Semester's End

As we are finishing our time here, I thought I would give a short tour of University of Ghana, Legon Campus as I know it. From the student hostel I live in to the Institute of African Studies where we have held most of our classes is about a 20 minute walk passing a market, other hostels, and classroom buildings.

This is a panoramic view from my fourth floor room porch. The room overlooks a minimally used car park and road, but in the distance are some unfinished buildings and the unfinished university stadium.

   

    

This is the courtyard for my hostel building. In the center there is a fountain that still has not been seen working since the day we arrived here. There is a bust of Professor Hilla Limann whom our hostel is named after. To the left, there are areas to hang clothes as well as two net-less tennis courts. On the right, there is a basketball court as well as areas to hang clothes out to dry.

When I leave the hostel each day, I walk towards the International Students Hostel (ISH) and Jubilee Hall. Above you can see the first ISH building and below left is the entrance to Jubilee Hall. Below right is the other ISH building. 

We also walk by our main sources for food and snacks. Most of the time we go to the Night Market (it is open both during the day and at night) which is pictured above. There are many items sold here, from pillows and phone minutes, to fresh fruits and vegetables, to jollof rice and plantain. Plus my most frequent purchase- egg sandwiches with a dessert of fresh mangoes or oranges. Below is the All Needs Supermarket where we can get many packaged goods, chocolate, and Blue Skies fruit juice.

    

   

The intersection after the night market and crossing over to the next block of university hostels. The blue structure was a bus stop, but it has now been removed and replaced by a patch of brick sidewalk for trotros and taxis to pick people up there.

There are huge, old trees scattered across campus, but this section of our walk on a tree-lined road is the shadiest and breeziest. It is the avenue lining the hostels and leading to the lecture halls. Below is the last hostel on this road and it is a place that we often go to eat lunch as there is a cheap cafeteria there.

The final stretch! Throughout our entire walk we need to avoid tripping into or over the gutters that line the road. The boulevard on campus features our final destination- The Kwame Nkrumah Complex Institute of African Studies (pictured below). This was always a good sight after a long (but good), sweaty walk from our hostel. We were always grateful for the running water, air conditioning, wifi, and of course good learning that this building represents!

Recently, I received the final installment of our Off-Campus Studies Newsletter from our ever-encouraging Calvin Off-Campus Studies Office back in Michigan. The newsletter started with this quote from Donald Miller: "It occurs to me, as it sometimes does, that this day is over and will never be lived again, that we are only the sum of days, and when those are spent, we will not come back to this place,to this time, to these people and these colors, and I wonder whether to be sad about this or to be happy, to trust that these moments were meant for some kind of enjoyment, as a kind of blessing." Good thoughts to ponder in all our endeavors of life and through the transitions we will experience as citizens of this vast world.

ABAN and Children of the Light

Sorry for the blog silence, I have much to update everyone on! I will start with my service-learning volunteer experiences at A Ban Against Neglect (ABAN) and Children of the Light after-school program. 

While at ABAN we, two other Calvin students and myself, worked with about twenty women and their children. The program is designed to empower these women, most of them school dropouts, to obtain employment and learn business skills so that they will be respected in their various communities and also provide for their families. There is a special emphasis given to being environmentally friendly especially with the water sachets that many people buy. Seamstresses that are employed at ABAN use these sachets to make various products such as bags and purses. These women were eager to learn and they were a joy to be around! We were able to help organize a their library, create a community event proposal, help out in the daycare, and also teach a few classes. Reflecting on my experience there, words cannot truly describe and express how wonderful these women and the staff at ABAN are!Learn more about ABAN at www.aban.org

Pictured below: The ABAN women working on a recycling project, the library we organized, daily classroom set-up, and two of the kids playing together.

At Children of the Light after school program we worked with teachers and helped supervise the many kids that come every Tuesday and Thursday. They are currently readying themselves for their annual Christmas program, so they were coloring stars and Christmas trees. We also helped tutor kids in math and spelling as those are the areas that the teachers identified as needing the most work. Despite not having incredibly fun content to work on, these kids were very enthusiastic and upbeat which was impressive and slightly overwhelming for me (in a good way)! 

Pictured below: the kids working on Christmas decorations.

Things you (might) do in Ghana: Volume III- Odwira Festival

1. Presenting gifts before the chief- schnapps, food, rams, and money. The girls would dance in the procession as part of the celebration for the ancestors. 

2. On Thursday, we witnessed a procession to feed the ancestors. People from each of the major houses in Akropong were chosen by a spiritual leaders to carry food and drink to the sacred tree. These people are said to be taken over by the spirits so it is necessary to have people there to withhold them if they start going the wrong direction or stop moving. These people will be very fickle if there are problems in the family. When these people stop moving altogether, other family members will pour libation on their feet with schnapps to appease the spirit that is said to reside in them. White is the color of purification- the goal of the festival. 

