Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Buagbaln Village – A New Home

Everyday I wake up at 5:15am to the sound of my alarm and talking outside. Through my mosquito net, my eyes meet my humble thatched roof as my ears are greeted by the ever so familiar sound of sweeping outside. Sitting up from my bamboo sleeping mat, I open my door to see that the women in my household are already awake an active.

Eight year old Gretchen is already sweeping the compound floor as her mother Dana is still putting away the mosquito net the family slept under last night. It’s not long before Evelyn, Dana’s 16 year old daughter, returns from her first trip of getting water for the household. At this time I grab a bucket and piece of cloth and start my daily walk to get water. By the time I get to the borehole, there is already a line up and I am the out of place man waiting at the borehole among women from ages 8-60.

My host family lives in Buagbaln Village which is only a 10min bike ride away from town. Buagbaln is unlike the other 90 percent of rural homes in the Saboba and Chereponi districts because it is fortunate enough to have electricity. Though my host family has the same livelihood as 90% of the population in the district (farming), because of their proximity to the main town, electricity has reached their doorstep. Another great benefit to living close to Saboba town is access to education, health care, and markets.

I chose to live with a host family so that I could learn more of the Ghanaian culture and more importantly gain an appreciation and understanding of the living conditions and livelihoods of the majority of Saboba’s population. Though my host family has an important luxury that other villages can’t dream of, I have learned a great deal from them already, and am starting to gain a much better perspective of the challenges that people living in poverty face everyday.

The only one who speaks fluent English is my host brother Philip. Through him I communicate with the rest of my family. Though I am very thankful for this limitation because it forces me to learn the alien language spoken in the region: Linkpapa. Every night we have reflection time, where I write in my journal and he writes what he did that day on some paper I gave him. After he finishes, I read over and correct his grammatical mistakes, and it is through this he hopes to improve his English. Recognizing that Philip has a lot to teach me, I am going to start recording my day’s activities as well, except in Linkpapa. Then he will be able to help me in my learning just as I am helping him. This creates a two-way knowledge transfer, which I feel local people sometimes forget, in that they can teach foreigners a thing or two.

3 comments:

Spencer Robertson said...

How are is your host family and the other people you are interacting with reacting to the spike in food prices? Is their main staple dried and ground corn?

Anonymous said...

How similar is Linkpapa to English in terms of sounds, alphabet, grammar, etc.? I had hoped that while I was in Japan I would learn some Japanese, especially since few Japanese people speak English but I'm not so good with foreign sounds and resorted to charades most of the time. I'm sure that you'll make more progress than I did, though!

Nick Jimenez said...

As far as I can tell it has not affected them too much. They produce their own food, ever single part of it, with the exception of rice. We don’t eat rice that often, but I have not asked or inquired about the price of it. The main staple is yam, cassava, and dried maize. Contrary to some Southern African countries (Zambia and Malawi at least), crop variety in my opinion is more developed here. National initiatives to produce maize and only maize, driven by the Zambian government at the turn of independence, played a large role in what farmers do now. Huge subsidies and cost-control measures were put on maize to encourage farmers to grow it in Zambia. Kaunda (first president) who last for close to two decades (I think), definitely drove that one into the culture.

I’ll keep my eye open for it though because I haven’t put much thought into it. I know that rising fuel costs are heavily affecting everyone especially with farming season now beginning. Tractor costs have skyrocketed, as well as anything you buy in town

Andrew, it is quite different, but practice is making . . . not quite perfect, but something close to understandable.