When it rains it pours: Coping with floods in Ghana

Image1: The Kpalwega Community attempts to block a burst dam

 

Air whistles in the screens as it starts to ‘wind‘, signaling the imminent rain. The power in my office goes out and I watch as the drapes blow into the dark room. Cool air streams in the windows and water starts to pound the tin roof. Today, the storm is more violent than the rains a few days ago, but the trend seems to be easing overall.

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) regional office where I work is quiet today. Every agricultural extension officer is on assignment in each corner of the region, collecting data on the flood disaster areas. Farmers have been steadily visiting our office in Tongo, registering themselves, the crops they have lost, and the damages to their homes.

The paths around my house have been impassable for weeks, and dirt roads in the Talensi-Nabdam district are eroding and partially blocked by water. My district is flooded at the southern end, where the White Volta runs through a community called Pwalugu. There, many farmers have lost their homes and fields to the flood water, and the river has risen so high as to reach the treetops, showing no signs of receding. Ousman, the MOFA Extension Agent for Pwalugu Area, reported that hunger has started to affect that community in our last staff meeting.

I remember clearly, at the beginning of August, one of MoFA’s agricultural extension agents told me that the rains were becoming too much. He explained that the buildings, made of clay bricks, are often covered with a thin layer of sand mixed with tar and cement. They have no foundations. When the rains are heavy and continuous—as they have been—the walls become saturated and begin to collapse.

Image 2: Collapsing Kpalwega Church

Last week, one of the brothers in my house told me that when he sleeps, it is never too deep because he fears that the walls around him will not last until morning.

My rough estimate from living and traveling in nearby communities is that more than 85% of traditionally constructed homes in our communities have experienced some cave-ins. Normally the cave-ins are cooking areas and animal housing. The Tikaha house where I am staying lost its pig pen and goat enclosure. The extended family’s compound house has several major walls down, including two cooking hearths and an animal pen, as well as one room. The most noticeable loss is the collapse of small tailor shop run by my Aunt Grace. It is located just by the roadside near the house. In a nearby village, Sakote, where I stayed in August, three families had to take refuge in the local elementary school.

When I anxiously asked my friend Lizzy, a high school student what these families would do, she looked at me calmly: “We will rebuild in the dry season,” without even batting an eyelash.

People just cope.

Image3: Collapsed bridge in Manga Village

 

She’s right. I have watched people, like Auntie, do just that: cope. Auntie now sets up her tables and her sewing machine under the shade of a baobab tree.

This ability to cope struck me most while I was walking across the village fields in Sakote with George, my host during my stay. The group of 12 men were bent over in the field weeding sorghum with hand hoes to the energetic and skillful music of a handmade guitar accompanied by song. The group stopped as we approached to greet us and walked with us up to the house. We met a pregnant woman pounding spices for the worker’s evening soup surrounded by three young children. Their house was particularly affected, with everyone of its six rooms collapsed. Yet despite it all, we received a warm welcome into their home and were offered flour water as is tradition when strangers arrive.

Because it is still the farming season, construction will have to wait. Unfortunately many of the crops have been spoiled because of the weather conditions and more vulnerable community members are without resources to rebuild or crops to harvest.

The crop failures due to erratic weather conditions has been a profound lesson in the vulnerability of these communities. Earlier in the rainy season, we all prayed for the rains to arrive. Now everyone is praying for them to stop.

The destruction and destitution left from the floods has emphasized to me the importance in reducing farmers vulnerability. I am now looking ahead to the next two months when I will be working with agricultural extension agents at MoFA to promote a business-minded approach to planning the dry season gardening that occurs in irrigated areas at damsites in some communities.

A strong crop in the dry season could really help some of the families who lost their crops this rainy season, and developing the habit of planning their production level each year will help to protect farmers in the future as rains are consistently unpredictable.

My home in Tongo. The Tikaha House

When my hosts use the term stranger to refer to me it means I am an honoured guest. Patrick Tikaha and his family have made me feel extremely welcome here, so when they say I am a stranger, I know that it is with great pride.

Image1: Patrick Tikaha (53 years old )

Patrick is a local JSS (equivalent to elementary) schoolteacher. He has a sturdy bicycle which he uses to travel more than 30 minutes to the small village school where he teaches young children to read and write. When I asked Patrick about his life story, he said that he had to start at the beginning, which was the origination story of his people. I will save that one for another post (sorry for the suspense), but when we did get to his personal story, I learned just what a determined and hardworking man his is. It helped me admire him all the more.

