Black Magic

It’s Wednesday at nearly 5:30am. I woke up about an hour ago and haven’t been able to get back to sleep, so I’ve decided to write.

I’m in Walewale in West Mamprusi on a place that is similar to a motel called “Moonlite” Guest House. The rooms are very simple and plain. There is no need for a comforter of any sort, so they don’t have it. They also don’t feel a need to match the top sheet and bottom sheet. Clearly I would be sleeping right now if they had. I’ve gone from four towels in Afrin Hotel to two in Cardoso to one in Miriam and no towels or soap here.

But I’m jumping ahead. After I wrote my blog yesterday, I went to breakfast at the hotel. The TV was on showing about 4 or 5 guys playing back yard football (soccer) with a homemade ball. Once again, I didn’t realize for quite some time that they were speaking English. The accent is sometimes so strong that I can’t tell. The expletives were left in and essentially the camera was just running while these guys were playing off-mic for about 30 minutes. Then they switched to w room with several women in a dorm style room once again, just talking off-mic in difficult English. They were complaining about people. While they were clearly in pajamas, one woman was wearing a pair of false eyelashes that were just frightening. Finally there was a commercial break about 40 minutes after I sat down. Sure enough, this is Big Brother Africa. No clear production, no editing that I could see. It was just bizarre.

I was supposed to meet Ernest at 7:30 so I decided to wait for him outside. I noticed that most of the cars that came to the small lot of the hotel were trucks. Most were 4x4 and they seemed so big compared to what I saw elsewhere. Then I remembered the wild ride to Tolon the day before and I realized that when the paved road stops you need a 4x4. I was expecting a much longer drive like that in my near future so I started preparing myself. There’s Air Conditioning in the car so it’s not bad, the seats are plush and the car is modern – come ‘on Jeanne… you can do this.

Nindoo from Miriam Hotel

While waiting my waiter from the restaurant came out and passed me. He asked where I was from and I told him the US. His name is Nindoo (pronounced Ndoo) He thinks it’s his dream place. I think it may kill him. City life is SO different from here.  In my dinner with Ernest last night he was telling me about classes that he took in development. He and his classmates couldn’t really picture what the developed world really was. A friend won a lottery to go to school in the US. When they contacted each other by Facebook the friend in the US said that NOW he gets it.

When I told Ernest we have 400 people in the Cambridge office he was very surprised. He asked me if we had drivers to take us places the way they do in this office and he was surprised to hear that we do not. I think he was wondering how the logistics would work to have so many drivers for so many people.

Prices here surprise me. Maputo was pretty expensive. Here we bought a cell phone for less than $19. The dinner that I bought for the two of us was essentially $15.

I was still waiting for Ernest to arrive – now it was 8 AM. So I pondered more…

They have so many expressions it’s difficult to capture them all. Most of them are similar to ours, but the sound is different. So while we say Eh and it sounds sort of like Aae. They will say A! very short and abrupt. They have a disapproving tsk sound that they do a lot, but it’s not quite like our tsk. I don’t know how to describe the difference. They also often say, “Can you imagine!” which really means, “It’s hard to believe!”

When I was in the airport in South Africa I bought duty free chocolates for Ernest and Justice – the two people I had been in the most contact with before coming. I realized on Monday that I really should have gotten chocolate for Diana who had made my logistical arrangements. Since I had barely spoken to her that hadn’t occurred to me, but now I felt bad. I’m hoping I can go today to a supermarket and get her some (even though I had heard that she made Justice give her his chocolate.) I apologized to her, but I still feel bad.

By 8:15 there was still no sign of Ernest so I pondered even more…

The locks here are really funny. You turn them once and it locks the door. You turn it again and the lock goes in further. I guess you lock it and then you really lock it. I didn’t realize this the first day when I got here so I got stuck in my room for a bit. I started to think I was going to have to call the reception desk and tell them to get me out. That would have been so embarrassing! Finally I managed to get the door open but it still took a while to figure out the lock-lock. When I told this to my traveling companions they were surprised this was new to me and they said that some of their locks have three turns to them.

