A day of fieldwork in Tongo

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I couldn’t be happier. It rained last night. I woke up because the wind was blowing so hard the shutters were rattling the window frame. My ears perked, searching for the sound of pounding water approaching from the hills. Nothing yet. Finally the creaking and banging of my door in the increasingly intense wind roused me from the mattress.

 

The door to my room opens onto a hall that is essentially a roofed extension of the front porch. I squint my eyes against the stinging dust. Flashes of lightning provide dim outlines of the millet in the fields around the house being beaten to the ground, and tree branches being whipped back and forth.

 

I smile, because I can feel the rain coming, heavy on the air. It means that the meeting I have scheduled with a women’s group tomorrow will certainly be cancelled, they will be busy in the fields, sowing and weeding. The soil has been dry and hard for the last few weeks, and this rain will finally loosen it. It means that the crops that can still be saved will survive.

 

The rain drums against the roof for the rest of the night and into the morning. It has been the second rain this month, and the first one that has lasted more than an hour.

 

My neighbour Jon, who is about 14 years old, passes by the house later in the morning. We exchange the customary morning greetings …

 

“ Q: eh-bie-geh (How is the morning?)

A: nah-bah (fine)

 

Q: la-a-wal-ya (How are you?)

A: la-a-so-ma (Fine)

 

Q: Ag-bi-wal-ya (How was your sleep?)

A: la-a-kine (excellent)”

 

Joe’s worn hand hoe is hanging over his shoulder, and I know it means he will be spending this sunday weeding and sowing in the field. I was worried that a lot of the early millet stalks seemed to have been broken by the wind, but Joe reassured me that they would spring back up quickly. We stand silently for a minute and he says, simply, “The rain has done well,” then turns and heads off in the direction of the family’s land. Joe can be something of a silent type.

Yameriga Women’s Group Members

 

I return to my work, putting the final touches on a workshop that will be presented to one of the women’s groups I’m working with. Their extension officer’s name is Victoria, who is very dedicated to them. They are one of the biggest groups in the district, and they work in agro-forestry. They have a nursery where they grow eucalyptus, acacia, and other species for MOFA, as well as for an NGO based in Tamale. They have planted two acres of Mangoes and a forest of Tich (a fast growing tree that can be used for firewood, and eventually harvested for hydro-poles).

Nursery

 

The group has a very high level of solidarity. They are a team of over 40 women and 10 men who care for the trees, farm together, and function as a social support network for each other in difficult times. The core membership is about 20 people, but the full membership of 50 came to meet me the first day I visited them.

Group Meeting in the Grove

 

I’m hoping that the training materials I’m developing with MOFA will help them to expand their forestry business by understanding basic business concepts like distinguishing profit and income, or budgeting and planning their market activities.

 

One of the challenges I’m facing in this work is finding ways to present accounting concepts to a group that is approximately 5% literate and not up to 15% numerate. It isn’t only an important issue to address for the participants to benefit from the workshop itself, but for the group to be able to understand the finances of the business, and make sure that members will still confidently participate in decision making if the group is using these new tools.

 

I arrive in the tree grove where the group holds meetings with a set of small cards that I intend on using as a teaching tool along with stone markers and the dirt floor. No one, however, is there to greet me. I had just seen some of the women busy working in the fields as I came over the last few hills on my bicycle. I relax on a wooden bench that some children have carried here for me. I thought that this might happen this morning. Because of the rains very few will be able to meet today.

 

I chat with the kids as someone runs to the fields to gather some of the group’s leadership. They are five young boys between the ages of 2 and about 11. Justice and Peter are the oldest. They say their family has 9 members, and they can hardly believe that I can count only one junior brother (Micheal J).

 

After an acceptable amount of time I venture out from the grove to find out if there is some farming work happening that I can participate in. Low and behold, some elderly women are steadily sowing groundnuts and removing weeds from around the mango trees. I join them and earn my stripes as a weed puller. I’m covered in a decent amount of dark clay-muck by the time the group leaders call me back to the grove. “Ho-moy-ya Sal-a-ming-a”, the old women say as I leave them, (Oh white lady, ‘you are trying’ or ‘you have done well’)

 

I sit with a few of the group leaders and pick a new meeting day. The leaders are happy that I came and that I understand their situation. This is one of the few days when they can work in the fields with full effectiveness.

 

Charles, the schoolteacher who records the minutes for the group’s meetings, walks me to the road with my bicycle. He shares that he is worried about his own crops, with have no fertilizer, and that he needs some. I’m never sure how to handle these kinds of gentle hints of ways that I could bring donations. So many of the donations I see are just bandaid solutions to problems that are anything but simple. In this case, Charles seemed genuinely interested in my unconventional response, which is, to be exact, “That’s really difficult for many farmers… I wonder what we could be doing so that next year it won’t happen like this.” We discuss how the price of fertilizer varies during the year and in different markets within the Northern Regions. We conclude that this year he will just have to stretch to find the money, but that next year, he should consider planning to buy when the price is low, or arranging to buy through a friend located where the fertilizer is cheaper.

I hope you enjoyed the story of my day, and that it will give you some insight into what I am working on.

 

Here is an extra bonus…

Some pictures of a visit from my ewb coach louis dorval. He is preparing Jollof rice with my roomate, Asana. We are all laughing at him because men normally do not help women cook. He did ok – except that I feel his technique in the grinding was a bit weak. However, Asana’s verdict is that he is a ‘champion’… and she is the expert in the house. Asana is 15 years old and in Junior Secondary School (the equivalent of Elementary in Canada). She works particularly hard in English Class because she wants to work as a news reporter.

 

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