Image2: Sticks used for pounding, for example, removing the sheathes from grain, and an old storage room.

As a young man he left a job in the southern town of Kumasi to care for his elderly parents in the village. They insisted that he marry his first wife, Talata, when he was around 22 years old, so that there would be someone to take care of this house, which was a necessity, since they were no longer able to manage it alone. Patrick agreed. His parents made the arrangements, chose his bride, Mme Talata, and his father paid the dowry.

A few years later, Patrick completed a certificate course to become a school teacher, and with his salary, paid for his older brother to marry. Then, finally he was able to marry again. Mme Lardi, (whom I was not able to get a photo of this morning) is his second wife. I get the impression that the second marriage was for love, although Patrick himself would never compare his wives in that way and it is something of an imposition for me to say so. His first wife does not live in the house any longer, although they raised six children together. Mme Lardi has six children of her own, bringing the family up to twelve children in total.

Image3: Terimba (Mme Lardi’s daugher), a neighbour, and Ahna (Mme Talata’s daughter), posing for me as they do the laundry. I am getting better at hand washing, but I’m not nearly as quick as these girls.
Two of the grown children live in the house, along with their children, and some of his grandchildren stay here as well. Patrick works full time, but he is also attending University through distance education. Last month he was writing distance examinations and staying up all night studying while attending to community obligations, which take up around four evenings every week, and taking an additional course arranged by the Ministry of Education during the day.

“We want you to tell your parents, when they worry about you, that you are with a family that will do everything we can to make sure you are comfortable. Before you go to sleep hungry I myself will sleep without food. We live in a simple house, and we know that you have left all of the comforts of your place and sacrificed to come here.

You will never pay anything to stay here, and you can stay as long as you like. Until the day when you come and tell me and my senior brothers that you will be leaving, and we celebrate your departure home, I will never ask you for anything. If you have any problem in this house just tell me. And if you are shy, you just tell my wife.

Feel Free. You are Welcome here.”

Image4: Ahna, posing with laundry soap. Apparently this picture is HILARIOUS, but no one could explain why so that I got the joke.

The downside of never being uncomfortable is….

“I don’t want you to do anything!” They insist. Taking care of guests well is a point of pride in the Tallensi community, and although I help with cooking or small tasks around the house, it is honestly very difficult to manoevre carrying water. I spend most of my energy trying to convince the family that I don’t like meat, which is usually only added to my dish if purchased, and that I actually DO like spicy food. I manage to do my own wash and generally fill my own bucket of bathwater in the mornings and evening.

Image 5: Mme Charity cooks all of the meals in the house, she is the wife of Patrick’s third son with Talata and is about to give birth to her second child.

But, I still fight to sweep my own room, or fetch my own stool to sit on these days. When I was staying in a neighbouring house (with a Dagbani family from the Northern Region) I swept the yard every morning and even carried water from the borehole. My struggles to contribute to the Tikaha house and participate in daily activites are a testament to the cultural variability in the Northern Regions of Ghana. It is slowly getting better and I’m sure that soon I will be allowed to do dishes.

sorry mom – i know reading that doing dishes has become something i aspire to must be strange for you.

Image 6: View of courtyard towards kitchen. Mme Charity in the doorway.

I know that Patrick is proud of his home. His family eats well, his children all attend school and there is electricity in this house. The reason Patrick has been so successful is that he manages his money very carefully. He pays his bills as soon as he receives his salary and provides the women of the house with more than enough money for soup ingredients.

To obtain electricity was expensive , but he saved and sacrificed to have poles erected from the closest line. All of the children from the family compound come and sit in the courtyard in the evening to watch Ghana News at 8:00pm and hang around to see whatever program is on afterwards.

Image 7: Linus (Patrick’s grandson through Talata), Sammy, and Lautia (Lardi’s youngest daughter)

Image 8: …Running to see the picture

The compound house is quite large and is located just steps away from Patrick’s compound. There are the extended families of four brothers, including Patrick, living here with their families. When I arrived all of the senior men and their elder sons met to welcome me to the family home. It was quite intimidating to be in the room greeting 12 men formally and being introduced to them in the local language, which I had only started learning. However, I now know many of them better, I am more comfortable and we always visit and greet each other.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Image 9: My bed – super lux!

