Going to Takoradi this weekend, Water Situation, Speaking French

Hello family and friends!

I won’t be able to post this weekend (we’re having a group trip to Takoradi and another place that I can’t spell ;) I think it’s the place on stilts on the water. I’ll tell you all about it when we get back!) So, I’m posting now, taking care of various tasks and updates of internet things, and merrily listening to my MP3s on my laptop while doing so. I’m incredibly spoiled. Kate, Chantal & I (the only three Guilford people who came this year) have talked about this a little: that we were given the impression that we would be roughing it in a lot of ways… and this is just not entirely true. It’s complicated. On the same streets where there are open sewers (most of Cape Coast), there’s fast internet. I’ve learned how to bathe out of a bucket, but there’s TV here and really thorough world news. It’s not like living in a village, because we have western toilets, bottled & bagged water, and tons of cars. It’s just complicated. And above all, things really do move slowly here. No one exaggerated about that, it’s just that living through it is very different from hearing about it.

Now then, onto the names of places (since I’m going to Takoradi). Now, generally I have trouble finding rhyme or reason to Fante/Akan/anything Ghanaian pronunciations. I’m sure they exist, but they’re just complicated, and I’m not competent ;) I can just tell you what is vs. what isn’t. However, I have found one interesting pattern, and since it applies to places that I go often, I’m telling you ;) So, there are three places: Abura, Koto Kuraba (I think that’s actually two words, not one), and Takoradi. Now then, as in so many languages, when things are said in conversation, they’re said faster and shortcuts are taken. In this case, for all of these words, the syllable just before the “r” sort of doesn’t exist. When spoken, you just sort of barely flip the R, and then move on with the rest of the word. So, correct spellings followed by Rachel’s pronunciation guide: ;)

Abura : Ah- Brah

Koto Kuraba : Koh- toh- Krah- bah (remember to say it fast)

Takoradi : tahk- Rah- dee (first & last syllables said quickly)

Abura is a market near where I work, Koto Kuraba is a market and a section of town, and Takoradi is one of the large cities in Ghana ;) Also, the term for “market” is “gua mu”, pronounced “gwum”.

Also, I’ve planned for some time to comment upon the water situation in Ghana & in Cape Coast. So, it’s complicated. At the moment, even though we’ve had two brief rains, the dry season is still very much in effect. All the major cities in Ghana are having water shortages, which means most directly that the tap doesn’t run much, or at all. So some people are upset that Ghana is doing things like the huge redenomination of money effort when they’re still having all these major problems. Now, no one’s dying, don’t get me wrong, and you can still buy water from other places, but it’s a hassle.

For me, this meant that for the first two weeks I was here, the water didn’t run from the tap at all. Mother kept saying “it will come”, but life went on extremely normally such that I thought I could imagine what it would be like if it never did. I was wrong, because if the tap didn’t ever run then our gigantic storage tank would not stay filled, and then we’d have a real problem because I haven’t seen any other local sources of fresh water. (We’re very near the ocean). But anyway, after that the water started coming on early in the morning and late at night, and then it stayed on all day… now, it’s back to the morning & night thing. During all this time, however, the other two people on my program, Katie & Chantal, have not had regular running water in their neighborhood, Ola. Shortly after we arrived, the water stopped running even at night. So their stores have just been slowly depleted… now the water runs in some lower parts of Ola late at night, and you can take your buckets to those places, and pay for water to be filled up there. It’s tricky, because you need water to cook, to wash clothes and yourself, and to flush the toilets, which turns into a considerable amount per day.

Now, at my house, the drinking water also plays a part because my family keeps a filter for their drinking water. Most Ghanaians don’t, however, and drink their water without problem. It’s different for us coming from the US because we aren’t used to it. Fortunately, purified water is extremely common here. Even if people don’t use it at home, they buy it at chop bars (restaurants… haven’t been to one yet) and just on the streets and in street shops. Mostly, though, people don’t drink from bottles- they drink from bags of water, called sachets (pronounce that as if you’re British rather than French ;)). Now you might think that this would be a difficult way to drink water – not so. You simply tear a corner with your teeth and put your mouth over it. Now, because of that constraint, one hopes that the exterior of the bag is also clean, but that’s just a chance you have to take. The water inside is definitely purified, although there have been rumors of some substandard stuff going around. At any rate, though, these bags of water hold the same amount as the small bottles they sell here, but use far less plastic, so one would think that this would be preferable from a waste standpoint since no one seems to recycle the plastic ones anyway. They recycle all glass bottles, but that’s a different story.

