OCTOBER 17TH...LOTS GOING ON

First and foremost, I know that I have a lot of writing to catch up on. These days have been so full as a great deal is happening. I went to visit a place where some older women are making hand made shea butter soap and some top quality shea butter. I have also been making arrangements to visit some areas affected by guinea worm…serious stuff. I have a workshop in two hours and have been in a number of meetings. SOOOO, I know I owe a bunch of stories including how the Jay-Z show went. It’s all coming! For now, I have added a letter that I wrote to a friend that is a general update.

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While I spent a lot of time in the south (Accra) recovering, I am now back in Tamale in the north. It is a different experience to be in a place during Ramadan where the majority is muslim. In Toronto, you could remain pretty oblivious to the month of fasting, but in Tamale you can’t. Even those that are not fasting are conscious and hesitant about eating in public. The odd time when I am hot and thirsty I’ll walk through town with a Fan Ice (it’s ice cream or frozen yogurt in a plastic wrap), but I notice the grills. I am also woken up by the late night prayers that go all throughout the night (12:30am, 3:00am, 4:30am); the mosque speakers reach quite clearly through my window (whether closed or open). Soon Ramadan will be over though and they will celebrate Eid. That will be cool because I have not gotten my morning tea and bread at work since the month of fasting began. Usually, the secretary brings it to me. Once Ramadan is over, this will resume again.

The weather was not very different when I first came here in July. It was actually cooler in Ghana than Toronto (sounds crazy huh?) due to the smog factor in Ontario. Being that we were in the rainy season over here, the rain once or twice a day would also cool things down. Gradually, the rain clouds are seen less and less, and the sun is getting hotter and hotter. The heat of the morning is feeling like what was the mid-day heat over the past few months, and the mid-day – it’s getting hot and they say it will get hotter. Up here we get something called the hamatan which is a very hot and dry wind from the Saharah desert which makes December to February months to survive.

I really enjoy the evenings here where the sun is on it’s way to setting and you can see dark rain clouds in the distance with flashes of lightning lighting up the dark grey mounds every few seconds. Last night the entire horizon was acting like a strobe light with the continual pulsing of light from the very broad storm clouds. So often, the sky looks like a completely different day in each of the four directions (light clouds and the sun setting in the east, dark storm clouds in the north, clear skys in the south, and the edge of the night sky in the west). It really is a metaphor for life: if you look at any situation you can see that it is not just a storm cloud, but if you look at the whole sky (situation) there are other elements to it. Even when the whole sky is clouded, the sun is still behind it.

Life up here continues to bring so many blessings with every day. I live in a house where the parents have three daughters. Two of them are under 5 years of age (2 and 4) and are a sweet medicine to my heart sometimes. There names are Chelpong and Milemba (which means forgiveness and redemption), and they love to play with me – especially when I let them come into my room. My neighbours are really nice and they usually expect me to come by in the evening for some fruits (papaya or oranges) or some tea. We sit in the living room and share stories while we watch TV (which is usually a Nigerian movie or an imported soap opera from Mexico, Italy or Spain).

I have really come to take a liking to my surroundings. The red dirt of the fields and the roads, and the shape of the trees, watching the moon, the stars, or the animals shuffling about the place is a part of my everyday that is great. My comfort level in Tamale (and in Ghana in general) has raised dramatically. When I first came, I was doing pretty well, but there were challenges. The many languages that people speak, people calling out to me because I am European (“Silminga” or “Abroni”), people that I never met before insisting that “I want to be your friend”, and many, many other details of life that were distinct from what I have experienced before. I now go places and recall how I felt the first time that I had been there and I can see the difference…like the taxi round! That place is a looks like an overcrowded parking lot with no apparent exit or entrance, it is surrounded by mats where taxi drivers sleep and pray, a small roofless mosque, dozens of market stalls (including an outdoor butcher shop), a plentiful stream of people roaming selling items (from sandals to bags of water), all while what seems like a traffic jam of bumped and bruised taxi’s is orchestrated through a combination of a cue system, signs that get passed around indicating where the taxis are going, and a whole lot of yelling. It was overwhelming to the senses. Keep in my mind that every step you take is a potential collision with a person, bicycle, motorbike, car, or even a roaming animal – with no differentiation between sidewalk and road. When I go there now, the chaos makes sense. For the most part, I don’t bump into anyone or anything.

