A Window Into Development

Conflicting Feelings

2009-05-27T01:22:00.002-04:00

So it's been 5 weeks since I've been back in Canada. I've decided to continue writing in this blog, because it is a constructive form of reflection for me. I'm able to process thoughts, and think critically from experiences, learning things I wouldn't normally learn. Some of these posts might not be interesting at all. You may think that I am over analyzing a simple situation, the result of a hyperactive imagination, lol. Alas, the blog should be changed to A Window Into Nick's Brain.

Since being back, everybody is asking "what's it like to be back". This isn't an easy question to answer quickly, because a whole mess of emotions arise whenever I think about Ghana and now the polar opposite that is Canada. Ghana was a world of extremes. Distractions were minimal, and one was able to focus on everything in their environment. There were highs, when I would work 80hr weeks and wake up excited for the next week. There were lows, when I cried for the first time in 8 years. Ghana pushed me to my limits, in a way no other experience has.

But being back is confusing. I'm so happy to be back seeing friends and family. It's amazing to engage in intellectual conversations with so many of you. Get up to speed on global issues. Have fun. Eat amazing food.

When I really sit down and think about it, I think about what my host family back in Ghana is doing. What my co-worker is doing. I think about the fact that 6 weeks ago that used to be me. And it makes me amazed that two places so different could exist on the same planet.

But when people ask "how's it to be back?". Sometimes I don't want to answer "great". Sometimes I'm damn frustrated, and want to say how aggravating it can be to see people so . . . content . . .oblivious . . . apathetic.

Though my experience is limited, I feel that the life I led in Ghana was closer to the majority than the world than we live here. The life we live in Canada, or at least Vancouver, seems so . . . artificial. People work hard for what they have, but there is just so much excess. People are able to have hobbies, walk around the sea wall, go out for coffee, sushi, or drinks. Our children dress like their supermodels, have elementary schools that are better than most secondary schools in developing countries, and participate in all sorts of extracurricular activities. We live life as though we are inside a bubble of sheltered utopian reality.

Now some of you may be saying “Nick, people are being laid off and we are in the midst of an economic crisis”. This is true, and for those people I am sorry. It’s not my intention to downplay or understate the plight of many Canadians. But I look at our society, with the social programs such as Employment Insurance and Welfare, and can see that we are still getting along quite well.

If you are somebody who has your struggles and that occupies your energy, efforts, and time, then my frustrations are not with you. If you are somebody who doesn’t know about the global crises of today, then my argument is not with you . . . although today we should all know what is happening in the world.

My frustrations are with those that know the great global challenges of our time, and choose not to do anything. The people who say “it’s too depressing, it’s too daunting”. That wearing the world’s problems on one’s shoulders isn’t going to make them go away.

There are issues in this world that are not permissible. They are unacceptable. We all know this but for some reasons are sometimes struck into a state of apathy. Ignorance of these issues is no longer an adequate excuse. Most people know of the global conflicts/plights of today, and those that choose ‘not to know more’ consciously, are guilty of inaction. Because it is depressing or too daunting, does not justify inaction. This is the same as saying: “that’s really sad, but I can’t deal with it right now, at least it’s not me on that side of the world”.

It is our obligation, as human beings, to attempt to remedy these issues, in whatever capacity we choose to.

No one should be able to say, you are doing enough or not doing enough. It is only a moral question that you need to ask yourself. “Can I do more?” If you get a guilty or queasy stomach feeling, then you know your answer. YES.

It’s true, that thinking of all global issues can be suffocating at times. One cannot know their place, what they can do, or what problem to address. Just pick something that motivates you to take action. Pick one cause that you can devote some of your effort to, and follow through on it. Start off small, take the small steps, and reward yourself for your small successes.

Just make sure that you are continuing to increase commitment. Don’t kid yourself that throwing pop bottles in the recycling or using a travel mug is really going to stop global warming. Just ask that simple question: “Can I do more?” and let yourself be the judge.

What makes me saddest is thinking about the upcoming generation. A generation that has a sense of entitlement, without the need for work ethic. A generation that’s occupied with the new bells and whistles being put out by Apple and Microsoft, instead of world news. I’ll leave that for another post however . . .

A FIRST . . . AND HOPEFULLY A LAST

2009-04-03T05:36:00.000-04:00

It’s probably around 11:00pm in Gbong, a rural village when I’m violently woken from my deep sleep. I’ve been staying in this village for the last 3 days, to get a final feel of rural life, and reconnect with the reason and passion that has been driving me for the last year.

Under my mosquito net, outside in the compound on the concrete floor, I’m violently ripped from dreaming about Canada by a sharp pain on my right baby toe. Something has stung me. In Gbong there are many bees, and so immediately I start slapping at my foot in the dark to try and kill the stealth bomber attacking my baby toe.

After 10 blind strikes and yelling “Son of a bitch” repeatedly, I grab my headlight to investigate the kill. Nothing is there. I’ve been stung by bees before, so I search for the black stinger likely to be stuck in my baby toe. I don’t see it, and a fleeting thought that maybe something else stung me passes through my mind. The pain throbbing in my foot is far more than any bee sting I’ve had before, so I start wondering what else it could be.

I leave the mosquito net, a little disappointed at the mirage of safety it has deceived me with, allowing my body to be penetrated by this mysterious night bandit.

“I’m sleeping inside. Something’s bitten me, and I’m sleeping on the bed no matter how hot it is” I say to one of my hosts.

60 seconds has passed since my rude awakening, as I enter my room. Immediately, a sharp pain strikes my inner thigh on my right leg, close to a ‘particularly sensitive spot’ on my body. Naturally freaking out, I immediately think that the bee has managed to crawl up my pant leg close to my crotch and is now attacking for a second round.

One swift pull of the draw string at the waist of my Thai Fishing pants, and they drop to the floor. I search through my boxers for the ninja bee, but to no avail. And again, no signature bee stinger left inside. By this time my foot is throbbing more than ever, and the sharp pain in my thigh is matching the beat.

I return outside when my host says: “if it hurts right here, then you’ve been stung by a scorpion” as he motions to his inner thigh. “Son of a bitch” I think to myself, as revenge becomes my primary objective.

Limping, I check with him around the area to confirm if his diagnosis is correct. After a minute or so, we see the scorpion heading towards my bedroom. It’s small, about half a pinky finger in length. I grab my sandal off my foot, and with ‘great vengeance and furious anger’, strike down upon the black menace.

After we kill it, I sit nursing my throbbing foot, with my two hosts. The man brings me some ointment to rub on my foot and I start to read the label:

{“CURES: All skin disease, boils, waist pains, sexual weakness, body pains, cartha, piles, white, cold, women use, infant disable, cholera, eye troubles, ear pains, breast problems . . . .”}

I laugh as I read the first few words, thinking that all of this must be ridiculous. I recall a bus ride, when a man boarded and started preaching some miracle cream to all the passengers as we hurtled down the highway at 90km/hr. He went on for about 45min about local treatment combined with clinical trials and real doctor approval. After he finishes, people start raising there hands and forking out cash as he sends out small containers of skin cream. At the time I could only think of how easy this con man could have filled some bottles with shea butter made from local women, printed a false label at an internet café; and be ripping off trustworthy Ghanaians. “I’m not using this crap” I think to myself.

Finally I reach the end of the label: {“. . . good for farmers, scorpion bites”}.

“Why not?” I reach in and spread it on my throbbing foot. I sit with my hosts for a while longer, as they all recall stories of when they’ve been stung by scorpions before. Suddenly I don’t feel so sorry for myself, as it seems like quite a common place occurrence in this rural village.

I crawl into bed and try to will myself to fall asleep. As I’m lying, the pain in my toe has spread to my entire foot, and I imagine the scorpion injecting micro razors into my toe that cut my blood vessels with every pulse of my heart. 30min after dreaming of things I’m going to do when I get back to Canada, I manage to fall into a deep slumber.

A first, and hopefully a last, in Ghana.

BUILDING A TEAM-

2009-02-20T17:46:00.000-05:00

This was part of my February newsletter (Feb 14). If you don't receive them and wish to, email me at nickjimenez8@gmail.com

For the last month I’ve been planning this district-wide survey around the clock. As I mentioned in my last post, it started with talking to the communities to influence the planning process of the government. Since those community visits, it has been a logistical thunderstorm, filled with spontaneous planning meetings, designing the community approach and questionnaires, and pre-testing that process in the field.

The first success was getting the government to cut a check for 3660Gh¢ (~3660 CDN) to fund the survey. After a week of hassling with cumbersome processes, the check was in the bank and I had one less problem to deal with. What was once an idea in December was now one step closer to reality!

The second success was the assembly the team. After sitting down on two separate occasions with all department heads (a once in a blue moon occurrence), we finally managed to draw a roster of 12 names that would form my team. After writing letters to inform the officers of the project, confirmation phone calls slowly started coming in. There were times when I would be driving through town and a man I didn’t know would stop me. After stopping the motorcycle and greeting the anonymous man good morning, he would say:

“Good morning Nicholas. I received your letter, and I want you to know . . . I’m in. By the way, my colleague John, he wants me to tell you that he is also in.”

The way these mysterious strangers would stop me in town and confirm their commitment in a secretive fashion, made me feel like we were planning a bank robbery. After two weeks of phone calls and personal visits, and 12 letters; The Fellowship of Saboba was assembled. The journey ahead would be long and intense, but if done well could serve the district in a profound way.

With personnel and cash in the bag, it was just a matter of having the community approach fine tuned. With my right hand man, Tanku, we headed off to a few communities to test our approach. After ironing out some glitches in the survey, we were ready to train the team and start spreading throughout the district .

Finally training started. I ran an intense program: 1 classroom day to introduce the team, 3 field days for practical experience, and a final day in the classroom to discuss protocol and get feedback. On the first day, people were excited and we quickly got to planning the evaluation.

Half of my team are elected community representatives. This is done so that when we enter communities, they see someone they trust, and thus share views more openly. The first activity we did was to start mapping out the district. This is where one huge problem with development in Africa was revealed.

The district is divided into four zones. What we quickly realized was that our list of communities was very inaccurate. Communities were in the wrong zones, there were duplicate communities, and some communities that did exist weren’t even on our list! Imagine that you lived in a community that the government does not even have on its radar. How would you ever receive public services!?

The other challenge is that communities change their names constantly. Sometimes communities will just decide after a chief dies, that they will change their name to the name of the new chief. So the records that we had five years ago, might be completely different from the records we have now. To compound this, villages fragment. When land becomes scarce, a family might decide to move a few kilometres away and start their own settlement. A decade later you have a new community to serve.

During this activity, there were vibrant discussions over the names of communities and what should be deleted and added. Once we made it visual, we were finally able to draw a comprehensive list of all the communities in the district. It’s hard to put into words just how instrumental this will be for the district in terms of planning! With this complete, we can now reach out to all citizens in the district. Once the survey is complete, we will actually have vital data on all communities in the district. Moving from not knowing the exact number of communities in the district, to knowing crucial data on all communities in the district, is the first step in empowering the government to evenly develop the district.

The next day was into the field where things really got interesting. All 14 of us went as a team to a community, where I demonstrated how the survey is supposed to work. Following that we split into two groups, where each team of two surveyors would get a chance to administer the survey, while being evaluated by their peers.

There are two objectives to each community visit. First, we split the women apart from the men, and speak to both groups in isolation. This is to create a more conducive environment for women to participate, since rarely will women speak up in front of men in a rural community. We probe into issues such as: drinking water, education, agriculture, health, and gender. Second, we bring the community back together and explain to them the new ranking process in the government. Through this we can hopefully empower communities to start taking development into their own hands and advocate needs to the government.

These days were no picnic. We would leave the office at 8:30am to meet the first community, and three communities later we would return to the office at 7:00pm . . . without taking lunch. After a 10hr day in the field and only drinking 1L of water, my partner and I kid about how nice it would have been if farmers had offered us some groundnuts to snack on. After the first day, my team told me that we would need to revisit the allowance I was planning to pay them each day.

“Now that we have had a taste for the work, we will need to have a long discussion about the money we are getting paid each day!” Salifu Dramani tells me with a grin after day one in the field.

By the last day of training I was exhausted, having to work two hours on both ends of each field day just to take care of the logistics for the survey. We closed the training by opening up the floor for reflections and feedback on the survey. Within minutes we were on the topic of allowances, and my team seemed ready to go on strike. After some tinkering with the budget, everybody was able to get a 100% increase in allowances brining it to 10GH¢/day. My staff sat smiling, as I cringed at the fact that for the following four weeks we would be operating the project with a contingency hardly over 200GH¢.With the tip of the iceberg finished, we’ll now begin ‘full swing surveys’. 14 communities down, 240 to go!

1 GOAT, 50 PEOPLE, ONE HELL OF A BLOCK PARTY-

2009-02-20T17:35:00.000-05:00

This was part of my February newsletter (Feb 14). If you don't receive them and wish to, email me at nickjimenez8@gmail.com

It was a cold morning in the quiet village of Boagbaln. The mist was slowly subsiding as the warm pink glow from the rising sun was just creeping over the silhouettes of baobab trees. The guinea fowls were clucking, water was splashing as girls returned from fetching water, and men huddled around small bush fires to keep warm. But something was different this morning. Indeed, this morning, was the beginning of a day never seen before in Boagbaln.

Two co-volunteers, Mary Roach and Jen Hiscock, had come into town for the occasion. Just 2 weeks prior was my birthday and this weekend was to be the celebration. We started off by drinking tea and eating bread in my room, because the morning was too cold outside.

You may have remembered little Shaky, my pet goat. He was given to me on Christmas by my office, and today was going to be his day to shine. After three people assisted me in guiding it into our compound, we proceeded to kill it, and prep the meat for a formidable feast. All of Shaky would be cooked, though we kept one half of his rib cage to roast on the fire for a salty delight at lunch.

Finally 11:00am rolled around, and children started to gather outside my compound. For weeks in advance I had been telling all the children in my community that there would be a volleyball tournament on my party, and to start practicing. Jen, Mary, and I had fetched water that morning to fill up a large garbage bin with water, to hydrate all the toned athletes.

The net set at regulation height (2.43m) and a court chalked with ash from a bush fire, we were ready to begin. With music playing in the background, the games continued all afternoon, with both girls and boys playing equally. At one point there was a real nail-biter as the girls team was beating the boys team by a lead of 8.

Once the volleyball was finished, it was time for dinner. My host mother Dana had been cooking all day to prepare a great feast of local rice, tomato stew, and Shaky; which was quite delectable in the end. Friends came from town and almost 60 people were served that day, by the little goat that could.

After dinner was my favourite part of the whole day – the dance party. Playing local music to please the crowd, everybody was dancing within 50 minutes. Boys were two-stepping, girls were shaking what their mama’s gave them, and the little ones ran around clapping to the beat. But even those with the best moves were out done by the stylish ones. In the end, it was all about image.

We finished off the night by watching Matrix 2 and The Incredibles on a projection screen I borrowed from work. Every time Neo would send someone flying through a wall or do a back flip, cheering and applause followed. It was a fantastic day in the end, and for days after people were saying how they enjoyed it. It was a birthday like no other.

Humility Cocktail 2 – “Teach her Small”

2009-02-20T17:23:00.000-05:00

I learned an important lesson today: I’m still quick to judge people, and have little tolerance for people who aren’t perfect off the bat. I’ve recently started running a district-wide survey, and have 14 field staff on my team and a secretary.

After a frustrating week with Jessica (secretary) in the office, who I originally pegged for slow, I needed to ask Douglas if something was wrong with her. After seeing that she was incapable of photocopying and putting together packages, reading, and then loading a staple; I seriously thought that she might just be a bit slow.

But when I asked Douglas, he was taken aback by my question. “That’s the problem with the education she receives! In the school they learn nothing, so when she comes on attachment [co-op] here, she is supposed to learn those skills” he defensively explains as though it were him I was calling slow. “In the office she learns nothing because there are 3 secretaries and only 1 computer. So she spends her time doing nothing.”

After hearing this my first reaction was that she IS here to learn. She’s not expected to come in being perfect, the reason why she is here is to be coached and taught how to do office work. I realize that her lack of skills is not a deficiency on her part, but an outcome of the failing education system I so often criticize.

“Can you use her for your work?” Douglas asks.

“I can use her for some work, such as photocopying and printing the packages. But I need somebody who can read the answers on the sheet, and then input that into the computer. Because she has trouble reading, it makes her almost useless to me for that task.”

This is when I get my second slap across the face of shame. Peter proceeds to say one of the simplest yet incredibly profound messages, in a genuine voice that sounded like a mother counseling a child.

“Teach her small. Just teach her small, and she will get better.”

At that moment, Peter transformed into a mirror, and I was staring at a reflection of myself. But my reflection didn’t look like me, instead I was looking at most of the Ghanaian directors I have often criticized for overworking certain staff and leaving others idle.

Finally being put into a leadership role, with the power to choose who to delegate work to, I realized the difficulty that Ghanaian directors face in working with their staff. It’s often the first observation any outsider will make. There are many people who have little to do and seem to just watch the days pass by idly, and there are few people who have too much to do.

I’ve always pegged the cause of this phenomenon as a capacity gap: a few highly skilled people, and many very low-skilled people. The result of which is that the many people who are far too unskilled to keep up with the pace of work, never get delegated work, and thus rarely grow. The highly skilled people get 80% of the work, get more experience and thus develop faster, and the cycle is perpetuated.

So now, in a position to perpetuate or combat this cycle, my first reflex was to fall into the same action as everybody else. My reason was what a micro-manager would normally say: ‘there’s not enough time’.

Thanks to Douglas and Peter, I was able to draw an important reflection out of the experience and avoid falling into a cyclical trap that restricts the growth of so many civil servants in Ghana. A trap that leads to mass underutilization of human resources and slows progress.

But what is almost more important than that reflection are the values that surfaced in Douglas and Peter’s reaction. First, the patience to work with people, even if they aren’t capable for the tasks; instead of rushing to achieve the outcomes of the project. Second, the faith to work with and help everybody, instead of giving up on people who aren’t ready right away.

