great white hope

10 Nov. 2004

Friends and Family:

Hello. I recently acquired a mobile phone (011.233.24.328.4116 from the US) but overseas calls are very expensive. I will try to call but I've had the most success with text messages. So with the brief time I have here, I will do my best to give y'all a glimpse into my life and what it is like over here.

I just got back from my site where I be living for the next two years. It is called Agou fie [Ah GO fee ay] and it is nestled in between the mountain border of Togo and the mighty Lake Volta. If you're looking at a map it lies between the towns Kpassa and Nkwanta in the eastern most region of Ghana. It is marked 'Bush Area' on our big Peace Corps map and I am the first volunteer to be placed there. Scott is another volunteer in our training group who will be living nearby (~5 mi away). Scott is an adventurous surfer from Torrence, CA and we are stoked to be pioneers for this new area.

To give you an idea of what it looks like, think of the mountaneous tropical regions of Colombia. The last movie I watched in the states was 'Maria full of Grace' and the scenes of her community in Colombia are fairly similar. Except there are no sweat shop factories.. no factories at all. Just a loose collection of mud brick houses with straw roofs.

I am fortunate enough to be livin in a tin roof, concrete brick house. It was built by a cattle rancher and former Attorney General of Ghana, Obet Simwa. There are two rooms, each 12' by 12' and a covered front porch. I have my own Mozambique ventilated lined latrine to crap in ... basically, an outhouse with a 2 ft deep hole in the ground. Sadly, it is more than most large families have. There is a rain gutter connected to a large concrete tank that stores my drinking water. An ingenious design for an area that gets pounded almost daily with rain in the wet season (May - Oct) and not so much in the dry season (Nov. - March).

It's a wonderful home, but unfortunately its home to many small creatures as well. So far, I've seen beetles, black wasps, spiders... a lot of big ass spiders, fireflies, and lizards in my room. I've heard mice and what I believe are bats above my room, in the space between the ceiling and the roof. There's a thumping on the ceiling that wakes me up in the morning. my neighbor Jacob said its most likely bats returning from their nights feast.

Then, there's the mosquitos. After two days at my site I looked like I had chickenpox. I was covered. To top it off, my neighbor Jacob -- headmaster of the primary school -- had malaria. Remarkably, he still went to school and taught that day. Over here, getting malaria is like catching a flu. It slows you down but its not a big deal... that is, if you're African. I've yet to suffer anything beyond intestinal difficulties, fatigue, and mild diarhhea. knock on wood.

The chief of Agou fie, Nana Lucas Sachepou, welcomed with me with a traditional prayer to the ancestors. I could not understand it all since they speak Challa where I'm at. It can be a little disconcerting when you say 'Amen' to a prayer you have absolutely no idea the meaning of. But then they poured the libations, a green bottle of Schnapps... alcohol, now they were speaking my language. Interestingly, when you drink a shot of the liquor, you leave a little bit at the end to pour to the ground, in remembrance of their ancestors.

The drumming and dancing ensued. I watched as the Challa performed their dance, then the Konkomba, and finally the Bassary. There are three tribes that live in and around Agou-fie, comprising close to 800. They all speak different languages but somehow they live together harmoniously. Amazingly, half are under the age of 14. When I spoke with the chief and community elders about the most pressing problems facing their community, they all said children's education was numero uno. There is only *one* teacher, Jacob, for approx. 200 school age children. Primary school 4-6 (like grades 4 - 6) are taught in English so I pledged to assist him in teaching them.

They also lack electricity and sufficient clean water -- one of the village's two hand pump borehole wells is broken. But despite all these problems, the people of Agou-fie are happy people. They laugh all the time, even at funerals. It just goes to show that happiness is a state of mind that can be attained without great wealth.

One more thing I have to share is the rules the chief had for me upon my arrival:
1. don't have sex with women in the bush
2. don't steal our wives
3. don't beat anyone in the bush
The bush is the tall grass that surrounds the village. I have to say it was hard not to laugh when they were telling me this b/c they were deadly serious about this.

I laugh but my skin color and my gender has given me remarkable power and prestige here. I'm still not used to the kids that gawk and stare.. there was a bunch of six kids that sat outside my house just waiting for another glimpse of the white man. Its a little like being a celebrity. I have a new sympathy for the plight of the public figure and the perpetual plague of the paparrazi (as you can see i love alliteration :)

The gender privilege is very obvious here as well. Our peace corps medical nurse, Ivy, told a group of us males that when we stepped foot off the plane in Accra, our stock went up 300%. She said that if we came to Ghana a virgin, we will most likely not leave one! Its true, esp. in the smaller villages. gender roles are much more traditional. women wash, cook, clean and tend to household affairs. Men farm, govern, drive cars, and make the important decisions. I will have much more to say about gender inequality in Ghana, but for now lets just say I don't have a wife but I've been offered one several times.