Travels and Damba

I have had my first experience with needing to go to Accra for medical reasons. Nothing too major, I had a somewhat exposed nerve on a tooth, that had potential for infection. So I got that cleared up ASAP! The dentist in Accra was very sweet and nice. Although definitely a different experience from US dentists. I was in and out in about 30 mins, had very little say about what was to happen, and no pain meds or warning about "discomfort". I had the front of the tooth sealed with who knows what and was told that it might sting a bit...oh boy did it sting!! But I guess it was a good thing the visit was short, because I'm not sure if I could have taken much more of the "stinging". ouch! But all is good now and hopefully this seal thing lasts for a long time.

After going to Accra, I met up with the Gender, Youth, and Development (GYD) group in Kumasi. Kumasi always freaks me out because it's so big. I'm definitely use to small towns and get pretty stressed out when needing to travel to Kumasi or Accra. But I prefer Accra over Kumasi. It's just too big and too unorganized, I'm also so lost when I'm there. So I mainly stayed at the Kumasi Sub Office (KSO). I had a blast with the other members of GYD and I think this next year we'll be able to accomplish a lot and I hope to be pretty involved in the GYD activities.

As it happens the Damba festival was taking place after my GYD meeting, so I was able to participate in it. Damba is the biggest festival in the Northern region, taking place over the course of 3-4 days with all day activities and dancing all night. There are two major Damba Festivals, one for the Gonjas and one for the Dagombas. Although I live in Dagomba land, the Damba festival started out as a Gonja thing, and so typically is the biggest in the Gonja lands. (the Gonja and Dagombas are the two biggest tribes in the Northern Region) So this year I participated in the Gonja festival, next year I'll go to the Dagomba one.

Damba started out as a Gonja tribal festival and when Islam was introduced, the religion was incorporated into it. Damba mainly celebrates the birth of Mohammed. After the Dagombas were established as a tribe in Ghana, they also celebrated Damba since they are the other major Muslim tribe. Much like Fire Festival, depending on where you are and who you ask, the histories of the festival and the purposes or events seem to vary, so what I know might be different from what other people were told about the Festival.

The day before the beginning of the Festival, all of the surrounding sub chiefs from the five gates (kind of like districts) arrive and greet the Paramount Chief (the high chief of all the Gonjas, sometimes called the Gonja King). So the chiefs of the five gates and all of their sub chiefs (it's like a tiered system), will line up in a procession and walk through town to the palace and greet the paramount chief. All of the following days, the chiefs of the five gates will stay in their homes (or the homes where they're staying for the Damba festival, since they actually live in other villages), and the lower chiefs and dignitaries will walk through the town and greet each of the sub chiefs every morning. Pretty confusing stuff, filled with lots of rules and etiquette. On this day, we greeted the paramount chief. Since he's the King, we bow all the way to the ground, with the men leaning to the left and the women leaning to the right, so show our respect.

The second day was filled with football (soccer for us crazy Americans) matches from all the different Gonja towns. There was also suppose to be a bike race (although they had no bikes, so that didn't happen), a Tug-o-Peace (because we should make peace not war....however, that never seemed to happen and I was very bummed, because it sounded awesome!), and wrestling, which also did not occur, but would have been fun to watch. But there was lots of football matches. We went to a Pito (pronounced pee-toe) bar around lunch time. Pito bars are marked by a jug on a stick outside someones house, so they're not like Spots (what Ghanaians call bars), where it's actually a place of business with signs, and different drinks, and perhaps some food. Pito bars are in someone's courtyard and only are open when it's available, hence the jug on a stick outside. So we just walked through neighborhoods until we saw one.

