Ghana's NID

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m procrastinating.  I have been since exams ended 10 days ago.  It just so happens that research is hard, and often it’s not attention grabbing.  In light of this mood of procrastination, I have the opportunity to share with you my experience in Ghana’s National Immunization Day (NID).

In 1985, RotaryInternational launched PolioPlus, the first and largest internationallycoordinated private-sector support of a public health initiative, with an initialpledge of US$120 million. To date, Rotary has contributed over $1billion and thousands of Rotarians have become personally involved in campaigning for Polio eradication or participating in NIDs, like the one I participated in recently.

When I went to Uganda last year with a number of District 5050 Rotarians, I heard their stories of the NID in Ethiopia. While I had been hearing about NIDs for some years, this trip and the great things I heard had me realize that an NID was something I, too, would like to be involved in. As luck would have it, I happen to be in a country where NIDs happen each year. Yet another reason why Ghana was a great choice for my scholarship year!

Ghana’s NID was supposed to happen sometime in April. Unfortunately for me, the date was postponed to the day before a final exam and I didn’t think it was smart to leave studying during the crucial last hours before the exam. Fortunately for me, the date was postponed AGAIN, and the NID was held last Thursday!

At 5am, I left Accra with some of the RRC members for a small village about 2 hours away. We had paved roads for the first ¾ of the route, but from then on we were lucky we were in a truck that could take us through water soaked roads and marshlands. We parked at a school and went on foot from house to house, seeking children under age 5 to vaccinate.  This took us about 4 hours and we only did half the village!

It was funny to see how some kids reacted. Some would start crying before they saw us take out the ‘medicine’. Some cried after they tasted it. Some stood there with smiles on their face or mouths open, ready to receive the vaccination. Others ran away, only to return with the shouts of their mothers and the threat of being beaten (not in a child-beating, unacceptable kind of way). The newborns seemed annoyed that they had to be woken up for such a thing.

While Ghana is not a polio endemic country, its big brother Nigeria (along with Pakistan and Afghanistan) is. Borders are very porous in West Africa, and migration is common, especially with the instability affecting large parts of Nigeria. Ghana is a common destination for many in the sub-region. As such, the unofficial slogan of Ghana’s NID was “when Nigeria sneezes, Ghana gets a cold,” demonstrating how important it is to immunize all children in Ghana.

When you’re a child under 5 you, of course, have no idea what polio is.  For me, I have seen people in Ghana who have been affected by polio and I have an idea about what the disease can do. To be able to participate in a day like the NID, knowing that I have helped to prevent the crippling or death of Ghana’s potential future leaders, was one of the greatest privileges for me.  I felt so honoured to be able to participate, even if it was just for a few hours on one day.  Thank you Rotary!

On a related note, please check out District 5050s End Polio Now Flashmob - like and share so we can get 1,000,000 views!

End Of Classes

Just when I thought the end was far from near, we finished our second semester of classes. At some points I really felt this day would never come. It has not been easy to get this far. In all honestly, I’m tired of school (after having been enrolled pretty much straight through the last 25 years, minus a few instances when I was off gallivanting). 25 years is a really long time!

Now that the course work is finished, I am left with a 5 exams which will take up most of May, and then I’m off to Burkina Faso for a while to complete my thesis research. July will be a whirlwind of rapid writing combined with many wonderings (I’m sure) of if I will complete it. But by July 31^st, I’m handing in my dissertation! August - I will have some Canadian visitors coming to check out the two computer labs that they have contributed to. I’ll also have to sit by the pool or the ocean a lot because there’s no way I can come back to Canada and receive questions like “weren’t you just in Africa for the last year? Why are you so pale?”

After 8 months of class work I thought I’d take a minute to share some of the differences between school in Canada and in Ghana.

In terms of quality of education, I think things are pretty much the same. All of our lecturers have studied abroad, a few even in Canada (and one even lived just down the street from me in Ottawa, I recently found out). Although I don’t know what a Master’s program is like in Canada, I think the material I’ve learned here is similar to what the same course would have given me in Canada.

One of the major differences is the quantity of work to be done. If I’m completely honest, the first semester I did about 5 of the assigned readings throughout the semester and crammed in a lot of hours reading prior to exams. I don’t think I could have done the same in my undergrad, let alone a Masters. That brings me to my next point, about exams – in my undergrad classes would have ended and 2 or 3 days later exams started. Here we’ve been given a week or more which has been really great, considering my lack of reading.

The lecturers I have met have had amazing careers all over the world. Some have multiple PhD’s, many have taught at some of the world’s leading universities, and have worked in a diverse range of settings. I think the lecturers are the most impressive part about LECIAD…and I hope that the department maintains this!  I also think they care more about their students. It is much easier to make personal relationships with lecturers and they are happy to meet you anywhere to help you or to give you advice on an upcoming paper or exam.  In one of our last classes, where we had all been divided into groups for group presentations, the last group and the lecturer had some kind of miscommunication which resulted in the final group not being prepared to present. The lecturer explained that the group should have e-mailed him or called him to get the information they needed. He remarked that in a previous group a student had called him at home when he was just sitting down to eat with his children. At first I thought he was going to tell the group that they should have found an appropriate time to call him, unlike that student, but instead he told the group that that was exactly what they should have done. I don’t think I met any lecturers in Canada who would have suggested that. In fact, most of them say e-mail them but don’t call them even though their numbers are on the syllabus  (and even then its just office number, never cell phone!)

