You are the bumbling tourist (3)

You are attending the final day of the funeral/ commemoration festival for the deceased Queen Mother of the Kwahu Tribe. Having visited the local tailor, you are dressed just the thing and think you fit in wonderfully while watching the crazed dancing and wailing of around a dozen fetish priests and priestesses who are possessed by occasionally violent Lower Gods. A flamboyantly dressed lady dances towards you.
She rubs her hand on your crotch, squeezes her ample breast towards you and motions with her hands that she is interested in getting to know you in a carnal fashion. Not knowing how to react to a being of the otherworld, you just smile politely. As she grinds her bottom against your nether regions, an argument in Twi language ensues between her and another woman beside you. Your wife is nowhere to be seen. What action do you take?

Answer: A tricky one. The key here is preparation. Befriend the people near you who then will automatically take your side when something kicks off. When the argument balloons out of control, quietly shuffle out of sight. The priestess is issued a straight red by the mob and the game continues. You may be cautioned following the examination of video evidence, but you’ll be long gone by the time the review board gets round to meeting in this part of the world.

You are the bumbling tourist (2)

It is 10am. As you are finishing your late breakfast, you receive an urgent invite to the palace of the powerful local Chief for some local chop (food). Although you are full to the point of bursting, you are aware that to turn down such a kind offer would be seen as a slight. Besides which, the Chief has already provided exceptional hospitality recently. At the palace, you carefully select a modest portion of recognisable foodstuffs and accept the offer of a large beer. However just as you are squeezing in the last mouthful of chop, two things happen simultaneously: a) your wife slides a large and unidentfiable lump of something from her plate onto yours; and b) the Chief himself comes over to offer you more chop from the bowls. You are aware that finishing all this food and the beer will make you sick, however to refuse would be rude and offensive to your host. The history of visitor sacrifices has already been mentioned in conversation. What do you do?

Answer: There is no easy answer to this, but the main thing is that you come out smelling of roses. Accept the chop and engage the Chief in conversation. You discover that the he has to attend an appointment relatively soon. Time waste by picking at the food and speaking a lot. The Chief soon makes his excuses and leaves, and you insist that you must stay to finish your beautiful meal. Once he has departed in a flurry of ceremonial cloth, quickly guzzle the main staple (the beer), push the plate to the side, offer the remains to the servants and head off with the wife. The time-wasting risks a yellow, but the Chief now thinks you enjoy his company and his food and the wife has no choice but to award brownie points for digging her out of a hole. Nice one.

You are the bumbling tourist (1)

You are cycling to the funeral/ commemoration festival for the deceased Queen Mother of the Kwahu Tribe. You and your wife are happily tootling along on a flat stretch of uncharacteristically good road, enjoying the dawn chorus and the phenomenal views across to the surrounding hills. Suddenly she accelerates at breakneck speed, screaming like a maniac and shouting RAKE!! RAKE!! RAKE!! When you eventually catch her up, she is crying her eyes out. What do you say to her?

Answer: This is a time for a calm head. Take a soft line and ask what is up. It turns out, as correctly guessed by one reader, that she is claiming a large black snake was lying a few inches from her pedal as she cycled past. However, having not seen it yourself, immediately issue a yellow for play acting, but bear in mind it is also best this early in the day to keep the flair players motivated. Stop play, allow medical attention to be administered on the sidelines (groundnut paste sandwich and energy drink), and wave play on.

