On Sunday morning, Carol, Mark, and I woke up at 3:30 am and were taken to the Tamale station to find a bus leaving for Yendi. When we arrived at the station at 4:30 am, we were directed toward the wrong line of people, and nearly an hour later we found the correct queue, where dozens of people were pushing and yelling, trying to form some semblance of a line so that the tickets could begin to be sold. Standing among this mess, we missed out on the first bus of the morning, but managed to be positioned correctly for the second bus. Before 10 am, we arrived in Yendi and met up with Brenden who was in our PEPFAR group and headed to Damanko with us. We waited for an hour while our tro filled—this bus was the worst bus I have ever ridden in, with the seats caving in and dislodged; I rode the entire journey with my hand on the seatback in front of me, holding it upright.
Oh, and the road! (Jeez, I was thanking my luck for having placed my site on a paved, main road, close to a big city.) We endured 3.5 hours of rutted, dirt road, going 5 miles an hour in and out of pot holes, with two goats up-top sliding and banging their hooves loudly across the metal roof with every sharp turn and bump. I arrived in Bimbila looking like an extra from a disaster movie, with dirt caked on the half of my face that was closest to the bus window. In fact, my backpack and my entire body were covered in dust to the point of earning a hearty laugh from my travel mates upon arrival. And we weren’t finished. We got in the back of a truck with two more goats on top and headed the final hour on another dirt road into Damanko. The last ride wasn’t so bad, except I was both peed and pooped on by a goat, dribbling down from above. Good times. My bucket bath that afternoon was well deserved.
Damanko is an utterly unexceptional town, with virtually no services, food, or goods. The PC volunteer here has lost 30 lbs in a year, mostly because there is no variety of food whatsoever. Damanko is the site for our HIV education field activities (PEPFAR). We are staying with a volunteer, Kristi, who is coordinating soccer matches in conjunction with an HIV awareness campaign. We are educating the soccer players to be leaders in their communities, who will spread knowledge to others about how to protect oneself against HIV, and distinguishing fact from myth about the disease. The first day’s events were fairly successful—we played several games with the Ghanaians, one of which helped them to visualize how easily HIV can spread when people are having unprotected sex. The men were only partially interested in these activities, and they mostly stuck around because we are white people, and that, evidently, is a pretty good spectacle to witness first-hand.
The remaining two days of PEPFAR were spent watching the soccer matches (boring), and giving small presentations on preventing malaria. On the day before we were to leave Damanko, I became sick with a high temperature and diarrhea. This sort of virus is incredibly common among the PC trainees and volunteers, and it’s really awful when it happens when you are traveling. That’s why they say that 99% of volunteers ‘join the club’ during their time in Ghana, which is another way of saying that they poop their pants. Thankfully, I did not join the club on our journey out of Damanko to Hohoe, but there were a few close calls along the way.
The goat is probably quite proud to have peed and pooped through the roof of the bus onto the great Kate. Bread oven looks strong.
ReplyDeleteHope your health is restored and you can avoid joining the 99%
VOID is complete in BUG gallery. I don't follow the news (Obama disappoints daily) however I am inspired to read the peripatetic journal. Love to you Kate.
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AGD Avoid Goat Droppings
Thanks Steven! Can't wait to see images of your show!
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