This all being said, this year has been EXCEPTIONALLY HARD. I was never a stressed student in my undergrad, but I have found myself stressed out on a number of occasions here. I have thought to myself, I’m doing less work than I did in Ottawa and I feel like burning my books and crying. Why? Its because the system, or the environment, here is EXTREMELY difficult. For example, as I write this my battery is at 32% on my laptop and I can’t charge it because we haven’t had power for the last 10 hours. This also means that the pump that pumps water to the taps is off, so there’s no running water. And the ice that accumulated in the freezer part of my fridge has all melted and is now on the floor outside the fridge. Another challenge is getting materials to read. One of the reasons I read very little for my courses is that there are no assigned textbooks to buy from the bookstore, but suggested readings. The problem with that, while cost saving, is that many of the suggested readings are in books that can’t be found or on online sites which we don’t have access to. The internet is off and on, mostly off. I can’t tell you how many journal articles I have had to read using the 3G network on my iphone. I’m sure my eyesight is 4x worse from reading the tiny text.

Its also hot. And for me hot means sleepiness. We don’t have A/C in our classroom so sitting there from 8am-6pm is hot…and exhausting. If I had class all day in Canada, which I never had in the first place, I could have come home and read a bit after class. Because I’ve been hot for the whole day I come home, eat, and sleep.

Speaking of lights off, yesterday I cooked stew for my rice that should last me about a week. Unfortunately I got up from the bed this morning to heat it and as I walked to the fridge the light went off. The queue at the Night Market (a place where they sell food to students on campus) was probably an hour long, so I felt forced to go and sit in a restaurant instead.  When I’m supposed to be learning… Life is hard, so school is hard.

This all being said, the year has been a great learning experience for me. It has helped me put ‘hard work’ in Canada into a new perspective. I have built new friendships and built patience. In fact, the lights off hardly bothers me anymore. I gave a speech in Japanese earlier this year about why its important to study abroad.  One of my lines was something like this:

Gaikoku de benkyooshimasu kara takusan challenge ga arimasu;  Demo challenge kara atarashii chishiki ya gijutsu o mi ni tsukemasu

Basically, studying abroad brings a lot of challenges but we learn a lot from these challenges.

In sum, if you ever have a chance to study abroad or you know someone who could - do it! Or make them do it! You (or they) will never regret it.

n.b.: this blog is just a generalization of experiences and does not run true for all lecturers that I’ve met in Canada or in Ghana, and I’m sure there are major differences between programs, universities, etc.  In fact, I know that one of my friends in a different course here has had a very different experience here. 

When Life Gives You Lemons

The way I see it, you have 2 options depending on your drink preference.

One of the many things that Africa has taught me is the importance and necessity of overcoming the obstacles that life with inevitably throw you.  Some of my classmates joke about “how easy” it is for Westerners to commit suicide because our parents never beat us when we were young – so when the going gets rough, some people jump. While I repeatedly tell them that they don’t understand suicide because they’ve never been to that level of desperation and depression, there may be some truth in what my friends are saying.

Living in Africa is difficult. It is difficult in the capital city, difficult in the wealthy parts of town, difficult in the slums, and difficult in the rural countryside. Even in the rich parts of town roads break down cars’ shocks. On campus students face the daily challenge of getting water in their bathrooms. In my neighbourhood, having electricity for a whole day is impressive.  For many workers, one meal a day is all they can afford. For many others, the recent fuel increase made transport fares increase approx. $.05 – this may seem small but when you add that up for a 5 day work week, people are looking at paying the equivalent of an extra day going to work- which can buy a meal.  Of course, living in a rural village is even more difficult. The price increase isn’t the only worry – will a car even come must also be factored in.

And Ghana is a fortunate country in the grand scheme of things in Africa. There are countries like Kenya where an electoral process in 2007 lead to months of violence, where the ethnic group you were born into was a determining factor for your survival. There are countries like Zimbabwe who have never known freedom of speech and who have had one leader since independence in the 60s. There are countries like Nigeria where the potential of national wealth is huge, but because of mismanagement most people are living in poverty, with a few of the oil tycoons topping the list of Africa’s richest individuals. Many countries saw years of dictatorship where political parties were banned. Many still face authoritarian rule and live at the mercy of elites.

