(sorry if this post is a little rough – I found myself in an internet cafe with a bit of time to write… but not much to edit!)
The work at MOFA is progressing steadily. For the past four weeks I have been in the process of visiting each of the eight district offices in the Upper East. You will see pictures of these visits throughout this blog entry.
Picture: Simon Apoaaba is a Farmer in Zebilla who planted dry season maize with MOFA’s support
I have taken a ‘break’ from this work to get a look at MOFA’s National Level for the next week. To be more specific, at the moment my EWB colleague, Christian Beaudrie, and I are travelling to a National MOFA workshop on the Livelihood System Approach (a concept originally developed by DFID: pls google the term for more information). MOFA is adopting Livelihoods as a monitoring philosophy, following the lead of the World Bank and other institutions who have recently adopted it.
During the visits i interact with as many district staff in formal interviews, field visits, and informal conversations about MOFA’s successes and challenges as I can manage. In each district i request to be lodged with a farming family, and i am indebted to my hosts, who have been amazingly welcoming. The results so far have engaged me completely… leading to a lack of posts (i apologize) From all of these experiences, my counterpart at MOFA (Thomas, the UE Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Officer) and i, are developing a program for my work. Once everything has been finalized I will be able to share it with you!
Picture: The dry season maize is bought from farmers by market women such as this woman, who sell it fresh in Zebilla, or travel to Bolgatanga and Bawku to get the highest price in the region… as long as they can afford to pay the transport costs up front.
Most of the districts have very different cultural groups, and so i have busied myself learning greetings in as many languages as possible. So far I know 3 very well, and I can manage greetings in another 3 languages with my handy language notebook, a small book where I keep track of the words people teach me.
The benefits of this travel are paying off. On our travel to the south this weekend, my colleague Christian and I were on a night bus (it was 16hrs of bus travel, including a 1am breakdown with a broken clutch) We hitched a ride on another bus and I was seated between two young men. Trying to avoid the common tendancy to speak with the most outgoing person… I tried to engage the more silent of the two by asking where he was from. To my surprise, he was originally from Builsa, a district I had just visited. I greeted him in Bulle, the language there, and we talked about Sandema, the capital, a bit of their history, and the local markets, all of which I was able to visit during my stay. His name is Jimmy, and he is an apprentice glassmaker in Kumasi. He was able to complete JSS (elementary school), but wasn’t able to continue to Secondary school because his family has some pressing financial demands. He says that he knew they would not be able to support him so he left for Kumasi to learn a trade.
These brief interactions, paired with the time spent with my family in Kantia, have helped me better understand the challenges of Ghana from the perspective of it’s people. I can’t think of a better way to start engaging in the process of Ghana’s development.
Much love from Ghana,
Sarah
ps – my family has started calling me MBOTEBA, or MBOTI for short. It means “I welcome everything, and I accept every kind of people” 
Musah Ayariga, another Zebilla farmer and I, are tying maize cobs so that they can easily be dried for seed
4 Comments
April 22, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Hey Sarah!
Great to hear from you again! It’s always exciting to see a new blog posting
Sounds like you’re having a great time, and doing a great job keeping up with the languages! I know I had a lot of trouble just stumbling my way through Dagbani, but 6! That’s awesome!
Thanks for the small stories about ordinary Ghanaian’s too, I really miss the casual conversations with people a lot! Learning about people’s livelihoods from welding to tailoring was one of my favourite things to do on a bus ride, or just wandering around town.
Are you getting excited for the arrival of JFs in a few weeks? I can’t wait to start hearing stories from them, and how they fit in with your program.
Hope you’re doing well, and we’ll be missing you a lot this summer in Waterloo!
Ben
April 24, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Hi Sarah, I’m working with Alex Lippert from the Faculty of Arts alumni office here at UW. We are featuring your story in our alumni electronic newsletter to be published in May. Can we also link to your blog and could we use one of the recent pictures as well?
Glad to hear things are going well and hope you keep in touch.
Cheers,
Tobi
Marketing Manager, Faculty of Arts
April 25, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Hello Tobi!
I would be happy for you to take pictures from this blog and provide the web address in your story.
Feel free to email me at sarahlewis@ewb.ca if you need any other information or higher resolution photos!
Sarah
November 16, 2007 at 10:27 am
Two new studies show why some people are more attractive for members of the opposite sex than others.
The University of Florida, Florida State University found that physically attractive people almost instantly attract the attention of the interlocutor, sobesednitsy with them, literally, it is difficult to make eye. This conclusion was reached by a series of psychological experiments, which were determined by the people who believe in sending the first seconds after the acquaintance. Here, a curious feature: single, unmarried experimental preferred to look at the guys, beauty opposite sex, and family, people most often by representatives of their sex.
The authors believe that this feature developed a behavior as a result of the evolution: a man trying to find a decent pair to acquire offspring. If this is resolved, he wondered potential rivals. Detailed information about this magazine will be published Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
In turn, a joint study of the Rockefeller University, Rockefeller University and Duke University, Duke University in North Carolina revealed that women are perceived differently by men smell. During experiments studied the perception of women one of the ingredients of male pheromone-androstenona smell, which is contained in urine or sweat.
The results were startling: women are part of this repugnant odor, and the other part is very attractive, resembling the smell of vanilla, and the third group have not felt any smell. The authors argue that the reason is that the differences in the receptor responsible for the olfactory system, from different people are different.
It has long been proven that mammals (including human) odor is one way of attracting the attention of representatives of the opposite sex. A detailed article about the journal Nature will publish.