hey kids, long time....
street-core protesting and political demonstration has, once again, thrown tamale into a constant state of emergency. party rallies and rioting ensue almost daily. the national elections are being held on december 7th, so each day more and more rallying by both major parties (the incumbent, southern-based n.p.p. and the popular-only-in-the-north n.d.c.) are happening in the streets. yesterday alone, one guy was killed and thirty or so people ended up in the hospital, after lt. jerry rawlings - founder of the n.d.c. party and the former president who staged a successful coup back in '79 and ruled ghana for twenty years or so - was in town, and since tamale is the n.d.c. headquarters, everybody went shit-crazy.
now, don't you fret about my safety: although this is truly a cause for alarm, peace corps is evacuating everyone from the tamale area and all volunteers are being put on a 'code orange' state of alert - "standfast." this means you're to stay at your site until further notice, which is - as of right now - until the 12th of december. if shit hits the fan and revolution is inevitable, then i'll be forced down to techimon at our rendezvous point, and then to accra to fly back home to the states. they wanted me to leave sankpala, seeing how i live right outside the 'hot-zone,' but i've got way too much work to do in the next two weeks before i come home to leave everything and just sit on my ass at another pcv's crappy site, doing nothing. besides, the people of sankpala are all too lazy to get all riled up and riot.....they'd rather sleep or pray or something all day long....
site has, really, been pretty busy these last two months.....kind of. at first, back in the first week of october, brett (my neighbor in kusawgu) and i trained the four new guinea worm volunteers. that was a task. brett's a pretty hardworking volunteer, and he's got that boy scout mentality and sense of work ethic. i tend to be a bit on the lethargic side, so between the two of us the newbies got a good perspective on what guinea worm pcvs are really all about. they followed brett and i around kusawgu and sankpala as we taught at schools, did case searches and filter inspections, and showed them all of our secondary projects that we were working on in our communities. brett has a farm and a library he's working on, so they were a little overwhelmed by his zealous nonstop energy and passion for his work, so i think when i explained that my secondary project encompassed reading on my porch or sleeping that they all relaxed a bit. that was nearly two months ago, and since then we've already lost one of those new pcvs....so now we only have three new guinea wormers coming in, and that kinda sucks 'cause that means i'll have to work harder.....and i don't like that so much.....
after the guinea wormer pcts left to continue their training down south in techimon (brong-ahafo region), brett took a three week vacation back to the states, and i was forced to facilitate a bike project that him and i had been working since february....all by myself. this didn't please me. we ordered forty used american mountain bikes for kusawgu and sankpala; twenty people from each village paid 250,000 cedis....which is a pretty fair price for a bike even here, but still - getting that kind of money out of bush-villagers like ours is like pulling teeth. it took seven months of looking up people and convincing them to pay up in order to get forty signatures and all the money up and around, and still things went awry when it came down to the actual bike workshop week. four bike reps (two americans and two Ghanians) came up from accra on oct.24th, and stayed until the 28th at the kusawgu health post. evidently, brett's counterpart - mr.saibu alhassan - was supposed to accommodate their lodging and meals and all that, but for some reason or another he 'forgot' to do this....so when they arrived at 8pm in kusawgu, they were without food and lodging. i'll save you the details of this tale, actually, 'cause it was probably the most hectic five days of my peace corps service and by far the most stressful, and i could devote an entire 'chapter' to this debacle. anyway. i had to bike back and forth between kusawgu nearly two or three times a day (and that's not a short trek, either....i hate exercise almost as much as i hate work....or goats), making sure everything and everyone was fine, and overseeing the paying and distributing of the bikes, etc etc.. in the end, surprisingly enough, we managed to pull the whole shebang off without too many problems. i mean, there were a few fights and a lot of money was missing somehow, but in the end i think most of the villagers were happy with what they got....and i was happy to be done with it all. i don't plan on ordering bikes again - especially not during Ramadan.
