Wedding

So I attended a wedding in my village recently. Weddings here are not a day long event but are 4 day events. Every day brides family will provide dinner for the community. This is a lot of people to cook for and is so much fun to watch.

So Ghanian dishes are the following:
T.Z (pronounced "Tee Zet" thus the reason why every child believes the letter Z is pronounced "zet")- This is a mix of corn flour and cassava flour. They add it to a pot of boiling water and then stir like crazy. It's really like an attacking motion.
Fufu- The ingredients varies from region to region of Ghana. Southern Ghana will use yams and plantains while the North will use just yams because plantains won't grow up north. You boil the yams and then pound them until they magically turn into a lump of dough. Without fail the women will form this ball of yam into a perfectly round ball.
Rice- Either in the form of a ball or cooked with a little bit of tomatoes. If cooked with tomatoes it is served by itself.

Those are the staples and then each is always served with some type of stew. You'll either eat it with some groundnut stew (tomatoes, onions, salt, peanut butter), Okra stew (okra, tomatoes, onions, salt), Dagban stew (local leaves off a tree, tomatoes, onions, salt), or Bra soup (leafy plant, tomatoes, onions, salt).

With these dishes I've mentioned you'll have learned about 90% of the dishes here.

So back to the wedding, this family is cooking for all 300 people in my village. Impressive. Watching the women cook the T.Z was like watching a really happy and joyful Iron Chef. They had this huge cauldron and a stirring spoon that measured up to my neck. I stood next to it but unfortunately didn't get a picture of it. So big cauldron, big spoon, a LOT of cassava and corn flour. There were about 12 ladies lined up behind the cauldron all taking turns spinning and attacking the T.Z. They tried to get me to stir the spoon and I probably only managed to move it a foot. Then I realized why it took 12 strong women to make this huge pot of food. I sadly didn't get a video of this (next time, as there are always more weddings).

On day 2 they made koko (porridge which is just like a really really watered down T.Z). Breakfast for all!

Day 3 they make Fufu. And yes, I got video's of this!

This is a video of women pounding fufu. There is such great coordination between them all it really always blows my mind. My mom is the one spraying water on the fufu.
"Twabu" which means pounding

This video is of them pounding a different ball (same day same time) and they had a super good rhythm going. It's really soothing to hear. The reason the video looks kind of weird/rushed is because at this particular moment I was trying to hide the fact I was recording because they felt self conscience they weren't in their good clothes. I told them you guys wouldn't mind. Fufu 

They had like 3 huge balls of fufu which they used to feed the village.

The family will get obnoxiously loud speakers and blare music the last 2 days of the wedding. There is some tribal scream that every women will randomly do when they feel like it and there is a ton of dancing and singing. The whole community really rallies behind these weddings.

Then the wedding ended (for me before I called it a night) with me being completely embarrassed because I got called out to dance in front of the ENTIRE community. The moment of "oh god... it's actually happening" will forever be engrained in my head

Random post

     I saw something funny the other day. My 3 house sisters all decided to have a group pee. Urinating (nobody here says “peeing”) is totally no big deal here. They all went into the bathing area of the house and urinated all around the hole that leads outside the compound. It was pretty funny when the realization dawned on me what had just happened. In general going to the bathroom here is no big deal. I’ll be going to fetch some water and somebody in the group will just say they have to “go to the toilet” and wander 10 feet into the bush and go about their business. Sometimes one of the girls will try to make a point that we can still see the person’s outline (if they haven’t gone in far enough) and then everybody will laugh.

     Now the music everybody here has been listening to! It is all moving music man. These songs are all the rage here and I have to say, I like them. If you got some time to burn and you want to listen to some Ghanian music then click away!

 

Azonto -Azonto is probably the biggest (or was the biggest) hit in Ghana. It was on the local news for the craze it was starting haha. Since I don't really know how to dance you can imagine how much laughing actually happens when I try to move to Azonto.

I love my Life - I mean this song is what every life lover (and one in particular) will love.

Yesi Yesi- I don't actually know what this song is about but the tune is just catchy man.

There are more songs but I realized searching up songs when the title is in a different language which I can't spell, is hard. So I hope you enjoy these 3 songs.

1 month at site!