“Teach her small” - Peter

Humility Cocktail – 1 part observation, 2 parts reflection

2009-01-16T04:55:00.000-05:00

Sometimes in my less happy days here in Ghana, I can’t help but think that Ghanaian’s are a little rude by Canadian standards. NOT ALL GHANAIANS!! And I don’t actually think that. But there are instances where I can’t help but feel a little offended by the small insignificant things.

Staring is for starters. Walking through town sometimes, or most often when I am doing something out of the ordinary for a white person in Ghana, I get some stone cold stares. Not the friendly ones with hints of smiles at the edges of people’s lips. The blank expressionless stares, or worst, the ones that suggest disapproval or unhappiness.

Another thing that makes me frustrated sometimes is being called ‘O Kran Ja’, the local word for white man. While I realize that it is a simple way of referring to me out of a crowd of people, I can’t ignore my conditioning and feel somewhat offended by it. The worst is when someone will sit but a few feet away from me, have a conversation in the local language with one of my friends, co-workers, or family members; and say the word ‘O Kran Ja’ repeatedly throughout. “I know you’re talking about me, the least you could do is ask me my name or speak directly to me!!”

But after I have these gut reactions immediately follows a sense of regret and guilt. Nobody is trying to be rude to me, and I know this. The people who may stare don’t mean to be intimidating and will often bare their huge white smile when I break the tension with a greeting or a smile of my own. To be honest, they are only staring because they are interested or because I am doing something that is uncommon for someone like myself to be doing or shouldn’t be doing at all.

The ones who refer to me as ‘O Kran Ja’ also don’t mean to be derogatory in anyway. Sadly because of the past in North America, I am conditioned to see any labeling of skin color as being rude. However, nobody here will say “White Man!!” with a hint of racism. They are simply attaching an accurate adjective to what I happen to be – a man.

What I realize through all this is that I get that incorrect feeling of rudeness only because of my perspective. My Canadian standards make me feel that way. But what happens when I look at things from a Ghanaian standard.

Put bluntly – I’m RUDE!! EXTREMELY RUDE!! Ghanaian culture is one that is so friendly and open, that more often than not I don’t even recognize how rude I am being. Example: it is a given, that when you are eating or drinking anything, and somebody enters; you are to offer them what you are consuming. Saying “you are invited” is the proper way to do it.

I can’t count the number of times that I forget to say it, or worst, consciously don’t say it. Yes sometimes I feel selfish. I make sure to buy snacks on the way to work, so why should I have to share with people who never take the time to think ahead. Well Nick, that’s not very Ghanaian of you.

Another is when people are sick. Here in Ghana, when somebody you know is sick, you go and visit them. I know that we do the same in Canada, but here I guess it is a little harder because 1) you know everybody and 2) everybody is sick more often. So when my co-worker falls ill for a few days, and misses work for a day or two; I’m extremely rude by not going to see them. That’s right, frequently people will leave the office to go and visit so-and-so because they are sick in the hospital or in the house. My phone calls with good wishes are pitiful attempts at keeping up.

The last and most obvious is one I commit daily. When you are friends you talk to eachother. Most ex-pats will complain (and I’m not exempt) about how when you give out your phone number people will call you lots. Well that’s what friends do. When your friend travels, you call them to see how their journey was. When you haven’t talked to them in a week or so, you call them to see how they are doing.

The other aspect is just human interaction. When I’m walking through town to work and I see a friend, a wave of the hand and a greeting yelled does not suffice. Take the time to do a proper greeting. I can’t count the number of times when people come into my office at work and after a few minutes of exchanging niceties, I am back to my work. But then I am shamed when I look at my co-workers accepting their guests and hosting them accordingly. Walking through town with a co-worker takes twice as long, because they actually take the time to greet everybody they know properly.

There are countless other cultural faux-pas that I commit everyday. The fact of the matter is that we as ex-pats are lucky to have such understanding hosts. Often I’m sure I’m let off the hook because ‘I’m from Canada’. The way I rush through town to get to work, or force kind people to awkwardly ask: “Am I invited??”; get’s let go because local people are understanding.

The Ghanaians I interact with are sensitive enough to respect my cultural norms, and they don’t hold them against me. If they were as judgmental as I am about those superficial cultural inconsistencies, then I’m sure I wouldn’t have any friends by now. I have nothing but thanks for my extremely welcoming hosts, who make living in this country, away from loved ones, an easier transition.

DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS IN GHANA

2009-01-16T04:53:00.000-05:00

This was a special political edition of my newsletters. If you don't receive them and wish to, email me at nickjimenez8@gmail.com.

It’s been a bit of a privilege being in Ghana during the election year. Today the 3^rd president of Ghana was sworn into office. After 8 months of competitive campaigning, Ghana has peacefully transitioned into a new party in office, and Ghanaians are excited for change. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) had been in power for the last eight years, while the New Democratic Congress (NDC) is the leading opponent and has now won the 2008, presidential elections.

As I arrived in Ghana, billboards and posters were going up for the 2008 election campaign. Only a few months later, flag bearers and presidential candidates commenced campaigning across the country. Every time there is a rally in town, you know by 9:00am in the morning. Party supporters will remove the mufflers from their motorcycles and be ceaselessly driving up and down the main streets. The goal of this activity is to make as much noise as possible. Motorcycles equipped with party flags, dressed up in party colors and sometimes even dragging cans will buzz through town like a frenzy of bees swarming honeycomb. Anyone without a motorcycle will surely be wearing a party T-shirt and be blowing whistles or chanting through the streets.

The first political rally I went to was for the ruling party, the NPP, right in Saboba itself. That day it was busier than Christmas, as party supporters were driving around on motorcycles throughout town. Traditional cultural dancers were paid to put on a spectacle, as a good portion of the population waited anxiously in the town’s main soccer field. In the afternoon the convoy of 9-12 SUVs and trucks sped into town holding the flag bearer and other important political figures. After a very motivational speech promising free education, roads, and well . . . pretty much everything else that can be considered development; the convoy was off in a cloud of dust, leaving only an riled up crowd.

Most rallies I try to avoid. Apart from the fact that I am a civil servant, and not supposed to be seen supporting either party, it is also in my opinion, dangerous. Often those riding motorcycles do so recklessly to attract more attention and create more of a scene. Getting to the later part of the afternoon, many become more under the influence of alcohol, only heightening the tension. Most of my co-workers and friends just try to avoid town when political rallies happen, and political leaders will even plead with party supporters to be safe and keep the peace.

As the year drew to a close and the elections grew nearer, both parties began campaigning more aggressively. For the ruling party, holes were being dug in the ground for electricity poles, school sites were being laid out, and communities were given small gifts. It was impossible to notice the difference in campaigning budgets, as the ruling party would have almost all billboards covered in party propaganda, majority coverage over the local television stations; and their distribution of party T-shirts could only be compared in magnitude with the distribution of candy on Halloween.

In Saboba, our Member of Parliament (MP) has largely been criticized for his inaction in office. Getting close to the elections, communities were given anything from T-shirts to grinding mills (a large diesel engine used to grind corn and other crops into flour). Chiefs and opinion leaders were receiving motorcycles and in some cases cash, in order to sway the votes of their communities in favour of the ruling party, and specifically the MP.

Sitting inside a farmers hut eating TZ (local dish), I noticed some bran new soccer jerseys and leather balls, still inside their packaging. I couldn’t restrain myself from asking where they had stumbled upon such items. “Charles, [Saboba MP], gave them to us” he replied with a smile.

This is done because in some areas where literacy is lower, communities will still vote as a whole. A chief or community leader will dictate the way an entire community votes. With uneducated populations, who are often financially poor, monetary gifts can be quite influential in shaping one’s opinion. In this case, it is easy to convince, or bribe, the local opinion leader.

After campaign rallies, televised debates, an ALL-NIGHT PARTY, and other campaigning tactics, the election-day closed in on Ghana. Leading up to December 7^th, peaceful elections were the mantra of the day, and precautions were put in place to ensure peace. Even in small-town Saboba, military personnel were dispatched the night before to create a presence and maintain the peace.

Finally the big day arrived, and most people were quick to go and vote and then return to their homes. At the polling stations it was nothing but calm line ups and quiet voting as citizens took to the ballot boxes. One thing I loved about the elections was the amount of people out to vote. Anybody and everybody who was of age was out to vote, and had the black index finger to show for it later in the day (in Ghana they thumbprint ballots, and mark the index finger with ink so you can’t vote again). Prior to the elections, people waited in anticipation for December 7^th, because this was their chance to have a say in the direction of their country. Children not of age also knew the different parties and candidates and could tell you part ant parcel their manifestos.

It made me reflect on Canadian society and wonder why in Canada we don’t take elections as seriously. Maybe it is because we are democratically older, and thus the importance of a citizen’s vote has faded among our young adults. The attitude in Ghana is a polar opposite to that of many Canadians, as for Ghanaians, December 7^th was a day to look forward to. People would rise at 4:00am to queue at the polling station before it opened at 6:00am.

As the day continued on, I was surprised at the transparency of the entire elections. Though I have no idea, and thus no basis for comparison, of the way in which Canada counts their votes; Ghana’s system was quite interesting. After the last person had voted, anyone is allowed to just sit in the open area in which the voting ballot stands. From there, the box is opened, and aloud each ballot is read to the crowd and marked down by several recorders.

After the polling stations finish their counting, the ballot boxes and results are shipped over to the District Assembly for collation. When I arrived at the Assembly by 8:00pm, the scene was breathtaking. Crowds of people were outside, chanting and laughing as the results of all polling stations were being collated. Inside the District Assembly, anyone was welcome to observe the collation, as at least 8 members of the Electoral Commission were gathered around a table recording results as one person read them aloud.

Meanwhile in town, anybody who had a television set would play it loud for all those without to come and watch. I parked myself at a local drinking spot with a Coke, as a crowd formed around this small shop to watch the results come in on television. And if you weren’t in a crowd watching the television, or at District Assembly, then you were in a small mob of people roaming up and down the streets to one of these two locations.

To be continued . . . .

DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS IN GHANA- PART II- The next morning was a scene to be remembered. Parades of people were marching up and down the street celebrating. For those of you from Vancouver, it was equivalent to a night at the fireworks down on Denman Street. Though the national results were still being collated, the Parliamentary Candidate results had come in. NPP MP Charles Bintin lost, to NDC MP Joseph Nikpe. The citizens of Saboba had voted with their consciences, not with their pockets.

The NDC MP won by a large margin and even in the rural areas. After attempts at bribery, citizens looked at the previous 8 years of government performance and decided that a change was needed. Just six months before the elections, Charles had gone to a community and told them to start collecting sand and rocks, to clear a site for a school; for he was going to build them one. After, 4 months of not seeing him, the opponent came to their village and simply told them to look at the heaps of sand that they had collected in anticipation, instead of going to farm. Let them judge Charles on those grounds.

After finding out from those community members about the soccer jerseys, I couldn’t help but ask who they voted for.

“Joseph of course!” they said in between chuckles and mouthfuls of TZ. “Charles also gave 60 GH¢ [~60CDN] to our village headman”.

“So you took the jerseys and the money, and then you voted for the opposition?” I curiously reaffirmed.

“Yes! We look at it as Charles paying us back for the last 8 years of inactivity!” he replies with a smile. And that was the order of the day. Throughout the district, citizens graciously received gifts of all sorts, wore T-shirts, and then voted for the opposition.

But what was even more entertaining, and borderline mean, was the amount of mockery that happened the morning of the 8^th. What I forgot to mention was that most of the parties have their own slogans and their own hand gestures. Though NDC had won, you would have thought it were an NPP rally had you not heard the results the day before.

All NDC supporters who had been gaily celebrating after their MP won were all wearing NPP T-shirts. They were also chanting the NPP slogan and making the party hand gestures, to mock the loss of the ruling party.

Three days later however, it was announced that neither party had won a majority (50%, plus one vote). This meant that there would be a run-off for the two leading parties, 21 days later. Ghanaians would again go back to the polls.

For many this was not an ideal situation, because it meant voting would occur just 3 days after Christmas. Indeed, the religious holiday had lost a bit of its zeal, as most were preoccupied on the upcoming election.

Alas, after the final run-off election, NDC had been declared the winner. The final results were approximately 50.23% NDC, and 49.77% NPP - very close indeed. Ghana would have itself a new president and ruling party.

I happened to be travelling through Tamale (regional capital) on the day that the results were announced. My previous opinion of a night at the fireworks in Saboba, was dwarfed by the mass exodus of people all throughout Tamale.

Tamale has long been a supporter of NDC, and it couldn’t have showed more on this historical day. Citizens took to the streets in party T-shirts – be it NPP or NDC. Whistles were being blown, drums beaten, pots and pans clanged, calabashes with beads shook, and voices sang loud as people took to the streets.

On this day in Tamale, you were in one of two places. In town small crowds of people formed around sound systems playing loud music, where either dancing or signing ensued. Indeed, these pockets of people resembled and entire sideline of spectators at a major sporting event, chanting and even dancing for their favourite team.

And if you weren’t celebrating in one of these spontaneously formed dance parties, you were in a parade of people gravitating towards one of these nuclei. As if choreographed by a marching band conductor, platoons of people marched down the street, signing, clapping, and making noise in unison.

The heart of downtown was complete gridlock or pedestrian mob. Nothing moved except people on foot. Although for the first time in Ghana, I saw somebody trotting along horseback, painted in NDC colors.

In the heart of downtown were 4 tanks in a row, with army personal armed to the teeth standing on top; to extinguish even the faintest thought of conflict among anybody. At intersections, army personnel were directing traffic in collaboration with the local law enforcement.

Ironically however, out of all the places for conflict to break out, Saboba was the only place in Northern Region. Though conflict is probably an exaggeration, disputes broke out two days after the results were released, because NPP were getting a little tired of the celebration style of the NDC supporters. In town there were some heated arguments, a couple of thrown bikes, and a couple of fights I think . . . but nothing too serious.

Today was the swearing in of the new president, and with that this rollercoaster of a ride is over. The only thing left on the horizon, is to see what positive change this new government can bring. Whether you support NPP or NDC, all eyes will be on Atta Mills (new president) to see what prosperity he can bring to Ghanaians.

Though he said many things in his acceptance speech, one thing stood out for me that I admire, and hope he will stick to.

“I am not a man for NPP or NDC. I am a man for all Ghanaians. I am a man for Ghana!”

- His Excellency, Professor John Evans Atta Mills

WATER TROUBLE

2009-01-16T04:51:00.001-05:00

This was an entry in my December Newsletter. If you don't receive them and wish to, email me at nickjimenez8@gmail.com.

“We need water!! We drink from the same water as our animals. People bath and wash clothes in our water, cows will pass and urinate inside it,” exclaims Faustina on the way to the stream! When February and March come the water will start to dry up and will become green. You should come back during that time and you will see that no human should drink that water!”

Two days earlier I arrived in Nalindo - a very small village about 50km from Saboba. I came to this village to find out more about the people I have come to Ghana to work for, as well as to get their perspective on what the government needs to do better. Through having conversations with them and living as they do, I hoped to gain a better perspective of the majority of people living in Saboba District.

On my first morning in Nalindo, I awoke at about 5:30am as the mist was still lifting from the stark landscape. The rainy season ended three months ago and has given way to the cold winter months of harmattan. In the mornings it is cold. Almost all of the women and small girls in the village start their days by going to fetch water from the local stream 2.5km away, while the men usually start a small fire and huddle around it wearily.

I chose to get a bucket and fetch some water with the women. After a 35min walk I arrive at the stream which I hesitate entering up to my knees. As the women take lead I also take off my sandals and enter to fill my bucket.

By the time I return back to the village with my meagre 20 litres I’m thirsty. I ask my host for some water and she enters a hut and pours me some water. Looking down at it, mildly brown in color, I drink the cup dry. As though the water had undergone some magical transformation in the 35min it took me to walk back to the village, I feel completely indifferent to drinking the same water I hesitated entering barefoot into. For the rest of the three days I stayed in the village I continued to drink and bath with the same water as there is no alternative for this community.

After having the conversation with Faustina two days later, I decided to also ask the men in the community about what they wanted from the government. The same answer came up. They explained to me the problems with the water they are drinking and how they only want a borehole from the government so that they can avoid the problems Faustina already told me about.

“Why?” I asked them after hearing about people bathing in the water. “Why do some people bath in that water when they know you drink from it”

“Years ago those same people drank from the stream themselves,” Faustina tells me in front of the men gathered. “After they received a borehole from an NGO, they now bath and wash in the same water that we drink. We took this matter to the [locally elected] Assembly Person to settle. But after they were instructed to stop bathing and defecating near the stream, they still continue to do so.”

Lacking a response, I switch to the matter of animals. “So why don’t you take your cattle to drink somewhere else instead of from the same stream you fetch your water?” I naively suggest.

“During the dry season all the other water sources dry up. Because of that, the Fulani- [a local tribe who take care of the cattle]- have nowhere else to water the cattle. The problem gets worst however.” At this, they called a small boy forward to show me the magnitude of the implications.

They slowly undress the bandage around his left shin, revealing two large open sores. They are the exit wounds of guinea worm, a horrible parasite that afflicts many rural people in Northern Ghana. Faustina then points to two scars on her legs left from guinea worm she had years ago. “It causes pain that makes you want to die!” she says after telling the boy to redress the wound.

As I’m listening to this I just take in everything they are saying trying to comprehend what living in this village would really feel like. I keep thinking to myself ‘wow! These people need water badly! How could anybody drink that?’ An hour later when I am reflecting on the conversation, I laugh when my mind finally connects two dots: ‘You’ve been drinking that water for the last 2 days!’

For the rest of the meeting I try to move past what the community needs, to what we can do about it. Part of my reasons for coming here was to also get community involvement and advice on the work that I am doing. In terms of what communities need, the answer is pretty easy. Generally people will tell you flat out, and sadly because most people lack access to the three primary public services – education, clean water, and health care – they are the most common answers communities will give.

My work is looking at how to get communities what they want, and more specifically, how to distribute the limited resources there are from the government. I fully understand that they need water, but I try to bring this community to the level of the government. I explain to them that every community I go to, they will all tell me that they need water, and many will describe a similar situation. “How does the government chose who should be first to get the boreholes they can drill this year?” I ask them.

