Create Change - what's it all about?

So I guess I should write a little about the project that I’m working on here in Ghana…'Create Change’. ‘Create Change’ is a small NGO which was founded in Canada/Ghana in '07 (there are 3 of us here in Ghana at the moment..Shannen (boss), Kay (videographer and me (role as of yet undefined ;)) which aims to improve the quality of life of people in Northern Ghana by providing better access to basic needs of water and education. I guess the idea is that if you provide people with the most basic of their needs they are better equipped to escape the poverty cycle in which they find themselves. The novel idea behind the charity is that we will create a number of short video documentaries of each project which we carry out which will then be posted on our website and will be used to appeal for donations from the public. The videos will be broken down into ‘proposal’ -where we describe the idea behind the project we wish to carry out and appeal for donations to help create this change, ‘implementation’ – where we show the money raised being spent in order to implement the project idea and the change that has been created and finally ‘impact’ –where we show how the project has changed the life of the people concerned. In essence people that donate can actually see firsthand the change which they by virtue of their donation have helped create.

Interview setup

The primary focus of our efforts here over the last few months has been on our ‘Ghana Girls Education’ initiative , a project which is enabling almost 130 female students to attend secondary school by virtue of paying their school fees, providing necessary school supplies such as text books, uniforms, bicycles, mattresses and feeding supplies (for the boarders), calculators etc. Northern Ghana is considerable poorer than the south of the country and girls are often overlooked when it comes to education with preference going to the male children in the family.

This mans son had malaria when we visited his village

This gender imbalance results in many problems including the issue of ‘kayeyo’ where girls from the north that can’t get an education travel to the major cities of Kumasi and Accra in the south to work as porters of heavy goods. They often have to live on the street and become victims of various types of abuse. By helping to keep these girls in school here in Tamale we are not only helping the girls become a more productive member of their communities but are providing an alternative to destructive options like kayeyo.

Interview in the 'field'

A typical ‘distribution day’ begins at about 7am and over breakfast we set out the plan for the day ahead. After biking to our storage location (the back of an internet café of friends of Shannens) we load up the bikes and the pickup with supplies –books, bikes, mattresses, food supplies, calculators, school bags etc. and head to either a community or a school. If we’re going to a community we always bring a translator as none of us have command of the Dagbani language beyond the basics. There is usually great excitement when we arrive in the villages and after introducing ourselves we are normally taken to greet the village chief. The chief is pretty much always wearing a funny hat and chilling out under a tree. It’s not cool to look him straight in the eyes when talking to him so we generally squat for a few moments and look at the ground by his feet and mutter “Dasaiba, Naa, Naa,” which roughly translates as “Good morning, cool beans, cool beans”. We then head back to the village clearing and give out the supplies to the girls who have assembled. Shannen measures them for uniforms and Kay films the entire deal.

Me n Fatuw (one of the boys we helped attend SS) and my Haojiin

I spend lots of time sorting bundles of books and lifting bicycles off the pickup. The look on the girls faces when you hand them what are probably their first ever textbooks or a bicycle which means they won’t have to walk 2 hours to and from school every day is really special and is where the reward is in this for me. Most of the adults we meet in the rural villages are very poor subsistence farmers. They have big families (polygamy is widely practiced here) and generally have not received any formal education. Despite this they are very insistent on the importance of education and are grateful that their kids are being afforded an opportunity that was not an option for them.

Woman delivering water

Over the next few months we will be gathering enough footage to make over 20 short films which will be focused on the topics of 'water', 'education' and 'health' here in the north of Ghana. Ill write a bit more about each of these in due course!

Motorbiking Milo

So I had my first motorbike lesson today...and within about 20 minutes of starting I found myself driving along the dirt roads of Tamale for the first time. The motorbike is pretty much the primary mode of transport here in Tamale. Its a common sight to see entire families (mum, dad and up to three kids) piled onto a bike chugging along the city streets, not to mention people transporting live sheep and cows on the back! The bikes are of varying quality, everything from good quality Japanese off-road bikes to rickety contraptions that aren’t much more than a bicycle with a lawnmower engine strapped on the back.

My bike is a red Haojin 125 cc which cost about 500 euro and shes a divvler on the dirt roads!

Anyway my first lesson came free of charge via Mr. ‘ I can fix anything which has moving parts’ Ebbe , and took place in a local school yard. Nothing too unusual there until you consider that it wa s about 1pm in the afternoon on a Wednesday. We pull up to the school yard, Mr. Ebbe dismounts and points at the clutch and says ‘Here is the clutch…only use it small small’, then the accelerator and advises ‘This is the gas…only use it small small, now you try’. So after a couple of stalls I figure out the meaning of ‘small small’ and manage to get the bike moving, at which point fifty or so school kids stream out of their classrooms into the yard. By the looks on their faces Im pretty sure none of them had imagined the treat that was store for them that day..a big hairy ‘salaminga’ learning to ride a motorbike on their soccer pitch at lunchtime! And so with a bunch of them running after me trying to touch my elbows and the rest shouting and jumping back and forth on my track I repeated figure of 8s until Mr. Ebbe managed to clear them all to get out of my way. He shouted at me that we should go elsewhere and it was at this point I realised that I wasn’t all that sure about the slowing down and stopping process. I mean I knew that I had a foot brake and a hand brake but wasn’t aware that the clutch was also needed! So after a juddering halt we decided that it would be much safer for everyone else if I learned to ride on the road itself.

One and half months and over 2000km later Im feeling pretty confident riding my Haojin pretty much anywhere. I’ve had a few minor falls but only when going really slowly over rough terrain when lack of balance and the desire to keep my feet dry have resulted in some comical tip-overs. In terms of terrain there are three types of surface here…regular tarmac which is pockmarked with nasty potholes, dirt road which is pretty bumpy but a lot of fun to ride on and then of course off road trails which is where the good times are had. Many of the rural villages which we have been visiting are accessible only via these dirt roads and the extended rainy season which we are having has resulted in the deterioration of these roads to comical levels. We have some classic footage of us riding through long stretches of knee deep water. Usually I have Shannen on the back which makes the bike a little more difficult to control and sometimes a little more stressful…now I know why backseat drivers are such a nuisance! My record for carrying stuff on the back was on Tuesday last week when we rode from Tamale centre to our house carrying four 10 foot long drain pipes. Initially we were riding with them supported atop our shoulders which elicited shouts of advice and caution from the locals but soon realised that this wasn’t going to work on the bumpy roads near our house and transferred to the much more sensible underarm method!

Pictures to follow (I brought the wrong cable to the web cafe so real ones of me on me bike will have to wait!)