The next steps...

So my time here in Tamale is coming to an end...for now at least. Over the last few months we've shot enough footage to make about 20 short documentary style movies which will be launched on the Create Change website in the coming months. The next job is to edit the raw footage and to do all the other things necessary before a finished movie pops out the other end. We've already started this process and I completed my first short film (Chelseas staff video) last week. It's really great to see all the work that we've put in over the past 7 months finally appear in a tangible form but I expect the best feeling will omce when the videos are launched on the site and it starts making money for all of the projects we have been working on here.

So in a few weeks Shannen heads for Vancouver to finish the editing and get the fundraising under way but I'm going to take some time to hang out on the continent to see if there are any adventures waiting out there for me.

The rough next steps are to head for South Africa to pay a visit to my aunt and uncle for a few weeks. Ive arranged to arrive in Cape Town on the day Ireland and going to win their first Grand Slam since...well since I don't know when, so it'll be a great reintroduction to the world of sport for me (I've been surviving on sports sections from the Irish times for the past few months)!! After that the country list for my travels is Namibia, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya. Of that time I'm planning on spending about 3 or 4 months in total on the road and about 2 months volunteering at a school in northern Tanzania but more about that in due course.

So for the moment its goodbye to hot dusty Tamale and hello nice cool beaches of southern Ghana!!

Whats for lunch?

Today I saw a small girl eating a rat. She was about 3 years old and clutching the rat as if it were a bar of chocolate. It still had its fur and tail on but some of its back was missing where she had bitten some meat off. I was filming an interview when I saw her and I didnt really know what to do or think. Instinctively I swung the camera over to film the little girl and the picture is just a screen grab from the clip so the quality is pretty bad. But its pretty clear that shes holding a rat. I suppose the rats in the countryside here are basically just very small rabbits so the people have no problem eating them...and it adds some much needed meat to their basic diets. When I started filming her she got nervous and ran away and I went back to filming the interview with an eight year old girl who doesnt go to school because she has to mind her small brothers and sisters while her mother goes to work in the farm...

Barbershop Tales

So I had my first Ghanian barbershop experience last week...and I must say it was quite entertaining! While waiting for my egg and bread breakfast to be made at a streetside stall I spied a barbers opening for business across the road and made an impulse decision to get my beard of two months shaved. I entered a brightly tiled room covered in mirrors and was welcomed by a young Ghanian man who had quite the surprised look on his face on seeing me. I'm pretty sure that by the look of relief on his face when I asked for a beard shave that he I thought I was going to ask for the dreads treatment! Most people in the north of Ghana are Muslim and many of the men have beards so I guess he was surprised that I would want to shave such a fine specimen:

Barber - "So why do you want to shave your great beard"

Sightly nervous mise -"Eh...well too many people are calling me Jesus when I walk down the street" (This is true...I get called Jesus pretty much every time I go to town, a typical Jesus conversation might go something like this..."Hey Jesus...how are you?" ... "Fine thanks, just going to the shops for some eggs..how are you too?)

Barber - "Ah!!! But it is a blessing that you are called Jesus...this is a very good thing!"

At this point in the proceedings he had shaved a good portion of one side of my face and given that he now seemed to dissaprove of my motivation for shaving I was worried he might refuse to continue.

Mise : "And its very hot at the moment for a salaminga with a big beard" I said hoping that this more logical reason would appease him. Luckily it did and he resumed the shave. As he continued to work I noticed that he was completely avoiding my mustache and that little bit of hair that grows in the dimple space above ones chin.

Mise (now looking very dodge with my skanger tash) - "Ehh you can shave my mustache aswell"

Barber - "Why would I do that...you don't like the way I made it?"

Mise - "Do you think I look good with this...I look like a salaminga Mexican!!" I said jokingly (apologies to any Mexicans reading this for using that stereotype).

This comment really got him and he stared roaring laughing all the while brandishing the razor in the vicinity of my upper lip.

Barber : "A Mexican ... yes...like in the movies!...ok ok ok I take the mustache off!"

This, however didn't include my chin dimple hair which he proceeded to shape into a nice neat little square. I decided that I'd pushed my luck enough for one shave and allowed him that little victory.

The final stage of a beard shave here in ghana is a liberal dousing with disinfectant (dettol in my case) followed by a few sprays of a cheap aftershave. As I left the barbers with dettol fumes stinging my nostrils I crossed the road to find that in my absence Shannen had been presented with a gift of 10 yams and a guinea fowl from some villagers whose kids we had helped to get to school. Shannen's scared of holding the bird so the newly shaven Jesus has to hop on the back of the bike, balance atop a pyramid of yams while clutching a struggling guinea fowl...not the smooth as my chin exit I had hoped for!

Where is Create Change at?

So I just thought I'd pop up a wee update on how the Create Change project is coming along so that you dont all think I'm just out here on a holiday! Since we returned to Tamale in late December Shannen and I have been working pretty much flat out (apart from last week when I went to see some wild elephants-more about that soon) to edit all of the video footage which we have captured thusfar.

We currently have quite a large bank of footage but because we are hoping to produce over 20 short films we are still a few weeks filming away from having enough footage. So my work at the moment consists of conducting interviews with a range of local people which has so far included characters such as the local chemical seller aswell as numerous school childrens' parents. Besides interviewing I also have to get alot of footage from the local rural villages where we are working. Just this morning I found myself knee deep in a watering hole near Kpaumo filming women and girls collecting water.

In this case we are putting together a short film about the water situation in their village which sees them drinking this dirty water from the dam, resulting in health problems such as guinea worm among the villagers. Its pretty shocking to see the condition of the water (so filthy I had reservations about walking into it!) ... and the amount of work which the women and young girls are expected to do to ferry it back to the village in barrels on their heads. Its the start of the dry season now and in the coming months this water source will dry up completely forcing the women to search for water in the countryside which can sometimes take upwards of 6 hours per day.

