First Day in Bongo and Bolga
on The Ghana Experience (Ghana), 13/Jul/2010 12:14, 34 days ago
12 July 2010With the long journey from Accra to Bolgatanga and getting very lesssleep afterwards resulted in the long sleep which I had yesterday.Today was my first day in the office. Rose had came to see me. Sheintroduced me to many people in the department where she is working.Of course it was difficult to remember all those names. I met my bossMr. Damma Mumuni who is District Planning Officer and the director ofthe district assembly. Mumuni was busy with many other things soactually I did nothing at the office. In fact his assistant did the TVon for me and I saw the re telecast of the football world cup finalbetween the Netherlands and Spain. The victory of Spain was intenselydiscussed everywhere.I went for the lunch with Rose's friends. She has made many friends atthis place. I was not sure whether I shall like all those dishes theywere serving. I asked whether they had some eggs but they did nothave. One of the Rose's friends told them to buy some cooked eggswhich were being sold by the streetside vendor. The eggs were ofGuinea Fowl and tasted just like those chicken. I planned to mix thoseeggs and rice together but by the time I asked them they had no riceleft. Rose had ordered Banku with soup. Banku is a ball of cookedfermented maize dough. It was served with some soup which was supposedto be that of goat. But I found no meat in it and it was just thestock which was heavily spiced with chillies and had some tomatoescrushed in it. I tasted it, felt that it was not bad and also orderedit for me. Rose's friends were laughing at me the way I was trying toeat it. Africans eat Banku by scooping the dough with all of theirfingers and with my Indian way I was scooping by using only three ofthe fingers. Then the scooped ball was supposed to be dipped in thesoup along with fingers and then taking some of the soup along withthe small ball are supposed to be eaten. There is not much of chewingis expected and one is supposed to gulp it down. I ate with spoonafterwards. Rose's friends had gathered a lot of information aboutIndia and were talking more about the similarities in African andIndian culture and the dissimilarities between European and Africanculture. Both of them were having lot of fun with my tries to use thelocal language Gurune, some words of which have been picked by usduring the local language lessons in the in country training.Some of the Ghanaian names are just funny. They are named after somecharacteristics or qualities. Though in India, we have those types ofnames, since most of them are in Sanskrit, they are just fine with thepresent day Indian languages. But these Ghanaian names just makethemselves funny with the English. If somebody asks me,"Where can Ifind comfort?", I might answer"in VSO office at Accra", as their isone girl named Confort working there. One of the friend of Rose isBetter. Now when I meet her, I shall be saying,"How are youbetter?", asking the questions and giving the answer as well. Anotherfriend of her is Miranda. I did not remember their names and asked heragain. She asked me whether I could remember the name. But then sheinstantly said loudly"Sweety Pie" and then she told me that her nameis Miranda. I, having very less knowledge of Christian and westernnames innocently told her that I had thought that her name is SweetyPie. I had thought that if the other lady is Better then this lady canhave this name. Actually she had called a passing friend of hers andit is some way of affectionately calling a girl. Then she startedlaughing loudly and told me that she would like if I call her by thatname.Since there was nothing to do in the office we went for shopping inBolga as I needed to buy some things. It is a market day after everythree days in Bolga and the main market in Bolga is full of smallshops selling dry fish, dried tomatoes, meat, grains, vegetables etc.Most of the shops except those of meat are run by the women. Themarket is dirty and smells of dry fish. Still it is exciting to watchthe variety of produce which was never seen before such as types ofbeans, rice, various utensils etc. Hope I shall be able to try some ofthose ingredients in preparing my food.Better and her brother Adien ( I might be spelling some of the namesincorrectly as it is all based on the pronunciations which I haveheard of them and these names are very much new for me.) took usaround the market and we did buy many things. I could also get incensesticks which I wanted to burn in the room for some refreshingfragrance in the air and I could get those made in India and with thefragrance of Sandalwood.We had to stop at Better's home for some time as Adien had gone togive his motorbike for repairing. I greeted some people around in thelocal language and one woman instantly asked me if she could have thebroom which I was holding in my hand. This was something which Icertainly did not expect. I told her that if I gave the broom to her Iwould not be able to clean my own house. But she openly told me that Icould buy a new one and give the one in my hand to her. I had tosuppress my strong feelings of dislike of the whole incidence and hadto keep the face smiling.I strongly felt that this is a type begging, which I try never toencourage, and I just refused. I strongly feel that it is all due tocharity programmes where African black poor people are helped by theorganisations in Europe and America. Majority of the help is ofcharity type and does not promote self help. They must have started toassociate white people with money which they can easily ask anytime.As these people consider that Indians are whites, it was natural forthe woman to ask for it but not natural for me to hear it. Even thoughpoor people tend to ask for such small things because they are reallynecessary and they sometimes can not afford them, there was not asingle hint of borrowing in it. I still think that it was just plainbegging which I just hate.