Northern Region Here I Come!

A quick note before diving in… Here is my Tamale, Northern Region mailing address. Best one to reach me at!

Zoe Norcross

P.O. Box 962

Tamale, Northern Region

Ghana, West Africa

[Air Mail]

(Mama Cecilia’s courtyard)

Anyways, Good Morning. I am sitting in Mamma Cecilia’s courtyard (I’m now actually at site and it’s 3 months later, but this is where I began writing this post so I’ll stick with it) enjoying my first true day off in about a month. My morning began at a lazy 6am when I woke with the roosters and the cacophony of birds perched in the cocoa trees right outside my bedroom window. The branches lean over the tin roof, which amplifies the sound, but I truly can’t complain as the branches provide shade to keep my room at a cooler 80 something degree temperature. A hot but not unbearable temperature when you don’t have a fan. I spent the first few hours of my day doing my wash (laundry). After returning south from offsite technical training all of my things were simply filthy. I like to think that it means I was working hard and not just because of the dusty Northern Region air. Now I have finished up with my breakfast (one boiled egg, bread, and bananas… all of the bananas here are quite small, about the size of the finger bananas you might find in the States) and I have sunk into fully enjoying just sitting and watching the animals, plants, and people around me and in this moment for some reason I am finding much joy in watching my clothes dry on the line. Watching the colors change as the sun beats down, seeing the small breeze push the fabrics letting me know the tiny gust is heading my way, and feeling accomplished with my morning’s work on display. It’s interesting to see my wardrobe start to change slightly as I have acquired a couple of shirts and a skirt in Ghanaian print. It seems that everyone here wears bright colors with loud patterns. This style has made its way all throughout Ghana, but is a bit less prevalent in the North. Up there men traditionally will wear more subtle colors in a style called a smock. Anyways as I sit, sipping my cup of powdered instant coffee called Nescafe with powdered milk (I can’t say that its delicious, but its doing the trick in this moment) I feel at piece, happy, nostalgic, and ready to write a blog post. So lets see what stories I can tell.

Language Success and My New Dress

I passed my Dagbani language exam! This was a HUGE relief as it was no small task with many hours spent in and out of class working on getting this new language into my head bit by bit. That night we had a cultural fair with our host families where we got to stop thinking about language for a moment and focus on trying new foods and watching two different dance groups share their local dances. This was also the first event where I had to wear a dress. Mamma Cecilia had a dress made for me and wanted me to wear it for this event. How can you say no to that? You should have seen her face when I tried it on before we left. Her smile glowed brighter and her pride shined through. She said I looked like a real Ghanaian woman. I am not one to wear a dress unless I have to and in this moment I was happy to give her that joy. The dress though did indeed make me feel like I should have been skipping everywhere and tossing daisies from a whicker basket into my wake.

(Golly my chest is pale! My farmers tan is coming in nicely indeed.)

Northern Region Here I Come!

We left for Contact Persons Workshop all eager to finally find out where our site assignments will be. The staff kept us waiting ‘till the morning even after meeting all of the Ghanaian contact persons from each site over dinner that evening. I went table to table looking for the Dagbani speakers. I kept going around saying “Aninwula” (an evening greeting in Dagbani) waiting for someone to know what I was saying. Finally I arrived at a table with 3 men, I said the greeting, and in unison they all responded “Naa”. I had found my people! The next morning the staff drew a giant map of Ghana in the courtyard of the hotel and region by region we were given our assignments. Just as I thought, I was placed in the North! My contact person is a WONDERFUL man named Afa Adams. He is from a small town in the Northern Region a few hours past Tamale. His hometown will be my new home for the next two years. Adams and I spent some time briefly getting to know one another, as he will be my first point of contact in town and in charge of introducing me to people when we arrive. Later I will find out how truly wonderful Adams is. He is kind, honest, and grounded, and well respected by the community. He has become a friend, a counter part for projects, and kind of like family.

They Call Me Laamihi

All trainees and contact persons heading North left bright and early a couple days later for site visit. This journey from south to north took two days for all of us. The first leg was done by bus. Peace Corps was kind and put us on a bus with air conditioning! We were off to Tamale. The trip took about 10+ hours. What a marathon! On the way I had my first experience using a ladies’ urinal (kind of like a tile trough) and worked on my Rubik’s Cube for quite some time (still only one side completed). We got pretty good at being quick to look out the window whenever we stopped to make sure our bags beneath didn’t grow legs and walk off with someone (a traveling tip we were taught before leaving). Finally we made it to Tamale and I was greeted by a kind of heat that I have never experienced in my life. The North is known for being hot and dry. Oh my is that true with temps that went above 100 almost every day I was up there! We stayed over at the Peace Corps sub office in town and carried on to site the next morning.

