Mole National Park

I’m currently in an Internet cafe in Cape Coast, Ghana. This is located in the southern part on the west side. It’s amazing how much more developed the southern part of the country is compared to the north.

As expected, my Internet capabilities cannot possibly keep up with the rate of cool stories I’m accumulating. We all seem a bit tired of traveling around; it’s entailed two early morning bus rides (one at 4 & 6 a.m.), and there’s another at 4 a.m. tomorrow. The places we’ve been are absolutely beautiful so it’s worth it. We started in Mole (pronounced Moe-lay), which is a national park. While we were there we saw Cob (which looks like deer), Waterbuck (also “deerish”), Warthog, Baboon, Gazelle, Crocodile, and of course Elephants. We actually had bad luck finding the elephants up close, and it took us three tries of doing a walking tour to be successful. This is actually stretching the truth because the last time we cheated by just spotting them from afar and walking down to see them.

It’s pretty hot here right now, and the animals feel it too. To cool off, the elephants come to drink and swim in a large watering hole conveniently located down a hill from the park hotel. I admit that having a drink and watching the wildlife was an agreeable way to spend the day.

Here’s a picture of the wild cob we encountered on a walk. Most were pretty shy but a few let us get close.

The Warthogs came right up to the hotel and even walked right through, which seems odd the first time one passes you as you sit by the pool. They eat just about anything and are scrounging for food, and they seem totally oblivious to people.

Here’s a picture of myself with the elephants in the background. Two are swimming on the left and one is drinking on the right. There were also at least 20+ crocodiles in this lake, but surprisingly, they were all extremely shy.

A Mole sunset overlooking the park. The large body of water on the left is where the previous picture was taken and where the animals come to drink.

A better shot of the sunset.

A few hours before we left, some elephants hiked up the hill near some of the bungalows to eat. They weren’t looking for “people” food like the warthogs, and seemed quite content eating the vegetation. There weren’t any tour guides, so some people just walked over and started taking pictures. We gradually got closer and closer, and in hindsight I’m surprised the elephants didn’t get jittery. At one point we were about 25 meters away and they started walking towards us. We immediately froze, but luckily they didn’t show any signs of aggression. I included this picture to show just how close we were.

Then more came.

And for the finale – here’s the “close up” picture I took. At this point I was within 10-15 meters.

Here’s a video of the same experience. Pretty exciting stuff!

Where Do We Go From Here?!?

Now that work is officially done, we have a week to play around. A group of us plans to leave early tomorrow (4 a.m.!) to catch a bus to Mole, a natural wildlife preserve in the northwest. I’m not sure exactly which animals we can expect to see this time of year, but I do know that elephants are among them. I’ll try my best to avoid animal attacks (not sure if they have cougars, but I’ll be keeping my eyes open).

We then return to Tamale for another night before we head down south. Our first destination I cannot pronounce or even spell, but it’s located on the western coast. We’re staying at a place called The Green Turtle Lodge, which gets it’s name because sea turtles come up to the local beaches to lay their eggs. There’s a possibility this could happen while we’re there, which would be amazing.

Two to three days later we head east to a place called Ada, which also has beaches and is supposed to be quite beautiful. It’s located right where the Volta River (the largest in Ghana) hits the ocean. We then get a ride to Accra to fly out. I’m told all of these places are quite photogenic, so expect some good posts soon. I have no way to predict the Internet situation so things may be quiet for a few days every now and then. But I’ll be sure to write when I can!

Goal!!!

My apologies for not posting anything in the past few days, but our Internet has been down. A lot of great things have happened and I could not possibly write about it all. Today is our last day of work, so we’re packing up the lab in preparation to leave. It’s been sad to say goodbye to so many wonderful people that we’ve become friends with.

