Ghana Update #4 - December 12, 2013

Well, I’ve finally come to the end of my Ghana road. As you can see, I’ve worn my one pair of flipflops entirely through ($4.00!), that means its time to come home.

I had an absolutely lovely time in Zambia last month with Christina. For those of you who want to read an interesting tale of one of my particular adventures there, you can find it in my last blog entry: http://www.dojustice-lovekindness-walkwithgod.blogspot.ca/2013/12/a-day-in-life-of-super-heroine_2.html

But it wasn’t all fun and games while I was there – I was able to take advantage of the somewhat lessened heat, the incredibly increased quiet and the relative solitude of my little converted transport container (I had it all to myself for a few days!) to finally finish my analysis.

For those of you who really wanted to know, you can find the latest final draft version of my analysis/report here: (Analysis of the Property Rights of Spouses in Ghana) but I don’t recommend trying to read it. It is quite long and may be somewhat dry to those who don’t work in this field. But I am encouraged that the people here in Ghana including the lawyer that I have been working under seem very excited with the ways in which they feel they can put the information I’ve gathered to good use in their continued battle against domestic violence in this country!

I’m making final preparations to return home now and am quite looking forward to it. I really feel as though my time in Ghana has been profitable and useful for WiLDAF in its work fighting violence against women in this country, and I’ve made some really great friends and lasting connections which is really encouraging. I definitely would not want to live in Accra, but I am going to miss Ghana.

I won’t say too much more, but I just wanted to thank everyone for your continued encouragement and prayers throughout my time in Ghana. They really meant a lot to me and to the people I’ve been working with. I will be back in Canada by the evening of December 14, 2013. 

Hope to see you all again in the very near future! :)

A Day in the Life of a Super Hero(ine)

As most of you will know, I spent most of November visiting my old roomie, Christina Gagnon, at her new home on the mission station in the middle of nowhere, otherwise known as Chitokoloki, in the Northwest province of Zambia. I had a lot of very interesting experiences there which I will summarize in the next post, but this one evening’s experiences deserves its own post.

This is Christina Gagnon.

Or, at least, this is who I thought of as Christina Gagnon. Sure, she’s standing in the middle of a little house in the middle of Africa outfitted in the latest Chitokoloki fashion, but she’s still the Christina Gagnon I’ve come to know rather well since 2009. “Quiet”, mild-mannered, northern Ontario Clark Kent…ahem, I mean Christina Gagnon.

Our adventure takes place about the fifth or sixth night that I spent with Christina in her cute little home, by which point I had succeeded in thoroughly addicting most of the mission station to Downton Abbey by bringing along all eight episodes of season four with me.

To me, that Tuesday evening seemed like any other Tuesday evening that one would expect to spend in the middle of Africa…

Our cast of main characters consisted of one Canadian nurse (the Heroine of our story), two Northern Irish nurses, myself, and Felix, the Australian second year medical student dude who was just cycling through Africa one day several weeks ago when he happened upon the mission station in the middle of nowhere and was invited to pitch in for random surgeries for the next several weeks…

Like I said, just like any other regular Tuesday in the middle of Africa.

Its about 10 o’clock at night and we’re all crowded around my tiny laptop which is sitting on a coffee table in Christina’s house, we’re all riveted to episode 3 of season 4 of Downton Abbey. We just get to the extremely shocking part (for those Downton Abbey fans reading this from North America, you’ll know exactly what I mean when the season comes out in January!) when Irish Nurse 1 gets a call on the batphone letting her know that Ms. Tiny 17-year-old in the maternity ward will be needing a c-section tonight.

Given the incredibly dramatic point at which we are at in our episode of Downton Abbey, everyone seems a little reluctant to jump into action right away so it is decided by an overwhelming majority vote that we should watch the last 2.5 minutes of the show. But immediately after that I am instantly transported into a Justice League comic strip -- African Edition. 

Irish Nurses 1 and 2 along with Australian Cyclist/Medical Student grab their things and saunter purposefully out the front door and into the pitch black Zambian night. We hear Irish Nurse 1 leap onto her four-wheeler, it roars to life and she’s off. Irish Nurse 2 and Australian Cyclist/Medical Student walk together down the left path towards the scene of the crim… I mean the hospital. Meanwhile, I am totally bewildered, kinda like those extras in the Matrix who are frozen in time while the main characters do all the cool stuff that the extras never see. I glance to my left and Christina has apparently already been in and out of the phone booth or the batcave or wherever because she’s already completely unrecognizable having donned her superhero scrubs. I hardly have time to utter a word before we’re off into the night. She also adopts a purposeful stride as we walk down the path to the right. Apparently all roads lead to the hospital.

