Wow! It’s been a few weeks! We were in Akropong three weeks ago, then back for one week of insane amounts of homework, and then gone up North for another week. It’s been really busy, but really awesome!
We were in Akropong for the annual Odwira Festival. The Odwira Festival is a festival of purification to renew the power of the town’s guardians, the odosu. The odosu are fragments of skulls from the enemies of the Ashanti people that the people of Akropong stole hundreds of years ago. The people who are in possession of the odosu must perform the Odwira Festival yearly in order to maintain the power of the odosu. This is done by bringing food and drink offerings to the ancestors in the sacred grove, which is at the edge of town. The kind of scary thing about it is that most of the food-carriers (there are three from each of the 7 royal houses in Akropong) are possessed by ancestral spirits. They sort of run down the street and convulse violently. It was very unnerving, but I had a lot of good discussions with people about the existence and prominence of spirits. I still don’t really know how I feel about it, but at least I am better informed now.
Akropong is a mainly Christian town (about 80% of the residents are Christian) and many people are trying to turn the Odwira Festival into a Christian festival of purification. Most people do not know anything about the odosu, however, so they end up supporting the festival without really knowing the outcome. It seems to be a very delicate thing. The Akrofi-Christaller Institute tries to engage in the festival as much as possible, but to use its message and ceremonies to a Christian purpose. The Presbyterian Teacher Training College right next door to the Institute does not allow their students to have anything to do with the Odwira Festival. I can’t decide which approach I like better. I love that the Akrofi-Christaller Institute tries to engage in the festival and discern right from wrong, but there is so much wrong with the motives of the festival that I don’t know whether engaging in it in the first place is a good idea. The week we spent in Akropong was far from settling.
We spent all of last week in the north of Ghana! We went so far north that we actually got to cross the border into the No Man’s Land of Burkina Faso! It was rather exciting! I like the north better than being in the south. Although there is no ocean and no beaches, I like the feel of being up north much better. Tamale is more what I was expecting of Ghana. It’s dry and dusty and busy, but it still feels like Africa. It reminds me of Kabala, actually. I am not much of a city person, so being in Accra is not really my place. I am definitely enjoying it, but I still don’t like cities a whole lot. I love being in the open, without being hemmed in by a giant city. Tamale was pretty much perfect. It was still big enough to have good shops and restaurants, as well as a wonderful market, but it was small enough to have a nice friendly feel. People would stop and ask how we were just because we were walking down the sidewalk. I love that so much!
Our trip was a mixture of doing touristy things and visiting NGOs. We saw the crocodile ponds in Paga, which is basically on the border of Burkina Faso. I got to sit on the tail of a 98-year-old croc! We got to see a church that was made entirely out of mud, and attend Mass there one morning. We went to Mole National Park and went on two safari walks. On both of them we saw...AN ELEPHANT!!!! I was honestly like 25 feet away from a wild elephant! It was so exciting! I don’t think that I have actually seen an elephant even in a zoo before, so it was so exciting! We saw him both on the afternoon walk, and again on the morning walk. In fact, the morning we were there, the elephant walked right in front of our motel! We also saw warthogs, baboons, green monkeys, and three different kinds of antelope. It was so amazing to just walk through the African Savannah and see all these animals!
We visited five NGOs on our trip too. We visited the Christian Children’s Fund of Canada, World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, International Development Enterprises, and BIRDS, a local NGO. It was really interesting to see the similarities and differences between all of them, as well as the impact that they had on the communities they were working in. I think my favourite project that I learned about was done by Catholic Relief Services in the area of child nutrition. They worked in 108 communities. In 102 of these communities, they provided access to a health and nutrition clinic and gave out packages of Plumpy Nut, which is a very nutritious meal supplement for children. In 6 communities, they sought out mothers whose children were very healthy and well nourished and provided tools for them to teach the rest of their community how to feed their children well. Once a week, all the mothers who wanted to got together and cooked a nutritious meal and were taught by the mother with the healthy children how to take better care of their own children. It actually reminded me of the muffin morning program at my church back at home. The greatest thing about this program is that the community started to take ownership of it. When families came back north after spending a season down south, many of the mothers helped them learn how to feed their children better too. The community now knows how to identify malnourished children and how to take care of them. I found this really exciting! There were many other interesting programs, but this one was my favourite. When we visited the NGOs, it was so cool to be able to ask them questions. We also got to visit a few places where programs had been put into place to see their impact on the community. It was just such an awesome experience!
The past three weeks have gone by so fast! I can’t believe that it’s been almost 11 weeks! I have just over 6 weeks to go! Where did the time go? I am loving living here. Sometimes, I almost forget that I am in Ghana because life here just seems so normal. Tonight, we are going to have dinner at Prof’s flat, just like every Monday. We always have guests, so tonight our guest is our Literature professor, who I’m pretty sure is the ringleader of the current teacher’s strike on campus. Thankfully, the strike doesn’t affect us, as our professors are paid by Calvin, not the University of Ghana. Still, it’s been nearly two weeks since the strike started, and if it isn’t resolved by the end of the week, they have to start sending the Ghanaian students home. It’s really not fair because the students have to pay all of their fees at the beginning of the year, so basically they miss out on a semester of school both education and money wise. Anyway, hopefully it will all be resolved soon. After dinner tonight, we are planning on watching the second episode of the Amazing Race, which was in Ghana! We stayed tuned for scenes from the next episode and recognized Makola Market, and the coffins (we’ve seen a fish-shaped one!) and all the signs looked so familiar. Logan and I are looking forward to seeing how badly they get ripped off by the taxi drivers! I can’t wait!
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