Boreholes & Cocoa

So the past two days in Abomosu have been pretty great.  We haven’t done anything extremely exciting to report on, but just being immersed in the African/Ghanaian culture is just awesome.  So I’ll give you a summary of what I’ve done the past two days.  

Yesterday, we had a meeting with a man who is in charge of the water wells here, which are called boreholes.  In Ghana, basically nothing scheduled is set in stone, and we learned that quickly.  An 8:00 meeting that includes local Ghanaians usually happens around 10ish.  That’s what we experienced yesterday.  We were up and ready by 8, waited for the water guy to come meet with us, and then didn’t get out in the community until afternoon.  In the health clinics, the “big days” are on Tuesdays and Fridays, and on the other days, it is busier in the mornings.  Since it was a Wednesday and we didn’t arrive until the afternoon, there was literally nothing to do.  Me and Paige did a little bit of data entry.  The clinic is trying to move from using mainly paper to using computers, and apparently they have been trying to do this for years.  We basically just typed people’s names and the city they were from.  We walked home from the clinic a little bit later and went through the village.  After we got back, we relaxed until dinner time, and Sherri and Darcy made some delicious fried chicken and mashed potatoes.  After dinner, me, Leah, Darcy, Scott, and Reika did some interval running outside our gated house.  We did lunges and squats, then we did intervals of walking for 2 minutes, jogging for 2 minutes, and sprinting for one minute and we did it 5 times.  It was a gooood work out.  I guess you could say my face was red for a while.

 

Today, we were out of the house by 8:30 to go conduct more water interviews.  Leah and I went with a Ghanaian named Seth who works for World Joy (the company who owns the house we are staying in) and he translated for us.  We went to a village called Ekorsu and we interviewed 9 households.  It was definitely interesting to do the interviews and learn how much having these boreholes affects their day to day life.  Before the boreholes, everyone fetched water from a stream which was a long walk multiple times a day.  Now that they have the boreholes, they have so much more time to do other things.  Children usually fetch water in the mornings, and when they went to the stream, they were often late to school and were exhausted from multiple trips.  Now that they have boreholes, the kids are at school on time, the adults are at work on time, and they overall have more time to do more things.  And when the kids are in school, they educate themselves to be successful in the future, so having clean water now can affect the community in generations to come! Also, families have noticed that they are a lot healthier after the boreholes, which is the most important thing.  We only did 9 households because the village was a farming community and all the adults were at work, so we got to everyone that was home, and had another quick day.  After we were done, me, Leah, and Scott (a professor) walked from our house to the village.  We walked around and said “How are you” in Twi to the locals and just spent a little time in the community.  How are you is pronounced "Et-Te-Sane" and the response is usually "Ay-Ya" which basically means good or fine. Scott, one of the administrators, ended up giving a little girl some candy  and she ended up following us all the way home.   She was super cute, but she didn’t speak English.  We told her many times to go home, said “bye bye”, and tried to walk fast and ahead of her, but she wouldn’t leave.  When we got to our gate, we were just going to shut her out, but she got her body in the way and would not move.  We got Yaw (pronounced Yow), who is our driver for our trip, to tell her to leave in Twi, and she finally did.  Apparently, that’s how a lot of kids are here.  Even if you don’t give them anything, they will follow you and bother you and won’t leave you alone.  After Yaw saved us, he showed me where cocoa comes from.  Steven Abu, a man who works for World Joy who helps run the house we are staying in, has 7 farms, and he has cocoa trees.  They look like a big, yellow fruit hanging on a tree.  Yaw cracked the fruit open for me, and in it were white, big, mushy looking seeds.  He told me to take one and suck on it, so I did, and it tasted like a slimy apple! It was so weird!  He opened the seed and inside it was purple, and after these seeds are dried out, you get cocoa.  It was super interesting to see that chocolate, one of the loves of my life, originates from a big yellow melon looking thing on a tree.   The rest of our afternoon/evening was spent making and eating dinner of rice with carrots, chicken, and green onions, and doing the interval running.  It has overall been a good two days.

Me, Darcy, Scott, Leah, and the little girl who wouldn't leave us alone

cute kid

step by step of the cocoa beans