I've Been Here for Five Months, But...

I am still having some culture shock.

But first let me tell you a little bit about what I’ve been doing at work. The thing that we’ve been spending most of our time on so far has been collecting cash from groups of women who took out loans from the bank in Walewale, that we plan to deposit at the bank tomorrow. The first day we did this, Tuesday, Marika was sick, and as a result, it was just Gifty and I collecting the money, while Doris did other things.

Yesterday, with Marika there and Doris absent, we had some small transportation issues. In order to explain that, I have to have a little sidebar. Marika and I wanted bikes. Unfortunately, Tawodep is about a 30-40 minute drive from where we’re staying, so that would be a really long commute on a bike. Doris solved this issue (I guess) by providing me with a motorcycle.

I was excited and terrified.

I was excited to be driving again, and I really miss my Annabelle (Honda CBR 125). But driving here is not like driving at home. It’s not as bad in Bolga, because it’s a small enough place that there isn’t too much traffic, so it’s easier to avoid most of the craziness. Still, the very act of getting on the road, as a driver, passenger, pedestrian, what have you, is taking sizeable risk.

But there was no other way. Even if we wanted to pay the obscene amount that it would cost to charter a taxi to work every morning, we need some form of transportation to get to and between the villages where we meet with women’s groups, and the taxis won’t go that far off the main drag, even if we could catch one in the middle-of-nowhere town of Bulugu where Tawodep is located.

The motorcycle that I actually ended up driving is not the one that belongs to Doris. At the moment, her extra motorcycle is in a repair shop in Bolga, because it desperately needed repairs. The front brake was nonexistent, and the fuel tank was leaking, so even by Ghanaian standards, it wasn’t driveable. The one that I have now, I have named Jezebel. That is because she’s the one that the repair shop lends out in situations such as these, and frankly, she’s easy. There is no way to lock the handlebars, so anyone could take her and roll her away, or even drive her away, because she also does not require a key to start. This is kind of scary for me, so I actually roll her up onto the verandah of our room at night, and anytime I park her anywhere, I’m constantly wondering if she’ll still be there when I return.

Jezebel is not fancy at all. Though physically larger than Annabelle, she has an even smaller engine, and no battery functions to speak of. Luckily, this is not uncommon here, so everyone recognizes and respects the hand signals that I use. There is a great swath of leather missing from the seat that has been replaced by a strip of upholstery that looks like it was stolen off a couch in the 80s. Bafflingly, she has two kickstands – one on either side – and, much to my dismay, a carburetor and a kick-start. Also, as I found out yesterday, no reserve tank, and no fuel gauge.

Doris wants Marika to learn to drive too, and she talks about a moped (that I’ve never seen) that she wants to give her, but Marika is too scared. I’m kind of annoyed, because this leaves me in a position that I’ve been in a hundred times in Canada, where I end up shuttling people around and taken for granted, and even taken advantage of, because I’m the only one who has a vehicle and can drive. I’m noticing that this may be the case with Tawodep itself. Doris provided me with the moto, free of charge, but I have to fill it with gas myself, and am required to shuttle Gifty and/or Marika out to wherever we go on Tawodep business. It’s a way for Tawodep to reduce their operating costs, I guess.

Anyway, with Doris absent and therefore unable to take anyone on the back of her motorcycle, we had a small transportation issue. Although riding with three (or even up to five!) on a motorcycle is fairly common here, I was really not comfortable with having more than one passenger, especially on the dust and dirt roads that we would be taking to get to the villages. As a result, Marika and Gifty were able to get a ride along the main road from Bulungu to Winkogo. From there, I drove Gifty the rest of the way to the village, which took about 10 minutes, and then turned around to pick up Marika.

That’s where I had a bit of an adventure.

Gifty had been holding my purse, since she was on the back, and I didn’t bother to take it back from her when I went to get Marika, because I figured I’d be seeing her again in just a few minutes anyway. That proved to be a mistake, because about three minutes into the drive back to the main road, my motorcycle sputtered to a stop, because I had run out of fuel. This snuck up on me in this way, because the machine has no fuel gauge.

So I was on a random dirt road in the middle of nowhere in Ghana with no phone, no money, no water, and a broken down motorcycle. So, I put it in neutral and started pushing. It took a while, and I was very tired and sweaty by the end of it, but eventually I got it to the main road, where there happened to be a fueling station. So Marika, who was waiting there for me to take her to the village, bought me some gas, and we went on with our day.

Today, in order to avoid my having to shuttle everyone around (which would have been harder today because we had two different villages to go to) Marika stayed at the office and worked on the Girl Child Education Agreement that Doris wanted drafted, while Gifty and I went to the field.

Now, on to my culture shock.

Working in the field is a lot of fun. It’s cool to see where and how people in rural areas actually live, and interact with these women who are supporting their families through their enterprises, and see how clever and capable they are, regardless of their levels of education.

But it can also be very challenging. Working with Gifty puts me in a very strange position in relation to the interactions that are taking place. Usually, Gifty and the women will speak to each other in Frafra, at length (it seems to me, but maybe that’s just because I don’t understand), about our business with them, and the money we mean to collect. People greet me, and I try to stumble through the appropriate responses, and work at greeting anybody I should such that I don’t offend anyone. Unless I ask specifically, Gifty doesn’t usually tell me what’s being said, even when people are clearly talking to me, which can be frustrating. I don’t know if this is because she thinks I will understand, or if she just doesn’t think to translate it, or if her English isn’t good enough to translate what’s being said, or if she just likes to watch me squirm. I think it would probably be rude to ask, and in the end, it really doesn’t make much of a difference.