Through the video which we are making we hope to raise money to build a borehole in the village of Kpaumo which will provide the village with a source of clean drinking water year round. This will have obvious benefits such as the eradication of guinea worm infestation but will also result in lowering the workload placed on schoolgirls on a daily basis so that instead of carrying water for 2 hours every evening after school they might get some time to study using all those text books which we bought them at the start of the project last year!

So the next few weeks will see things continuing in the same vein...out in the field filming during the day (trying my best to get some semblance of shade from the ~40deg heat!) and then uploading and editing the footage in the evenings. Not a bad way to spend February I suppose! And after that...well thats material enough for another blog posting... !

...not for those of you who liked Mr. G. Fowl...

Im sad to reoprt that as of last evening Mr. G. Fowl is no more. It seems the deceased was involved in a bizarre de-feathering ritual before he met his demise. He is survived by 3 fellow-fowl in the neighbourhood.

When asked about Mr. G. they all said he was a stand-up member of the local community, often campaigning for equal rights for guinea fowls on the farm. Rumours abound that this apparent 'de-feathering death' might have been the work of local chicken mobs who felt threatened by G.'s insistence that guinea fowl should have the same labour rights as chickens (right to prime nesting locations etc.)

May he rest in peace.

Fowl at a Funeral

So this morning I attended my first Ghanian funeral. The father of a boy (Yakubu) whom we are sponsoring through secondary school was knocked off his bicycle by a tipper truck and killed sometime before Christmas. Most people in this region of Ghana are Muslim and a persons 'funeral' takes place a month or so after the death and burial. We arrived at the village of Taha at about 9am accompanied by Dawuda (our translator when we work with the people there).

There was an almost festive atmosphere with everyone dressed in their finest most colourful clothes, and a pair of drummers were providing entertainment. Food was being cooked in the compound houses by the women and the men were sitting in small groups and talking or eating. We were taken by Dawuda and Fatuwh ( another boy we are supporting who has excellent english) to a room where we had an 'audience' of sorts with the Fatuwhs father who would now be looking after Yakubu and his brothers (his mother had also passed away recently). We told the man that we would be able to look after the Yakubus education until he finishes SS and would also help them with his younger brother Alhassan who is in primary school. They were very grateful for this and presented us with a gift of an adult guinea fowl as a gesture of thanks. With this little fellah securely tucked under my arm we visited a number of other compound houses where we met with the cooking women and other people related to the family. On leaving we were also presented with some take away food. In Ghanian culture it is very important to accept whenever you are offered...even if you are not very hungry / scared of guinea fowl / not too fond of eating goat stomach before 10am etc.

The closeness and unity of the rural community of Taha was really evident at the funeral. There seems to be a very strong support structure for kids like Yakubu and his brothers who suffer a double bereavement by virtue of the fact that members of the community take responsibility for looking after their welfare. Despite the fact that they are quire poor they were extremely generous in giving us the fowl and we have seen this on numerous occasions...where people give us eggs or yams. Its quite a humbling experience to be given these things by people who you know are really struggling themselves.

Guinea fowl are like big chickens...they lay small but tasty eggs and their meat is slightly tougher than chicken but very palatable. The adults can be cantankerous and protect their eggs vigorously (they have been known to scratch mens eyes out...hence my pose in the picture :)...so much so that farmers will often steal wild guinea eggs and put them in chickens nests so that the chicken will raise the young fowl as a 'domestic' bird. I dont think I quite have the necessary skills to pluck and feather the thing so we'll probably give it to the local women around our house and let them hae a nice dinner.

more stories from the Road

Ellis Hideout Coconut

The beach resort of Ellis Hideout in the village of Butre is the most idyllic place that Ive been in Ghana. We spent 5 fantastic days there just relaxing and soaking up the rays.
Tony the watchman would bring us fresh coconuts that he knocked out of the trees every morning. He'd chop the top off with his machete and when we were finished drinking the coconut milk he'd split them so we could scoop out the coconut flesh with a little spoon made from the coconut skin. And apparently its good for ya aswell!!

Axim Drowning

Rip tides on the coast of Ghana are notoriously dangerous and luckily I’m here to tell you a little about them. Axim beach resort is a posh kinda place...the one where waiters come to you on the beach and ask you if you’d like a drink. They stopped coming to us when they saw us with our own pure water bags (little plastic bags of filtered water which one buys for 5c here and not really of the same class as everybody else staying at the resort). The waves were pretty big ... some nearly 10 ft and after diving under a few in a row Shannen and I found ourselves out of our depth and being carried slowly away from the beach. I began to get unsettled a few moments later when despite swimming towards shore we were still out of depth and Shannen was beginning to get out of breath. I'm a reasonable swimmer and was pretty sure Id be able to get myself ashore but wasn’t too sure about Shannen. Telling her to stay calm and regulate her breathing helped us for a few minutes but we were making the mistake of avoiding rather than going with the huge waves that were crashing shore-ward. I was afraid that I would catch one and Shannen wouldn't. Then I noticed the resort lifeguard had come onto the beach and I motioned for him to help us. He swam out quickly, allowed Shannen to hold his shoulder and motioned for her to catch a wave. I waited until I saw them surface some 30m closer to shore and then swam hard to catch the next one. I surfaced breathing hard but in shallow water and waded ashore with my heart pumping. Later that evening one of the waiters told us a story of how 3 men had been swept out to sea earlier that year as one and then another attempted to rescue the first swimmer who had gotten into trouble. I guess we got lucky!