Its pitch black outside so I use my iPhone camera flash as a torch to light the way since there are sometimes snakes in the path.

10 minutes later we’re at the hospital. I follow our Heroine around like a puppy as she gets ready to roll. She leads me into a room filled with multi-coloured scrubs and selects a nice magenta set for me with a little hat and decidedly non-matching crocs (which one must check before slipping into since postman spiders are sometimes found inside (see the following picture I took of a relatively small postman beside a toonie to fully comprehend the size of these things).

(Sorry Denise and Daena)

My crocs are, thankfully, postman free this evening.

The magenta pants are at least two sizes too small (I’m clearly an extra in this feature film!) but the magenta shirt is two sizes too large so it covers the pant problem up from everyone else’s view.

(this is the set of scrubs I wore a few days later, but you get the idea)

After changing without any finesse whatsoever, I notice that, like our Heroine, somehow all of the other cast of characters have, meanwhile, become caped crusaders as well.

I follow our Heroine back to the ward where I notice, in a complete daze, that she has truly become a completely different person. Like Superman's Kal-El, our Heroine’s mysterious super disguise seems to have given her an instant command of the situation and launched her from mild-mannered reporter in the background right into the thick of the action.

Our Heroine proceeds to set up the operating theatre while Ms. Tiny 17-year-old is brought in also looking quite bewildered. I find it comforting to know I’m not the only one.

Irish Nurse 1 points out to me which parts of the operating theatre I am, under no circumstances, to contaminate by touching with any part of my body, lest some of my non-superhero impurities should be transferred – essentially anything blue or green is off limits to me. Other than that, I am allowed to roam around the room so that I can get a good view of the action.

Irish Nurse 1 also shows me the extra tray of emergency supplies just in case an extra pair of hands is needed all of a sudden. She also tells me I can pick out an outfit for the new baby, dress it and keep it until the surgery is over if I like. I feel like Robin, always there just in case -- he can handle the minor bad guys and is good for a supportive “Biff!” here and there, but everyone hopes Robin never has to actually save the day because while he may sorta look like he's part of the League to the untrained eye, in reality he has no clue what he's doing.

Irish Nurse 2 hands me a list of instruments to count with Zambian Scrub Nurse when he gets in. Notice I got promoted to “Circulating Nurse” at some point during my trip!

Then, just like Tuxedo Mask in an episode of Sailor Moon, out of nowhere a Chef mysteriously enters with great pomp and circumstance in a totally inexplicable costume.

He's otherwise known as Irish Doctor (he’s not "Doctor No. 1" because he’s the only doctor!)

Irish Doctor/Chef talks with Ms. Tiny 17-year-old in her local Lunda language, he then leads the entire Justice League in a prayer for the mother, the child, the team and the procedure we’re about to perform.

Meanwhile, Little Ms. Tiny 17-year-old has been stripped bare in preparation for her spinal injection and is trying, very much in vain, to regain some of her modesty by covering herself with her hands. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have enough hands to accomplish the task and the procedures she is undergoing are not conducive to modest poses. She glances at me from time to time, but I can only smile and look encouraging since I’m really just an extra, a side-kick at best, and I don’t speak her language.

Zambian Scrub Nurse does the instrument count with me and the next thing I know, they’ve started slicing her up. My mouth is constantly gaping open as I watch them reach cavalierly into the incision they’ve just made and literally wrench the flesh apart with their hands in order to widen it enough to reach the baby we’ve come to rescue.

Innards of all different colours, shapes and textures are on vibrant display.

They can see the head and they pull it out unceremoniously. The head gives absolutely no reaction whatsoever to this unexpected development. It is as if they have just pulled a shriveled doll’s head out of a messy sac.

As with any good superhero story, there is some trouble at the height of the action. They are having difficulty pulling the shoulders out because Little Ms. Tiny 17-year-old is so…well, tiny.

I notice that, like a good Tuxedo Mask, Irish Doctor/Chef offers seemingly random words of wisdom from time to time as the League continues to grapple with the task at hand.