When we’re in the field, Gifty talks, and I make decisions. It’s a very awkward relationship. Whenever money is being collected, Gifty immediately gives it to me to count, or hold, or whatever. Whenever any records need to be kept, I am the one to write them, and whenever anything needs to be decided, even though I do very little in the processes of the work that we’re doing, Gifty always asks me to decide.

One such example happened today, when Gifty turned to me after speaking to one of the women, and said, “The money is not reach.” After a short blank stare, and some questioning to figure out exactly what was happening, I figured out that the woman we were there to collect money from didn’t have the money for us, and said she would bring it to the Tawodep office on Monday. Once I indicated that I understood the situation, Gifty asked, “Should we go? Or?”

This makes me think a lot about what my role actually is in this organization. I don’t know if Gifty is deferring decision making powers to me because I’m white, educated, English-speaking, Canadian, or any other of my characteristics as an Obruni, or if it’s because I’m actually positioned somehow above her in the Tawodep foodchain (which, again, I would question the reasons behind) or if it’s because she’s simply indecisive and would prefer for me to take charge.

In this instance, I just said, “Okay,” and went along with it, because if the woman didn’t have the money for us, it seemed to me that there wasn’t much more we could do. Having seen the record books at the office (hilariously, most of them were meticulously notated on the pages of Hannah Montana notebooks) I knew that many women defaulted on a few of their payments, but made them up the following month, so at least there was a precedent for this kind of occurrence.

The loans that we were dealing with seemed to be pretty straight forward. Each woman had a loan ranging from 50-1000 cidies, but they were only allowed to take these loans as a part of a group, that shared responsibility for their repayment. This measure is to prevent people from taking loans and simply disappearing, which can be a big problem in rural Africa. The interest on the loans is 14%, if paid off within the first 6 months, and 26% following that. This seems pretty steep to me, but I don’t really know much about this (yet). I will have to research more about interest rates and things in order to write my final report, but I haven’t quite gotten around to that yet. Anyway, the women with the GHC100 loans have to pay back GHC114 by the end of the six months, so they end up with GHC20 monthly payments, until the last. It’s a pretty easy system to follow, and to explain to people who have never heard of “compound interest” and have never gone to school. But because they don’t have scheduled monthly payments with the bank, defaulting for a month and making it up the next one (as long as it’s within 6 months) is not a big deal.

But it can be really frustrating for me, when I’m asked to make decisions as if I necessarily know better, but I am not being given all the relevant information. If I hadn’t put in serious effort today, Gifty would not have told me that the woman intended to bring the money to the office, instead of requiring us to come back, nor when she proposed to do so. All she would have told me was “The money is not reach,” and I found myself getting pretty frustrated. I ended up having to take a quick walk to calm down after we got back to the office. Apparently my frustrations were starting to show, and Marika called me on it. I realized she was right, and I was starting to be pretty grumpy, so I went and sat under a tree and made faces at schoolchildren until I had calmed down a little bit, so we could continue our work.

It’s hard not to get frustrated sometimes. It’s just one of the challenges of being a stranger in a strange land. Whether they think I’m rich, or smart, or stupid, or mean, or nice, or helpful, or helpless, because of the colour of my skin, people have thoughts about me, and think they know who I am before I ever get a chance to speak. I knew it would be challenging being a visible minority here, and I knew I would have culture shock, but nothing really prepares you for the full force of Obruni Rage.

But something else happened today that made me forget my rage entirely. When we went to one of the villages, a woman who wasn’t involved in the loan program was standing around, which is not unusual. She was holding a baby girl, which is also not unusual. What was unusual was that the baby girl had white skin. She didn’t have red eyes, but she didn’t have Caucasian features either. What struck me though, was the angry pink that her arms and face had turned. I went over to her, and waved and cooed a bit, before taking her hand gently and sliding up her sleeve, to see that the skin that wasn’t exposed was much less pink. Gifty came over and joked, “She’s your friend!”

Looking at the little girl’s sunburn, I remembered my first day of work, when I was sunburnt and dehydrated, but found it almost impossible to explain these concepts to Gifty and Doris. My heart broke a little for the girl with her burnt skin as I realized that her mother probably had no conception at all of a sunburn, how it hurts, or how bad it is for a child. After a moment of showing Gifty that her skin was burnt like mine was, and making pained, and sympathetic faces, and hoping my meaning would be understood, I decided that the next time we went to that village, I would bring one of my bottles of sunscreen (because I have about four too many) to give to the mother. I hope that when I go back, Gifty or Doris can translate for me.

Until then, I guess I’ll keep on dealing with culture shock, and trying to get my life in order. I’m still staying at the guesthouse with Marika, even though I’d hoped to be moving in with Doris by now. Maybe this weekend we’ll get that sorted out. I hope so, because I’m pretty much out of clean clothes and tired of living out of a suitcase.

For the rest of the day I think I’m mostly just going to relax and get ready for tomorrow. These first few days, it seems like we’re really not busy at all, but I know that that will soon come to an end. I hope Doris is back at the office tomorrow. It’s nice having her around to translate, but also to give us more direction and certainty in our endeavors.

However it goes, I’ll keep you posted!