Family Time

I love going over to Auntie Esther’s house.  Between Charity, Auntie Esther, Valentina, Lovelyn, Kwame, Ema, and Elvis, there is always someone to play with or talk to.  Lately, when dinner has been finished and we are relaxing outside, I have ended up in deep conversation with Ema, while Elvis commands the attention of everyone else with his antics.  Ema is seven and, like any seven-year-old with an imagination, can absolutely talk your ear off.  Lately our conversations have covered everything from Christmas to thunder to Spiderman to outer space to food to cartoons.  Last week, we started off talking about thunder, progressed through bodies cracking in half and God and Jerusalem and lightening in there somewhere, and ended up on Christmas presents that he would receive from us early before we leave on December 7^th.  I couldn’t even tell you how this progression occurred, because the conversations consist of 99% Ema and 1% Ally.  I nod along and ask “really?” and “what’s that?” at the appropriate times, but other than that, the floor belongs to him.  Erin and Hannah asked me how I can stand to listen to this seven-year-old chatter endlessly when we can’t even understand what he is saying half the time, but it hadn’t really struck me to be annoyed or bored when a little kid is explaining what an airbender is to you.  It’s clear that Ema has too many words to say-he can’t get them out fast enough, and I can see his brain working a mile a minute as he talks.  I’m excited for him that he has so much to share, and the other night I suggested something to him that seemed to get him thinking even more.  In the middle of a discussion of racecar games and wireless internet, I asked him how he thought of all of this stuff.  He shrugged, as you might expect, and said he didn’t know.  I told him how cool it was that he had such an imagination, and asked if he knew where the stories in books came from.  He had been reading a book called the Ugly Duckling to us all week, and I referenced that-“where do you think that story came from?”.  Again, he said he didn’t know, and I said “someone with an imagination just like yours thought it up and wrote it down.”  His eyes lit up in disbelief.  I said that someone, somewhere had an idea that came from a crazy imagination, wrote it down, and it became a book, or a TV show, or a movie.  I saw dawning realization in his eyes as he understood what I was getting at, and he bashfully grinned at the suggestion that one of his crazy stories was worth writing down.  “Writing something down makes it even easier to share with people,” I told him, and especially to him, that seemed to ring true, especially since I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be sharing all of this if he didn’t have us as an audience each night.  “What if you wrote down what you tell me-could you write it in the notebook I saw that’s for school?”  He shook his head no sadly…”but I could write it in another notebook I have!”  Two seconds later we were off on another conversation involving how far the sun is from the moon and what an esophagus is, but I was glad we had gotten a chance to talk about him-he’s clearly very smart (he just got moved from class 2 to class 3 in school), has a lot to say, and needs to share it, so maybe writing some of these stories and thoughts down will be a way for him to do that, especially when his obruni audience goes back home.

Speaking of smart kids, Elvis, who is three, recites his ABC’s, says his two times tables up to 2x12, and traces capital and lowercase letters for homework every night in his little school notebook.  All this without watching Sesame Street everyday or having dozens of books that would helpfully reinforce colors and numbers and letters.  He has one alphabet book that he is fiercely protective of, and hilariously points to C with a cat as the picture and says “pussycat!” as all one word in his funny little voice.  His other trademark phrases, pronounced crystal clearly, include “where is your camera?” “put this in your bag” “let me do the zip” “did you eat all?” “I’ll miss you” “I love you too” “I’m giving you an injection!”*

*this last one comes with its own story-he found a syringe cap in an extra room in their house where mothers can stay (Auntie Esther is a midwife), and proceeded to run up to us and do his best to plunge it into our arms before we realized what it was.  Needless to say, the cap was confiscated quickly and he got into some trouble for that one.   

Having these kids around is great, and to have a family here is even more of a positive thing than I originally thought it would be.  Lovelyn and Charity smiled with pride when we told them that none of our international health classmates in other countries have a host family, so we are lucky to have them.  Lovelyn asked me if they tell us where to go abroad, and I said no, I had heard from last year’s girls about how great it was in Dodowa with her family, and asked in my placement interview to come here.  Charity told us how she has a “Georgetown University Mom” t-shirt from another year’s group, which couldn’t be more appropriate.        

