My new home and the town of Wa

It has been a week already and my head is full of impressions. Everything, I mean it, everything is different.

I flew in with two other guys from the same program who will also stay in Ghana, but in different projects. We flew through Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) where I got my first impressions. I had to laugh because the airport had smoking cabins that were about 4 m² and separated through 2 meter high glass walls. However, the cabins had no top and no door so the smoke was all over the airport. Striking was also how the simple little airport shops had empty shelves. Interesting was the high number of Chinese on the airport which I also found at the airport in Ghana. I was told that China has contracts with some African countries to dig up their resources and in return they build for them. This opens up the African countries for Chinese tourism.

At the airport in Ghana I was picked up by my new boss and host mom Evelyn. We stayed a couple of hours at her sister’s place in Accra (the capital of Ghana) and at 8 o’clock at night took the bus to Wa, my new home town. The bus was more modern than any bus that I have taken before. The 11 hour journey was accompanied by very loud choirs praising the lord and later on reggae tunes with the same mission. Also it was probably the coolest 11 hours I will ever have in this country. Evelyn warned me to put on more cloths. I should have listened! The air conditioning was killing me.

In the morning we got to my new home. We are Evelyn, her 6 year old son Alex (who will go to boarding school soon), Alice a girl in her early 20ies and me. At the moment another Alex who is 9 years old and from Burkina Faso also stays with us during his vacation. We actually share borders with Burkina Faso and the people along the border speak the same local language. They have the same roots from the tribe of the Dagaraa and at some point someone simply decided to put the border in between. The national language of Ghana is English and of Burkina Faso it is French.

Wa is an amazing town. It is very rural and simple and just a special blend of many things. Muslims live together with Catholics. It is no problem for a Muslim to be married to a Catholic. At three in the morning you can hear the deep voices of the men singing from the various mosques…..impressive but luckily I brought earplugs. Sometimes they even preach through speakers. At the same time you have many churches all over the place. 

The special blend also concerns the Western style cloths and the typical colorful dresses, new pickup trucks, old motorbikes.

In Wa you buy everything you need on the local market where people sit on the ground and offer the foods they harvest. Evelyn taught me from the very beginning that you have to be careful with the food you buy on the market and in the streets in general.

All over the place you see women carrying in an amazing way heavy things on their heads. From things that look as if they weigh 20 kilos to a plate with 50 eggs. They walk, sit, turn, and grab things from it with ease. Pictures will hopefully follow soon. But it is not okay to just take pictures of people why I have to wait for a good moment and ask for permission. The town is also characterized by the goats and chickens that you see everywhere.

A day in Jenny’s life

I get up every day between 5:30 and 7. I already joined Evelyn to the church service at 6:30 once and I will try to do so some times. Evelyn goes every day. When she comes back we have breakfast and at 8:30 we go to the office. From 12 to 2 we have lunch break but hang around there. At 5 we leave the office. I drop dead at 10:30. New to me is that the TV is always on. But the program is mainly in English so I can follow. 

Eating is still a little tricky but I will find my way. All the local food contains dried and pounded fish. With raw food one has to be careful because of worms, typhus etc. Now, what does a strict vegetarian do in Ghana? I will see. 

We don’t have running water in the house and the girls fetch water from a well each morning, carry it on their heads to the house and we store it in the house in a barrel. We wash our bodies with water from buckets and also use buckets of water to flush the toilet. Every weekend we wash our cloths with a soap bar, buckets and hands.

The drinking water is packed in little sachets that can be easily carried around. Electricity works with a prepaid card where you use up the units. The internet connection in this area is UMTS, meaning it is very slow and hard to find.  

At the moment we are in rainy season. Some days it does not stop raining heavily, other days it only drizzles for a few minutes and we have sun for the rest of the day.

This week many exciting things happened. We went and visited the local radio station because Evelyn wanted to make an announcement. It was guarded by the police because that same day the verdict concerning the recent elections came out. After the last elections the loser went to court and claimed that the outcome was not right.  However, the winner was announced to stay in place and in Wa the people were apparently relieved. Another exciting encounter was a rat that spent the night with me and in the morning when it noticed that it was not alone squeezed out under my door.

By the way, I am sure I will be able to tell you about what it is like to have Malaria. I mess up with taking the freaking Malerone daily and get bitten by mosquitoes all the time. Around here everyone has Malaria frequently and they just know the symptoms and what to take before it becomes uncomfortable.

Next time I will tell you about HoLIFE, the organization I work for. I already learnt about some of their projects and the shocking injustices they are fighting against.