and we're back....
alright, so as you all know i'm a water sanitation/health education volunteer - specifically (supposedly) working with guinea worm eradication. this is loads of fun, as you can probably tell from my previous emails. well, since i talked with all you lovely folks last, i was still in the process of settling into my wigwam of sorts in sankpala. early this month, some of the other pcvs asked me to accompany them into the volta region of eastern ghana to work with remote villages there in order to kill off the guinea worm scourge i have so learned to despise in recent months. i, being the retard that i am, whole-heartedly agree....my moving to site could be kept off for another week, right? i mean, how hard could this educational feild trip be...we're all here having fun anyhow...
nwanta's in the middle of nowhere...literally; a small-ass village in the middle of nowhere. it took us well over six hours down a near-undrivable dirt "road" (even in a goverment vehicle, not some crappy public transport) in order to reach the place, and there we foudn ourselves without electricity or running water for a week. granted, i don't have water or electricity at my site, but i also don't have to help run a hospital/clinic in my village - and this is what i had to do in nwanta. as it turned out, not only was i to paint billboards and murals throughout the village (trying to draw attention to the whole guinea worm epidemic and educate people on preventing the problem), but i was to also teach in the local schools and help out in the hospitals. obviously, since i'm white and american, i'm more or less qualified to be a full-fledged doctor. accordingly, throughout the course of the week, i assisted in delivering babies, holding down patients while they underwent "surgery," helped dress wounds from guinea worm and other infections....you name it. good times, believe me. rest assured, i have a complete new appreciation for all of you who work in the medical feild - that stuff's disgusting (however, i DO challenge you to do so without electricity and running water....its a lot of fun, trust me...)
with guinea worm week over and done with (thank God), i looked forward to a nice relaxing week at site. sankpala was all in commotion shortly before my departure (as i may or may not have said already) because of the sudden and mysterious death of our village chief. *note, this is not the death of the paramount chief who lost his head - the one that was previously mentioned in another emai - this is a different guyl* the new chief hasn't ascended the throne yet, so whenever i have to talk with the chief, i have to talk to the 'old chief' still. "but wait, brian," you say, "isn't he dead already?" yes he is, friends - which makes it all the more weird. its complicated, let's just say that. anyway, my supposed relaxing stay in sankpala was cut short by the feok festival - the annual bolsau festival in the upper east region town of sandema. so even though at the time i was undertaking a couple of new side projects and was trying hard to get the ball rolling with those, i said 'screw it' - bidding all my trusty villagers nawunni ni labsina, i set off with a handful of other pcvs into the u.e.r. where we were to take part in the
festivities for a few days....
okay: do you guys remember slaves? the ones we had in the south back in the day? well, turns out we got those from africa. and, as it were, about 80% of those dudes came from ghana. AND the majority of those were taken from the northern region and upper east and west regions of the country. so this festival that is held in sandema every year is a celebration of when the bolsas (the prominent tribe in the area) got pissed off at the ghanain slave-traders and fought back. they (the bolsas) managed to drive the ghanain slave traders (the gonjas and dagombas for the most part....i made it a point not to speak dagbani while i was in sandema...) out of sandema, out of the northern regions, and into the ashanti regions in the south. here, they combined forces with the ashantis and drove the slave traders all the way to the coast where they slaughtered them all like animals. pretty whoop-ass, right? sure it is....
so for the feok, bolsa men dress up in traditional battle attire (viking-esque helmets made from steer horns and wooden bowls; leather smocks and metal flap-coverings, etc.) and arm themselves with traditional weapons (bows and arrows, short swords, hoe-looking axes, short spears and sheilds, etc.) and dance all over the damn place. all the while, women are running about them, fanning the 'warriors,' to cool them off while they dance, and people everywhere are beating drums and metal clinky thingys. to top all this off, everybody at this festival gets really REALLY drunk. apiteche - a ghanain "gin" (the closest thing i can compare it to) - is a ceremonial drink that everybody is nearly forced to take part in. and seeing how there's this whole warrior mentality prevalent during this celebration - and everyone's hammered - constant fights break out amongst the bolsas. with all this drunken brawling and mayhem, i easily identified the feok festival as the ghanian equivalent to st.patrick's day...
