Knowledge is good!

Post By: Sita Violet

Time is flying away so quickly and yet I have settled into Ghana life so thoroughly I feel like I’ve been here for months! I love my team to bits, I really couldn’t imagine a better group of people to share this experience with. My host home is remarkably generous and accommodating, and my counterpart Ayisha is really helpful with teaching me the customs and ways of life at home. So far, being in Ghana has been an immensely positive learning experience and I am feeling really hopeful for the future of this programme and grateful that I am a part of it.

Meeting the Communities.

As we are working in several communities, our group has been split into project pairs to be able to give the best of our attentions to each community. I am working with an income generating group in the Dundo community with my project partner, Issahaku! (We make a great team woo)

             Meeting the community for the first time was a really exciting event, to finally meet the IGG we are here for, but also slightly nerve wracking for me because of the language barriers. How was I going to be able to understand anything, or be understood? Thankfully I am paired with Issahaku, who is brilliantly patient about translating each and every point needed and is happy to translate my questions across. Me and Issahaku had prepared some questions the day before that we felt it would be most useful to know straight away, about Dundo and about the IGG there (Who have named themselves ‘Bangsim Viella’ which translates to ‘knowledge is good’) Knowing more about the challenges they face and the reasons for coming together as this group will really help us to formulate a plan of action when working back in the office later on, and to pass on to the next cohort of volunteers.

                I felt very positive after the introductory visit, the ladies of the group seemed to be very happy that we were there and eager to speak their answers to the questions we prepared, we actually ran over time in our community visit by a quite lot because of how much valuable information we gathered from this one first visit. No bad thing! I think a highlight of the visit for me was at the end, where the women sang a beautiful song together, later which Blaise told me was all about how learning is good, tying into the group name. Also the generous gift to the whole group, of Yams, which I am probably addicted too.

Me and Issahaku with our Dundo IGG group

Katinga Market.

On Thursday, we went to Katinga Market, just outside of Tolon village, to get more of a taste of where the end products of our community will end up, and the goals that the IGG’s are working towards in terms of selling their produce. As soon as we stepped out of the TroTro we could immediately sense just how vibrant and busy the market would be, compared to the quiet streets that we are used to walking down in Tolon. It seems like the market is the weekly hub of activity in the Tolon area, not only a chance to sell your produce and find (almost anything!) that you will need for the week, but a very social event, where friends from different communities can come together.      

Katinga Market

Amongst all the familiar stalls, selling jeans and shoes and other such everyday things, there was many things that us UK volunteers had never seen before, unfamiliar vegetables, beautiful fabrics and super light bowls made out huge hollowed fruit shells. Walking through the chaotically busy but still neatly organised stalls, it was very useful to find sellers of such items as shea butter, as then we could get an example of how our communities may price and present their finished products. We found that Shea Butter seems to be only sold in this particular market in huge quantities, subsequently at a large price. Too much for one person to carry on their own! This gives us a small idea of what kind of things we will need to start thinking about in terms of giving advice to our IGG’s.

Planning our next community visit

Even though it is only week two, I already feel as if I am slowly developing a huge amount of skills. I came into this ICS trip with no previous experience of this specific type of work that we are doing. Baseline research, non-formal education, delivering guided learning sessions and community profiling as an example of all the new things I am learning. I tend to be a very practical learner, learning as I go along, so whilst we are all researching and learning about group and community profiling, being able to put it into practice a few days later is a really valuable thing for me to be able to do. I feel like ICS and international service in Ghana is going to be immensely useful for my future plans, and my confidence into putting them into practice!