Many people were hopeful that the rains had set in and they were ploughing their fields and planting early millet. They tell me that in the rainy season there is so much water that the ground can't absorb it all so it runs in the plough ridges and creates little streams everywhere (which makes some of the low areas impassible). It also becomes really slippery in some areas as the ground has a fair bit of clay in it as well as being quite sandy. Ever since then, for about 2 weeks, I've been waiting for the rain to come so I can stand outside and be completely soaked, maybe take a rain shower in the bathing room. Most people too are waiting for the rain, they are now late and if they don't set in by mid-June people are going to have a hard time planting and harvesting enough food to last through the dry season. Since there is only one rainy season in this area, when the rains come is of extra importance.

Access to water is the biggest challenge facing communities in this District. At the workshop last week all the communities identified access to water as their biggest challenge...one community called Tetaco relies on only one borehole for about 400 people. Each family takes turns supplying the school with water because of this shortage. With only one borehole this means that the women will have to walk long distances to fill their metal basins and carry them back on their heads. I tried to carry a small one on my head (about 1/4 of the size of the big ones the women carry) and it was really heavy and tippy. I spilt water backwards and forwards and to the sides and was exhausted by the time I had made the short trip to the house from the well (about 35m). I don't know how these women can do it for much longer and doing multiple trips in one day. Usually in the morning I walk down to the bore hole and fill up my water bottles - I probably have about 10L of bottles now - to keep them in my room so I have water to drink. I have a little confession to make - the crystal lite I brought is proving to be invaluable - I put a little in the water to give it a little lime taste (like a lemon slice in water) and then I can drink much more. I found I just wasn't drinking enough sometimes of straight water - not because it tastes bad but just because it's hard to chug a lot of water.

So I was thinking about how I was actually missing water and thinking that it's kind of a wimpy thing to miss.....jumping into lakes, turning on the tap, the swirl in the toilet - it all seems so luxurious! I can't think of how many basins of water that would take for me to carry to be able to live that way. But then I thought maybe it's a good thing....it's hard not to have water readily available and it's hard for the people here too. I'm sure any woman gracefully balancing a basin on her head would much rather turn on the tap. Now instead of feeling wimpy I feel a deeper understanding of the people here. I feel more integrated into the community and into their daily lives. It's hard to explain. I'm trying really hard to be responsible for getting the water for my own consumption such as bathing and drinking. I have a large container about 10 gallons which I can fill at the bore hole and ask some one to carry home on a motor bike (I know it's kind of cheating). I can also fill the container at the well carry it home - maybe even on my head :) In the begining Amelia, a 17 year old girl living in the compound, would get my water in the morning but I feel like I need to do this for myself. I depend on the people in the house for a lot of things, a room to sleep, a bed, meals, and instructions on how to do almost anything since most anything is foreign to me. The least I can do is help fetch water, pull up the bucket from the well and sweep.

I made pancakes yesterday for everyone. Luke gave me some bread flour and I bought some cream, eggs and used the maple syrup for sugar. It was quite the adventure as I didn't know how to use the charcoal stove or how much oil to use for the pan....(my minimal skills with electric burners and teflon were of no use) They turned out pretty good - if you put enough mape syrup on anything it will taste good - although they were more like deep fried pancakes. The kids loved the syrup for the most part and I blew up some balloons for them to play with. When I tied a string to the end of the balloon and hit it against my hand like a boxer they all laughed. This morning I made some more to finish to milk and brought them to work so we'll see how they like them...:)

So I am asking myself what should be done? If water is the most pressing challenge - and it affects so many other challenges as well - what should the people do? What can I do? What can we all do? Yesterday I had the experience of actually seeing how wells are dug and now I know that any solution will be immensely hard work. Through the integrated livelihoods Program sponsored by Oxfam which I'm working on communities are receiving loans to make organic mango farms. For this to happen there needs to be a means of irrigation in the dry season or else the trees will try so wells need to be dug so people can irrigate by hand using a calabash. They brought in some contracters to dig the wells as the community members lacked the tools and needed to dig their own holes for the seedlings. One man with a pick axe managed to go down 8ft in one and a half days digging a well about 2m in diameter!!! He would swing the pick axe and break the soft rock - very rich in Micas and sand so it comes out shining - and then shovel the loose soil over the edge. It looked almost effortless as shovelfulls of sand were flying out of the hole but taking one look at the guys abs will tell a different story. One they get down too deep they have to rely on a 2 gallon bucket to lift the sand out. One well hit water at 20ft so now they also have to manually take the water out to be able to dig deeper to have a sustainable water supply. The suprising thing was how they go in and out...there was a plank over top of the well with a knotted rope tied to it. The diggers would put their toes around the knotts and then climb down on the rope. The next thing they have to do is line the wells by dropping cement cylinders in the hole. They have to do it soon because if it starts to rain the wells will cave in and then all their labour and the money will be lost. The gravity of the problem is how hard they have to work to pay that money back, cash income is hard to come buy in subsistence farming communities - especially during the planting season as all the money is spent on farming.

Oh Multinationals - when will they get it right?

2006-06-02T10:04:00.000-04:00

June 2, Friday 12:57pm

Multinationals

I wanted to write about this story that I heard that Philip my director as well as Ros, a British recent journalist grad doing some freelance in Ghana, were researching. I hope I get it right although some of the details may be fuzzy. I met Ros first in Bolgatanga while I was down there over the weekend and she came to stay for one night in the Ayamba compound where I'm staying. It was really good to be able to talk things through with somebody having a first impression to everything, somethings I think I see now with clearer eyes.

The tomato industry in Ghana is going through some major changes as it is being threatened by cheaper imported canned tomato paste. People no longer want to buy the local tomatoes which causes problems for the local farmers who farm tomatoes in the dry season and use the sales as a source of cash income for the year. Rainy season farming, usually millet, maize, sorghum, soyabeans and cowpeas, are stored for consumption throughout the year and not sold in the market unless there is a surplus.

Recently "Gino" tomatoes has been promoting everything from TV shows to the national futbol team. They have set up a factory near Bolgatanga and are attempting to buy a factory near Bawku. People here apparently think the company is from Italy maybe because of the name. The company itself is advertising itself like a national company, supporting local farmers and what not. In actuality the company is owned by an American multinational and is importing the tomatoes from China. Furthermore, the tinned tomatoes are only about 40% tomato and the rest is starch and filler. Gino even managed to get the vice minister to open the factory with the name Black Star attached which is Ghana's beloved national futbol team and a source of great national pride as they have qualified to play in the world cup. Philip is attempting to try to track their cultural penetration and mount some sort of campaign to stop the opening of the new factory. The other factory, which had agreed to buy local tomatoes, has been paying people far less than even market prices and less than the agreed to price I think. Many farmers will then see working in the factory a more viable option thereby increasing their vulnerability.