there were about twelve of us pcvs there during the main day of the festivities, and we spent most of the day at a local bar drinking with the locals or standing by the parade grounds where the main war-dances and drumming was going down. we were enjoying the local ghanain drink and cuisine (the best we could with what we were offered, obviously) and taking pictures of all the hooplah and celebrating. morale was high and we were all in high spirits well into the afternoon.
and that's when shit hit the fan....
the district assemblyman for the u.e.r. (an equivalent to a u.s. state governor), who, by the way, was NOT well-liked in sandema or among the bolsa people (not sure why yet), had insulted the villagers and the festival-goers by not only showing up late for the festivities, but for not even having the common courteousy of bringing a p.a. system! the nerve of that guy, right? right. well, the crowd of 'warriors' - intoxicated beyond all reason and armed to the teeth - turn into a vicious mob that soon enough attack the state official and his police escort. the d.a. has his arm broken and his head bashed in (i'm not sure at this point if he was killed or not, i'll check into that...). well, yours truly and two other buddies of mine were caught right at the front of the crowd at the time (as luck would have it) - we were taking pictures when things turned awry and got swept up in the mess of things. fortunately, a few spooked horses cleared a path for us by trampling down some drunken bolsas so we got to take advantage of the newly-established exit route and high-tail it to safety like a bunch of scared little school girls. find a blocker and head for the endzone, that was our mentality at the time. that, and not get killed (after all, white people might be associated with pro-slavery in the eyes of some of these drunken 'warriors.') after awhile, things calmed down to a dull roar and there weren't any more sporadic cannonfire or gunshots heard off in the distance. we (the remaining pcvs - several folks took off out of sandema when all hell broke loose) ended the evening out peacefully enough in a local bar, recounting yet another close brush with death in the beach corps....
well, i'll be back in to update you guys more on the aftermath of all that and the holiday adventure that awaits us. we're having christmas in tamale (where i'm at right now) in the sub-office with other northern pcvs, and then the majority of us are headed down to bulsua beach on the coast for new year'e eve. the party itself has a pirate theme - that's right, a pirate theme - to it so we've all been spending the last few days finishing our costumes and sharpening our swords (the cool thing about third world country is you don't get in trouble if you walk down a public street carrying a cutlass - its like playing war as a kid - except you're 23 and get to do it for two years....as a living). needless to say i'm having a good time. my next installment of news fromt he bush will document our adventure down into the south, and it should be frought with peril (dastardly peril) seeing how our ride across the country isn't concrete at this point and odds are we're gonna have to 'improvise' for most of the way. regardless, i'm looking forward to seeing the rest of our crew that we left behind when my training group split up during the accra-phase of training (my first week in country). 17 of us went into the north, the rest of the 43 stayed in the south - it'll be good seeing all those kids again. and yeah, i'm also looking forward to all the swashbuckling and plundering that will hopefully ensue as well....
i hope you guys enjoy your holidays: have fun with all your snow and your pine trees and your reindeer and your christians and your candy canes and your fireplaces and your mistletoe and all that other crap that i can't enjoy 'cause i'm over here in aids-ville. santa clause, i don't think, comes to ghana - he tends to not get down with that whole third world country thing. that, and there aren't really chimneys abundant around these parts. i tried explaining santa clause and christmas (besides in the biblical sense, which is known around here) to ghanains they think we're all shit-crazy for thinking that some old, fat white guy slides down a fireplace and stocks presents under indoor trees (into socks, etc.), and that he gives you more if you give him biscuits (cookies),and that he flys through the air in a sleigh pulled by eight flying bush-deer (reindeer)....one of which has a nose that glows red and can illuminate its way through fog.....well, you get the point - it does sound pretty friggin' ridiculous. anyway, enjoy your weird-ass holiday. if you need me for anything, i'll be over here in muslim-country sweatin' my ass off; eating donkey, playing doctor/pirate - the usual. i'll talk to you later, kiddies, stay outta troube - until next time....
the one and only,
col. brian j. hough
9th royal northern region donkey cavalry regiment
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