Cathartic Cleaning and Halloween Horrors

On Friday I swept the whole house and mopped all the floors (even the concrete ones.... not ideal in hindsight), cleaned the bathroom, threw the rattan rugs over the washing line and beat the living crap out of them.  Had had a very unsuccessful morning; the teacher I was supposed to observe cancelled on me without actually cancelling, just not turning up (for the second time). So needed to feel I was capable of something. On finishing the cleaning I had melted so much I was covered in damp dust and was in need of a shower and a V and T on the roof – I managed to deal with that far more successfully.

Saturday brought about the VSO Halloween Party.  As many of you will know costume parties and dancing are not on my list of ‘love to do’; basically as I am crap at both.  I did however love this one. When there is ‘not a lot to do’ it seems that even the things you wouldn’t normally do you learn to love.  The VSO vols did the solomeas proud and danced the night away to Ghanaian and Western tunes with a face full of black eyeliner and makeshift costumes…. I’m a witch in case you were wondering…

Towards the end of the night....with Ali and Damien

Helen, Ali and me

The two witches.... Rachel and myself

We even managed to make a ‘pumpkin’ using a ‘water melon’… thank goodness I’m volunteering with some very creative people!

The watermelon pumpkin

Peugeot 104? You know the one…

Last week I visited Bongo District GES office and Bongo High School in a town called…. go on, guess…. Bongo (we also have a Tongo, Kongo, Bingo and Ningo!) where I met some lovely, welcoming people. I joined a fellow VSO vol in the morning to show me how to get there as this is where she works every day.  We took a shared taxi from where we live, Estates Zamstech, from the main road to the Total garage in town, walked to the Lorry Park and picked up another shared taxi to Bongo.  It could have been a taxi, bus or a tro-tro we picked.  It was the only thing there and it was my first experience of a shared taxi so I was happy.  A shared taxi basically works as it may suggest from the name; it’s a car, of varying kinds in two colour ways, normally white and yellow or black and red. When the taxi is full it will follow a well-defined route of main roads to a particular destination and will not stray from the route.  Inevitably this involves a short walk at either end of your journey; from your starting point to the main road to pick the taxi and at the other end from the main road to your destination.  It’s worth it for the price.  A quarter of the price the door to door taxi would charge at the very least.  We didn’t have to wait long to fill the taxi to Bongo and we had a comfortable estate car with plenty of room. One of the passengers even told off the taxi driver for using his phone whilst driving.  Very commendable - although a totally pointless exercise in my opinion.  It was a successful morning and I was back to my fellow VSO vol’s office by 9.15am (we had left at 7am) to say goodbye and brave the half hour trip back alone, working out for myself where to get the taxi, shared or otherwise, tro-tro or bus.  Unusually I had to wait just 20 minutes for the next mode of transport to arrive at the Bongo transport station.  It was a shared taxi once again.  More specifically it was a Peugeot 104.  Yes, they do exist, I have not got the 4 and the 6 confused despite my ‘Ghana Brain’ (It appears you don’t have to have a baby to gain a brain that says and does strange things… you could also move to a hot developing country and live in the middle of nowhere).  Peugeot between 1972 and 1988 manufactured these Skoda rip offs.  The Ghanaians are still driving these 23 – 39 year old scrap machines and I had the pleasure of a ride in one on the way back from Bongo.  I gave up the front seat which was offered to me by the driver, to a woman and a baby, which in hindsight was a mistake.  I shuffled in next to a lady already sitting on the back seat, into the middle section mindful another person would join us to finally fill the taxi before we could depart.  My concern when I looked down at the space beside me was who would fit into it.  It seemed that my enormous West African arse had filled the majority of the back seat.  Who indeed.  A small child perhaps? A small frail old lady?  No! No! A strapping young man in his early 20’s built like a brick shit house and about 6 foot three inches tall.  Marvellous.  Goodbye personal space. The bumpy ride to Bolga was a long half an hour ride.  The fact that the back axle twisted in the opposite direction to the rest of the car framework across the bottom of my back didn’t help. You have never heard creaking like it.  I was convinced that the next twist would shatter the already cracked front wind screen (Autoglass hasn’t made its way to West Africa yet it would seem) onto the young mother and child who I was fast regretting having suggested they take the seat.  Not the most comfortable ride of my life.  On returning to Bolga and stretching out the aches and pains, I decided to take an alvaro (a malted lightly carbonated soft drink which comes in all sorts of flavours; apple, pear, passion fruit, pineapple and my favourite ‘mineral’) at the Blue Spot on my way home after a ‘small small’ bit of shopping had been done.  Having wiped my brow with my white sweat rag it became clear I had been walking around Bolga greeting people for half an hour with a face covered in red dust with a red dust moustache to boot….you don’t want to know what came out of my nostrils. 

