September 8, 2007, Evening- Keeping Score

September 8, 2007

Evening

I felt like having a beer.  After spending the day at the hospital with Kafui and Ernestina, Sonjelle needed one, too. 

Margaret Marquart Hospital is only just down the road, but I haven’t been there.  From Sonjelle’s descriptions, I don’t think I want to, either.  The children’s ward, like the rest of the hospital, is understaffed, and the staff are under qualified.  Sonjelle has stories: in the waiting room next to a man with broken, dislocated bones, moaning for hours on end; in the hallway because no rooms were open, sitting next to an expectant mother who was alone and wailing on the floor; laying awake all night with one of our babies in a cot next to a crib where the child’s soul had passed on, body forgotten.  I am sure there are stories of healing and recovery, but those aren’t the ones that keep her up at night, and a sorrow shared is a sorrow cut in half. 

We hacked away at our day’s sorrows on the walk to the Maxi Spot.

We bought our “Big Star” brews, which set us back about 80 cents each, and sat in white plastic chairs at a white plastic table under the canopy, as far as we could get from the subwoofers that thumped with early 90’s hip hop and Celine Dion. 

Soon after sitting we were joined by Tim, a Peacecorps volunteer, and Vin, a German Expatriate.  I made it through the small-talk, and then Sonjelle thankfully took over as the conversation turned toward the finer points of capitalism, socialism, and international stereotypes.  I started zoning out as they started exploring Marxist theories as applied to the local economy, but was snapped out of it when Tim asked me how long I’d be in Kpando. 

“Two weeks.  I have about a week left of my stay.”

“See.  That’s part of the problem,” Vin said, flapping his hand in my direction.  Part of what problem, I wasn’t sure, but I felt ashamed just the same.  “You young Americans think you can come to this place and make change in two weeks and then you go home to some high fives and never think of it again.” 

I blushed.  “I just wanted to volunteer.  And experience a new place.  And.  And hug some kids.”  I didn’t mention how number five on my “List of Ways to Make the Most Impact” was “You Know… Make an Impact.”

“Yeah.  And what of those kids?” he spat out to the whole table.  “I see these volunteers come and go.  And those kids.  They stay.  They stay and watch you go.  What of them.  They have nothing.  They have no one.  And you come and go.”  He dismissed me with a flick of his wrist.

“Vacation volunteers,” Tim said down his nose at me.

But I haven’t done anything wrong, I thought to myself.  I just wanted to...  I don’t know.  Do something good.  I came here to be helpful.  Vin, you’re a self-righteous prick.  Being an expat doesn’t make you better than the rest of us.  And neither does being a Peacecorps volunteer, Tim, so quit nodding your head.  But the next sip of Star couldn’t extinguish the fire that had re-kindled in my throat.  They weren’t wrong.  I’m going to go home in a week, and what of those kids? 

I threw back the last gulp of my Big Star and stood up, steadying myself for a second before heading to the bathroom.  Quote, Bathroom, unquote. 

This adventure began by pushing open a dirty swinging door with the back of my hand.  The door led to a positively filthy four foot wide alley between two glorified shacks with a ditch running between them.  The door didn’t lock so I had to hold it shut by pinching a rusty nail that was sticking out where a handle might have been.  Closing the door left me perched on a cement strip about as wide as my foot.  It was too dark to see much, but I could tell that something, possibly another door, was blocking the alley at the street, and piles of beer crates blocked prying eyes from the other direction.  The opposite side of the ditch didn’t have a ledge, so I couldn’t straddle it while holding on to the rusty nail to pee straight down.  My only option was to step to the side of the door, hold the nail with one hand, pull up my skirt with the other hand, and lean back against the building with my hips jutting out, and hope I could get enough of an arch so I wouldn’t have to walk home with my feet smelling like urine. 

Success.  With minimal backsplash I pissed into the ditch like a champ. 

Daily score: Ghana (specifically Matilda and Vin) 2 points, Dana (Bathroom Skills) 1. 

(photo credit: Erika, 2010)

September 8, Afternoon- The Superhero & The Heart-breaker

September 8

Afternoon

Justice, eating in his pinstripe pants.