We proceed to discuss different criteria that the government could use to assess who needs the borehole the most. But what I’m most interested in is what the community can control. “What can the community do to show that they want the borehole the most, and are most prepared to maintain one?”

“We can collect money and put it in a bank account,” is what Kunde, chairman of the Water & Sanitation committee in the community says. “We can also request to the District Assembly so they know in paper, that we want a borehole. Following that we can give yams and guinea fowl to the officers at the District Assembly!”

“Now that last one is what we are trying to move away from,” I say in between chuckles. The first two responses were golden because they touch on a community’s readiness to maintain the borehole once it is put in place. The last suggestion touches on favouritism and is something we are trying to reduce. We want the communities that show commitment and need, to get the infrastructure. Not the ones who can be most convincing to a certain government official.

In the end, we generated some great ideas for what criteria could be used to guide community selection. The community closed by saying the following and it has stuck with me. “We need water and are prepared to do anything to get water. Because we have felt the pain of not having water, we will maintain it. What is holding us back is that we don’t know what we have to do to show this commitment. If the government tells us, we will do it.”

SQUARE DANCING

2009-01-16T04:49:00.000-05:00

This was an entry in my December Newsletter. If you don't receive them and wish to, email me at nickjimenez8@gmail.com.

Funerals are quite different in Ghana. Though there is mourning that occurs and a burial process, on the fourth day after the death, are large celebration is planned. All day women will brew Pito (local beer), and drums will be carved to provide the music. Anybody who knew the deceased (and often many others that didn’t know them) will arrive for the celebration.

People from all the surrounding villages will come to attend the jubilation. Each community will send a group of dancers, who will dress up in traditional dress or even soccer uniforms. The music has already started and everyone dances in a large circle around the center stage which provides the ground shaking beat. At the center of the clearing, are two large drums carved out of tree trunks. A third man holds a typical ‘talking drum’ which allows you to alter the pitch of the drum by squeezing the tension strings.

The girls then form a circle around the musicians and perform a square dance with considerable hip movement. Their hips shake quickly and their footwork is complex. On the outside of that circle is a larger one that the men form. Dressed in traditional wear, they perform a choreographed dance including stomping and lose arm movement. They usually attach metal rings to the backs of their ankles to make a percussion-like tambourine sound when they stomp the ground. I saw that the same rules apply in Africa that do in Canada. Women can dance better than men!

I began by watching this spectacle of advanced square dancing, from the side lines. After studying what seemed like a basic step, I joined the circle. Within moments, I was handed a small tree branch with leaves on it, to swing with my left hand. After that I was handed a child’s cap gun to wield with my right hand. Fully loaded I started waving and shooting to the beat.

After 20minutes of dancing, two small boys were going around to the dancers on the outside with a 15L bucket of what seemed to be water. What tipped me off as odd was that they were serving it with a small cup. Suspecting something other than water, I passed, and so did my co-dancer. The boy poured out half of the small cup, leaving and ounce or two and gave it to a small girl beside him. I later found out it was alcohol! One last aspect I loved was that babies learn to dance before they walk. Ladies with their newborns strapped to their backs didn’t hold back, joining the dancing while their child’s legs dangled.

A HOT CHRISTMAS

2009-01-16T04:47:00.001-05:00

This was an entry in my December Newsletter. If you don't receive them and wish to, email me at nickjimenez8@gmail.com.

My morning started off great as I started to make some French toast for the occasion. I rarely make French toast, but a fellow volunteer - Jen Hiscock - had given me some syrup for Christmas. Other than that everything was shaping up to be a regular morning in my community.

Then my co-worker Douglas came by and gave me my second present of the day. The office was doing something small for all the workers, and I had been given a goat. I called him Shaky, because it was very scared. I knew that it would only be about 12 hours until I ate him.

Douglas explained to me that before Christmas, parents will buy their children a very nice outfit. Then on Christmas people would dress their best and go to church. Following church, children would go door to door and visit their neighbours. Everybody is responsible for preparing a large meal – rice and some meat. Then it turns into an activity similar to ‘trick or treating’, where going door to door, everybody must provide food or some money to their guests.

So following church with my family, we went round to greet some of my friends (and of course to eat some rice and meat). The last friend I was to visit was Douglas, and he had told me that this year his church had planned some games and a small party for the children. When Jen and I arrived the music was playing and the kids were playing games. It wasn’t long before we too joined in the dancing.

The whole experience was quite interesting and I drew a few comparisons. The biggest difference I saw was in the amount of purchasing people did before the holiday. Because people don’t exchange an excessive amount of gifts, there is not as big a push to buy presents for everybody before the big day. The emphasis is on the day itself, and more people will worry about the drinks they serve and the meat they prepare.

As for going door to door, it’s similar to the evening meals we prepare for our families. The only difference is, here because the town is so small and weather so hot, everybody can just walk to their relatives. What I like about this Ghanaian style of Christmas, is that the emphasis is entirely on the whole spirit of the day. The focus changes from the objects you give to others, to the company you share with loved ones. Once evening set in, the day pretty much finished. I ended the day by eating a 5^th meal, which would end up making me sick the next morning.

Gender Roles Blatantly Exposed

2008-12-10T21:30:00.002-05:00

It’s 4pm and I decide to take off from work. As I arrive at home, I see from afar a soccer ball bouncing up and down just above the thatched roofs that make up my community. As I get closer, I hear a sound that is music to my ears. The screams, shouts, and laughter that make up a good volleyball game for a bunch of neighborhood kids.

After parking my bike, I exit my compound to watch the action. The first thing I notice is that out of 12 kids playing, none are girls. 12 boys, aged 10-24 are engaged in a jovial game of volleyball. The spectators are made up of 2 girls and about 8 other younger boys. This scene was very similar when I returned yesterday from Togo.

I ask Evelyn my host sister if she has played at all today. “No” she says with a smile. “I have too much work to do”.

I call over my host brother Philip and ask him if any girls have played today. He tells me no, they haven’t come. “Maybe they aren’t interested in volleyball”.

I decide to investigate. What are all the girls doing right now that is keeping them from this game? So I start to take a walk through my community to check out the scene. Oddly enough I didn’t come across that many girls in the households or in the other parts of the community. I look at the sun hanging just above the horizon and it hits me. Evening time.

Upon arriving at the community well, I see the answer to my mystery. All the girls are playing that other game that boys can’t play! 15 girls sit and chat while fetching water to either cook with, or likely provide drinking and bath water for the family.

Now I’m pissed. At first I was angry because I assumed that the boys weren’t giving a chance to the girls to play. I’ve encountered too many instances where males dominate and suppress females to retain control. My first instinct was to remove the net. If the boys can’t learn to share, then they won’t be able to play.

After having investigated a little, I see that it goes deeper.

It all comes back to the gender roles. What in society has condoned the fact that women must work throughout the day while men and boys have little work to do? What bothers me more than the fact that women always work while men enjoy more rest time, is the fact that these are children! The gender roles are engrained from birth, so the likelihood of reversing this in the future is minimal, as this will become all the young boys ever know.

The boys ask me if I’ll come and play. “No!” I say sharply. “I have water to fetch”.

My host sisters are now starting to fetch three buckets of water each, so I figure by adding me in the equation we can at least reduce that down to 2 trips. Sitting with the girls at the borehole, I feel powerless to truly pry and find out what is holding them back from playing. Once again language has prevented me from engaging over half the population here in Ghana.

I’ll have to work within my means on this one. My heart can’t help but feel a considerable amount of tension towards the boys; though my head tells me to stop taking out my frustrations caused by a male-dominated culture, on these young boys who are not to blame. Ideas flash through my head: allocating certain parts of the day for just girls, removing the net entirely, allowing my host sister to be in control of the net instead of my host brother. None land me at a comfortable feeling.

I call my host brother Philip into my room later that night.

“I’m not happy” I start. “Yesterday I came home and saw that only boys were playing. Again tonight I see the same thing. Why is this happening?”

He goes onto explain the same thing I already know. That the girls just have more work. They go to water the garden in the morning and in the evening. They also have to collect and sell firewood, fetch water, and go to study at night. This is why they don’t play.

“But why do girls have more work than boys? Why do boys have so much time?” I ask hoping for the answer.

Philip shrugs his shoulders. How could he know, I ask myself? This is the way it has always been. The only answer one can muster for why a woman carries water and a man does not is: ‘it is their work, men can’t do that’.

And this is one of the cruxes of gender equity and therefore development as a whole. No one can explain, or justify why gender roles are the way they are. Some men will say that there are certain tasks that a man can do that a woman cannot. I will concede on the fact that certain more labourious tasks are better suited to men. However, using four months of hard work during the year to justify resting for the remaining eight months is hardly acceptable.

The volleyball net is hardly the point of contention here. Replace the volleyball net with studying, starting a business, going to school, or for Christ’s sake just having fun as a child. All this volleyball net has done is uncovered what I have sadly allowed to become the order of the day, and what I have ceased to notice. The blatant fact that rural gender roles that were carved out by whosoever are preventing over half the population of Ghana from developing at the same rate as the other.

The change begins with the individuals. If a system is to change, individuals must change.

“There’s a problem” I begin slowly. “I bought the net so that everybody could play, but right now only boys are playing.” Philip nods along. “We have to find a way to fix this problem.”

I put it to Philip. This upcoming week I will be travelling to a retreat with my co-volunteers. I will take the volleyball net with me. His task, is to sit down with the boys and figure out how they can get both girls and boys to participate. They can explore why the problem exists, and ask girls as well. But in the end, I want to come back to an answer, or something having been done to rectify the situation.

Philip agrees with me and says that he likes the suggestion. He will sit with the boys to figure it out.

I know that this isn’t a solution to the overarching problem. What I want is that initiative to come from the boys themselves; not because a white man has taken away the net and now in order to play again they need to include girls. But to be perfectly honest, I’ve got no better ideas.

This is where I ask you. Tell me what you think of the situation and what I should do. If you think I’m blowing things out of proportion (and I likely am, I’ve got my own issues with gender inequity), then tell me. I just feel that this is a great chance to use as a learning opportunity for these boys. Who knows?

A Great Week at Work

2008-12-10T21:30:00.001-05:00

Lately there have been some great leaps and bounds at work. As I said in my last post, my evaluation/educational proposal went up for approval. The first step was convincing the executive committee (all the decision makers) to approve it and put it before the house. This went off smoothly, and most of the members of the committee were very excited about it.

Three days later was a general assembly meeting. This is where any large projects get put before elected representatives within the district, to be approved. I was called upon to go to the front of the room at the podium and explain briefly my proposal. Alas, the house approved the proposal and it looks like funds will come in the next couple of weeks for the project.

What this means for me, is that I now have to design this whole evaluation down to the tee, so that it can run as smoothly as possible and be effective. This was a huge step for the District Assembly because it is extremely rare that they finance their own evaluations. One of this size has never been conducted with their own funds. Only when donors have come in has the Assembly gone out to do field evaluations.

So the opportunity for great changes has come. There’s a chance that if this evaluation is conducted well and the findings are proven to be very useful, then perhaps the District Assembly might value and budget for monitoring and evaluation in the future.

Taking all this into account, I’m just working feverishly to make sure that it is as great as possible, so as to have the most impact on the beneficiaries. Done well, I believe that the information gathered, and the participation instilled and taken by the communities will really move the district forward.

Other exciting news is that I’m learning how to ride a motorcycle. Lately the works department guys and I have been going out to the field more to monitor contractors and make sure that they are building quality infrastructure. With my co-workers, we created a field monitoring form to fill out, that way we can start to keep track of the work that different contractors do. Through this, better infrastructure can be built, as well as ensuring that certain contractors don’t receive projects in the future.

For now it’s back to the drawing board for designing this evaluation. I’ve got one month to clearly design all of the logistics as well as our approach in the communities and what exactly we will be doing. Once I’ve got that figured out, I will train the 21 people doing the evaluation. In January, it looks like I will be spending the majority of my time in the field visiting 40 communities or so and monitoring the evaluator teams. The whole evaluation is targeted at visiting all 281 communities in the district, by using 8 evaluator teams. It should be a jammed packed two months, filled with a lot of learning and interacting with the primary beneficiaries.

If You Weave it, They Will Come

2008-12-10T21:29:00.000-05:00

It all started with wanting to get more in touch with my community. I thought to myself: “what’s a game that I could play with my community that everybody will be able to participate in”. Volleyball!

I went to my local fish net weaver, and explained my situation. He said that he could weave me a volleyball net for 10$. Sure I thought to myself. A soccer ball and few tree branches later, almost all the kids in the community were outside MY compound playing volleyball.

First the bigger children took to the court, with the little ones as anxious onlookers keeping score. Apparently, being off the court is just as exciting as playing, as all of the young children look up with bright eyes at the competitive game. Every time the ball hits the ground, at least three different versions of the score are shouted from the children, followed by a vivid discussion over whose right. No need for a chalk board, at least 2 small children are keeping score with their hands in the sand.

Following the first game, all the young children got to give it a chance. The older kids reluctantly give leave as I push them off the court so that everybody can have a chance. The small kids have a great time throwing the ball over the net and hitting it anyhow. Sadly, the bigger kids are less accurate in their ability to keep score. One point turns into five, and within 15minutes, the small halftime timbit game is over.

By the end of the day, the volleyball net resembles a badminton net. It has sagged so much that now most of the older kids are at eye level with the top of the net. Thankfully nobody knows how to spike.

The game ends as the sun starts to approach the horizon and the mosquitoes emerge to take over the air. That night I hear my host siblings talking about how they will play the following day (Saturday). I think to myself how this had to be the best 13$ I’ve spent in Ghana so far.

Poisoning Education

2008-11-21T04:06:00.000-05:00

Imagine your son or your brother or yourself when you were just graduating grade 12. Now imagine that same person teaching your son or daughter elementary school. Don’t skim over those words. Imagine a grade 11 or grade 12 student, being responsible, for the education of your son or daughter when they are in elementary school.

Crazy? I know. Why am I asking you to imagine this scenario? Because that is the situation for 25% of the children in primary school, here in Saboba.

“They are poisoning the education system!” Isaac exclaims as he unveils the reality of the public education system in a rural district in Ghana. My pen hurriedly scribbles down notes as Isaac, the education department administrator in charge of statistics, and long term teacher for 18 years, breaks down the complexities of public education in Northern Ghana.

3 Problems:

Problem 1: Not enough teachers. A school that gets built and is not filled with a teacher and students is called a white elephant, and it’s the last thing you want in development. But right now there are simply not enough teachers in the pipeline to fill the growing demand for education. The national pupil teacher ratio is 35:1 for primary schools. Right now in one of the biggest primary schools in Saboba town, enrolment is approaching 900 hundred, and there are 11 teachers. That’s 81 kids per teacher.

The reason for this is two-fold. First off there are simply not enough people graduating teacher training colleges every year, to fill the growing need for education. Second, there is a constant outflow from the district, because teachers are using it only as a stepping ground to greener pastures. After 3 years service in a rural district, you are eligible to go back to school and upgrade. For those of you who have just finished your PDP program, think of whether or not at this point you would want to go live in a rural village without electricity or running water, potentially 45min away from the nearest town. The incentives just aren’t there to keep teachers at their posts for longer than the minimum service.

Problem 2: to solve problem one, supplementary untrained teachers have been sent into schools. Ghana has a program called National Youth Employment. This is an initiative aimed at curbing the unemployment rate, by providing high school drop outs, or graduates who were unable to continue onto a tertiary institution; with employment. They get paid pennies (70$ a month) but at least get employment and are not idle people loitering.

It is exactly these people that have been thrown into the education system to relieve the pressure (not to be deceived, the numbers quoted in problem 1 are with this “relieved pressure”). Some of the people who are accepted for youth employment have not even graduated middle school (equivalent of grade 8). They receive no initial training, and are put to teach young children the primary grades. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, in June you could drop out of grade 10, and in September be teaching primary school level 2.

Problem 3: Most of you have guessed it now, but the third problem is quality. The quality is unbelievably low. Isaac has just returned from a meeting where the education management was discussing with head teachers the low grades seen this past year in the middle schools, and to address it.

“Only 35% of students passed their finals” he sadly explains as my jaw hits the ground. “The reason is because they come in from primary school completely unprepared.”

He goes onto explain that the problem is so complex. First off those youth employment are paid closed to nothing, and often they don’t get paid for periods of up to 3 months. Think to yourself how motivated you would be to teach in the school when you haven’t collected your measly salary in 3 months. So alas, these teachers sometimes don’t show up for class, and often cut the days short. Also, those teachers that do complete formal training, only start off at 150$ a month, hardly something to write home about.

Why aren’t they monitored? The management is responsible for that, and they don’t receive any funds for monitoring teachers. The district is cut up into zones, and one person might have to monitor 15 to 25 schools, but there is no budget for fuel to get to the classrooms.

Now upon driving out in the district and to the rural communities you can see teachers riding their bikes to school around 10 or 11, and starting to ride home around 1 or 2. Why would a teacher for a rural school be cutting the day so short? Though accommodation is provided for a teacher when they are posted to a rural village, they often don’t want to stay where there is no electricity and no amenities. So they will commute to and from the main town, which in many cases can be up to 20km away.

If that’s not bad enough, this is just the surface. Everytime I think I am starting to figure it out, more issues become uncovered. To find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes, email me. Education has recently become a deep passion of mine, and I’d love to share with you some of the challenges faced here in Ghana.

The Ball is Rolling

2008-11-21T04:04:00.001-05:00

Work is now moving faster than I can keep up with, which beats the slow pace of the Government in Ghana. How did such a scenario arise where I am working more than I can handle? Well once my work started to show some benefits, more people became excited, and so it has expanded and started to snowball.

As I said in my previous newsletter, I am working with decision makers and implementers, and in some cases some of the beneficiaries, to create evidence based decisions.

Take boreholes for example. What sort of factors do you need to consider when selecting a community for a water project? What factors are more important than the others? How do you prioritize all 281 communities when the water need is so much?

So I have captured that decision making process, and with my co-workers we have developed an excel file to store all that information and analyze it. I know that this may not excite some of you, because it sounds like we have just worked on a computer for a few weeks. But what this has done is it has created a more transparent, and unbiased way of considering which communities benefit from water projects.