We went to a football (aka soccer) game on Wednesday night. Ghana is hosting the African Cup this year, which is a huge deal. They just built three 25,000-people stadiums spread throughout the country, including one in Tamale where we’re staying. We managed to get tickets for the opening games! It was a double header with the first game being Tunisia vs Senegal, and the latter was South Africa vs Angola. The second match was especially intense. One team made it into the World Cup last year, and the other usually does as well. While I haven’t had much exposure to the sport living in the States, after seeing a few good matches I can see why people love it. Unfortunately Ghana is only playing in the capital, Accra, but I’ve seen both matches on television. Ghana won them both, and even up here in the North everyone went crazy. People run out of their homes and into the street cheering every time we score; it’s a lot of fun to participate in!

The crowds outside were really impressive. Here’s a picture of the new Tamale stadium from the outside.

Here’s a shot taken on our way into the stadium.

And here’s a shot of the South Africa v Angola game; this is S. Africa taking a corner kick.

And here’s a pretty good shot of the spectators.

Here’s a cool video of an “almost goal” in the South Africa v Angola game. This partly captures that intensity I mentioned before.

Ghanaian Garb

Our group has officially figured out that our enjoyment of the beneficial exchange rate extends to clothing. Within the town market there are numerous booths that sell fabric, and on our way home one night we stopped by and each picked out a few we liked. Typical prices ranged from 1.5 to 3 cedi’s per yard (remember that a cedi is roughly equal to a dollar). A tailor had also been recommended to us from several of the Peace Corps volunteers we’ve been spending time with, so we took them up on their suggestion. Surprisingly, having the clothes made cost even less than the fabric, so the whole deal turned out pretty cheap. While I had a few shirts made, some of the girls went all out and got skirts, pants, tops and dresses. We just picked up our clothes yesterday, and we’re all very pleased with our “Ghanaian Garb”! The bright colors are very much in style here.

Yesterday I tagged along with another student to help him in one of the rural areas in the surrounding areas. We had to get around on motorbike, which wasn’t my favorite idea but I couldn’t really object since it’s the only form of transportation that can reach some villages. Cars don’t hold up so well on the rural roads. Here’s a picture of my guide and his bike I rode around on all day. He’s a funny guy with a great sense of humor, and he also happens to speak at least 8 languages (it’s hard to tell exactly because he’s kind of modest about it), which comes in handy. The dialects can change completely from village to village, even when they’re separated by only a few miles.

Of course lots of kids were following us around while we were working, and one grabbed my hand a few times when I let it hang at my side. They were all constantly smiling and loved yelling “hello” even after several hours into our time together. Here is a picture of a fraction of our entourage.

Another few interesting pictures that I forgot to post are included below. The first is taken in Kpanvo on the morning before the Fire Festival (see the prior posting). This is right after we drank pito and shots of gin. Notice how only the visitors are smiling; that happens a lot here!

And this picture shows what we were served for lunch. The white stuff is called Tizet, and it’s a staple food that doesn’t really taste like anything. The green stuff are vegetables mixed with groundnut stew, which kind of tastes like unsweetened peanut butter.

There were a large group of us who had never had it, and we unanimously loved it. So despite it’s appearance, it’s pretty good.

Happy New Year! Well, Sort of…

Sunday night was the most memorable experience thus far. I went out with Izumi, Tamar, Susan, Sophie, and a handful of the Peace Corps volunteers to a local village named Kpanvo about 15 minutes away from the where I work to participate in “The Fire Festival”. We had visited there earlier in the day to go through the formal ceremony of meeting the chief (who was away in Germany working as a doctor) and the elders. After drinking Pito (fermented millet) and shots of gin, we walked to the other side of the village to have lunch with our host, Joseph. He works as a school teacher in the village, and is also the only Christian among all Muslims. We contacted him because the village already had a slow-sand filter for each household (roughly 190) plus some Kosim filters. Izumi and Sophie were very eager to take water samples from them.

We taxied over at 8pm when it was completely dark. The festival itself has two purposes: it’s the start of their calendar year, and it’s also a tradition based on a Dagomba legend. The story goes that a chief’s son was lost one night so all the villagers formed a search party, made torches and hiked all the surrounding trails chanting loudly to find him. One version also has the son “kidnapped” by a tree, and they had to throw their torches to make it release him.