Drummers announce the procession.

3. Drum crews line the side of the streets. Their accompanying dancers would catch passersby and dance with them. If you are chosen by the dancer, you would also offer up small cash to them. 

4. Durbar grounds. All processions on Friday led to these grounds where there were speeches given by community leaders and even the President of the Republic of Ghana himself!

5. Local chiefs and queen mothers processed into the Durbar grounds under umbrellas and carried on chairs and in palanquins. Each chief and queen mother was elaborately dressed and had many supporters surrounding them.

6. Among the diplomats at the Durbar, we saw Former President Jerry John Rawlings. For more information go to: http://www.presidentrawlings.com/pgs/hmp.php

Rawlings and his wife at the Durbar

7. While waiting for the Durbar, I made a friend- Emmanuella. This little 5 year old sat with me while we waited for the procession to end and the speeches to begin! 

Things you (might) do in Ghana: Volume II

Stories and experiences in Northern Ghana:

1. The gargantuan Kintampo Falls. This was our first stop on our way to the North. Kintampo Falls is a series of 3 different sets of falls and pictured below is the third and biggest falls. When you stand, or more likely sit, under the falls you will get pounded by torrents of water. Nonetheless, the waters are perfect for a hot day and they are also a perfect excuse for getting off the bus!

2. Participating in a beautiful celebration of the Northern Presbyterian Church in Tamale. We were able to march in a mile long procession with the congregation. It wasn't your normal procession though, it consisted of dancing, singing, and playing instruments. It was a jubilant celebration of God's gifts to this particular congregation.

3. While in Bolgatanga, we visited TAWODEP (Talensi Area Women's Development Project). We were able to help produce shea butter and we learned about the process to make it from start to finish. The shea nuts are pounded and mixed with water until it is a smooth consistency. The oil is then boiled off which takes away the brown color (seen below left) and the product is the butter (seen below right)

We also participated in making pito, a traditional Ghanaian alcoholic beverage. This is made from millet and maize that is ground on a stone pestle and mortar. They had both fermented and un-fermented pito available for us to try from the traditional means- a calabash instead of a cup!

TAWODEP also works with a group of women who create beautiful baskets. Most of their baskets had been sent to market the previous day, but they were all hard at work weaving new baskets for the next market day. The baskets pictured below are nearly completed, and I was able to purchase one directly from the woman who wove it.

4. Bolgatanga is about an hour away from the Burkina Faso border, and we were already planning to visit Paga, Ghana which is right on the border so why not try to cross the border even if only for a few minutes! Ghana's immigration officials allowed us to briefly cross the border into Burkina Faso, so we are able to add one more country to our lists!

5. Paga is famous for its sacred crocodiles due to the amount of these humongous beasts that reside in and around Paga. While there, it would be a shame to not try and see at least one of these creatures. There are even guides that will help you get especially close to these crocs, all you have to do is buy a white chicken to feed to it (also for a distraction method when you are behind it). People are able to touch the crocodile's back, and some people even pick up its tail if they are brave. Needless to say, I was terrified!

6. These forms of transportation.

Notice the luggage barely staying in the trotro
(vans that seat around 20 people) on the left.

Goats and sheep on the roof.

We actually fit around ten of us in this
small motor bike!

7. We were able to go to a beautiful Gonja fiddle performance and attempt to participate in the dance that is performed along with the fiddle playing. The instrument itself is a one-string fiddle that is passed down through the males of a family. Each fiddle player makes his own instrument and teaches any boys in his family how to play the fiddle. The dancers usually wear a traditional smock (not pictured here) which defines their movements as it swirls around their bodies.

8. The Larabanga Mosque. The architectural style is Sudanese, and this is the only mosque styled in this way in Ghana. Each side has a different entrance- one for women, one for men, one for the muezzin, and one for the imam. The Baobab tree seen below only strengthens the foundation of the mosque. It is said that everyone in Larabanga is Muslim and will attend Friday prayers at this mosque. However, it can only hold one hundred of the four thousand civilians in Larabanga.

Women's entrance in the back

Men's entrance on the right side

9. Mole National Park. Even though we didn't see any elephants, we were able to see a lot of wildlife at the park. We saw warthogs, baboons, patas monkeys, mongoose, crocodile, water buck, and bush buck. The heavy rains that the park has received lately is actually keeping the animals away because their are other water sources farther north that much of the wildlife is taking advantage of instead of the water hole in Mole National Park that is the most consistent source of water during the dry season.