Justice, wearing his favorite pair of white pants with pink pinstripes (girls pants, donated to the home), was strolling, as he does, by himself around the periphery of the compound listening to his tape player.  He’s 14 years old, born January 27, 1993.  He and his brother Isaac are Kpando natives.  The two of them used to wake up and sell kenke at the market every morning from 5:00AM to 8:00AM, go to school until 2:00PM, then work in the farm until bed.  Justice came to HardtHaven every single morning for a week straight asking Edem to allow his brother and him to come live at the home.  His mother is alive and hasn’t been tested, but their father died from HIV/AIDS.  Although they didn’t exactly meet the criteria and weren’t referred by a social worker, Edem saw Justice’s potential and felt compassion for the boys’ situation, so he welcomed them into the home.  Justice is a very smart boy and pours over nonfiction any chance he can get, asking a million questions while he reads.  He wants to be a pilot someday because they are rich and get to see the world.  But for now, that pair of headphones are almost always sticking out of his ears, connected to a tape player that’s usually playing some Bob Marley music (they call Reggae music “Culture”). As the oldest boy, he’s often too old or too “cool” to play Memory and Uno with the other kids.  I figured he needed to learn a grown-up game.

I’ve never claimed to be much of a chess player, but I can see enough moves ahead that I can hold my own without embarrassing myself too terribly against most opponents.  I just don’t like to play very often, because I don’t like to lose.  Today I taught Justice, and by our third game he was asking me “are you sure you want to move there, Auntie?”

While Justice was defeating me, Christopher and Junior started playing catch with a bouncy-ball. 

Christopher, giggling.

Christopher, Juliet’s younger brother, is an adorably goofy and twiggy five year old (probably— DOB unknown) with big ears and an even bigger grin.  His knobby little knees are always covered in band-aids from his klutzy falls.  He’s a Superhero, you see, and he needs to fly from place to place, pausing only to strike muscle poses for his adoring Auntie-fans.  He taught me the Ghanian finger-snap handshake (regular handshake, slide to fingers-facing-up handshake, back to regular handshake, then slide your middle finger along the other person’s middle finger and snap the other person’s finger with your middle finger and thumb.)  It takes some practice, but he’s an expert, ‘cause he’s cool like that.

Junior, after playing with chalk.

Junior is a heartbreaker.  He cuddles up, shyly at first, with his big, puppy-dog eyes, and melts you into a puddle.  At age five (DOB July 14, 2002) he was Hardthaven’s first border, and in three short months his legs have straightened out so much that he can run like the wind, in a fit of infectious giggles, when chased by Aunties threatening to tickle.  “Auntie, no, stop!”  And then he gives you the puppy-dog eyes until you tickle again, and lets you until he’s out of breath – “Auntie, no!” and so on, until he’s tired you out.

The Superhero & The Heart-breaker

Today the Superhero and the Heartbreaker couldn’t control the wild bouncy ball, though.  They chased it through a game of Uno, sending cards flying.  They scrambled after it, stomping through the circle of older girls who were reading and gossiping at the picnic table on the porch.  They clambered after it as it soared over the twins, waking them from their nap in the shade.  They raced to prevent it from ambushing the kitchen… but they were too late. 

It flew through the open door, wack wack wacked against the wooden table and the floor, and then suddenly changed directions, slipping through poor Christopher’s fingers, and smacked Sister Matilda in the rear.

The boys froze for a brief second, eyes on Sister Matilda’s backside, then scrambled after the assailant, and booked it like their lives depended on it. 

Sister Matilda, the lumbering Sasquatch, thundered after them, bellowing in Ewe “MA-POH!”  (I will beat you!)  A switch appeared in her hand, like Darth Vader using The Force to summon a Light Saber.  She re-emerged from the boy’s room with Christopher shrieking and swinging from her claw, trying desperately to escape, and Junior, head hanging, tears streaming, following behind them.

She pushed Christopher into a stool and held him there as she hiked up her skirt and plopped onto the chair next to him.  She barked something in Ewe and Christopher bravely got up to lean over her knee. 

I found myself running across the compound, sweeping Junior up from his puddle of tears and turning to Sister Matilda.  She was ready for me.  She yanked Junior out of my arms and dismissed me with a firm shake of her hand, an abominable look, and a grunt. 

I just stood there as she caned Christopher.  My head ached and there was fire in my throat.  He squeaked a little each time the switch came down.  My knees felt weak. 

