Ghana Christmas Vacation

In December two friends and I set off for our Christmas Vacation in Ghana, a two day trip on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. We were lucky and got a direct bus from Bamako to Kumasi, Ghana which took 44 hours.

Kumasi hosts West Africa’s largest open air market and it was in full Christmas shopping swing when we arrived. Ghana is almost 50% Christian and 50% Muslim and with the larger disposable income of the country the market was swelled with people. It was amazing to see blenders, X-Box, iPods, and laptops on Christmas special where in Mali most of those things are inaccessible to most of the population.



We also visited several slave castles along the coast, including the two largest slave trade castles in West Africa. The historical significance of visiting these places, having local Ghanaian’s as tour guides explaining the savage history of their land will be something that I will remember for the rest of my life.


On a lighter note, we also meet up with two other friends from Mali and took the aerial walk outside of Cape Coast. Towards the coast of Ghana is rainforest and in the Kukuma National Park they have constructed a walkway bridge between eight trees stretching more than 400 meters into the air. You could feel the rope bridge swinging in the air and at parts you couldn’t even see the ground threw the trees below us.



Ghana also has some amazing coast lines. For Christmas we spent three days at a “Green Resort” on a secluded beach. We passed the days in the water and the nights around bon-fires on the white sand beaches. However, sadly all vacations must come to an end and this trip was no different.

Women in village vs. city

I recently read the book Monique and the Mango Rains about a Peace Corps volunteer in the 80’s stationed in Mali writing about her experience. The book focused on women’s rights and Malian culture. I thought I could give a brief profile of two different women that I have worked with during my service

Fatamata Sydibe

Fatamata (age 26) grew up in Segou Mali and went to high school up to grade 10 then dropped out to get married off at age 17. She is the first wife of her husband and she has three children under the age of eight. She works as a secretary at Miselini (my work) from 9-4 Monday threw Friday, and because she has a one year old child she gets an hour off every morning to breast feed. She wakes at 5am to start making the morning porridge and because her house servants left her she and her mother take turns preparing the daily meals in the morning before work. On Saturday it is laundry day where she washes by hand the family laundry for the week, which is no small task. She owns her own moto that she has worked hard to afford and the majority of her money goes to her husband who makes all of the monetary decisions for the family. From her salary her husband gives her an allowance for herself that she purchases her cloths. She is in charge of food shopping every week and rationing the food amongst the family.

Aminata Berry

Aminata (age 52) grew up in a small town in Guinea. She was one of 15 siblings and was the top female student in her class up until grade 5 where she was forced to drop out so her younger brothers could go to school and she would have to take care of the house. She was married by 14 years old and soon started having a family. Her husband moved around and married three other wives. When Aminata’s first son started going to school, she would take his text books at night and teach herself math, French and even English when they lived in Ghana. She ended up settling in Doune Guinea, and was working as the town mid-wife, activist against women’s genital mutilation (excision), president of the women’s group, village pharmacist, hospital nurse, village chef and host. She was living on top of a hill and was often seen carrying heavy buckets of water for her family. Due to her busy schedule she often got to skip making family meals and one of the other three wives would prepare while she was off working. She received very little money for any of her work and all of her money went straight to construction of her own house. After 40 years of living with a man she never loved she was moving out, something unheard of in village. She saved her own money and on the outskirts of town was building her own three bedroom house. She was also taking moto lessons; in Guinea it is almost unheard of for women to drive a moto. She was the president of the group I worked with and was by far the most influential person I had ever met.

Both of these women have a lot in common however they are very rare exceptions. In village it isn’t unheard of for women to never leave their compound with no contact with people other than their family.

Also women are in charge of all cooking, cleaning, fetching water, field work, raising children, selling in market and buying in market. All of those things are done by hand year round. Now I am not advocating polygamy but it is easy to see when there are several wives that the work gets split and life does become much easier.

Getting Braided

As hot season approaches I recently got my hair braided again. I have a serious love/hate relationship with getting my hair braided for several reasons.

On the side of LOVE:
-Every woman Malian has her hair braided from the moment the hair is long enough to braid
-It is much cooler
-It gives me a reason not to wash it
-I don’t have to fuss with it

On the side of HATE:
-Malian women don’t know how to braid white hair
-Sunburns!
-It takes forever to braid and even longer to take out
-My hair is so long it tangles inside of the braids
-It pulls a lot of my hair out and makes it more fragile

However despite all that, I went to a baptism and had my hair braided for it. Two girls came over in the morning and started to pull at my hair. After about five rows, my eyes are watering and they ask me if my hair is extentions because it has the feel of mesh. That is never a good sign, which means they are having a hard time braiding my hair in rows. Almost an hour later they were finishing up and all three of us were ready to finish.

All said and done, it looked ok and after two days the pulling pain went away.

Meeting Etiquette

Once a quarter my micro-finance organization has a meeting with five women who have been elected to represent the voice of our loan clients. These are most likely the loudest five women in Segou.

Our meeting was supposed to start at two pm on a Friday. I biked back to work after lunch to find the office locked up still from Friday prayer. So a boutique owner lent me a chair and some shade and I waited for half an hour for my bosses to show up and let me inside. Once inside it was almost three, and there was no sign of these five women anywhere. Normal work hours are 8am to 4pm here so when I saw it was past three and still no women I thought the meeting would just be canceled.

Two women show up around 3:30, so my boss and I start the meeting. Because the women don’t speak French, my boss was in charge of running the meeting and I was just to sit there and wait for translation. Over time more women show up and the meeting keeps getting repeated to catch the late comers up.

At one point all five ladies were screaming their heads off and my boss was screaming back at them. Because it was in bambara I still had no idea what was going on so I just sat there in awe of the argument. I mentioned earlier that these were the five loudest women in Segou, well the room was almost vibrating from the commotion. And by that time it was pushing 6pm… on a Friday. All of a sudden everyone sat down very calmly and said its over and the women left. I looked at my boss and asked what happened and he just shook his head and said they were talking about bread prices.