Strange Cows

Here in Ghana, animals roam the streets freely. The most common animals are goats/sheep (I'm not really sure how to tell the difference; they all look the same to me), but cows are very common as well. Very few of these animals have markings, but supposedly everybody in the community knows who they belong to and only uses their own animals for food. I'm not sure about the protocols dealing with roadkill, but it has to happen fairly often because of people's poor driving and the animals' stupidity.

But back to the cows. The cows here are the strangest looking cows I have ever seen. Most of them have these odd humps on their backs, which seem to be fatty and not bony. I have seen them wobbling back and forth on some of the cows. It is like they are crosses between cows and camels. Many of them also have ripply fringes of loose skin hanging down from their necks, some from their bellies as well. The horns also seem to grow however they feel like: up, down, sideways, curved, etc. There isn't a lot of uniformity. So here is a picture of one of these strange cows for your enjoyment.

TZ

You can see my June 11 entry for more details. The TZ is the white stuff in my hand (as it's mostly gone, you can tell it is the part of the meal that I liked), the meat is Guinea Fowl, and the soup is something weird and gross.

Beginning of June

June 9, 2009
Ever since we got back from Mole I have had a terrible cold. Yesterday I felt a lot worse, but today I have a worse cough. Don’t worry—the symptoms of a cold are not the symptoms for malaria or typhoid, so I’m not dangerously ill. Nothing of note has happened the last couple of days. We are just continuing on with our jobs as usual.
There have been a couple of funny things we have seen that I have wanted to write about, but forgot. Here is one that I remember right now.
Almost all of the taxis around here have things written on the back, probably for good fortune or to send a message or something. The other day when we were driving around, we saw a taxi proclaiming:
God is God
Burger
People here don’t eat burgers, and so I’m not really sure what was meant by that.
And here is another. Today, Zet, our cook, told me that Africa is good for me because I am getting fatter since I’ve been here. I know she meant it as a compliment because here it is good to be fat, so I tried to seem happy to hear that. I thought it was funny that what is a compliment here is an insult at home. I don’t actually think it is true. Apparently she also had told Peter this a few times before, and he (at least he said this to me) thought to himself that I had actually lost weight since being here. Now don’t anybody worry that I’m very concerned about my weight, either gaining or losing. I mostly just thought it was funny.
Another thing. People here call plastic “rubber.” And a plastic bag is also a rubber. It really confused me when I first heard it, because there is really no rubber around. Just plastic.
June 11, 2009
Today I have tried two new Ghanaian foods. The first is a little bean biscuit called kosi or something like that. It is generally eaten for breakfast. It was good, and it was a little bit spicy. The second new food I have tried today is called TZ (pronounced tee-zet). It is basically a cross between mashed potatoes and homemade play-dough that is made out of corn flour. You dip it into soup. It wasn’t the best food I’ve ever eaten, but it was fine. However, the soup we ate with it was AWFUL. It didn’t really have any flavor, and its texture was that of egg whites. I am not sure that there were not raw egg whites mixed in. No way to tell. However, I ate it anyways, just not very much of it. We’ll see if I am sick tomorrow or not. : -)
We also took our first stab at making pizza here. It turned out pretty well. We used Lauren’s dough recipe (see my blog in April if you’re interested) and some canned spaghetti sauce somebody left here. We will definitely be making it again. It was nice to have food that was like home.
Felicia, one of our Ghanaian friends/employees, came over later in the evening and we told her we had eaten pizza for dinner. She thought it was very funny and asked me why we had a food that was named after Peter, or had we eaten him for dinner. (She pronounces his name Peetah). We realized that people here pronounce pizza “piza” and with the “t” sound in our pronunciation, she thought we ate “Peetah” for dinner.