     Hey everybody! I've been at site for one month now and its been smooth sailing.
     As my last post said I was going to get my ears pierced. Well I did it! I didn't do it without a fight though. I probably almost broke this girls hand because I was squeezing it so hard as they punched the earring into my ear. They believe if they spray perfume over the spot where they are going to pierce, it won't hurt. This I can say is a fallacy. This woman (one of the chief's wives actually) got my earring and said what is probably one of 10 English words she knows, "Rrrrready?" To which I replied ".... .... Okay...." Then she leaned in and I leaned away. Far far away. This went on for probably too long when I finally finally worked up the courage to just sit there. It took a lot of laughing from the other wives (they probably thought it was ridiculous how much I struggled to not get them pierced), but I did it.
     I can now carry a bucket that is half the size of what the other women here are carrying. I can only do it once before I need to switch back to my little one, but still it's progress! Woohoo.
     Drama in the village: Yesterday I was washing my clothes by the pond/lake thing. After I finally finished (and had clean nails again) I started walking home. All of a sudden I see a huge flurry of movement. All the young men in the village are running and yelling and pointing. I'm standing there with this wash basin of clothes on my head just watching it all. Nobody can explain to me what is happening in English and it's super hot out so I decide to just go home.
     It takes a while but eventually I'm able to get the story from Abass (a man who speaks good English who lives in my compound). A Fulani (a tribe of people who herd cattle) had cut the water line to a mango field my community watches after. Somebody confronted the Fulani about what he had done and said that he needed to give him one of his cows. The Fulani refused. The situation escalates until two of his cattle are shot.
      Whoa right? The whole issue gets brought the the chief of my village and I believe the resolution is that the meat will be sold and the money from the meat will be used to repair the water line. I'll let you know if anything else happens about this.

      So here is proof that I got my ears pierced. I guess 22 isn't too old.

     I'll post pictures of my site and house sometime. I haven't taken any pictures of site yet because I'm afraid of the children and how they will undoubtedly swarm me, especially if they see me taking pictures. Plus I have 2 years right?
     Lastly I didn't know i could reply to comments on my blog! Haha but I do now so expect responses from here on out.
     Byebye everybody!

Integrating some more

     Since the last post I've eaten about 20 more "saba" and I got to say... it is honestly good. Took a little getting use to and a lot of mental "it's going to be okay its going to be okay" but I got through it and now actually sort of look forward to saba. Try not to judge me too much, okay?
     Sooo I'm going to get my ears pierced. All the women and men here have the same hair cut so one of the main female indicators are earrings. I've had several people ask me where my earrings were and I've always had to say I only have one on my right ear (the cartilage- which btw, thanks Thea for convincing me to get it way back when because it's been a saving grace haha). Anyway I recently buzzed my head so I decided it was time to get earrings to make up for my lack of hair. I know I said I was growing my hair out but it is a lot easier to cut your hair on a whim rather than growing it out. Don't worry all, I'll make sure the needle is sterilized.
     Morning runs have been really great. Sometimes the smoke from the burning bush gets to me though. The people here start the bush on fire to catch the saba. It's not a very good thing but I'm at a loss of what to do. To deny eating the meat they serve me is an insult but to eat it is encouraging bad practice... There was this night where I thought for sure I could hear it raining. I was so confused because I knew that it couldn't be raining though since it's the dry season, yet it was unmistakeable what I was hearing. I forced myself out of bed and peeked outside my window. Bush fire crackling and popping just behind my compound.
     So I'm really enjoying my days at site. I've been really having fun making a fool of myself trying to pronounce certain words and playing with the kids. I haven't really had time to read books actually which has been a surprise.
     Just a short update for now! I'll try to write more next time I'm at the cafe!

Official Volunteer!

Sorry its been a while since my last post. First and foremost, I hope everybody had an awesome Christmas (enjoy that snow for me!).


Second, I have a new address!

Diana Hsieh, PCV
Peace Corps/Ghana

PO Box 962

Tamale- Northern Region, Ghana

West Africa

I passed my language exam! Woohoo! This was hopefully obvious as I didn't show back up in America haha. After passing the language exam we were all sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers! The swearing in ceremony was really really nice. We all got our certificates, danced a bunch, and had some celebratory drinks after!

Then we all travel to our individual sites, mine being Yapalsi. I was definitely a little worried because last time I was in Yapalsi I left pretty stressed out. However since I've been at site it's been nothing but nice. Knowing more of the language has been a huge help. I was really dreading the children knocking on my shutters saying, "Madam. Madam. Come out. Madam. Madam. Come out. Please. Madam..." for 20 solid minutes at night, but since being at site that hasn't been a huge issue.