While they’re working on it, the rest of us try to guess the gender of the baby based on the facial characteristics. Irish Nurse 1 tells me its my duty to announce the gender for the official record once the baby is out. My money is on ‘boy’.

They finally pull the baby out and I check and double check. And double check again. Seems to be a girl so that’s what I go with. Australian Cyclist/Medical Student and Irish Doctor/Chef take a second look and ask me if I’m sure, but then agree, yes indeed it’s a girl.

Irish Nurse 1 takes our baby Damsel in Distress over to a little table to make sure she’s alright. She has a little trouble getting a reaction out of the little Miss. Actually, Damsel is quite floppy and seems reluctant to cry, but once Irish Nurse 1 gets a few weak mewls out of her, she wipes her off and instructs me to shield my eyes from the threatened onslaught of birth fluids while she trims the umbilical cord. She shows the successfully rescued Damsel quickly to Ms. Tiny 17-year-old and then hands her back to me.

My moment has finally come, I have the important task of diapering, clothing, and cuddling this tiny Damsel and I have picked out the perfect pink knit pajamas to accomplish my mini-mission. I set to work.

I’ve never seen a baby anywhere near this young, let alone been left in charge of making one presentable. I feel like Robin’s identical twin Larry, who unbeknownst to the Justice League, went to law school rather than superhero training camp, and as a result has absolutely no clue. Tiny Damsel is so listless, not at all like how putting a diaper on my niece (Ella) was once she was old enough for Denise to let me try. But I manage. Its tough to get all the clothes on her but once she’s all bundled up and pretty, I get to sit on a stool beside Ms. Tiny 17-year-old so that she can see her little Damsel while Australian Cyclist/Medical Student sews her up.

I should point out at this point that there is a wild kitty loose in the operating theatre somewhere meowing constantly. Its been there for several days now, they can’t seem to get rid of it because its so quick and skittery.

The members of the Justice League don’t seem to mind the kitty’s distractions. However, as Australian Cyclist/Medical Student is starting to sew up the incision, the power goes out and we’re all thrown into pitch black for a few seconds. The lights come back on and go off again a few seconds later. Pitch black again.

Never fear, Robin’s here!

Yeah, that’s right, our Heroine hands me my trusty iPhone and I become the human overhead light with my camera flash/torch so that Australian Cyclist/Medical Student can finish his sutures. No word of a lie. By the light of my iPhone. I feel like I'm in a commercial for Apple.

Once all the drama is over and done with, I get to slip back into the background while the main characters clean up Ms. Tiny 17-year-old and tidy up the operating theatre. The instrument count is completed by yours truly…

And at some point, just like Tuxedo Mask, I notice that Irish Doctor/Chef has disappeared already, likely busy saving the day somewhere else now that the climax is over in our particular story.

The remaining League members roll Ms. Tiny 17-year-old back into the maternity ward while I march proudly behind them with my Damsel in arms. The relatives sitting in the dark corridor are told in Lunda that a woman child was born and they all murmur in what seems like general approval.

Our Heroine tells me I have to relinquish my Damsel to the maternity ward nurse which I am somewhat reluctant to do… but, I should have expected to have to give her up, since Robin never gets the girl.

Our Heroine whisks me back to the scrub room to change out of my clever magenta disguise. When I emerge from the room I see that everyone else in the League has returned to their alter egos. And before I know what’s what, they all slip off back into the Zambian night towards their respective lairs.

As Irish Nurse 1’s four-wheeler roars into life in the distance, I whip out my iPhone to light the way back home while contemplating the wonder of God’s creativity and the engineering of new life. It is at that moment that our Heroine suddenly turns to me and says in anguished tones,

“I still can’t believe it! Its just so awful!”

I wrack my brains to try to figure out what I’m missing.

It takes me a moment.

Then I realise that she's talking about Downton Abbey.

Yeah. Seriously. 

Apparently even our Heroine has put her alter ego back on. Its Christina Gagnon I’m talking to now, and she is referring to the incredibly dramatic episode that we’d been watching in what seems to me like a completely different universe ago.

In reality, it was about an hour and a half ago. Delivering a new soul into the world is just another day in the life of these Superheros, they’ll do it again tomorrow as I go back to my books and cases and facts and arguments.

And that was that.

Need I Say More?

Sigh...

Update #3 - October 31, 2013

I thought I'd still send out a quick update before it becomes November. This should be the second-to-last update before the end of my mandate!