What's So Funny?

There are some moments and experiences that defy differences in language and culture.  I have been here in Dodowa for over five weeks now, and it has become clear to me that those moments can be rare.  As I have already alluded to, people here often find us really funny, when we think we are doing something completely mundane.  A couple weeks ago, for example, we bought a coconut at the market, had the man selling it break it open for us, and passed it around to taste the juice inside.  For some reason, this had about ten ladies at nearby stands absolutely shrieking with laughter.  We wondered what was so funny, and when inquiring to our friends later about the experience, they weren’t really able to provide an explanation that we understood.  All we got was that they were laughing WITH us, not AT us.  Ok... 

Besides that, there are many other times that something is absolutely hilarious to us and not to anyone here.  When buying clothes at Big Milly’s in Kokrobite, we found pants made of wheat flour sacks, and thought it was so funny that Hannah wanted to buy them, because she can’t eat gluten.  “It’s funny because it says wheat and she can’t eat that!” we tried to explain to the woman selling the pants.  She didn’t see the humor in it at all, and just gave us a look that told us she thought we were crazy (this look is directed at us a lot).  Another thing that is a constant source of entertainment to us is the store names in and around Dodowa-the best one by far has been the “He’s Alive Meat Shop”-how’s that for irony?  We also are seriously considering checking out a place in town that offers “perdicures”, as well as a place that advertises as “Club 32 so nice”. 

Last night, however, coming home from dinner in Legon in a tro-tro, two rare instances of common understanding occurred.  As we arrived at the tro-tro station, we saw that there was a line waiting to fill up tro-tros going to Dodowa, so we hurried over to get a spot in line and wait our turn.  However, a mate in charge of filling the vehicles up immediately came over to us and said “come, come you three can get into that car over there” as about twenty people in front of us stood waiting patiently.  I knew right away that this was not right, and as he spoke to us many people in line became angry at him for trying to do that.  It was getting late, everyone was tired at the end of the day, and everyone was waiting patiently for their turn to come to get in a tro-tro and go.  As people yelled at the mate in different local languages, we added to the chorus of voices, insisting that we would stand in line like everyone else and weren’t asking for any special treatment.  This only lasted for about ten minutes before he gave up trying to convince us, but it was funny how even though we still stand out and look very different and often act very different from others, in the moment, common human courtesy was a universal language to all.  We knew it was not right to get in a tro-tro in front of everyone else in line, and they knew that we were insisting that we didn’t want to be treated differently.  Everyone ended up packed into a tro-tro about five minutes later anyway, and as we drove home, another instance of “universal language” occurred.  We were some of the last ones to get on our tro-tro, so the three of us were sitting in separate rows-Hannah towards the front, myself in a middle row, and Erin towards the back.  As we bumped along, the man sitting next to Hannah began falling asleep, and kept rolling his head on to her shoulder as he drifted off.  Hannah politely didn’t say anything, and allowed this man to basically fall asleep on her.  As I noticed this and looked around to Erin, I noticed that everyone in the back also noticed what was going on.  Laughter started to ring out as we all saw Hannah being slowly inched out of her seat bit by bit by this very sleepy gentleman.  One of the girls sitting in the back reached up and tapped Hannah, motioning for her to punch him in the face to get him off of her shoulder, and even more peals of laughter sounded at that advice.  Hannah, Erin, myself, and about eight other tro-tro riders all thought this situation was quite funny, and when he finally jolted awake after a large bump, a friend informed him that he had been our source of entertainment for the last ten minutes.  It was cool to all be laughing at the same thing-like I said, I often feel like either we “get” or “don’t get” some things here, so to “get” what everyone else understands too makes me feel like the world isn’t so big if we can all laugh together.

"Where is your cam-air-ah?"