I heard a similar story at ZOVFA yesterday talking to Zach (one of the long-time staff). ZOVFA is working on the MYAP (Multi-year Assistance project) which promotes agricultural development. One of the MYAP workings wants to come up to do some field trials with some GMO maize. GMO products rely heavily on pesticides and fertilizers to grow and also has a terminator gene which doesn't allow farmers to take the seeds from the plant after harvest to plant again next year. Farmers become dependent on multinationals to buy seeds and fertilizers as the land has been too depleted of natural nutrients to grow organic crops. ZOVFA being an organic organization against the use of GMOs and inorganic fertilizers would naturally not support such an initiative and such trials are not included in the activity plan agreed to by the MYAP people for the year. The MYAP people want to come up and do them anyways without the involvement of ZOVFA so the staff are trying to get to the communities to advise the people on the consequences of using GMO seeds on their future harvests, on their land and on their health. We are hopefully going to make a song that can be sung and spread throughout the communities advising people on the dangers of commercial agriculture. You can well imagine the frustration of the staff when people on one end want to follow a completely different agenda than their parteners on the other end.

Jango

2006-06-02T10:01:00.000-04:00

June 1st Thursday

Hello everyone, I can't believe it's June already it doens't seem possible that I've been here for 3 weeks. The time is flying by and there is still so much I don't know. Two and a half months left - seems like such a short time.

I am so happy that everyone is enjoying the blog, that's great motivation for me to keep writing. I want it to be as interactive as possible so if you want to ask questions or want me to clarify something or want me to write more just ask. I appreciate the comments so much even though I usually don't have time to respond to them all. I'm fortunate to be close to the internet though, someone else in the Upper West is 4 hours away so he must be using a cell phone a lot.

A lot of people here have cell phones, no one has land lines as that would be a huge waste of resources to put in right now. THe cell phone deals are also pretty good, you can receive calls for free!! You also don't pay for a monthly plan or activation fees you just buy a units card (like minutes) and then you're set. Unfortunately all the cellphone companies who provide the service are investors from foreign countries. My network is Areeba, it has the best service out in this area.

I want to work on posting more about ZOVFA's programs, it's history and the people I"m working with. But that will have to be in another post unfortunately. ZOVFA's history is an especially interesting story :)

Yesterday and today I've been attending a Communication & Advocacy skills workshop in the ZOVFA office. It's part of the RAVI program which aims to increase people's involvement and lobbying to the state at the regional level. Letting people know their civic rights and what they can demand from their government will mobilise communities into advocacy in their district and regional assemblies. Already one community had managed to get a clinic and another a new school - both work to really meet the immediate needs of the people in those communities as the clinics are usually far away in Bawku and take several hours to bike to and the schools have over 60+ children per classroom and are sometimes staffed by volunteer teachers. The workshop is attended by 4-5 key representatives from each of the 4 pilot communities of the project who will then be responsible for spreading the information in their communities and acting as key leaders in this aspect. It's been alot of fun as the facilitator is really good and therefore the workshop is very interactive. They did the communication telephone line and them message totally got changed along the line of 6 people :) THe original message was that there were 3 teacher for 200 students in Binduri school and the final message was that their were 60 pupils at Binduri school. The RAVI program also includes a lot of dramatization to get the word out, which I can't wait to see some of, as well as dancing.

I'm not sure if I wrote about this but in my first week I attended a women's group meeting under a tree under the RAVI and Domestic Violence Programs. They were all standing in a circle doing some kind of dance, one woman would start along the circle and choose another person opposite her. The women would jump in the circle and kindof stamp their feet and then touch bums while the others kept up the rythm and the song. When they were done the original woman jumped out of the circle and the new woman choose another partner and so on. Naturally I was included in the circle and did my best to figure out the stamping, jumping and butt knocking. You would all have been rolling around laughing if you could have seen me. It was great fun!! The ZOVFA staff person I came with told me that the songs they are singing represent mesages against domestic violence,spousal abuse and female genital mutilation. They sing "Don't hit the child, don't beat the child, don't cut the child - Respect, Respect, Respect". The power and joy of these women singing under a tree, their solidarity and support of one another, touched me more than I can know. The problems that they are fighting are huge and overwhelming, they work so hard all day bringing water, cooking, working and yet they still can come out and dance under a tree with all the energy and strength in the world. It brings me great joy and great sadness because I know that it is through the strength and incredible will of these women and the people here that development will happen. I feel joy to see their strength and sadness to know that the rest of the world, even in Ghana itself, is not choosing to change to make the situation more fair for the people here.

I had a chance to dance the "Jango" a second time last week where fortunately I could coordinate the stamping and knocking and jumping...somewhat:) I am continually amazed by the warmth and friendliness and acceptance that people have shown me and by the time they take from their days to explain and converse with me.

Sakande

2006-06-02T09:59:00.000-04:00

May 29th, Monday 1:37pm

Today was turning out to be an average day with nothing major to report, I was just going to write a clarification of where I am and the places I am refering to for a reference. But then something so wonderful happened that I had to tell someone about this. Today I am in Bolgatanga, a small city about 80km South of Bawku (I say small city instead of town because there is so much going on taxis, tro tros, people coming and going and town to me refers to the sleepy rural life). I arrived in Bolgatanga the night before yesterday on the 27th of May with the coordinator of my NGO (ZOVFA) to use the bank and perhaps print some pictures I took as a gift for a girl I live with (neither of which I was able to do). So today I was trying to figure out if I could withdraw money or print pictures - which involved a lot of walking around in the sun - so you could image that I was hot and sweaty although not desperately hot like before...I must be ajusting :) This boy came around the corner with a water sachet bag in his mouth but it was orange so I started asking around but to no avail. Everywhere in Ghana there are micro-enterprises set up that sell filtered water in sealed 500ml bags called "Pure water". Girls walk around town carrying them on their heads to sell (in baskets of course) and local kiosks have coolers and deep freezers where they are kept cold. Anyway...so I was trying to get a taxi to go back to Philip's office (I'll explain later) and I saw a girl with the orange drink bags on her head!!!! They were 1000cedis!!! (whereas pure water sells for 500cedis a bag and little juice boxes are about 3000 or 4000cedis or 500ml bottle are 8000cedis) and completely frozen....Jublilation!!! I quickly bought one, ripped off the end and bit in....ahhhh ice cold orange flavoured goodness!! When the universe aligns in that one single moment of goodness - it was that good. The name on the package said Sakande and it tasted like an orange popsicle but the best orange popsicle that you've ever tasted. I really hadn't eaten anything frozen yet, they sell yogurt bars and things like this but, for one they are pricy and nobody here eats them here so you would stick scream "western tourist" if you were walking down the street with a frozen treat in hand. An image that I am trying actively to dispell or at least not to encourage whenever I can. It was comparable to the hot days where we were tree planting and Larry suddenly produced freezies after supper and then any day suddenly turned into the greatest day ever because of that.

