Asesewa Part 1
Posted by Atkilt on October 21st, 2009
Once at Asesewa, we drop our personal belongings at our respective lodgings, my being Sisiamang, a CIDA funded labour clinic ten minutes and two valleys outside of Asesewa. The clinic consists of two buildings in a clearing on the side of the road. One houses the staff, three nurses who are always on call, and the other accommodates the patients and I. The Plan Ghana Area Manager recommended I stay there due to its nice facilities. I reside in a large unoccupied patient’s room with a bed and a bedside counter. There is no electricity in the place save for the when they have patients, in which case they turn on the generator. At night, which is the only time I am there after finishing my work, I light my room by a rechargeable lamp that is charged in the Plan Ghana offices during the day. In these conditions, alone in a clinic seemingly in the middle of nowhere with no light or phone connection, late night trips to the bathroom across the hall are excursions that test your fiber as a man. Thankfully, the nurses have taken a liking to me and provide me with rich and delicious home cooked meals and even hand-wash my clothes. My interaction with them is limited though since they live in their female-only quarters. I am kept company by the bells, chirps, and flutters of creatures beyond my windows, and occasionally the shouts of expectant mothers delivering babies across the hall.
Our fieldwork assignments in Asesewa consist of initially meeting with the Plan Ghana Area Director or staff, and running the details of our activities by them. This serves two purposes. First, since they have been working with communities in the area for a number of years, they provide us with precious insight and information to how we should implement our strategy on the ground. Secondly, Plan Ghana is funding our project, which requires full transparency on our part and that we ensure their participation. We usually meet in their conference room to discuss and debate the particulars before moving to the communities. One such meeting was interrupted by the Under 20 World Cup Finals, where Ghana defeated Brazil to become the first African champions to win the tournament. It should go without saying that the office, and the whole country, erupted in celebration.
The logistics of our work in Upper Manya is challenging, adventurous, and accentuated by an element of danger. The settlements and communities are located in isolated and remote areas that require travel through pothole filled streets (or street filled potholes), and bumpy red dirt paths (rough roads as they are called here). Depending on the availability, we may take a Plan Ghana Land Cruiser manned by the driver Mr. ‘Osofo’, which translates into Pastor, but are usually left to traveling via dirt bike. On these excursions I am typically left to sit behind one of my colleagues, head shrouded by a helmet and hands clutching the railing above the back tire, praying silently that the phantom taxis as I have termed them don’t come flying around a corner in the wrong lane, as they often do, to strike us. Aside from the taxis are locals themselves who travel by foot on the roadside carrying goods and foodstuffs, usually on their heads, from their homes to their farm plots. Unlike me they seem undeterred by the untamed vehicles flying through the roads. Ubiquitous in these areas are gorgeous mountain, forest, and lake scenes that never fail to provoke admiration. Being propelled through these areas on a bike, head bent to one side observing the roads in front of the driver, with my shirt flapping violently in the wind and my camera strap across my shoulders, are some of my favorite moments here so far.