For your Friday morning viewing pleasure, check out Elvis hamming it up for the camera in his jean jacket while we waited for it to stop raining last night...

...I swear this kid gets weirder by the day.

cam-air-ah = camera, pronounced that way by Elvis every day when we arrive for dinner

Unexpected Inspiration

Having just returned from a meeting with Dr. Gyapong, about a million thoughts are running through my head about my research project, and I keep thinking back over how I arrived at this topic.  I wouldn’t say it was fate, but a few chance happenings led to the experience that led me to ask questions about what has become my focus for the rest of the semester.  It all started about two weeks ago, when the option of going on outreach visits came up at work.  We would be taking turns going out with the community health nurses at My Place to provide health services such as weighing and vaccinations to young children.  Only one person could go on each visit, because of limited space in the car, so we pulled names out of a hat to see who would go that Friday.  I ended up with the little piece of paper with an “O” on it, so I got up early Friday morning and set off alone down the road to My Place (side note: this was the first time I was going anywhere alone since being here-you could say the three of us are a packaged deal of sorts).  In the car on the way there, one of the nurses (whose seat I was sharing), kept insisting that I needed to get out when she did and come to her outreach site.  I readily agreed, and hopped out with her initially.  However, the other nurses had apparently already agreed that I would be going somewhere else with another nurse, so they emphatically insisted I get back in the car.  To me, it didn’t really make a difference where I was going, but that was about to change.  The outreach visit with Cynthia, the nurse, went really well, as I previously described.  It was something that happened as we were packing up our scale and medical supplies that struck me.  We had been set up right outside of a school in Otsebreku, and about twenty minutes before we left, a woman arrived in a cab.  It quickly became clear that she was there to bring food for lunch at the school, since she pulled a large plastic bin full of rice from the trunk of the car.  As all of the children, lined up with bowls and cups to have them filled, I noticed that the bin contained ONLY rice-no vegetables, no meat, nothing supplementary in any form.  Although the diet here in Ghana does primarily revolve around starches-cassava, yams, rice-I immediately knew that a lunch provided for school children should consist of more than plain rice.  Apparently Cynthia and a few nearby community members had the exact same thoughts.  They angrily began discussing the situation with each other in Dangbe, and were clearly trying to figure out how they could correct the obvious deficiency in this lunch.  I asked Cynthia if they were talking about how the lunch was insufficient, and she confirmed my suspicions: “how can the children go back into school and learn with nothing but rice in their stomachs?”  I asked her who paid for the lunch to be provided-the government (what I later researched to be the Ghana School Feeding Programme, providing one hot nutritious meal to students in primary schools each day to improve childhood nutrition and increase school enrollment).  Clearly, the meal didn’t fit the “nutrition” part of that objective.  As people got on cell phones to call local assemblymen, Cynthia and the driver heatedly discussed the clear implication of such a simple lunch being served-where was the extra money that should have been used to pay for vegetables and meat to go with the rice?  Into whose pocket was it going?  These were the questions everyone kept coming back to, and I sat there quietly thinking to myself about this whole issue.  I had been floating around various research topics for a while, and the wheels had really started turning.  Could this be a completely unlikely and unplanned source of inspiration?  Looking into such a large project like the GSFP and visiting many schools and talking to many people at each school could be quite challenging, so I kept this idea in the back of my head but formed other research options to present to Dr. Gyapong. 