yeah, that's right, friends - this workshop went down during Ramadan (i don't know how to spell this....). that made things all the more complicated, and i'll tell ya why: for those of you unfamiliar with islam, this a month-long fasting which goes in sync with the cycle of the moon (or something along the lines). generally, everyone over the age of 12 doesn't eat or drink from dawn 'til dusk. that means that everyone gorges themselves at 5am (very loudly, might i add....and this is usually when yours truly is still trying to sleep...), before the sun rises, and don't eat or even drink water until 6:30pm or so, when the sun sets. how they manage to do this, i have no idea. the food issue i know i could hack - during Ramadan, the heat was terrible....seeing how the rains had stopped and the winds of harmattan hadn't started yet. 110's usually. i don't have an appetite when its that damn hot out. i couldn't go without water in such heat, though - but somehow everyone manages to do it. the biggest problem with Ramadan is that since there's no food or water to be had during the day, everyone just kinda sits around on their ass in the shade and tries to conserve energy. this, consequently, means that i don't work as much 'cause no one has the energy to do much of anything. at the end of this fasting, there is a huge celebration - in comparison to maybe christmas or easter, in terms of EVERYTHING being closed - in which everyone parties and feasts and visits one another. this day is called sallah (again, not sure how to spell that), and i was in tamale for it - and was, obviously, stranded at the office for three days 'cause not even the tro-tros were running. i couldn't even get back to my site, which was ridiculous. but, then again, i'm retarded and knew better and should've planned for something like that to happen. if it’s one thing i'm learning the hard way over here, its that it’s very foolish indeed to underestimate the problematic atmosphere of tamale....you never really know what kind of a mess you're going to find yourself in......
probably the greatest news i have out of the last two months was my eminent and complete victory in the war against the goats. that's right, kids - i prevailed. my landlord built a shoddy fence in order to dry out his kesava and maize and keep the animals out, and i benefitted accordingly. the first time we had a downpour (again, its been about two months or so since the last major rains....) after the fence was erected, i sat at my porch - laughing jovially - as the goats ran towards my porches for cover and found themselves thwarted by the chain-link wall. that was a tearful moment, as you can imagine after the four or five month battle i've waged against those animals throughout the rainy seasons. so yeah, as far as the sheep and goats are concerned, my life is wonderful - no shit and urine on the front porch and no more restless nights of sleeping with loud farm animals right outside my bedroom window. peace at last.
halloween this year was at bolgatanga - where i had undergone training a year ago - at a really nice hotel called the sands. i was to d.j. this party, but they didn't have the right cords to plug in the sound systems, so we were forced to listen to Ghanian ‘highlife’ music during dinner and that 'downtime' that takes place after the dinner but before everybody starts partying hard. this wasn't nearly as good as what we could've had, but it was better than nothing. i didn't really have a costume - i'd say about half of the forty or fifty pcvs present dressed up - i threw a turban on, that's about it - felt kinda lazy this year. besides, its not like we have 'halloween' or costume shops in abundance over here in west africa. come on. around 10pm or so we rolled into the old 'bar district' - the legendary commercial street that had been our stomping ground during those early months of training, long long ago - and saw quite a few old faces and friends. it was a good night and we had a blast causing mischief all over that place....as we have over the last year, every time we can help it....
thanksgiving, also, was fun - but not as riotous as halloween by a long shot. i think we had fifteen pcvs at the tamale sub-office, and most of them were girls who (thank God) could cook well. like i've said many times before, i can't cook at all - and so therefore i was banned from the kitchen throughout the day leading up to the meal. that was fine with me.....so the three of us guys who were present only had to do the dishes, which rocked. apple and pumpkin pies, biscuits, cornbread, meat dishes, mashed potatoes and gravy.....more or less everything you guys probably had back home in the state, but on a much humbler level i'm sure. it was all right, though: mostly everybody was in town that night 'cause early the following morning was the 'swear-in' celebration for the newbies: when the swear the peace corps oath and cease to be trainees....becoming actual volunteers. i slept in late and missed their formal celebration - big surprise - but we all, new and veteran alike, celebrated later that night to epic proportions. so my spur-of-the-moment trek down and up to techimon was not in vain by any means.....
i've contracted malaria a third time, about a month ago, and possibly have it again right now. not sure what it is that attracts these little bastard moquistoes to me, but whatever it is they sure do love it 'cause i've been getting eaten alive. that, and i'm taking a daily malaria pill - doxycycline - instead of the weekly claw-your-face-in-a-hallucenegetic-state-of-dream-inducing pill, mephloquine. taking pills daily is a pain in the ass (my hat's off to you ladies who manage to successfully keep up with things like birth control), and i frequently am saying to myself, 'shit, i haven't taken doxycycline in a couple weeks....whoops...' actually, that's probably why i've been getting sick. huh. yeah, i suppose i'm a dumb ass. i'll have to work on this...
remember that pcv i replaced in sankpala, jennifer martin? well, before she had left for home she had sent out several boxes of books for sankpala's school. these books finally arrived to tamale, addressed to 'the pcv of sankpala,' and i took and seized the opportunity to make myself look even grander in the people of sankpala's eyes. first guinea worm work and forest reserve work (i'll get to this in a sec), then the delivery of the grand ol' bikes and bike tools, and now books for the children. yes, for the children. anyway, as i was going through these boxes with a few of the men from the village, i stumbled across a particular storybook that made me shout out in surprise and astonishment. hoi! of course, everyone was curious as to my sudden exasperation, and i quickly explained myself. the book in question was none other than one of the many dinosaur books my brother chris and i had read to us almost every single night as kids. the EXACT same book. i couldn't believe it: first, the EXACT same algebra book i had my junior year at clare high school (stumbled across that one in nvrango), and now this.