Ok, by 8:18 Ernest and the driver arrived. We went to the office and I noticed that people say “You’re welcome” meaning “Welcome to our office” but it has a way of making me think that I had just said “Thank you” Almost immediately I discover that the route we are going to take to visit the offices is going to require an overnight journey because it would take too long to drive to all of the places and come back in the same day. We now have to arrange a car and driver that is available for that amount of time and drive to our homes to get things to take. While driving around the radio was playing and I’m thinking this really IS small town! Announcer: If you have found a brown, leather wallet with a voter identification card with the name ***** and driver’s license number ***** please contact this station at *****. Also we are sad to report that ***** of the ***** family has passed away on this day at 3 in this morning. You can pay your respects at **** street.

Very amused by this strange woman

Jeanne and the Spray Operators.
The Chief was cut off on the left.

This trip, so far, has actually been pretty easy. We weren’t able to get the really rugged truck so they had to make arrangements around the truck that we were able to get. So far all of the driving has pretty much been on paved road. The guys in the car hadn’t eaten breakfast so we stopped at a roadside vendor who sold them guinea fowl, fried plantains and fried yams. We have passed several check points but have not been asked to stop. We passed a radio station (94.1 “High in the Skies We Soar”) Eventually we got to our Diare operation site in Saveluge/Nanton. I met Izzy there and we worked on his computer briefly and we found out that the spray operators were working just a little while up the road so we decided to visit them. We stopped at this compound where I was introduced to the team leaders, several spray operators, and the chief of the village. I was very honored. There were two little girls watching who just found me to be the strangest thing they’d ever seen. I said hello and they giggled as though I was tickling them.

Room at Moonlite Guest House

Back on the road we pulled into the Moonlite guest house which is where I’m writing from now. There was a very manual process for checking us in that too about 30 minutes for 5 people. First we had to be registered, then accounting and finally receipts.  Everyone finds the name Goodman to be very funny here. I get this everywhere. Shouldn’t it be “Good woman?” I told them the story of the driver who was looking for a man and they found that so very funny!



Joloff rice and beef



After checking in we went to our last destination of the day. It turned out to be just across the road, but we still drove there. I got to meet the data clerk named Eugine. We thought it was going to be very quick but his program was doing something really strange. It took us a while before I found a way around it, and then it was late and nearly time for dinner. Ernest and I came back to the guest house while the others found a woman to make us Jolloff rice with beef.  The others joined us at the table outside of our room.

We talked about so many things that it’s hard to remember. We talked about how marriage engagements work in Ghana. This is still wrapped in a lot of tradition where the man tells his parents he wants to get married so the parents make plans to meet the woman’s parents. They discuss the terms of the dowry and if her parents drink with his parents the deal is done. He spends some time acquiring all of the things for the dowry (all of the things the woman will need to be a married woman such as a sewing machine and lingerie.) and then they have an engagement event. The room is divided with the guests of the man on one side and the guests of the woman on the other. The guests of the woman will ask the guests of the man “What is the intention for that man for this woman?” the guests of the man will reply, “He wishes to marry her?” “What does he offer her for this?” They describe all of the dowry items that he has acquired. This goes on and on until the guests of the bride are convinced that he is noble and they say, “Where is this man?” Until now he has been hiding. His gets fetch him and he is greeted with fanfare saying things like, “Ooooh. All of the way from America! Or All of the way from Britain!” (Apparently just because it sounds exotic that he travelled all this way for her.

Bikes for sale in Walewale

We also spoke a lot about politics. “We HAVE to change the way we THINK” Kwammi, the driver, gets very passionate. I notice that Ernest’s accent seems to be stronger when the others are there. I struggled to understand. They complained about traffic in Accra that is so bad that in order to get to work by 7 you have to get up at 3. There are some people who dress their children in the car during the traffic jam because that’s when there’s time. Ernest was saying that you don’t realize how insane this is when you live in Accra, but when he moved here for this job he looked back and saw how crazy it was. He was amazed the first time he left work at 5 and was home by 5:15! Can you believe it?!

We spoke about inheritance rules and how they differ in different areas. In the peoples that Ernest and Justice are from, the oldest son inherits the chiefdom. But in this area, they gather the sons after the chief has died and they say their name three times starting from the eldest. If they respond by the third time, he is chief. Apparently at least in one case, the next to eldest son put a black magic spell on the eldest so that he went into a coma so he wasn’t there to hear his name called. When the fellow woke up from his coma he was so disturbed that he wasn’t chief that he killed himself.

Black magic is very real here and tribal warfare is preventing investors from helping to grow the country.