Perfect timing?

I wouldn’t normally send out two posts on the same day as I am sure later in the year I will run out of things to say so I have a few on the back burner ready to go at a moment’s notice (I have a lot of time to spare here).  This one however, I just had to send tonight.  It’s most appropriate.  Today I sat on my bed and even before I could swing my legs around… it broke, made a huge noise and I found myself half on the floor and half not.  It was just before a skype date with my mother when she helpfully asks ‘I hope it wasn’t due to any activity that shouldn’t have been going on!’ She clearly hadn’t read the previous blog….looks like I need to lay off the carbs.  Tonight I will sleep on a mattress on the floor within a bed frame and tomorrow George the carpenter will be getting a very early call to fix my bed.  Work will have to wait.

The ‘f**k off’ vibe.

It would appear it is forever with me, even in Ghana. 

I was told in various training sessions to ‘keep your wits about you’.  It’s a well-used phrase of my mother’s too and generally means ‘keep your knickers on’, a phrase which sometimes follows the first with my mother, for extra emphasis. ‘Those Ghanaian men love a bit of fat on a girl’ I remember one girl tell me in training.  She told me she had refused Ghana as a placement because of what she had heard about Ghanaian men and ‘big’ girls.  She was a ‘big’ girl… and so am I.  So, in a very strange way, after all the preparing; the role playing with Liam (AKA moto training partner) on how to answer ‘are you married?’,  with ’ I am not really interested’ etc, etc. I’m miffed. Miffed as I have had exactly zero attention.  I am surrounded by solomeas receiving the well-practiced lines....  It’s that horrible, you want what you can’t have situation…. But if you had it, would you want it?

Only the other day a VSO colleague was asked by the DVLA boss man for her number (he was old and sweaty…and hairy). She cunningly asked if it was dependent on her getting her licence in a jokey manner (although the way we are feeling regarding our licences at the moment anyone of us, male or female, might consider selling our bodies to get one).  He replied it wasn’t and she offered her      e mail address, which I though was a smooth move, so not to upset the man who has control (however, given the following DVLA postponements maybe she should have just given him her number….  It’s far too easy to become part of the corruption here…).

Another VSO colleague who is the essence of ‘petit’ in both height and stature gets the most attention… where’s the big girl love I ask myself…

This of course should not be a surprise as I have had pretty much zero attention in the UK over the years, or at least too little to write home about. So in the process of analysing every given detail of my life, I asked myself why? (I’m doing that a lot recently) and came up with three possible reasons;

1.       I am the most unattractive solomea here.

2.       I’m just too big, even for a Ghanaian man (Kwame – my washer man has given me evidence for this, let’s just say he describes me as the ‘fat’ one….)

3.       I am giving the biggest ’f**k off’ vibe ever. 

I’m plumping for number 3 as the others will leave me emotionally scarred…..

DVLA Part 3 postponement – twice over.

You may or may not recollect that DVLA Part 3 was due to take place today.  On Friday it was postponed to tomorrow and today it was postponed until… well no one knows entirely.  The problem?  The damn machine and the damn man who seems to be the only man in West Africa who knows how to fix it.  He is always ‘travelling’, the Ghanaian way of saying he’s out of town. Permanently.  My frustration led to a conversation in the office today. ‘You will get used to this system, but I tell my brother today, you not ready yet, you don’t know.  Someone needs to tell you, so I will. The system here in Ghana is simple.  When someone asks you for 5 cedi and you give it to them, your receipt will show 1 cedi. Always the receipt will be different but don’t question it, no!  This is the system.  The DVLA, they are corrupt’.  Better tell Baba to pay more cedi then….

