Ok, so some of you guys might be wondering why it is I’m touching a crocodile in my previous post. I will explain soon.
I will continue my story post Shea Butter.
We were all taught how to use this plant called Vetiver to help with erosion problems in Ghana. During the rainy season the rain comes down fast and hard. There is an incredible amount of runoff and naturally soil is carried away.
-side story-
In a previous post I mentioned how when I’m out running I always have to be careful because cars will frequently be driving on the wrong side of the road. This I due to two reason. 1. Many of the cars here are way overloaded and therefore cannot travel fast (the other day I was in a taxi, built for 5 people, with 9 people in it). This causes any and all cars to pass on the opposite side of the road. It seems like it’s an unspoken law that all drivers shall pass a slower car regardless of whether they have to or not. 2. The roads have huge potholes, trenches, crevasses, and ditches caused by low maintenance and erosion. All the drivers will avoid the holes by driving on the nicer side of the road, regardless what side it is. The drivers might even just decide that the road is too bad and drive next to the road on the dirt and grass, though he can’t do this for long since the grass here is over 6 feet tall.
-back to Vetiver-
This plant can have roots over 6 feet long! It looks like really spiky grass and it grows in clumps. In order to plant this we needed to be able to find the contour line of an area. To do this we had an awesome practical where we built an A frame and learned how to use it.
The same day as the Vetiver practical a bunch of us suited up in Bee suits and learned how to harvest honey combs. We left after dinner and were taken to a bee hive. This was a self-constructed rectangular box with top bars on it. We got to learn how to harvest the honey combs and to see what an actual hive looked like. I have to say, it gets a little disconcerting hearing all these bees buzzing all over you… I definitely began to worry about my clothing and whether I actually had it on right. I must have though because I didn’t get stung! Only one person did actually and that was when we had made it all the way back to where we were staying at, gotten out of our, and were all leaving to our rooms.
The next day we learned how to make the beehive box and how to make the rabbit hutches. Can’t say I particularly enjoyed this session because the Ghanaian really just kind of took over the project.
The last thing we really learned about during this off site Tech training was dry season farming. We saw irrigation ditches, saw how farmers organized their beds, the different techniques for watering the plants, and were even given the choice to help plant some onion plants.
Thanksgiving day!
This was the day that we traveled to Paga and saw the crocodiles. At this palace crocodiles are considered sacred and if you are caught killing one it is considered homicide and as Ran’s frafra teacher told him, “If you kill a crocodile your life is forfeit.” We all hung around these Crocs and the trainers fed them live chickens for us. That was pretty cool I must admit. Before we left Paga we got to drive right up to the border of Ghana and Burkino Faso, so now we can all officially say that we’ve driven through the complete length of Ghana!
After the crocodile fun we all left back to the Spiritual Renewal Center (the name of the place we were staying at, cool name right?) for lunch. After lunch a few very cool people volunteered to stay back to cook Thanksgiving dinner while the rest of us had the choice to go learn how to brew Pito, a local beer, or to just relax. Tempting as it was to just “ptfo” I decided to go and learn how to brew Pito. It is a super intensive process! It takes several days of fermenting and boiling and soaking before you get the final product. Every person who brews Pito is a woman, apparently it is taboo for the men to do it. The lady we visited told us that she had only sons so therefore she had no help making her Pito.
It was a really interesting experience watching the whole process. Like any good tour we got to sample the final product. We drank the Pito out of these bowls which were carved from the fruit of a tree. The Pito tasted like a sour apple cider and wasn’t too bad. We all thanked out brewer and left to go back to the SRC.
Thanksgiving dinner was awesome! The turkey cost 90 cedis (about 60 dollars), alive. So Linda and Danny took the job and killed and dressed our turkey. I can’t remember everyone's jobs but I do know what we all ate: Turkey, biscuits, mash potatoes, apple cobbler, fruit salad, vegetable salad, guiney fowl, wine, sun tea, sweat potato casserole, and some gravy. Ridiculous. The (three) guiney fowls were donated by a really cool family that joined us for dinner. They were from the states too and were here in Ghana working with a local village.
It was incredible how well dinner turned out (the great chefs made enough for 34 people) considering how difficult it is to find half of those ingredients. Since Thanksgiving cooking is not my specialty I was part of the cleanup crew.
With the conclusion of Thanksgiving dinner we all went back to our rooms to get ready to leave and go back to Kukurantumi. This marked the end of offsite tech training.
-our lodgings-
A little description of where we stayed out during our tech training.
The first place we stayed at was a place called Premier Palace, a pretty decent hotel. It had AC so no complaints haha.
Then after we were broken up into Shea and Cashew groups we Shea people stayed at the nice swiss ladies hotel/hostel/house. This was a really cute compound and reminded me of a normal home.
Then we were all reunited once again at the SRC. The SRC was definitely a nice and relaxing place. This was one of the few places I’ve seen with hills. The running here was really nice and it reminded me of running around in a rural country setting. There was a really deep well here that had dried up so there were all these bats living in it and we could gather around the opening right at dusk and see them fly out. There were these baobab trees in the SRC which were huge!
Linda, Suzanne, and Terry working on the A frame
The cool trees out front of the SRC. Trying to meditate by them was fun, but I'm still ultimately and completely unable to clear my head. Haha.
Bee hive harvesting. Rich, our tech trainer, is in the middle.
Rabbit Hutch/Bee hive construction. Notice how the Ghanians use the saw.
Gobble Gobble.
Rich in traditional garments. We're learning about dry season farming.
Pito Brewing facility
Burkino Faso is just yonder.
Okay I miss you allllll and I hope that Thanksgiving was awesome for you guys.