What this can do is reduce the amount of political influence that interferes with development. When a sound, unbiased way of ranking communities is adopted, then favouritism is reduced (hopefully).

So now where I am at, is doing a similar thing with the education department so that schools can also be properly sited.

But siting infrastructure is only a means to so many great ends. Now that all of this data is stored and available to planners, government staff are now in a better position to truly strategize and develop the district. It is unbelievably difficult to know everything about the district at a given moment. But these tools store all this information, and can aid in providing planners with the exact needs of the district to guide development.

What makes me even more excited however, is community participation. The biggest factor used in deciding whether a community benefits from a borehole or not, is whether the community is ready and has shown ownership. The sad thing is that there are so many communities that don’t know about this process.

This is where part 2 of my work comes in. I am designing an evaluation/educational campaign to all the communities in the district. It will be put up for approval in 3 days. This evaluation will collect all the necessary information (community needs, community status), in order to fuel the government with the necessary evidence to make sound decisions in planning. It will actually provide the government with an exact picture of the district, which is something that is difficult to obtain and rarely done.

The second component will be to educate all these communities on this new transparent way of siting infrastructure. So now communities will know exactly how projects are sited in the district – which is something that few communities know. But more exciting than that, is that they will be told all the steps that they can make in order to better their chances to receive a project. The ball will be thrown in their court. They will have the knowledge, of what steps they must complete, and are thus put in the driver seat of their own development.

Lastly, on this district wide education campaign, the government will be the student also. After communities learn, and are given a chance to give feedback, on this new decision making process; they get a go at the government. Indeed, through a meeting and several interviews, the government will ask communities:

“How can we serve you better? What do you not like about us right now, and what can we do better?”

Then we will brainstorm with the communities, how both parties can reach the overall vision of a better Ghana.

That’s the short of things right now, but I also have other things that I am working on in my work. If you are at all curious about the details of my work just email me. I would love to discuss further. If you want a copy of the proposal I have prepared, or a copy of the tool we have created, just ask.

The Little Things

2008-10-18T18:17:00.000-04:00

Get out a piece of paper and write down the last time you just did something small to help somebody out.

If your page is blank, this is for you. Hell, even if your page has something on it this is for you. While you’re settling down to read this grab some wine and crackers because it is going to be damn cheesy. And it’s already started J.

I’ve had a sudden life revelation during this trip. Perhaps it was during my search or who I want to be in this world, or what I want to do. But the revelation is not all that original, though perhaps something we all need to be reminded of.

The little tings count. That’s it. Working feverishly on my placement to achieve the greater goal I realized something. If I fail, what is left? What has been left, if the ‘Big Change’ you were shooting for doesn’t get done?

And after asking myself this I realized two truths. Big ideas come and go. You work hard and maybe the culmination of all your efforts yields some great change that can positively influence many. That’s the whole reason we get out of bed in the morning isn’t it? For whatever the ‘Big Change’ is for you. For whatever ‘the catch’ is. And if you achieve that change it’s marvelous. But soon after, you move onto the next catch.

For me that catch is what I’m working on in my job right now. Big potential for great change, but long return on investment. But what if I don’t get it? What if I miss . . . and believe me, over here it’s easy to miss. What am I left with doing?

The second truth is that nothing takes away the little things. The little things make up life, and they last forever. If I train somebody at my work in computers so that they are that much more efficient and capable as an individual; well that’s a life long incremental change. That person might not be related in anyway to my ‘Big Change’, but it’s a small step in the right direction for them. All of the little things are what really count because those are the changes that stick with people.

The sad thing is somehow we’ve misaligned the value. So often we’re focused on the ‘Big Change’, the big catch. So often we measure people and reward them based on those big catches, but rarely do we recognize the value in all the little steps. In our endless pursuit for the big catch, we most often miss the little things. So focused on the means to the end, we don’t take time to do those little things.

To speak frankly, it’s the little things that make us human beings, and compassionate to other human beings. Those little things are what will change the world.

For me this meant stepping back. From bringing work home in pursuit of the big change, to investing in the people in my immediate surroundings. Whether it be computer training with co-workers, to tutoring math and English to my host siblings at night; both need to be done daily.

And for you the small things are whatever you make them to be.

A good friend of mine (John Gattey), once quoted (4 months ago), a much smarter man (Albert Einstein). This is what he said, and I think John for sharing his (Albert Einstein’s) wisdom with me.

“I wish to do something great and wonderful, but I must start by doing the little things like they were great and wonderful”

On your road to wherever you’re going, in your pursuit of that big catch; don’t forget to lift those around you. If you look closely enough, most probably in the recent past, someone has lifted you.

Fresh from the Drawing Board

2008-09-17T13:52:00.001-04:00

So my work has now been broken into four different sections. I apologize for the lack of communication on my work. It’s not that I am trying to be secretive, simply that some things I chose not to put on the blog. I will try to get better at that.

1) Computer Training- I won’t spend too long explaining this because it is obvious. This breaks down into training co-workers in MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and just general skills. This is important because the change I am shooting for and much of the development industry, will eventually require some computerized form of reporting. Imagine doing all finances with a paper & pen and calculator instead of excel. Imagine simple reporting taking 5x longer than it should. Through computer training the efficiency of the office can hopefully be improved and workers will be equipped with the proper skills to use manage large amounts of data. (This one I have been working on since the beginning of my placement)

2) Training local contractors. One problem of development is the construction of infrastructure. Usually contracts will run far late of their expected date of completion. For the rural citizen, this means waiting way longer for their school, well, or particular infrastructure project. Also, the quality of these projects is in question. Roads that get washed away the year after they are constructed, or schools that quickly fall into disrepair. In response, the district works department have come up with a way to address this through workshops and increased monitoring. This doesn’t address all the causes of this problem, but more importantly it enables implementing staff to execute a plan of their own, and hopefully prove to decision makers that it is worth it to invest in implementing staff.

3) More Rigorous planning based on reliable information. This is the main focus of my effort right now. Working with the district planner and other departments such as education, water & sanitation, and health; we will be working on creating a more transparent and rigorous way of selecting communities for infrastructure. This will include using monitoring and evaluation to acquire essential data, and developing a ranking system for deciding which projects go where. What this means for the rural people is that the communities that need services the most will be next in line, as opposed to select communities accessing service upon service. Essentially it is a fair way to select communities for infrastructure

4) Last I will be working on a better monitoring and evaluation system and increased commitment to M&E by government staff. This means that the link between the people accessing public services and the government will be stronger. Not only will there be a better system for learning from implementation and being in tune with community needs, but also the accurate information will be made available to decision makers to make better decisions.

In a nutshell that’s what I’ll be working on for the next 6 months. Feel free to email me questions or post comments.

One Hell of a Day

2008-09-07T16:56:00.000-04:00

I wake up and immediately feel that something’s off. I glance at my cell phone to see how much I overslept. It’s 4:45am, the time I was supposed to be leaving my house to catch the bus. Little did I realize at the time that this was a blessing in disguise, that my determination inconveniently inhibited me from recognizing.

There is one main bus that leaves Saboba every morning at 5:00am and goes to Tamale. I wake up, quickly packing my bag, and not even brushing my teeth. I check the boxer briefs I have hanging in my room from yesterday’s laundry. Still damp. Ah well, I decide to go commando for the ride and buy some in Tamale. I throw on my bran new pair of dress pants, without grabbing a belt; confident my tailor measured me to size.

Bad idea #1: Going commando without a belt in new pants. I realize this 10min into the bike ride from my community to town.

To my immediate relief, but later demise, the bus is running late. I buy a ticket, and because today is Sunday, the bus is only half full. In my mind, things are going alright: bus was late as I was, and now I get two seats to myself.

30min into our trip, the bus suddenly starts to tip to my side just a little too much. Things happen so fast in life you hardly have time to react. Before we know it, the bus is suddenly stopped, and in a precarious position-tipping 45 degrees to my side. We all abandon the bus only to realize that the driver drove on the shoulder in order to avoid some deep mud in the middle of the road. Unfortunately for us, the shoulder was also soft, and gave out under the weight of the greyhound-sized bus; narrowly escaping a roll onto its side.

This is where the journey really begins. On the side of the road, we try at all lengths to free the vehicle. 15 of us pushing from behind, only to see the bus slip deeper into the mud.

Bad idea #2: taking pictures while everybody is pushing the buss. WHAT!!! Like you wouldn’t. I wanted to capture the moment, and especially when everybody started pushing because I was convinced the thing would tip. It only took an annoyed bus driver saying “white man come push, stop taking pictures”, to make me retire the camera for the rest of the efforts.

An hour passed before the first truck leaving Saboba half empty of passengers passed us by. At this moment, I don’t know what compelled me to stay. Maybe it was a sense of commitment . . of not leaving when the going got tough . . . of not abandoning ship and swimming for shore. A few passengers of the bus hopped onto this rescue vessel leaving our sinking ship, but to my surprise not many.

Our first attempts were collective. “EVERYBODY GETS ROCKS” yells one of the alphas in the group, as we try to provide some stability for the wheels. I am initially passive just taking orders, seeing as the bus conductor and two drivers (the heroes of this story) had taken the lead.

After a few failed attempts, I start to get frustrated. Not because I was working, because I wasn’t, but because no other bus was coming. I had some weird misconception that upon a bus breaking down or getting stuck, another would be sent to pick the customers who had paid for their ride. This was not the case.

And then something clicked! “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”. I was no longer going to criticize failed attempts from the comfort of my armchair (really a patch of soil under a tree).

If there’s one way to get your idea adopted, it’s by championing it. Lost the sandals, rolled up the dress pants, rolled up the sleeves and started to dig with my hands. Nothing like digging through mud and rocks with your bare hands to help some freshly popped blisters from the previous day’s farming work.

By this time a tractor had come to our aid from a nearby village, along with some members with shovels. I decide that we need to brace the back tire, and we start to dig it out with vigour. Adding stones and branches where we can, we hope that with the help of the tractor, the thrust from the bus, and our measly push from behind, we can free this behemoth of a bus and carry on to Saboba.

6 hours I spent on the side of the road. All to no avail. Using a jack to raise the bus. Pulling forward with the tractor. Pulling backwards. Laying branches and rocks. Only marginal progress.

After a few other vehicles drove by and picked the remaining vehicles, I made a decision that I would go on the next way out. A cargo truck pulls up with some market ladies in it. I hope into the back of the truck only to have one of the bumpiest trips ever, and in the wrong direction. That’s right, back to Saboba to see if I could get my co-worker to give me a ride to a bigger town.

When you’re riding in the back of a truck and you can’t see what’s coming, it’s a bit of a love-hate relationship with speed. This driver was in a rush, or so it seemed, which is scary because knowing that at any point an unsuspecting cow herd, pot hole, or deep stream could cross our path, it would send all of us flying up off our seats. And it did. Buckets, bags of crops, spare tires, and people would hop up off the truck everytime it hit a bump at full speed.

Slowing down didn’t offer much reassurance either, because whenever the vehicle slowed, it meant that one of those obstacles was approaching, and probably too fast for the driver slow enough. Everytime he let off the gas, I held on for dear life.

I get back to Saboba, and hop on the back of a motorcycle to go to Yendi, the next biggest town. After an hour and a half of leaving the bus, it is still there, but with re-inforcements. There is another MetroMass bus, with a mechanic, pulling the first bus out of the ditch. They break free as I am passing, so I decide to get back on the bus.

Like a rugby team coming from a championship match, everybody’s higher than life. Dehydrated, sweating profusely, exhausted and muddy, a sense of triumph fills us all after persevering through seven hours of blood sweat and tears. (ok so I wasn’t there for the whole thing, and there were no tears)

The rest of the ride is alright, though when we get to Yendi, the driver adds insult to injury when we end up stopping for 45min to pick up more passengers. By this time we had all been travelling for 10.5 hrs. A passenger convinces the driver to take off, and reach Tamale 12hrs after departure, a trip that normally takes 2.5hrs.

The first thing I do is find a vendor on the side of the road, and buy some underwear. Exhausted and not thinking straight (I haven’t eaten anything), I’m unable to see that I am buying tighty whiteys instead of my usual boxer briefs. I find a secluded corner somewhere in town, and drop my pants, only to squeeze on what feels like a cotton speedo the size of one I wore when I was 8.

I write this post to you now, after having eaten, still sitting in the same clothes, in my new speedo.

Living Green 2 – Can Development Be Green?

2008-08-08T08:52:00.000-04:00

What does development really mean? For those that read my development posts earlier on, I mentioned reducing vulnerabilities and promoting agency. In short, enabling people to be able to respond to shocks and mitigate the effects of those shocks (drought, sickness, floods, etc.); and ensuring that people are healthy enough, educated, and have the political will and freedom to make their own choices.

The most intuitive response that comes to mind when thinking about reducing vulnerabilities is often economic development. Hold the tomatoes and lettuce fellow volunteers, let me finish my point.

Micro-enterprise is obvious, so let’s choose agriculture. Typically we try to encourage farmers to start farming as a business. Producing more than subsistence and selling the surplus, so that with the capital saved up, it can be re-invested in more farming, education, or just soften the blow of different shocks (drought, sickness, floods, etc).

But whether it is a carpenter or tailor expanding their business, or a farmer making the switch from subsistence to business person, it all requires a greater exploitation of resources. Perhaps equally important as the environmental stress, is the corresponding need for consumers. Finding more consumers to pay you for the service or good you are producing.

Even development in the sense of getting an education, will eventually lead to somebody getting a high paying job, so they can consumer more; or a more educated farmer, who can produce more.

I look at our consumerist lifestyle, where the amount of packaging and disposable material alone is a burden on the environment, I think of the population of Saboba, ~7,000 people, and think to myself that the same amount of people living in Canada would have a landfill the size of the town used to house these people here.

I can’t help but wonder if developing countries are following the same path. In many ways Ghana captures a past lifestyle and a modern one. Just travelling 12 hours south to Accra the capital, you can see many of the trends you see in Canada.

I would be a hypocrite to criticize the direction of development, chanting a concern for the environment; if after this experience I am going to hop on a PLANE, and fly back to my consumer driven lifestyle in Canada. To be perfectly honest, the ecological footprint of most rural Ghanaians is so low, that I find thinking of these types of issues far misplaced.

It makes me smile to see environment as a cross-cutting theme on so many development projects here. In some cases it is donor driven, but often the Government of Ghana is also pushing for environmental sustainability. Agricultural extension agents training farmers on how to preserve soil fertility, reduce erosion, and conserve their natural environment is inspiring.

Maybe the question is how to move forward with development but at the same time not replicate an ever growing ecological foot print, that we now know the earth cannot sustain. Is sustainable development just an oxymoron we all refuse to recognize? I guess this is just another clear example that our society is not the definition of good development, and that the “endpoint” of being developed (if there is one), is less defined that ever.

Living Green 1: What does it look like?

2008-07-25T11:45:00.002-04:00

In Canada society is constantly looking for ways to reduce its ecological foot print, and appropriately so. Prior to this trip, I would try my hand at the typical daily choices we can make to help conserve the environment: use public transport, ride a bike, use a travel mug, turn off appliances, turning off the tap when brushing my teeth, etc.

Maybe this is an unfair comparison, but living here in Saboba, sustainable living has taken on a new meaning. Apart from the somewhat appalling solid waste disposal system here (garbage just finds it way somewhere), life is quite low impact. Here I fetch my own water, along with the majority of the population, reducing our need for electrical pumps like those in Vancouver pumping to our homes.

Here at least 95% of the population rides a bike to work or walks, probably not out of choice but nevertheless. Because of the climate, no heating is required, and air conditioning is restricted to the upper class or office buildings. Since everybody lives on such a small income, consumption of frivolous items is quite minimal, and mending is a survival tactic all its own. If Toyota and Nissan saw the mileage that Ghanaians get out of their vehicles, they’d surely send them free trucks just for the publicity.

Everything here is repaired until it literally disintegrates or radioactive decay starts to depreciate its value. This is contrasted by Canada’s way of abandoning many automobiles as soon as they start to wear down, just a general sense of “spending over mending”. Urban sprawl? Not quite. Markets just spontaneously appear to keep people commuting relatively short distances.

For those of you who have heard of the 100mile diet, I don’t think it could be more honoured here, where 70% of Northern Region is engaged in agriculture as a livelihood. This also includes the urban dwellers. Indeed, most of my co-workers and bosses, still have farms of their own that they may pay people to work on or tend to themselves, just so that they can produce their own food.

What this made me think of was how committed we are to living green in Canada. In Vancouver we have it lucky that our climate is so mild, but for those that have traveled east of our lovely west coast, it gets colder in the winter. With that comes the ecological foot print of increased heating for accommodation. Another result is that we need to use electricity (240V) to dry our clothes 6 months of the year, for those of us that actually use a line during the summer.

Let’s ignore urban sprawl and using cars for transport, just to give us a step up. Our food consumption is anything from within 100 miles of where it was produced. For those that buy locally grown food, again, the diet becomes quite limited when the weather gets cold. Switching from fruits, veggies, and grains to meats; our meat industry happens to be the second largest contributor to greenhouse gasses after energy production. Here most of the meat I consume walked around grazing in natural fields for at least a few years before I ate it.

To wrap things up, I just wonder about all the initiatives we have to live green, such as recycling and green energy, when already our lifestyle seems to completely contradict the notion of living green. This is nothing new, but should we be living the way we are if it is not sustainable? How many of us are prepared to make the true sacrifices needed to actually switch to a sustainable lifestlye?

The “Cost” of Collective Living

2008-07-04T18:09:00.001-04:00

Before coming here I had a typical development oriented state of mind. Idealistic, socialist, thinking that the government should manage all to prevent such a stratified class system. I believed that a capitalist society was one that was selfish by nature, based on a dog-eat-dog world. Competition to get the top.

I’ve realized with my short stay a bit of the “cost” of my idealistic dream of a world - where there would be no disparity and everyone would live equally. I call it “cost” because depending on what stance you look at it from, it might not be a cost.

What I’m referring to is the collective lifestyle that I see being lived by the majority of Ghanaians I interact with. It’s inspiring to me, because there is such a sense of community here that people do truly help out their neighbours, and welcome each other. Generosity here is exemplified in so many actions, it gives the word new meaning.