Danny, my wonderful coach through EWB, mentioned something in an email that was really interesting. He said that treeplanting is the only thing in Canada that compares with farming in Ghana...I think he is right although all the logistical responsibilities as planters are taken care off whereas farmers have to also take care of all those concerns, like transporting the seeds, manure to the field, and the yields to market. The actual physical work though is similar, waking with the sun, working long hours, bending over to hoe the field (here the women bend at the lower back to do most of their work) and the commraderie between people working hard together. I can't really describe it any better than this, all I can say is that any farmer in Ghana would put a treeplanter to shame most days.

This is another side story but after arriving in Bolgatanga on the 27th at night I heard that there was not a bank here that had an ATM so I would have to go to Tamale. So yesterday morning (the 28th) I grabbed a trotro to Tamale last minute, about 160km south of Bolgatanga, to visit the bank and maybe say Hi to Luke, the long term OV(overseas) volunteer based there. I also was hoping to see some of the people from the JF (Junior fellow) group that came when I did although that was a long shot as I did not have their contact information. So I went down to the station and was trying to find a trotro (Ghanaian bus) and I just so happened on a group of people who were heading down to a wedding in Tamale and they had rented a bus and had a few seats to fill...perfect! I met some great people on the way, Betty who was helping me get a seat on the bus, Charity who works with the Red Cross in Bongo and Thomas the driver became my fast friends. We arrived in Tamale no problem where I successfully went to the bank, bought some material to make some pants and a top, and then went to see Luke. I also ran into Sabrina and Ian two of my fellow parteners working in Tamale with Mapronet. On the way back to the station around 2:30pm I met the same driver so I agreed to return with him, he just had to go pick up the wedding people from a house nearby, so I came along. When we got their the people had already left and were at the station relaxing at a restaurant inside. So I thought we were going to leave but we ended up sitting down with the people in the restaurant for awhile. Even when we made it to the bus we were still missing a few people but they filled the bus anyways with extra passengers (a bus never leaves the station without being completely full) and we were on our way....Two people from the wedding party came running beside the tro tro, one man carrying a chicken wing in his hand waving us down. Then all hell broke loose as the people who stopped us were saying that they had the right to come along and the extra passengers were saying that they had the right to stay. We ended up taking everybody along and squishing more people into the row. We left at about 5:30 (instead of 3:00) and I only got back to the hotel where I am staying at 8:30 because we had to drop everyone off (it was another piece of luck that I found this tro tro because I got dropped at the place I am staying and not at the station where they which would normally happen). Afterwards I visited with the driver and Betty for awhile so all in all, it was a good day.

I also wanted to talk about the different places that I am staying and a little more about how ZOVFA works. Before coming here I was also very confused as to how things were organized but now it's a little more clear. The NGO I work with ZOVFA (Zuuri Organic Vegetable Farming Association) is located in Zuuri. The community of Zuuri is beside the village of Binduri (a village by definition here - I think - is somewhere that has a market a few times a week). You can find Binduri on the map, it is about 15km Southwest of Bawku. Bawku is the nearest small city and the central city in the area where ZOVFA does its banking etc. Most of the staff that work at ZOVFA live in surrounding communities such as Bazua, or Garu (usually places where they can rent a room because they do not live in the easily accessible area or places with electricity). Peter, one of the staff memembers, lives in the same family compound that I do with his children and wives. Zuuri and Binduri are small communities without electricity so the staff usually elect not to live there, especially since they all have motorbikes courtesy of ZOVFA so they can commute to and from work easily. They need to motor bikes to access the communities in which they work quickly, although most people in the communities use bikes or walk to get around (it is usually a 5-7km trip to the ZOVFA office for most communities).

Philip Ayamba is the founder of ZOVFA in 1997 and the unofficial coordinator. ZOVFA does not currently have the budget to pay the salary of a coordinator or overall director so he does it concurrently with his job. Philip manages an NGO based in Bolgatanga called "Trade Aid" which is why he and his family live in Bolga and not Bawku. ZOVFA therefore only officially employs program directors of the various projects they are working on, although most things go through Philip and he does a lot of the communication with places like the Oxfam central office in Ghana.

I am staying at Philip's family house - (where is family is from and where they live). Philip's father is the head of the household and Philip is the eldest son. Philips other brothers are in the South somewhere working I think. This is why there is confusion when I say I am living in the director's house. I hope that clears things up a little bit for everyone.

Contact info!

2006-05-28T19:42:00.000-04:00

One more update for today. I got a cell phone!!! The number is 011 233 24 615-1238
The best time to call is about 9pm local time here. I am four hours ahead of Toronto time, so call around 5pm Toronto, 3pm in Saskatoon. It might take a few tries to connect properly, but it will go through eventually.

Oh, and can everyone send emails to my gmail account. Yahoo is a lot slower to open, and I want to read everyone's emails.

Thanks all, hope to talk to you soon!

Funerals and other things

2006-05-28T07:48:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, May 23, I was stopping to visit the house next to ZOVFA in the morning when i heard these booming sounds from a distance, like explosions. I was curious as to what they were because the normal morning sounds were roosters, goats, sometimes a donkey and people (children laughing, yelling, crying) radios blaring and so on. I asked Alhassan - (a teacher working in Walewale who is on leave for 10 days to attend the funeral tomorrow of his brother (i think) who died in the South - What these sounds were. He said that the night before yesterday an old man had died in Poyamire, one of the communities I've visited. Traditionally in the morning when the burial is ready the tradition is to put gun powder into a pipe and then pack it down with sand. You then put the pipe in the ground and light it making the boom, explosive sound. It is a signal that someone has passed on and that anyone who has family members living in that direction should come and pay their respects but if you are not family then you are not invited, although the definition of family is so inclusive here that i'm not sure anyone would be turned away. They sound the pipes before they are going to bury someone and then afterwards to tell people that the burial is finished. People are normally buried around the house although many communities have started cemetaries when the houses are too close together. Normally they are seperated by farm land so it is very difficult to tell where one community begins and one ends. If the man or woman was a very great person, such as a chief, they are buried in a room in the house which is then reserved for them. If the person who died is very old, above 45, then the funeral is a huge celebration that they have lived a good long life. If the person is young the funeral is more serious as people mourn an "unnatural death". The funeral tomorrow in the house next door will be the latter because the person was only 37 years old and left behind a young daughter. Now people light gun powder during funerals as a display of wealth and sometimes there can be up to 100 blasts. The number of successive blasts also tells whether the person was a man or woman (3 for men and 4 for women). Numbering here seems very important such that odd numbers are associated with masculinity and even numbers are associated with feminity. For example, a man should marry 2 wives or 4 wives but not 3 although more than one wife is becoming less common and is associated with the traditional religion or Islam. The ratio in this area I would estimate to be 15% traditional, 35% Islam, 40% Christian and 10% agnostic. But this is very much intermingled with the culture that is predominant. I say that I am both which gets a few quizzical looks.