Piggate

Monday morning a couple of weeks ago, I was woken by some strange snuffly snorts from outside my bedroom window a little after 5 am.  It turns out two cute piglets had pushed their way into our compound and were merrily destroying what garden we had.  I shooed them away and pushed the gate closed.   On Tuesday they returned and I quickly discovered this was to be a daily occurrence, developing into not only a morning but an early evening ritual to conquer the gate and destroy the ‘solomeas’ (white peoples) garden.  You would be surprised what damage a bunch of piglets can do.  You see during the week the original two piglets decided to bring all their brothers and sisters too.

You’re probably asking yourselves; ‘why don’t you bolt the gate?’  A fair question… with a very good answer.  Our gate is a huge iron gate with concrete post either side.  As the day get warmer, (it hots up super quickly here) the gate expands and you are unable to open or close the gate.  To the amusement of my neighbours this happened to me and despite 4 Ghanaians pushing and pulling the thing wasn’t going to budge.  Luckily our landlord is fixing the gate this week (only after seeing the wreck of a garden). Kwame, our washerman was actually pleased to see the piglets.  He said because the rains had made the weeds grow in the garden so tall and bushy with lots of foliage (and it shoots up so quickly here) the snakes would come to hide there.  The piglets would eat the snakes (not sure about that; scare the snakes maybe?  Could have been lost in translation), the upshot being, pigs = no snakes, and in my book, even with a pig sty of a garden, that’s a fair swap. 

By Friday the sound of snuffles and snorts was much louder and heavier and I was thinking how many more piglets can there be as I unbolted the front door to enter into the shooing routine I had become accustomed to at an ungodly hour in the morning in the rapidly forming pig sty that was developing outside.  It was at this time, out of the corner of my eye I spotted The Biggest Sow In The World surrounded by her 9 or so piglets.  Mum had arrived.  I imagined briefly being eaten alive by the massive sow in a very Bridget Jones, eaten by Alsatians kind of way…  Remember the quote? ‘And that was it. Right there. Right there, that was the moment. I suddenly realised that unless something changed soon I was going to live a life where my major relationship was with a bottle of wine[vodka]... and I'd finally die, fat and alone [in Ghana], and be found three weeks later half-eaten by Alsatians [a massive sow]’.  [Square brackets tell my story].  Anyway, it was at this point I decided knock routines in Ghana on the head… more trouble than they are worth.  Who needs routines when you have a sow who is clearly ready to eat anyone that comes near her and is bigger than a person should they be walking around on all fours.  Please, destroy my garden, ‘you are welcome’ as they say in Ghana.

DVLA Part 2….

….was unsuccessful.  A wasted morning. Would you believe that the electricity is ‘gone’ today, and for the rest of the week in the exact part of town the DVLA is to be found.  I am not amused. Monday is when we experience 'DVLA Part 3' and go to have a digital photo taken to be put on our ‘temporary licence’ before we get the actual licence in around 3 months’ time, hence the need for electricity.  No one has heard of a generator clearly for a building whose role relies on electricity.  I mean, we couldn’t even take the forms away with us to fill in before they are needed on Monday to save time.  Why?  Because they need to be printed.  No one in Ghana is aware of stockpiling clearly.

Stockpiling is a habitual trait of my mothers.  Next time you go to the house, take a sneaky peek in the under stairs cupboard.  I will eat my hat if you can’t find (at least) 3 massive multi packs of bog roll (they call it T roll here – did I say?).  And don’t get me started on the stockpiled toiletries and ‘canned’ foods for those moments when the UK ‘runs’ out of those essential items because of a petrol crisis… there has been one you know.  It is western experiences like these which leave me gobsmacked here when you can’t get hold of an envelope or staples to put in the stapler at the office.  Or god forbid, you had the last bottle of vodka can of tuna the previous week at the supermarket and they haven’t yet had another delivery. ‘Tomorrow madam, tomorrow’ is the stock response. It’s never tomorrow.

In this country, where no one obeys the rules and regulations of the road, one wonders why. Why are they so damn instant on a licence?  What is the POINT.  They don’t look at it, they could just let us ride; I don’t imagine any of those 14 year olds you see driving around have one when it's illegal.  Why, in a society only newly techno, with an unpredictable electrical supply don’t they have a paper system running alongside the digital one they are unable to continually run.  Why?  …Why is there never a Plan B?