It’s painted all over the cultural subtleties I see everyday. When someone you know is sick in the hospital, despite the faint connection you have to them, Ghanaians will go to visit. When people come to randomly visit you, maybe at work or at home; you make time no matter what you are doing, welcome them in, offer them food, and converse for a short while. Anytime somebody is eating and a friend is walking by, even an acquaintance, “you are invited” is the phrase to indicate that the food should be shared.

This culture of sharing and taking time for others, completely contrasts North American living. What I’ve come to notice though, is while this same sharing provides the safety net that so many vulnerable people rely on, it also stifles the advancement of any one individual in society.

Steven is the name of a friend I have in Tamale who has started his own business of selling cell phones and cell phone accessories. He also owns a taxi that he has a driver operate to generate some extra income. Steven’s story provides hope, because a hard working individual has become an entrepreneur, which is such a popular sequence of events here in Ghana.

Though as soon as Steven starts to advance, as soon as he starts to save some money, siblings, family, and friends come knocking. The reasons are great, from somebody needing money for medication to school fees for a child. This makes saving for an entrepreneur like Steven difficult, because there is such a need to supply coming from close friends and family.

The same can be seen even more in rural communities. Farmers are constantly knocking on each other’s door, and sharing when somebody’s harvest comes in small. This makes it so hard for any one person to advance their livelihood. Just yesterday I went farming with my host father Elijia, and after losing the majority of his cassava plantation to indiscriminate goat grazing, he was re-stocked by a neighbouring farmer. Amazing that a subsistence farmer would so readily share his crops with a fellow farmer, but it doesn’t bode well for the generous farmer ever escaping subsistence.

What this shows to me is a collective mentality to get through. In both these cases, there is a sense of others over self. Perhaps it is a no-brainer for farmers because they can empathize with eachother, and share a common hardship. Initiatives such as communal labour (see 10 things I love about Ghana No.8) and acts of complete generosity such as these really hit home in terms of giving.

So the result is that community development is somewhat stagnant in most cases, or at least very slow. It is a realization that I’ve had, that with a collective lifestyle, development interventions are diluted among the masses, and from a short-time frame it would seem that development is static.

The question I’m left with is how collective can you be before it is a bad thing? At what point should somebody say no to a friend or a friendly member so that the individual can advance their livelihood and provide for their children? How effective can micro-enterprise initiatives be when loan repayment is so unlikely with this collective system? I constantly see what I would naturally call bad business men, who will continually sell below production or give out freebies to their friends, and here people have a lot of friends.

I’m not sure of the income distribution in Canada, but how does our society compare? Do we sometimes close our doors to family members and friends, in order to invest in our own future? Is that a possible explanation for our “success” in accumulating wealth? And in most cases, I think that the disparity of incomes is not as bad in most developed countries compared to that of most developing nations. How can that be explained?

TEN THINGS I LOVE ABOUT GHANA - #8

2008-05-25T07:47:00.001-04:00

The numbering has no relevance for preference. Simply the order I wrote the post in.

Solidarity among rural communities. Communal labour is an initiative that I admire about Buagbaln village. Communal labour is the reinforcement call when you have too much work to do on your own. If a farmer is ploughing their field and cannot complete it on their own, they can call for communal labour. “Children” aged 15-24 will answer the call and report to whatever the task is after they get back from school at 2pm. My host brother Philip (23) is always reporting to communal labour.

Apart form the example I gave of tilling your field, others could be construction of a house. As most huts here are made from mud bricks and mud mortar, it involves an immense amount work. Mixing dry mud with water to make mortar is extremely tiring (I’ve tried), which needs to be done to mould bricks, and for the mortar for the hut. A common call for communal labour is exactly this task, mixing of mortar and constructing the walls.

One that my family recently used was that they were re-flooring their entire compound courtyard. This involved breaking up the old concrete with pick ax, followed by laying new gravel, and concrete, and ending with compacting. For a family to do this entire task on their own would take too long for one day, which is the time frame it needs to be done in.

Another communal initiative are grain banks which I have seen in certain communities. Essentially a large community food storage is built by all members of the community, and upon harvest everyone donates a portion of their crops to this bank. It serves as a safety net for the community when shocks occur to individuals or the entire community. Should someone lose their entire harvest to pests, or perhaps fire, the grain bank would serve to pick that person up. It is also used to supplement the community food intake during the lean season (see blog post Back to the Field)

I don’t quite understand how, but it works on the honour system, and apparently nobody abuses it. The reason why I love these initiatives is because all the farmers are in the same situation and recognize the need for cooperation. There are conditions about their lives that make certain tasks too great for an individual to do on their own. Seeing this type of communal solidarity in overcoming the difficulties surviving off the land can throw at you, makes me wonder if something was lost when civilizations progressed to big cities and lost their connection with the land they depend on for survival. Nonetheless, I admire the sense of brotherhood that joins this community together.

TEN THINGS I LOVE ABOUT GHANA - #9

2008-05-25T07:46:00.001-04:00

The numbering has no relevance for preference. Simply the order I wrote the post in.

Shopping for clothes. Yes I know it doesn’t sound like me, a long time beneficiary of hand-me-downs. Due to a well fashioned two older brothers, ever since grade 9 I’ve been benefiting from an at-home shopping mall (sorry Sean and Barry).

Here the textile industry is fantastic. In the market there are textile vendors. You’ll go and buy material from local tie & die, to elaborate linen with embroidery (very popular among the Muslims). Then you take it to a tailor in town who will size you up and allow you to chose the style of whatever article clothing fits your fancy. Four days later you return to pick up your custom made clothing.

The great thing about this system is that here the consumer has the choice, and there is way more personal interaction. Speaking to textile vendors, they guide me on what will look good with my skin tone, lol, and what I should buy (mostly they just steer me away from the female fabric because I have trouble distinguishing). Since arriving in Saboba, I have become particular yclose with one tailor and he prepares all of my clothes. I’ve gotten to know his wife and child, and visit him regularly.

What I love about all this is the personal interaction. What is one industry in Canada, has been segregated into two in Ghana, where the consumer makes the choice. In Canada, retailers produce the finish product from beginning to end. In Ghana almost all of the “finished product” articles of clothing you can buy are simply donated clothing from developed countries. The task of going to the market, choosing a fabric I’m uncertain of, and then working with my tailor to make a shirt for me is definitely something I’m going to miss.

TEN THINGS I LOVE ABOUT GHANA - #10

2008-05-25T07:45:00.000-04:00

The numbering has no relevance for preference. Simply the order I wrote the post in.

Food comes to you. As I sit in my office the time is nearing 10 o’clock. I look forward to this time because I know that soon one of two ladies will be at my office. It is around this time that they usually make their rounds. I don’t know where these ladies walk from, maybe from town, maybe the market; but they always come to the offices around ten o’clock. They carry either: bananas, avocados, groundnuts, or now that mango season is in, huge ripe mangos.

I guess they come to the offices from wherever they are coming from because the business is better, but regardless it is a service that I never saw in Canada. At work in Canada, I would either have to pack my snacks or go out and get them on a break. Inconvenient for the vendor but a service no consumer could turn away.

From the raised seat of a greyhound-like bus, I reach down to give a young girl some money for some of the food she is selling. Holding the platter as high as she can with her arms stretched above her head, I lean out the window and reach down to .grab some food off the platter. In other transactions that aren’t as smooth, the bus starts off before you can finish getting your food. A chase sets in as a small girl runs after the moving bus to give me my bundle of bananas.

Buses travel regularly from city to city, and they make the regular stops. Vendors stakeout these stops, that way as soon as the bus stops to drop off a passenger women spring from their perch and rush the bus. Windows are crowded with all sorts of tasty treats: fried yams, roasted chicken, pure water, fried cheese, bananas. Passengers stock up for the next stretch of the trip with whatever fills their heart content.

Back to the Fields

2008-05-25T07:44:00.000-04:00

To my saving grace, the rains have come. At least three times a week Saboba has a thunder and lightning storm with high winds and heavy rains. Though these random showers almost always seem to coincidentally occur just hours after I have done laundry and left my clothes out to dry, it is a blessing none the less.

Living in my host community has really allowed me to observe, and participate, in farmer’s livelihoods. Now that the rains have come a lot is changing in Saboba and my village. In Saboba the tractor traffic has increased five fold, and diesel sales have soared. As for my village, men have sprung into action. Every morning at 6am, men and boys leave for the fields to farm yams, maize, and many other crops I can’t remember. The days of sitting in the shade weaving grass or playing Oware are finished for men. Now backbreaking labour has become the focus of everyday.

But to the men of this community, they’re happy to be at work. The longer the rains delay, the higher the likelihood the lean season will extend. The rainy season is sometimes called the lean season because it is this season that is furthest away from their last harvest. It’s around this time that food stocks start to deplete and rations decrease in size. So the faster farmers can get the crops in the ground the better, because it means an earlier harvest.

The reason why I call it backbreaking labour is because that is exactly what it is. For those that can afford it, tractors are used plough fields. Sitting in my room at night I can hear the roar of the tractors as they pass right by my compound to return to town after a day in the field.

But for the majority of farmers, hand tilling is still the way to prepare the field. What a tractor does in 10seconds would take an individual farmer 1 hour. Some of you may have wondered why farmers would delay in preparing their fields if the rains didn’t come. The reason why is because after the long dry season, the earth becomes similar to concrete and hand tilling is extremely difficult. Thus farmers wait until the first rains have come and soften the ground, to till. Also, I’m not sure why, but you only sow seeds after the first rains. Anyone who has that answer, please help out.

The only thing we now have to watch out for, is that the rains don’t continue too long. For the mean time the rains are a great blessing, but too much rain means huge consequences for farmers. Seeing as Ghana suffered flooding last year, a second year in a row would be really sad.

Down For The Count

2008-05-20T11:35:00.000-04:00

Well I don’t know if I am glad to say that I got malaria two weekends ago, but now that I’ve experienced it I don’t need to go through that again. Some of you that know me better than others may be thinking that I got what was coming to me seeing as I refuse to take anti-malaria pills, and to that argument, another volunteer that came over with me has gotten malaria twice while being on anti-malaria pills.

It started on Friday. I was going to a workshop, had a blistering headache and was starting to heat up. I had lost my appetite and did not eat much lunch, and later that night went to bed early, exhausted and skipping dinner.

Oddly enough the next morning I didn’t feel that bad. I woke up and decided to take it easy and read a bit of my book. 30 min later I was down for the count lying on my thin foamy in my room. Running a fever I decided not to chance it and took my malaria treatment, before being diagnosed. For the rest of the day I was inside, sleeping, skipping meals, chugging water.

Around 2 o’clock the fever got worst. I was extremely hot to the touch and not sweating a bit, which made me think back to the good old NLS days and learning about heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Fond memories of that not so long ago Saturday, lying in my room pouring water on my head for it to run off and cool me down for only seconds.

At the time of the peak of my fever, my host siblings were watching a movie on my laptop that I had put on to take my mind off the fever, though to no avail because I just passed out and resulted to my futile drizzling of water.

Around 3 o’clock my host brother said, Nick you need to go to the hospital. I agreed completely, though only to take a test and confirm that I had malaria. I would have gone earlier in the morning, but in my state of exhaustion I wanted my co-worker to pick me up on his motorbike to take me. Thanks to the unreliable service that MTN provides its clients with, I could not communicate by phone with anyone.

Conjuring up all of my remaining energy, I waited until 5:00pm for the sun to start its approach to the horizon. Soaking my tee-shirt and hat, I geared up for one of the most exhausting rides into town ever. Stopping for a Fanta Orange, the high sugar content provided me with a shot of adrenaline.

Took a test at the hospital to confirm that it was malaria I was suffering from, and returned home to pass out. The next day was less dramatic, though still entirely unproductive. Water, rest, juice, and Ocean’s Thirteen got me through the day.

The morale of this story, is at night wear long-sleeve shirts and long pants if you are going to be hanging out outside. To the more cautious, maybe anti-malaria pills might help. I am feeling 100% now. Though I have to give it to malaria, it knocked me on my ass.

Urbanization Part 2 – Indigenous People

2008-04-27T05:54:00.000-04:00

Upon further thought of the difference between Canada’s settlement trends and Ghana’s, I asked myself why? Why did Canadians form more predominant urban centers and leave the rural landscapes? Why did people stay in the rural parts of Ghana?

Mom, close your ears to this next part as it will become evident that Social Studies 9-11 were not my strongest subjects. I’m now going to take a stab at why settlement occurred differently between these two places. This is my version and best guess at possibly explaining why Canadians developed in clusters as opposed to scattered settlements across our country.

In Ghana, among the rural population there is a strong sense of culture, tradition, and home. People are well aware of their tribe as well as the area their tribe has occupied for past centuries. And it is the latter point that I believe is the root cause of a person’s attachment to their environment. Some of the communities that I have been to, have been there for hundreds of years. It has given rise to ancestral burial grounds which is a term most Canadians would be foreign to if not for anthropology books and horror movies. Generations of experiences, teachings, and investment have gone into the same land over and over. The same land that once bore fruit to the great-great grandparents of today’s generation, continue to, and will continue to bear fruit for following generations.

Through this tradition and sense of “belonging” to the land few of us can relate or empathize with, rural people and indigenous tribes have remained in their settlements while development may have flowed to other areas within their reach. Maybe this accounts for the fact that still, so many communities stay where they are, persist and persevere through the monumental challenges they are faced with, and chose to live where their ancestors had once lived.

Bringing it back to Canada, how many of us can say that we have been in the same area for the past four generations? How many of us know where our ancestors once dwelt and what they did, let alone where they were buried? I think it might be because when the European settlers first came, though they were farmers, they formed small settlements, forts, or communities. Some of those early forts continued to develop into today’s oldest cities.

As for our indigenous people, because of the conflict that existed between European settlers and the First Nations people, much of that same tradition and attachment to the land that is exhibited in Ghana’s rural people; was lost when our Natives were booted off their land and retro-actively compensated for it generations later.

This is a very simplistic explanation and view on a matter that includes many more factors. It was more of a reflection upon an observation that I made. In Canada people are not tied to the land and moving away from one’s roots is not that uncommon. In Ghana, people seem to be more tied to the land, at least among rural people, which might continue to feed the problem of low population density.

Urbanization Part 1 - Evil or the Way Forward?

2008-04-27T05:53:00.001-04:00

This post I expect to furrow some brows. Similar to the post “Is School Cool?” this post is aimed at making us question something that we have forever thought was bad. I’ll lay down the most abbreviated summary of the typical and well-established argument in favour of rural-urban migration being bad. Those who know otherwise, PLEASE correct me.

In the 70s, when development really started to take off, much of development was aimed at urban centers in hopes that their would be a corresponding trickle-effect. That by developing urban centers, those centers would then follow by providing services for the rural population. In many cases what happened was what E.F.Schumacher called “the twin evils of mass migration and mass unemployment”.

Large populations of rural people would migrate to the urban centers (typically the young, strong, and perhaps educated men) leaving the elderly, young children, and women behind to mind the harsh conditions that rural livelihoods can often entail. Because the urban centers were not set up for this huge influx of people, mass unemployment followed along with its close companion mass homelessness. Your shantytowns and slum dwellings are the result, coupled with an ever increasing informal sector (people engaged in informal income generating activities).

Then I started to look at the differences between Canada and Ghana, and try to figure out some of the obvious differences that might account for the differing development challenges. Though there are MANY, ONE came up when I was having this conversation with a co-worker of mine. Immediately I thought of the low population density of the Northern Region of Ghana in particular. I know that Canada is one of the global leaders in low population densities (~30million people in the 2^nd largest country in the world), but it seems that most of our people have somehow gravitated towards towns or cities. When I drive from Hope to Manning Park, there aren’t too many rural settlements along the way.

Ghana is a polar opposite. There are small settlements everywhere, scattered throughout the country. The difficulty that arises from this phenomenon is that suddenly to provide electricity to all these people, you need ten times the amount of electricity lines. Water = 10 times the amount of pipe. Market access = 10 times the length of roads. If the same energy and resources that went into spreading such little butter over too much bread went into capital start up of industries, would it be possible to provide for the masses?

BIG BARK . . . little bite!!

2008-04-27T05:51:00.000-04:00

I want to make sure that I am not coming off as a development professional, because as you already know . . . I AM NOT. In fact it’s quite the opposite, I am in the beginning of my career, and with regards to this particular placement, in the heart of my learning phase. Right now I am still trying to understand how things work in the development industry, Ghana, and in particular my district.

Because of this, my greatest asset is the ability to ask questions, inquire, and tag along on projects with the objective of learning as much as possible. I want to reassure everyone, that I am not in a position where I am telling people what to do or changing MOs left right and center, when I am only 2 months old in Ghana. I know that when we typically think of a consultant, we think of an expert in a particular field who is going to teach/coach an organization on how they can improve themselves. Allow me to respond to your initial gag reflexes upon reading that I would be a “consultant”, with what I actually meant with that label.

One skill that will pay off is effective questioning. Through my learning and persistent questioning, my co-workers reflect on the current practice to provide me with an answer. The value in effective questioning is that I provide an outside perspective, but I am also able to reveal some of the gaps that typically are overlooked because of the nature of repeating a job for a number of years. Through learning about the why and the how things are done, together my co-workers and I are evaluating the current practice.

On top of that, areas of improvement and different practices are easier for me to see because of my outside perspective. In some cases, by learning by doing (such as I am in the gap filling area), I am able to offer suggestions that I have seen in other cases or countries. If not providing a direct suggestion for improving a process, through effective questioning you initiate a dialogue of current practices, which is an added value on its own.

In light of all this, let me finish by saying that 80% of what I do will be in cooperation with co-workers and truly the ideas will be generated from both parties. I am but a facilitator of a motion to improve, where the ideas and action will come from the local development workers/experts.

As I learn more about the workings of the District Assembly and the development industry, I will increasingly move towards more facilitation and doing. Let it be known, that the credit does not belong entirely to me (or even close to it). This placement is truly a partnership and a collaboration of minds.

Buagbaln Village – A New Home

2008-04-22T13:42:00.001-04:00

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.

Office Work? . . . Really?