There is an excellent description of village life in the May 2006 New Internationalist magazine that is worth the read as it gives a perfect description of the area. Although the village community is in Burkina Faso it could easily be access from here because I am in the North East and the BF community is in the SE. It is probably a 30min - 1hr drive away.

Ethnicity and Electricity

2006-05-28T07:44:00.000-04:00

Zuuri, the village I am staying in and Binduri, the village connected to Zuuri, don't have electricity altough nearby Bawku and communities on the main road have had electricity since 2000. The main hardship, especially when talking to the men, is the lack of electricity in their community. The reasons people give are usually very political with ethnic undertones.

For example, the electoral system in Ghana operates such that you vote for a president and an MP representative seperately. The current party in power is the NPP...whose slogan read " so far so good" - this seems like a very apathetic slogan for a political party but who am I to judge the local meaning. The representative elected for this area is from the second major party the NDC so he does not have to ear so to speak of the president to further development initiatives in this area. This seems to be one reason why, although it was promised in the las election in 2004 and before that, electricity has not yet arrived. During the last election the NDC candidate I think or the presidential, I'm not sure, came and installed the posts to support the wires but since then nothing has happened. The government recently wanted to remove the posts to provide electricity for a nearby funeral of a chief which caused quite an uproar in the community. They did not get the poles although they are still without wires.

I am currently writing because the generator is running for Ema to work on the computer. He is the accountant and he must do some reporting for PAGEV, a water and sanitation project along the white volta river.

The other reason for the lack of electricity runs much deeper into the history of the area and the settlement and migration patterns of people back in the early 1900s. The Kussasis people are the native people from this area, they were living in this area for ages in an unhierarchized society. The Mamprusi tribe were traders from the north or nomadic, depending on which account. From what Alhassan told me, they were establishing a trade route through this area but kept having problems with robbery so they decided to send people to settle the area. One way or the other they came to settle here. THey had a very hierarchized society with a clear power structure and soon came to rule over Kussasi people. There was therefore a situation where the majority Kussasi were dominated by a minority Mamprusi which lasted until the 1960s I believe when the Kussasi people organized and fought back. Ghana gained independence in 1957 and the government representative came and made the decision that the Kusassi were the rightful people to have power of governance so the Mamprusi people had to give up their positions. Even now this thread is very prevalent in politics as it is very hard for a mamprusi leader to be elected into government because people fear Mamprusis in positions of power. In 2000 and 2002 brief conflicts flared up again surrounding this ethnic tensions but were quickly resolved. Since there has been so much intermarriage and Kusal is the dominant language spoken in the area the differences in ethnicity are no longer clear cut and for the most part I don't think it affects people's lives. They certainly do not talk about it much. But when people talked about why they did not have electricity they were clear to point out that in this area most people are Mamprusi and are thus not on the receiving end of development in this area. I have not been able to talk to too many people so I do not know how accurate this is or how many people attribute ethnicity and politics to underdevelopment at a community level. It's an interesting story though......and either way I hope electricity will come here soon because people do enjoy it.

Right now people use latterns with oil or flash lights with batteries so function after dark. Alhassan my neighbour has a TV and VCR and sometimes buys petrol to show Nigerian movies to the 50+ people that show up. I think the biggest impact of electricity in this area will be in the mindset of the people who now feel left behind and abandonned to a certain extent since they can see others who have light when they do not. They are also worried that it would be a great hardship for me but I try to tell people about tree planting and Alveena and put their minds at ease. Normally, when the sun goes down I am so tired that I fall straight to sleep, earlier than most, so for me maybe there is even less of an effect.

Making my way

2006-05-23T18:14:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone, sorry that it has taken me so long to post things on here but I have not figured out how to get to town on my own to take the hours necessary to write everything down properly. You have to walk out to the road which is about 1-2km away and then flag down a tro tro (Ghanian bus) for a ride. Thankfully enough, Emmanuel, the staff memember of ZOVFA that picked me up, needed to do some photocopying in town so he took me along. I had a brief disagreement with the food last Thursday but it seems to have mostly worked itself out.

I have a story to tell about the day that you think you've seen everything. I was on the back of the moto going to Bawku when I saw atype of boxy mini-van piled high with stuff. Trucks and cars andpretty much every vehicle is always packed to the max with things tiedon top for several layers so this van was no different. Severalplastic chairs bags and ...two goats adorned the top of van...I juststared and didn't know what to think other than..man I wish I had a camra right now. Luckily the van was moving quite slowly...probably because of the goats, so I hope it doesn't have far to go. Livestock is transported in all sorts of ways, baskets attached to the back of bicycles. I saw a rooster strapped to the back of a motor bike which was inevitably going to be supper and a goat in a big water basin strapped to the back of a bike. My little moments of joy are the goatbelieve it or not, there are so many baby goats around, I feel like I am in a petting zoo, and they are playing and sleeping out under trees. Whenever I feel tired I try to find a goat to watch.

Working with ZOVFA is proving to be very informative. It gives me a chance to get out to different farming communities and really meet the people work with them and so on, but it is also confusing since I don't understand the language and what exactly is going on. Plus, the people are used to working in the heat without much water for long hours so they are always asking me if I'm tired. They are taking very good care of me, teaching me the ropes and making sure I'm not out there too long. I was working with other ZOVFA members in a community called Poyamire demarkating 10 acres with sticks for a mango plantation. After 3 hours in the late afternoon it was getting dark and a man that I had come to know, Avado, came up and gave me 4 guinea foul eggs as a thanks. He appreciated that I was doing the same work that they were and helping them with their project. In 3 years time hopefully they want to have a organic mango plantation that the community will harvest and export for extra income.