This has become the foundation for the celebrated holiday. We kicked off the night by drinking some Pito and another alcohol called Apeteshie, which I swear must be a local version of moonshine made from distilled palm wine. It smelled and tasted disgusting; I would equivocate to having the bite of both Tequila and Whiskey. All the villagers (roughly 2,000) and us then gathered on the main path and navigated by moonlight to the head warrior’s house to “request” that we go on the journey. He then led the way with the chief on a trail far away (roughly 20-30 minute walk) to a tree while people chanted something in the local dialect called Dagboney and then threw torches at it. We then hike back for moonlight dancing.

Here’s a picture of myself and Izumi beforehand when we were having Apeteshie. Clearly it’s safer to have everyone playing with fire after a few drinks!


















The most interesting stuff lies in the details. Many people paint their faces white (either completely or some sort of design), and while the children only carry torches, the adults carry machetes, cutlasses, and rifles.



























They also pack pipe-bombs which they detonate off the trail while everyone is yelling to heighten the effect. Everyone is screaming and running around with torches, and I admit to feeling more than a little uneasy when I was separated from the group and found myself among the village warriors, who were all armed and yelling. I didn’t really have anywhere to go either because there were large fires on either side. All the heat and smoke made it pretty hard to see, and I had to keep a close eye on my torch because it burned fast. A lot of men were pretending to slash each other with the cutlasses or shoot at one another with guns.

Unfortunately my pictures didn’t turn out so well, but my videos are amazing. Some of the other students had much better luck with taking photos but it’s unlikely I’ll be able to procure them before I return to Cambridge. Here’s a few good ones though.





























I’ve also posted a link to one of the videos I took during the ceremony. See it here.

It sure beats the ball drop in New York!

Smooth Sailing Thus Far

Today has been comparatively normal, except I just got back from lunch and a local woman grabbed my behind with both hands (my first time from a stranger). Her answer to my puzzled inquiry was simply, “I like your butt.” Most Ghanaian women have not been this aggressive, so this caught me off guard. I just realized that I should have gotten her picture, because she was pretty cute. Maybe it will happen again tomorrow.

I’ve also realized that I haven’t said anything on how much things cost here. The currency exchanges almost exactly to the American dollar (about 96 cents actually), and the equivalent of the dollar is called the “cedi.” Cents are called “pesewas.” To add a bit of confusion, the Ghana cedi recently underwent a re-evaluation where they changed the currency to be exactly 10,000X less than it previously was. Most people have not mentally made the change, so buying a meal still costs 15,000, which is 1.5 cedis. Remembering that cedis and dollars are equivalent, $1.5 for a big meal is pretty cheap. A five minute cab ride is about 35 pesewas, and the beers here cost around 1 cedi for a 24oz bottle.

One of my favorite things here is this ice-creamish substance sold by bicycle vendors throughout Tamale. It’s called Fanice and it comes in four different flavors: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and tampico. The vanilla is amazing; the closest thing I can compare it to is cake frosting. It comes in a little frozen bag; you bite off an end and squeeze it into your mouth. At a reasonable 30 pesewas, it’s a pretty good way to brighten a long day.

My days here are starting to get more routine, although I did have a funny story yesterday. I was tagging along with some other students taking water samples in a nearby rural village, and our local guide stopped by his house to serve us lunch. We ate tiezet, which is the basic staple of the poor villagers. It doesn’t really taste like anything, but it has the consistency of fufu (see previous post for a description and picture). It turns out that it tastes pretty good if the stew is right, and his wife had prepared groundnut soup that was really good. It was very thick and had the flavor of unsweetened peanut butter, but lots of spices had been added. Throw on top some local guinea fowl, and you’ve got yourself a meal! Everyone in our group loved it.