2008-04-22T13:39:00.001-04:00

As you read about what I am doing here in Saboba, many of you may be caught off guard. I understand that you may have thought I would be working in the field with those living in poverty and interacting with them first hand. I know that an office job was not what most expected when they heard I was going to Africa, and it probably doesn’t come to mind when you think about alleviating poverty. Allow me to explain why it is that I am doing what I am doing.

The ultimate aim of why I am here is to help development move along and specifically help the rural poor. What does “help the rural poor” mean? To me that means: allowing the voice of the rural poor to be heard, for their needs to be met, and for them to gain access to whatever their priority is. What I’ve realized from being here is that the way that development is carried out is much more complicated than just providing communities with what they need.

Let’s start off there. How does one find out what a community needs? You go to the field and ask them. But in that activity of going to the field, approach is important, to make sure that the true needs of ALL the people, even the marginalized ones, are heard. Through side projects and being a part of field activities, I am able to make sure that proper plans are made and good methods are used to get that critical information from communities. Not to suggest that this is not already done.

Now let’s say that the field implementers are experts at what they are doing, which in many cases they are, how do you transfer that information so that it can be used for accurate decision making? Documentation becomes important as well as analysis. To make decisions based on the needs of the people and to be able to provide them with the services they require, decisions need to be made on accurate and up to date information. Thus information management becomes crucial to provide communities with quality services. It is funny because I would have never thought that improved reporting and information management would ever be important in development, but when you have the multiple needs of 400 communities, resource constraints, and unexpected occurrences such as floods and droughts plaguing your environment, how could you ever cater to your people without accurate information?

However, information is only as good as it is used. So assuming that good data has been collected and documented; analysis and evidence based decision making is the next step. Making sure that communities gain access to services based on need, and ranking, and not for a number of other biases is the true crux. The rural poor will only develop if fair and well-informed decisions and plans are made. How does one begin to rank and prioritize the seemingly infinite problems with such a finite amount of resources?

As you can see from the trend, to truly develop the district and start to reduce poverty, there are key components that need to be present in the local government in order to facilitate that process. It is because of this need that I find myself working as a consultant, over an implementer. For sustainable development to occur, the district’s capacity must be built first.

Gap Filling

2008-04-22T13:38:00.001-04:00

GAP FILLING

The section of my work is really intended to do two things. Accelerate the workings of the District Assembly to make time for the more important things, such as getting out into the field and providing for the rural poor. The second objective is to try and build credibility and trust with my partner organization (the District Assembly) and to share knowledge and skills along the way. I have a lot to learn about this organization if I am going to contribute to its improvement, and an outside perspective is extremely useful in improving processes here at the District Assembly. This partnership is truly an exchange of skills.

The previous post, The Task Ahead, provides a good overview of how things are working, however here is a short re-cap to help you understand the following post. The District Assembly (Assembly for short) carries out its own projects that have been highlighted in the medium term development plan (Mentioned in the “My assigned tasks” post). The Assembly doesn’t have enough resources, human or financial, to get the work done however so non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Donor Projects come in to fill in the gaps.

NGOs are the small organizations that get contracted out to do work. Donor Projects are the big international government backed projects that are really driving the activities on the ground. District Wide Assistance Program funded by our very own government of Canada (CIDA) is an example of a Donor Project. This project is very simple in that money is available to the District Assemblies to apply for, and upon being granted funds they are to undertake the projects of their choice with the money.

Other Donor Projects are rigid guidelines and are more specific in their intended use. Currently in the district there are at least 8 of these Donor Projects. Now I will go into the side projects I have found myself working on.

In Detail

The first is a Northern Region Poverty Reduction Program (NORPREP) evaluation. NORPREP is a big Donor Project that is working in the district. They have asked the Assembly to do an evaluation of the work that a smaller NGO did for them. I have been working on this project in order to pilot new ways of doing evaluations, as well as to improve the quality of reports that we write in efforts of making the knowledge we gain from the field more useful to other people.

The second is working with the Natural Disaster Management Organization. This is a branch of the government that is responsible for managing and distributing relief items to people affected by natural disasters (such as the floods last year). My role with them will be to do the allocation of the rest of the relief items and to make sure that accurate reporting is done to aid in transparency.

Last, I have just started working on a new Community Based Rural Development Project that is providing the district with a large sum of money to do road rehabilitation after the floods last year. My role in that project is to ensure a transparent and evidence based decision making process for deciding which roads get rehabilitated.

For now those are the only side projects I have on the go, in addition to my three other large work streams. It makes for a long 10 hour day, but keeps me busy which is why I came here.

My Assigned Tasks

2008-04-22T13:35:00.001-04:00

After three weeks at work my task has been laid out for me. Since starting work on March 19, I have been helping out in the office on various projects, as well as attending meetings and workshops to find out just how the District Assembly works. Through the small work I have done and informal conversations with co-workers and supervisors, I have generated a fairly good idea of the problems here at the District Assembly and have now started to address these issues.

I will start by giving some background into the governmental set up of Ghana. Right now I am working at the district level of government. Ghana is divided into regions (the equivalent of our provinces) and then into districts. The District Assembly is responsible for all development projects in its district. Any Non-governmental organizations (NGO) working in the district must first get permission form the District Assembly, and usually end up cooperating with the local government. As well, money from the national level of government is allocated to each District Assembly so that it can deliver services to its people.

In essence I am here to serve two functions. To provide an extra set of hands in any given development project to help services get out quicker and improve the quality of services to the rural poor. The second is to act as a consultant to this government structure, and strengthen its institutional capacity so that it can perform better in my absence.

GAP FILLING

This is the part of my work where I am just working on any given project to help move things along, and also learn about how the District Assembly works and how to improve it. So far this has been anything from helping with report writing, to monitoring and evaluation of previous projects, to developing ranking criteria for citing projects.

CONSULTANCY

The following tasks were identified by my boss and myself upon observing some of the bottlenecks here at the district.

1) The evaluation of the four year medium term plan. Every district creates a four year medium term development plan which determines all of the projects they will do for the following 4 years. This plan is also supposed to be monitored as it goes, which has been done to some extent but could be improved upon. My job is to actually look at the medium term development plan and see how much has been completed, and most importantly, what we can learn from what we've done, etc.

2) While doing the evaluation of the four year medium term plan, we will also gather the community’s needs, priorities, and suggestions. From all this information we will make the new development plan for the two new districts (the district I was originally posted two has split into two).

3) Through both of these activities I am to resuscitate the district planning and co-ordinating unit. This committee of people is responsible for all the planning and decision making with regards to any development projects in the district. My boss strongly feels that improvement in this area could really improve the effectiveness of the District Assembly.

4) Creating a better information management system. Ensuring that key information is gathered, organized and stored efficiently so that decisions can be made based on evidence.

5) Computer training of the staff.

That is my work in brief. I wish there was a way to boil it down into a simpler picture, but as I have come to learn, the development industry is convoluted mess of different players and activities that makes it difficult to wrap your brain around at first.

Is School Cool?

2008-03-15T20:12:00.001-04:00

After my stay in the village, and more specifically speaking so much with Joshua (my 25 year old translator), my brain is struggling with the concept of education for rural farmers. Everyone! E-very-one, who had been to school and completed senior secondary school wanted to get employment. And this is no surprise. Isn’t it the same in Canada?

The reason why it bothered me was because there are only jobs in town. The only employment opportunities available are located away from the rural areas. This made me question what we were trying to accomplish by promoting education. It is obvious that we invest in the rural people because they constitute the majority but as well so that farmers stay farmers. Investing in the agricultural sector and avoiding what Schumacher would call the twin evils of mass migration and mass unemployment in the already over-crowed urban centers.

Urban migration is one of the leading contributing causes of unemployment in cities and thus crime. Governments can hardly keep up with the job creation required for satisfying the demand placed on it by the supply of urban graduates; let alone all the rural poor looking for opportunities. So why are we educating rural farmers so that they can simply leave the rural parts and head to the cities?

Some would argue that a literate farmer is better than an illiterate farmer, and I completely agree. But what I noticed is that you get a growing divide with young adults returning to rural life with urban educations. Not only is there now a tension between traditional beliefs and modern ways of thinking, but also you have educated adults with a bit of a chip on their shoulder. Understandably so, they believe that they deserve more than their uneducated peers, nor do they want to continue doing the labour intensive farming practices their forefathers performed.

A close parallel to this is what happened after the war in Sierra Leone. Within the internally displaced persons (IDP) and refugee camps, education was closely monitored and administered. In fact the UNHCR did quite a good job. But when the war was over, Sierra Leone was in desperate need of infrastructure. The people leaving the camps were educated however, and didn’t want to do labour.

The intuitive response to this undesired outcome is to train farmers in skills and educate them on relevant subject matter to their livelihoods. In essence help farmers become better farmers. I am immediately reminded of a scary scenario illustrated in Alduous Huxley’s Brave New World, where people’s futures are decided for them. Is it right to alter the curriculum for a certain audience in the hopes of providing incentives to take a certain profession?

Which makes me question investing in farming altogether. As I said before, everyone who had been to school was looking to leave the village. It’s because they knew of a city life and wanted it. I ask you, who goes to school and decides they want to be a farmer? In Canada we PAY our farmers subsidies so that they will farm. We provide financial incentives! What incentives are there for rural farmers in Africa? Farming is hard, somewhat risky, and not lucrative whatsoever. So is it so unreasonable for farmers to want their children to have a different life?

Boy Trouble

2008-03-15T20:10:00.003-04:00

“A woman speaking to a man, is not the same thing as a woman speaking to a woman”

I was arguing with Joshua about skipping the line at the borehole to fill our buckets when he told me this. That was when it really hit home: that gender equity is a longer and much more complex battle than I thought.

This comes from the following explanation, given by Joshua. When you are a boy, you do as your father tells you to because he is the provider. Though you can argue moderately, ultimately what he says goes because it is his house, and he is the one giving you food. Thus he is your elder. And this is exactly the way the entire village operates. If ever there were a dispute that couldn’t be settled by the chairman, then the oldest man in the community would decide.

Now, men are the providers for women. If a snake comes into a compound, the man will kill it while the women run. The men hunt and farm. The men are the providers for the women. Thus men are "elders" to women, and the same relationship between a boy and his father follows. Because of this, ultimately whatever a man says or requests when speaking to a woman is accepted. If a man walks into a compound or room, a woman must provide him with a seat, just as you would an elder. Men eat first, and women second. Everything follows this hierarchy.

What does this fundamental flaw lead to? An extreme disparity at the village level. Women lead different lives than men. Women look after kids, fetch water by foot, cook, clean, collect firewood, make charcoal, plaster walls, process crops for consumption, carry loads, and help the men with any of their activities. Men are responsible for anything farming related, weaving of grass and building infrastructure, fetching water by bike, and hunting.

The role differentiation is not the problem and is actually required. During a somewhat heated conversation with the men and chairman of the village, the chairman explained to me that if everyone did the same activities then they would not survive. There is too much to do and specialization is paramount to efficiency and success. The problem for me lies when there is a difference between work requirements.

Men work hard. They also pay for school fees and any health related costs. It is not my intention to underrate them. However anytime that a man was sitting in the shade resting during the mid day inferno, women are still working. Always cooking, tending to children, or some other reproductive chore for the household. WOMEN NEVER STOP.

I’ll close this with coming back to the fundamental mental stance on gender equity. Joshua told me that he knew what it was and believed in gender equity. That through school he learned that women can do what men can do, and he is ok with a female president. But at the same time, in everyday activities and interactions with the opposite sex, he still returns to the traditional stance. Though he could regurgitate the rhetoric taught at school, his nature was still inherently gender biased towards men.

One success story I had was when we were harvesting yams. Joshua, his brother and I were harvesting in the field whilst women were peeling yams no more than 30m away in the shade of a tree. After finishing uprooting the last yam, we wiped the sweat from our brows and went to sit with the women. I asked Joshua who would pick up the yams from the field and bring them to the tree where the women were peeling them. “That’s women’s work” he replied. I proceed to grab one of the steel buckets and head back to the field. After two trips of carrying the yams on my head, Joshua through laughter told me to stop and that I had made my point. I looked at him and told him that if he and his brother would help me it would go a lot faster. They proceeded to grab two buckets and help me finish the task.

The women peeling yams were beside themselves in laughter, and smiles had crept across the faces of my co-workers. I know that it is only a drop in the ocean however, for what is a much longer battle. Changing values is something I don’t know how to do.

Nobody Speaks English

2008-03-15T20:08:00.001-04:00

One of the first things I noticed in the village was how many kids there were running around all the time. At least 3 kids per adult. But what stuck with me most was why they weren’t in school. It didn’t take long for the community to answer this question for me. The biggest barrier to education right now is distance. The nearest primary school is a 45min walk away. This may not seem far but it is the number one reason why enrolment is so late in this village. No child goes to school before the age of nine, which is when they are old enough to walk there on their own.

The repercussions of this were everywhere. Upon being introduced to the village by the local agriculture extension agent, he singled out the English speaking farmers so that I would know who I could communicate with. Five men, ages 19-26 were the privileged few. English is a good indicator of one’s education level because from primary school, children are taught English (Ghana was a British colony).

Distance was the first barrier, but it went further. As expected, money was also a barrier because as children get older, school fees increase. Junior secondary school and senior secondary school are more expensive. Also if a farmer ever gets hit by any shock, children are pulled out. The example I was given was if someone were to get sick or die, money would be needed and school was an expense worth redirecting. If the rains fail or more help is needed in the field many children are pulled out.

This accounts for most of the low enrolment, but the gender correlation was particularly interesting. There is a fundamental belief among male farmers that is a barrier to female education. Why send a girl to school if when she gets married she will leave the family? Sending a girl to school doesn’t lead to your investment staying in the family. I don’t know the answer to this. I know that ideologically educating a female is good because that knowledge will be transferred to her children and will have a greater impact; but I cannot think of an answer to the question posed above.

Because these types of questions need to be answered before we will see equal enrolment for both boys and girls, getting girls in school goes much further than address the surface causes.

Distance was also tied into gender disparities. Because of the distance, parents were more inclined to send their sons to school instead of their daughters. When girls start hitting the pubic stage in their lives, boys start pursuing them and as a result teen pregnancies occur. Keeping children at home allowed parents to monitor them and more importantly, be their moral compass rather than allowing peer pressure. It makes me think of a similar phenomenon that we are witnessing in Canadian societies, where children are following their peers more and more, as opposed to the teachings of their parents.

“Water Is Life”

2008-03-15T20:07:00.003-04:00

I wake up at 4am to start walking to the borehole which is a 45min walk away. I am with my translator Joshua, three women and two 11 year old girls. Walking down a narrow trail and unable to see, there are three flashlights in the group. We get to the borehole and there are already six women waiting there. An hour and a half after arriving at the borehole, a man suddenly arrives with the parts to assemble the handle, and allow the women to start the activity that haunts them daily.

We are lucky today. When I say we, I am referring to the party that I came with to the borehole. We are the last to fill our buckets before the well runs dry. It’s 7am and the well is dry. For the other 12 women and girls here, and the other 30 that are bound to come over the course of the day; this means that they must wait until the water returns to the borehole. Sometimes this takes hours. Sometimes a day. Women will spend an entire day, waiting at the borehole to get just one bucket (25L) of clean water. Think to yourself what you use clean water for and if one bucket would do for your family. Some women don’t even get a bucket in a day. Did I mention that there were girls there as well?

“If I go any farther my neck will snap” is all I can think to myself as I struggle with the 50lb weight I’m carrying on my head. In that 1hr walk back, I took a few breaks, and was only given a glimpse of an activity that is for so many rural women the bane of their existence. In this village, women will make this trip twice a day every second day. On the opposite days it gets worst, they must make a trip that is over twice as far (at least 2.5hrs walking) to the local dam to fetch the dirty water used for bathing and cleaning.

It was the first thing on everyone’s mind. More water. We are at the peak of the dry season right now and this community couldn’t be hit harder. Speaking to the chairman of the village he tells me “Nick . . . water is life, isn’t it? Before our community can pull itself out of poverty we need water”. Men too fetch water daily, using bikes to go to the dam. Sometimes twice.

An inadequate and distant water source has so many repercussions. Women and men are now taking entire days just to sustain the family. This leaves no room for generating or saving income/assets, and leaves them completely vulnerable to any shock. If someone gets sick and needs to be taken to the hospital, how will the rest of the family cope?

I mentioned that there were girls. Optimistic, high-spirited, potentially great, girls are having their futures robbed from them because their entire days are spent perfecting an art that no eleven year old child should be performing flawlessly. A sorrowful smile creeps across my face when I see young girls smiling and laughing as they jump up and down in pairs to drive the pump arm designed for an adult. Because I know that they should be in school investing in their future. It kills me to watch young girls spending entire days waiting for a dry borehole, because I know they are capable of so much more.

I don’t need to be a crystal ball reader to see their future. I simply look at the women in the community and observe their lifestyle and know that their daughters will share the same fate if nothing changes. Everyday that passes is a day that these children are not in school or in someway enhancing their brains or harnessing the potential they are overflowing with. Everyday that this continues only furthers a lost generation.

Kpsani Village

2008-03-15T20:05:00.000-04:00

For the last week I was staying in Kpsani Village just outside of Yendi. Because things at my workplace in Saboba were not yet ready, I decided to get out in the field and do a village stay. The point of this village stay was to get a little experience with Ghanaian farmers and start to understand their livelihoods. I went to a Kunkomba village which was perfect because they form the majority of the population in Saboba.

The Kunkomba people are very welcoming. It is just in their culture. One example, is that for a visitor, all households must provide for them, not just the household they are staying in. How this affected me was that every time I visited a compound, I was provided a meal to eat. After 3 days of eating 8 meals a day, I explained to my translator that if all households needed to provide for me, then they could only do so for one meal a day.

After my first full day in the village, my body was aching all over. I had blisters on both hands from my first day of using a hoe to harvest yams, my feet were still burning from the bare foot soccer match I played, and my shoulders were aching after a long day of learning how to weave grass. That was only the first day. After that biking 30km a day became the norm because we were fetching water from the local dam 12km away.