We drove on a dusty dirt road through small communities separated by dried up farmlands until finally arriving in my town. Right off the bat this town looked so different than where I was staying in the South with Mamma Cecilia. The South was green (lots of trees, grasses, other plants, you name it) with some dust. The North is made up of a redish brown sandy clay like dirt floor and at this time of year there is very little green life to be found. The herds of cows that we passed along the way to town were emaciated and I found out that this happens every year as the hot/dry season grinds on taking a toll on the animals, farms, income, and communities. The houses here are also different from the south with mud walls and either thatch or tin roofs as opposed to the concrete buildings in the South. Most of the living spaces in the communities that we passed are compounds with rooms attached by mud walls with a courtyard in the center. Finally we reached the village and were immediately surrounded by a drove of people who helped carry my bags and brought me to the compound that I will call home. After dropping my things we all moved as a pack with Afa Adams by my side to the Chief’s house to greet him. At the door to a larger circular hut we took off our shoes and went inside. The Chief was sitting on a comfy living room chair placed on a platform with animal hides covering the surface. The community elders, a group of men who have done good for or know the history of their village, sat around the Chief lounging either on the platform or leaning up against it. To the side of this group there was a small pile of hay and a large horse with a bell around its neck, which for some reason made this experience even more surreal. My senses were on overload trying to take in this whole experience. Adams and I squatted down in front of the Chief and elders and did a small golf clap while the chief welcomed us and we continued to say “Naa” the traditional response to his greetings. A short prayer was said and I was presented with four cola nuts to officially welcome me to the community. Afa Adams told me it was customary and polite to take a small bite of one (if I hadn’t it would have been thought that I was insulting the Chief). Man oh man was that cola nut bitter, but I was told to keep chewing. The Chief and elders spoke in Dagbanli (the local way of saying Dagbani) to each other and then concluded that my name should be Laamihi, meaning Thursday born and extra fitting because I also arrived to the village on a Thursday. What a first day!

Site Visit… Strength, Soccer, Heat Rash, and Food

(My room! – cot to the left and bathing area on the right. The last volunteer made a sign with some of the local kids to help welcome me to my new home.)

Site visit is only a few days long, but I was able to see so much. I am the second Peace Corps Volunteer to be placed in this village and it is clear that the woman before me was loved, respected, and part of the community. I feel very lucky to be jumping off from such a positive starting block. Walking around it was very apparent that the women here are some of the strongest and hardest working individuals I have ever encountered. It seems there is no rest for Ghanaian women and girls. Their role in the community is so pivotal and involves raising a family, manual labor, constant movement, fetching water, fetching firewood in the bush, cooking the meals, going to market, washing the clothes, and in my community many even will go to farm, which is typically reserved for men. This is only scratching the surface of what they do. Keep in mind that many of them typically do all of this with a baby on their back who will be breast fed throughout the day without the woman skipping a beat in her daily tasks. I watched women working. I watched their strength. I watched their stamina. And I never heard them complain about a task only occasionally of aches and pains. It’s challenging to convey the kind of strength that they have so I will say it is simply unwavering. They are a force. They are a true force.

The children too are strong (especially the girls). They take part in daily chores and daily scoldings if they slip up in any way. The children run free when they are not doing chores, making their way around the community barefoot or in sandals playing with anything they can get a hold of. The kids in my community love rubber bands and have come up with many games that revolve around them. I watch kids wielding machetes and small blades. I see them in charge of starting and tending fires for cooking or burning trash. And I see children caring for babies. The girls here can carry a baby on their back way better than I ever could. It is a community and everyone takes part. There is something to be said about making the most of what you have. The kids’ ability to be creative for the sake of play and fun is outstanding and something I hope I can instill in my kids some day. Some children like to kick empty bottles, some like to play with rubber bands, some like drawing when they have access to pens or pencils and paper, some like rolling old bicycle tires, some like making balloons out of empty water sachets, some like to read or work on math and English, some like to run around and get into trouble, and everyone likes a ball. The boys love soccer. I got to play with them once during my visit. It was a hot hot late afternoon and I could feel the heat from the ground coming up through the soles of my shoes. The boys played barefoot and as the sun continued to move across the sky the light shifted so that every time they took a step the dust would fly around their feet making it look like they were running on fire. This image has been stuck in my head. It was beautiful.

During site visit, which I will consider round 1… the sun won. I was out too long in the direct heat with no hat my first full day and I ended up with heat rash on my eyelids. Oowee was that itchy! I slept outside each night because of the heat. The first night was uneventful. The second night I was woken up by a frog jumping on me and then had swollen eyelids the next morning from the heat rash. And the third night I slept outside in a dust storm because the wind, although exfoliating, felt nice on my itchy eyelids and sleeping inside seemed fairly unbearable. From now on its big full brimmed hats for me!