When she finished, she motioned for Junior.  Christopher, holding his backside, tears welling, stepped in front of her reach, shaking his head, whispering something.  Sister Matilda grunted and put Christopher back on her knee, starting over again.

The boys ran off to their room, hand in hand, to console each other.  The show was over, so the rest of the kids went back to their cards and their books.  The air thinned back out and the birds started chirping again.

I washed my face and went back to the chess game. 

“Justice, are the children beaten often?” I croaked.

“Yes, when they do not behave.  But Sister Matilda likes to beat too much,” he whispered back.

September 8, 2007, Morning- Hm. Delicious.

 

September 8, 2007

Morning

Sister Matilda plopped my plate in front of me this morning and the egg smell made my stomach turn.  I love eggs.  And except for the excessive salt, these are delicious.  Free range and organic, I’m sure.  It’s just that four days in a row is a bit much.  As is rice.  And yam.  Every meal is a slight variation of the last, and I think Sister Matilda is testing our tolerance by making each dish incrementally spicier.

Fried Yam & Salsa

Boiled Yam & Stew

The cornerstone of each meal is an enormous pile of carbohydrates, which are boiled, fried, or mashed.  When the rice and yam are boiled they come with stew, which is a misnomer, because when you think of a bowl of stew you envision chunks of delicious vegetables and a thick savory sauce.  This stew, however, is not stew.  It’s a tomato paste based dipping sauce.  Sometimes it has bits of scrambled egg, sometimes soggy cabbage, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, visible slips of red onion.  If the rice is fried, it’s called “jollof,” which is like fried rice, minus anything resembling a vegetable, plus extra oil and hot pepper.  I complain, but jollof is a welcomed respite from the plain rice or boiled or fried yam.  When the yam is fried it comes with a garnish of salsa, which is nice because you can actually see fresh tomato ground up, even if all you can taste is hot pepper. 

Peanut Stew & Rice Ball

Banku & Soup

Anything mashed comes with “soup,” which is also more of a dipping sauce, but at least it usually has a few chunks of okra or garden egg (tomato sized eggplant, but white in color).  A half cup of soup is served with rice balls, banku (bang-koo), akple (auwk-pl-le), kenkey (ken-kay), or fufu (foo-foo).  Rice balls are mashed (yes, mashed rice), shaped into a ball or a big lump, and served only with peanut stew.  Banku is ground and fermented corn that gets boiled into a playdough-like paste.  It tastes almost like unbaked sourdough and corn.  It’s like putting warm, sour, slimy, gooey playdough into your mouth.  I can’t decide if I like it or if it’s the worst thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.  Akple is exactly the same, except it’s not fermented, so it’s much more palatable.  It’s almost like eating very fine polenta dough.  Kenkey is exactly like eating polenta.  Fufu is made by boiling either yam, or cassava and plantains, and then pounding the shit out of it until it turns into a shiny, slimy, thick dough.  It’s every child’s favorite, but it’s so exhausting to make that they only get to have it on Christmas.  Apparently it’s eaten without chewing.  It’s the one thing I haven’t tried so far.  Edem says I can’t try it because it’s unsanitary because you sweat so much making it.  I think it’s just too much work, so he doesn’t want to ask Matilda.  I certainly don’t. 

There are specific rules as to what soup goes with which mashed carb, but I haven’t figured that out yet.  Some go with peanut soup, others with okra or garden egg.  Some with fish, some with chicken or goat.  At home I eat fish, but, shudder, not here.  The smell is abhorrent. 

It’s a shame, because the Volta Lake is so close that it’s considered part of the Greater Kpando area.  A five minute, thirty peswa cab ride will put you on the shore, standing next to the fishermen.  The minute the millions of tilapia are caught, they go straight into the frier and then to market, carried in tro tros and on women’s heads.  And that’s where they sit in row upon row of baskets for days in the sun with the flies.

Red Red

Bleh.

My mantra before lunch is “please no fish, please be red red.”  Which, as I mentioned, is delightful beans and delicious fried plantain.  I could eat a truckload of fried plantains.  They’re soft with little crispy bits, a little bit salty and a little bit sweet.  Sometimes they’re made with a little hot pepper.  MMMMmmmmm.

