the first few days

I have arrived! Four months of intense learning, a week of intense training, and three days of exhausting travelling later, I’m in Ghana!

The past couple days in Tamale have been really interesting. We’ve all been thrown into a brand new culture and a brand new job so right now everything is interesting, exciting…. I’ve been trying to learn a few phrases but the only one I’ve really picked up is “Naaaa” which is what you would reply when being greeted.  I think it means something like “I am fine.”  We’ve also had a few meals of Banku (dough-like ball) and groundnut (peanut) soup which you eat entirely with your hands – right hand only! Walking around the market and seeing all the men and women dressed in their colourful outfits has definitely been one of my highlights so far.  Everyone walks around with something precariously perched on their head.  It’s absolutely amazing, and something that I plan to be expert in by the time I’m back in Canada.  Anything and everything gets thrown up there – bins of mangoes, stacks of cloth, water sachets, icecream etc. Even the little kids carry “training” bins! 

Now a little bit more information on my placement.  A few weeks ago, I was told that I would be working with a women’s group processsing shea nuts.  Unfortunately, at the last minute, meetings with the partner organization were not going as well as hoped and the placement no longer seemed as promising.   Fortunately, however, there was lots of work to do in the Upper East and I was reassigned to the Bolgatanga district to work with two long-term volunteers researching market access! This placement came about because as EWB and MoFA were working towards implementing “agriculture as a business.”  Farmers were learning the curriculum and putting it to good use, however, it doesn’t really make sense to give farmers tools to produce a better business plan to improve yields, yet still have restricted access to markets.  So this is where I come in.  Right now, the assumptions are that farmers are producing and that markets exist for the produce, yet an efficient system of linking the farmers to the markets does not.