An interesting question

Last week I was stopped by a Ghanaian as I walked down the street and asked a question. Now this in itself isn’t that strange, I quite often get stopped to be asked where I’m from, whether I can be a friend and occasionally for money or food. This time the chap looked at me and asked what the word was for the phenomenon where you see spots of dancing lights in front of your eyes when you’ve been hit. I had to plead ignorance.

Ten things I’ve learnt

I wrote this back in May but didn’t post it as I wasn’t sure about its “preachy” style. Decided to go ahead anyway.

1) Just how very, extremely, exceptionally fortunate the developed world really is, and the massive responsibility that implies
2) It’s all about people; they’re what makes things work (or not), they’re the reason it matters that things work and they’re what’s valuable, not possessions
3) There’s less hurry than you realise. Sometimes the wait is an important part of the journey
4) Access and Excel are excellent products for the right problem
5) Even the poor can be happy, contented and enjoy life, but that’s no substitute for decent health care or educational opportunities
6) The world’s poorest are utterly destitute through no fault of their own. They are the truly deserving poor.
7) That I’m more resourceful, patient, better with people and better at communicating than I thought
8 ) That Larium effects short term memory
8 ) That Larium effects short term memory
9) How important water is, and how easy life is when all the utilities are working efficiently
10) That Africa’s problems are incredibly complex and difficult, without easy or glib solutions, but they are for Africa to solve. The responsibility of the developed world is to stop being a part of those problems and to offer whatever assistance is both wanted and not counter-productive

Travel musings

Over the last few weeks I’ve seen a few strange things, from the “Butlins Skegness” mini-bus parked outside Kumasi, to the bottles of “Great Wall” Chinese red wine in a supermarket in Ouagadougou (surrounded by good quality French wine). On slightly less surreal and more cultural note some of the women on the boat had beautifully tattooed feet, with geometric patterns mimicking shoes. I also saw women in Mali with a black circle tattooed onto their face around their mouths; I believe to make their teeth appear whiter. The guys wearing t-shirt, shirt and padded coat in nearly 40°C heat on the Mali/Burkina border were quite impressive too. I know it’s the cooler rainy season but if 40 is cold what is hot? I still find the ubiquity of mobile phones strange, sitting on a boat that could have been built 50 years ago, chugging through the fourth or fifth poorest country in the world, the countryside being tilled by hand or ox drawn ploughs, and still you hear the equivalent of “Hello, HELLO, can you hear me? I’m on the boat, … I said the boat …, no, BOAT …” as well as a nice mix of irritating ring tones.

While on the boat my wandered a bit, to something my friend Richard from Lewes wrote on his blog a while back about “pre-funerals”, the idea being that you stage your own funeral every 5 years or so to allow you to enjoy it before you die. This (and reaching 40) set me thinking about how I’d like my (final) funeral to be. A bit morbid I guess but sometimes when you’ve been sitting on sacks of rice staring at passing river bank for hours your mind wanders.

Anyway, I reckon I’d like a quiet time when people say nice things about me, with an appropriate reading or two chosen by my siblings from my favourite books or poems, nothing too religious, with Vaughn William’s “Lark Ascending played at the end to let people meditate while my body is ethically disposed of, followed by a wild wake. The wake should include food, plenty of booze and laughter at the stupid things I’ve said and done.  That said I plan on being around for a while yet.

Slow boat to Timbuktu

Well, I got to Timbuktu for my birthday. It wasn’t easy, which is sort of satisfying, and there isn’t a great deal there – which is also sort of satisfying. I’m not sure I would go back, but at least I can say I’ve been. And now I’m in my forties, when I’m told that my life will begin apparently.