The following week, as we sat with her and Sheila trying to get a good direction on our projects, I brought up some other ideas I had been working on, but kept the school nutrition idea to myself, because I wasn’t really sure what the response would be and if it would even work.  As we were finishing the meeting, I decided to at least try it out, especially since time with Dr. Gyapong is precious (she is the director of the DHRC and isn’t around every day), and related the story of my outreach visit to her.  Her eyes immediately lit up, and suddenly I knew what I would definitely be researching.  After our second meeting today, we have decided that I should stick to the nutrition side of the issue, rather than dig too deep in terms of other more political (i.e. controversial) aspects of the program.  So, I will be doing a case study of the nutritional needs of primary school children at the Dodowa New Town D/A Basic A School.  I will look at the food provided for lunch as part of the GSFP, but also get a larger picture of the nutritional status of randomly selected kindergarteners by going to their homes and seeing what is eaten in a full day.  Focusing on just one school gives me the opportunity to talk to the many stakeholders involved-the students, the teachers, the head of the school, and those who prepare and serve the food at the school.  More detailed discussions also will be had with the children who are followed home, and if it works out, I would also like to be able to take simple anthropometric measurements.  I’m extremely excited to embark on this project, and I can tell Dr. Gyapong is very enthusiastic about it as well.  I was most flattered when she said that she had been discussing my idea the previous evening with her husband, who teaches at the University of Ghana School of Public Health.  They’re pretty much a Ghana health power couple, and that they were even briefly talking about my idea was pretty cool. 

So now as I’m reflecting on all of this, I realize how a few random occurrences led me to come up with this research area-happening to be the one to go on outreach that day, ending up at Otsebreku instead of another site, having the lunch arrive before we left for the day, mentioning the idea on a whim to Dr. Gyapong.  I love having a project based on an experience I had first-hand, instead of an area of interest I just researched online or someone told me about, and it already has made me extra enthusiastic about getting started!  It will be a bit challenging getting proposals written and commented on, since UNICEF field work has pretty much everyone out of the office this week and possibly for a few subsequent weeks.  That means that Sheila, Irene, Oti, VU, EL, Solomon, etc. (basically everyone we interact with on a daily basis, and many of the people from whom we will need feedback about our project proposals) are all gone for now, so hopefully enough people will be here next Monday so we can present proposals and get things submitted for IRB review.  Despite this, optimism is running high amongst all three of us (Hannah and Erin are collaborating on an awesome project that Dr. Gyapong is really excited to have them do, because it directly fills a need of the DHRC-they’ll be looking at conditional cash transfers to pregnant women through an ILO program and evaluating what is going on with it, because no one really knows right now).             

Dinner and a Wedding!

After living without a working stove for our first three weeks here, we have finally figured out how to use it correctly and have since been basking in the glory of being able to actually cook things.  Never have I been so grateful to be able to boil water and cook some pasta-again, it’s the little things J  Anyway, with the knowledge of our working stove in mind, it was time for a second try on a Max Mart trip, since our first one failed in spectacular fashion.  Not so this time around.  First of all, with a gelato shop right inside the entrance, the hot and sweaty tro-tro ride we took to get there was immediately negated.  Then, the actual shopping commenced, and I got blissfully lost in the many options before me.  Frozen veggies!  Babybel cheese!  Fresh chicken at the meat counter!  Peanut butter! (I have become weirdly obsessed with peanut butter here…not sure why…Hannah and Erin had to stop me from buying three jars on this shopping trip).  Heavy baskets put an end to our trip, as we wanted to be able to get this all back on a tro-tro home, so we said goodbye to Max Mart until next time.  Our tro-tro out of Medina broke down briefly, and we were treated to some passionate preaching in a local language by a woman in the front row, but we arrived back in Dodowa before dark and ready to cook.  You see, we had invited Irene and Jonas, two of our research center friends who live nearby, over for dinner!  We made a chicken recipe of Hannah’s that turned out to be delicious, and supplemented it with lots of pasta and sauce as well as sautéed spinach.  We even were able to procure parmesan cheese from our shopping trip to grate over the pasta!  So fancy, right?  Our dinner for six turned out quite nicely, with good conversation and full stomachs all around-I felt like Charity looking to see who had finished all of their food.  This time I wanted everyone else to eat all!  Irene, Jonas, and Oti all gave the meal their seal of approval, and Erin and Hannah topped the meal off with their concoction of oats, chocolate, peanut butter, and not sure what else all mixed together.  It was great to hang out with friends outside of work, and we’ve realized that more people live right here in Dodowa than we originally thought, so we’ll be able to invite more DHRC friends over in the future!  

