Welcome to KSO!

Yee-hah! My site restriction is over, and now it is time for cool projects with other volunteers!

This video was created at our Kumasi Sub Office (aka KSO) where we introduce its amenities and have some fun along the way. I shot a couple of scenes (including the very last one) and also had several seconds of fame. But the real heroes are Matt (the main star), Jimmy (the editor) and Tabatha (the voice-over).

Ayekoo (well done)!

PS: My idea for another video-audio project is to collect songs from various parts of Ghana.

Social Life Post

As a fan of urban life-style with its never-ending socialization during after-work drinks, festivals, concerts, birthday parties and pub crawls, it can be somewhat shocking to live in a small village in West Africa (although I was born in a small island town in Russia and studied in the Pennsylvanian boonies). But, upon closer look, rural living can still provide some social opportunities.

So far the most popular social event around here is…a funeral. While in the US, Russia and Kazakhstan it is a fairly private family affair (with an exception of an obituary published in a local newspaper announcing the memorial service for friends and close relatives), Ghanaians see a funeral as a chance to socialize with relatives from other villages, meet local chiefs and raise funds for further arrangements.

Overall, a typical funeral or a memorial service looks like this: a canopy is put up on a village football field, where hundreds of plastic chairs are placed. There is an MC who plays pop music and makes announcements through giant speakers. In the middle of the field there is either 1) a tent with a coffin where a deceased is laid to rest), or 2) a big photograph of the deceased festooned with black and red ribbons and plastic flowers. People, dressed up in their funereal best (either black-and-red dresses and shirts, or black-and-white robes, depending on the type of funeral and the age of the deceased), walk around the field from right to left, wave at other guests and pay respect to the deceased. They also give money to the funeral committee that would cover various expenses – the biggest one being a fee to a mortuary where a body is stored, sometimes for months. Here in the region of cocoa, where there is some extra money after the harvest, a lot of funerals are held in February and March.

Despite the somewhat morbid occasion, people regarding these events as great opportunity for socializing, dancing, eating and drinking. Many times they pay an MC a little extra to request a certain song for their village or a certain person (one time a song was requested for me, “an American woman”, where I had t stand up and dance a bit).

A family of the deceased is usually responsible for feeding the guests, but as far as drinking goes, many simply go to local spots and have shots of apeteshi or beer. I did not see too much crying and mourning – Ghanaians hardly express their grief in public. However, based on the family’s church affiliations, there is some room for mourning through dancing and singing. One funeral, organized by the Divine Faith Church, had women criers around the coffin.

 If a departed was an old and well-respected community member, their funeral is attended by local chiefs who make quite an entrance with their interpreters, bodyguards and umbrella-twirlers. They display their chieftaincy through big golden rings, head bands, bracelets and tribal marks. It is quite a sight.

From an outsider’s point of view, it seems like a mortality rate is pretty high – my fellow villagers go to funerals every weekend. But one must take in the fact that it is a more social occasion here than in the US. The mood is usually festive, and the entire event looks like a combination of a festival, a diplomatic visit, an auction and a discotheque. MCs make announcements of each delegation from every village, vendors walk around to sell groundnuts and bofrut (a Ghanaian donut) women chat and occasionally stand up and dance in the middle of the field. People dress in their best attire: both men and women order new dresses and shirts; women weave their braids and buy new kerchiefs.

I was told that another good way to socialize is at a wedding if a couple decides to organize one (as usually the ceremony of a husband taking a wife is done privately, only in the presence of their families). So far there were no weddings around here, but I will let you know what they are like once I’m invited.

Here are some pics  (and a video!) from the festivities:

 Women from my village and their beautiful outfits.

Dancing! And honoring the chief.

The essential plastic chair for all your community needs (I have one in my court-yard, and during training we broke a whole bunch of them :)).

A Day in Life of a PCV in Ghana

Some of you were wondering what is it I do every day in Ghana: Soaking up the sun? Wondering in the bush with a cutlass pretending to be an explorer? Hiding  from the heat? Fending off marriage proposals?.... Well, although every day has its unique moments, right now, during my first three months of an integration period, I’ve been mainly staying in my little village with an exception of going to my market town for some provisions and visiting volunteers who live nearby. So, as of now, I have a certain daily routine going, which I provide below. Note – this can change in April, as I’ll be off my site restriction, and will be able to travel more for more training, grant work and friendly visits to other regions. [Note: by the time this blog entry got finally posted, my site restriction officially ended. Yay!]

6.30-7 – wake up, go for a run in the bush (if I’m not too lazy). Sometimes after that, I walk to the main street of the village and greet people on their way to farms.

7.30-8 – breakfast (coffee, fried eggs, fried bread, or bofrut, which I buy in the “downtown”), reading, listening to some tunes, watering my little garden. I’ve got some cabbage, basil, aloe and carrots planted in various containers (including new coffee mugs that I already managed to chip and break). Some of them I inherited from previous volunteers who served several years before.

8-12 – going to a farm with one of the farmers (once a week – going to a local school to teach a couple of integrated science classes). So far I helped with weeding (with my cutlass!), harvesting cocoa and planting tomatoes. With a rainy season coming up, there will be a lot of cocoa planting, so I want to help with that too. Since I live right next to the school (and since my mother is a teacher) I felt compelled to do something at the school as well.

12-2 – lunch (usually stew, or fruit, or gari with groundnuts) and an afternoon nap. Sometimes farmers feed me bread, apesi (boiled plantains and yams with a fish or tomato stew), or a pear (this is how they call avocado). It’s getting hotter around here, so an afternoon siesta is a requirement, not an option J. I’m more lucky than other volunteers, though – it does not get 100F in the shade around here, and there is a fairly pleasant breeze.

4.30 - 6 – a visit from neighboring kids to help me fetch water or sweep a courtyard in exchange for fruit, or a game or a craft. So far we played frisbee, sang songs and learned how to make a skipping rope from used water satchets.

Sometimes I wonder around and greet people as they prepare their dinners and prepare for bed. Greetings are very important in the Ghanaian culture, plus there may be a possibility that somebody may feed me. I also walk to the big tree where men play board games – usually dam, which is just like our checkers.

6-7 – dinner (red-red, pasta, stew, sardines, or salad), or whatever I’m being fed.

7.30 – 9.30 – watching a movie or reading a book, writing in a journal, writing letters, trying to write new blog entries.

9.30-10 – lights out (I’ve already experience the official “dum-sor”, or “switch on-swtich off” of the national electrical system where the entire districts lose power for up to several days.

On certain days the routine changes a bit. For example, on Fridays I go to the district capital’s market to stock up on some food staples (tomatoes, onions, sardines, cabbage, mushrooms etc.). I also visit my friend Abdulae, who, despite being from Burkina Faso, is fluent in Russian. We cook lunch, drink box wine and talk about life in Ghana, Russia, Ukraine, Canada and other countries both of us managed to live in. I also go to the internet center where I post my blogs. Finally, I get my sweet fix – FanIce ice-cream, which is not sold in my village, take a bush taxi and head back.

On Saturdays I go to church (I sing in a Seventh Adbentists’ Church choir), and on Sundays I usually do chores (laundry, sweeping, cleaning), and also run our soap-making group’s meetings. We already made moringa soap, moringa ointment and key soap. We learn as we go – as people say around here, small-small.

That’s pretty much it….No traffic jams, no rushing to work, no open mics, no late-night drinks with colleagues. Technically I work everywhere I go because even talking to someone fulfills a purpose of being a Peace Corps Volunteer. Which I don’t mind doing.