Usually Sister Matilda asks Sonjelle “what will you take for lunch.”  This morning Sonjelle was at the hospital with Nancy (possibly malaria), so Sister Matilda asked me instead.

“How about, um, red red?”

“Plantain finish,” she spat.  That means they’re all gone.  She looked at me accusingly.  She thinks that we should buy all the food at the market for ourselves (we already paid for food and board through Cosmic Volunteers).

“Uhh… soup with rice?”  That sounded good.  A nice little change from rice with hot sauce, or soup with fermented dough.

"It is not possible" she answered curtly.  "You will take rice with fish stew," and she turned on her heel, snatching up my empty egg sandwich plate.

(Photo of Fried Yam & Salsa courtesy of Erika, 2011; Photo of Peanut Stew & Rice Ball courtesy of Kristen, 2011)

September 7, 2007- Evening- Super Auntie

September 7, 2007

Evening

The evening with the kids was pretty typical.  I donned my imaginary Super Auntie cape and put diapers on all three toddlers (Emma, Gabriel, Nancy), read them a story, and watched each of them pass out within 25 minutes – no small feat.  Especially considering I haven’t changed a diaper in almost 10 years. 

Gabriel in time out

Although Nancy is a sweetie-pie, she’s also a crier, and (understandably) very clingy, so doesn’t go down easy.  And then the twins!  Gabriel and Emma (Ee-mah), short for Emmanuel, are fraternal twins, born on February 6, 2005.  They came from a conflict region, and both parents are still alive but HIV positive and unable to care for their babies.  Gabriel, not quite living up to his Archangel namesake, has been fittingly nicknamed “The Destroyer.”  I walked into the office the other day to find him dangling from the third shelf up, one arm reaching higher, the contents of every shelf below him still settling from their crash landings.  The minute I set him on the floor he vanished, leaving me with nothing but the sound of his giggling in my ear.  When I finally tracked him down, I carried him, shrieking his insistence that it was Emma who had annihilated the office, and put him in time-out.  He sat in the corner of the compound on his little stool with his back to us, wailing and wiping the snot from his nose with the back of his little hand.  God help me, it was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

Emma wearing my shoes on the 4 Square court

If Gabriel was born with a miniature Devil on his shoulder, Emma was born with the Angel counterpart on his.  Nicknamed “The Professor,” he’s happiest sitting on your lap at the desk in the office with a pen in his hand.  The most impish thing he’ll do is try on your hat or your shoes when you’re not looking.  He fell today while playing with one of the older kids, and wiped away his own tears like a big boy when I finished putting Neosporin and the Superman Band-aid on his lightly scratched knee.

Both boys are at a healthy weight now, and thankfully Gabriel is completely healthy.  It breaks my heart that Emma isn’t as lucky.

I wore gloves when I put the Band-aid on Emma.  We’re required to wear them regardless of how small the cut.  We are actually required to wear them whether the child is sick or not so that there’s no difference in treatment.  But it’s unavoidable.  Every kid with a boo boo gets hugs, a pep talk before the antibiotic spray, and a hand to squeeze tight while it stings.  And I gently blow them all dry.  But my lips float just a touch further away when soothing sweet Emma.  I don’t know why.  I know the sick can’t jump from his little scrape to fly through four inches of air and into my mouth to infect me.  I kissed his temple twice before letting him go.  He doesn’t know that one was for him, and one was for my guilt.  

The Twins (Emma on left, Gabriel on right)

After putting the kids to bed, I joined Sonjelle on the porch and listened to Justice read bible stories until Sister Francesca came back from her afternoon out and about.  More often than not, if Sonjelle or I are home (which we always are, unless Sonjelle is running children to the hospital for checkups or malaria medicine) the matrons leave once the meals are cooked to go to the market or do whatever it is they do.  You can count on Sister Francesca to be back by bedtime, but with Sister Matilda it’s a crapshoot.

I know I came here to volunteer, but I didn’t realize it would be quite so intense.  Always on.  Always at the home.  Where the heck does Edem go?  And the matrons?  Aren’t they getting paid to be here?  How the hell has Sonjelle survived essentially by herself for five weeks without going mad?

