Chapter 8: the great white hope

here we go again....

so the weather's a bit on the warm side here, as i may have already mentioned to you kids before, but its been progressively getting warmer - a lot warmer. we're coming out of the 'cold season' and entering the 'sweat your ass off' season. imagine lying in bed at night in 104 degree weather, without a fan, and without a breeze. that's what i do now - it’s not all that cool (excuse the pun). i've taken to sleeping outdoors, since occasionally there there's a slight breeze and i don't wake up soaking wet like i do indoors. the bugs aren't friendly, though, and this rate i'm bound to get some kind of insect virus or airborne illness of sorts (i think AIDS is airborne over here in africa by now...) by doing this, but its better than waking up in a waterbed every morning. trust me...

wow, so the lions won the superbowl over there, eh? huzzah for detroit - about time. anyway, the big sports thing around here is also football, but not of the same kind you folks are used to. most of you guys know (hopefully) that football is the name for soccer the rest of the world over, and within the last month they erected an extremely rustic football field right in the middle of the field you can see from my porch (see 'view from brian's front porch' picture). this makes it extremely exhilarating to go and fetch water some days, because one has to cut directly through the field in order to get to the bore hole to fetch. more than once i've been sitting on my porch and watch a stray soccer ball fly through the air and either hit the bucket of water off a woman's head, or rather hit the woman in the head itself, sending water everywhere and children in all directions running for there very lives as pissed off women go running through the fields chasing them with switches. i've got it somewhat easier 'cause when i fetch my water to bathe in or do laundry with or cook with or whatever, i strap a big jug with a lid on it to the back of my bike and quickly dart across the melee to the borehole. this, i find, is much more efficient than risking the gauntlet of flying balls and kamikaze small boys....

by now most of you folks know that kris came over here to visit, and from what i hear she sent out some sort of an e-mail describing everything. therefore, i won't go into too much detail with what transpired - wouldn't want these things to get boring...

we all remember jimmy carter, right? hell, i voted for the guy as i'm sure all you wonderful people did. and what a wonderful person he is as well. by wonderful, i mean really REALLY old. holy crap is that man old. i sat there with my fellow guinea worm volunteers in total amazement that the guy hadn't died in the unmerciful african sun yet, but sure enough there he was - southern drawl and all. he must've stumbled across dick clark or keith richard's' secret to eternal life or something, who knows. anyway, the meeting we were attending was a huge moot of bigwigs the country over who were all there to discuss the horrendous guinea worm epidemic that is gripping the northern region. my district, the west gonja district, is currently in the top three for worst epidemic zones; no one can say we're losers! oh yeah! anyway, so this three hour meeting-thingy only saw ol' jimmy talk for about ten to fifteen minutes. pretty sweet. i passed in and out of consciousness throughout most of the meeting, but when jimmy took the stage all were attentive to the man and his words - not so much as to what he was saying, but moreso trying to figure out what, exactly, he was saying....i could barely understand a word of his shpeel, and from the reaction of the Ghanaians, i don't think they did either. good times....keep an eye out for the picture with me and jimmy and some friends that was taken that glorious day, that'll be in your hands shortly...

and by now i'm sure we've all heard that i, in all my eminent wisdom and glory, have been made an official chief of the dagombas. yes, that's right friends, my people have made me a chief; officially, henceforth and forever, i shall be known as maligunah, or for you at home who don't speak dagbani, "he who brings all good things," or "he who brings solutions to many problems." more or less, it could be summarized with "he who kicks a lot of ass," but i was content with what i got. i'm sankpala's official 'chief of success,' or 'problem-solving chief'...and nowadays whenever there's trouble and we need to gather the chiefs, sub-chiefs, elders, and councilmen together for a meeting or something, i get to sit down on the sacred mats with the big dudes and sit there and pretend like i know what's going on. just like a real politician, how cool is that....

the ceremony itself i won't go to much into detail about, 'cause i'm sure from kris' documentation of it and the pictures you all have gotten you know enough about it already, but for those at home who have no idea what i'm talking about i'll drop a quick synopsis: we were ordained royal smocks, given our royal names, and then the whole village more or less came out and for the following hour or two and there was A LOT of drumming and dancing. a lot of it. most of which is documented in video and in pictures, so that can show you better than my words could i think. it was a good time, though, rest assured - and my old name (which somehow, because Ghanaians have a hard time pronouncing 'brian,' they transformed into 'ibrahim'....so i've been walking around with a muslim name for the last three months. the usual...) throughout the village has since disappeared, and now when i'm met on the street i'm hailed by my chief name, maligunah, and people bow before me. as it well should be....

besides jim-bob and the masses groveling before me, while kris was here we did the whole mole thing and the busua thing. fortunately, the gods smiled upon us and there were no life-threatening encounters to speak of. no vicious, man-eating elephants to speak of; no gun-toting soldiers to speak of; no pirates to speak of....not a bit of it. so, therefore, i'm gonna let the pictures taken speak for themselves when you get them - not much really to explain that i already haven't done before in previous pages....

