Tenacity in Tamale

I'm tired. I really am. I've been eating well and sleeping well. The weather is nice mostly and I'm getting along well with everyone (or at least I'm oblivious enough to think so). But I'm tired. I've hit the time crunch. There isn't a whole lot of time left in my placement, but there is plenty left to do. I think this would be easier if the people I am working with didn't really know or care about what I'm doing. Unfortunately my work is valued and I'm expected to do what I said I was going to do.

What a complaint to have, but quite honestly the variety of reports, projects, blogs, profiles, stories, pictures, e-mails, tweets, posts, and updates I'm expected to complete is entirely reasonable for a 4 month period. I carried my tendency for procrastination with me to Ghana and so I've really only been focusing on work and home. As such I have an excellent relationship with my Ghanaian family and things at work are really going quite well (though there is a chance that I lowered my standards), but I have a plethora of communications to attend to.

As you're likely aware, this blog has been rather sporadic all the way through and its main purpose it to let people know that I'm still alive. I've tried to refocus and unfocus a few times with it already, but you probably know that you're just going to get what you're going to get. Instead of trying to fix it or make up for 3 months of obscurity, I am working on how to communicate my placement when I get back.

The point of the last three paragraphs is that it is unlikely that I will take any initiative to communicate clearly and effectively until I get back to Canada without a specific request. If you want me to write about anything in particular then leave a comment and I'll get right on it.

Okay so onto this post. I've just decided that this won't be a community profile. Maybe some other time. Instead I'm going to tell a story.

Last Saturday I went to Tamale. I don't like Tamale. I could imagine liking it, but I don't. This trip to Tamale was distinct from the other trips I've taken there. First off it was a day trip (which I've only done 1 other time). Second it was with my Ghanaian mother. Third it was to buy stuff, but none of it was for me. Fourth I didn't take a single taxi (which makes me very happy). Finally I bought a ridiculous amount of stuff.

In summary, I went with my Ghanaian mother to a provisions supply store in Tamale's central market on a Saturday. It was a completely different side of the market, in fact of Ghana, that I had entirely failed to see (though I suspected its existence). It was awful.

I love my Ghanaian mother dearly and greatly enjoyed an outing with her, but getting supplies was miserable. At 9 a.m. Ghana time (meaning something closer to 10) we flagged down a passing metro mass, bought two tickets, and enjoyed the second nicest (and second safest) way I've ever travelled to Tamale (the first being private car). Junior, my 21 month old junior brother, slept all the way there on our 1.5 hour trip. So in good spirits and with an empty backpack and full wallet I arrived at Tamale's metro mass station--just up the road from the central market.

We then made our first mistake. We entered the market. Okay that's an exaggeration. I don't like Tamale so getting on the bus was the first mistake. We entered the market to first buy vegetables (that were to constitute 4 delicious meals--well worth the cost of the bus fare, and the travel time) which I threw into my backpack and consequently forgot about because the real reason I had come was to see what it is like to source goods for a provisions store.

Then with a quick jaunt to the bank (as my full wallet wouldn't be able to withstand the entirety of the affair) we came back into the market and went to the supply store. I say store but I mean stall. I mean stall, but what it actually was was a small opening behind a barricade of netting and goods that separated 2 gentlemen and a hoard of supplies from 10+ women. Though I'm sure both groups of people are generally lovely, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, pressed up against the storefront to leave room for people and carts to still pass through the market behind them, they weren't in the most agreeable of moods. And after standing and waiting for an hour to get any sort of attention whatsoever from the store man I sympathize greatly. Now comes problem number three (the first two being the low staff/high demand crowd and the fact that we were in Tamale): we can't see what is in the store and even if we could there was no indication of the prices. We then proceeded to tell the shop tender what we wanted. Item by item we would say the name, he would say whether they carried it, we would discuss brand names, and amounts, then he would write down the decided item and it's price. At the conclusion of our lengthy demands he added up our total and gave us the paper then attended to the other customers. We then were left to gape at the 600 GHc bill we were to have run up (a good 3 times what I was hoping for), and so we went to another store for a similar exercise to find the items that the first shop keep didn't have.

