just in case you were curious, africa is still hot as hell and full of black people....
with that said, let me tell you a little about what's been going on this last month. long story short, brian's been doing lots and lots of traveling. mpaha, nvrango, bolgatanga, tamale, etc. anyway, i'll start off with telling you the latest news in sankpala, my home sweet home and the dagomba village that i rule over as chief (with an iron fist, of course...)
the thermometer outside this internet cafe that i'm at right now (in tamale) says 49 degrees celsius. i don't know what that means in english, i'll let you guys at home to do the converting, but i guarantee you its hot as hell. fortunately, the rains are beginning to set in - which is a sign that the 'hot season' is closing out and sooner or later the 'rainy season' will start. unfortunately, we've only gotten a few rains lately - just enough to increase the humidity on top of this blistering heat, so its been even more unbearable the last couple of weeks. i've got heat rash on my forearms and fainted the other day while doing filter inspections in sankpala, but every time it rains it drops down to at least 80 or so (at least it feels like that 'cause of all the winds...when it rains here its like a tsunami or whatever its called, its great). the worst thing about the rain here, besides the humidity, is the porch problem i've been having. each time we have a storm in sankpala, every last goat and/or sheep in sankpala makes a fast dash for the white man's porch in order to find shelter. so, consequently, every morning i wake up to find what looks like a truck full of milkduds all over my two porches. turns out farm animals aren't big into thunderstorms. in order to stem this animal defecation problem, brett's going to help me cement some hinged wooden swing-gates into place to keep them from entering my property. that will truly be a Godsend. oh yeah, and i'm finally getting furniture too.....
the work itself is going well, but lately global 2000 has had me set up a painting studio in tamale in order to start working on billboards and murals and flip charts for the guinea worm eradication program (on top of the health education in schools, the filter distributing, the market stints, etc.). this i don't mind so much, 'cause it sure beats biking twenty km to different villages passing out filters in this heat every day (which is what i do these days...). i'm thinking of moving the studio to the summer hut in the sub-office's backyard so i can at least be around other white people when they're passing through so i can hang out with people (and have a stereo).
speaking of the tamale sub-office, guess who got to try on the daddy pants last week and become peace corps volunteer leader for the north? that's right, yours truly: becca (our current pcvl) had to travel to accra for business, so she elected me to watch the office in her absence. third-in-command of peace corps ghana: this job gave me innumerable powers, the greatest of which, by the way, was the office spending money, which i used to buy an imitation circa-1985 nintendo video game system for the office. it really sucks, but it has 30 games built into it; cheap rip-offs of super mario bros., hogan's alley, fifa soccer, etc. they're the same games, but the colors suck and the music's different. but hey, at least now we have video games at the office....and the kids here have worshipped me for it. i almost burned down the summer hut, though, when we decided to have a bonfire in order to clear out some dead brush lying in the backyard, but we were quick thinkers and put it out efficiently so that when becca came back she didn't even notice. booya....
they're nominating a new pcvl in june, and so far the three current pcvs running for the position all suck. they're mostly second year volunteers, and they'd most likely turn what we have going on in that office to a work environment of sorts. this simply won't do, so a few pcvs and i nominated our own candidate pcv (a little against his will) to apply for the position. now, this isn't really an election or anything, its an appointed position given by the administration down in accra, but we decided that we'd launch a political campaign anyway. we've been printing off fictional newsletters, fliers, and are about to undergo t-shirt production. we've also launched a quite successful smear campaign against the other candidates. so far only one has dropped out, but we're confident come 'election time' our man will bring the votes in....
this brings me to another political topic. okay, i went up to bolgatanga - my old training stomping ground - on sunday with another volunteer in order to see the old sites, visit our old homestays, and hit up the old drinking spots throughout town. unfortunately, i didn't get a chance to see my family, but i did get to see plenty of the old barhands and drinking companions we left behind - who surprisingly enough remembered us by name. fun times. anyway, on the ride back from bolgatanga to tamale, just as we were reaching the outskirts of tamale, our tro was caught up in a motorcade. but not just any motorcade, mind you, but an new patriotic party (npp) motorcade.