one thing i do believe i should touch upon is the pure hell that has broken out in my village since i talked with you all last. do you guys remember that guesthouse i was building in sankpala? well, as of january 1st (little did we all know until recently), washington d.c. and the current administration has decided to cut in half peace corps' funding; the worst area or which was the spa grants, i.e. money we use to fund projects that aren't our primary projects (like my guesthouse project). so i find out that ghana's budget for spa grants have been cut by 75%. that's right, 75%. so no guesthouse, says peace corps. 'that's cool,' says i, 'don't worry about. its not like my people haven't already borrowed money from their friends and families to start construction on the house before the real money came in. its not like they already had the window frames and the doors built, ordered the cement and the zinc, and contracted the carpenters, masons, and bricklayers....don't worry about it, no problem...'
(sarcasm)

huge problem. when i left the northern region to head south towards busua and to take kris back to the airport for her flight, little did i know that a week later when i got back into sankpala the guesthouse would already have been built - that despite my pleading for them not to start construction, they went ahead - without the proper funding - and half-constructed the damn thing. now, without the money to plaster it or roof it with large metal, zinc sheets, the guesthouse - which is made up out of mud bricks (as is the custom over here in the bush) - will wash away when the rains come in a month or two. my apcd (assistant peace corps director), john addipa, commanding officer of the wat/san heroes, made a special trip up to my village at my request (or command, as i was irate at the time of hearing about the fund cuts and calling him and probably sounded a bit on the rash side when i talked to him...) and talked to my council and assemblymen. this didn't help things much - at this point not much really could help us except, well, a big pile of money landing in our incompetent, logistically-flawed laps. this, obviously, wasn't happening, so john gave me a stack of grant proposal request forms and nearly ran to his getaway car and fled to accra and to safety. unfortunately, i can't put my name to any of these forms until after my inservice training (i.s.t. - peace corps loves acronyms) in late april/early may, rendering them more or less useless. pretty much, we were left with a half-built mud structure that was going to disintegrate when the rains came in march/april.

luckily, most of the blame for this mess escaped me completely. my village seems to understand that none of this was my fault, thank God. my counterpart (my right-hand man and personal translator, if i haven't already explained that) mohammed issahaku, who was the main voice in pushing for construction of the house before the rains came, was pinned with the most blame. as a result, the public backlash was horrendous. mohammed, over the recent months, has grown in shadiness in all aspects of his dealings with me. lately, he's been taking these classes at a local radio station and not spending enough time with our guinea worm program work. this leaves me to go out with other peace corps volunteers in the region when we teach at local schools, give presentations and water-gathering sites (like dams), or do filter inspections/case searches and actually pull the worm outta people's legs and stuff.

now here's where my boss company, global 2000 (subsidiary for the carter center) comes in.....

my Ghanaian boss, opposed to my peace corps bosses, is a man named sahmed. this guy evidently is fed up with mohammed, who's lack of workmanship and overall lack of character has pushed him closer and closer to a decision on terminating mohammed from his zonal coordinator for guinea worm position that he holds. mohammed, you see, works for the same company (n.g.o.) that i do, so sahmed is his boss as well. sahmed recently informed me that mohammed, who has nearly abandoned all his duties, as both a counterpart and zonal coordinator and is gone for days at a time (which has forced me into fetching my own water and diving heading into dagbani without a translator - which is nerve-racking to say the least), is being sacked. you heard it right, kids at home, mohammed - good ol' shady mcshadywitz - is being replaced. as of march 1st, maligunah is getting a new right-hand man, a new translator, a new counterpart. no news as to who this mystery hero will be as of yet, but i'll keep you all informed. as of right now, mohammed doesn't know he's being canned either - that ought to be nice and awkward for all involved, but its no less than the man deserves for deserting his duties, i guess. as an individual, i like the guy (to an extent), but working with him has been a continuing trial of my patience and energy. it is because of this and many other reasons that sahmed and global 2000 have cast him aside. and so passes mohammed issahaku, son of allahassan najiri....lord of the dance....

well, as you can see, things have been a bit on the hectic side here as of late - time's been flying by, make no mistake about that. good tidings seem to be on the horizon, though; st. patrick's day is the next great peace corps venture, and one that i'm sure will be the main topic of the next installment of news, along with the annual 'disco' party in tamale (where pcvs the country over gather together, along with volunteers from the u.k., france, holland, canada, etc., and dress up in 70's get-ups to go and cause chaos together in the local clubs...should be entertaining enough. i know i'm forgetting some things, but for the life of me i can't remember what they are at the moment, so at any rate they'll have to wait 'til next time.

i hope all is going well for you people back in the states - keep up the good work over there, nicely done indeed. i'll be back soon enough with more tales of debauchery and horror, fret not. until next time, then; i'll talk to you guys later, stay outta trouble...

the one and only,

col. brian j. hough
9th royal northern region donkey cavalry regiment

p.s. i've undertaken a great project that is well underway,; one that i should mention before closing, one that will hopefully be well and ready for the disco party in april. 'operation: mullet' has been launched....