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