Other times, there is very little to do it seems, the staff are around reading or talking or in town so I need to find a project that keeps me busy, builds capacity in ZOVFA and doesn't take up too many resources (such as petrol to run the generator to work on the computer) I've been doing some training on a digital camera that was given to ZOVFA as part of a CARE Canada run project. I will really need to figure out all the diferent projects, I think there are about 8, each one with its different objectives, reporting criteria and soon. With a staff of only 9 people and one of them is injured ZOVFA has it's work cut out for it.

Living in the Philip's compound has proved both insightful and challenging. Insightful in that I can see how a family compound operates and challenging because mostly women live there and few speak any english at all. My Kusal is coming along but not at the rate that I would like, there are no books that I have been able to find so I'm spelling the way things sound...unless there is no spelling for the sound such as frog (gwan in the back of your throat). There was also a German junior social anthropologist researcher staying there for 6 months who was living in the compound and left 2 weeks before me. The family is therefore used to treating white people like guests and my requests to eat meals with the family have met little success. They were very fond of her but she was also very busy with her research and probably didn't have as much time for integration activities. It's hard to know...I try to help but since I start to sweat because of the heat they think I am tired and want me to sit down.

In the morning I try to help sweep the compound with stalks of grass tied together at the end. The sweeping is done by stooping close to the ground and brushing back and forth. I also try to pull up water from the well whenever I can to fill the metal basins that the women carry water with. Trying to lift one of those onto my head is a little out of my reach right now, I'll have to start small or else I might spill water so labourously pulled up from the well. On the weekend I also had the opportunity to help plaster a cow pen by the compound. I came home from the market with a Emilia (a 17 year old elder daughter living in the compound) and saw all the women slapping mud onto the walls. Buildings here are made by either cement or mud. The mud is rolled into balls and piled up for the walls. Then, tar is heated and melted into a sandy material which is all mixed together with water. It forms a kind of paste which the women smooth onto the mud wall and then resmooth with a smooth surface so there are no rough spots. I was bringing the paste to the women with a shovel and bucket so that they could slap it onto the walls. We finished the pile of paste in about 2 hours and a bit.

So as you can see things are going well and I am trying to integrate and learn as much as I can. I had a skirt and top made for a funeral on Thursday from the material I bought in Tamale and I went to see a Nigerian film at a neighbour's house yesterday night called Tom and Jerry. It was about two boys who were tormenting their blind grandfather while he was watching them for his daughter. Let's just say they weren't setting a very good example for the kids.

I'll try to write more soon and thank you for all your support. I always love hearing from you even if I can't respond right away so thank you for writing me...hint hint

Samina

Appropriate Technology & Ownership?

2006-05-23T17:54:00.000-04:00

During my visit with Philip he disclosed something with Oxfam which makes me question the value of appropriate technology without adequate ownership at the local NGO level. Even with the best intention of appropriate technology, if the implementation is not controlled at the local level then it is still not appropriate. There needs to be appropriate technology and implementation.

The situation is such that Oxfam is supporting a project to supply 8 grassroots NGOs, one of them being ZOVFA, with Donkey Carts, Ploughs and Ridgers which the NGOs must pay for and then sell to the farmers in a credit based system. In theory and good practice this an excellent initiative because donkey carts provide a way for farmers to transport their harvest to market whereby they can obtain a better price. It also allows transportation of manure to the fields and such. The ploughs are pulled behind two bullox and make planting the fields much more efficient and less labour intensive. Hopefully with more donkey carts the women could use them to transport water home to their families from the wells and bore holes instead of carrying the water on their heads for distances of 200 meters to 1 or 2 km. Although they make it look very easy it takes 2 people to lift the basin full of water onto the head of the woman who will carry it which is a remarkable thing to see when they don't spill a drop.

Oxfam contracted a supplier in Tamale to make the carts, ploughs and ridges for the 8 parteners and then delivered them to the local NGOs in big truck loads. ZOVFA was the last partner to receive their supply and when Philip Ayamba, the program director, happened to be there to receive them he outrightly refused to sign for them because they were of poor quality. Already some of the donkey carts from Oxfam were bending under heavy loads and the ploughs were breaking.

The farmers who have invested their resources into these equipment were justifyably very angry...wouldn't you be? Therefore when Philip inspected the supply of new materials and found wheel frames welded together, old broken tires, even thinner metal he refused the shipment outright. Since all the other 7 partners had accepted their shipments you can image the up-roar that ZOVFA caused among the supplier. Philip shares an office with Trade Aid in Bolgatanga, who are one of the 8 partners, and they are already experiencing problems due to the equipment provided and their farmers are angry. In a reality where clientalism is apparent this was a very brave and risky thing to do. ZOVFA could develop the reputation of being difficult which would make it difficult to receive funding for more projects which would essentially put the organization out of business. But Philip and his staff are also accountable to the communities in which they work and therefore could not accept the supplied materials.

Two questions come to mind...why were the materials of such poor quality when previous inputs from the company had been of high quality? Secondly, why were the materials being transported from Tamale, a 4+ hour transport when there were local manufacturers in Bawku, just 19km away or Bolgatanga just 45km away who produce high quality goods.

The answer is in mass production. Oxfam wanted to speed things along so for them it is easier to give the entire contract to one company and then distribute the products to where they are needed. Much the same way which is standard operational practice in the West since the advent of Fordism. But this supplier does not normally receive orders for the mass quantity of carts, ploughs and ridgers that were ordered, but I do not know if Oxfam checked their capacity or their quality control independently or not. Over the phone the company would have perceived a lucrative opportunity and jumped at the chance, leaving the practical logistics for later. Philip suspects that the company was unable to keep up with the production timeline and thus bought carts from suppliers in the market and painted them to seem like they were produced by just one supplier. The supplier was depending on his previously strong reputation of producing good quality merchandise. There is also the factor that maybe the quality standards were negatively affected because the materials were being produced for Oxfam for communities far away,which may be seen to remove the accountability to the local farmers. Furthermore, the price list for the donkey carts that Oxfam ordered were 2.7million cedes each (divide by 8000 for Cn$) while the ones produced locally of better quality were 1.6 million cedes. A substantial difference when you think about subsistence farmers whose access to income generating activities is a struggle at best.

ZOVFA has previous experience with equipment sent from Oxfam such as huge water tankards that need a pump to be filled because they are over 2m tall, pesticide spraying pumps (for an organic organization), rubber boots (the farmers are always barefoot or in flip flops and it is too hot for boots), and brass rings for the cows where the farmers use rope. It seems like all these things imported from abroad really don't have a place here. If people change then what do they do when there are no more rings, boots and such. They are currently waiting for Oxfam to come and collect their things that are sitting in the compound cluttering things up.