Day 0 and day 1, to Ouagadougou
On the Friday night I got a lift to Bolga from Jonathon, an ISODEC colleague who’d been down for a couple of meetings in Tamale. Sitting in his truck was a good way to start and Saturday morning Sarah and I departed in a taxi for the Burkina Faso border at Paga. Bolga is less than an hour from the border and we reached it by 10am. This was my first land border crossing in Africa and almost immediately we were swamped by touts offering us transport and money changing, all crowding around us shouting their rates and waving bundles of cash. The formalities were relatively painless, the Burkina Faso visa purchased and forms filled in with irrelevant detail much like borders around the world. I made a foolish purchase of CFAs at an exorbitant rate that must have made a tout happy and we were bundled into the back of a decrepit Peugeot shared taxi for our ride to Ouga (pronounced Waga[ doo goo]), capital of Burkina Faso (BF from now on to save typing). My first impressions of BF were that it seems poorer than Ghana. Many more thatched mud huts, often painted with black and white geometric patterns in the south, and fewer cars on the road.

We reached Ouagadougou by early afternoon and eventually found our hotel after a farcical taxi ride with our French not being understood, and the driver seeming to be unable to read the address in the map or the book, instead choosing to take us to a series of random hotels. When we finally arrived in Hotel Les Palmiers it was to a lovely little green oasis in a dusty grey city. That evening I experienced the first culinary evidence of the French heritage, with a good meal accompanied by a bottle of wine.

Day 2 – Chilling in Ouga
As well as good food I also discovered a recent copy of the economist in the hotel’s magazine rack. Having decided to explore a bit anyway we stayed put on Sunday – venturing out to a craft market where we watched the batik process and bought a few bits and pieces and our next days tickets before retreating to the hotel’s pool, Sarah swimming and me devouring the Economist along with a few beers.

Day 3 – To the Mali border, Koro
Monday was spent largely on wooden benches in bone shaking buses. We left Ouga at 9am (ish), changed buses at Ouahigouya (wee-gee-ya) and crossed into Mali at Koro at around four in the afternoon. Throughout the day the scenery got browner, the vegetation sparser, as Savannah turned into Sahel. We even saw the occasional camel. The border post leaving Koro was, perhaps, the most remote feeling border post I’ve been to – a couple of huts next to a small mud hut village with very little vegetation to break the bleakness, with a blazing sun in a blue sky.

That night we stayed in L’Venture hotel in Koro, we slept in grass huts under the stars and I awoke with the beginnings of a cold, but the hotel itself is nice and worth staying in if you get trapped in Koro.

Day 4 and 5 – Mopti and the journey there
The next morning we crammed ourselves into a tro-tro (although they aren’t called that in Mali) and spent 5 hours being bounced around to the town of Mopti on the Niger River. Actually the ride was made spectacular by passing through Bandiagra escarpment – a stunning piece of scenery.

The town of Mopti is a bustling river port, and something of a surprise in northern Mali. We stayed in a simple hotel near the river, a little way out of town but next to an extremely nice hotel with a swimming pool and good restaurant. The town itself is frenetic, with boats loading and unloading, groups of tourists being plagued by “guides” and touts, strange looking shaman selling strange bones and charms, proud Tuaregs with their flowing robes and headscarves wrapped around striding through the throng as well as a bustling, colourful market. Nothing is cheap and the touts try to persuade you to buy everything from them before you leave for Timbuktu as it is so expensive there. This is a bit of a lie. You’re told to buy kola nuts and “tea Afrique” to give as gifts when you take photos. We had planned to leave the next day (Wednesday) but the boat was cancelled so we accepted that we’d be in Mopti until Thursday, giving Sarah the chance of a swim in our neighbour’s pool (during a spectacular dust storm) and me a chance to read by the pool and eat a nice ham sandwich. Unfortunately the ham sandwich caused my nice new filling to fall out again, leaving a big hole in my tooth. As well as this I was developing a nasty cold, coughing and sneezing away.

Days 6, 7, 8 and 9 chugging down the Niger
We established ourselves on the boat Thursday lunchtime, and at about 4pm it set off. The boat was a “market pinasse”, basically the simplest boat you can imagine, just a 20m long hull with a small diesel engine at the back, a simple steering mechanism and a thatched roof. This was filled to the brim with sacks of rice and millet, various boxes of provisions, charcoal and a large irrigation pump. Between 20 and 30 passengers perched on and around the cargo, trying to find a space large enough to sleep. We weren’t the only white people onboard; a vegetarian German student vet called Alex was spending his summer break exploring West Africa. The centre of the boat was clear as a galley and sump, a crew member continually bailing and a cook making basic rice and sauce dishes on a cooking fire using water straight from the river.