Let’s hope DVLA Part 3 in no way resembles ‘Back to the Future 3’.  I couldn’t cope… there isn’t enough vodka in this town.

The Ghanaian way

Such is the Ghanaian way, that I will find myself doing and saying things which would never be done nor said in the UK despite us speaking the same language (most of the time). 

Everything you buy, even if it is just one item you get given it in a black plastic bag which are known as ‘rubbers’.  I don’t know, maybe it’s just my mind, but I always envisage a massive black condom. I regularly find myself saying ‘No rubber please, I have one’.

If you phone someone with a missed call so you can pass on your number to them it’s called a ‘flash’.  As I have met many new colleagues of a certain standing in Ghanaian society, you will frequently hear me ask ‘Can you flash me?’ after having exchanged my number. Imagine saying that in the UK!

In Ghana, you have never ‘finished work’ or finished anything, including phone calls - you are ‘closed’.  ‘Are you closed now? Shall I pick you?’ is a regular taxi phrase and nothing is ever ‘small’ it’s always ‘small small’.

One night I am ‘picked’ by Isaac, a very nice Ghanaian man from Accra who is working, briefly in Bolga to install roundabouts in schools.  The roundabouts ingeniously convert the energy made as the children turn them into light energy for lanterns that the children can use in their classrooms to read (very few schools have electricity for lighting and they are very dark).  He had spent some time with my house mate during the day deciding on the next school to install the equipment in and we agreed to go for a drink with him in town.  In his 4x4 I sit enjoying the relative calmness, the air con and the super suspension.  He asks me ‘are you gone?’, ‘Gone,’ I said laughing, ‘gone where?’  It seems even ‘sleep’ has a new word.

It is not the Ghanaian way to ‘close’ a phone call with a ‘bye’ or ‘see you soon’ or other such necessity to enable the listener to know you have indeed, in fact, rung off.  Instead the Ghanaian way is to try in whichever way possible to make the listener think you are still on the phone (at least I haven’t figured anyway, anyone makes it clear they are closing a call).  So often you will hear me mindlessly chatting away to… the phone.

Another interesting and slightly uncomfortable Ghanaian way is ‘hissing’.  Hissing (at someone) is done to get their attention and is not considered rude; it might be hawkers walking through a spot while you take a drink.  It might be people at the Lorry Station (bus station) to warn you, the direction you are heading in (indeed the one they just pointed you in) is the wrong one and redirect you the right way. You may have to do it to get the attention of a waiter or waitress, and if your hissing is unsuccessful (as mine is), a simple ‘my sister’ or ‘my brother’ will do. For in Ghana, we are all brothers and sisters.

Begging a lift

Sometimes taxis just aren’t appropriate, there are no tro tro’s and you don’t have a moto, so…. you need to beg a lift.  It’s a well-used method of getting around in Ghana and it’s much more common (and safer) than hitching in the UK, and anywhere similar for that matter. On the first day back of my second week at work I was to meet a colleague to redraft a letter ‘just up the road’ at the Municipal GES Office.  Walking ‘just up the road’ in the midday sun is not a choice I was happy to bare on the way back as well as the way there so this was to be my first ‘beg a lift’ moment. 

I’d like to say I had seen my housemate ‘beg a lift’ to get us from the meal we had been invited to by the Programme Director who was visiting from Accra.  I’d like to say I learnt from her and like every new experience I took the bull by the horns, stood on the side of the road, placed my left hand on top of the right and moved it up and down as if to beg.  However, it appears I am so brilliant at begging a lift I am able to beg without moving a muscle.  In fact, the exact moment I reached the right side of the road and positioned myself to start to beg a driver simply pulled up and asked me if I wanted a lift.  Perfect.  Not a cedi swapped hands and practically door to door service.  I cannot tell you the amount of sweat this saved me.  I love Ghana!

Learning the moto the Ghanaian way and the art of patience

After waiting a very frustrating three hours for the moto trainers to turn up we started our training just after 12 noon on Monday morning.  In the midday sun. We started by going over the 5 day schedule from Monday 9 am (yes, I know, we were already at 12 noon Monday and had missed the 3 hours of training we were then told about – even the tea break) to Friday 5.30 pm.  We were then ‘picked’ to the stadium field in which we were to do our off road field practice.  Being ‘picked’ is a very Ghanaian English phrase meaning ‘to give a lift to’.  You can say it in a number of ways here; ‘I’ll pick you’, ‘Pick me’ and to the taxi driver; ‘can you pick me at 9am tomorrow please’.  All of which sounds very odd but makes utter and complete sense here. 