first of all, what makes this such a deal is the fact that tamale itself is the very heart of the npp's biggest political rival, the national democratic committee (ndc). the two absolutely hate each other. ever since the fourth republic's last national election (its first ever 'free election,' in which a president took office without throwing a coup of any kind) tamale has been in a state of emergency. all pcvs were evacuated out of the northern regions because of the riots and violence back in the early 1990s, and up until a month or so before i came here the curfew was at 6pm, when darkness falls here (now its at midnight). every year or so we have severe riots here in tamale and all the pcvs are consolidated to a rendezvous point in order to prepare us for an evacuation, but it usually never happens. they blame this violence publicly on the gonja/dagomba dispute, but its really a npp/ndc thing.
anyway, this brings us back to the motorcade, in which me and this other pcv were in the wrong place at the wrong time. i noticed in horror that our thousand-strong parade of npp supporters and fanatics were headed straight into the heart of tamale for a rally. i also noticed that the ndc supporters were prepared for their arrival and had lined the streets with their own fanatics. at first things were only mildly alarming; people shouted obscenities and were threatening the people in the passing cars and wagons. then things began to get thrown. our poor, innocent, bolga-born tro was mistaken for an npp car and was pelted with objects thrown from the streetsides, and i was certain that we were done in for. thankfully, soldiers began to take to the streets and sooner or later what could have been a full-fledged riot was brought to a standstill.
i was having a political conversation at a local Ghanaian restaurant later that day with a few Ghanaians and pcvs, talking about the day's transgressions and the future of ghana politically. the national 'free' election will be held on december 7th this year, and already people are expecting the worst. last year, the ndc claimed that the npp had stolen the election, and that if they were to win again this year serious hell was to pay. one of the Ghanaians there told me, "war is politics with bloodshed, and politics is war without bloodshed." in ghana's case, at any rate, i think that guy's on to something....
on a lighter note, before my stint as pcvl in tamale and before my bolgatanga adventure, i also spent some time in nvrango. there was a 'barbecue' up there at an old spillway by a reservoir, and six or seven of us pcvs met up with some Ghanaians there that one of the guys worked with. the beer was free and we got to eat plenty of meat as well: donkey, ostrich, goat, bush rat, dog, monkey, and cat. all of it was really really good, except for the cat....the cat was actually pretty disgusting, but from what i hear it was just really poorly prepared cat that time and that usually cat's pretty damn good. i'll have to let you guys know later when i try cat again whether or not that's a factual statement.
on april 9th, the guinea worm volunteers (and dan, from mole, who isn't a guinea worm pcv but wanted to come along for the ride anyway) traveled to lauren's site in mpaha for a guinea worm market education day. this, to me, was a ridiculous idea from the start, but i was outvoted so along i went to mpaha - about an hour and a half away down a rickety dirt road - towards certain and inevitable doom. we were planning on having a carnival of sorts during mpaha's weekly market day, that way our coverage would be greater and we'd reach more people. we had 'pin-the-guinea-worm-on-lisa-fiala' (who failed to show up, so we had to make her an example for future traitors), that bozo the clown game where you throw the ping-pong ball into a series of buckets in order to win prizes, face painting, and several other games i don't really feel like getting into right now.
now, muslims really are a clean people. before they pray, they clean themselves very ritualistically and thoroughly. hence, therefore, the public outrage that was created when dan and i began painting little mpaha children throughout the day. we started off innocently enough painting children's faces with suns and flowers and little kiddy crap like that, once and awhile throwing in a guinea worm reference or two. however, as the day progressed, we began to get bored (or creative, depending on how you look at it...), and began to paint on their starving, swollen bellies instead (more surface room to paint on there...). "i *heart* clare, mi" and "i choked linda lovelace" were among the messages that began to appear on children throughout the village market, and soon enough we were asked to stop painting the little gonja children. it was well worth it, though, and you'll see what i mean when i send the pictures of that day stateside - they're hilarious....
as you can tell, i'm still working hard over here, enjoying the pleasant weather and the fine cuisine. hopefully everything over there is going equally well for all of you. congratulations to those of you graduating this year, and congratulations of you out there or are still fighting your way through school. i hope your super DUPER senior year at school will be just as fun as the previous five (or six). i know i'm leaving a lot out of this email...but for the life of me i can't remember what else happened this week. a lot, i know, that's for sure....i've been keeping busy. anyway, if i remember i'll throw it in along with the next installment of groundbreaking news from me. well, i gotta go and eat some fufu and groundnut soup and get some more heatrash....that's what i do for fun around here. stay outta trouble, kids at home.....until next time.....
the one and only,
col. brian j. hough
9th royal northern region donkey cavalry regiment
chief of dagombas
p.s. operation: mullet is coming along splendidly.....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment