Friday, May 22, 2009

Ghana Vacation

Hi Again!

Well, I am on my last few days here in Ghana. Next Friday I leave for Accra and fly out on Monday night. If my flights cooperate, I should arrive in State College Tuesday afternoon, June 2! Hard to believe I will be back enjoying a nice hot shower and wonderful brewed coffee in just 10 days!

I have hit a large snag here in Ghana. My computer has decided to stop working. I have no idea what might be the problem, since it won’t even power-up. Hopefully, Dell tech support at Penn State can fix everything. Well, only a few days left, right?

Anyway, I recently went on vacation to the Northern part of Ghana. I rented a truck and driver for the week and took along a friend from UMaT, who acted sort of like my tour guide. We began our trip Tuesday by traveling to Kumasi, which is about three hours north of Tarkwa. Kumasi is the second largest city in Ghana and the capital of the Ashanti Kingdom. The Ashanti people are the largest and most powerful tribe in Ghana. The Ashanti King sits on the Golden Stool, which was delivered directly to the Ashanti people from heaven centuries ago. Most people in Ghana, whether Ashanti or not, believe in this divine intervention from above. The Ashanti Chief, Nana Tutu, is reportedly the most powerful man in Ghana (even more so than the President) and is possibly the wealthiest man in West Africa.

In Kumasi, we visited the Cultural Center and Chief Museum to see many of the artifacts of the ancient Ashanti people. There were replicas of the Golden Stool and several weapons used when the Ashanti leaders went to war. They conquered almost everyone in the Western Region of Ghana. We also toured around Kejetia Market; the largest open market in West Africa. Almost 10,000 traders operate within the 12-hectare area. Very crowded! We spent the night at the university guest house in Kumasi and prepared for the next travel day.

On Wednesday, we started off for Techiman, another 2 hours north of Kumasi. There are three tourist attractions in Techiman: Tano Sacred Grove, Buoyem Bat Caves, and Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary. We stopped at the monkey sanctuary first, primarily because I really like seeing wild animals. We hiked around this wooded area and spied the two monkey species that live there, the mona and the black-and-white colobus. The mona monkeys are very tame and friendly. They will eat out of your hand and come close to you. The colobus stay partially hidden in the trees, well out of petting range.

Mona Monkey (top); Colobus (middle); Joanna hanging out by a tree (bottom)



After a couple hours at the monkey sanctuary, we headed over to the bat caves. Well, first we got lost, but Shamo put us back on course after an hour detour. The caves were a bit more of an adventure than I was looking for. The caves were in this small village, miles from anything, along a rough road. We hiked a couple of miles to the caves in the heat. I didn’t bring any water because the guide said it wasn’t far, but he and I obviously have different ideas of “far”. We got to the first cave (no bats there), where the people of this area hid from the ever-warring Ashanti. We traveled a little further to the second cave, where the fruit bat colony lives. Here is where my story gets interesting. First we had to climb down to the cave entrance. Our guide, in flip-flops, scurried down and awaited Shamo and I at the bottom. Shamo took one step down and slid the rest of the way on his butt. He didn’t get hurt, but I was wondering how I was going to get down without completely embarrassing myself. Well, I took two steps and then slid the rest of the way on my butt. However, I think I had far better form! Once at the cave entrance we were told we would have to climb on our hands and knees through this tunnel to the area where the bats live. Now, Shamo is a big guy, as can be seen by his pictures, and he was very concerned that he would not fit through the tunnel…yes, it was that tight. But we had made it this far and I can get very stubborn about things. I convinced him it would be fine and we followed our guide through the tunnel. The tunnel was about 10 meters long, but it felt like 10 miles. We finally made it to where the bats were, but it was too dark to see anything, but you could hear them and that freaked me out. There was a ladder out of this area of the cave, but once you reached the top of the ladder, you were faced with a rock wall with vines. Our guide told us we needed to scale the wall to the top. Shamo and I just looked at each other with disbelief. We were both exhausted and I was seriously thinking that I could not climb that wall. The wall was only 5 meters tall or so, but I knew that this was tall enough for me to injure myself. Again our sandal footed guide climbed up the wall like spider-man and waited at the top for Shamo and I to do the same. Shamo climbed next with some difficulty, but made it to the top fairly quickly. Now I felt that I HAD to climb that wall to prove how tough I am! I got about half-way to the top, lost my footing and skidded down to the bottom. I rested for a while before my next climb wondering how much it was going to hurt when I fell the second time, but to my amazement (and everyone elses) I made it up to the top. My poor bunions were aching as we hiked back to the village. Once we got back to the car, the nice guide offered me mangos, which I devoured. A woman came out of one of the huts and spoke to the guide for a moment, while he watched us eat. Turns out the woman was in labor and was wondering if we could take her and her sister to the main road for them to get a taxi to Techiman. I would like to say my decision to take her all the way into Techiman was completely altruistic, however, I knew once we headed back into the town, we could find a hotel and I could rest. She was very happy when I said we could take her all the way into town and I am also happy to report that she didn’t have the baby in the car!

We spent the night in Techiman and decided to go to Tano Sacred Grove in the morning. This worked out well, since I could barely walk down the hall to my hotel room. Tano is a forested area with lots of interesting landforms and some caves. It was not an easy hike, but it was far better than the bat cave experience.

Shamo making a climb in Tano Grove:

Joanna at a small cave entrance in Tano Grove.

After this two hour hike, we traveled up to Kintampo falls and then continued on to Mole National Park near Tamale.

Shamo and I at Kintampo Falls:

Mole is a wildlife reserve where you can find deer, crocodiles, wild boar, and elephants, among other things. We arrived in time for the afternoon hike on Thursday. Our guide was kind, but not as knowledgeable as I would have liked. I think I drove him crazy with all my questions. He knew a lot about the animals in the park, but very little about the plants. The nature walk was nice and relaxing. The surrounds were flat and well traveled and we stopped often to watch the animals. We stayed at the hotel at the park and you could see lots of animals, primarily monkeys and wild boars, around the rooms and buildings. The monkeys can be a bit of a nuisance, since they rummage though the garbage cans and will come very close to you while you are eating. Friday we did the early morning hike and got to see the elephants bathing and mudding themselves. After they bathe, they spread mud all over themselves to protect themselves from the heat and sun. Friday afternoon was spent relaxing.

Animals in Mole:

We left Mole on Saturday morning at 6 am and drove straight through to Tarkwa in about 12 hours. It was a great vacation, but I was happy to be home again.

I hope you are all well back in the US. I hear summer weather is finally there, just in time for my arrival!

I will see you all soon!!


Thursday, April 16, 2009

16 April 2009

Hey There!

I have been way to busy to blog, but today I have a bit of time to let you know that I am happy and healthy in Tarkwa. I have been in the lab almost everyday trying to develop some simple filtration units that may be able to help improve the water quality in the villages. The filters are created from fine sand and clays. Right now I am looking at pilot scale devices, but if they work to remove some pollutants from the water we can look at making the filters larger (bucket size) for homes. The sand and clay can be found easily and need little preparation to use. The sand is sieved through mosquito netting and the fines are washed and placed in a plastic bottle with holes in the bottom. The bottle is lined with cotton fabric to keep the sand in place. Clay soil is crushed and heated to several hundred degrees. The clay is then sieved through the mosquito net with the course material used in the filter. The clay pebbles are layered on the sand and more sand is placed on top to sandwich the clay between the sand. I have also been looking at the possibility of using bauxite, which is a mined in the area, as an adsorbent for the filter unit.

Here is a picture of the fine and course sand:
This is a picture of the clay pebbles:
Filter assembled in a 1.5 Liter water bottle:

I would love to tell you that I have been going to the beach every weekend or going out to dance clubs, but none of that would be true. Life has been pretty boring. Victoria and I go out from time to time to watch a soccer match at the UMaT clubhouse or at the clubhouse where Don Juan works. I spend weekends doing my laundry in the bucket and hoping that it will dry before it rains. The weather has not been as hot lately and I have been enjoying it!
Here is a picture of Victoria and a student in our shared office:

I am still hoping to take a trip up to the northern part of the country sometime in May, but I have not made any definite plans. The trip will make a much better blog…

Monday, March 9, 2009

9 March 2009

Hey there!

I certainly hope everyone is doing well and surviving the cold and snow. Ghana, on the other hand, is hot and humid!
I recently spent an afternoon at one of our study site villages called Samahoo. It is a village of about 300 people approximately 15 miles north of Tarkwa. I met with the village chief, Nana Kofi, to share the results of the water quality analysis with him and to ask permission to do further study in his community. I also wanted to try to implement some sort of water remediation technology and a community education project in his village. He agreed to allow more study, so I traveled out to the site to collect water samples with my colleague Dr. Richard Amankwah. We had made arrangements to meet Nana Kofi at the site, but I did not know he was going to bring along everyone on the community council to meet me. Although unexpected, I was happy to meet everyone and emphasize the importance of getting the entire community aware and on board with the project. I need their input as to what type of purification technology may work for the community and have some feedback mechanism to assess the success of the project. Dr. Amankwah acted as the interpreter and we spent at least an hour discussing how the borehole is used, where the community latrine is located, and how much water is used by the community in a day. The only downside to the interaction was the pouring rain we all had to endure while we were meeting!

In true African fashion, water is carried on the head:



Here is a picture of the community members:

This is a picture of the kids waiting for us to get the heck out of thier way so they can get the water:

They were also happy to pose:


The borehole site we have been studying is near a living complex used by local school teachers. The entire site, including the borehole, was built by the area gold mining company as compensation to the village after a large cyanide spill into a nearby river, which happened to also be the sole source of community drinking water.
Nana Kofi also asked us to take samples from another site in the community. This borehole is located near the KVIP, which is the village latrine. I can’t remember what KVIP stands for…something like Kumasi Very Improved Pit latrine. Anyway, samples were taken and analyzed. There is an unsafe level of bacteria in the water of the borehole near the teachers’ living quarters, but surprisingly, the borehole near the KVIP doesn’t have much bacterial contamination.


Samahoo is also sometimes Samahu:
Around the KVIP borehole there is a lot of trash:



The building behind the pickup truck is the KVIP building:





Here I am earning my keep and getting rained on:


This is a close up view of the KVIP...I am thankful for the plumbing in my house:

Work is going along well, but there is still a lot to be done in my limited time here!
I am getting used to the traffic noise around my house and the construction of the second floor has ceased. This enables me to sleep until 7:30 or later!! The roof has also stopped leaking when it rains!
I really learn to appreciate the small things in Ghana…

Wednesday, February 25, 2009



Hello Again!

I hope you are all doing well. As for me, I am working a lot and trying to keep cool. The weather has turned hot and the rainy season has begun. It rains almost daily and the hours before the rains are hot and humid. This sort of heat is exhausting for me, but I am doing my best to keep cool. On the bright side, for an hour or so after the rains the weather is wonderful!
I also don’t have to spend as much time outside, which helps me take the heat. Because I am living with Victoria, I take a taxi to work or town instead of walking. She lives on the main road and taxis pass by every few seconds. The taxis I take are called shared taxis or line taxis. They run a set route sort of like a public bus and will pick up anyone going the same way and take them to the center of town called the “station”. This trip costs 35 pesewas, which is equivalent to about 30 cents. The university (UMaT) is on the way to town, so I just ask the driver to let me out by the UMaT gate or I can take the taxi all the way into town. This trip takes about 10 minutes. When I want to go home, I just stand by the UMaT gate and flag down a taxi and ask to go to Tebrerebie Junction. I live just across the street from the junction.
The taxi experience is normally fairly dull, but on a couple occasions the driver searched around the car (on the floor or in the glove box) and pulled out a cassette tape and popped it in. What I heard next is some American pop, rap or rock. The drivers then look at me and give me thumbs up, a big smile, or they may ask if I know the song. This morning the driver played “Freaky in the Club”!
One thing I don’t really like about the taxi experience is when they pack lots of kids into the car. It is not uncommon for three or four school kids to get into the front seat along with several kids in the back. This makes me nervous!!
Another thing that has helped with the heat is the window air conditioner that now occupies the main office. My office is connected to the main office, so I reap some of the benefits of this amazing device. When I arrive at the office, I will often sit in the main office and make my coffee and cool off. Unfortunately, the electricity is not very reliable, but for the time that the AC is on my world is wonderful. Currently the electricity is off and has been for about two hours. Everyone just calls this “light off”. When the power is off for more than an hour it is doubtful it will come on again that day. When the power goes off the internet connection also turns off. Maybe I will get a chance to post this blog tomorrow!
The main office with AC. My office is off to the left.

