Due to lots of travelling and early starts the following tale reflects my state of mind a bit (although some of you may say I'm usually quite rambly and space cadet-y : )
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6:30 in the morning, another early start. Tamale – the northern city of Ghana feels like a different world to Accra, there is a haze covering the road with motorbikes and people all over the place. We arrive at Rabby the soap makers place. The compound has a lingering smell of shea butter and moringa coming out of it, a kitten is chasing a baby chick, a little boy wonders around without any pants on. The sun starts to rise shinning across the small courtyard, Tessa smiles at me ‘perfect light for photography’.
We stop for at a bar by the side of the road for a desperately needed coffee. The woman ushers us over to some plastic seats that they have put out and produces a tin of Nescafe, milo, some condensed milk and a couple of mugs of boiling water. She then proceeds to whip up an omelette for Peter. I smile to myself ‘sure it’s not a latte but Ghana you sure do have it sorted’
We arrive at the district assembly hall in Tolon. The women are all very enthusiastic when we walk in. Some of them try to talk to us but we just look back at them blankly, apologising for not being able to understand them, at which point some of them try talking even more enthusiastically and using hand gestures, which just makes us feel more guilty, we all end up laughing. Rabby shows up and gets started. The women all respond really well to her, they hang off her every word. You can tell when she says something important because they all respond in unison with a humming noise. The women are beautiful, colourful and dignified. For some reason I find their faces facinating, they seem to be the faces of women who have mastered the atitude of survival and have seen a lot in their lives despite probably rarely leaving their village.
The day wears on, at one point the power goes off killing all the fans and the little air con there was, the room slowly gets hotter until it’s unbearable. The demonstration is finished. There is one old man sitting up the back in traditional muslim gear. When we find the translator we ask him why he is here. Turns out he is here to support his wife.
‘naaa, despa’
We leave Accra at 5:30am to get on our flight to Tamale. I snooze most of the way and only really wake up when it’s time to get off the plane. There’s quite a few people in far out outfits on the flight. As we walk down the tarmac we notice that huge crowds of people have turned up. Tessa (the consultant I'm working with) and I start looking at each other and wonder who the celebrity on our flight was. Turns out it was this guy. The best explanation we got was that he was probably an important religious leader who had just come back from a pilgrimage to Mecca. (I kinda thought he looked like one of the wise men - he had a gold hat with jewels in it and everything!)
*********6:30 in the morning, another early start. Tamale – the northern city of Ghana feels like a different world to Accra, there is a haze covering the road with motorbikes and people all over the place. We arrive at Rabby the soap makers place. The compound has a lingering smell of shea butter and moringa coming out of it, a kitten is chasing a baby chick, a little boy wonders around without any pants on. The sun starts to rise shinning across the small courtyard, Tessa smiles at me ‘perfect light for photography’.
We’re here to document the process of soap making for a workshop that will be happening later in the day. Rabby is a master soap maker and even makes soap to export to Europe, it’s hardly surprising; northern Ghana is a haven of perfect ingredients for making beautiful soap. She takes us through all the steps, from melting the shea butter to setting the soap in the mould. She even shows us how you can make ‘omo’ style detergent using shea butter (something a lot of the women from the villages didn’t believe was possible).
You might ask why my job suddenly consists of soap making workshops. Well part of the project we’re working on is to encourage behaviour change when it comes to hand washing (with soap!) something which can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by around 44%. A lot of the communities we’re working in are remote or poor and so they don’t always have soap all year around but they usually have most of the ingredients on hand to make it themselves. If women in communities make soap from locally available ingredients they can sell it quite cheaply to neighbours and friends and even give some to the local schools, thus enabling them to increase their income and also allowing everyone to have soap to improve their hygiene and health – horay!
Once we’re finished snapping away we set out for Tolon where the soap making workshop is going to be run. Peter Paul is driving us. Along the way we spot a sign for a local drinking spot. It gets us talking about some of the funny signs we’ve seen while we’ve been here like the ‘don’t mind your wife’ eating spot. Peter explains to us that if a wife is mad usually the first thing she’ll do is refuse to cook for her husband, and then go on to deny him ‘certain other pleasures’ which kicks up an interesting conversation on how things work between men and women.
‘In Ghana a woman will ask a man out for a drink when she is interested in him, but he can only accept if he has a full pocket, a woman will never pay for her meal and if the man cannot pay he will be disgraced. So you can only take a wife if you have the means to maintain her’
Tamale for some reason feels so much more ‘African’ than Accra. It is so much more relaxed and laid back, and is full of feasts for the eyes, the fabric on women’s clothes feels brighter and everyone seems to have an innate sense of funk. Everyone rides on motorbikes, bikes, motorbike-utes, on the top of buses... you name it. I’m not sure quite how all the craziness on the road works but it does.
We stop for at a bar by the side of the road for a desperately needed coffee. The woman ushers us over to some plastic seats that they have put out and produces a tin of Nescafe, milo, some condensed milk and a couple of mugs of boiling water. She then proceeds to whip up an omelette for Peter. I smile to myself ‘sure it’s not a latte but Ghana you sure do have it sorted’
Peter insists on paying for us all.
We arrive at the district assembly hall in Tolon. The women are all very enthusiastic when we walk in. Some of them try to talk to us but we just look back at them blankly, apologising for not being able to understand them, at which point some of them try talking even more enthusiastically and using hand gestures, which just makes us feel more guilty, we all end up laughing. Rabby shows up and gets started. The women all respond really well to her, they hang off her every word. You can tell when she says something important because they all respond in unison with a humming noise. The women are beautiful, colourful and dignified. For some reason I find their faces facinating, they seem to be the faces of women who have mastered the atitude of survival and have seen a lot in their lives despite probably rarely leaving their village.  |
| Rabby shows the women how it's done |
‘ he says he is very excited that this workshop is taking place, he thinks it is a wonderful idea, he says he will support his wife to buy her all the equipment and ingredients she needs’
That night there is a flurry of activity in the ‘Aussie house’ where I’m staying, everyone is preparing for Thanksgiving dinner which is being hosted by another expat down the road. As usual I feel a bit strange turning up to a strangers house uninvited with my bottle of wine but the beautiful expat hospitality is the same as in the rest of Ghana, ‘come one come all… but we might need to borrow a few plates from the house next door.’
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I got to sleep in a bit more this morning and didn’t have to leave the house until 7:30, brilliant! The sun’s still rising though as I set off through the rubbish dump and little compounds to the main road. There’s a surprising amount of people of around and they all great me, I think it’s the only local language I’ve learnt in Tamale, ‘Despa’
‘naaa, despa’‘naaa’
‘naaaa’
‘… naaa’
‘naaa!’
I pass a small flock of baby ducklings swaddling through a dirty pool of waste water – oh so cute.
On the main road I manage to flag down a share taxi, there’s a man standing there with a smart African shirt, I ask him if this taxi will take me down the road to where I’m going.
‘not a problem’, he jumps in ahead of me and squeezes into the middle seat. I as I try to gracefully maneovre myself into the small remaining space with my three fat bags he smiles and takes my overnight bag and puts it on his lap.
‘oh it’s ok I can fit it on my lap here’
He smiles again ‘oh no, not a problem’
As we drive along we came up to some chaos on the road. A school girl has been knocked off her bicycle, she looks confused and has blood oozing out of a wound on her head. There is a circle of people surrounding her but no one seems to know what to do. The tension in the taxi rises and we all look around at her. Out of nowhere and in a matter of seconds a woman in a smart suit jumps off her motorbike, marches across the road, somehow produces a cloth and holds it tight against the girls wound. We all breathe a sigh of relief. When we drive past fifteen minutes later in the car that is taking us to the airport the girl is gone and there is no evidence of anything having happened there.
Now back to my house husband and his awesome spaghetti bolognaise!
Now back to my house husband and his awesome spaghetti bolognaise!