The room that the family has opened for me is the nicest room I have stayed in here, it was not in use and it was cleaned and prepared for me with great care. I have not done the place credit with clothes strewn about and all that. The beautiful bed was one that had been previously bought and not used. Patrick assembled it with me.

Image 10: Everything I own (sorry for the shaky pic – and for not cleaning…)

Image 11: My sweet ride WITH gears! 42$CAN

I am very happy here.

Atarah Family – Kongo Photos

I stayed with the Atarah family for almost 2 weeks near the beginning of my stay in Ghana. I remember the visit fondly, because I met my very good friend Justa during that time. She lives in the same village as I do, Tongo, and we have become great friends since this time.

The Atarah Family; Pascal, Kristy, Justa, Selina, Martin.

Selina helping to shoo the chickens towards her mother, Kristy, has trapped termites for the fowl to eat (protein!) in the bucket.

Sowing Sorghum at the beginning of the farming season. I got a fantastic sunburn on my back on that day.

Eric Atarah, my host and the head of the family, is on the far right.

Kristy brews Pito – the local beer – and sells it in the market, which is held every three days. It takes three days to brew Pito. Coincidence?

Kristy, stirring TZ, a millet porridge and staple food that is eaten with spicy soups. It composes most major meals.  I eat it a lot.

I try to work for my supper as often as possible.

Hope you enjoyed the picture show and the non-work related update!

Sarah

The Decision to Adopt is with the Farmer

International Governance has its roots in the district office of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Tongo, a small community in the Upper East Region of Ghana. This small office is where I work with government extension agents, bringing improved technologies and development programs to farmers and their families.

 

They say that the health of the roots will determine the height of the tree. My experiences here in Ghana have led me question how well we who are concerned with the progress of human development, know what is happening here at the roots, in the field. How many of our statesmen, program developers, researchers and politicians take time to understand the decisions farmers make, and tackle the realities of policy implementation in places like the Talensi-Nabdam District in the Upper East Region of Ghana?

 

I meet Anobre Akologo on a monitoring visit with several district officers from Bolgatanga about two weeks ago. She is a frail elderly woman, a widow, shy and silent because we had interrupted her on her field. She is clearly intimidated by our presence and seems confused by our interest in her work. The small groundnut (peanut) plants in rows around her feet are stunted and flowering prematurely. The grains of her extended families’ early millet are hard and bland due to the recent drought, and the officers are concerned that the crop will not produce viable seed. Although it is now late in July, Akologo is planting cowpea and more groundnut among the failing plants in hopes that the rain will continue into October. She must harvest before the rains stop and the ground hardens, which makes it near impossible to remove the nuts undamaged. The rains normally begin to slow in mid-September.

 

Not five minutes drive down the dirt road we stop to meet Asimbaling Apuko, a model farmer who works closely with MOFA. To reach his house we pass through fields of tall, healthy millet and sorghum. The millet is almost ready to harvest and the grains look fat and healthy. Apuko is a confident man who speaks in broken English, and after a few tries we exchange words and manage to understand each other. His wives greet us from the doorway of the house and then disappear inside. He says that he uses a mixture of compost and chemical fertilizers to achieve such good results, but I know the timing of planting, the quality of seed and soil, and the ability to manage complex community relationships all play a part in Apuko’s success.

 

The diversity of the experience of a subsistence farmer in these examples becomes more clear after actually living and working at the community level. Many reasons for the disparity can be traced to the sophisticated and geographically specific social systems that govern village life, of which I have only the barest understanding after five months of living in Ghana. However, the best Agricultural Extension Agents (AEA’s) among MOFA’s staff understand it very well.

 

This brings me to a very important point, that I had left AEA’s entirely out of the story. The staff of MOFA are the representatives of local and international institutions of government to farmers. I watch carefully as the MOFA officers interact with both of the farmers. The female officer speaks gently with Akologo as the others stand aside to help her to feel comfortable expressing herself. I follow their lead and hang back after greeting her in the local dialect. The field workers ask very specific questions about the state of each farmer’s crops, and what impact the season has had on the wellbeing of their families. The officers give what advice they can to each farmer and communicate the results to the regional government.

 

I often ask my colleagues what they would advise international institutions and the donors that fund MOFA’s programs if they had the opportunity. Over and again, my co-workers repeat that assistance does not reach the poor and needy people in communities. They know it because everyday MOFA staff manages the impact of overambitious and poorly managed programs with limited resources. In the rush to spend budgets before they expire, many programs severely discount the time, expertise and supervision required to work well with local communities. In the end, this systematic neglect of the challenges of implementation limits MOFA’s ability to promote the development of agriculture.