The Field

For the last few weeks I’ve been visiting “the field”. Leaving the confines of the car honking, ear splitting, speaker booming towns and cities to visit communities. This, I'm told is by definition, “visiting the field”. Asking questions about “the field” before arrival is frowned upon. Questioning how we will arrive and depart from said remote communities is also reminiscent of the first rule of “Fight Club”. The command is simply co bra. Go and come. Don’t ask questions.
My colleague Gifti and I are visiting women’s co-operatives who have come together with the help of the Community Development Department to make their businesses and lives more viable. We travel by tro-tro generally – the main local public transport and the way in which goats and chickens, people and farm products move from one place to another on the crumbling bumpy roads. On the most remote trip recently the regular crunching of gears and loud music was punctuated with a loud clanking. The driver stopped and slid under the car with tools.
The passengers waited for about an hour and then – without discussion – all set off walking to the nearest town in the mid-day sun. There is no fuss. This is what happens. For the more remote communities if we’re lucky there are motorbikes. Or we just walk – like everyone else. Most of the groups make palm oil. Strong arms separate the bright orange-red kernels from the spiky, rough husk of the trees, grind the sun-dried kernels, squeeze and press the kernels and chaff and then boil them in huge roasting cauldrons above pits filled with charcoal and acrid smoking chaff.
The paths are waterlogged and slippery in the rains, the smell is overpowering, the sun above unrelenting and the profits minimal. If they work from 5am to nightfall and they are lucky, this is how they can perhaps afford to send some of their children to school and pay for their hospital bills. By the time they have walked miles into the bush to buy the palm fruit or kernels the whole process will take one to three weeks. It varies but spending £15 on the kernels could reap a profit of about £2.50 (excluding time and labour). It is difficult to understand their single-mindedness but for these women this is currently one of the only ways of making any profit at all. They have no or little access to land, no access to loans or investors and most of them have had no formal education. They are expected to farm, collect water, sell produce, cook, clean, look after the children and provide the money for their education.
It is these women I hope to help during my placement here.

Lucy

Down in the Jungle...

...people, particularly the obruni, are aliens.

Our 20km trek through the rainforest of Ankasa in the Western Region felt like running two marathons. The heat and humidity makes every step a gargantuan effort. The cacophany of noise is at first raw, exciting and awe-inspiring, setting the senses on high alert. Gradually the relentless noise, and dense, living, breathing greenery that the human eye cannot penetrate, is disorientating. Ultimately the feeling of being totally out of your depth is a constant

Of course, in classic Mulholland-Adams fashion, we had not waited around for the guide who was late (we could have missed seeing the monkeys at dawn after all) and had set off into this foreign environment alone.

Armies of red and black ants form motorways of unstoppable movement across the track. Spiders form giant web traps across the path. Dozens of species of stunning butterfly float inquisitively alongside.
Giant dragonfly swoop backwards and forwards, seemingly without purpose unless hovering to collect water from brown puddles. Lizards scuttle away from your feet.
Monkeys call out to each other and stay just out of sight while smashing through tree branches. Crazed, taunting bird calls echo through the wilderness (See Useful Link to Mulholland Tube videos (right)). A 3ft green snake spots us and slithers across our path and out of sight into the undergrowth. I heroically jump in front of Lucy and scream SH - I - I - I - T as an unidentified beast (probably a huge panther) makes it's noisy getaway.

The seven hour journey is broken by a packed lunch at a village of one hut. With one adult and a child. Following Lucy's impression of an elephant eating bamboo, they lead gracefully to the only place of rest from this exhausting assault on the senses. The dense undergrowth makes way for a magnificent bamboo cathedral.
Space, silence and stillness. It feels like reaching an oasis in the desert, or some sort of Eden. It looks like the land of the giants. We can almost see the forest elephants that come here to eat for three months of the year.


Andy

A local cold

As if it were nothing more troublesome than a mere cold, people in Ghana often casually mention that they have recently had a little malaria, and before long go about their daily tasks regardless. Well I've just probably had malaria, and no daily tasks were being conducted.

It hits you like a hammer, or more accurately a fire extinguisher, blow to the entire body. Sudden and total exhaustion, burning and then freezing sweats, intense headaches, aching bones, failing muscles, confused thoughts.

Fortunately the symptoms were relatively mild, possibly suppressed by the anti-malarial drugs I've been taking religiously every morning. Lucy morphed into a magnificent nurse, ultimately resorting to a visit to the local Seventh Day Adventist medical clinic to confirm the symptoms with the doc. The clinic was packed with people, including children slumped on benches with similar symptoms to mine, but worked remarkably efficiently.

For these people and I, medication is affordable. Four days' daily intake of 22 pills and pirated Arnie Swarzenegger movies and I was back on my feet. Many can't afford insurance and have to suffer without help, with either a loss of working income or worse (it accounts for a quarter of all deaths of children under 5 in Ghana (20,000 children pa)).

Andy

Wisdom

Wise man in Glasgow say: 'See man with machete, run mile'.
Wise man in Koforidua say: 'See man with machete, ask him 'where coconuts?''.
Andy