Site Visit

I just visited my site for the first time and spent five days there. It was enlightening and intimidating at the same time. First, I’ll tell you about my community. It is fairly small, about 1600 people, almost all farmers. Everyone was very nice and laid back. They were all happy to greet me, but also willing to give me space and let me just hang out at my house a lot. My village is absolutely beautiful, with a lot of open space and farms everywhere. They literally farm almost every foot of land that is not covered by a house or building. So, the whole village is rows of plants, mostly maize, with paths throughout and housing compounds scattered throughout. Since it is a mostly Muslim community, most families have multiple wives and they all live in one compound. So a compound is a circle of mud huts with thatch roofs connected by a mud wall, creating an inner courtyard. I’ll get pictures of it on here at some point to make this clearer. We do not have a chief right now because the chief died and they cannot replace him until they have his funeral. But, they cannot have his funeral until the funeral for the regional chief, who died 7 or 8 years ago, is held. That funeral has not been held yet due to political issues, but supposedly will be held soon. Confusing, I know. The village has a primary school and a junior high school, which is great. It has a clinic, but no one to work there, so it is not functional. And, that is about all that is there. Oh yea, and there were about 2 latrines in the whole village and no soak away pits that I saw, so I already have some projects in mind.

As for the location of my village, as the crow flies, it is very close to Tamale, a major city. But, as the tro-tro rides, it is about 1.5 to 2 hours away from Tamale due to the not so well maintained roads leading there and the not so direct route taken to get there. To get in and out of my village, there are two tro-tros per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and two tro-tros per day out of the neighboring village that leave about 1 hour after the ones in my village. These tro-tros all go to Tamale and I can go wherever I want from there. So basically, I will have to plan carefully if I want to travel from my site because I might not get back into my site that same day. This shouldn’t be a problem though, as Peace Corps has an office in Tamale where I can stay for free when I need to.

Now, onto my house. I am lucky to have my own house. It is at the edge of town, but not far from town at all. It is a yellow cement house with some murals on the outside that were painted by the previous volunteer. The house has four rooms, three of which are mine. The fourth is a community meeting room. It also has a “screened in” porch, but the screens are falling apart, so its not really screened in anymore. The four rooms of the house are all in a row, connected by the porch. The rooms on the two ends, the meeting room and one of my rooms, leak very badly when it rains, so I won’t really be using that last room. The two rooms in the middle do not leak at all and are pretty nice. One of them is a kitchen with tables and lots of supplies left by the previous volunteer and the other is my bedroom which has a wardrobe and a desk in it and should have a bed by the time I get there. On the porch, there is a long table and I take chairs from the meeting room for people to sit. I have a bucket flush toilet in a small bathroom off my porch, so I don’t have to leave my house to use the toilet, which is very nice. Outside, I have a bathing area with a nice view of all the farms and open space. A bathing area is a small area, maybe 4’x4’, with mud walls to about shoulder height and no roof, where you go to bucket bath.

While at site, I did not do a whole lot. My counterpart brought me around to meet all the elders and opinion leaders. It’s interesting meeting elders here because in this culture you have to squat down when greeting an elder to show respect, and you cannot ask an elder how they are doing. So, it’s them asking all the questions and you answering “naa” repeatedly. Also, when they greet you, they ask a bunch of questions. A typical greeting might be: Good morning, how is home, how is work, how is your father, how is your mother, how is your husband, how are your kids, how were your travels, and how did you sleep. For each thing, the response is “naa” until they ask how you slept and then it is “gombiene” and you don’t really wait for them to finish the sentence before saying “naa”. And, when you say naa, they can respond with naa, so sometimes you have a mini conversation of just saying naa back and forth. It’s fun. As for the language, I really did not understand anything but the greetings, so I am going to have to work hard on that and hope to get a tutor at site. This is totally normal though, so I’ll end up learning quickly, I think/hope. Whenever I was home alone, I would sit on my porch and go over my language notes, and a bunch of kids would come to hang out with me. They were really cute and entertaining. They also were trying to help me with the language, which is cool. I learned a few words from them and they learned some English from me. We also visited the nearest functioning clinic, which is actually a very nice clinic. There are two doctors who work there, which is very unusual, and a bunch of staff. It looked very busy, but the doctor who was working was very nice and introduced me to the director as well. I’m hoping to do some work with them because they will be very knowledgeable and I was just impressed by the clinic. I hope it actually runs as nicely as it looked.

I hope that entry was not too long, but there is still more I left out that I’m sure I’ll talk about when I actually move to site. Overall, I liked my site very much and think I will be happy there.