 

These field realities are even more remote when decisions and pronouncements are being made from Geneva, Rome or Waterloo. The greater the distance, the clearer theory appears and the further the complications of implementation can be allowed to fall from serious consideration. The greater the distance, the easier it is to write a beautiful policy or plan, send it to another party to implement and declare success with satisfaction.

 

I wish I could invite international governance thinkers and policy developers into our district staff meetings with MOFA. For example, a few weeks ago there was a pertinent discussion on the challenges of fieldwork sparked by a field agent’s comments during a field report.

 

The AEA was speaking out of frustration. Each AEA was required to trial a new planting technique with their farmers, planting seeds with a small amount of compost in each hole in one of their fields. The practice is time consuming and very few farmers were willing to try the new technique. After a few hot comments to the effect that the practice would not be adopted, our district director, Dr. Quist, broke into the discussion with a few words.

 

He said, “You seem to have forgotten that the decision to adopt is always with the farmer. Introducing a new practice is an experiment, a joint venture undertaken by the farmer and the field agent.

 

When the results are in, it is for the farmer and the AEA to each take something from the experience and to decide how it can be applied. You are not the one who decides if hole composting is worthwhile for the farmer. We try it together and it is the farmer who decides.” The comments succeeded in re-focusing the discussion on how to demonstrate the technology more effectively.

 

I have referred to Dr. Quist’s words often in my work. In my limited experience it has been easy for me to forget that a brilliant program idea is only the first step towards a positive change for farming communities.

 

What lesson do this afternoon on a field visit and a discussion in a district staff meeting have to offer international governance theory?

 

It is imperative to account for the decisions community members make as they face the opportunities or challenges created by their government. These experiences teach that the interest of policy makers should be to know how Apuko or Akologo’s lives will actually change through a new policy direction, and that meaningful dialogue between key decision makers throughout implementation will show us what success, if any, is being realized.

 

The implementation of a policy is the true test of its quality, and the power to achieve results… or the decision to adopt, rests with the people whom policy is intended to assist.

 

The decision to adopt is with the farmer.

 

————————————————————————————————————

By no means does the mention of individuals’ names indicate agreement on the part of that individual with the conclusions I have drawn from these experiences. I would like to express my deep appreciation to Lawrence for his patience and wisdom, Clement for his skill and enthusiasm, Edward for his support and confidence, and to Dr. Quist for his critical eye. To every member of the Talensi-Nabdam MOFA District Staff I owe equal thanks and appreciation.

Picture update: early millet & sarah with a wall full of sticky notes in ghana.

These are my neighbours’ sons, Jon and Assibi roasting the early millet crop in Tongo. The early maturing millet is planted alongside the longer maturing variety so that the family can harvest something and eat during the lean season (which is upon us). This year the early millet harvest is meagre. Because of persistent drought the farmers say the millet grains are small and bland.  Farmers are not only worried that there will not be enough to eat during the coming months. They are concerned that next year, if they plant this millet, the germination rates will be very low because the drought will affect the quality of their seed.

In addition, many of their other crops are stunted this year and farmers have sold much of their livestock to buy seed for a risky second planting, now, in late July. We are only praying that the rains will keep long into sepember, and allow those who have attempted a second planting will be able to harvest groundnuts (peanuts), cowpea and early maturing corn. The danger with a late planting of groundnuts is that without rain to loosen the soil, the groundnuts will be sealed in the hard ground, making it difficult or impossible to pull up the nuts.

Here is a photo my sister Asana took of me this morning. She doubled over in laughter when she walked in and saw that I had spent all evening and morning covering my walls with sticky notes. Maybe some of you will appreciate that some things don’t change no matter what continent I find myself on.

For the EWB members in the crowd… yes, the stickynotes are an impact chain for the program we are implementing.

My apologies… A real narrative blog post is in the making but not yet completed.

Sarah

Comments after a Phone Call with Canadian University Students

 I took a phone call with the University of Waterloo Chapter of Engineers Without Borders last week.  Here are some of the follow up questions they sent me and my responses.