i energetically went through the book with the men, trying to explain what dinosaurs were to these dumbfounded dagombas. they at fist assumed that these beasts must live in america or something, but i informed them that - nay - these dinosaurs lived all over the world, even in africa. they, in turn, informed me that no such thing existed in ghana. i, in response, told them that they didn't really live in ghana, but they USED to....over 65 million years ago. 65 million years ago didn't really sink in with these guys - i might as well of said a 500 hundred bazillion years ago or something - so, instead, i said that God (Allah, whatever) made dinosaurs before he created man, and they had all been killed off before man walked the earth. before man, they said? whatever, maliguna......they weren't buying this thing, especially the part about them being bigger than elephants - NOTHING is bigger than an elephant, maliguna, nothing.
then they saw the size-comparison picture, depicting a tyrannosaurus, brachiosaurus, and a triceratops alongside a man, a chicken (appropriately enough), and (thank God) and elephant.
holy shit.
it never ceases to amaze me the power of an illustration can have on a Ghanian. even though these were just simple illustrations in a children's book, they took it at face value. i mean, come on - if its in a book, it HAS to be factual. the calamity and uproar that ensued amongst these men quickly spread throughout the women and children and other men of sankpala. the place was in a state of fervor over this book. what glorious and powerful beasts, these dinosaurs! think of how much meat you could cut off a brontosaurus! *yes, i'm aware that the official name for 'brontosaurus' is 'apatosaurus,' but i refuse to call it by that name.....and those of you who do should be damned well ashamed of yourselves*. anyway, in closing - sankpala has gone crazy over dinosaurs, and if any of you back there in the states are sitting on a collection of old dinosaur books (preferably illustrated), PLEASE - for the love of God - send them my way....
if someone would have told the young brian hough in his elementary school years that he would single-handedly bring dinosaurs to a people that had never known - or even imagined - such beasts, i think that he would have been bouncing off the walls in a state very much like the state i found myself in when i hurriedly and passionately explained to those men what dinosaurs were all about under that shade tree those three weeks ago. for, after all, that little kid in me that was obsessed with dinosaurs never really died.....i don't think it does for any kid (usually among boys, at least....dinosaurs i guess are more of a guy thing, ladies...). it lies dormant, perhaps, but it never dies - and i've had the chance to resort back to conversations i have had plenty of times with friends and brothers back when i was a child....'no way, alhassan, a t-rex could TOTALLY take a triceratops...anyday.' 'maliguna, are you sure? look at those horns, they are bigger than the horns of a steer.' dear God, its a blessing....
well, i'm running out of time so i'm gonna have to cut this off short. there was much more to tell, especially concerning the forest reserve and more on this political frenzy, so if i survive the next two weeks or so, i'll be able to send out another mass email - an epilogue, so to speak, for my first completed year of service....the end of part 1. because of the political situation and the rioting and the standfast and all of that, i have to fly straight out of tamale to accra - an hour-long flight - then quickly swing by our headquarters in accra in order to pick up some bags and fill out some paperwork, then i head back to the accra airport and fly out for home. i've got a two hour layover in amsterdam, then its straight to detroit. i fly in on the 16th of december, and will be back in the good ol' u.s. of a. until january 15th. during that month, you can reach me at this email address or call me at my dad's or my mom's house. if you don't have the number, email me. its gonna be weird coming back after all this time - america and west africa are somehow different, culturally-speaking - so the acclimation back into american culture may take a few weeks. please don't make fun of me....for i know i'm gonna act like a retard, in your eyes, quite often, due to all the little cultural quirks i've acquired over the last 14 months. bare with me on that. oh yeah, and before i forget, if you ever want to read old 'chapters' of mine or check out the pictures that are up on the internet, here are the sites my dad's made:
here - for the old chapters, etc.
here - for pictures taken from over the last year or so, etc.
and so, i leave you now for the time being. i may have a chance to send out that epilogue on the 15th, between my two flights while i'm at our headquarters in accra. i'll try. but, if not, then this is it until i reach the cold lands of michigan. i hope to hear from you all, and can't wait to 'catch up' and all that. so break out the bottles and muster the troops, friends....
the chief is coming home.
col. brian j. hough
9th royal donkey cavalry regiment