I hope you are a little disgusted right now. If you aren't then remember 4 things: 1. We were in Tamale 2. It's hot and sunny 3. We've been in the market for about 2-3 hours now 4. We have a toddler with us that has had to be carried this entire time because of the insanity of the Tamale market crowds.

So now with our two lists I break the news to my mother: yes we still haven't found all the items we want, but we can't afford what we have found. Let's sit, get some water, and decide what we'll take. And so we did. And this takes us back to the two stores to re-argue over requests and finally order the goods, a lengthy process to be sure. This leads us to the next bit of unpleasantness (which wasn't, surprisingly, paying). We had to get the goods (boxes of soap, flats of canned goods, and generally heavy and awkward items) through the small hole in the barricade, through the crowd to our poor head porter employee (sometimes called kayayo).

Head porters (generally) are poor village women with little education but a need for money to support their children. They leave their homes with very few possessions (the most important of which is a large tub) in the dry season when there is no work for them or their husbands and migrate to Ghana's large cities where they often have no connections whatsoever. They take themselves and their tubs into the markets to carry obscene weight on their heads for about 1 GHc per job for whomever will employ them. Since they have no place to stay and no money they sleep on the street where they are subject to abuse by the elements, the other head porters, and the less reputable citizens that congregate in large cities. After months of this dangerous and damaging work they return to their children (who they've left at home with the elderly and the teachers or other employed people in the village to take care of--imagine a 60+ year old woman trying to meet the needs of 20 children aged 2-12. I'm not kidding. I've seen it.)

Upon seeing that the laws of physics wouldn't allow us to fit all of our goods into our head porter's tub (regardless of the capacity of her bones to bear the weight) we employed a second and consequently fussed over the newly created problem of managing fair weight distribution with spacial relations of square boxes into round tubs. I skipped lightly over the act of paying because there wasn't much to say. There is no haggling. Even though the prices aren't displayed, they're final. I'm the only one who was inconvienced by the price but I had far too many hours of standing in the heat to care about something so trivial.

We have now managed to decide on, order, buy, and load our goods into our human carts. Now it's back to the metro mass station. To get to Walewale you take a tro, not a metro mass, but the tros also wait at the same station. It was happenstance that we caught a metro mass on the way down. We overpayed (at my firm insistence) the head porters who quickly went back to the market for the hope of more work that day. We then payed the fixed price for the tro tickets and were about to do the same for the goods that we bought when the driver all of a sudden tripled the price. This had nothing to do with the volume of goods. I feel confident in saying that it was because I look like a walking wallet. My Ghanaian mother thought so too and said so. After a frank exchange of ideas, we compromised and loaded into the tro.

Tros are an adventure in themselves. I would say that they would hold 12 people by Canadian standards except they in no way meet Canadian standards. There were 20 people (well 21 with my poor, poor junior brother) in this one. When we started there were only 15 but that's because 5 of them were pushing the vehicle because it would only start if the wheels were already moving. We then started our 110 km journey back to Walewale. I don't know how fast a tro can drive because I've never seen one with a functioning speedometer. Regardless they take 2-3 hours at top speed to get to Walewale from Tamale. Sitting on a stool with no back, over the engine that dissipated heat though conduction into the floor, trying to entertain a toddler who had been insanely well behaved (not always a norm for my dear junior brother) but has reached his limit, while I'm well passed my own limit I had two things on my mind to be thankful for: 1. I never have to do this again 2. We were leaving Tamale.

We arrived back in Walewale where we had to haggle over a car to take us and our stuff back home, which only took a few minutes--though it seemed a lot longer. We arrived back home around 5:30 where we discovered that my host father had received a live chicken as a gift so it was straight onto the next adventure of turning a live bird and the forgotten vegetables in the bottom of my backpack into an incredibly delicious meal (considering we hadn't eaten all day).

And all though I never have to do this again, my Ghanaian mother, and countless other Ghanaian women do-- not to mention the ones who can go to other major centers rather than the deplorable Tamale.

 

Quote: "My chest is paining me"- my Ghanaian mother after carrying my junior brother on her back for several hours

  

Fortunately Moving On,

 

Tom