Chapter 12: how i spent my summer vacation

before you read any further, ladies and gentlemen, i'd like to warn you that this letter isn't going to be all that entertaining to skim through. delete this now if you're seeking edge-of-your-seat, whiz-bang, cherry-pop pin', fresh-out-tha-box action and adventure. i'm completely serious. over the course of the last two and a half months or so, i have not once been in a life-threatening situation; no elephant attacks, no rioting, no run-ins with soldiers while waiting for egg sandwiches. nothing. i have not mingled with former presidents or famous movies producers. i have not undertaken any new and exciting projects within my community. i have not done anything whatsoever that i deem worthwhile since talking with all of you last. it is now, in august, the heart of the ' rainy season,' and all the aspects and paces of life have grinded to an excruciatingly painful and abrupt halt....

my village, as you all are now well aware of i'm sure, is made up primarily of farmers. my zonal coordinator, mr. abukari, as well as all the other guinea worm volunteers and red cross personnel in sankpala, are all away at their farms on the outskirts of the village. farming is how these people make money, so when the rainy season sets in, this is when the tilling of the land really heats up. i had never thought it possible for me, of all people, to sit on my porch in the middle of the day wishing and praying for some form of work of any kind. how horrible. right now, farming is the priority, so all health work in the village gets shoved back onto the back-burners until sept./oct., when the harvest comes. i've gone out to farm occasionally with some of the villagers, but its not really all that much fun....digging holes with cutlasses, being bent over most of the time, sweating profusely in the sub-saharan heat, being covered in dirt and God knows what else, etc. i don't care much for manual labor, and i can say, without a doubt in my mind, that when i return to the united states in nov. '05, i will not be going out into the country to find work on a farm as a field hand. call me crazy...

when i'm able to pull abukari away from his maize and groundnut plots long enough to teach at a school in either sankpala or one of the other smaller, bush-villages in our zone, its a good time. most of the kids in our community now recognize me as maligunah, chief of success, from sankpala, and not just another run-of-the-mill 'siliminga' ('cause, you know, all us white people look the same...). teaching's fun, and since i don't have much to do these days at site, when i do get the chance to get out and work i'm energetic and have the time of my life with the students and teachers. even when teaching to a class of ten or twelve kids who don't speak a word of english, in a mud hut with a dirt floor, in 110 degree weather, twenty miles into the bush country seems like fun to me these days. i realize this is sad, to get so worked up for an hour or two hours of work, twice a week or so, but that's what my life has boiled down during this rainy season. i have become an old man.....sitting on my porch....reading book upon book....working on the rock opera....fighting evil via gameboy advance....drawing....daydreaming about carpeting....sleeping...you get the picture.

and speaking of my porch....*shakes fist in rage*...this goat/sheep situation as not gotten any better throughout the season. just in case you were wondering. nay, my good friends, its gotten much much worse. they're starting to jump the walls, thereby making my pitiful, charlie brown-esque, self-made barricade completely and utterly useless. i had a juju witch doctor in my village bless my trusty 'goat stick' with juju magic in a desperate attempt to thwart my hooved enemies, but even the power of juju seems not enough to stop these creatures. luckily for yours truly, i have also mastered the skill of carpentry and masonry since i have been in ghana, and am now, as i speak to you, constructing a couple of swing gates to cement to my main veranda and side porch. "but hold on a sec, brian," you may ask, "won't the goats still storm over the walls, thereby making your gates just as pathetic and useless as your once-crappy barricade?" yes, dear friends, it most certainly would....had i not also thought of that factor while devising my ingenious plan. i'm going to add another row of mud bricks and plaster them atop the existing walls, hence making it all the more difficult for the goats and sheep to scale. and seriously, if those animals can jump five or six feet onto my porch to get out of the rain, then they deserve to be in basketball or something....kinda like that dog that plays basketball, 'air bud'....or was that football? now that i think about it, it might have been a monkey in the first place....nevermind....

the porch crisis is but one factor in my daily hut management. fetching water is still a chore, but this i am beginning to tackle without much difficulty. most of the women at the borehole still like to joke around that i am, in fact, a woman for wearing earrings still, but usually a joke about being able to 'prove that i am indeed a man' gets them to shut up. its all in good fun, though - little things like fetching water two or three hours a day for some sad reason seems just as entertaining to me now as teaching in bush schools or cleaning my hut....

also entertaining are my legion of 'small boys' who frequent my porch and compound. the concept of 'small boy,' if i haven't mentioned before, is something that america lacks, and i think would greatly benefit from. 'smalls,' as they're commonly referred to, are boys ranging in age from 4 to 18, usually in the 8 to 14 area. one of the things i absolutely love about this country, is the fact that you can walk up to any 'small' you come across - whether it be in the village, city, whatever - and order him/her to do something for you. it doesn't even matter if the kid knows you or not - that's the culture. if i, for example, was on the complete opposite side of sankpala, eating fufu with a neighbor, and decided i wanted a drink of water, i could yell out to a small boy passing by on a dirt path to go fetch me some water from the borehole...which is all the way across town. this is totally acceptable, and he would do it immediately...dropping whatever it was he was possibly doing (the exception being, of course, if he was fulfilling a previous 'small boy' task). this concept of near-slavery is deemed acceptable in west african culture, and when you think about it really isn't all that bad...when the small boys grow up and become men, it will be their turn to order small children around like slaves; continuing the circle of life as ghanains know it. the smalls that frequent my hut are usually close neighbors or the children of coworkers that work with me in my health projects. the pictures i'll be sending soon depict some of them, mostly abukari's kids. almost every single child in sankpala thinks i am beastmaster (remember that show, from way back in the day? well, its one of the most popular shows here in ghana, and children are obsessed with it...). this i don't seem to mind that much, 'cause that means they deem me as a superhero or something....and i'm not about to stop them from worshipping me as a god. i think that would be wrong and not in peace corps policy. maybe.

i'm running out of internet time here, so i'm gonna have to cut this short. you pay by the minute here at these cafes, and its prepaid, which i deem pretty stupid. but what can you expect from a country whose biggest music stars are celine dion, shaggy, and westlife (if you've never heard of these guys, they're like a boy band from europe....they have no talent and i think they may be homosexuals...) and who idolize famous actors like jean claude van damme, osama bin laden, and gov. ahh-nold shwarzen-however-you-spell-it. little differences - some that take more getting used to than others. but yeah, anyway, like i was saying before, life's been kinda slow these days: right now i'm watching the tamale sub-office again...acting as pcvl for when the 'new group' of pcvs come rolling through on their way to site visits. i'll be sure to show the newbies how 'real' pcvs get down....bwah haha ha. speaking of which, the chief has work to do, so i must leave you all now.

please do not cry - i shall be back soon....whenever something happens that is worthwhile and deemed entertaining enough to talk about. knowing my community, however, i'm not sure when this will happen. fear not, though, kids at home - its always darkest before the dawn.

and knowing my luck, peril and adventure are most certainly around the corner...until next time....

the one and only,

chief and col. maliguna of sankpala
9th royal northern region donkey cavalry regiment