Kukuwo

Ok so this is my second attempt to blog, but since my computer has been nothing but difficult this whole trip, it erased my first attempt.

When I get home I'm buying a mac, and that's that.

As I was saying, I realized I haven't blogged about food yet and it is quite relevant in my everyday life. All of Ghana is sustained mainly of starches, which is probably one of the main factors in the group weight changes we have seen.

Fufu: pounded yam, served with soup and meat

Banku: pounded cassava or maize served with Okra soup and meat

Red Red: beans and fried plaintains

Yams and Pepe: fried yams and super spicy sauce. Today my pepe was so hot I had to stop eating it, and my face to my chest was actually in pain, and my eyes watered.

Rice: (fried, plain with sauce, or with beans)

Egg and bread: fried egg on fried bread

Ghanaians enjoy these meals at all times of the day, often even for breakfast. I like them all except egg and bread, which I expelled from my body violently when I got ecoli and now I can't even stand the smell.

Ditto Julie, but with banku.

Ghanaians like to see me try and pound fufu, they find it very amusing. It's pounded with a really long, really heavy piece of wood that you slam over and over into a pile of yams until it becomes a soft gooey ball. It's extremely hard work and I can only do it for about 5 swings and then my little bicep muscles get tuckered out and the people at my compound clap for me. Overall, they appreciate my effort but on the whole it's pretty pathetic in comparison.

Also, you don't chew banku or fufu, and all of the above foods are eaten with your hands. One time I ate fufu with a spoon and I am the butt of that joke to this day. Every woman in our compound (there is one man and one boy and like 10 women) is a force, I swear. They are so badass, but they are also really nice and caring. They help us out and teach us about things that we are ignorant of, and we make them laugh by trying to exist in the world and constantly struggling.

School is going well, our prof/coordinator is a brilliant, radical man. Unfortunately I am having some problems with the direction the program is taking right now, and so I am desperately trying to work out an alternative with the heads of my program. I was aware we would be partaking in mini placements, but I wasn't aware of was what the mini-placements would entail. I assumed it would be like our 3 month placement, shadowing an NGO or a community organization or something. What our assignment really is, is getting into groups and actually going into a rural community and coming up with questions in order to analyze a system that has been put in place, such a school feeding program.

The problem is that we are not skilled or trained on how to know whether or not a programme is in fact being as effective as it can be. We are students, and we are predominantly white, all privileged, all middle-upper class, and we are invading a poor, African community and any conclusions we draw will stay in our classroom. This is not the development that I believe it. It is against my politics and my ethics to do this, and although I can see the benefits that might be drawn my people who are interested in field work, I am not.

I am emailing my prof at Trent and trying to get out of it. Usually I would just suck it up, I mean, I'm uncomfortable here all the time and I just deal. But this makes me so uncomfortable I can't even express. At least if I don't get out of it I can try and change the program for next year. Maybe over something different, something that applies to field work but that doesn't so blatantly take advantage of the groups' overall status.

Beyond privilege and beyond wealth, it comes down to race. I do not want to the white do-gooder going into the poor Black community not even to help, but for the sake of purely selfish information gathering. Information that will be discarded, and in addition to that, any community hopes that might be raised about elevated attention to their cause will of course be dashed. It is frustrating that these concerns were not addressed in class because I am sure I am not the only one with these concerns. The Ghanaians in our group are used to community entry, but none the less see the problematic nature of it. Especially because we are doing it just to know what it's like, not to actually try and mend something that is broken, or some other larger purpose.

On a totally different note, I drink about 5L of water a day. Give or take a litre. I am not messin around here. Also, lately it's been getting really cold at night because of the change of seasons, so I've been wearing a hoodie, pants, and socks to bed under a sleeping bag. Then Chris told me how low the temperature gets at night...

30 degrees Celsius.

So I guess I can say I've acclimatized.