Yet somehow through all of this, Africa is advancing. At the University of Ghana, the number of female students is basically equal to the numbers of men. There are two female presidents in Africa. The number of civil wars is decreasing. Economies, for the most part, are growing despite the global recession that we have all felt.  While traffic is becoming ridiculous, people have money to buy cars. Infrastructural developments are everywhere. Those with thatched roofs are buying metal sheets. Mansions are everywhere. There has been a visible rise in the middle class.

I have faced some significant challenges while being here. Sometimes things have gone seriously wrong – the complete opposite of the plan. Sometimes I have wanted to go home; sometimes I have wanted to quit school. Sometimes I have even wondered why I didn’t choose an ‘easier’ country to study in during my scholarship year.  I know Ghana has been a good choice for me though. It’s not easy to give up on a one year course when you hear that your friend walked across the Sahara desert to get to Libya to seek employment opportunities and maybe get to Europe. It’s not easy to give up on a project because of a bump in the road (however significant it may be) when your friend whose parents both died when he was a kid has been able to complete school and build a house for himself, his wife, and his brothers.  It’s not easy to give up when a friend has lived the last 25 years on the amount that some people make in 6 months. 

It would almost be embarrassing to give up.

A Trip of Firsts

• First trip to la Côte d'Ivoire
• First ride in a police car
• First time being deported

One of our classes this semester is ‘Regional Integration’ where we learn about the integration processes of African countries, particularly the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). ECOWAS is supposed to enable free movement of goods, services and people in West Africa, so we decided to cross the border to la Côte d’Ivoire (CI) to see how this process occurs. In addition, CI had a post-election crisis in 2010 which resulted in a war between supporters of the winning President Outtara and the previous President Gbagbo.  Some of us are taking a course in ‘Conflict Resolution’ so the trip would also allow those of us taking that course to see a country in its post-crisis stages and meet some of those affected.

The trip started on Thursday when we left Accra to see some sites in Ghana before heading to Abidjan in CI. We stopped in Cape Coast to see one of the largest forts on the West African coast where slaves were shipped to the Americas. We travelled on to the birthplace of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president at the time of independence. On Friday we went to an Ivorian refugee camp where supporters of Gbagbo have been forced to flee to. It was an incredibly sad place with approx. 7000 people living and schooling under UNHCR tents and surviving off of WFP food donations of rice, oil, and beans.  The president of the camp was previously a lawyer in CI, lost all his possessions including his law certificates and was forced to abandon his comfortable life in CI to live under a tent with a dirt floor in a refugee camp in Ghana.  Another man arrived at the camp only to see the person who killed his daughter, which obviously created a lot of challenges in the camp.

From the camp we went to the Ivorian border, which is where all the trouble began. The Ghanaian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (where 15 of our classmates have come from as part of their training before being posted abroad) arranged the bus for our travel and provided us with a letter and invitation to give to the Ivorian authorities whenever we met them. Because of this letter, I was told I wouldn’t need a visa to enter. Apparently this was not the opinion of the Ivorian border agents who said I needed a visa and it was passed the time that I could buy one at the border. As such, they put me in a police car and deported me back to Ghana. I was even recorded in their official book of deportation. This was even after multiple calls with senior staff at Ghana’s mission in CI. Fortunately our classmate who is from CI called her father who is a General in the Ivorian army who was able to call the head of the border staff and instructed that they let me enter. Although I was already in Ghana, they told me to come back where the police picked me up, this time bringing me back to my waiting classmates and our bus in CI. Shortly after we were off to Abidjan.

Côte d’Ivoire is quite different from Ghana, though many of their ethnic groups and local dialects are the same.  A series of civil wars has really affected the country, and this is quite clear by the mannerisms of many of the security officials we met. After every few kilometres there is a police or military checkpoint. At each of these stops we were met with hostility by the officials who were quite apprehensive about ‘foreigners’ (even the Ghanaians) travelling in CI. It was explained to me that much of the gendarmerie is comprised of illiterate ‘rebels’ who were absorbed into police or military forces during the reconciliation process. Sadly, those who were not brought on board still roam about, bringing sporadic disturbances and violence with them.

Abidjan is an interesting place. It is better than Accra in that it has closed gutters, making sanitation in that respect quite a bit better. It is said that Ghana has a trash problem – but in CI it is even worse. There are a number of waterways that separate parts of Abidjan from others. Large boats ply many routes, taking people to various parts of the city which I expect reduces a lot of traffic on the roads. There are some magnificent buildings like the national theatre, but at the same time there are many impressive structures that have not been maintained (even in the city centre) - probably another result of constant political turmoil. The food (probably my favourite part about travelling) uses the same ingredients as Ghanaian food, but prepared in completely different ways. For example, one of their main local dishes, Attiéké, is prepared from cassava and looks a lot like couscous. It is eaten with onion and tomato stew, hot pepper, and one of the tastiest fish I have ever eaten. Plus they have French baguettes and croissants which were a great change from what is available in Ghana.

On the whole the trip was a good one. We went for educational purposes and I really learnt a lot - especially to listen to my own advice and always get a visa before travelling to another country.

                                                         Ivorian Food: Attiéké