The third thing is having a youth meeting in Sakalo. Sakalo is a small village about 25km south of Tumu. Penny has already been working there for a while, doing fortnightly sessions with the women, but with the arrival of Tiffany and I things have been scaled up somewhat. We now go weekly, with Tiffany running a Good News Club for the children, and myself organising a Bible study with the youth. Our first visit though, before any of that got going, was probably the most interesting. We arrived pretty early in the afternoon, so that we could go round and greet the village. This is necessary anyway, but essential if there are new people, and it also lets Penny tell all the women to turn up that night. It takes quite a long time to go around and greet an entire village, but we still had plenty of time before dark to play some games with the kids. Now, “games” are a fairly new concept to most of these kids, at least organised games with specific rules. Plus we were working across a language barrier; it was never going to work smoothly… We started off with British Bulldog. Tiffany and I had already tried this in Accra and it worked great. We explained, and got Penny to translate a lot for us, and got the kids lined up at one edge. I was in the centre playing the “bulldog”. I shouted “British Bulldog!” and all the kids ran. Straight to me, with beaming faces. After we all stopped laughing, we retaught them the rules, with the help of a native Sisaali speaker, renaming the game “Lion”, an animal they can understand you’re supposed to run away from! After that they didn’t run towards me anymore. We also tried Red Light Green Light and Stuck in the Mud, which went fairly well, but the basic idea of a ‘tag’ game is very foreign to them, and they took a while to catch on. Penny has a parachute, one of the large multi-coloured
ones with handles, which she’s never used, so we decided to give that a try. It was fun and the kids loved it, but the parachute created a bit of a dust bowl on the dry, dusty ground!
After that it was definitely time to bath. We stay the night in Sakalo, and it’s expected that we clean ourselves in the evening and again in the morning; Ghanaians are very conscious of cleanliness and being very presentable. They all wash twice a day, even the kids, who get a big scrub down. Our “bath” is an outdoor shower. There are four mud walls, with a small gap in one of them as an entrance, and inside you have a large bucket of lukewarm water, and a small margarine tub. You wash yourself as best you can, and try not to forget your towel (I did). Tiffany and Louise joke that I’m so white the shower lights up when I go in. Unfortunately this isn’t too far from the truth.
After the shower we eat. I guess time to tell you a little about the food here! There are broadly 5 or 6 main dishes. The primary staple here is T.Z. (Tue Zafu). Made from corn or millet flour, it has a consistency similar to very thick semolina, so thick that you tear off chunks from inside a pot (though they’re quite sticky, almost jelly-like chunks) and dip it into the soup provided. In Sakalo they don’t grind the flour as much, so it has a thicker, grittier texture, but in Tumu it is smoother, which I prefer. They often serve it with green leaf soup, which is just some kind of green leaf mashed up and boiled a lot, so it’s not that great. Groundnut soup is much nicer; imagine the peanut sauce you get with chicken satay made into a soup. Basically spicy peanut stew. Banku and kenkey are two variations upon T.Z. Banku has been left to ferment, and acquires a sour taste, but is still quite nice (especially if you like injera, those of you who’ve been to Ethiopia!), while kenkey has been left to ferment even more. I’ve only had kenkey once, but I absolutely loved it. It tastes very similar to injera, very strong, very fermented, but it has more taste than banku, which I like. Fufu is my favourite Ghanaian dish. It’s made from pounded yam. Yam is basically potato, but they grow much larger and in much funnier shapes, and the outside looks and feels like tree bark. The taste is slightly different to potato, and it is much thicker when mashed. This allows you to make fufu, where they boil and then pound the yam, and form it into large lumps of what is similar to mashed potato, but much heavier. Again you tear off pieces and dip it into an accompanying soup. Rice is also very common here. You can get fried and normal at street vendors, and also jollof rice, which I love. It’s like rice cooked in a tomato based sauce and fried, and it’s delicious. I’ve found you can buy packets of the seasoning, so we’ve started making it at home, and it’s almost as good. Min and I are thinking of opening a restaurant called “Jolly Foli Jollof”! (Foli means white man, and all westerners get called it wherever they go). Rice and beans, which locals call “wahchey”, is also very good. Abu has introduced me to a great chop bar that sells it behind the Rural Bank, and we get breakfast there often.
Eating kenkey (pronounced ken-kay) with beans, with the right hand of course. I'm slowly mastering that art.
Anyway, so after eating in Sakalo we split; I go off to do a Bible study with the youth, Penny does her women’s meeting. The first week I stayed with the women. They begin with a small number, but when Penny’s interpreter shows up he brings a drum (plastic bucket and stick) and starts to play, the women sing and clap, and slowly more trickle in. They do this for quite a while, and then Penny does a talk. I thought when she said she had an interpreter that it would be in English; no, she does it in Sisaali (Tumulung, the dialect we speak) and it gets translated into the local dialect! Bear in mind Sakalo is less than 20 miles from Tumu; the language variation here is huge. After she finished, the praise and worship started again. The women sing and dance and ululate; this is hard to describe, but it’s sort of a high pitched shriek that undulates up and down, made using their tongues. They were absolutely determined to get me to dance, but I was equally determined not to, but Louise and Tiffany were more willing, and Louise has learnt to ululate too, which they love. The singing and dancing just went on and on and on, for probably 1 ½ hours. For the entirety of which Penny and I were sitting and clapping, and poor Louise and Tiffany were dancing! Eventually just got up and told them she had to go to bed, and they finally eventually stopped. Wasn’t the end to my night though. We eventually found a place for me to sleep (my host had decided to go to Tumu and not return), but it wasn’t easy. Penny gave me a spare roll matt, and I’d brought a pillow, so it wasn’t too uncomfortable. Unfortunately my new host apparently enjoys a lot of noise and light while he sleeps (and we all sleep in the same room). He was listening simultaneously to the radio and some kind of Islamic history lesson on his phone, which a bright torch shining across the room. I did manage to sleep in the end, but it wasn’t easy! At least I did sleep; Penny and the girls had one night outside with a dog barking most of the time.
After waking up at 6 (Ghanaians start early. You have to when it’s almost impossible to walk around outside by 10) the girl bath again (I escape by pleading I will at home), and we have a breakfast of tea (green leaf) and crackers, and head off. It does mean we’re back home nice and early! Going to Sakalo is an interesting experience then, and one that has its ups and downs. My sessions with the youth have been mixed so far, but are hopefully on the up. We’ve had weeks with good numbers, and weeks with a small few who knew it all already.
The last time we went to Tumu I took my bike along and cycled home afterwards. I wanted to see how long it took. I have a plan to start a group at the church with the youth on Sunday mornings, as they don’t currently go, but I hope they would if there were a group for them to go to. This would only really be possible if I had a way to get myself there and back; hence the trial cycle ride. It’s 25k, and I did it in just under 1 hour 20, but I think I can manage a little quicker. Unfortunately right at the start I discovered my tyre was nearly flat; thankfully Bernhard found a pump, or the title of this blog might have been Stranded in Sakalo; Penny had already left!
I think I will go now and eat some homemade rice and beans. I’ve mastered the art of homemade baked beans here; perfect for Sunday evenings!
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