To the savannah!

10-25-11

There are two items that this blog will talk about. The first item was an experience I can now say I have had, but I never really wanted it. That would be malaria. At least I think it was malaria. Halfway through my week in Accra (10/2-10/7) I got sick, and I did not recover for a week and a half. In fact, I am still not fully recovered. I have a cough and a stuffy nose, but that could also be allergies. What is it like to have malaria? Well, it is a lot of fun. Not really. Actually, it mostly felt like I had a cold (interchanging every symptom known to humankind) mainly at night. During the day, I felt considerably better and even completely fine at some points. Then the symptoms would return at night. I also had a significant loss of appetite, which only had me eating about six bites of rice and then I was full. As a result, I lost some weight, and I actually look like I am in better shape now.

On Sunday (10/9) I was fed up with being sick, and the previous night was one of the worst nights in my life. I’ll spare you the details, since I don’t think anyone really wants to know them. I went to the hospital and I was diagnosed with malaria. They took a blood test, and told me to come back later, since the lab did not open until later because of church. They gave me medicine because they were very confident that I had malaria. I was unable to return until the next day, and that was interesting. On Monday across Ghana, the doctors went on strike. That’s right, THE DOCTORS. Last I heard, they were still on strike, only handling emergency cases. I’m not really sure about that, but I have been outside of normal communications for the last week and a half. I’ll get to that later. Even though I went into the emergency room, there were only nurses, and maybe one or two other patients. It was eerily quiet. Fortunately, it does not take a doctor to do a lab test, and the laboratory technicians were not on strike. However, the test came back negative. They said that it was a small sample, and since I had already started the drugs and the symptoms lined up, I should continue taking the drugs. Obviously, I was uneasy. Papa Kum (my host father) also was uneasy about that, so he called the homestay coordinator, Aunty Gifty, for advice. She set up an appointment with her private doctor who was within walking distance of my homestay. So I went to Dr. Martin Morna. He knew what he was doing, and he also affirmed the diagnosis of malaria and gave me better drugs, but he also added something to his diagnosis. He added a bacterial infection. Since I had been sick for five or six days at that point, my body was primed for it. So Dr. Morna added a few other drugs to take care of that. By Friday (10/14), I was completely fine, and on a follow up visit, he gave me the okay to go on the Northern Trip.

That is the second item to write about: the Northern Trip. From 10/15-10/25, I travelled all over Northern Ghana. Here is a brief synopsis of the travelling.

10/15 – four hour drive to Kumasi.

10/16 – seven hour drive to Wa.

10/18 – brief day trip to Sankana, then back to Wa.

10/19 – five hour drive to Mole National Park (the roads were TERRIBLE! It should have taken maybe an hour if the roads were even decent).

10/20 – five hour drive to Tamale.

10/22 – six hour drive from Tamale to Kumasi (TRAFFIC IN KUMASI ALSO TERRIBLE).

10/25 – four hour drive to Cape Coast.

As you can see, there was a lot of travelling. It was also ripe with experiences.

The first thing to note about the north is the geography. In the south, it is rainforest, except for a stretch along the coast that is called the coastal savannah zone, which stretches from where the coast turns north-east and goes through Accra. In the middle region, or the Asante region, it is a hybrid of rainforest and savannah. The north is savannah. That means the southern areas get two rainy seasons, and a lot more rain. The north maybe gets 15-20 inches of precipitation a year during their one rainy season. So as we travelled north, the trees thinned out and the grass became far more prevalent.

It wasn’t only the trees that thinned out, it was also the people. This is not just in overall population, but also in size. They were far skinnier in the north. The distances between towns also increased. Ghana’s population is roughly 22-25 million in an area a little bit bigger than Minnesota, but most of that is in the south. There are many reasons to account for this. First of all, this was the raided lands that the slaves were taken from. The savannah regions all the way up to the Sahara were the people that were exploited for the infamous inhumane labor we all unfortunately know too well. From these northern regions, they were marched barefoot to Assin Manso, the slave market mentioned in an earlier blog, and then after being sold to the Europeans marched even farther to the castles, and you know the rest. That means that the removal of people gave room for less population growth, and at this point it is all statistics. There is another reason that the North is less populated: jobs. The recent trend in Ghana is to flock to the cities (Accra, Kumasi, Takoradi, etc.), because in these places there are jobs. In the north, there is no real opportunity to move beyond your economic level. This is comparable to Komenda, also referenced in an earlier blog. Thus people are leaving an already less populated region for the south. This is unfortunate, because the north provides the cereal crops (rice, wheat, etc.) for the rest of the country. Economic stimulus as applied by the government towards farmers is minimal to non-existent, so there is little hope to keep up farming, because it is not an easy life and reaps very little benefit.

The people in the northern regions also have a negative stigma given to them by the people of the south. They are seen as lazy. This can be understandable though, after spending a week up there. Even though the weather is dry as opposed to the humid south, there is no breeze, and without rain, it gets HOT. Apparently it was rather cool when we were up there, but a fifteen minute walk in Wa left me drenched in sweat. I don’t want to experience what hot is. From 9am to 3pm, when the sun is most direct, the people become inactive. If they become active, then they overheat and are more likely to die from heat exhaustion. That means the active hours are from 6am to 9am, and then again from 3pm to 6pm. At these times, it actually isn’t that bad, but it certainly wasn’t great either. During the day, you will see people gathered wherever there was shade and taking naps. I also took quite a few naps on this trip, frankly because the heat wore me out. The south, however, sees this as laziness, and the habits created from the weather by the people from the northern areas compound the stigma.