On the second day the rudder broke. The crew poled us to the river bank, tied up and carried the steering mechanism to a local mud hut village while we sat on the bank and waited. That day the weather was grey and brooding, the sky the colour of old washing up water and so low that you felt you could have touched it. With a completely flat landscape with scattered villages and ox drawn ploughing going on it felt more like 16th century East Anglia than 21st century Africa. After a few hours the crew returned, the local blacksmith having fixed the rudder and we were on our way again.

Sleeping on the Pinasse got easier as we got used to it and worked out how to make ourselves comfortable, but sacks of rice have the same comfort level as ridges of concrete and I don’t think many people got much sleep on the first night. This didn’t matter too much as there isn’t a great deal to do onboard apart from read, doze and watch small clusters of simple houses go by on the river bank. Occasionally we stopped at a small town to load or unload cargo and passengers. While we waited hawkers came out on canoes selling bits of food.

The last night was a clear, moonless night in the desert and the night sky was heartbreakingly beautiful, perhaps the most brilliant I’ve ever seen.

The second day’s delay meant that we got an extra night on the boat, reaching Timbuktu Sunday afternoon. A bus ride into town and we found a nice hotel to stay in (Hotel Colombe) right on the edge of the desert. Mind you most of Timbuktu is on the edge of the desert – it really isn’t very big.

Day 10 – My birthday!
So I awoke in Timbuktu on the morning of my 40th birthday. At breakfast Sarah gave me a card signed by quite a few volunteers and a traditional Fulani hat. I spent the rest of the morning wandering around the town, which is fairly interesting with low, mud brick houses and ornate doors. A good lunch in the hotel was followed by a camel ride into the desert, climbing a sand dune, visiting a Taureg encampment and seeing the sunset. A memorable birthday.

Day 11 – back to Sevare
At 4.30am Tuesday morning we climbed into a crowded 4×4 for the overland trip back to the town of Sevare (just south of Mopti and a better travel hub). After a ferry ride we spent 10 hours hard travelling, getting into Sevare about 5pm. In Sevare we stayed in a great place called “Mac’s Refuge”. It’s quite a long way from the centre but Mac is an American who grew up in Mali and speaks the local languages. He joins his guests for meals and makes interesting company, the food is wonderful. One of the guests when we were there was an Italian botanist from Wakehurst place – part of Kew Gardens. She was there collecting “useful species” for Kew’s millennium seed bank. A fascinating job and it was interesting to chat about Sussex.

Day 12 – We part company and I go back to Ouagadougou
By Wednesday I decided that I’d had enough travelling and wanted a chance to recover before going back to work on Monday, but Sarah still wanted to explore Dogon Country (which is highly recommended) so I left after breakfast, catching a bus to Koro, crossing the border in another bus to Ouahigouya and finally one to Ouagadougou, reaching Ouga about 9pm. Staying at the same hotel I had a nice chat over a great dinner with an English couple driving in rally from London to Senegal in a small car (and I admired his tiny Asus eee computer, I really want one).

Day 13 – chilling in Ouga (again)
On Thursday I explore Ouga a bit more, bought one or two bits to take back to Tamale and got a bus ticket for the whole journey back to Tamale in the Gare Routier in the south of the town.