Some of you have asked so I’ll let you know that the countdown at this point is 43 days. A little under a month and a half left, I think that is manageable. While I am definitely going to miss my dear landlady, Mrs. Kyei, when I leave, I am looking forward to finally moving out of her house, as there are a few families of vermin that I’ve had quite enough of. We’ve got some very odd species of spider living in the walls, in addition to the moths that are making babies in my clothes and the moisture ants whose gargantuan colony has had to expand its territory so that they no longer live just inside the walls, but also have taken up residence on both of the beds in my room. They bite. Its upsetting. And I’m somewhat worried that they may find their way into my hair while I am sleeping…sigh.

The mosquitos are annoying too, but actually not that bad. Once you get the hang of their tactics they can be pretty deftly avoided.


It is quite hot here these days! 31 to 33 degrees it seems, on average. I’ve given up on pre-warming my showers on the stove in the mornings now, I just take it straight. But by the time I get to work, I wonder why I bother. Ah well, of all the things about Africa one hears about before moving there, I definitely can’t say I didn’t know it was going to be hot. Its just that I really miss that fantastic July/August weather we were having!


Things with my project are going relatively well. WiLDAF is engaged in training Legal Literacy Volunteers and Maternal Health Volunteers in rural areas all over the country. I can’t remember if I explained this in the last update or not. Basically what they do is they ask local chiefs to give them the names of people in their communities who would be willing to receive some free focussed training on essential legal or maternal health issues. Those people are gathered up by WiLDAF which runs the training over the course of a week. Then the volunteers graduate from the program and WiLDAF comes to the community to introduce the new Legal Literacy Volunteers or Maternal Health Volunteers to the community. The Legal Literacy Volunteers are doing amazing work around the country. Basically their job is to let people in their communities (including the chiefs) know what their legal and constitutional rights are and what to do if those rights are being violated. For instance, if someone is experiencing domestic violence but thinks that maybe that’s just the way things are done, the Legal Literacy Volunteer in that community would be trying to find these people to let them know that there are laws in place that can help them and get them to people in their community who can defend or protect them. They’re like quasi-lawyers/paralegals in a sense but with a real sense of volunteerism and a passion for their own communities. Its neat. The Maternal Health Volunteers basically become the go-to people for the pregnant women and families in an area. There a lot of maternal deaths around here and most of them are, apparently completely avoidable. So WiLDAF has been trying to give community members the information on what to do, where to go, when to go, etc. so that they can get involved with the women as they become pregnant in their communities. This community volunteer training is a really great initiative of WiLDAF’s since its sustainable and empowering to the community members. I got to tag along to three of the graduation ceremonies held in September and October because the chiefs all get invited and I got to take some of them aside afterwards to interview them on domestic violence issues for my project!

During the graduation ceremony the graduating class put on a couple of maternal health skits for the community to illustrate some of the common easily avoidable life-threatening pregnancy situations. They added their own local humour to some of the situations and the crowd loved it!


(above) The graduating class (wearing green) with the local chiefs and queen mothers in front.


(below) These are pictures of my meeting with the chiefs after the graduation. The debate over the answers to my questions got pretty heated at times so there was a lot of gesturing!

(Below) here is another graduating class in a different region of the country a few weeks later

(below) and here is my focus group with the chiefs and queen mothers in that area afterwards (the translator is the guy standing next to me)

(below) This is a picture of the general area that we were in for this focus group

After the focus group I asked someone to show me where the washroom was. She directed me towards this structure…

I’m still not sure what exactly I was supposed to do there… It was literally a flat concrete slab with aluminum siding erected around it. No drain, not even a hole. At least when one is directed behind a tree or even to the local gutter at the side of the road I know what is expected of me. But I just couldn’t take the risk of getting it wrong in this aluminum thingy… I gave up and held it until I got home. I apologized to my kidneys.



Back in Accra, I was able to visit some We’s or “Family Houses” in the Osu region to try and get some interviews done with community members about how economic violence issues are handled in their families. Here is one of the We’s I visited and the lady I interviewed there.

Another Canadian who lives in my neighbourhood, Jocelyn, invited me to the Aburi Botancial Gardens outside of Accra one weekend. It was a great trip and I even got to have some ice cream!