So every morning I go and get water from a pond about a 10ish minute walk from home. Everybody carries the water in these huge barrels on their heads so I wanted to do the same. It's a pretty funny site because by the time I get back to my house I'm normally soaking wet. I use a bucket about half the size of the barrels they carry because my neck muscles just aren't up to par. The one time I tried to carry one of their barrels on top of my head I thought I was going to break my neck. I literally could not even take a single step for fear making myself a paraplegic. I've made it a personal goal to be able to carry one of those barrels though, I mean, my 12 year old sister here can do it (the barrel has to weigh half her weight). People here are beasts man.

Not having electricity hasn't posed a huge problem for me yet. It was annoying though when I couldn't charge my phone when it died. My original battery lasted 2 weeks before it needed a charge and was amazing. However I dropped my phone on my way to site and my battery fell out and disappeared into thin air. It was like a really good magic trick, only I didn't get what I lost back. This new battery actually just freaked out last night. The battery got really hot and expanded to an oval like shape. I got really scared and threw it away, thus bringing me into town so I could buy a new battery and visit an internet cafe!

Yesterday I went and picked cotton with my fellow village mates. I kept wondering where every child went during the day so I followed them. It was a site for them to see my picking cotton next to them. Cotton tears at your hand though, you got to be careful when picking it!

 Getting my PCV certificate!!

 My host parents at the ceremony! They had a matching dress tailored for me.

 A funeral ceremony I attended. Those guns were LOUD.

If cultural integration didn't begin with fetching water in the morning or picking cotton, it damn well began when I ate this- "Saba" or bush meat. My family ate this the night before but I had already eaten dinner so I thought I was in the clear. Well, no. I got this for breakfast today. Maybe this is how everybody feels when they are served fish with its head still attached? Either way I ate this whole thing (minus the tail, head, and 1 paw). Honestly it wasn't too bad...

Home stretch of PC training

     Since returning back to homestay (back at Maase in the Eastern Region) things are as if I never left. In the beginning I felt a little out of place and estranged, but that quickly melted away. My family is still super nice and it will be harder saying the final goodbye than I originally thought. Like most things, I get attached before I know its happened. I’ve taught the children living at my homestay house to say “I’m awesome!” when I ask them how they are doing. It’s pretty funny.

     Language training has been a roller coaster of a ride. Once we got back from tech training language class was pretty stressful. After not hardcore studying Dagbani for a month it was not an easy transition back into it. However language class has finally begun to mellow out and all that is left is our dreaded Language Proficiency Interview (LPI) this coming Monday. All 25 of us have to have a 30 minute taped conversation in our target language. Wish me luck…
      Knowing that we would be wearing dresses to our swearing in ceremony (the day we turn from Peace Corps Trainees to Peace Corps Volunteers) I went to get a dress made for myself. People here have some serious skill in making dresses. It’s all handmade and somehow they turn 4 yards of cloth into these really cool dresses. A yard of boutique fabric costs about 5 cedis (about 3 dollars and 30 cents). To make the patterns on boutique fabric somebody will carve a pattern out of wood and then fill it with wax. The wax is then melted just slightly and dabbed on the fabric to create the repeating pattern which is dyed different colors. You will bring to a seamstress the fabric you bought and tell her what you want made. She’ll take your measurements and then about a week later you’ll have your own personalized dress. The labor costs about 10 or 15 cedis. Pretty crazy right?

     We’ve been having daily dancing lessons. These people come and bring these native drums and bang out a beat for us. Then some people will demonstrate the traditional dance to the beat and we all follow in suit. It’s a really fun time and it’s quite interesting to be learning these dances. When we all swear in we will be doing 2 dances that we learned. My mother went to get a dress tailored for me so that we could all match for the ceremony.  Had I known she was going to do this I wouldn’t have gone out to buy my own dress, but I guess I’ll just have two now.

      So yes, I've been dancing, getting dresses made, and all sorts of other jazz. I can't believe it either.

 The children at my house cut the grass with a machete, you didn't think they had lawnmowers did you?

 Food practical day! Making delicious food with Ghanian ingredients.

 Proof that I'm not telling lies and am actually dancing. Ran is my partner behind me.

Tech training part 3

     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.