I mentioned earlier that there is a movement south because of economic opportunity. This means that the economic opportunities in the north are not as good, and the economic disadvantages is much higher. This was manifested in numerous forms. First of all, the water sources for washing clothes. People would flock to a dirty pond to use the water for washing. Clothes would be strewn on the side of the road to dry after washing, even though the dust on the roads would seem to make their efforts futile. But you have to use what’s available, and that’s what is available. The second way that economic disadvantages were witnessed was the vehicles. In the south, there are plenty of cars. In the north, they have motorcycles. Lots of motorcycles. They are cheaper and they get better gas mileage, so it makes sense. Also, everyone drives motorcycles that are of age. In the south, there are not many women drivers, but in the north, they were half of the drivers on the road. What was kind of scary was that many of the women would bring their infants or young children on the bikes as well. Helmet wearing was also minimal. If you owned a car in the north, you were automatically very well off. That was just two of the numerous things that I noticed that showed the economic disparity between the north and the south.

I should give a synopsis about what I thought about each of the places I visited. Let’s start with Wa. It was really just one long stretch lasting a few kilometers but not really breaking off of the main road. It was long and thin. What was fascinating was that this was one of the few places I have been where I do not get brutally stared at because of my skin. It was kind of weird, and I strangely became uncomfortable without the gazes coming my direction. In Wa, I visited the School for the Blind, to see how they operated their system. It was fascinating, and they were well funded and operated. I also went to Sankana to visit a place of resistance to slavery. They were one of the few groups to beat back the British. They took great pride in their past understandably.

Next was Mole National Park. This was a nature preserve funded by the government. I felt very touristy there, and it was the second time in Ghana that there were more Bronyis than Ghanaians in one place (the other was in Cape Coast at a restaurant called Oasis established for tourists). I went on two nature hikes; one in the afternoon and one in the morning. The one in the afternoon was uneventful, I only saw a couple of bushbuck, which are deer. It’s not like I live close to a nature preserve in Minnesota and haven’t seen a few deer before. The morning trek, however, was legit. First, we walked across a marsh because we had seen a few elephants a little ways off. So we went across, and we got close to them. IT WAS SO COOL!!! I was maybe about fifty meters away from two of them, and got a couple of decent pictures in. After that, we walked a little more and found a couple of baboons. They’re strange little things. So that was fun. I made a point earlier that it was funded by the government, and it was for tourism. I’m not just saying, but all around the Park was the economic disadvantages, and yet this place was funded for tourism. It doesn’t seem right. The same point can be noted about the castles. There are many things that the government could be doing internally to develop their own country, yet they focus more on tourism than these things. I’m not saying that tourism should be removed from the government’s priorities, but I am saying that there are many more valuable things that it could be doing. Sorry, that was a tangent, but it happened.

After Mole was Tamale. I honestly experienced very little of it, so I cannot give a decent synopsis of it. What I can say though is that they make some really nice leather stuff. I bought a pair of sandals and a game called Ware (Wa-ray). It is known in America as Mancala. The second day in Tamale was spent refining some things for my ISP and dwelling on my experiences. I will get to that later.

Lastly was Kumasi. I did not like Kumasi. This was in the hybrid zone area, and it also housed the second largest market area in Africa. I saw it, and my introvert nature took hold of me. Whenever we drove somewhere, we were caught in incessant traffic, since it was mostly single lanes everywhere yet housed presumably a million people. Imagine that, if a place like Chicago became single lane traffic. Yeah, you try and enjoy that. Also, the African style of driving compounded my introverted nature. They are, what you call, aggressive drivers. My passive aggressive driving habits I have learned in Minnesota would not work whatsoever in Ghana, much less Africa. Thank goodness Ampah was driving; he is a REALLY good driver. In Kumasi, we visited a carving market, and I bought a few things there, but other than that Kumasi was not my cup of tea. An introvert is not meant to do well in a place like that. Cape Coast today seemed incredibly tame in comparison. I’m not planning to go back there.

I know this is getting quite long, so I have one last thing to talk about, and I mentioned it briefly earlier when I was talking about Tamale. I spent some time on this trip considering my ISP (Independent Study Project) which is fast approaching. It starts on November 5, which is less than two weeks away! The ISP lasts for four weeks and then I have one more week and then I get on a plane back home. Time is flying by. Wow. As I considered my topic, I also considered my methodology of research. My topic, which in short is a study of global forces (specifically comparing China and the West) and their influence on Ghana, would require me to go where the foreign influences are mostly located. That means that I have officially decided to spend the entirety of the four week of the ISP in Accra. I am currently working out the housing details and also the travelling details to get to Accra, but this is where I will be able to do my research effectively. In Cape Coast, I would maybe have one or two good interviews to work off of, but in Accra I would have hundreds. Also, the University of Ghana campus would house many important items that would greatly help me.

I’m sorry that was so long, but there was a lot to write about, and I honestly just scratched the surface on most things and left out a few other items. But what can I do? I don’t want to write a novel, that would take too long. I’m not working on my doctorate yet.