June 13, 2009
I’m happy to report that I did not get sick from any of the food. In fact, I have not been sick at all except for the cold I had earlier this week. It has been a blessing.
The past couple of days I have been thinking about all of the things I miss about home. It’s been super boring here, and yesterday I didn’t leave the house at all. So here is my list:
1. Raw vegetables and salads. We can’t eat them here unless they are rinsed in bleach first, and lettuce is never safe to eat.
2. Milk products. At home, I eat/drink TONS of milk products, and here, people don’t. They’re hard to find, expensive, and for the most part not very good.
3. Having a job that I like. My job here is boring and stressful. The past couple of days have been particularly boring and stressful.
4. Having a job where I get paid.
5. People who speak American English, and who understand it.
6. Not being a foreigner.
7. Variety in food.
8. Variety in clothing (I’ve started to get sick of the clothes I brought.)
9. Reliable electricity. It is SO frustrating to have the power go out about once per day on average. It’s especially bad if it goes out multiple times in one day.
10. Reliable internet.
11. Fast internet.
12. Family and Friends. You deserve to be at the top of this list.
13. Not having to discuss/listen to business discussions 24/7. There is never a break from work.
14. Weekends.
15. Not having to count money every day.
16. Not having people come ask me for money every day (this is for my job, not beggars. I don’t see beggars every day, because I don’t leave the house every day. But as the “accountant and disburser/collector of funds”, I am perpetually being asked for money).
17. Good roads.
18. Traffic laws that are predictable and generally obeyed.
19. Being in a place where terrible diseases are not lurking around every corner.
20. Being in a place without mosquitoes. (Hurray for the desert!)
21. Mountains.
22. Being able to be cold or warm whenever I want.
23. Car air conditioning.
24. Grocery stores.
25. Ice cream.
26. Citrus fruit. It’s not common here, and the oranges I have eaten have been awful.
27. Soft mattresses.
28. Shower heads that are fixed to the wall and higher than my head.
29. Plumbing that doesn’t back the septic tank smell into the shower on a regular basis (or ever).
30. Movies.
31. Mexican food.
32. Good beef.
33. Cooking my own food.
34. Pandora.
35. Comics.
36. Pizza.
To compliment this homesick list, here are a few things that I love about being here.
1. The fruit here is INCREDIBLE. Particularly the bananas, mangoes, and pineapples. Best I’ve ever tasted.
2. New experiences.
3. New people.
4. Learning about another culture.
5. Visiting villages.
6. African children.
7. African music.
8. African fabrics.
9. Seeing the women who are working on this business succeed.
10. New money. It’s kind of fun.
11. Humidity. Honestly, I really like it.
12. I generally have more free time here, which is sometimes nice.
13. I always have something to write on the blog about.
14. Fun things to photograph.
15. Interesting animals.
16. Interesting plants.
17. Hard, heavy rainfall.
18. Enormous mud puddles. They’re fun to look at. They’re also awful for driving and for the mosquitoes, but if you are inside they are nice.
19. Waking up every morning and having breakfast already cooked.
20. Not washing dishes.
21. Stellar laundry detergent.
22. Sleeping 10+ hours every night. (I go to sleep really early here. It’s dark by 6PM.)
23. Appreciating things I used to take for granted.
24. Learning a new language. I only know a few words so far, but I will learn more before I leave I’m sure.

June 14, 2009
Today I want to write about Ghanaian phone manners. Pretty much everybody here has cell phones. Even in villages with no electricity, people have cell phones. About once a week they walk to a place with electricity to charge their phone. There is almost no situation that is more important than answering your phone. If you are in the middle of a meeting or a conversation, or just about anything else, a Ghanaian will answer his phone before continuing it. Our employees often make exceptions to this when they are talking to/meeting with us, probably because one of the bosses complained and told them it was rude.
It also appears that if you have a Ghanaian’s phone number and you are friends, they expect you to call frequently and for no reason at all, except to touch base. I discovered this from two experiences. First, a few days ago a girl who works at our store gave me her phone number so we could coordinate rides from the store to the Palace. I ended up not needing to call her, and so I never did. Yesterday, she chided me for not calling her. I was surprised, because after the rides were coordinated (without the use of cell phones) I really didn’t have another reason for contacting her. Secondly, this morning Fairuza called me. She asked how I was, and said, “I hope I will see you tomorrow,” and then said goodbye. The conversation was probably under 30 seconds long. I would really never consider calling somebody for that. I probably have terrible Ghanaian phone manners, but I don’t plan to change.

African Outfit #2

I think the headwraps look good on African women, but I think mine makes me look like a cancer patient. Which is what Peter lovingly calls me if I wear it.

Peter also has some African outfits that I will photograph whenever he decides to wear them.

Larabanga Mosque

This is the mosque at Larabanga. The legend of its creation goes something like this: There was an important Muslim man who was traveling (sometime around the early 1400s, but nobody knows for sure), and he decided to throw his spear and wherever it landed he would build a settlement. His spear landed on the site of this mosque, and its foundations were already built, presumably by Allah who wanted him to stay there. He built the mosque, and when he died they buried him underneath the tree you see in the left of the picture. Every year, the villagers make a special soup with the leaves from the burial tree and everybody has to eat it.