(My veranda and foam mattress that Adams lent to me for the first couple of months of service… This is where I slept during site visit)

I had some difficulties with the food and I believe that will be a big challenge throughout service. Especially since it is the dry season now fresh produce is hard to come by. Market happens every six days in a neighboring community and refrigerators don’t seem to be used in my village other than at the one shop in town. This makes food storage challenging indeed. A lot of the ingredients that are used in cooking have been dried, which causes them to loose some of their nutrients. As for protein, there is a woman in town who sells soya at times, which is like tofu, but other than that it looks like I’ll be eating some dried fish in soups and ground nut paste, which is essentially peanut butter. The last volunteer left some protein powder for me, which will be fantastic for after exercising or working in the garden. Speaking of a garden, that is a priority on my to do list so that I will hopefully be able to have fresh produce write outside my door. We’ll see how it goes! Soup and TZ (a corn substance) is the main food here. I really enjoy one soup that is made from bra (a dark leafy green) and pieces of groundnuts. I’m not yet a fan of the rice with fish heads though, but it did allow me to make friends with “small cat” (a kitten) who lives in our compound by feeding it the fish heads.

Hopefully it will catch the mouse that goes into my room from time to time. The rice also is gritty with small rocks and sand that creep into bites like little mouth landmines. I have now figured out that I can chew it enough without actually closing my teeth together. Hopefully that will save me a trip to the dentist. It’s mango season! And luckily they keep fairly well so it is a nice treat to have fresh fruit. The mangos in the North are small and after washing them you can eat the skin. They are quite stringy, but very tasty! I floss my teeth more here than I ever did in the States. My dental hygienist would be proud!

Offsite Technical Training and Learning to Be Forgotten

I wrapped up my site visit and headed off to our offsite technical training location a little ways outside of Tamale still in the Northern Region. During offsite tech we got into the nitty gritty of some of the topics that we might be involved with once at site. We talked about malaria, HIV/AIDS, soak away pits, latrine building, tippy taps for hand washing, nutrition, behavior change communication, mural painting, and quite a bit more. It was great being able to do the hands on aspects of training. We were able to help facilitate the construction of soak away pits in a nearby community, help out with and learn about the latrine building process, and run a Community Lead Total Sanitation Project with a community to shame them into action to make changes around their open defecation practices (using shaming as a tool is not a practice that I enjoy whatsoever, but is common and typically effective here).

During the soak away pit construction day, we had the knowledge and set out into this new community in groups. We were matched with locals to build pits to soak away wastewater typically from bathing or dish washing so that it doesn’t pool on the surface of the ground but instead soaks into the earth. This field experience ended up being pretty powerful for me. I was ready to get to work, get my hands dirty, and dig, but when we started up the local men were the ones doing all of the work. My small group and I were watching and trying to jump in with only few opportunities. I felt like I was useless as I just watched the men work. I removed myself and started working on another physical portion of the project breaking and organizing rocks, which felt great! I was hands-on and helping. I was contributing in making a difference… I then paused realizing that my role here isn’t simply to ‘do’, create, and lead the charge in the foreground, but instead it is to be part of a team, support, and empower. In the long run our goal is to be forgotten and for the knowledge and practices to live in the community with the locals leading the way. I felt a bit ashamed when I realized that I hadn’t even introduced myself and although I have been taught about my role and personally understand what I should go in and do, when it came to putting it to practice the idea of being helpful by jumping in and moving earth overtook the idea behind development in a different way… in a sustainable way. So with that said I stopped what I was doing so that I could build report with our local comrades and actually talk with the people who are benefitting from the soak away pit, the people who should indeed be leading the way for this project, and the people who will be able to teach others about these kinds of solutions when I leave in a few hours. I used as much Dagbani as I could muster up and the men loved it. The dynamics changed right away with more collaborative work side by side and knowledge sharing. It’s amazing what sharing your name with someone can do. By the end we were joking around with one another and the men were on their way to finishing their soak away pit. Fast forward almost a month later, I ran into one of the men I was working with that day and he greeted me by name not because I built him a pit… because I didn’t, but instead because we shared time, shared conversation, worked together, and had a common experience one afternoon.

(Looking a little dirty after soak away pit construction!)

The idea of learning to be forgotten is not one that I had heard about when thinking of development projects abroad. It seems that everyone wants to flag that they have made a difference somewhere and that it was their work that gave something to a community. There is nothing wrong with this, but I have been enjoying the idea that I can be remembered based on the interactions I have and the connections I make and maybe even some funny dance moves (which the kids at my site call America dance… sorry America) and the community can remember the hard work that they personally did and their local champions that guided them through the process of creating change to benefit their own community. Lets see how it goes!

(Making murals at another volunteer’s site during offsite technical training. It was a blast! We had to wash our hands with petrol… gasoline… at the end of the day though to remove the oil paint… my hands smelt so bad for so long!)