It has been 2 weeks and I’m quite settled in with my host family, the Baarus. I’m living with a family of farmers, spread out between 3 compounds about a 15 minute bike ride outside of town. The father and head of the family has 12 sons and 3 daughters. Plenty of help means plenty of land to cultivate crops, especially maize for pito (local beer) or any of other forms you can consume it (my favourite happens to be Kenke, a fermented gooey maize ball wrapped in husks and served with a soup of tomato, groundnut, meat and chili).
Our compound and backyard.
I’m sharing a compound with two of the sons, Samuel and Ahmeh. Sam is 28, a bachelor and has his fingers in many pies. He did not attend Secondary school, but has taken some agriculture courses at the local training institute. He will be going to college in Kumasi for an agric-business diploma in September but currently runs the family xylophone making business and is working very hard to get it set up as a learning centre (in which I’ll obviously be a student!). I’m hoping to help him out with some computer training to get it on the net. Sam also teaches Dagaare, the local language, to illiterate women at night as well as acting as an assistant to the social welfare program that provides a pension to vulnerable elderly farmers. Additionally, he is always helping out neighbours with their farms, especially now that dry season is coming to an end and the rains are on their way. There are always people stopping by for his advice, and he also happens to be trained as a marriage counselor. Sam is extremely warm, generous, open and sincere. He refuses to let me pay rent, but I manage to make sure we have enough food by picking up a few things everyday from town. The man is a serious inspiration. He’s planning to go back to school to study Horticulture, so we have plenty of conversation about plants and get along fantastically. I’m learning so much from him… including the traditional upper west sounds.
As the main man for the family xylophone business, he’s frequently travelling. Sam has been away for over a week and so his younger brother, Ahmeh, and I have been making it on our own. Here in Ghana, there is a lot of emphasis on family and showing respect for your elders and those who provide for you. Since I’m now the man of the compound, as well as a guest, Ahmeh goes to great lengths to make sure I’m comfortable. He constantly lets me know what he is doing, where he is going and is often trying to make my life easier by fetching the bath water from the well, doing the washing or cooking. If I was spotted doing my laundry, cooking or even farming, Ahmeh would feel embarrassed because it would seem to the rest of the community that he is not being a good host. This conflicts with my eagerness to learn to live without electricity in a rural northern Ghanaian community!
(cooking hut and garage... home to many a Hemidachylus mabovia.... common house gecko). There is a well just outside our compound which is too tempting to drink from on a hot, dry northern Ghanaian day. Ahmeh just recently informed me that a previous guest from Argentina was hospitalized due to this well, so I have taken up biking the distance to the more reliable borehole. Once the rains come more frequently, rather than the current sporadic wind, buckets of rain and life-threatening lightening storms, there will be more bugs, more risk of contamination and maybe I’ll start taking the malaria thing more seriously. As it stands, I have not seen 1 mosquito in my area…. Although bites have started to appear in very odd areas.
Settlement in Lawra was done in such a way that farmers’ compounds are in the middle of their farms. This isn’t always the case in our district. As a result, the area surrounding the town is very crowded and animals (goats, pigs, cattle, dogs and a variety of reptiles) roam free. This means that they’re always chomping on garbage, or sprouts. Most farmers don’t tie up their animals and so there is often tension between farmers with accusations of selfishness as they let their animals feast off a neighbouring crop. In other areas, farms and compounds are separated, which means animals stay at home and aren’t so free range. Speaking of free range, there is no latrine.
Due to the overcrowded nature of settlement in the district, there are too many farmers and not enough land, presenting a monumental technology transfer problem. There is a need to develop an acceptable and appropriate technologies, infrastructure and teaching programs to transfer this technology to where it is needed. As its stands, MoFA’s biggest challenge is low adoption of technologies. In other words, Agriculture Extension Agents (AEAs) have been promoting many of the same technologies to farmers for 30 years; however the policies coming out of Accra don’t often reflect the realities of farmers so farmers don’t adopt them. Sometimes the technology doesn’t fit in with the culture of the community, and often the technology requires an investment that most farmers can’t afford to make. This means working along side farmers, getting feedback and recognizing that the current top down transfer system of extension of MoFA needs to be shifted.
What EWB has been working up here in the Upper best/West is just that. We’ve been challenging the way AEAs approach their extension services by working with them to develop new technologies that are more affordable and appropriate for farmers. Farmers need to be seen as innovative, adaptable and able to problem solve. Their indigenous technologies should be revalued, honoured and learned from to understand the benefits. AEAs are used to the transfer of technology in a lecture and demonstration style, the way that it was taught in training. They aren’t used to learning from mistakes. The innovation project is somewhat unclear by AEAs and can be helped by a pyramid of understanding through action in order to dismantle the myth that farmers are “stuck in their ways, lazy, illiterate and have given up in life”. The innovation challenge then is about finding new knowledge in the field, new adaptations to MoFA technologies that are inexpensive, appropriate and can be shared with other farmers. Examples include mixing salt and water to combat the striga parasite (a plant that literally attaches and sucks the food from another plant), mixing pepe (chilis) with cowpea to prevent destruction by weezle pests during storage.
The second part of the innovation challenge has to do with MoFA staff. From an innovation fund, 3 districts in the Upper West have submitted change projects to receive funding. These projects are ideas that MoFA staff members have submitted that they think could change the way that MoFA more efficiently and responsibly. Examples of these change projects include instead of having the monthly district meetings in the office, have them take place in field to include farmer groups. Another example involves a suggest box for AEAs to submit concerns, and establishing a committee to meet to go through the comments and work on implementing them.
As for me, I’m responsible for keeping these projects moving, and getting AEAs excited about farmer innovations and coaching them to find other ways to find solutions to farmer problems. Work is pretty rough sometimes, trying to get to the field is difficult as AEAs don’t get a fuel allowance and as planting season has just begun, they are very busy. Building trust takes time so I’ve been playing it cool, perhaps a little too cool, as I get the sense that some of them think of me as an imposition rather than an asset to the district office. Getting to know staff outside of work is a pretty good way to go when you want to build trust and if you want to get to the field.
(cooking hut)In other news, sorry to keep this post long and wordy but you have to understand that I’m using the only computer that has internet in the district, so it’s rather slow and that makes picture uploading impossible. Bare with me in my future attempts to make things seem more visual than the dense script above! I’ve finally been able to get on to twitter. That is, I can send text messages to update my facebook status and twitter accounts simultaneously. Gary, you better get cracking on this new ICT!
Today is market day in Lawra so I’m off to get a few things for the week with my host brother. He has offered to give me a small plot of land to farm from scratch so I need to find some seed. I’ll be growing groundnut (peanut) and maize, with his help and guidance of course. My green thumbs are quivering in anticipation!
(Front door... welcome to my home!)Love from the upper west (side).
Spencer.