I have also found a church that I enjoy attending. Since I have been in Ghana I have visited about seven churches. Seeing such a wide-array of worship experiences has been great. Some of those experiences were great and some…not so much! The place that I like to go is Lighthouse Chapel. The worship reminds me of Rhema more than anywhere else that I have been, though some of the praise and worship is still in local languages. The pastor is someone I enjoy listening to, and has good teachings. It is funny at times because he is often using local issues to give examples. One of the things he was saying is that people need to give more to their walk with God. He used the example of going to the US, asking the congregation how many people would go if they had the opportunity. Almost everyone put up their hand. He then asked them, what if you were going tomorrow? Everyone raised their hands. He then listed a whole bunch of questions: what about your job? What about your family? What about that meeting you have? What about your cousins wedding next week? To all of the questions, people would just abandon everything: quit the job, leave the family, miss the meeting and the wedding all to go to the US. Then he mentioned, “oh, I couldn’t come to church because I was tired”, “I couldn’t do what I said I would for the choir because my cousin was getting married”, “I missed that church committee meeting because of work”. The point was clear that people will sacrifice for what really matters to them, and going to the US is more important to most people than doing what they can to serve God. It was a funny presentation, and such examples are numerous: they talk about all of the conditions here. Goats, chickens, toilet facilities, hand washing, village life, and even witchcraft all come up as examples.

At work things are picking up. We have completed to stories (“All Night Long: The Negative Health Effects of Interupted Sleep”, “Ghana’s Other Gold: Ghanian Women Use Shea Butter for a Brighter Future”). We have also booked time to follow a man named Micheal for a day in his rounds fighting scourge of guinea worm, which he says is still a major problem in the north.

After meeting with a few people who work with Micheal through the Carter Centre, we have found that we will be doing a number of projects together. Guinea worm is really a serious issue. I remember seeing people on television infected with it when I was a child and it terrified me. The idea of having this worm over a metre long living in your body. And how it grows and how it comes out and potential complications really irk me. It is great to have the opportunity to make a difference with this issue through the radio though.

In terms of reporting the main reporter that I was going to be working with, Ramadan, has not been in the clearest state of mind and has not been around as often due to the issue with his uncle. His uncle is the Regional Minister of the area and is in the inner-circle of the President. He is not really a straight and narrow guy, and has a very sketchy and questionable past. Because our station has reported some of these issues and has opened a forum to discuss this, the minister has had people make threats to his nephews safety and life. I have tried to support him and encourage him, but getting anything done with him has been a challenge.

As a result I have began to work more with Hassan and Farouza who also work at the station. I have not abandoned working with him, as this afternoon, I will be continuing with an informal workshop on production with Ramadan where we will also be discussing some story ideas that he has.

We will be going to the Human Rights Commission again this week to see how we can build a stronger relationship with Radio Justice. We are want to make people aware of the services that they offer, so that the community can use them as a resource. They are the only body that can enforce the respect of people’s human rights outside of what the Ghanian legal system defends.

After meeting with the Manager of the marketing department I got an update on the Live Presenter Mention log system that we developed. The marketing department is using the logs, yet there is not full participation from the presenters. We are working on plans in order to achieve 100% participation with the log system.

I have also been involved in the meetings surrounding the development of a Radio Justice website. It looks like the site will be www.radiojusticeonline.com and should be up in the next month or two. Live online broadcasts may take longer as the bandwidth is an issue. However, we have been doing some photographs around the station with various staff to provide web content.

