Home Sweet Home

I’ve been living out of suitcases since pretty much May 1st, so upon arriving to the bungalow that will be my home for the next year, I was nothing but completely and totally relieved! I finally had a chance to put my bags down, unpack my frying pan and knife and feel like I was home. The flat I am staying in, used to be the Headmaster’s home so it is well furnished and despite a small mouse and cockroach problem which may necessitate a cat, is quite comfortable. There is no running water, but I do have electricity. I have no trouble calling this place home.

The Living Room is nicely furnished with chairs, couches supplied by the Senior High School I will teach at. There is also a table and chairs, a giant television, a dvd player, 16 James Bond movies, and a library of other American action movies.
I am the first one to say, the Kitchen needs some work. I think a good scrub down and building some counter space will be high priority upon my return.
This is a picture of what one of my fellow volunteers termed, the Soft Yellow Cage. A mosquito net is a crucial part of any anti-malarial lifestyle.

Now the challenge lies in enduring another 2.5 weeks of Peace Corps training before I am finally turned loose.

Ghanaian Fufood

Now that the sweet taste of cheese burgers and carne asada super burritos has vanished from my mouth, I think it is high time I talk about the agony and the ecstasy of Ghanaian cuisine. Most Ghanaian meals follow a simple 75/25 rule; 75% starch, 25% nutritious, life-sustaining ingredients. Let’s just say, if the Peace Corps didn’t supply us with a daily multivitamin, irreparable damage may be the result of my two years here.

In a nutshell, the majority of the food take just a few different forms and fall into a just a few different categories. In as many variations as you can imagine: plantains, cassava, yam, rice, and maize are boiled, mashed, pounded or all three at once- boiled, mashed, and pounded. Common combinations include: ampesi, boiled plantains and yams; banku, mildly fermented boiled and mashed maize; fufu, plantains and yams boiled then pounded into a substance with a texture similar to chewing gum; kenkey; fermented maize boiled in a plantain leaf (kind of like a tamale but without the excellent center stuffing). Each of these annihilated starchy compounds are then served with either scalding hot soup or stew and, of course, painfully eaten with your hands.

This is my homestay brother and sister preparing fufu.

As for my particular tastes, I like Banku the most, it has a nice taste reminiscent of San Francisco sourdough bread, only hot and gooey. You can’t go wrong with Ampesi dipped in a some sort of stew. Kenkey makes the list and then at the very bottom is Fufu. Despite my initial enthusiasm for it (yeah there was one day where I ate it for lunch and dinner), Fufu has lost my attention, completely. It is by far one of the strangest foods I have experienced. Allow me to explain:

This is the infamous Fufu before it is drowned in boiling hot soup.

First, the taste. If made with some semi-ripe plantains, and cassava it has a nice sweet starchy flavor, but nothing more. Let’s just say it doesn’t add flavor to a meal, just calories. Next, the texture.

It is smooth and sticky, so much so that it is not to chewed, just swallowed. In fact, it is culturally inappropriate to chew your Fufu, not to mention the risk of choking as it sticks to the roof of your mouth semi-permanently. All jokes aside, it has the texture and consistency of chewing gum. A big bowl of chewing gum, with piping hot soup, to swallow.
Not to mention it takes more than an hour of physical labor to make the stuff. I just don’t get it.

And this, is a ready to eat bowl of Fufu, Peanut Soup, and Fish.

To all my future visitors, you better believe this will be your first meal upon arrival in Ghana, and by the time you leave, you’ll be pounding Fufu better than my homestay family.

Boti Falls

About a 40 minute drive from the Eastern Region capital, Koforidua, is a georgous waterfall. There is a short trek down several hundred stairs to get to the catch pool at the base of the waterfall. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:

Obama

That is my fellow trainees and I in front of Air Force One. I am sure many of you have heard that Obama was visiting Ghana. Peace Corps arranged a ridiculously awesome event and I had the opportunity to be no less than 20 feet from him as he addressed some onlookers at a farewell event. I got a whole bunch of amazing pictures, but this one takes the cake. More on the event later.

Ohum Festival

Recently my community, Asafo celebrated the Ohum Festival. It is a festival during which people take time to thank the gods for giving the chief of the village the power to supply enough food for the community. It is essentially a fertility festival during which a few ancient ceremonies take place. The ceremony I attended was two-fold due to the fact that we had not yet been introduced to the village chief, his linguist, or any of the village elders.
The introduction to the chief was impossible due to the fact that he is currently working as a contractor in America and was not scheduled to return anytime soon. That didn’t put a damper on any of the festivities though. We were asked to meet at the chief’s palace at 10am and to bring a large piece of firewood, taller than ourselves. I had my brother Nkwobinwa chop a log down in the morning and I trucked it on my head across town, mostly to amuse the people who would see me on my way to the center of town. The people of my community really love watching us Americans try to take part in everyday Ghanaian life. For example, my host sister nearly died laughing the first time she watched me trying to eat smoldering hot plantains and kontumeri/palm oil sauce with my hands. I couldn’t help but laugh at myself later that night as I was nursing my poor little burnt fingers. Cultural adaptation isn’t always a walk in the park. I am still new to Ghana so constantly being laughed at has not yet gotten under my skin. I just picture myself as a one woman, nonstop, improve comedy troop. This approach seems to be working so far; at the very least it is keep my host mother, brother, and sister infinitely amused.

So the wood is carried to the chief’s palace and plopped in a giant pile. It is a symbolic offering to the chief so the gods will know that the chief has enough wood to start a big enough fire to cook for his whole village.

After the wood is piled, me and my colleagues (and our host families) are paraded around to the elders where we shake hands numerous times and bough graciously for letting them stay in our village for the present time. It was quite an honor to meet such a well coifed group of elderly Ghanaians. I also really appreciated the feeling I got, that I was part of a tradition that had gone on for hundreds and hundreds of years.