Saturday saw us all waking up early to get ready for a wedding!  A little backstory first: at the interdepartmental meeting a few weeks ago, we heard mention of a wedding coming up soon.  We did not know whose wedding it was, but in the meeting they talked as though anyone who wanted to come could come.  This confused me, because I’m used to weddings being pretty strictly invite-only affairs.  We vaguely wondered whether we could go to this wedding, and when we finally asked Oti about it, he looked surprised to even hear the question and said “of course you are coming! Why wouldn’t you?” And that’s how we ended up going to the wedding of two people we didn’t know.  Technically, we “know” Eunice, the bride, because she works at the research center and I’m sure we met her in our whirlwind first day of introductions.  However, you usually don’t end up attending the wedding of someone you met once at work, but that’s just the way it is here.  As Hannah put it, “exclusivity doesn’t really exist here”.  We excitedly discussed with Gloria the day before as to what we should wear, and she assured us anything we have in African prints would be good, and so we settled on wearing our matching sundresses in different patterns that Millicent, who is quickly becoming our favorite seamstress, made for us.  The wedding was a little over an hour away from Dodowa, so we carpooled with research center staff to get there, and arrived at a Presbyterian church decorated with green, white, and yellow decorations.  The church building itself was not actually a complete building (it didn’t exactly have a roof), but tents were set up over the seats and streamers, balloons, and banners made it look like the most beautiful venue to get married in.  The wedding was pretty standard as far as weddings go, with joyful songs, scripture readings, and exchanging of vows.  The main differences, however, were that the sermon was not the most optimistically phrased sermon for a new couple (basically the minister ranted about how horrible and shameful divorce was, and basically said that they better not get divorced), the bride and groom hugged instead of kissed after they had exchanged vows, and people were much more vocal in their celebration of the couple (when they went into a back room to sign the marriage contract, people began dancing and singing loudly in excitement, which only increased when the bride and groom came back out and started dancing through the crowd themselves).  After the ceremony, pictures were taken, including one of the DHRC staff with the couple, which I’m hoping will make it’s way to me in an email, and then everyone made their way down the street to the house where the reception was being held.  Tents in the backyard shaded many tables, and a buffet of rice varieties and chicken tasted delicious after the 2+ hour ceremony.  We sat at a table with Gloria and another family with the cutest little girl in a pink dress that would smile at us and wave from across the table.  We also made friends with two adorable girls dressed in matching dresses who were delighted when we took their picture and showed it to them on our cameras.  Dr. Gyapong had the honor of sitting at the high table with the couple, and also led the cutting of the cake, with a nice speech about how all of the work that goes into making a cake beautiful mimics the work and patience that it takes to make a marriage happy.  Although we left before tasting the cake, we did stay for the champagne toast to the couple, and left for the day happy to have shared in such a special day.  We rode back home with Augustina, who works at the research center and sings at Solomon’s church, and she told us our dresses were the perfect thing to wear and that Eunice was very happy to have us there!

Finally, we have two new friends at dinner: Gina and JoJo, who are visiting their cousins at Auntie Esther's house.  Gina is four years old and JoJo is two, and though they were a bit shy around us the first couple of days, last night we finally got them to smile and play with us!  Both were very excited to see our cameras, put on Hannah's sunglasses, and sit on our laps.  Once Ema's friends Bernhard and Quako showed up, we had quite the group to be able to play a big game of tug-of-war between the all the kids.  Elvis did seem to get a little bit jealous that he wasn't the only little kid around, and was not too happy to have to share his recently acquired book of ABC's (which he hilariously calls his "Bible").  Hannah has a great picture of him giving some seriously angry side-eye to Gina as she happily sits on Erin's lap.
We also tried fufu for the first time last night!  It's made of pounded cassava and plantain, and is served in a spicy tomato soup.  I was a little bit skeptical of how much I would enjoy it, especially because banku and kenke were difficult to get used to the first time, but I actually really liked it, and nearly finished it all!  We came early to dinner to eat it because it is a very heavy food so it is better to not eat it too late.