Back to the story. While I was sitting and eating, my red nalgene bottle was clipped to my belt. There were several children following us around as always (anywhere from ages 2 to 7), and while they usually keep their distance, one crept up behind me and briefly touched my bottle, only to recoil quickly. At this point I took notice, and he looked at me and slowly placed his hand on the bottle and kept it there with this look of amazement. The other children who were watching intently then made their way over and took turns touching the bottle, slowly at first and then for longer periods of time. I eventually figured out what they were doing; they saw the clear red and assumed it was flaming hot, and one brave soul touched it to see. They found this highly entertaining.

My research is going well, although I’m not getting the results I was hoping for. I guess that’s just part of the game, but I’m hoping to solve the problems before I leave Tamale on the 25^th. We’re working out where we’re planning to go and it sounds very exciting, but I’ll save that for another post. A few of us will be traveling around Ghana together as a vacation before returning to Boston.

Below are some pictures of Tamale. The first one is on the main drag through town.

Here is a picture of the marketplace. It’s pretty tight quarters as you can see, but mostly the vendors are selling all kinds of food or fabric. I’ve already bought three designs of fabric which I’m having made into shirts. It was 6 cedis for each fabric (2 yards needed for a shirt), and another 4 cedis for the tailor. The girls in our group are having dresses, skirts and pants made.

And here is a picture of Andy and me acquiring water for the house when we moved in. This coincides with the house mentioned at one of the first posts. Also visible is the infamous red nalgene bottle I mentioned.

And the last one is a sunrise taken on my first morning here in the north. I find it quite beautiful, and the sunsets are equally impressive.

Putting My Stomach to the Test

Part of the African experience thus far has been the food, which I’m quickly learning can be quite different from what we’re used to. There are a lot of items that Westerners can’t really handle too well, not because of taste, but because it’s not up to our levels of sanitation and would mess with our stomach pretty badly. Buying food from street vendors is just as sketchy here as other places, but most of us have been doing it with no ill effects thus far. Some of our luck has been due to our conscious effort to only eat things that are cooked (or at least look cooked).

One local Ghanaian dish is called fufu. Yes I know, a silly name. It’s a little hard to describe, but it has the consistency of uncooked bread dough, meaning it’s very thick and heavy. When you order it, you get to choose which soup you want it in and what kind of meat to go along with it. So far I’ve only had the “light” soup, which has the consistency of a semi-thick spicy tomato sauce. The meat choices include the traditional cow, chicken or goat. Of course I had to order the goat (why come all the way to Africa and not?) my first time out.

That turned out to be a poor decision. For some reason that I still do not comprehend, the goat is served a little bit differently than the other two choices. They leave the skin on, which in my case included its hair and follicles. I’m told my face went pale, which is impressive because I’m not exactly tan to begin with. And just to make the experience that much more memorable, it is local custom to eat with only your hands. Of course one washes them beforehand like so.
Below is a picture of the dish with cow. I don’t yet have a picture of the goat because I was too busy worrying about my health, so I didn’t bring out the camera until the next time I ordered fufu. I didn’t feel like getting the goat again.

And here is proof that I actually did eat it Ghanaian style.
Most of the other food I’ve eaten here hasn’t been nearly this exciting, but I continue to be on the lookout for the local stuff. I’m guessing my enthusiasm will last only as long as my stomach will let me.

Village Visit

Since yesterday was Sunday, most of us decided to take the day off. One of our guides had invited a few members of our group to go visit his village, which is only about a 30 minute drive north of town. I hadn’t seen a rural village yet, so I decided to tag along. We rented a taxi for three of us and headed north. It turned out to be a comparatively easy trip, with only 10 minutes off the paved road. I also found out that the village is fairly small—about 50 huts and 500 inhabitants.

By dumb luck, we happened to come on a very exciting day. One of the sub-chiefs (kind of like a vice president I’m told) in the village had recently passed away and his replacement was being installed. We unfortunately missed the formal ceremony in the morning, but the celebration was well underway when we arrived and was expected to continue long into the night. Everyone was extremely nice, especially since we had come with a local. They gave us plenty of food and water (some of us felt adventurous and actually drank it) for lunch, and there was a steady flow of people who introduced themselves and thanked us for visiting.