Elephants

Mole Park

June 6, 2009
This morning we drove to visit Mole (pronounced MOW-lay) National Park, a wildlife preserve. It was a beautiful morning for a drive—overcast and not too hot. The cars here do not have air conditioning, so you really appreciate days that are overcast. We drove over the White Volta on our way. It is the first river I have seen here, and it was pretty. I would never go in the water for fear of getting Guinea Worm, but it was nice to look at. The scenery along the way and once we got to Mole was very nice, much more lush than near Tamale although it isn’t very far away. It also seemed to be a bit more humid, but that could have been my imagination.
Once we hit the turnoff for the 86 kilometer road to Mole National Park, the drive became very unpleasant. The road is never good, but it was especially bad because it rained the night before. The water washed away the soil so the entire road was covered in bumps not unlike a rumble strip next to the freeway. There were some parts of the road that were smoother than others, so we would try very hard to drive in those parts of the road. The road itself was raised a couple of feet and there was about a car-width of flat dirt space on either side. These flat parts down off the road were usually the best places to drive, when they weren’t full of puddles. The drive reminded me of being in an inner tube behind a boat on VERY choppy water. You bounce all the time, sometimes you go over the wake, or back inside, and you hold on for dear life and hope you don’t tip over.
I’m pretty sure the road should have a warning sign not to take infants on it, because the shaking would probably damage their brains.
It took us three to four hours to get through the road. We stopped a few times to play Frisbee and walk around to have a break from the shaking.
We also stopped right before we got to the park at a small town called Larabanga. Our tour book talked about the oldest mosque in Ghana, and we thought it would be fun to see it. We happened upon it by chance—we took a wrong turn, and as we were turning around we noticed we were right next to the mosque. It has pretty interesting architecture, although it is not the only building of its kind in Ghana. However, I did not really enjoy our stop in Larabanga. The tour book warned that the people of Larabanga all accost you and ask you for money, and it was exactly right. Everybody asked our names, and then would start little conversations with you where they would tell you a story about how their life was hard and ask you to donate money to their cause. I just felt very defensive the whole time I was there, and the mosque wasn’t really cool enough to justify the uncomfortableness of being swarmed by well-practiced beggars. So if you ever come to Mole, don’t bother stopping in Larabanga.
The Mole Park Motel, or whatever it was called, was actually very nice. It had a pool, where we spent the majority of our time, and I felt very relaxed. There is only one (public) pool in Tamale and it is always very crowded, so I will probably never go swimming there. The motel is on the edge of a cliff and overlooks two watering holes. It was fun to look over the beautiful scenery and see all the animals. There are warthogs ALL over the place at Mole. We got very close to many of them. I learned two things about them—first, they kneel down on their front knees when they are eating, which was really fun to watch, and second, when they run they look EXACTLY like Puumbaa in the Lion King. I guess the Disney animators did their homework about how warthogs run. It seems like there might be a scene where Puumbaa kneels down as well. Warthogs and antelopes were the only animals we saw today.

June 7, 2009
This morning we woke up VERY early—5:15 was when our alarm went off. Neither one of us slept well, because the air conditioner would turn itself off periodically and every time it did we both thought the power had gone off (which it hadn’t) and woke up. Even so, we got out of bed and went down to the observation deck to watch the animals. We wanted to arrange to go on a walking safari at 6:00, but they wouldn’t let us go before 7. About 6:30 was when we saw the most animals from the observation deck, mostly different kinds of antelope running all over the place. It was really fun to watch.
Our walking safari turned out to be a very nice hike through the park. We were paired with a group of four students volunteering with an NGO that helps people to get cataract surgery in Tamale. The first animals we saw (apart from the warthogs) were baboons. They like to hang out near the staff quarters, and our guide told us that if the staff don’t lock their doors the baboons will get in and eat their food. There were a couple of baby baboons that were fun to watch. We also saw one baboon carrying a different kind of monkey as if it had been a baby, which I found very interesting.
The landscape was beautiful and it was really fun to hike around and look for animals. The big animal which everyone wanted to see of course was the elephants. Eventually, we found about five elephants sitting in a watering hole and having a bath. They would spray themselves with water every few seconds or so. I would say we were about 20 feet away from them, so we were very close. I wished we could have seen some baby elephants too, but our guide told us that they stay in the interior of the park with their mothers and only the males venture out to the edges of the park (at least in the rainy season, when water is plentiful).
There are lions in the park, but they are most active at night and it is rare to see them. Night is when they hunt for food. After hearing this, I better understood the song “the Lion Sleeps Tonight.” You hope the lion is sleeping at night and so it isn’t going to come and eat you, or your animals.
After we saw the elephants, we headed back up the hill to the motel. We swam in the pool until lunch, and then we packed up to head home. While we were swimming, a baboon with a baby came right over the short wall and was looking at us, which was fun to see.
We both got our first sunburns of the trip while we were swimming, despite our sunscreen.
Because it didn’t rain at all while we were in the park, the divots in the road had evened out a little and the drive back was not as bad as the drive in. It was still VERY bumpy and still not an experience I am anxious to have again, but it was better.
We ate dinner at our friend Babs’ house. He is the owner of the hotel where we are staying. They made us Guinea Fowl, yam pottage, a blackeyed pea stew, a rice dish, plain rice with a vegetable stew, and fried yams and fried plantains. Although I think yams/sweet potatoes in the US are disgusting, I like them here. They are not sweet, and they are white. However, every single one of the dishes they served (except obviously the guinea fowl, fried yams, and fried plantains) had fish as one of the ingredients, which I determined because I could see little shiny fish scales in the food. It all tasted good, but being a person who does not like fish very much and thinks fish scales are pretty horrible to look at, it was hard for me to eat the food. I was also afraid of finding fish bones. However, I appreciated their hospitality and it was fun to try new dishes.