Q- You mentioned that some NGOs do not have very effective or sustainable programs …

Effective and Sustainable Programs
The trouble with these ‘ill-fated programs’ usually comes from a disconnect between the implementation level and the policy level or donor level. The donor may not have provided enough guidance to the implementing NGO, by providing large, vague goals such as “promote small scale ruminant production” or they may have unrealistic conditions, such as demanding that money be spent by a certain date. A combination of these mistakes will create extra problems.

How do Frankenstein Projects come to Life?
All development programs are created out of the public’s desire to support tangible actions to resolve the inhumane global divide between rich and poor. This desire is backed by financial investment, and creates effective demand that the field of international development field has risen to fill. Intentions are generally good, but here are a few reasons why ‘bad’ projects may happen regardless:

- Objectives: The demand for change that this desire ‘to make a difference’ creates is ill-defined, and how to measure the success of a change is open to interpretation. The path to achieve poverty reduction is not simple or clear in reality, nor do developing countries have all the answers to address poverty in their own countries. I think a crowd of engineers should know what happens when the problem statement is poorly defined.

- Formulation: There is generally a lack of ‘good’ information in the hands of decisionmakers. A successful program often depends on identifying best practices in the field AND having expertise on the local context in order to adapt these best practices to field realities. It’s like rolling two dice and hoping for a ‘12′. Seriously, though, situations where both of these elements are strong are rare.

- Implementation: The gap between the program office and the field is expensive, and there are few incentives to fill it well because decision making power and accountability reside in the central office. Critical information from the field can not only potentially threaten the position of decisionmakers, but may demand changes to the program that will incur additional costs. The gap between central office and field is not only physical but cultural and involves unequal wealth and power relationships. These factors magnify costs in terms of resources and time.

- Feedback: If the potential alternative uses of donor support are not clear to the beneficiary, it is difficult for them to say what would be in their best interests. Beyond the power dynamic and a lack of ‘big picture’ reasoning, critical feedback is not a strong aspect of culture in Ghana in particular. These are just some of the reasons it is challenging for implementors to engage beneficiaries in providing meaningful feedback
Because of these and other factors, it is rare to find a project that doesn’t have some Frankenstien element hidden in a closet somewhere.

Q – The economist William Easterly, is strongly opposed to big, top-down, government / donor / UN plans for development. He claims they are not sufficiently responsive to concerns on the ground, and prefers
ground-up, small projects instead. Is there any presence of big, top-down plans in your work? Do they help (Provide guidance) or hinder? (Plans do not match reality)

Big Top Down Projects
MOFA is the implementing agency for many ‘big top down’ projects. They are very helpful to MOFA since their financial support allows MOFA’s programs to continue, and provide project money to be linked with beneficiary communities.

The aspects of their assistance that are a hindrance are the amount of reporting that MOFA needs to provide to them and the often unrealistic demands that they make on field staff given their skill set, limited time, and the complexity of
their work. Each large donor typically requests a quarterly report, which means that MOFA’s monitoring and evaluation office often works long days and weekends for at least two weeks around the end of the quarter trying to get it all done.
Donor money distorts the incentive system for employees. There is money for doing donor work, but not as much for working to complete the organization’s own strategic goals.

Some MOFA staff display low ownership for the results of their work because it is ‘for the development partners’. Other staff speak up against this attitude, but donors certainly contribute to its existence with unreasonable demands on staff for their project. MOFA staff are often not empowered to refuse and they are forced to sacrifice other priorities in order to do so.

From the perspective of MOFA, donor assistance is essential to realizing food security for rural populations and much more of a help than a hinderance.

Q- Do you have any idea on how accountability in development projects can be shifted from above (Donors) to below? (Farmers)

Shifting the Focus
Cultivation of a culture of appreciating feedback from the field in implementing agencies would help to shift accountability. Through my project EWB hopes to bring additional attention to the value of fieldwork experience in implementation of MOFA’s projects. More participation in field work by program managers and a more professional approach by field staff and volunteers would contribute greatly to changing this power dynamic.

Q- Finally, if you could go into a little more detail of your work …
Mini Job Description

On any day I could be:
- Travelling to the field with an extension agent to meet a farmers group
- running a workshop
- participating in farming activities and / or conducting informal interviews
- provide feedback on AEA’s extensions techniques
- Collecting market data with MOFA enumerators (statistical staff)
- Assisting in completing reporting with the district Information Officer
- When in the office i provide one on one computer training for small issues as they come up, but this is not usually a focus
- Reviewing proposals that extension agents have prepared for/with farmer groups
- In MOFA’s regional office in Bolgatanga reporting to the regional director and developing strategy
- Developing workshops and discussing progress of Agriculture as a BUsiness with my AEA project team
- On the phone or internet collaborating with my fellow LTOVS
- Visiting or calling JF Ryan to check on his progress and make decisions about his placement together
- Participating in a district staff meeting

Much love from Ghana!

