I've been having really odd dreams. Apparently this is a side effect of malaria medication. They are kind of interrupting my sleep and I keep waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning feeling wide awake. Then I lay in bed until 6.30 and then get out of bed only to wait around until 8 oclock when I have to walk to the taxi station. I do yoga though and eat big breakfasts. I have been eating a type of baby food cereal that actually tastes pretty good.
Today was such an incredible day. To start I’d like to tell you a little bit about something called fufu. It is one of the main dishes in Ghana. Now I will tell how it is made from start to finish and then how you eat it. Fufu begins in the fields. A plant called cassava is uprooted and carried back to the home. From there you peel the cassava, wash it, then put it in a machine that is started by pulling a string to start the motor, kind of like a lawn mower. You put the cassava into the machine and push a wooden piece so that the cassava pushes against a sharp moving blade. It comes out of the side looking like mush. From there you put it in bags and the bags are tied and laid on a presser. You put large pieces of wood or tree branches on top, then you lower a bar and clamp it there. This presses as much liquid out as possible. Any end product made from cassava is known as gari. What comes out of the bags at the end is gari which is a dried grain like substance that is ground up. You can add water to that and eat it like cereal. However, to make fufu you cook the cassava just after it is peeled and put it into a large pot. From a tree branch they make a pounding stick. They use this to pound the pieces of cassava. As you continue to pound and turn the cassava over and over it starts to look like dough. The pounding is very exhausting. Often the man will pound while the woman turns the dough. It can be dangerous, so it involves a rhythmic pattern. It is said that if the man and woman can make fufu together than they are a good match.
After this you take the dough and put it in a soup. It can be several kinds of soup. One is called ground nut soup which is a spicy peanut butter kind of soup. Ground nut is similar to peanut. The meal is a bowl of broth with the fufu dough inside of it. To eat this you use your right hand, two first fingers and cut the fufu to the bottom of the bowl. Then pick it up, scooping some soup broth along the pay, put it in your mouth and swallow immediately. You don’t chew. This is a very important to them that you swallow it. That is how it is done. Then you can also drink the soup.
I was involved in every step of this process. It was so incredible. To start in the fields uprooting the cassava all the way to eating the fufu!!! It was so cool to be a part of all of it. This is Ghanaian life. This is how the entire country survives, from start to finish. The soup was pretty good, but kind of weird to have to swallow.
Something that is important here is the use of the right hand. You only ever use your right hand. You shake with right hand, eat with right hand, give with right hand, point a direction with right hand. This is very important because to them the left hand is what you use to wipe when you go to the bathroom so it is very important to only use right hand.
Another process that I learned today was the making of coconut oil. I took dried coconuts and put the chopped up pieces into a machine, poking them down into the mechanical grinder which then produces coconut oil. This oil is used for cooking and also can be turned into soap.
I am so happy doing all of this work. Its really exciting and cool to be a part of it. I can't even explain how amazing it is to be working on a farm in Africa. My project partner and I kept saying that to each other. We’d just be working and suddenly just say, “Wow, we’re working on a farm in Africa.”
After that we sat around for a long time and played with the women’s babies. We are working with a man named Kofi and his wife named Aya. They have three children. The first she gave birth to at 15. He is now 9 and named Kingsly. The second is Jessica who is 4 and the third is Monica who is 10 months old. Her sister visited today who is 19 and has a 2 month old baby boy. When you give birth here you put on a white beaded necklace and white beaded bracelets for the first three months of the babies life to show that you are a new mother.
So we sat around and played with the babies and other children around the village. We took pictures with them and showed them the pictures. People here love when you take pictures of them and then they want to see the pictures. Even the people we work with make us stop and take pictures of each other working. Its really funny.
Something that is really strange to observes is that these people live in such poverty out where we work. It is a small village 40 minutes taxi ride from any main town. They are sleeping on the floor and the children walk around almost naked. Yet, they all have cell phones and you will see some wearing shirts that say Calvin Klein on them. It’s a really bizarre image to see, almost disturbing. I have watched some videos in my anthropology classes showing people who come out to villages like this and do advertising for western products like coca cola and cell phones. Its ridiculous that the priority would be using a cell phone over having running water and sanitation.
I am so sore from work. My whole body is aching and exhausted. The work here is very hard.
Honestly though, today was such an incredible day. I was smiling all day, filled with excitement and having my mind explode with so many thoughts and just being able to explore a new world. It is really a great experience being here. I have also noticed that I go to take pictures of where I am living and realize that I wanted to show you guys at home the poverty that I am living in. However, I find that my mindset has completely changed. I go to take a picture while walking down the streets and it all looks so normal to me. I don’t feel the need to take a picture anymore because its not some crazy looking thing to me anymore. This type of living is becoming okay with me because I am seeing it and living it every day. I’m so used to using the bathrooms and walking down the streets with sewers on both sides, seeing animals and naked babies running everywhere. Broken down shacks look like normal sights to me. I feel like going home is going to be like encountering a new amazing culture that will blow my mind, rather than just being the norm. I most likely will experience culture shock in reverse come August.
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