Oxfam and ZOVFA have agreed that ZOVFA should get the money and arrange to buy their own supplier of donkey carts ploughs and other material in a kind of hush hush deal. Philip wanted to hold a general meeting with the suppliers, partner organizations and Oxfam Ghana to discuss the matter but Oxfam thought this would create an uproar that would be greater than the current problem at hand. The larger question is - why wasn't ZOVFA able to buy their materials outright, determine what the farmers needed and then report back to Oxfam about their progress. ZOVFA knows the local suppliers and their quality and if they needed anything in Tamale they could have arranged it. They also know the perceptions of their local communities and what the people expect of them. Here is a case where the ownership project management level was not sufficiently transfered to local partners. This has cost Oxfam, and all those who support Oxfam here and abroad, wasted money on tranport, shoddy material and un-needed equipment.

I don't want to completely trash Oxfam, they are a very strong organization who genuinely have participatory intents at heart and the fact that they are using local NGOs at all is a sign of true commitment but it is dissapointing that it has happened this way. Call me idealistic but true trust between partner organization, with an equal valuation of knowledge on both sides would have placed ZOVFA in charge of the local aspect and Oxfam in charge of international awareness campaigns and getting the story out, something ZOVFA does not have the capacity to do. Both aspects of development are equally important and both need to have organizations and people who are best suited to carry out these tasks. When one attempts to tread on the others feet then time and valuable resources are wasted which could have been used for shea butter processing plants, more bore holes being dug or increasing the number of class rooms and teachers in rural areas (a small sample of the things that people want to do in the communities). So my conclusion in all this is that appropriate technology is not enough, it must be partenered with trust and power at the local level to be truly effective.

Tamale town

2006-05-13T10:58:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone, these have been an eventful couple of days and I am hoping this post goes through as I am not writing it in notepad as a I should be so that I don't loose everything if the page doesn't load. One thing I know is that I should have brought more of these MEC breathable shirts, my cotton T-shirts get soaked in an hour during mid day and then they aren't much use other than being wet. Although it is not too hot today and there is a nice breeze. The rainy season is late this year so people are anxious for the rains to come so they will have good crops this year. Drought is a major problem for the norther regions. I bought my first Ghanian cloth to make a skirt and shirt today, I will wait until Bawku to buy anymore clothes. I met two boys named Hassin and Fajarak who were tending to a store and they walked all over town with me while we looked at different clothes. They showed me the cultural centre which is where all the foreigners hang out and I am sorry they thought to bring me there because I wanted to see the market that people here shop at (which we eventually did see) We spent a good hour walking and talking, they were teaching me Dagbani and as we went to greet people Hassin would whisper the appropriate reply to the greeting so that it seemed like I could speak really good Dagbani. Then we went back to their shop and they gave me a sachet of water (filtered water is bought in sealed bags of 500ml) This is very typical of my experience in Ghana where people are willing to take the time and sit with you and talk even though it might be easier for them not to talk to you but to speak to someone that they already know. People here speak excellent english for the most part, it is taught in school and Tamale is the major urban centre of the Norther region. I hope my Dagbani will get better as well, I will have to force myself to speak more but I am learning new things everyday. People here see education as the highest priority for the future of their country so there is a large emphasis on being in school. I've found out more about my placement, I will be in the town of Zuuri 15km West of Bawku in the Bawku district in the Upper east region. It is small town of about 300 people with one borehole and electricity for the office. I am looking forward to finding a family and community that I can come to know and develop a relationship with.

Another story, yesterday I was coming home from the Communications and cultural studies centre in Tamale TICCS and I was waiting to buy water. There was a man ahead of me on a bike with a long flowing white shirt that went past his knees and a white cap on his head, I couldn't help thinking how he didn't get dirty since I'm always covered. I think sweating makes things stick to me resulting in the look of having just rolled around on a dirt road. The man that was ahead of me bought these red nut-like things that I wasn't sure if you were supposed to cook, ground or eat raw. He turned around and broke off half a nut and gave it to me and bit into his half. I couldn't think of what to do so I did the same, the nut tasted very bitter, kind of like radish but more fibrous and dry. The man road off on his bicycle and I had this half eaten nut on one side of my mouth (which was too dry to swallow it) as I tried to order water with the other side of my mouth. I decided the best thing to do was to rinse the nut out of my mouth because I didn't know what is was or where it came from so I quickly went around the corner where the woman selling the nuts wouldn't see and gave my mouth a good rinse. I later found out that what the man gave me was a Cola nut which people eat here to stay awake, it must have some caffeine in it or something. It was such an out of the blue experience which made me think that I need to develop more trust in people around me.

Sorry I can't upload any pictures today it seems

My Life

2006-05-11T12:29:00.000-04:00

Ghana

Hello!!  I am very sorry but I don't think my last post from
Accrawent through so to all of you who have been waiting...
I'm sorry.  I am in Tamale now, we arrived yesterday after a
12 hour bus ride.  This morning around 10am we walked along
the main road - Bolgatanga Rd - with the girls who were up
first and we met mostly highschool boys who wanted to show
us around.  They are very friendly and were helping me with
my Dagbani.  Afterwards we went back to the hotel/motel and
waited for Luke to do some logistics stuff.  We are hopefully
going to talk to our NGOs tomorrow and figure out where we
are supposed to be, I have not gotten an email from my NGO
yet so it is very important that I contact them somehow.

It is very hot outside but not as humid as Accra which is
nice, so you cool down faster when you go in the shade. 
After this we are going to go to the market to hopefully
find some hats and take out some money from the bank.  All
the currency is in 1000s so it feels like we have a lot of
money.  Walking along the street is very interesting you
can find anything from car doors and cellular telephones
to goat heads or intestines.  It all feels very comfortable
although I hope I get used to the heat soon, I forgot that
I sweat more than most people.

Last night I recorded my first voice recording with Adam's
MP3 player and that system is going to work out very well,
I don't have the time or energy when I have to time to
write everything that is going on but saying it is much easier.