In the afternoon, there was the first major Damba event (well first one that actually happened as scheduled), which was the Sorting of the Rice. Everyone gathered at the Chief's Palace, where there was plenty of dancing as the different processions arrived. After everyone had arrived, the dignitaries sat down on prayer-mats around the chief and everyone else just stood. A lady with rice came around and gave about a handful to the dignitaries. And the Linguist (the speaker for the chief) went about the opening prayers and remarks. Groups of people were presented to the chief to show respect. I don't speak Gonja, so I'm not really sure what all was happening during this time, but it involved a lot of talking. Afterwards, dancing lines started up and the people began to disperse. Nothing ever really happened with the rice, so I'm kind of confused as to its purpose, but oh well. After a break for dinner, there was a singing and dance competition. Which at first I thought would be like Village Idol or something. Nope, not at all. All of the participant I saw where 50 or older and did the very traditional songs and dances. It was pretty awesome. Around 2 am, we left to go to sleep, but the competition was to last until morning, crazy!

The next morning between 5am and 8am was suppose to be the sacrificing of the Bull. We decided that it probably would happen closer to 8, so there was no reason to wake up at 5 and boy am I happy we did that. The sacrifice actually took place at 10:30...hahah! Yeah Ghanaian time! But there was some dancing that started up around 9. I didn't stay for the 3rd day, since I needed to get back to Tamale, but I heard that it was suppose to be a lot of talking, which I don't understand, so I'm not too sad. All in all, Damba was a lot of fun and very informative.

Lights out? Use a stick!

Our power went out last night, something that recently hasn't been happening. However upon inspection, only our compound and a few houses to the West had lost power, with all of the classrooms still retaining power. Kind of a bummer seeing other people with power and us without. So the great minds of our fellow teachers got together to devise a plan. What is this plan you ask? Well, lets get a desk, then put a stool on top of it so that we can fiddle with the wires supplying the power to the compound. Luckily the man selected to stand on this wonderfully safe contraption had wonderful balance. There are four power supply lines that connect to the compound from the power pole outside the building. This man went about checking to see if there was electricity in any of those lines and started undoing then crossing the wires attempting to get power, I believe he was trying to take the power from a neighboring building. When 20 mins of this didn't result in power, a new plan was put into action. The power pole outside the compound has connector pieces for the wires, I have no idea what they're actually called, probably something like transistors or capacitors, who knows, they're the cone like things you see connecting wires to poles. Well this guy took a huge long stick and start to hit these connectors, causing sparks and all sorts of "probably bad news" things to happen. And what do you know, we got power. HA! Who'd have thought that hitting a cable with a stick would restore power.

In other news, I've started teaching Chemistry to the Form 4 (seniors) at our high school. What's nice is that I'm only teaching 2 classes, with a total of 45 students, so it's not too much extra work for me. However, I never realized how much time is spent doing lesson plans...I give props to all those actual teachers out there...that's some hard work! Oh course, I'm sure that you're text book is actually factually correct, so you don't have to double check everything and that'd save me a ton of time. What's interesting to note is that JB is teaching 500 students spread out over 8 classes in Form 2. Not only is his student load way higher than mine, but he also has students that just don't want to be in school. The 45 students I have are the ones that made it out of those 500, they're the very devoted ones. So JB deals with a lot more students who don't care or pay attention. My students are active in asking questions, they want extra classes, and are very willing to learn. It's been great. The problems that I'm running into are dealing with this horrid textbook and limited supplies, but I'm making due. Luckily I have the internet to help supplement my lessons.

New photos should be up this weekend, so keep an eye out for them. The majority of them are from a baby weighing that I go to every Friday. Instead of going to clinics or having check-up appointments for babies, here we just have baby weighing days. Every friday women will come to the old, old hospital (mainly it's just two rooms with a court yard) to have their babies weighed and receive vaccines if they're due. This helps to catch babies who are failing to gain weight and need extra nutrition. Today we have 5 babies requiring Plumpy Nut and some mothers in need a bit more education. These Fridays the women also receive a general health talk, today was on Malaria and Breast Cancer. One of the big highlights I believe for these mothers is just being able to relax with some friends for a few hours. Women here wake up at 4am in order to start cooking breakfast and getting the kids ready for school which usually starts around 6:30-7am. Then they're busy all day cooking, cleaning, going to farm, some work in the market, and other various work. Baby weighing is when they only have to deal with one child and they don't have to deal with any extra stress of the day. It's nice to see these women laugh and joke with each other. I think it's a great way to end the week!