Later, it was time for the dancing. There were about 10 drummers who would walk through the crowd while playing continuously and one would stop in front of a person and start doing a solo. This means that person has to walk to the middle of the crowd and dance alone for a few minutes. While in the middle, people walk up and give you money, which you are then supposed to give to the drummers when you leave the middle. Of course, three tall white people kind of stick out, so we all had to dance at some point.

I got it first out of our group. I had watched a few others dance in hopes of copying their style, but I decided it was kind of a freestyle thing since everyone looked so different. This gave me enough confidence to let loose a little more, which in hindsight paid off. I wasn’t at all timid. I tried to give them a good show. People were cheering and laughing like crazy. Another student from our group, Vanessa, fortunately came in and made me look a little bit better towards the end. Our popularity skyrocketed after that, and we were approached to have our pictures taken with several people. I’m not sure if our dancing had anything to do with it, but we were also invited to take a picture with the chief and many of the elders afterwards.

Both the pictures I’m posting here were taken at the village. The first was taken during the drum circle. The background shows the villagers’ circular houses (around 10 feet in diameter) with thatched roofs. The second is with a fraction of the many children who followed us everywhere. Some would point and yell “Saminga!” which means white person.

Now that it’s Monday, it’s back to work. Today I started running my system with chlorine and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find my data values to be almost exactly what I had predicted them to be. Hooray for science!

Despite being on the other end of the world, I’ve been successful in keeping up with the football playoffs. One member of our group figured out how to get live streaming audio for the games, so I listened to the recent Patriots/Jaguars and Cowboys/Giants games. The time difference makes it a little difficult; the Patriots game was on at 1-4 a.m.! I was very sad to hear the Cowboys lose, but the nice thing about sports is there’s always next year.

Here a link that shows the weather for the area where I’m staying.

As you can see it’s quite warm this time of year. (I’m told being near the equator does that.) The locals laugh when we tell them how hot we are (as if 100 degrees isn’t hot); apparently it gets another 10-20 degrees warmer in March and April. So I guess they have a point. Despite the heat it remains socially unacceptable for men to wear shorts, which I find most disconcerting. Women can wear skirts that go below their knees, but no such luck for the men. Thankfully I was told this beforehand so I could pack accordingly.

With a little help from our friends

We had to get going right at dawn this morning because there were planned demonstrations in downtown Tamale. Demonstrations here do not necessarily imply peaceful, so it’s not exactly the best place for white foreigners. The last civil unrest here happened under similar conditions back in 1994 when riots broke out and a few deaths were involved. No one is expecting near that level of excitement but it still required some of us to be up way too early.

My research has been going well so far. While the entire team is studying water quality, everyone is focusing on specific aspects of the problem (reducing turbidity, disinfection, etc.). The most common water source is coming from what’s called a “dugout.” This is essentially a large hole with a built-up outer embankment that keeps the water inside. I’m told they usually place the dugouts near rivers to catch floodwater, but the main input comes from rainfall and surface water runoff.

I’m working on using chlorine to disinfect water in a community-scale, centralized system. Another student with us is working on chlorine disinfection as a household option. I plan to compare the two in terms of economics and the likelihood of user acceptability based on taste and odor, which are often problems with chlorinated water.

Some of us (myself and two others) have set up a lab at the local Peace Corps office. They have all been incredibly gracious with their space and generous with donating their time to help us out. We need a LOT of assistance figuring out what materials we can get, where they might be, how much they might cost, and how feasible it is to translate our lofty ideas into reality. Our projects would be dauntingly more difficult, if not impossible, without the Peace Corps volunteers’ assistance.

Our living situation has been a little interesting thus far as well. Initially we were staying in a guesthouse located within a compound of cabins, each with two kitchens and a handful of bedrooms. The electricity was dependable, the water was relatively clean (probably not clean enough to drink but certainly clean enough to bathe in), our laundry was done for a small fee, and we were served two meals a day. Basically a West African equivalent of a four-star hotel for under $20 per day. The initial plan was to remain there for our entire stay, but Susan rented a house for another purpose and pointed out it might make sense for us to stay in the house instead. We all moved the following day.