We were given a talk about the parts of the bike.  Yawn. But for the whole entire 5 days gears were called ‘Grears’, nuts and bolts were called ‘nots and bolts’ and spark plugs were called spark ploogs’.  It’s difficult to really explain how the word is said in writing with the strong Ghanaian accent attached, suffice to say, internally I was amused.  Which is good, I’d been waiting for soooooo long to get going I was ready to burst.  I was the first to fall off (as predicted).  My own fault, I was getting a bit too cocky as we were doing the equivalent of snaking in and out of the cones using trees when the tragedy struck.  It had something to do with the fact it was loose sandy soil and a huge number of tree roots were exposed.  Hey ho.  Just my pride that was damaged magnified by the fact that I was at the front behind the trainer so everyone saw. We spent some time, too long, doing figures of 8 and by the end of day one, full with SWAP restaurant pizza (will be giving that a miss in the future) I was itching to get on the road.

Day two started with our first road trip via the busiest traffic lighted cross roads in Bolga, which in my month here have never worked.  And in my house mate Hannah’s year here have worked maybe 75% of the time. Generally we will turn up at the office and a police officer will be directing the traffic and by the time we wait an hour or so for the trainers to turn up, they are no longer there… it’s a case of closing your eyes and hoping for the best.  Bunny hopping across this junction was not one of my finest moto moments but I made it and managed the sand, the river banks, river bed, oncoming traffic on the wrong side of the road, various ‘honorary policeman’ and didn’t need a loo stop.  Our meeting that afternoon with the DVLA Upper East Regional Director was not particularly enlightening, except when he explained why they don’t enforce animals are tied up in this country.  To be fair, if they didn’t let them roam in the dry season they would all die, they need to be able to roam and find food and water.  Anyway, we were told, ‘The animals are honorary policemen, we like them; they make the traffic slow down…’ What?!  They cause the most accidents.

Day three started with a 4 hour (should have been 2 hour) trip to Bongo and the Burkina Faso boarder. The scenery was fab, and we passed through a few very rural villages.  Why did it take so long?  One of the volunteers had still not been able to get past 2^nd ‘grear’.  An issue when you need a bit of speed.  ‘Why was she on the road then?’ I hear you ask… ‘It’s Ghana’ is the only reply I have for that.

We sat through another ridiculous talk about the rules and regulations of driving in Ghana by a Police Commander from Upper East, which was pretty much a repeat of yesterday, the only sensible thing said was ‘you must wear a helmet’.  Most sentences started with, ‘you should’, ‘you must try’, ’it is law here to….’ knowing perfectly well that no one abides by the rules and regulations.  The most hilarious statement from locals is that if you ride a push bike (there are many here) then the road rules don’t apply – including which side of the road you ride on and abiding by red lights – because you are on a push bike. Even though if you are on a push bike you are even more exposed than on a moto as you have no helmet – go figure.

To be honest, if you are at a stop light, it doesn’t matter what vehicle you are in.  No one stops.  It was market day so we had requested a town ride when Bolga would be at its busiest.  Market days are heaving form very early in the morning until very late at night.  It was during this relatively short road trip (and directly after the talk from the police commander that the trainers had sat through) that I narrowly missed two sheep, a dog, a cow (sorry… four honorary policeman) and a woman crossing the road.  Then when I stopped at the stop light… well it was red, I was shouted at to ’Go! Go! Go!’ by the trainer….. I simply closed my eyes, took a deep breath and figured it’s actually safer to ‘do as they do in Rome’… if we get stopped by the police on a ‘crack down’, it appears you simply give them a few cedi and all is good.  No problem then….  Agghhhh...corruption at its finest.

