A Great Week: Thursday

More fried eggs for breakfast, between suddenly introducing meat into my diet and the amount of eggs I am eating I am a little worried that I am going to end up like that guy on Supersize Me. We met a little later at the Red Cross office to debrief on the day before. I attempted to compliment the moderators on their energy throughout and their commitment to the project, but it was lost in translation and everyone thought I was talking about the mothers there. Oh well, they too deserved recognition. My feedback was that we should split the communities into two groups next time and have half of the girls come in the morning and half in the afternoon. We just don’t have enough staff for this kind of project. We also strategized on how to recruit more girls to the survey and the program overall. It was decided that at an announcement would go out Friday at dawn to tell the girls to come to a community center. There are two ways to get news and announcements out to people in these rural areas. One is through churches and town leaders who walk around from home to home to communicate the message and who tell people as they come to church. The other is to hire people who go around in a van with a megaphone at dawn and announce any messages. I asked Nadia if these teenage girls would be awake by then and she replied, “Oh yes. They all have to fetch water for the day for their homes.” I feel like I am getting good material to use when I am the parent of a lazy American teenager. We opted for the megaphone approach which cost $100. It is bizarre to me that something so arcane would be that pricey.

After the meeting, Barnard, Nadia and I went out to get fufu for lunch. We went to a little chop shop and I was told that I would have to eat with my hands. Luckily I had come prepared with my packet of Wet Ones hand wipes. We stood looking into the pots of meat and I was noticing some different option that I had not seen before. A dark clump of something was put onto one man’s fufu and I sort of assumed but had to ask Nadia. Sure enough, it was snail meat. She asked if I wanted to try it and I should have censored myself but the face automatically conveyed a look of shock and horror at the possibility. The other new option they had for me was grass cutter meat. I have been told that this animal looks like a large rodent or guinea pig. I ended up ordering fish with the fufu and spicy tomato broth. And I ate it with my hands, but of course chewed it. You can only venture so far from your comfort zone. It was pretty good though and the guy who was pounding the fufu (it is a combination of pounded cassava and plantain) wanted me to watch him and take some pictures. I know they say necessity is the mother of all invention, but it really amazes me how much work goes into the main staples of food in this country. Pounding fufu looked exhausting and one other person has to reach his hand in to turn the dough. A slight distraction on timing could easily result in a broken metacarpal.

The second part of the day saw me, Nadia, Kwame (the regional Director of the Red Cross) and two of his team members meeting with microfinance institutions in the Eastern Region. We wanted to find out what types of loans they had available for girls, if they would be willing to present information to the girls, and their overall opinions and advice for us. I have to say that this was a truly amazing and educational experience for me. All of the organization are locally staffed, essentially Ghanaians lending small amounts to other Ghanaians instead of international organizations driving the microfinance movement. I was starting to get a little cynical about development in Africa because foreign aid, despite the huge quantities, seems to be doing little good but Africans are not stepping up to improve their communities either. However, these organizations demonstrated an exception to this pattern and were able to speak frankly about the cultural challenges inhibiting development.

The first encouraging piece of information we heard is the emphasis on the girls being able to demonstrate an ability to save money, even a small amount over a period of time. The microfinance organizations want to reduce the “dependence syndrome” which sees too many looking for an easy handout and making excuses for why they can’t move forward. These problems are not unique to Ghana, but the pervasiveness here really stunts the growth of the economy for more so than it does in the US. We had included a section on saving money in the questionnaire and realized now that it had to be an essential component of the training. Another problem we heard about from these microfinance organizations is the consistent pattern of people gaining capital from their business on spending it on material goods not essential to the business. We heard about one man who used all of his profits to buy a BMW and then when he came back to get another loan and the loan officer turned him down, the man accused him of being jealous of his new car. Materialism is certainly not unique to Ghana but it is difficult to hear about how women will skip their babies’ doctors appointments because they can’t afford a new outfit and how there is no money left for food when a week’s salary was spent on a new funeral outfit. All of the Ghanaians agreed that the public needs to be disabused of its perception that material goods are a higher priority than basic goods like food for their kids. It was also very validating to hear that the organizations agreed with the number of people we are targeting for the vocation skills training. All 250 will receive HIV educations and hear presentations from a variety of people in the community, but only 40 will receive training in a specific skill such as cooking and weaving. The microfinance specialists agreed that it was important to start small and focus on getting the 40 girls up and running in a microbusiness before attempting to expand it out to the rest of the girls.

The night was dominated by Ghana’s Black Stars facing Cameroon’s Lions in the semi-finals. Again, as I had mentioned before everyone was wearing their Ghana gear and even one of the men we met with at a microfinance organization had a very silly fuzzy hat on in the pattern of Ghana’s flag. People were nervous. Cameroon was known for having a very good soccer team and always dominating in the Africa Cup. Also, one of the best players of the Black Stars had received a red card in the previous game and could not play in this one and their captain was injured. It was fun getting to watch it with a few locals. Nadia and Mary were screaming at the TV and falling on the floor at different times. Bernard refused to watch fearing that his hypertension would be severely worsened by watching the game live. Sadly, Cameroon scored late in the game and Ghana was never able to capitalize on its few chances. The newscasters were so dramatic. There were comments such as “the hope of a nation has been crushed,” “an entire has been silenced by one goal,” and “the nation of Ghana is devastated.” All of the players were weeping at the end and the newspeople described them as “inconsolable.” The most surprising moment of the game for me came when one of Cameroon’s players was injured on the field. The Red Cross staff were on the field attempting to help him when one of the other soccer players from Cameroon ran up to a Red Cross medic and pushed him to the ground. He was tossed and rolled for a bit. It was very bizarre. I have never seen anything like it and couldn’t imagine why a team member would want to harm the people who are helping his teammate. Perhaps steroids aren’t only a problem in baseball.