Sarah

Shea Butter Processing Group Pictures

I know I haven’t been posting very much – so here is a little photo gallery of a few visits to a group of Shea Butter Processors in the District.

The Group farm together on family land as well as for commercial farmers in the area. Here they are sowing rice in the field of one of their members.

The group is meeting with Stephen, MOFA Agricultural Extension Agent, and filling out the registration form for the program we are developing.

On another day we visited to process shea butter with the group. We are up to our elbows!

The ever present Baobab tree.

A day of fieldwork in Tongo

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.

 

Update Time

I’m here in Bawku, the upper east corner of ghana, visiting short term volunteer, Ryan Case, a University of Waterloo student who is working with me for four months. We have been busy so far, meeting his host family (a compound house with a total of 27 residents and four women… it’s complicated.

It’s been really inspiring to hang with Ryan, who is a complete trooper, through thick and thin. He is working on an analysis of the extension  techniques used to promote guinea fowl production and assisting me in running a pilot program on Farming as a Business in his district.

Last week we launched the program in Talensi-Nabdam District. The AEA’s (field staff) seem eager to develop the business thinking of their farmer groups. I am working closely with two staff who will be participating in data analysis, program development and implementation. There will be two parts to the program, basic profitability analysis of the group activities, record keeping, and what marketing opportunities exist for the group’s initiatives.

More news to come as the program moves along. The next hurdle is seeing how many farmer groups apply for the three month course.

No farmer group pictures yet, but here are some for my mom and dad… We climbed the hills around Tongo last weekend and snapped some pics:

the climb

the view

“It seems that the sun wants our millet to die”

The sun absolutely burned across the sky today. It has been more than two weeks since the last rain. I am settled here in Tongo, the capital of Talensi-Nabdam District, in the Upper East Region of Ghana. The millet is wilting a little more severely every day. When I wake at 5:30am I can hear the scrape of simple hoes against stone and sand.

Farming families are busy weeding from daybreak until the sun becomes too hot to bear. Women and young children accompany the men, in groups of four or five, bending over the soil and tearing up weeds as they move slowly from one end of the field to the other.

 

I can often be caught searching the sky anxiously on their behalf. Sometimes I spy clouds, and the wind picked up yesterday for a short time. My hopes were raised. But the heavy clouds were too high, and rain did not even really threaten to fall.

 

This is not the only concern of the farming community.

 

A few weeks ago, it was where to find money and the seed to be able to plant because the rains had started early. There were three good rains within a week at the beginning of May. Most farmers had not stored enough grain to complete planting, as well as feed their family until the new crop is harvested. Everyone was looking for money, additional labour and competing for scarce plowing services.and anyone with access to a plow and money for seed was working hard to get a quick start on the season. Those who could not afford to start early.

 

Although everyone has their eye on the clouds, there is another major event happening. The new Chief of Tongo has been enskinned (sp) and returned from his travels. We visited the palace to see the celebrations. These traditional dancers and drummers performed in groups moving around the palace grounds.

 

I have a lot of work ahead of me, assisting MOFA’s Extension Staff in their efforts to support farmer groups. I still believe, as MOFA does, that through improved farming practices farmers can see increased profits, and farming families can invest in new ways to gain income and create opportunities for themselves and their children.

 

But I have to say that the past few weeks have dampened my initial enthusiasms with a solid dose of realism. Farming is hard work, and farmers are the hardest working people I think I have ever met. The more time I spend in the field with MOFA’s Extension Agents, the more clear it becomes to me that Farmers operate in an environment where the future is difficult to predict.

 

An AEA that I worked with last week told me that they have a saying here, that “A man working at an impossible task may work very hard and achieve nothing at all. People will not see his work and will call him a fool or a lazy man.”

 

Sometimes farming seems like an impossible but necessary task for farmers here in Tongo. But when you look deeper it becomes clear that success just comes in small doses, and is deeply appreciated when it arrives.

 

I’m hoping to be a part of some of this small success. We are all praying for rain.

 

My guides for the day: John and Emmanuel