Life in Ghana

A few things to know about daily life in Tumu, Ghana:

1. The joys (and challenges) of wearing a skirt: All day everyday. Not just at church or on special occasions, but whenever I step foot outside my house, I have to be in a skirt or dress. Knees and thighs are big no no's, so they must remain covered at all times, this makes for rather interesting tan linesÉTraveling is always an adventure. I don't think I'd ever ridden a bicycle in a skirt before coming here. The challenge is to keep the flowing skirt from catching in the spokes or chain of the bike while keeping my knees covered as the skirt goes up and down with each peddle of my feet; all this while maintaining balance and keeping from falling on the treacherous roads. I have also mastered the art of riding side- saddle on a motorcycle! It is also nice to have some air circulation in the 110+ degree weather.

2. Market Day: Every six days, the market comes to Tumu. This is a big day for the town. People get dressed up and it's quite the social event. You go to the market and it is organized chaos with the crowds of people buying and selling, the noise and the smells. But you can find anything you need: Fruits and vegetables, bicycle tires, clothes (new and used), live chickens and goats, some unidentifiable food concoctions (at least to me) and the list goes on.

3. DVDs: For 3 Ghana Cedis (that's about $2.50) you can buy one DVD. What a great deal! But it gets better. This one DVD holds up to 30 movies! Mind you some of the movies don't work, but most do. You can get an entire season of your favorite show on one disk! Gina and I recently bought one from the market; it's a Discovery Channel disk, for our educational needs. We've already learned about Great White Sharks and Cobras (which we probably shouldn't have watched because there are cobras here).

4. Wildlife: Speaking of cobras. Snakes are a big part of the wildlife here in the Upper West Region of Ghana. Of course, just for me, the most populous snakes are the cobra and the viper, and our house is conveniently located on the outskirts of town near a whole lot of empty fields (and we have nice snake-sized cracks in the bottom of our door). There are no giraffes here, which is a bummer, I would have loved to see some. In order to see the elephants, lions, crocodiles etc. you have to travel about six hours southwest. Here in Tumu we have plenty of goats, sheep, pigs, cows, chickens, guinea fowl, giant wolf-spiders (which I literally had a nightmare about) and the occasional monkey. Oh, and now that the rainy season is approaching, the bullfrogs and insects including the malaria carrying mosquito are plentiful.

5. Water Conservation: Water is precious. I never realized how wasteful I was until I came here and found that it does not just flow freely. Most people have to take their buckets to the water pump. If you have the means, your house will have a water tank connected to the town supply. The town supply gets turned on every six days. When your tank is empty, you have no water until it's turned on again. Therefore, the conservation of water is huge. To shower, you turn the water on and off as needed. The toilet you flush pretty much only when it's brown. The motto is "if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down". Laundry is done by hand and usually the rinse water is reused for the next batch of laundry.

6. The Chief: Every village has a Chief. The "chiefdom" is similar to a monarchy in which it belongs to one family. However, it is not passed on from father to son necessarily, it is passed to the most qualified member. The Tumu chief is the "head chief" of the Sissala district; he is a very important and powerful man. The Tumu chief died just before I arrived here, so I got to go to the funeral, which is HUGE! Government officials from Accra came in, and thousands of people from all over the country were here for the celebration (which lasted a week). There was singing, dancing, food and drinking and even parades. It was the biggest social event for many years to come (basically until the next chief dies). It was a wonderful cultural experience for me!

Life is very different here from the United States (or even any other country I've ever visited). But everyday is an adventure and it is a continuous learning opportunity for me. I am so glad that I have gotten the opportunity to experience life here.