Can't you read the sign?

October 2. Wedding bells and gender equality in action

On Saturday I attended the wedding of my work colleague Frank. It began with a rowdy church service with plenty of singing and dancing in the aisles, and continued at an outdoor reception which also involved a fair bit of dancing. There were easily two hundred and fifty people in attendance, but I was told it was on the small side for a Ghanaian wedding.

It was very nice of Frank to have invited me, and my colleagues also surprised me with a traditional African shirt which I wore for the occasion. The wedding also marked the first time I’d seen a groom have a ‘best lady,’ as another member of WiLDAF, Abigail, was asked to act in that role.

September 30. A fond farewell to a weekly tradition

This Thursday was my last Quiz Night. I went out with a bang, despite the fact that we finished second place by an agonizing half point, as I won the pint chugging contest that determines which team wins the beer round (the prize being a round of beers for all team members) whenever there’s a tie for first. In this case there was a five-way tie, and our designated chugger and current world record holder Andrew the Kiwi was out of town, forcing me to reveal a hitherto hidden talent.

Most interesting question of the week? What is the only US state without a ‘major’ airport? A: Washington crossing the _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.

September 28 - 29. Sensitization seminars

This week, my last full week of work at WiLDAF, we put on two more seminars to increase awareness of the Property Rights of Spouses Bill and get public input into how the Bill could be altered. On Tuesday we held a session for members of the media, and on Thursday for members of selected women’s groups.

September 25 - 26. Ada Foah

On Saturday a group of six of us went to Ada Foah, my favourite spot in Ghana with the exception of Mole National Park. We stayed overnight at a beautiful spot on a spit of sand separating the Volta river from the sea. Initially we tried to drive along the beach all the way there, but became stuck in the sand. So we had to climb out and dig ourselves free while a small group of Ghanaian men and teenage boys watched, to our irritation, without lifting a finger. When we asked them if they’d mind lending a hand they asked how much we’d be paying them. After a while, a sizeable crowd developed and a few older women and young kids gladly jumped in and helped us dig and push. I thought seeing their grandmothers pushing a car out of the sand might shame the guys into taking over, but I thought wrong.

All in all the experience reminded me a lot of digging cars out of snow in the winter, except that this effort took place on a beautiful beach in over 30 degree heat.

Afterwards we parked the cars and took a boat over to our accommodation, which is the way less adventurous and wiser people generally get there. It was great to be out on the water taking in the beautiful scenery. This was something I’d done before actually, during my first week in Ghana with Kathy and Keith.

The place we stayed was great, with clean fresh water for swimming on the estuary side and violent surf on the other. We even saw a mother turtle burrowing in the sand during the night.

September 23. No substitute for victory

There was no stopping us this week, as we once again won at Quiz Night. Most interesting question of the night: which is the second most populous continent? A: the one I’m writing from.

September 22. Meeting Annie

On Wednesday WiLDAF got a visit from Annie Zawadi, CCI Program Officer for Ghana and Togo. After chatting briefly with Annie at work I got to know her a bit better over dinner with Gabrielle and Ji-Young in the evening.

September 21. Fore!

Today was a national holiday in honour of the birth of Kwame Nkrumah, so I had the day off work. My friend Andrew, a volunteer from New Zealand, and I played nine holes of golf at a local course. The greens – which were actually called browns, since there’s nothing green about them – were a bit tricky, given that the amount of loose sand varied from hole to hole and often even between the ball and the cup. It was good fun, even if the course was not quite up to PGA standards.

September 17 - 19. Another weekend in Accra

On Friday evening I attended a concert featuring drumming and dancing at the Alliance Francaise. Saturday afternoon Duncan and I meet with Ji-Young, another CCI intern working in Accra, and an American named Brian that sometimes plays soccer with Duncan and I. We had a drink at a nice bar on the beach in the Jamestown area of the city, and then stopped in at the British High Commission Club for their curry night. The following day Duncan, Brian, and I went to another Ghana Premier League soccer game, and then stopped by at Labadi beach to watch the sun go down. Labadi is absolutely packed with Ghanaians on the weekend, and there’s a ton of activity, with acrobats, jugglers, guys selling rides on horses, and lots of crafts and trinkets for sale.

September 13 - 17. A busy week

This week was a bit of a busy one, as I scrambled to send off an application for a doctoral scholarship that, as I found out on Monday, was due in by Friday. I also drafted an article about WiLDAF’s training activities designed to increase women’s participation in next months local government elections, which will be published in CCI’s newsletter, “Sankofa.” I did, however, make time for Quiz Night Thursday evening, where we came in a solid second, just a point or so behind the winners.

September 3 - 5. Go Dwarfs!

After things wrapped up in Axim on Friday afternoon, it was time to meet Duncan and a big group of friends at a beach resort 25 minutes west of Cape Coast. From Axim I caught a ride back west with my WiLDAF colleagues as far as Takoradi, where I then caught a tro-tro towards Cape Coast and finally a taxi to the resort.

The resort was quite nice, and we did a little swimming and played cricket on the beach. On Saturday we all headed in to Cape Coast for the Oguaa Fetu Afahye festival. The streets were teeming with people, and we watched as seven local chiefs were paraded around town while held aloft in decorated wooden beds. This being Ghana, where one uses one’s head to carry just about anything smaller than an SUV, each of the beds was held up by four men standing under the corners. This job was perhaps only slightly better than that of the poor guys that had to walk the parade route carrying huge drums on their head while another dude just behind them ceaselessly banged on the drum in an apparent effort to increase profits for those in the hearing aid manufacturing business.

On our way back to Accra on Sunday afternoon we again stopped in Cape Coast, this time to watch a Ghanaian Premier League soccer game between the Cape Coast Mysterious Dwarfs (best team name ever) and the Accra Mighty Jets. The atmosphere was quite good, with the quality of the soccer probably just below that of the Vancouver Whitecaps.

August 29 - September 3. A Field Trip

On Sunday I awoke at 5am to catch a taxi to the STC bus station, where I hopped aboard a bus to Takoradi, in the Western Region of Ghana. Once in Takoradi I was picked up by John, a lawyer who works in WiLDAF’s Takoradi office, and taken to meet the rest of the Accra WiLDAF team. When I reunited with them I was told that there were actually two groups heading to train women in two different communities, one being a small inland village called Tarkwa, and the other a beachside town known as Axim. I was given the choice to spend the week in either place, and opted for Axim and the beach.

The week-long session seemed to go very well. My role was to record the goings-on of the sessions in order to compile a report afterwards. My task in this regard was complicated slightly by the fact that about 75% of the conversations during the week occurred in the local language, but I was able to get a decent handle on things through the other 25%, plus some helpful translations from the rest of the WiLDAF crew, John, Mercy, and Richard.

Monday through Thursday were taken up with group work and brainstorming on issues such as leadership and communication skills, how to advocate effectively, and identifying sex and gender roles in Ghana. On Thursday afternoon, WiLDAF assigned the participants (about 25 in total) to five groups encompassing a number of local electoral districts and gave each person a dozen posters advocating for an increased role for women in politics. The idea is that these groups will coordinate their own training sessions and awareness-raising activities within these electoral districts, which will hopefully increasing the number of women running for and elected to public office.

On Friday the participants put on a public event at a local outdoor meeting ground to share what they had learned during the week. They were able to attract about 60 people who listened to their short speeches and watched a role play designed to stress the importance of having women in decision-making positions, as well as how to best advocate for that goal.

Overall it was a cool week. It was interesting to get out of Accra and spend a week in a smaller town in a different Region of the country, and it was very encouraging to see how many people are concerned to ensure adequate numbers of women are making important public decisions.