We met these teenage girls at the Botanical Gardens. They reminded me of the girls from teen night at Agincourt because they loved to dance. They wanted to show us their moves…

I didn’t get to actually eat any turkeys over Thanksgiving, but I think I did SEE some here on High Street on Thanksgiving Monday

So you all remember my good friend the greasy Court Registrar? (See The Story about the Registrar from my blog: http://www.dojustice-lovekindness-walkwithgod.blogspot.ca/2013/09/the-registrars-concubine.html)

Well, earlier this month I FINALLY had a breakthrough with him and received the copies of my court decisions that I’ve been trying to get for the last 3 months! So now I am FINALLY able to complete my analysis and finish my project :) the only reason he finally gave them to me is because I dragged my boss into it. She came with me one day wearing her lawyer tabs and jacket and that got the job done (I see lawyers wearing them everywhere here, but I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing my robes in Accra. Actually, I would be caught dead. Of heatstroke. I don’t know how these guys do it)



So I have now completed all the research for my project. In addition to the court cases and interviews with chiefs, I also got to do a couple of interviews with Muslim leaders and even a couple of lawyers. Its made for some very interesting information gathering. Lawyers here seem generally cynical and jaded, which means they would fit in just great in Toronto. Actually speaking of inter-country juxtapositioning, all this stuff I keep reading about the Canadian government and the Senate and the robocalls business has me wondering whether both Canada and Ghana’s politicians might not have gotten their political science/good governance degrees out of the same Crackerjack box or something…hmmm



Today is Halloween but I don’t expect to see much in the way of festivities. Its not big here, though the bigger stores do put up decorations and sell costumes. But the only costume I’ve actually seen worn so far is an orange t-shirt sported by a guy walking down the street that said “This IS my costume” :)



Now that my research is finished and I’m fully into the writing phase of the project, I decided I would take a few days and go visit Christina in Zambia. She invited me to come see her side of the continent before I head back across the water and since she is also working full-time, I thought it would be an excellent way to get away from my ant problem and get some work done. So I’m quite looking forward to that and will have some details about that little trip in my final update.



Oh! And also this month I attended both a funeral and an “engagement” (which is what customary marriage is called here). Both were quite the experiences. The funeral was for the father of one of the young men from the church in Kumasi. He was only 56 and died of a sudden and massive stroke. Very sad.

The engagement/wedding was for the niece of my sister’s colleague’s husband’s mother! Mrs. Basie invited me to her niece’s engagement this past Saturday and I had a great time. I felt like a wedding crasher, but nobody seemed to mind. It was HOT that day, but I couldn’t complain since it was the poor bride and groom who had to stand in the sun for ages while the ceremony went on.



The two mothers of the couple ran most of the ceremony and made a lot of jokes between them for about an hour and a half before the bride and groom were ushered into the area. There was a lot of laughing so I’m sure it was quite humourous, but I couldn’t understand what was being said unfortunately.

The buffet was fantastic! And I even got a souvenir!

Things up in Kumasi are going quite nicely. I’ve enjoyed my routine of going up there every other weekend, I’m getting used to the route, and always look forward to it. They’ve got me teaching the teen Bible class (both guys and girls) every time I’m up there now, which is a lot of work, but I enjoy it. This weekend we’re going to explore how exactly one can have an ongoing two-way relationship with an invisible God – I think it will be a fun session! The last two sessions I did were on the purpose(s) of life according to the Bible (I found 7!) and one on the fruit of the Spirit. I really enjoyed doing the purposes of life session with them as it really was an interesting study for me to do in the first place! And they were really into it, which was great. Keep on praying for them, some of them are going through some really tough challenges in their lives – especially the girls.

Here are a couple of pictures of the kids.

I haven’t been able to get very far on my child abuse case (the one I discussed in my last update). The witness I’ve been working with has been away most of October and I really need her input in order to move forward with the evidence. But we’re still moving ahead, slowly. Though the limitation period is ticking away so we do really need to move on it. I am hoping to be able to get a lot done on that front during the first half of November as well.



Well, this thing is 10 pages long now so I should really wrap it up. Sorry for such a long update! But I hope you enjoyed the pictures and that you are all doing well. Enjoy the cool weather for me, I wish I could import a little of it over here for a couple days!



Thank you again to all of you who’ve been praying for me and the for the work here. And thank you also for your encouraging e-mails! They are all really very much appreciated!





Yours truly,





Genna