On day four at DVLA my licence should have been converted to a temporary Ghanaian Licence which will be replaced with a permanent one in 3 months.  I was told to smile and chat enough to the DVLA man that he liked me and didn’t ask to see me ride, nor take the written test. I understand he would also have been ‘dashed’ some money to get the solomeas (white people) through. We would use a different term in the UK… I’ll let you figure out what it is.  It’s the Ghanaian way. Day four would have been bureaucracy and corruption at it’s very best. Unfortunately the machine to make the licence was broken and the man who fix’s it was in Tamale, a 5 hour tro tro ride away.  So instead of bureaucracy and corruption we were faced with the consequences of living in a remote part of a developing country.  I’m learning the patiences of a saint.  The licence will be next week or maybe the week after, who knows.  Now we wait. Instead we took a ride out to Tongo and the Tongo Hills to practice steep hills…

The long trip to Paga and the crocodile pools took us on a brilliant ride for our final day.  I honestly felt like I was doing motor-cross riding or something.  With a distinct split in the group (one girl only getting up to 3^rd ‘grear’ today) we split into two and I went for speed.  Loved it.  Making friends with the crocodiles was unusual to say the least.  Never have I seen a man get in with the crocodiles and paddle around it in the water swinging its tail around like it’s some kind of toothless inanimate object.  I remind myself where I am and then everything seems normal. 

Even the trainers going off to the boarder for over an hour to flirt with the women didn’t bother me today.  I’m done with getting stressed about waiting and remembering to bring a book. 

I’ve succeeded all week to ‘manage’ my toilet stops to coincide with being around a toilet, always helpful but not always an option in Ghana.  Public toilets in Ghana as I am sure you can imagine are not ideal.  Women have the choice of a urinal for a number one and a toilet for a number two.  I have yet to experience the urinal, will have to let you know.  The toilets are grim and I would never use them for what they are meant for – would rather bust my colon.  If you are in a more rural area you don’t worry about toilets or urinals….just make friends with nature and hope you have brought along some T roll….The VSO toilet is acceptable and all week I’ve managed to hold it to make it back to the office and at the same time holding off any impending water infections.  It’s a difficult plate to balance when you live in a country of extreme heat.  You don’t want to drink so much you need to go to the loo every 5 minutes, especially when toilets are difficult to find but at the same time you need to replace the gallons of water you lose through every pore of your body, all day, day and night.  I had known all week Paga would be the day I experienced my first ‘going to the loo the local way’.  You can’t miss the openness they have in partaking in what I consider to be a very private act.  Men are constantly peeing on the side of the road (my mother would hate it) with no care or desire to hide what they are doing.  I’m immune to this now.  I am not however yet immune to seeing people treating shitting in the same way. Literally they just squat in the busiest, most open area you can find and crap…. Luckily I didn’t need to get at one with nature on the number two front but was successful in peeing behind a tree missing my leg, my shoes, experiencing little ‘splash back’ and as far as I’m aware kept my western dignity. 

This was not the case for a female member of our moto group however, who, to maintain her dignity, shall remain nameless.  I am so surprised this wasn’t me.  It was during the time a member of the group had come a little too close to a dog (actually it was the dog which had come too close to her) and had come off her moto, in the middle of a village. I had ridden off with another vol unaware of the carnage behind but turned around and returned to the scene when we realised no one was following.  While we were alcohol wiping her legs and ankles another female vol realised this could be an opportunity to go pee.  She realised the fallen moto rider had enough help and took the opportunity to ask one of the local villages where she could pee.  They directed her to an open space at the back of a ‘house’, her face must have said it all as she was redirected away from the open space towards a bush at the back of the house.  Still donning her helmet she decided it was safe to ‘go’ and dropped her pants.  It was around this time that she noticed a couple behind the next house having a good old look.  She felt safe in the fact that in wearing the helmet no one would know who she was so she continued peeing, finished, pulled up her trousers and walked back to the front of the house thanking god that she would never have to visit this village again.  Unfortunately she had been left with a very uncomfortable spiky feeling between her buttocks.  Her first thought she recounted to me later was that she had a caterpillar up her bum.  In Ghana you see there are many and they are all extremely hairy.  She panicked.  Wouldn’t you?!  She spoke with a local village woman and tried to explain her predicament and asked to go in the house to sort herself out.  This involved a panicked face and a lot of pointing.  The Ghanaian lady was telling her to take off her trousers and in the commotion left to retrieve a sarong to save my friends dignity.  Thankfully the offending object was retrieved and the spiky grass flower was removed from the buttock area… slippery little suckers.  Thank goodness it wasn’t a caterpillar!  Through my friends traumatic experience us girls now check before we squat that there are no long bits of grass for us to pick with our bum cheeks as we rise from the squat position.