With Sister Francesca back and the children looked after, Sonjelle and I went to the internet café.  It’s a shack on the other side of town, just past the library.  The little room is lined with bulky, yellowing monitors, a few of which are connected to massive archaic computer towers by a labyrinth of wires.  Some of the obsolete equipment seems to be sitting around for show, or possibly for parts.  The second computer I tried turned on, and after 20 minutes of warming up I was able to get on the internet.  While pages slowly loaded I imagined a woman in a sweater set and a bouffant hairdo at an internet switchboard, indolently plugging and connecting at her leisure.  After an hour and a half, my blasé operator and I had successfully transmitted a whopping three emails.

September 7, 2007- Laundry

September 7, 2007

Morning

When I came out to collect my fried egg breakfast from a very surly Sister Matilda, I found the children playing FourSquare!  Elikplim was clearly in charge of the game, announcing when a player was “out” and shuffling them from one square to the next.  Even though he was bossy, he was fair – he went to the end of the line with no excuses when he misplayed the ball himself.

Elikplim and his younger brother, Israel, who was so quiet in comparison to the other boys that I almost didn’t realize he was playing, lived at their Aunt’s house down the road before coming to HardtHaven.  Not long ago they lost their mother to AIDs and their father went missing.  A social worker referred 11 year old Israel, who then begged Edem to take in his older brother, too.  Elikplim was working his fingers to the bone as a “house boy,” cooking, cleaning, and raising his baby cousin.  Both boys are really sweet and helpful around the home with chores. 

Speaking of doing chores; today was laundry day, which I will never ever complain about ever again at home.  Laundry here is done by hand, bent over a bucket of Omo suds.  Omo is a powdered detergent that also might actually eat flesh.  Sister Francesca set me up with two buckets – wash and rinse -- and demonstrated; her hands expertly scrubbing and flipping so furiously that the dirt was scared and splashed out right before my eyes.  “Like this” she commanded, handing me the filthy t-shirt on the top of the pile.  My turn.  I rubbed and dunked, dunked and twisted, twisted rubbed and dunked.  There was giggling.  I splashed and sloshed, and rubbed and dunked again.  My arms got tired, so I plopped my first victim back in the soapy tub, leaned back and inadvertently let out an audible sigh, which sent the giggler over the edge.  I squinted into the sun at Edem, who had magically appeared, stopping by as he does now and again to check on everyone.

“American woman doing laundry!” he squeaked out before doubling over in hysterics. 

I was so terrible at the chore that he assigned eight year old Kafui to supervise.  As Kafui re-washed everything right after me, I asked him questions about himself.  He wants to be a bank manager when he grows up, and he likes playing basketball, making paper airplanes with volunteers, and drawing.  He doesn’t know when his birthday is or where he is from.  His file in the office doesn’t list those things either.  He was found by social workers, covered head-to-toe with ring-worm, selling firewood on the side of a busy highway.  No one knows much else about him, other than that he’s “sick.” 

Kafui and I hung the laundry on the line to dry under a sun that could sprout melanoma in ten seconds flat but for my SPF 70, and then joined the throng for lunch.  Sister Matilda unceremoniously plunked down four pounds of boiled yam garnished with oily tomato paste, flecks of soggy cabbage, and tongue-numbing chili in front of me.  I couldn’t choke it all down so she glared at me as I dragged myself off to my room for a nap.

When in Rome learn to speak Ewe.

Words to know when taking care of kids who speak Ewe (spelled phonetically, compiled with help from Sonjelle):

• Yavo/yevu/yevo- white man
• Ah mey ee bo- black man
• Va- come
• Jo jo- go
• Ay- yes
• Oh- no
• Toh- stop
• May kah ee fee me oh- don’t go there
• Mah- share
• Doh toh- quiet
• Novee- please
• Qwa nam- give me
• Eff wah- how are you
• Bohn u a day- careful
• Ach bey- thank you
• Wey zoh- you’re welcome
• Vah me donu- you’re invited
• Indeenah- good morning
• Oh leh nyah ah nyah ueh doh- I hope you’re saying nice things.
• Meh gah whey oh- don’t hit
• Meng nyeh we bleh nyu ehoh- that’s not a toy
• Mah-po- I will beat you (note- this is not to say to this kids, rather to be able to recognize it when they say it to each other.)