The bus ride was also something else, the busses have a
middle seat that folds down when people are on the bus so
we were sitting 5 across. The bus was vearing around other
buses and trucks and people walking on the side of the road.
We would stop periodically and buy things from people at
the side of the bus through the windows, what really struck
me was this area of construction with mounds of red dirt
piled on each side and women selling corn on the cob at the
side of the road on their heads.  Lots of people in the bus
bought some and for a moment the bus smelt like sweet corn.
The bus was very nice when it was moving and we got a good
breeze, I slept off and on and tried to learn Dagbani with
a new friend Amin who was going home to Tamale from Accra
for the summer holidays.  It started raining at one point
and the smell of the earth was amazing!! We drove past some
rural villages as well with kids running around and women
walking with babies tied to their backs.  The countryside
is very green with tall trees that look like oaks and banana
plants surrounded by other brush. As we moved further north
into the country on the bus the trees grow shorter and the
brush flattened out so we could see more of an horizon. 
It is also much less humid here in Tamale which is very
welcome on my end, although the farmers and people that
live here might wish for more rain.  We are coming at the
beginnning of the rainy season so I'm sure it will get more
humid soon but the temperature will be a few degrees lower.
The smells are very intense, sometimes so sweet and then sour,
sometimes spicy and then very earthy they always change and
I can't even hope to begin to identify them right now.

All in all, things feel very comfortable and I feel safe
and well taken care off,the people at the hotel we are
staying at are very friendly and most people speak english
so it is easier to communicate. I hope I can learn Dagbani
fast so I can talk to them in their local language.

Thank you for all your thoughts and hopes,
I hope to write soon again, maybe making a little more
sense than I do right now
Samina

2006-02-05T18:22:00.000-05:00

Engineers Without Borders at York

Ghana

2006-01-15T22:59:00.000-05:00

I found out I'm going to Ghana this summer...to Accra most likely, it's a city on the Southern coast close to Togo. That's all I know for now, I should know more after the conference this week from Tuesday to Sunday..

Philedelphia

2006-01-15T22:44:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone, Oh joy the Avalanche won...and so Greta was in a good mood on the way home. The trip was fun! and so was the driving...kind of relaxing...except for the small snow storm on the way back. It's also true what they say, that it's way easier to get into Canada than it is to get into the US, we didn't even show them our passports on the way back but the US border guy asked a lot of questions interrogation style. We walked around the night we got there in downtown and found Philedelphia's gaybourhood where we met these two nice guys who told us what to see...they were really sweet. It's a really nice city, old and very architectural. We went to see the Liberty Bell the next day, which you have to go through a metal detector and airport security process to get to weird and then I wandered around the old city while Greta and Adam went to see the game. I saw the last 5 minutes in a bar, Philly scored 2 goals in the last 5 minutes to make it 3-3 and then Colorado dominated in overtime to win 4-3.

Greta at the Liberty Bell...after security

It's Adam's slogan...

It's apparently the sqeeeziest in Philedelphia...I thought it was a funny sign :)

Philly

2006-01-12T01:16:00.000-05:00

So I'm going to Philedephia for a day....how life twists and turns. So far for me January has been on weird start to the new year...although I don't really feel like I've started anything new since I"m just doing to same thing that I was doing before...mostly. Greta, class buddy, got Avalance tickets for Christmas cause she is a huge Avs fan. But her boyfriend isn't too much into hockey so he suggested that Adam and I go along too and then Adam...also an Avs fan...go to the game with Greta and that we all hang out in Philedelpia for a day. Two days later I leave for Ottawa for 5 days for a conference with EWB from across Canada. Saskatchewan apparently has a reputation of being the "crazy" group...we'll see:)

Anjum Happy Birthday to you on the 13th!!!! I hope you get to blow out some candles

Huh?

2006-01-11T01:29:00.000-05:00

So this has been a very crazy day that everything came together....I got all my grades back finally and....I did way better than I had expected which makes me confused as to what I expect....very confused.....maybe its the new office chair that survived the plane ride intact and has become Max's favorite sleeping spot or maybe the chocolate covered coffee beans are like a super smart drug that makes you a genius when you eat them for a week...I"ll have to test that theory in April again.

I think that I finally believe somewhat that I am going to Africa...we had a meeting today about the conference coming up and people seemed to think I was going...although they didn't see the need to inform me about the meeting until late the day before....I just need to get fundraising, hopefully I'll have time cause I think the last part of the year is going to get a little crazy. Anyway, so that's me...I'm freaked out cause everything is going to well....yeah sounds like me, I can't be happy unless I'm worrying about something or feel that I'm doomed somehow. I have to do more reading for tomorrow, and get more sleep, I almost forgot...sorry mom
Bye for now,
Samina

Disaster

2006-01-11T01:14:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd post some pictures of the flooding that we had in August. This is the hole that is in one of the major streets just South of where we live and it is still under construction or just beginning construction ....oh the joys of living in a low priority neighbourhood....causing major traffic pains everwhere else Grrr!! Anyways, the hole is still in the road, it was caused by a creek overflowing that you can see from our balcony and then trying to fit into the pipes that funnel it under the road. Didn't work as you can see here...

This happened when we were moving from our old playce actually so we came home after a long day and found the cats up as high as they could get and water pooled under the bed and soaking the rugs...that was a fun night let me tell you. Earlier I didn't think it was so bad so I went to the mall to get something to find that the mall was being evacuated cause the parking lot was flooded and the sewage was being backed up...I was also totally soaked in 10 seconds of being outside even though I had an umbrella.

Mindless chatter

2005-12-11T05:11:00.000-05:00

Hmmm, I don't think anyone is reading this anymore, except for Myriam... :) Come back, come back... man am I ever on holiday mode, all I want to do is sit and watch the snow fall... yes, we have snow in Toronto now but it isn't usually that cold. All I know is that walking in snow is much harder than walking on nice flat ground for someone as out of shape as I am. I guess I'll really have to start working on that in January...ahh the January list continues.... I just hate having handed in all this stuff last week without some sort of gratification to keep me going.... I'll have to wait until next year :(

I'm taking anyone I can get my hands on to go see the new Pride and Prejudice movie over the holidays. I was holding up to pretty high standards and wow, it was really really good, makes up for the dissapointing Harry Potter movie that I walked through a blizzard to go see...Hmph!

Lalalala I'm very ready to be done, and stop studying!! Let's see, is there any way to make myself done sooner....mmmm think think think....suggestions? I haven't decided if I'm bringing my advent calender with me or just eating all the chocolate before I leave...I guess that all depends on how much I want chocolate the night before.....Mmmm chocolate.

This Summer

2005-12-10T01:13:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone, Big News!! I'm going to Africa this summer for 16 weeks!!!!

I got the Engineers without Borders placement for York so I'll be their summer intern in Sub-Saharan Africa for the summer. I'm hoping to be working on agricultural sustainability issues in a rural community somewhere...I can't even imagine right now!! I got the call this afternoon and I still can't believe it! It's less than 5 months away, that's no time at all!! I just can't think too much about it now, or I have to try not too....stupid exams...taking up all my thinking space.