A tour around the market…. and other mutterings from Ghana.

Let me take you on a tour, this is the place we go to every three days for fresh food.  Fly covered food but fresh food nonetheless…. You’ll need a strong stomach.  I only wish this was ‘smellynet’ too so you could really experience it. 

I’ve taken to walking into town.  It’s cheaper and the only exercise (apart from cleaning) I’m getting at the moment.  It takes between 20 and 30 minutes depending on how hot it is. This is the path I walk down along the main road into town from Tamale. 

Everyday new piles of ‘mud’ get shovelled out of the open drain beside the path and piled up onto it.  I never see anyone removing them, although they do I have noticed over time, as where the piles are along the path is constantly changing.  It turns out this is the stuff they used to fashion into bricks.  I’ve discovered is the same stuff piled in heaps either side of the drain they are (still) making along our street as it dries rock hard.  When it rains it sticks to your shoes like glue and dries on them like it’s been baked in an oven, so hard you need a chisel (a machete here) to get it off.  Thankfully the drain on our street is nearly finished but we’ve worked through a series of unconventional, often unstable, bridges to enable us still to get access to our compound.

Food is seasonal and the market reflects this.  Often things run out until the next harvest so one day you could be buying sweet potatoes and the next they are nowhere to be found but the following day there are bucket loads.  We can get white potatoes like we would get in the UK, only here they are called Irish potatoes and they are difficult to find.  I can’t show you yam alley (Yam chips and pepper sauce are a particular favourite of mine), I didn’t go there this weekend, and any way, it’s slowly changing into cassava alley… we are in for a seasonal change in the root vegetable variety. I can’t show you green peppers either, yesterday they were there and today they are not.  Not sure they’ll be back for a while now. 

We have fruit too, lots, seasonal again.  We have yellow melons and pineapple at the moment, more bananas than you can shake a stick at and apples too. They’re expensive though.  I tried a sweet apple today, Hananah gave to me while I helped out in the shop – was more of a hindrance to be fair, but it’s the only chance she gets to speak to anyone as she works in the shop 5.30 – 10pm every day.  She isn’t even allowed to go to church.  Sweet apple looks like a small durian (sp) fruit you’d get in Asia on the inside; tastes like icing sugar (too sweet for me) without the smell of rotting flesh (thankfully).  Mostly you’ll find fruit sold in stalls outside of the market, beside the road or found in huge bowls on the heads of women and children, mainly girls wandering the streets selling from the bowl on their heads.  This girl is selling small bags of pure water.  it’s how you get it clean and safe here… that is of course if you pick the reliable brands….

Sometimes the don’t carry things to sell….

I’ve even seen a backpack being carried on the head… and a suitcase?!

The market is littered with small drains….

...and stalls, both new and old….

It is a 'market  labyrinth' and you have to use landmarks to navigate yourself round.  This is the case for everywhere, village, town, region.  Often you’ll hear ’turn left at the baobab tree and right at the next pile of rocks’ No one tells you how big the tree is or how tall the pile of rocks are….no one has heard of a map.  And no one needs to, there’s GPS now.  Some vols are mapping the schools in Bolga municipal on GPS… let’s hope the idea takes off as smart phones clearly are and they map all the schools in the region.  Maybe then the statistics office will be able to say exactly how many schools there are that are junior and senior high schools… maybe I just didn’t ask the right question…

Meet the dried fish stall…

..the fabric stall….

...the tomato and garden egg stall…

...the salt (with iodine) stall…..

...the cabbage (the veggie of the season) stall….

...the butcher stall…

….with entrails….

...the green leafy things (taste alright actually…. No idea what they are)….

...the onion seller and her onions (I did ask her to smile when she asked for her picture to be taken!!)…

...the handmade huge wooden spoons…

The cooking pots for street food (now you know why they have huge wooden spoons)….

...and the pig; wallowing in shit down an alley off the main market…..

Shove in the hustle and bustle, the motos, bicycles, children, goats, pigs, piglets, chickens and other fowl criss-crossing everywhere, the shit (literally) and the smells, some good… some bad and you have two hours of my day, every third day.  Love it.