September 6, 2007- It's All Fun and Games

September 6, 2007- It's All Fun and Games

Sonjelle went to the kitchen to pick up our breakfast and handed me my plate.  The same fried eggs and sweet white bread as yesterday.  A little saltier, but still tasty.  At any rate, it's got to be better than the sour-smelling porridge the kids eat.  
 

After breakfast we took the kids across the “street” to play games at the sports stadium.  We brought our soccer ball and played girls against boys (the boys beat us in a shoot-out), and then I taught them how to play the epic game that determined the social hierarchy at my elementary school: FourSquare.  Teaching FourSquare was on my shortlist of things to do.  I love this game.  I fantasize about teaching the game to children world-wide, and being the catalyst for the game catching on to the point of becoming an Olympic sport. 

All you need is some chalk (or a stick on dirt) and a ball that bounces.  One person stands in each of the four squares on the grid that’s drawn on the ground, and the person in the fourth, or “King” square serves by bouncing the ball and swatting it into another square.  First serve is to square one, second to square two, third to square three, back to one, and so on.  Once the ball is served, players swat the ball after one bounce, using one hand, into other player’s squares.  If the ball bounces twice, the person in that square is out.  If the ball bounces on a line or out of bounds, the last swatter is out.  The person “out” leaves their square and gets back in line, anyone in a lower square moves up one slot and the first person in line steps into square one.  It’s addicting.  The kids were totally in to it.
  
When we were all tired out, we played tick-tac-toe, checkers, and Memory on the clubhouse porch.  I’m fascinated by the different rules people use to play the same games I grew up playing.  The kids had these little wooden tick-tac-toe boards.  You play like normal until all the pieces are used, and if no one has won yet, you can move one piece per turn one peg (not diagonal) until someone wins.  Checkers had different rules, too -- all pieces move any direction, and distinguishing “kings” is impossible.  Memory rules don’t require cards to be in rows.  They are scrambled so there’s no order, and sometimes the kids will move pieces around in the middle of the game.  It’s terrible!  Chaos!
  
After lunch (“red-red,” which is beans and fried plantains, both covered in palm nut oil, and scoured with tongue-numbing scotch bonnet peppers—I LOVE it.  It’s incredibly tasty.) I shared my dried apricots, which the children thought were weird.  I was hoping it would butter them up for my “art exchange” project.  Turns out, they didn’t need buttering up, and even if they did, dried apricots were not the way to do it.


Before coming to Ghana, I coordinated a workshop at the Boston Children’s Museum where kids made drawings of their favorite food, pets, family, friends, and ball teams for me to bring to Ghana.  Each drawing had a photo of the artist to accompany it.  The HardtHaven kids gathered around me on the porch, pouring over every photograph and every drawing.  A blonde middle school girl and her drawing of her yellow lab was a favorite.  The boys connected with a similarly aged sports nut.  When I got to a photo of an African American girl with a drawing of her house and family, they all stared at me incredulously. 

“She is not from America.  She is not yavo.”

“Oh, she is” I assured them, skipping ahead to share more photos of children of all skin tones.  “All different colors of people live in the United States.” 

Mouths dropped.  Eyebrows went up.  Young minds were blown.

I let them each choose a drawing and photo to keep and they skipped off to stash them away.  Before dinner they reconvened, asking if they could make drawings for me to send back to their new American friends. 

After dinner (a huge plate of oily cup-of-soup type noodles with hot sauce for us, and unidentifiable fishy-smelling stew with sour-smelling dough for the children) they asked if they could start making drawings right away, even though it was dark out and there’s one little light for us all to see by – I was beaming!  We drew until bedtime, and just after the last crayon was put away and the last bedtime story was read, Matilda stumbled though the front gate.

The minute the gate clanged shut the compound temperature dropped ten degrees.  If this were a western, the piano player would stop playing, the card-dealer would slide their hand under the table to finger their pistol, and tumbleweed would blow past.  She staggered just a bit, a fourth of a cup of clear liquid sloshed in the bottle in her hand, and her scowl was so fierce that I didn’t even notice her exposed left breast until she was standing directly in front of us.  Leaning against the rail, she used her free hand to flip her shirt down, then, apparently thinking better of it, flipped it back up.

Without saying a word, she turned, continued to flip her shirt up and down, and made her way to the toddler boy’s room, where the matrons sleep, and passed out.