Day 14 – A bus ride back
Probably my most comfortable day’s travelling, a comfortable, air conditioned bus carried me from Ouagadougou to Tamale in about 7 hours, including the usual nonsense at borders. I was home in time to sort one or two bits out, have a meal in Swad and then meet up with peace-corp Kim followed by Fred for a few beers. It’s good to be back

Conclusion and observations
It was a tiring, hard travelling but brilliant trip that I’m delighted to have made. Burkina Faso and Mali are a lot poorer than Ghana (in the bottom 5 poorest in the world), but Mali especially is much better set up for tourism. The persistent touts and hawkers can be a bit tiring, but they usually respond to a firm but polite refusal. Mali is expensive and we were lucky that there are ATMs in both Mopti and Timbuktu or we would have rapidly run out of cash. On the whole the people are friendly and helpful. Some French is useful, but not everyone speaks French. Perhaps the most obvious differences with Ghana are the sheer number of men smoking (almost no-one smokes publicly in Ghana) and the general quality of the food. I wish I’d had a bit more time to explore more of Mali, and at a slightly more relaxed rate. I may well return.

(more photos on Flickr)

A visit to the dentist

On Monday night a large chunk of a filling fell out of one of my back teeth while I was eating. As a result I found myself wandering around Tamale Teaching Hospital on Tuesday morning looking for the dentist. Now I’m not sure what sort of reputation dentists have in Ghana but Tamale’s hospital has put them in an unmarked building at the back of the hospital behind a door without any sign on it*. Fortunately (a) I speak English, (b) Ghanaians speak English and (c) Ghanaians can be extremely friendly and helpful when eventually I suspended my male pride and actually asked for directions.

Once I’d located the dentist, filled in the appropriate paperwork, paid a small fee and waited a lot less time than I would have in England I was seen by the dentist. The actual consultation was quick, efficient and painless. Because my gum was slightly inflamed he gave me a temporary filling and asked me to come back Friday, when I suspect there will be actual injections and drilling.

To add to the mood it rained all Tuesday morning and I got back to work slightly bedraggled and a little muddy.

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*For the optometrist whom I know reads this, the eye clinic has a big sign outside and is very easy to find

My (travel) plans

Two weeks today* I’ll reach the respectable age of 40. This won’t be my first birthday abroad, I’ve celebrated the anniversary in America, Australia (my 30th was in Melbourne), Hong Kong, Outer Mongolia and China, but this year I’m aiming for a birthday in the legendary city of Timbuktoo. Next weekend I’ll travel north with a friend from Bolgatanga into Burkina Faso where I’ll spend a few days in the superbly named Ougadougo (pronounced waga-do-goo) the capital enjoying the French influence in the form of street-side cafes, restaurant culture, nice wine and cheese etc (yes, food again).  After luxuriating for a few days we’ll head further north, into Mali and probably base ourselves in the town of Mopte (mop-tee). Mopte appears to be a good place to catch a slow (3 day) boat up the Niger river to the mythically remote town of Timbuktoo - aiming to be there on my actual birthday. while in Mali hopefully we’ll visit the town of Djendeto see the mosque, the largest mud structure in the world as well as exploring the traditional villages in Dogon country. I’ve only got a fortnight off work so it may be a bit of a whistle stop tour but I’m really looking forward to it. As a note to those interested I’ll probably be completely out of contact for most of those 2 weeks.

In other news (as they say back home) I’ve chatted with a VSO program officer about staying on. They’re open to the idea and will look to see if there’s  suitable placement. If not I’ll carry on with ISODEC for a bit and explore other options.

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*i.e. on Monday August 4th, in case you were interested

VSO Ghana’s 50th Anniversary National Volunteers Conference

I spent Wednesday to Friday last week attending the VSO Ghana’s 50th Anniversary National Volunteers Conference. For 50 years brave (or misguided?), well meaning souls have been coming to Ghana to try to share their skills with locals. Every two years most of them get together to learn from each other, share experiences, catch up with people they haven’t seen for a while, meet new people and perhaps whinge a bit.

It would have been hard not to enjoy 3 days with over 70 positive, kind, self-confident, empathetic, pro-active, intelligent, curious (in both senses) and generally great people, especially when you’re staying in a beach side hotel with a pool (it isn’t advisable to swim in the sea off Accra) and attending an interesting workshops. VSO volunteers may be many things but they’re rarely dull and generally willing to get involved so the conference generally went with a zing, much to the credit of the volunteers who organised it.