We quickly discovered the house was a few steps down from the four-star standards to which we had grown accustomed. Running water is very limited and not available for the showers or toilets. The lights are dim, so the house gets pretty dark after 7 p.m. We initially had a bit of a mouse and cockroach problem, but that seems to be getting better. The electricity switches on and off during peak load hours. And there was dirt and dust everywhere originally, but the maids we hired have done a wonderful job cleaning up. The upsides are it’s a lot cheaper than the guesthouse and much closer to where I’m working, so I’ve been staying here. There were originally only two brave souls out of nine who stayed here after the first night, but two more just rejoined us, so maybe the tide is turning. It’s certainly been an adventure.

Tonight the whole group is going to the Peace Corps office for dinner and drinks. All the beer here is Ghanaian (even the Guinness is brewed and bottled in the capital, Accra). Surprisingly, the girls swear the beer tastes better here than in Boston. I personally think they’re crazy, but I do agree that it may seem better after a long day in the sun when we’re super dirty and dusty.

The group here is all going out to lunch so I am going to join them. My other main goal for tonight is to find a way to watch the playoff football games.

Greetings from Tamale, Ghana!

Hello all! I was a little late getting this blog going so there is a lot to catch up on. I have been in Ghana for a little more than a week. It took ~72 hours to get here, which is a little high because I had an extra red-eye flight from the West Coast to NY that most people wouldn’t have. Another red-eye later and I was in London, then it was one more quick seven-hour flight to Accra, Ghana. Even though we landed at 11 p.m. local time it was 90 degrees outside, which was a bit of a shock compared to London.

Just as a point of reference, Ghana is located here in Africa.

On the flight into Accra I did have one interesting experience. In the short amount of time between naps, I talked a little to the woman next to me, who I quickly found out was Ghanaian. She asked about my reason for coming to Ghana, to which I replied that I was studying water in the North. I told her the name of the town I was going to and asked if she had ever seen it. She quickly replied, “I don’t go into the Northern parts” and proceeded to tell me that I should expect to feel “very close to nature.”

I remained undeterred.

We had to get up early the next morning to catch an 8 a.m. bus to take us to the North. Thankfully I slept well the night before (and thoroughly enjoyed my first shower since leaving the U.S.), because it turned into a 13-hour ordeal. Legroom on the bus was very limited, so I could only sit completely upright, which made it nearly impossible to fall asleep. They also played locally made films named “American Husband,” “Family Crisis,” “Family Crisis 2,” and another one I can’t remember right now. Even without understanding a lot of the dialog (it took me a little while to adjust to their accents), I got the gist. The movies are pretty hard to watch in comparison to what we’re used to, but they seemed especially tiresome considering the long trip and lack of sleep.

We arrived well into the night and unloaded all our bags. It was very crowded and hectic at the bus station. These two guys started grabbing our luggage and gesturing for us to come with them. I had heard taxi drivers can be pretty aggressive, so I grabbed one of the bags that one guy was carrying and yelled at him to put it down. I found out a few minutes later that he was our guide and had been sent by our advisor. I felt like a jerk. He knew who we were, because we were the only white people there and certainly the only ones in a nine-person group.

Susan Murcott (our research advisor) bought a new flatbed pickup truck to help us get around. It’s a lot of fun to use, especially since the taxi service here is a little complicated. There are taxis everywhere in our town; I’d say they represent at least 1/3 of all the cars. However, the system here is a lot different than in the U.S. First of all, you should ask them where they are going. If they happen to be going in the direction you’re heading and you can negotiate, then it’s a lot cheaper. If you just get in and say a place, then you are asking to get ripped off. There are no electronic meters, so you bargain before you depart. After overpaying many times I think I’m getting it down a little better.

It’s getting late and I am going to head back home. The mosquitoes that carry malaria come out at night, so it’s a good idea to be inside, especially since I’m probably the first thing they see in the dark.