And that was the pace of most of my days. Trying to engage in as many of their activities as possible in order to better understand how they live and why they do what they do. Having as many conversations as possible with people to find out what the constraints around their community’s development were, and what role the government was playing. Finding out what they needed and wanted in terms of government services and gaining a better perspective on farmer realities.

Acknowledgement of Women – Volunteers (part 1)

2008-03-04T13:29:00.000-05:00

In my Disclaimer 1 post, I mentioned that I am a man. As I get a better glimpse of the sad, shocking, and significant differences that exist between male and female gender roles, I will write tributes to women. These posts will serve as my acknowledgement of the difficulties and adversity that women face.

The first is for women volunteers. I’ve noticed that even as volunteers there are certain things that limit both sexes. As I highlighted previously, the fact that I am male makes it more difficult to build trust and learn about women in this country. But the limitations affecting women are more difficult to overcome in my opinion.

Depending on the culture (in Mali based on volunteer feedback) women can be seen as incapable of making decisions, might hold less power in the workplace, or can be discriminated against in the workplace. Though none of these thoughts are based on Ghana or female volunteers from Ghana, I’ve heard of instances where female volunteers were only given menial tasks to do, their opinions holding little to no weight in discussions with co-workers, and being given control or leadership over nothing. Office work instead of using a motorbike to go out to the field could be an example, though does not appear to be an issue here in Ghana.

This is a challenge that I think more women might face than men, and for that I acknowledge that I am fortunate to have some of the privileges that might make my work easier.

Also on top of that is the fact that health and safety is somewhat more complicated for females. Some local men pursue my female counterparts in a much different way than they perceive me. With homosexuality being frowned upon in society, I don’t get that many marriage proposals. Men have proposed to many female volunteers I’ve talked to and overall, it takes a bit of firmness to turn men in pursuit away. I know this happens in Canada as well, but I think it is a little more amplified in certain countries. In fact it adds another dimension to deciding who wants to be your friend or who has hidden intentions.

Lastly, safety issues such as travelling alone at night, hitchhiking, and overall situations that put women in vulnerable positions. This might decrease or alter their mobility, and again is a privilege/advantage that male volunteers might have. (Don’t worry mom, I won’t be hitchhiking alone at night and then walking down a back alley to my house).

March 4, 2008

Disclaimer 1

2008-03-04T13:21:00.001-05:00

Before getting too far into my reflections and interpretations of Ghanaian life I wanted to put out a disclaimer. Everything I write on my blog is through my eyes and my interpretations. As a western man, I hold many biases and filters into what I take in. I wanted to acknowledge these, as well as outline the corresponding limitations that come with it.

I just wanted to emphasize that the views I share on my blog are mine, and should not be taken as the standard or absolute truth about Ghanaian life. They are solely what I have noticed through my experiences. Also because I am a westerner, I will be exposed to a slightly altered culture of Ghana. I’ll do my best to break down the barriers that my light skin impose, but I’m certain that there’s a level of Ghana I may never get to know. On top of that, I am only seeing a portion of Ghana. I would hate for someone who had been to Calgary to say that they knew all there was to know about Ghana. While Ghana is not as big as Canada, I just want to leave it open that I will not be seeing all of it.

As I am Western, I can never truly be poor. I can try to alter my conditions to reflect what living in poverty might be, in order to gain a better understanding of the people I serve. But the bottom line is that I am not poor. Even if I were living in a grass hut, without electricity or running water . . . I am not poor. If you remember back to my description of poverty, a key theme was vulnerability. And that is exactly what separates me. I’m not vulnerable. Living in a grass hut with no running water or electricity might be close to those I am serving, but if I get sick with malaria, I going to seek health care that they can’t access. For any volunteers, when the going gets tough, we check out. This being said, there will always be aspects of those living in poverty that I will not be able to empathize with.

Also very important is the second word in my description. Man. As a male, I will only be able to see a certain side of Ghana. Already I can tell that those who I interact most with are men, and those most interested to get to know me or take me in are men. There are a few tools I can use to get closer to this large population of Ghana that I am somewhat screened from. One is trust building, and specifically trying to get to know women. Spending time with them, taking on their daily chores, and breaking down gender stereotypes. Through this I will gain small successes and glimpses of their lives.

The other is language. Learning the local language thoroughly will enable me to communicate with an otherwise isolated part of the population. Unfortunately in many rural parts, education is limited, and with that extremely limited for women. So if the only people who can speak English are men, then I need to find another way of communicating with the marginalized majority.

I will try to communicate these realities back to you, but I wanted to say my limitations explicitly. If I’ve missed some, and I know I have, feel free to fill in the blanks on a post.

(Feb 29)

My First Impressions of Ghana

2008-03-04T13:16:00.002-05:00

After waking up and making our way to the bus station in Accra, we are now on our way to the Northern Region capital, Tamale. One recognizable feature of Ghana is the red brown earth that gets on absolutely everything. This sandy earth is everywhere and you see women sweeping it as soon as the sun rises. The resulting dust gets on every surface imaginable: cars, houses, trees, your clothes.

One thing I didn’t expect about Ghana, was its lush green foliage. As you pan up from the rust coloured earth, mango trees and palm trees provide a canopy over the relatively short infrastructure. Once out of the city there is tall green grass and dense bush that look like the beginnings of rainforests.

As we travel north through the country, the lush green of the South steps aside for a yellow background. It is much drier and hot in the North and it is illustrated through the natural environment. The green grass and bushes are replaced by rust coloured sand and yellow grass. The mango trees are still around, but the palm trees are no more and trees with only a modest amount of leaves provide the shade.

In country training has been happening over the last three days here in Tamale. This has included going into markets and just talking to random people about anything (day 1). Spending a few hours with a worker in the development sector and learning about development from a local expert (day 2). Last we needed to do some interviews on a specific topic, for me it was education in Ghana.

The first thing that has resonated with me in Ghana has been a culture of welcoming. I see people greeting eachother constantly. Lined on either side of the road are fruit venders to bike repair shops. There is a constant flow of pedestrian traffic and bicycles passing by. But along the way, everyone takes time to greet her neighbour. Here, it is customary to ask how one’s sleep was and how there family is doing. Simple greetings take a few minutes here as neighbours share their state of being with eachother.

In a market the true social dynamics are revealed. A market is the nucleus of activity. The central market in downtown Tamale is analogous to an ant colony. Completely enclosed, very narrow walk ways, and copious amount of people coming and going. You could literally spend a few hours just sitting at a stand and observing the interactions between people.

Tailors chatting as their needles pass over traditional Ghanaian cloth. Three women pounding Foo Foo in a huge mortal and pestle. A butcher is chopping the carcass of a cow as he negotiates with the consumer over a fair price. Meanwhile little girls are walking by carrying a bucket of 500ml water pouches on their head being stopped periodically for the only solution to an intolerable heat. Young boys are passing selling miscellaneous items ranging from food to electrical components. And through this your nostrils are filled with an indescribable smell.

This is only my first impression of Ghana and definitely a skewed one. I will try my best to discover what’s below the surface of this interesting culture, and hopefully immerse myself in it. Thanks for listening.

(Feb 29)

A Warm Welcome

2008-03-04T13:13:00.003-05:00

As I get to the bottom of the stairs and take my first steps onto the tarmac, I’m greeted by a warm and familiar air. The air is hot and thick. It goes beyond the smell sensed in my nostrils and the taste left in mouth. It’s an air that you feel on the pores of your face and the hairs on your arms. At first the air is so thick, you feel like you are walking through an invisible curtain.

“It’s good to be back” I say to myself. Though I’ve never been to Ghana before, all tropical countries I’ve travelled to (Trinidad, Dominican Republic, Zambia, and Ghana) have a similar air to them. It’s that sharp and superficial distinction that immediately tells me that training is over, and this is for real. After five weeks of preparing for this highly anticipated moment, it has finally arrived.

We make our way through customs with no problems at all, and exit the airport terminal into a gauntlet of welcoming guests. All I know is that I am meeting a man named Rafik, who will take us to our lodging for the night. “EWB”, written in black felt on a folded piece of cardboard gives way to a sigh of relief. After working our way through a mob of very helpful airport porters, our bags are carried to the cabs that Rafik has waiting for us. Negotiations and bartering follow to reach an agreement with the porters on a suitable price for their services. Five confused Canadians new to

Ghana

were surely taken advantage of, only to be expected.

After getting some food with Rafik, we all go to bed early following a moderate commute from Toronto of 20hrs. I lay in bed thinking of what’s happened over the last six weeks. How all that built up excitement over training in Toronto has now been given its chance to realize the reality of what were previously manifestations in my mind. Though I am not anxiously anticipating the 12 hour bus ride that awaits us the next day, from Accra on the coast to Tamale in the interior, I am excited to see more of this new place I will soon come to call home.

(February 25)

Who Loses? -Failed Projects (part 3)

2008-02-18T01:17:00.003-05:00

Did I mention this post is a trilogy? This is the second response to the original anonymous comment to my Who Loses? -Ethics in Development post, and the third post in the series Who Loses. You mentioned a reality of development that I think we all to often forget. Development is difficult, and you cannot "foresee all variables to know [if] a project [will] fail".

No matter what you do, you cannot prepare for everything. The problem is too complex, with many factors all interrelating to your project. Even the most well thought out project, the most meticulously planned implementation, will never. . . never ever achieve full success without a few curve balls.

What I believe (and many at Engineers Without Borders) is that the solution is counter-intuitive. The more rigid your plan, the more likely you stand to fall flat on your face. Projects need to be planned with flexibility in time-lines, activities, and desired outcomes. Development is a process, not an achievement or static state.

Flexibility allows projects to change and adapt to the complex field realities and cater to the dynamic needs of the community. Often, what you think might work, might not. What you think the community needs, they might not. Recognizing this allows the beneficiaries to dictate the direction of the project more. The project actually responds to the needs as they come. Field staff are given the agency to lead the project the way they think it will benefit the people the most, not have their strings pulled by rigid donor constraints.

These ideas are not new. In fact, Dudley, Chambers, and Smilie have been speaking of this for decades. Slowly, more development projects are being designed as hypotheses. Having a plan, and an idea, but allowing enough leeway to change things, to respond to the needs of the people.

To answer your last question, fairly compensating communities to failed projects or incorrect hypotheses lies in staying for the long haul. Staying in a community until they have a sustainable source of clean water (to continue with previous example), not until a well is drilled, or farmers are trained. By committing to communities for a longer time period, you allow adequate time for learning, and catering to the unforeseen complications that occur in development.

Though I am partial, who better to do this than the government. NGOs come and go. They should in fact, be trying to work themselves out of a job. But the government can't go. The government doesn't leave.

Who Loses? -Accountability (part 2)

2008-02-18T00:43:00.006-05:00

This post is in response to an anonymous comment on my Who Loses? -Ethics in Development post. I'm actually quite glad they posted that comment, as it leads perfectly into this sequel post, and the questions raised are great.

In response to the first question, NGOs are accountable to their donors. You hit the nail on the head with your statement that donors "likely demand certain quality/productivity in exchange for [funds]". The problem with this accountability is two-fold.

First, accountability to the donors instead of to the people intended to benefit, draws away from the actual aim of development. Development workers then need to start doing whatever they can to maintain their incoming funds, and thus their jobs. Often, this undermines the very objective of the project in the first place, because to maintain funding "reportable results" are required.

Our trainer Levi, here in Toronto put it perfectly: "If you knew that every month there was a plane ticket for you if you didn't perform, you'd start to put that report in top priority". And this couldn't be more true. By creating such strict reporting formats (which donors do), it shifts the priority away from helping the people, to reporting and staying afloat. It makes me sad sometimes, because so often NGOs are held to the candle to constantly present results and to cut down on administration costs. However, to write the reports and show the results, you need office staff. If hiring an extra secretary to type up reports will ensure you sustained funds in the future, then that takes priority over activities in the field.

The second problem, is these results. The easiest result to report, and to demand; must be quantifiable, must be tangible. I will refer to these numbers as outputs from now on. So it is no longer paramount to achieve the real impact we wish to see on the ground, which is long-term behaviour change, but instead the focus becomes short-term gains. A simple example of this is training. It is very easy to report on how many farmers you trained in water-well maintenance. A great number. However number of farmers trained does not equal number of farmers doing maintenance. It does not equal the number of wells maintained, or the number of farmers gaining access to clean drinking water. So if you return 6 months after the training, and the well is broken, then the whole point of training the farmers was missed, which isn't reflected in the report.

The wrong indicators are useless for measuring successful projects. In fact, it fosters bad development. What you get, is farmers being rushed through haphazard training sessions, just to get the numbers up, all because the field staff are accountable to the donors, not the people.

Alas we come to the million dollar question which you eloquently put as "what would be the best form of accountability for these organizations?" I hate to disappoint the readers, but I don't have the answer. To answer this question, I will give it more thought and I will post this at a later date. Sorry all

Whose Logic? Whose Values?

2008-02-17T19:13:00.005-05:00

One of the most valuable attitudes to have when working in a different culture is understanding cultural differences. Recognizing your own biases due to your deeply rooted values and beliefs.

Often this difference of beliefs and logic can be the cause of mis-communication and failed attempts at reducing poverty. On the surface of culture are superficial signatures. Greetings, food, mannerisms, clothing etc. Down below the surface are the really important aspects that shape the visible actions. History, traditions, gender roles, values and beliefs, religion. The underlying causes are harder to understand and to identify, but are the most crucial in dictating the decisions people make. Households have reasons for what they're doing that we don't always understand. As outsiders, we may come up with great ideas and solutions for problems, but they might not be the problems the people are having.

Family Planning Example
There have been projects aimed at promoting family planning to reduce birth rates. Adults were taught birth control methods as well as explaining the downfalls of having many children. The intervention didn't work however. Households continued to be large in numbers, and people continued to have many children. After prodding deeper into the causes for this sustained action, people were having large families to ensure or create social capital. Due to the lack of social networks and welfare systems, households would continue to have children until they got three boys, and then they would start to apply what they had learned.

So the real problem that needed addressing wasn't family planning, but it was social networks. Social safety nets was what households valued, far more than decreasing family size.

This goes to show that people make decisions for a reason, and sometimes their logic is different than ours. What may appear to make no sense from the outside, may be their way of mitigating risks in the future. This amplifies the importance of taking time to understand farmers' needs and values. Finding out what they value, and then addressing those issues.

I chose this example to tie it into my post Setting the Stage. I mentioned the problem of a large child population (46%). Only when you understand why the case is the way it is, can you even start to plan how to fix it.

Who Loses? -Ethics in Development (part 1)

2008-02-17T12:12:00.006-05:00

When I think of some of the ethics involved in development one word in particular comes to mind. Accountability. Who are Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) accountable to? Ideally in the public sector, if a government does not provide services, they are accountable to their people. In democratic societies, leaders can be re-elected or removed from office if they are not performing. In theory, farmers have the power to vote for the leader they believe will provide them with the best services.

The private sector also has a form of accountability. By the very nature of competitive industry, companies or players in the private sector that don't perform, will eventually run bankrupt. There is a quasi accountability to the market, to perform and remain competitive. Companies are continually driven to innovate and improve their products, to evolve, so that they can survive in a competitive market. Ideally, farmers would be able to chose the vendors (fertilizers, treadle pumps, etc) they think provide the best advantage or quality.

But the third sector, the civil society, does not have this same accountability. NGOs rarely ask permission to work in a certain geographic region, or to run their projects. They are free to come and go, independent of the local government, and are rarely bound by laws or policies that limit their mobility within a recipient country.

This poses the question of: what power do the intended "beneficiaries" of these projects hold, to dictate the direction of an NGO's agenda? Certain comfort can be found in the notion that NGOs are there to serve, and that they are acting in the best interests of the poor. But what happens when a project does not benefit the poor? What happens if the projects have negative implications on the poor?

Almost all of the projects that are done are intended to benefit those living in poverty. But needless to say, mistakes happen, and have happened. We need to ask: what we are prepared to do to compensate those that we effect?

Let's bring this back home. In Canada, if a new product is tested on a population, some companies give free trial runs, and some will even pay the patients. People are provided an opportunity free of risks, and sometimes even paid.

Overseas, NGOs move in and out of communities, implementing this project or introducing this technology, with little to no accountability, let alone paying people for their time. Of the many rural farmers that have been "test subjects" for "appropriate technologies", what remuneration or compensation have they received for their monetary investment in some cases, and time commitments in all instances?

I'm not suggesting that all NGOs enter communities, do damage, and leave unaffected. There are many cases of successful interventions and projects that have benefited many of the marginalized people of developing countries. I only raise this question as a metric, a code of conduct. Who loses? This question we need to constantly ask ourselves and use to check our work, because there are people who stand to lose; people who stand to lose big. The poor, who are already vulnerable to outside shocks as it is, can ill-afford to have NGOs exacerbating their struggles with failed projects.

If we are not ready to stand by our projects, when they succeed and when they fail, then maybe NGOs need to re-evaluate their accountability to the people they aim to help.

Setting the Stage II

2008-02-17T09:43:00.005-05:00

The last half of the document was a clearly defined plan and implementation strategy for what the Saboba/Chereponi District Assembly (SCDA) will do over the next four years (2006-2009). It's very exciting to be reading exactly what the district I'll be working in is planning to do. Indirectly, it shows me what I will be working on as well.

The goals laid out for district are as follows:

Livable environment with enhanced opportunities
Equal distribution of development benefits, and more consistent living for everyone
Double economic growth rate, and maximize agricultural gross output
Halving the growth rate and doubling income levels
Science and technology at the forefront

I will only highlight a few of the projects that stand out because after all, we're talking about the development of a district.

Agriculture
They are looking to expand the crop production and area farmed by 4% each year. To keep up with that growth SCDA plans to increase extension services, improve farming practices with and without appropriate technology, and diversify crops to include non-traditional export crops. The challenge with this plan is the isolation factor. Gas prices increasing causing transport costs to rise only exacerbates the lack of extension services available to rural farmers.

Education
Right now school participatory rates are 28% for primary schools. One of Ghana's goals is to provide free basic education to everyone. SCDA plans to increase this number by 11% by the year 2009. To get this done, they need to build an additional 17 schools and train 418 more teachers by 2009 (remember these numbers are taken from a report written in 2005). To attract those teachers to rural posts, the government plans to get energy and roads reaching out to those communities. What occurred to me was that to increase the school participatory rate, you have to keep up with the population increase, which is quite high in the district.

