Have a Peanut Butter Christmas!

Hi folks. Yes, I know, I suck. So, instead of writing pages and pages of fascinating Ghanaian insights for Christmas to make up for my long months of silence, let me instead wow you with my new technological capabilities.

I give you: How to Make Peanut Butter, Ghana-style!
(or go to YouTube and search for 'shea peanut butter')

Watch my exploits as I follow a peanut from a seed, into a plant, into a squashed nut that I like to put on my toast.

It's delicious!

Happy Holidays,

What am I doing here?

In the most literal sense imaginable (I’ll get philosophical later, I promise).

I’ve slipped back into my bad non-posting habits lately, so to repent, and to get back into the swing of things, I thought I might actually tell everyone what it is I do here. (Props to the University of Manitoba EWB Chapter for getting my rear in gear!)

Agriculture as a Business.

The vision:

Farmers’ incomes are increased on a sustainable basis through an agriculture as a business program that strengthens farmers’ capacity and creates an environment that enables farmers to take a business approach to farming.

In other words: Increasing household well-being by helping farmers put more money in their pockets.

So. Let’s leave aside for a moment all of the burning questions that you have (or more accurately, all the burning questions that I have) about economic development and how much it actually works for the poor, and talk about what this Agric as a Business business actually looks like on the ground, so that we’ve got some context.

I am working with the Ghana Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Upper East Region, and I am working with agricultural extension agents to deliver a farmer group development program to farmer groups around the region. From now until August, nine extension agents (with me tagging along) will conduct a series of 3 group development meetings with two or so farmer groups each. The topics cover meetings, projects/teamwork, and finances – the building blocks of a strong group – but the real focus is on approach. It’s about training extension agents in facilitation techniques, so they can get the farmer groups not just to participate, but to own their own group development, and take positive action for their own advancement.

I’m currently scaling up this particular tool, but it’s only the beginning, the groundwork laid before the real Agric as a Business fun starts. I don’t know what will happen after August, but it will involve some more intensive work with the most motivated farmer groups. Two more excellent Engineers Without Borders long-term volunteers are working on developing curriculum for more advanced farmer groups, which generally means embarking on some type of project together. And when you’re talking about helping a farmer group with a slightly ambitious project (or even not-so-ambitious project), it generally means loans. Which is a huge minefield of good and bad development practices.

The biggest problem with the loan business (and with other NGO offers of support to farmer groups) is that pesky culture of dependency that can develop, until very few farmer groups believe that they can accomplish anything without outside help…which leads to many farmer groups lying dormant until the next NGO blows through town, escorted by their local extension agent.

So, the question keeping me up at night is: how can we avoid being ‘that next NGO’? How can we, as outsiders, help a farmer group learn that it can stand on its own, and then help it to do so? I feel like it’s a delicate high-wire act we’re doing here, but it does, at least, explain our enthusiasm for business practices.

Because, put simply, this is our goal:

To help farmers make the shift from being treated like – and feeling like – a VICTIM needing constant assistance, to becoming a PLAYER, providing for their families through the agricultural sector.

...and now try caring about all this development and empowerment nonsense when the rains are almost a month late in coming and everyone around you is hungry.

Black Star

Hello there! I've tried to make up for my month-long silence with 4 blog posts and plenty of pictures. I'd love to hear your comments, if you get a chance, and feel free to tell me what you'd like to hear about! I promise to get in a lot more about my work, but for today, I wanted to introduce you to my world.

And my world is called the Black Star. BEHOLD!

WANTED FOR MURDER

Name: Shea Loewen
Age: 23
Nationality: Canadian
Last known hideout: Zuarungu, Ghana

In the early evening of March 22, 2008, a mass murder was reported in the town of Tongo, in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Misters Guin E. Foul and Local Pole-Tree were among the victims. Photographic evidence shows that the victims had their throats cut with a kitchen knife then had their outer layer removed before being disemboweled and dismembered. Police suspect that Shea Loewen and her accomplices disposed of the bodies by grilling them with some choice spices, then ingesting them, perhaps inviting some unsuspecting guests to consume the remains. When police arrived on the scene, only a small pile of internal organs remained to identify the victims, as even the bones had been devoured.

If anyone has any information on the current whereabouts of Ms. Loewen, or of her accomplices, Ms. Lewis and Ms. Justa, please contact the Ghanaian police department closest to you. Police believe that this hideous crime was only the first in a series of killings planned by the suspect as she takes advantage of her new surroundings to fuel her homicidal tendencies.

Ethnographic research shows that traditional practices in her new surroundings involve ritual sacrifice, conducted openly and nonchalantly in the family compound. We plead with household leaders to curtail these activities while Ms. Loewen is still on the loose.

Happy Birthday Ghana!

March 6 was a very big day for me, and apparently for Ghana as well. She (He? It?) turned 51 years old on my first full day in the Upper East Region. Sarah Lewis, person extraordinaire, took me under her wing that day and threw me into the celebrations going on in her adoptive home town of Tongo.

First, the obligatory morning visit to the local pub for some fresh brewed pitou, accompanied by Sarah’s host father Patrick. Who knew local alcohol could be so tasty?