Memorable moments include an incredible cultural evening where each of the main national groups entertained us, the Filipinos winning with a health and safety defying demonstration of traditional lantern dancing, with a woman dancing with a lit candle in a glass balanced on her head. The Brits demonstrated country dancing with a rendition of “Strip the Willow”* and a made up thing, music courtesy of a much appreciated CD Kirsteen gave me before I left. I will admit that I ended up teaching a group by the pool to “Strip the Willow” at 2am Saturday morning, apologies if we woke anyone up. The Irish demonstrated Irish dancing (which was also taught by the pool at a late hour). The Australians demonstrated drinking at a bar.

And we even got the opening ceremony (with the British High Commissioner) on national TV.

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* An innocent traditional British dance that involves swinging your partner and then someone else’s in alternately down a line.

An interesting view and my response

I just read a great post describing the hordes of volunteers in Ghana here:

Holli’s ramblings: Giving Back - Volunteers flood into Ghana

 

And I tried to respond there but was unable. Instead I’ll say it here and hope Holi will both read it and forgive me.

I wanted to say: 

A great post and one I feel I should respond to as a current VSO volunteer, albeit well past the 18 – 25 bracket, certainly not female, not working with children and I’ve never had my hair braided or worn “Jesus” sandals in my life.

On the whole I think you’re right, and I had a level of cynicism from early on here. But I do think though that there is a difference between a naive 22 year old college girl without skills or training who “wants to help children” and some of my colleagues who are professional teachers with many years experience who are working in schools and teacher training colleges. Saying that a lot of the projects even VSO vols are working can be poorly thought through and poorly implemented, but I suspect that the delivery of experts (and they should be experts) who are committed to spend time in a community rather than simply flying in and flying home is possibly a more effective and less corruptible means of giving aid.

You ask the question “What is it you feel you need to give back?” I’m not sure I want to give anything “back” because I don’t think I’ve taken anything in the first place. I would like the chance to give though. After many years in the software industry I’d like at least the chance to feel my skills could be put to slightly more constructive use than making rich bankers richer. It may fail, I may not be useful but at least I’ve tried. And why do I put up with it all? Because I’m learning lots, about IT, about international development and its complexities, about Ghana and about myself; because I’m enjoying it overall; because it is a chance to do something different for a while and to get a different perspective on my London life. I don’t kid myself that I’m changing the world or even making a significant difference, although I suspect there is a role for IT here.

As for the young girls I think the maxim “first do no harm” applies. It is very easy to feel snobbish towards these sometimes self-delusional people but are they actually hurting anyone other than (perhaps) themselves? If they bring money into a poor country and take away an idea of what life is like for the majority of the worlds population is that bad? Of course they’re (we’re) kidding themselves, but isn’t that the right of young people? And the less young too perhaps.

 

International List

The VSO Ghana National Volunteers Conference finished yesterday.  I’ll try to write it up a bit more later but I was struck by the sheer number of nationalities represented by the volunteers, so as a quick post I thought I’d list the countries that I’ve met VSO volunteers from while I’ve been here:

• The Irish Republic
• England
• Wales
• Finland
• Italy
• India
• Uganda
• Kenya
• The Netherlands
• USA
• Canada
• The Philippines
• Israel
• Australia

Some have more representation than others, but one of the pleasures of this year has been getting to know people from so many countries

[14 July 2008 Many apologies I forgot Australia first time - lots of great Aussies here]

Seasonal confusion

I realise that we’ve just passed mid-summer but it doesn’t feel like it. Being so close to the equator means that by 7pm it’s pitch black, and being in the middle of the rainy season means that quite often it’s grey and drizzly too. Now I’ve got used to the heat even mid 20s can feel chilly. Sometimes I have to remind myself I’m in july not October. In January/February when it was reguarly in the high 30s and as dry as a bone I kept thinking I was in a particularly hot July or August. Oh well.

p.s. I’ll be heading to the VSO national volunteers conference in Accra next week so I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to blog next.