Zzzzzzz Zzzzzzzz Zzzzzzz

2005-12-06T14:47:00.000-05:00

It's almost all over....finally. I just have to do a final edit of my last big essay for this year and then I have 6 days to study for my next exam...6 days seems so luxurious !!! so many good sleeps to be had. Can't wait, I'm actually fantasizing about sleeping right now, so tempting ...can't keep mind on track ...or pay attention at all.

Having a laptop is the most wonderful thing in the world right now. I'm at school and can choose to relax and do stuff on the computer if I want instead of work. I have everything right here plus taking notes inclass was so much easier, I'm hooked. I'll have to consciously practice writing so my hand doesn't get out of writing shape.

This time of year you're kinda chained to your computer so now I'm free to come and go as I choose, Yay!! So the librairy is crazy right now, absolutely crazy, I hope I'll be able to print my thing and then get outta here quick!!

Anyway, I'm still alive although considerably more sleep deprived than before, whenever before is I think it still applies, I hope all of you out there are too

Christmas News

2005-11-03T17:08:00.000-05:00

It figures that I have a final on the 20th of December at 7pm. It definitely puts a hamper on my extended holiday season but at least there is not excuse about not having enough time to study. Thought I'd let you all know :(

November ????

2005-11-01T19:45:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it's November already, where October go? where did September go? I'm not ready for winter yet!! I've been really tired lately, maybe it's the weather, shorter days, too many naps, I don't know but if I were standing guard somewhere I'd be asleep in my chair...or on the floor. I'm really excited about doing an internship this summer. There are some in Peru, Venezuela, Ghana, Zambia and more. They are volunteer posistion but they are completely funded by the university. I wish I could do two or three of them. They're 3 month internships so that means I wouldn't get to take courses this summer which means I would graduate next April not December but I think it's worth it. One is with the UN but that's in Italy and another is with CIDA in Peru.

Other news is that I'm going to have to postpone the Fair Trade Fair I wanted to organize with ten thousand villages before Christmas. We'll have to do it in February I guess. Otherwise, I want to organize a meeting, pressure the University to order paper with a higher post consumable recycling percentage and maybe create a Toronto resource website for York Students, maybe as a link to the IDS webpage, who knows :). I' m going back to reading now

Back again

2005-10-29T19:09:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone, its been a great week. Starting off with a getaway overnight trip to Muskoka woods with Myriam, favorite sister :) and a hot tub. It was a great way to relax and be out to see the fall colors. I'm also very happy to have come back safe and sound from a little...may I emphasize "little" for all you worriers out there...hike to see some waterfalls. Then all the hard work of last week seemed to pay off this week in class, always a bonus. On Thurday my knee was its best ever. I rode on a stationary bike for 5 minutes, have finally gotten it to straighten and it feels over all much stronger and sturdier. My scarves are coming along, I'm in the process of finishing two and I've got two more done. I've also got the process underway to start a knitting etc. group at York and I've met a couple other people who are really interested. Well, now that October is almost out of the way all my tests are done so next week I start writing essays....my not so favorite thing to do. Then December is back to doing tests and then it's all over Yay.

I thought this was a pretty cute picture of Ben, he's trying to fit under the desk cause Adam shoved him under there one time. He has lost 2 pounds since September but it's not quite enough...although I'm sure he thinks it is.

Grrr Arg Grrr

2005-10-17T23:51:00.000-04:00

Hi, I have 2 midterms this week so I'm sorry but no more posting until they're done, it's too tempting, too much fun, I should never have discovered the internet it is so distracting. Anyway, wish me luck...

My baby takes its first steps

2005-10-15T00:43:00.000-04:00

No no no, no real babies.......

I feel strangely proud of my knee, as if it were detached from my leg and the rest of my body. I pamper it, nuture it, carry it around with me, and I can't help looking down and saying....wow knee you're looking good. I'm still elated by the fact that I can walk and the cursing that characterized September has been replaced with giddiness....I hope I won't get so giddy that I'll trip. I mean by any other standard I'm just a girl walking around with a limp and a cane....but it's like I have a happy little secret under my pants :)~ So as my new knee takes it's first steps into the world I rejoice, not because I can walk around and life is suddenly so much easier, that all fades with a bad day, . . . I swell with pride at what my knee can do, that's its fixed and better after so long, it's on its way to being a full fledged functioning knee someday, whether it's still attached to my body . . .

The lost sewing machine

2005-10-14T03:38:00.000-04:00

I found a better place for the sewing machine on top of a shelf where it can get used if it wants to and left there when I don't have time. So from now until 2009 :)

I might have a possible use for the sewing machine in the immediate future. I want to start up a cooperative artisan's student society at York where people can sell there arts and crafts for tuition money. I can make tuques and scarves (especially ones with big needles) pretty fast and I could do it say on the bus...since I spend so much time there. If I can find other people at York who make crafts they can participate too. I could sell the stuff on campus twice a week for a few hours while I'm studying or after class. It would be the kind of job I could do because I don't have to stand or do any lifting and can have complete control over hours of work and when I feel like it. It's a thought that will need more investigating...

I met a lady when I went to physio in the hospital who makes a living selling crafts, scarves, fleece blankets etc. She goes to craft shows all over the Golden Horseshoe and even her husband quit his job to come work with her. I thought, I can do that, I can make that no problem...after all, I don't come from a crafty family for nothing.

Ahh Office

2005-10-12T20:51:00.000-04:00

I had to write my first paper since moving into the new office...and now I can really appreciate it for the torture chamber that it is. I really like it though, especially now that I can sit comfortably...all I need now is a big comfy chair to fall asleep in or maybe that's not such a good idea. The lamp that mom got me from Ikea is perfect, it makes the room seem really cozy and bright without being too bright. Thanks mom. I put the other reading lamp next to the couch, it fits perfectly.

Thanksgiving...

2005-10-10T13:44:00.000-04:00

Happy Thanksgiving anyone? Hey everyone, hope your day is going well and your spending time with family or friends or both. I'll be having Swiss Chalet with Myriam later on tonight. Hopefully I'll have finished my essay...or have started my essay by then. I woke up with a sore throat and the like. I really wish I'd stop leaving things to the last minute.

background

2005-10-09T19:49:00.000-04:00

First try

2005-10-08T23:21:00.000-04:00

Hey, I'm starting this up to keep in touch with people close by and far far away. I'm sorry but it's a less proactive way of keeping in touch but at least it's something...