However, the Ghanaian government has decided that sachet water is a big problem, because they don’t get recycled, or even just thrown away… no, like almost everything else bought on the street, the waste simply gets thrown down. And it’s not only in town- on the beach, in people’s yards, *everywhere* there’s litter of all kinds. I think that this is also because there are very few trashcans. The only places I’ve really seen them are in houses (I have no idea where my house’s small amount of trash finally ends up), and on campus. Even at UCC, though, they are few, and people through sachet bags (is that redundant?) on the ground. I think it’s also because people aren’t used to plastic, though, and have by habit always thrown down all of their trash because it used to all biodegrade. Now, however, empty sachets often end up in the sewer drains that run alongside the streets and clog them. I haven’t actually heard of this in Cape Coast, but I know it’s a big problem in Accra. A lot of the little sachets now have little warnings on them saying, “keep your city clean”, with a hand throwing something into a trashcan. But regardless, the Ghanaian government has decided that they should be banned completely banned. I think this is really just a band-aid solution (as do many others), and that people will still make sachet water unofficially, and in that case they won’t necessarily be selling really clean water. Also, it would be much less available on the streets, where it’s most needed to keep people hydrated in the heat. It would be much less affordable in plastic or glass bottles, and if they used plastic bottles I’m not sure that the waste from that would be any better handled.

Ah well ;) that’s that. On another note, Jane was completely correct about the Benediction service on Sunday nights that I was so confused about with the “most holy sacrament” and whatnot, so if you’re interested please read her comment on my last post :). I had my friend Richard explain it to me the other day. The “holy sacrament” is the bread & wine, the body & blood of Christ (not the ceremony, which is how I was thinking of “sacrament”) - it’s just the elements that have been left in the Tabernacle, symbolic of Christ’s continued presence with us. And they do indeed raise up a thing that looks like a sun (with a compartment in the back for the sacrament) with a cross on top, and this is similar to when Moses lifted up a staff w/ a snake & healed the people of snakebites… I need to look up that passage, so forgive me if I’m getting something wrong in my haste ;) But Richard said that this was a specifically Anglican service, and that it was meant for healing, and that some people claim to have been healed as the cross/sun + sacrament was raised. But anyway, at the seminary they sing really nice music with this service. If only it didn’t have so much male-centered language ;) I might still try to borrow one of the lyric sheets one day and send the songs along to the CCC folks. I don’t know how I’d get a recording of what they sound like, though… I’ll work on that later ;)

And finally, for the day, I’ve met a couple more French-speaking people over the past few weeks! One I met on the way to the Internet café this morning… He just automatically started speaking to me in French. I didn’t understand at first because I was expecting him to speak Fante, but then was so surprised ;) He was from Côte d’Ivoire (aka, the Ivory Coast), and spoke a lot faster than the two men at the seminary, but was very nice. He was carrying cloth someplace, asked me if I was married (an extremely common question), and we parted a few minutes later. As to the marriage thing, I think he was just being polite and asking, though a lot of people ask because they’re interested. So different from the US ;) But anyway, there’s also another francophone at the seminary besides Mardi from Guinea; his name is Pierre, and he’s from Togo. I think he’s somewhat older than Mardi, maybe 35 or 40 years old. They’re both soft-spoken, and fortunately for me, speak very slowly ;) But it’s just very pleasant to talk to them. It gives all of us another outlet since our Fante and even English can be somewhat limited & limiting.

On a related note, there’s a Japanese girl, approximately my age, who got here at about the same time I did and is also working at PPAG (Planned Parenthood). She’s also called Obruni (so, it’s more of a “foreigner” thing than a “white person” thing), but her name is Jun ko, I think, and she’ll be staying here for 2 years. She’s also learning Fante, though in some ways it’s a lot harder for her because she only knows some English and speaks it with a much different accent than Ghanaians are used to. Anyway, she’s nice ;)

And now I’m signing off for the day :) Have a lovely Thursday, and a great weekend! I’ll probably write again in one week.

Thanks for caring!

Much love,

Rachel Rose