Facilities
The national average is 400:1 people to borehole (water well). To catch up to where they should be and to keep up with the population increase the district needs to drill on average 30 boreholes per year. Electricity and roads are also a top priority for the government.

I'm astonished by the need of this district and its apparent that there will never be a shortage of work to be done. As I said in my first post, donor funded projects have come in to fill the gap because the entire plan is too large for the district to complete without any resources. Hopefully this will give more meaning to what is meant by providing services to the rural citizens. My job as stated before, is to work with the SCDA to find ways to improve providing services, and more importantly address the constraints that are strangling the government and preventing it from doing its job.

Setting the Stage

2008-02-17T01:14:00.012-05:00

I was lucky enough to be given the four year plan for the district I will be working in. This document was written by the government of Ghana, upon consultation with local communities, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and other districts. After working through the entire document (122 pages) I wanted to give you an update on what the current situation is and what I will be working on while I am there.

As you can see from the picture, Ghana is broken up into regions, and then into districts. I will be working in the Saboba/Chereponi District.

Population
Saboba is a rural district, with 110 000 people. The capital of the district, Saboba, has approximately 3700 people and this is where I will be living and working out of. 93% of the district's population lives in a rural setting, compounded with an extremely inadequate network of roads that become impassable during the rainy season. This results in complete isolation for the majority, especially when cell phone coverage doesn't reach mush further than town. Most of the people living in these rural establishments are subsistence farmers, meaning they only produce food for consumption, not for sale. Being rural they also lack access to electricity, and most use wood for cooking which contributes to higher respiratory illnesses among women.

Some of you may not be surprised as this is typically what most people think of when they think of "Africa". However, when I started to really think about what some of these numbers represented the reality of how difficult development can be for local governments really dawned on me.

97% of the population is rural, and most are subsistence farmers. How do you start to provide services to a population that doesn't pay taxes, and is completely cut off for half of the year during the rainy season? How does the government even start to generate revenues to pay its employees?

Demographic
In any society the most needy are children and elderly. They generate less for their society because they aren't working, and at that age they require many services. 46.2% of the population is under the age of 15. 54% of the people in the district are under 20. It's difficult to put that in perspective, but now we have half of the population being children, leaving a small working class to provide for society. Though deep down we know that children should be in school, these numbers provide an explanation for why kids are taken out of school to work. On average there are 5 children per woman.

Education
After reading those numbers, the public services provided to the people of Saboba did not come as a surprise, but is no more acceptable. 80% of men and 87.7% of women are illiterate. For every 55 students there is one primary school teacher and 56% of teachers in the district are not trained. In rural parts of the district there is no accommodation for the teachers and an absence of electricity, which deters educated teachers from taking posts in rural communities.

When I try to pinpoint a starting place, an entry point, a first step forward . . . I come up short. It is obvious that there is no ONE answer to this picture. That a multifaceted approach needs to be taken. Providing the infrastructure to link the isolated majority to the services available is crucial. Simultaneously, education cannot be forgotten, nor can the development of the agricultural sector which is the livelihood for at least 90% of the population. But when working within such a limited budget, choosing a starting place creates quite the conundrum.
(I've even omitted health care and water & sanitation from this picture, which I can assure you, are in a similar situation as the rest of the district's public services.)

I could go on but I don't want to simply write down a lot of stats without a reason. I not only want to provide some context for the challenges that the local government is pitted with, but also put development into perspective. Before I started to learn about the complexities of development, I had always wondered why with the billions of dollars poured into Africa annually and 30 years of aid were unable to "fix" these types of problems.

This is an oversimplified picture of the causes that explain the slow progress. I can assure you that there are many other factors at play. However let this be a start to understanding the local situation. Through my work you'll find out more about some of the challenges of development, and more importantly what is being done to address them.

All numbers and statistics were taken from the Saboba/Chereponi Medium-Term Development Plan (2006). For more information, please visit:
http://www.ghanadistricts.com/districts/

The Choice to Know

2008-02-08T23:49:00.000-05:00

Pretend for a moment you are walking down Granville St at 2am after leaving the bar. You are with a few of your friends, and as you walk past an alley, you notice someone getting beat up. A man is being pummeled by three other assailants, and it doesn't look like it will get any better anytime soon. What do you do?

Take some time to think about this.
(If this doesn't work for you, what about someone getting robbed? An older couple? A woman being assaulted?)

Most often we would freeze, not knowing whether to intervene, to call for help, or to keep on walking. Personally I would probably call the police or ambulance to allow those who are trained to handle the situation, as it's not within my ability to settle it. But how many of us would be comfortable walking by taking no action?

A settling thought might be: regardless if we were there or not, it would happen anyways. That had we not been there, it wouldn't have changed the outcome. But at the end of the day, you were there . . . you did witness it . . . and you have a choice.

For all of us, it puts you in an awkward, uncomfortable position. The reality of the situation is that you have seen it, and you now have to make a decision between action vs inaction. Without beating around the bush, sometimes it's nicer not to know, not to see. Out of sight, out of mind. By not being faced with that immediate choice, with that immediate feeling of obligation to do something, we are able to continue living our lives content, without that interference.

Now let's extend that situation. How close does a crime have to be to you, in order for you to feel compelled into action? How much do you have to witness something before you get that uneasy feeling in your stomach?

When I returned from Zambia, some people asked me: "what was the thing you realized you took for granted most". At first my answer was the laundry machine. After doing laundry for 4 hrs every Saturday in the sun, you became nostalgic for the good old Maytag appliance. But upon re-evaluating it, the luxury we take for granted the most, is the choice to know. The choice to know.

We all have the choice to watch the news, read the newspaper, learn about the problems in the world and take action to fix them. We all have the choice to turn off the TV, flip the newspaper page, change the radio station . . . the choice of inaction. That's my biggest problem, is that we have the luxury of turning a blind eye to what we know is unacceptable. And half the time we don't even realize how LUCKY we are to have that choice. Everyday we are walking by that person getting beat up. Everyday we are walking by that person getting robbed. Everyday, that woman getting assaulted.

I'm not saying that we should all become Saints or get rid of all our possessions out of guilt for privileges that we were born with. I'm not saying that you should not be able to live a happy life, because in fact, it's not your fault that the world is the way it is. But perhaps, that uneasy uncomfortable feeling we get when we witness something horrible, is not something to avoid. Maybe that feeling is not hurting us.

On the contrary, I think that feeling is compassion. Empathy. Maybe it's the very essence that makes us human. Or maybe it's the good will in man, that sometimes we forget is still there. If you get that uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach, good will is within you. The question is what choice you make.

Development

2008-02-07T21:37:00.001-05:00

It's not very often that you realize you can't define the work that you do. If you asked me what my job was 2 months ago, I could have given you a clear definition of what a lifeguard/swim instructor does. However, if you sat down 11 volunteers about to head overseas and do "development", you be hard pressed to find a common definition of "development".

It wasn't until we tried to define it that I realized just how difficult development actually is. I've gotten into some interesting and somewhat heated discussions about development before, and the common questions are "Are we just Westernizing Africa? If our lifestyle is unsustainable, why are we trying to industrialize Africa? And wouldn't they just be better off without us interfering?"

I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you what development means to me. From the previous post on poverty, development boils down to choice and reducing vulnerability.

Development is a process which enables people to make choices on how they want to live, and reduces vulnerability.

To make this shift into a position where you can make the decisions on how you want to live, people need to have their basic needs met, and enough assets to overcome unexpected obstacles in their way and take advantage of the opportunities available to them. Also, this is a process. I don't believe that there is a destination called "developed", that eventually one reaches.

Now coming back to the recurring theme of whether what we do is changing culture and values overseas. After much discussing, I think it is naive to believe that you are not changing culture in one way or another. Bold statement? Maybe. But any intervention you take is changing behaviour, and arguably culture.

Take sanitation for example. Water borne diseases such as E. Coli, cholera, dysentery, all stem from drinking sources contaminated with fecal matter. As sanitation is such a problem in some developing countries, it would be hard to argue that introducing hand washing in attempts to prevent these diseases would be a bad thing. Looking at hand washing, the very focus of your development project is to invoke a behaviour change among people. And this is anything from farming as a business to preventing HIV/AIDS through condom use.

While it is important to try to minimize changing the local culture, you are influencing people's actions no matter what. How do I feel about this? It's not something I like to give in to. As much as possible, our work MUST be done in a participatory manner and in collaboration with local co-workers, such that the intervention is the least foreign as possible. In an ideal world, all of our interventions and projects should come from the people they are to affect. The rural poor should be requesting interventions that will fill their needs, as they identify them. To me, when the solution comes from the people themselves, you are not being the cause of change, but instead a facilitator of change.

The fact is, we don't live in an ideal world. As it stands, we must be influencing something, otherwise their would be no point of us being there (more on this in a later post). What I'm saying is that sometimes their is knowledge that might not exist within a community, and that is when you can intervene to provide it to them. What is crucial, is that the drive comes from them. For those of you who know me well, I could some this up with my personal favourite buzz word: OWNERSHIP.

To leave you with an unanswered question, and perhaps something to think about in Canada, is the following. Eric Dudley, author of The Critical Villager, perhaps said it best in his small pamphlet Panic. It goes something like this: (paraphrased)

What is the good life? With China and India starting to develop fully we realize that the environment cannot sustain more growth like North America. But aren't the poor entitled to such a wasteful lifestyle? In fact, in their eyes, isn't that what development means? Industrialization? So the question is: if the goal is not sustainable, then what the heck are we doing? In fact, if we don't even know what end we are trying to achieve, then how can we offer directions along the way?

Maybe we are not as developed as we think.

Poverty

2008-02-05T00:49:00.001-05:00

One of the first sessions we had here in Toronto was about poverty and defining it. If we are committed to eradicating poverty or more realistically, reducing widespread poverty, we need to ask what it is.

POVERTY:
Being VULNERABLE to outside shocks, and lacking the AGENCY to chose the direction of your life.

This is my broad and simplified definition of poverty. There are definitely varying degrees of poverty, but if you gave me two words to describe poverty they would be vulnerability, and agency. I want you to take your typical farmer in rural Africa and think of the possible shocks that can affect this person. If we're speaking about agriculture, irrigation typically comes to mind. Most rural farmers in Africa depend on the rains to irrigate their staple crop. It is exactly this dependency that we are trying to mitigate. If a farmer is completely dependent on the rains, then they are vulnerable to any shocks, and do not have the means of responding or bouncing back from those shocks.

Let's break this down for a second. If the rains fail, what are the short term implications? The crop is completely lost and the family does not have enough to eat for the rest of the year. What about the long-term implications? Potential malnutrition of children, dropping out of school (hungry children can't learn), selling off of other crucial assets such as oxen to pay for food. Likelihood? With increasing climate changes the weather is becoming more difficult to predict so the likelihood of this is high. And last what is this farmer's ability to control that? Nothing whatsoever.

Let's look at health. If someone in the house gets sick? Short-term: loss of labour, cost of health care, loss of education. Long-term: death, cost of funeral, if an adult dies, loss of safety-net and income generator. Likelihood: high: unsanitary situations, AIDS, malaria. Ability to control: not very much without money.

What makes me sad and angry all at the same time, is the fact that people are completely vulnerable. Even in areas where rain has been consistent for years, all it takes is one drought, one death, one shock, and all accumulated assets overtime are now lost.

With this extreme vulnerability to factors out of your control, how can one have choice to live the way they want to live. How can one have agency. You see, until you can feel comfortable with with your quality of life, and a certain security (food, personal, health), how do you start to choose your own future.

This is unacceptable. To really grasp what I am saying, take a worry that you have in your life, right now or at a time you thought you were most vulnerable, and apply the same questions. What are the short term implications? Long-term? Likelihood it will happen? Ability to control?

I'll put one of mine below, but if you don't want to read it, the point is this. Because of the way society has evolved around us, we have safety nets. Whether social safety nets through our family, or institutional ones through loans, healthcare, or welfare; our vulnerability is covered by these safety nets. This enables us to have the choice of what opportunities we take advantage of.

Thanks

Out of high school:
worry: can't afford university.
Short Term: borrow money from family, take student loan, get part-time employment and save
Long-term: Working full-time and doing night classes. Doing a trade or gaining a cheaper qualification
Likelihood it will happen: For me, low
Ability to control: High. I have the choice of what mitigation strategies I take.

Training in Toronto

2008-01-31T00:39:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone. Life in Toronto has been anything but laid back. It is very seldom that we are fortunate enough to be completely surrounded by wonderful people, and that is the situation that I have found myself in for the past 3 weeks. Here in Toronto we have been working feverishly on cramming as much information into our brains as possible. From gender equity workshops (more will be posted later) to analyzing rural livelihoods, pre-departure training has taught me tons. (I will post many more interesting debates had in a different section of my blog)

EWB rents a house in Toronto to house its volunteers throughout the year. Right now we are lucky enough to only have 16 of us living here. Typically, every morning we wake up around 8 and head to the office for 9. Training runs until 6 usually, and then we get home to work on homework, read a development book, or engage in development discussions long into the night.

On our first day off, we cleaned the entire house mopping the floors, wiping the walls, moving furniture, and cleaning everything in the kitchen including behind the fridge. I set up my tripod and camera in the top corner of the room (thanks dad), and video taped the entire thing.

Enjoying our new, clean pad didn't last long however, because just one week later we had to move everything out for the exterminator to fumigate the house. I never realized how much of a nuissance bed bugs could be.

This environment is one that just compels you to work. All of us come from quite an eclectic background, and this lays the stage for some fruitful discussions. Our facilitator Levi faces a problem most facilitators dream of. Like dealing with a bunch of 10 year olds who think they know everything, none of us are capable of asking or answering a question in less than 5 minutes. Some of the simplest statements will bear a controversial and exciting discussion questioning our conditioned value set derived from societal norms.

Just wanted to lay the context for my living situation. From here on out, the posts will have more substance.

cheers

The Task Ahead

2008-01-31T00:11:00.000-05:00

Many of you may be wondering what I will be doing overseas. I know that before I left for this training I couldn't provide you with much of an explanation but now that I know a little more I will try to explain. Because the development situation in Ghana is somewhat complex, I will start by laying some background down first, followed by where I will be coming in.

Before the recent past, Ghana's government was divided into ministries that would carry out various projects similar to here in Canada. The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) would be responsible for all projects related to food and agriculture, obviously. All the Ministries had their own responsibilities, and most projects were planned from a national level and then implemented down through the regional and district level, until finally the activities would occur at the field level.

The problem with this was that plans were being created from a national level, which didn't include the field realities and were sometimes out of touch with the real needs of the farmers. In other words, there was an information gap between the implementing bodies and the fund releasing bodies of the government. Anytime a field worker needed to get something done, approval would need to go through a beauraucratic obstacle course, until funds would be released.

So in the recent past the government has started to decentralize. Essentially this means that districts have gotten more responsibility and more freedom to meet the needs of the people. Now field workers should be able to get the money from the district and do their projects. The districts in turn will get money from the regional office, far in advance through lump sums of money. The outcome of all this is that districts would be able to do projects quicker, with less transfers of funds, and without standardized projects and processes that omit the needs of the people, and the room for innovation.

THE PROBLEM. The districts were given this new responsibility without the funds to do it or the increase in labour to get it done. To fill that gap, large donor projects have come in. CIDA funded projects, UNICEF, and many other donors have come in to fill the resource gap. Each donor program has their own specific application process, database to fill out, and field of focus. Also, coming close to the end of the year these donors will run numerous and time-consuming training sessions that prevent the field staff from doing their jobs, that they are later held accountable for.

For example, as I understand it, if one of the field workers of the government sees that a community needs a hand washing project, they would then write a proposal to UNICEF (one of the many donor projects) to get funding. Then, if they were lucky enough to get funding, the project would be granted however with so many restrictions and conditions that it really restricts the field worker's ability to do good work. The restrictive conditions and regulations associated with the funds are ways to hold the field staff accountable to their project and ensure success. The only problem is that it stifles all innovation and since the projects are decided from the donor level, they don't take into account the field realities.

MY JOB. My job is to work at the district level to share skills, and hopefully offer some insights into how they can improve their programming. Some of this might be in terms of implementation tools, but more likely proposal writing, computer skills, and offer some solutions to the problems they have already identified. To be perfectly honest, I am not sure exactly what their need is, but I will be serving as an outside view.

THE BIG PICTURE. I will be working with a district that is already functioning well. The big picture is that after working with that district, together we can create some tools to enhance the capacity of districts, and then those tools will be disseminated across the region in other districts. Also, Jen Hiscock, another EWB volunteer, will be working with UNICEF. This is important because as I come across frustrations at the district level because of problems higher in the food chain, I can communicate with Jen to understand more of the donor level.

This is a very vague and approximate idea of what I will be doing. I want to highlight and emphasize that my work with the district is a sharing of skills. Realistically, I have to find out what they need, and try to fill those gaps. Also, I must learn about implementation at the district level, so that hopefully we can transfer those systematic problems to the people who need to know.

Feel free to ask questions, or offer suggestions.

2008-01-29T02:02:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone,

I’d like to welcome you to my first post. This blog is set up to take you along on my journey through Ghana, the frustrations and joy that development can bring. For those of you who know me well, you know that I’m quite transparent, and you can be sure to expect the same from this blog. Feel free to ask questions, and post comments, and you will see that my posts will not hold any punches.

This blog will be broken down into three sections. 1) Work. This section will describe the work I am doing in Ghana, and ultimately the reason why I am there. Though I will try to keep it manageable and relatively simple, forgive me if this section gets a little convoluted. 2) Life. This section will give you a look into the vibrant culture of Ghana (though I have never seen it). Here you will be able to see how I am living, and my personal reflections on this interesting and foreign place. 3) Insights. This section will be where I post my reflections on everything I do. Be from work, the culture, or the general direction of where the development is headed, you will be able to read about my humble opinions on different matters.

Thanks for reading. Posts will be spaced no more than one month apart. Don’t be strangers. I miss you all.