This afternoon, I will be presenting a workshop that has two parts. The first is a general human rights Q&A as I have been getting a lot questions about what “Human Rights” actually means. The second part of the workshop will be the introduction to the entire staff of the Public Service Announcement and Song and Poetry Contest projects. We will focus on the PSA project first, and then move on to the contest. One other important aspect of the workshop will be an invitation to approach me regarding informal workshops. I will provide a number of possible topics, while letting those in attendance know that any other suggestion they have is welcome.

By next week, we will be re-launching “Freedom Thursdays” at Justice. The show will be on in the mornings from 9:30am-10:00am. I will be producing the show and will be bringing others in that I will be training. Our first broadcast will be next Thursday. One of the primary contributors that I plan to be training and working with is the station’s secretary Layata who has a strong interest in gaining skills in radio.

Also, Farouza, who has added reading the news to her duties as a music show presenter, has asked me to co-produce a segment that she want to add to her show that she calls “Serious Issues for Serious People”. She envisions the segment opening with interviews, testimonials or articles to give a foundation of information on a given subject (the first topic she wanted to look at is marital rape), and then she wants to open the phone lines and moderate a discussion of the topic.

Not really a JHR task, but certainly added value, is that the section of my music collection that I brought to Ghana is getting added to the stations database – which a few of the presenters are quite happy about.

Hopefully, this weekend will see me in Accra again to celebrate my birthday. I don’t really want to be traveling there right now, but I would love to be there for my birthday. I am thinking about the fact that I am turning 27 years of age…27…just thoughts about where I am at, where I am going. Being here has been a blessing in that sense, where I have been given the chance to grow tremendously and to face so many questions. Day by day, realizations and wisdom com and guide the next step.

As for the birthday, there will potentially be maybe 15-20 people at my party, which is cool because I don’t even live or work in Accra. I would love to be celebrating with all my people from home too, but this will be my first time having a birthday away from home. Being that I always have a number of people get together, it will be different.

The pastor that baptized me, Pastor James from Revival Time Tabernacle in Toronto will also be coming to Ghana on my birthday as part of a week long ‘crusade’ that he will be ministering at. I thought that was a pretty interesting alignment of stars!

You know, for awhile I wanted to switch from my placement in Tamale down to one in Accra at the university radio station. I would really like to be on the campus with the students and the professors, as well as being able to spend time in their library which is a place that gives the feeling that you have just stepped out of a time machine into another generation. However, there are a number of projects that I am working on up here that I really want to accomplish. We are doing Human Rights Public Service Announcements, a Human Rights Song and Poetry Contest, and I am thinking of putting together (with students from a secondary school) a human rights play that we will broadcast). Developing Layata into a presenter and reporter is also important to me.

I don’t imagine that I will travel too much until December when I come to Accra for Christmas. I really wanted to visit my friend Ndija in Egypt when she gets there in December, but I don’t know if that will be possible. God’s will be done! It would be amazing to see her there and to visit the pyramids and the Egyptian coast line. A visit to Israel would also be incredible, but I am not sure if that is what I am supposed to do at this point. However, I will be going on some stories to some of the villages in the northern countryside. I will also be going to visit the animal reserve at Mole Park (which is west of here by 300kms). There is one other trip that I would like to make which is to Mali – through the desert – to see Timbuktu. I would love to see the desert.

Sometimes I just wish I could share more of Ghana with people, even just some friends being here. It seems funny, but I think I could be a pretty good tour guide in Ghana. Though there is much I have not seen, I could give a decent two tour of the country!

I will close this letter now, but as I close there are a few more thoughts I want to add.

I am grateful for life. Grateful for every moment. I have been blessed with this opportunity to be here – the growth has been a gift and was very necessary. I am taking one moment and one step at a time and learning to give my best to each, and learning that my best keeps getting better. Sometimes the thoughts of the future or the past get to be a lot, but I let all that go. Everything I need to know is with me, and everything that I will need will come – my role is to give my best. I think of the word, Isaiah 49:23 “thou shalt know that I am the Lord: for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me”.

Stay Blessed!