from top to bottom: Ashley, me, and April with Nave; me sitting on Nave; all three of us on the watchtower rock at the slave camp; out for Ashley's birthday (Francis is in the yellow, Daniel's behind him)
So another week (and then some) has passed since I last posted on my adventures (I promise I will try to get better at posting more often!). I think we are mostly settled in now and we are definitely getting more and more comfortable with our surroundings. These past days have been pretty busy and I am glad for the mid-day break I have right now. Well here goes an update of what I have been doing...
After finishing up with IPT-i/Urban Malaria I moved to work for three days with NDSS (Navrongo Demographic Surveillance System). The NDSS gathers census-like data on the entire population of the Kassena-Nankana District where the NHRC is located. Much of the work done here relies on data collected by NDSS as it can be used to find study populations for the various research projects. In other words if, for example, a study was to be conducted on malaria and pregnant women, the project team would turn to the NDSS to determine who amongst the local population is pregnant and can thus be considered as a subject. My first day with NDSS I went out with WM (staff at the center go by what they call code names) and Francis to the eastern region. We stopped at various field workers’ homes to collect their data from the day’s interviews. Because everything here is so rural the field workers live in the communities they are responsible for gathering data from and so senior staff from the Centre must check to make sure the workers are completing their work. Thursday (my second day with NDSS) I went out with Daniel (another NDSS worker) and WM to the west where we went to check up on a field worker while he was conducting interviews. In order to find where in the community the worker is the team stops at the worker’s house and checks forms they leave outside to see which houses will be visited that day. Once there is a general idea the team then goes to the area of the community and asks around to see which compound the worker is in. While this worked for finding the first field worker of the day, it didn’t work for finding the second so much of the morning was filled with driving and asking without being able to locate the person. It was a little bit frustrating but I got the impression this happens often and I was content enough to sit back and enjoy the amazing scenery (the west is hillier than around here). Friday I went out with WM and Francis in the morning to collect field worker data and in the afternoon I got to sit in on a field supervisor meeting.
Friday was also Ashley’s birthday so that night after some much needed showers (we had been without running water for 2 days because the water tank servicing our apartments had burst) we headed out to dinner with Francis and Daniel. It was a nice celebration at an outdoor restaurant with an amazing view of the stars and plenty of bugs to eat us up. Saturday we decided to travel to Paga, a town about 10 km north of here. After hiring a taxi (the first of many adventures) we headed off to our first stop, the Zenga Crocodile Pond. There are two crocodile ponds in Paga and according to all the locals the animals never harm humans—they believe that they are totems and that the spirits of ancestors reside in the crocodiles. When we got to the pond we were told that we would need to purchase chickens to lure the crocs from the water. After our purchase we headed down to the water (where people were doing laundry) and using two of the birds the guys running the site managed to get two crocs out of the water (which didn’t phase the women doing laundry at all). But after feeding them the birds they decided that these crocs weren’t big enough to take pictures with (they looked plenty big to me) and we headed off to look for Nave, the oldest (at 89 yrs) and biggest croc in the pond. We found him in a little side pond after using the last bird to lure him out. The guys then proceeded to show us various poses for pictures including squatting over the croc, holding its tail, and sitting on him. Needless to say it was a little bit terrifying but Nave didn’t seem to mind the poking and prodding and calmly posed for pictures with us. Ashley, April, and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves although none of our parents were too pleased to hear that we had been sitting on playing with crocodiles.
After the croc pond we headed over to the Pikworo Slave Camp, which had served as a stopover/rest area for slaves being brought from Burkina Faso and Mali before being taken down to the coast. The area was a stony hillside where our tour guide showed us places like the dining area (where food was served in holes bored into the stone), mass graves, the lookout tower, etc. It was very interesting but also sad to see. When we finished up at Pikworo we headed back to Navrongo where it was market day. We braved market to stock up on food for the week and then managed to get stuck in a rainstorm on the walk home. Our cooking is getting better although we eat a lot of rice and noodles and fried plantains. We are slowly but surely finding foods we like including the amazing bread that you can buy fresh on the side of the road (it’s called sugar bread and April and I are capable of devouring a loaf between the two of us in a matter of hours). Sunday Francis invited us to attend services at his church (non-denominational Christian) where he was scheduled to preach. Francis picked us up and we got there at 9:30 (services started at 9:00 but the church wasn’t full until around 10:00). There was a ton of singing and dancing and then Francis gave a really great sermon. When all was said and done the service had lasted over 2 hours. Sunday afternoon we were lazy and April and I took a bike ride which had a few mishaps (including a flat tire) but it was nice to get a little bit of exercise.
Monday I switched over to working at the Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Project. My first day there I went to a meeting at the Ghana Educational Services office in town where they were discussing teacher training for the ASRH curriculum that is taught in schools. Yesterday I got to go about 40 km south to Naaga, a very rural community that is one of the ASRH intervention sites where we facilitated a beekeepers meeting. One of the parts of the ASRH project is a livelihood component. The idea is that by providing certain people in a community with a means of income ASRH can then use these groups as a way to get messages across to the beekeepers who are then supposed to spread information on ASRH throughout the community. Well that’s all for now—I have to go check in to see if there is a group headed out to the field. Hope everyone is well!