Then, on to the main event! Schools all across the district of Talensi-Nabdam descended upon Tongo to march around proudly in front of a random local politician.


It was a LOT of children, standing around all day in the hot sun, inventing new ways of marching with a bit of attitude.

Everyone was marching, from the military…

To the local hairdressers and barbers school, proclaiming interesting philosophies on their placards.


But of course, this is Tongo, home to a happy mishmash of modern and traditional, and no official ceremony can avoid being crashed by male Talensi dancers! (see: a future posting on the Gologo festival for more details on them)


As for me, I ended Ghana’s birthday with some quality party time spent with Sarah and her (and now also my) friends, Justa, Priscilla and Eugene.

I love birthdays!

(Except, of course, when it's your own birthday, and everyone celebrates by pouring their drink on your head.)

Dry Season Gardening Revisited

Last month, I promised you photo documentation of my first excursion into dry season gardening. Without further ado, here we go!

This is what the land looks like right now in the area surrounding Tamale.

But, by digging down into the ground in this one area….

Enough water can be found to turn that dry land into this:


And if only this abandoned dam was still full of water…


Then the water table would be higher and more reliable, and that green space would extend even further, with even more farmers supporting their households off of these vegetables.

In moving to the Upper East Region, I saw that the issue of forgotten dam projects was shockingly widespread. A well-functioning dam can make a huge difference to a community, since this large body of water can do everything from quenching livestock’s thirst to raising the water table enough to allow dry season gardening across a wide area. Sadly, it’s mostly lack of follow-through on behalf of non-governmental organizations and local institutions that leave these dams half-finished or falling into disrepair. This man here is from Zanlerigu, where a partially complete dam means that he can grow a few onions.


This Zanlerigu vegetable farmer group is my first official farmer group, passed on to me by Sarah Lewis. In my first meeting with this hard-working gang, they asked me if I was willing to work as hard as Sarah to help them. They also asked me if I would marry all of them.

Behold, my new husbands!


There are so many issues facing them, from the dam to their vulnerability to the fluctuating price of onions and tomatoes, to transport difficulties, and much more. In the next 12 months, I’ll be meeting dozens of other groups facing similar and varying challenges, and it will be my job to help them identify opportunities to improve their situations.

Oh yes, and I believe that last time, I also promised you photo documentation of my fulfilling my life’s goal of swathing myself in green at all times.

I’m so happy here.

Ghana-riffic!

As I enter my second week here in Ghana, training time is coming to a close. Tomorrow I’ll be in a tro-tro (local mini-bus), heading for the Upper East Region of Ghana, but for now I’m enjoying my last day in Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region and general hub of action in the north.

It’s scorching hot and dusty right now, in the months just before the rainy season, with the hazy sky meeting urban dirt kicked up by passing motorbikes. I feel sweaty and grimy, but utterly and completely happy: Ghana is agreeing with me.

Every day of our in-country training, my fellow volunteers and I have been sent out on some adventure or fact-finding mission, with the idea that we’ll learn best and fastest through first-hand interactions in a bustling market, rather than in another round of workshops and sessions.

A scavenger hunt took up our first day, with five eager, jet-lagged Canadians descending upon Tamale to find things like ‘a traditional cure for diarrhea – bonus points if it also cures all of malaria, arthritis, erectile dysfunction, piles, etc’. My focus for the day was on local cloth, wandering in and out of fabric stalls in the market, comparing prices and seeing which fabric came from China, and which was locally made. The result? Well, as people who know me well can attest, one of my life’s ambitions is to be able to clothe myself entirely in green as much as humanly possible. Which is why Ghana and I are going to get along! (Expect photo documentation soon.)

Other days have been packed with information that I’ve barely had time to process, and on topics that I’m looking forward to learning a lot more about. One full day was spent trying to understand why most Ghanaians prefer eating imported rice than their own, locally produced rice, and learning that most people surveyed would eat local rice if it was packaged like imported rice, and processed to remove troublesome stones. I barely scratched the surface of this topic, before going out on my first field visit to learn about dry-season vegetable farming. I’m going to learn a lot more about this topic in the coming months, and for now I really wanted to leave you with some pictures, but tragically that will have to wait for a better internet connection. So, instead, I'll just leave you with some questions to ponder:

What constraints are these farmers facing? What ill-fated development project has reduced the size of these farmers’ cultivatable land for vegetable farming? What does vegetable farming look like in the first place? Until next time…

Amsterdam

Simply in order to set a precedent for posting more than once a month, I'm feeling moved to use my extra couple minutes in the layover town of Amsterdam to quickly get a post in.

I am getting more and more happy/nervous/freaked out. I keep imagining little scenes, imagining that taxi ride from the airport as you're staring out at all the new scenery, bewildered and exhausted. That first meeting with my new boss, shaking hands and trying to make a good impression. Riding a motorcycle out to a new community, wearing a ridiculously big, white, face-eating helmet that I was forced to cram into my bag to bring with me to Ghana. The first big cultural blunder, when everyone around me starts laughing and pointing and I remind myself about the joys of self-deprecation.

My time's run out here at the internet kiosk, but the actual adventures are just around the corner... W00t! W00t!