The hot and rainy weather has also impacted my home life. There is no AC at Vic’s, which makes sleeping difficult. The last several days my laundry has also been rained on while it hangs out on the line. This is a bummer since it takes me so long to wash it in the bucket! Vic and Don Juan have a girl that comes over on the weekends to help with the laundry and I have recruited her to do my washing as well. I sort of feel bad having her do all the work, but she is getting paid well for her services and I try to do some laundry myself during the week to ease her load.
My days here in Ghana start early in the morning. As I mentioned earlier, we live along the main road and the traffic noise often keeps me up. The huge trucks from the mines and the honking taxis are the worst! There is also construction occurring on the second floor of our house, which means essentially that the house owner is building the second floor. The workers start at about 6:30 am. The construction on the second floor makes me tense. It often sounds like the ceiling will just come crashing down. This fear is reinforced by the fact that the ceiling has begun to leak in several places when it rains in the afternoon. Vic’s husband spoke to the building owner about this, so I am hoping that the workers will start to cover the roof when it rains. With all these things going on, I usually get up around 7 in the morning!
A view of my house with construction going on the second floor:

Last week I also had a new Ghanaian food called kenkey. This is fermented corn wrapped in corn or banana leaves served with dried fish or shrimp and a spicy tomato paste. It smells just like silage…for those of you who don’t know what silage is, go and ask a farmer. Here is a picture of this meal. Ghanaians eat all the parts of the fish and shrimp (shell, skin, fins, etc.). I wouldn’t eat the shrimp, but I did eat the entire fish…the head was crunchy! The kenkey tasted better than expected and I liked the spicy tomato paste. I guess given the chance I would try it again.

Work is going well and I will write about my meetings with the Chief of Samahoo in the next blog. Now, I have to get into the lab and check on my water samples. Here is a random picture from my house looking out onto the street. You can see three taxis (you can tell by the yellow fenders) and smoke from the constant burning of garbage.



Friday, February 13, 2009

13 Feb 2009

Hello friends and family!
It is hard to believe that I have already been in Ghana for three weeks! It sometimes feels like I never left!
I arrived in Accra on Tuesday, January 27th and spent the following day retrieving my supplies from port. I now have this system down to a science and I am happy to report my analysis supplies arrived intact. My faculty contact at the University of Mines and Technology (UMaT), Dr. Amankwah, was in Accra for a meeting so we met at the hotel and drove back to Tarkwa together on Thursday.
Since then, I have been staying at Victoria’s house while I search for more permanent accommodations. Victoria is a doctoral student at the University and her husband works for one of the gold mines as a safety manager. Unfortunately, the search for other housing is not going well. Either the rooms are far out of town or have poor basic services (water, electricity). I considered staying at the UMaT guest house like I did last year, but the place was expensive, had poor water service and no cooking facilities. All this information has led me to negotiate with Victoria and her husband to stay at their house for the duration of my time here in Ghana. I have my own room and the water service is good. I would say we have flowing water 90% of the time. Unfortunately, there is no hot water, but I am adjusting to the cold showers. I can cook meals for myself in the kitchen, although I have to admit Victoria does most of the cooking.
With my supplies already here in Ghana, I have been able to do lots of work in the last couple of weeks. One of the students that I was working with last year took some water samples in November and January from the communities I am studying and I am working with a different undergraduate student to analyze the samples for metals and nutrients.
I have also moved forward with plans to work with a community to do some remediation studies. I have met with community leaders of a village called Samahoo and they are very interested in implementing some simple filtration at their borehole site. There is still some red tape to get through with the Samahoo Chief, but I believe they will come to trust our efforts with a few more meetings and assurances. From my study of the site, the borehole water is severely polluted with bacteria, metals and suspended solids. Filtration and aeration can help alleviate some of the problems at this site, but any remediation will need the support and education of the community. In the upcoming weeks I will be doing some lab-scale filtration studies and meeting with more representatives from the community. I believe that the work is progressing nicely.
On a more somber note, my grandmother passed away this week in Minnesota. She led a full and healthy life, finally passing at the age of 94. I tried to get a ticket back for the funeral, but the expense and travel time was too much for me to handle. I know my grandma, and she would see it foolish to spend several thousand dollars to travel all the way back to the US, but it is still sad that I cannot be with my family. I love my work here and the feeling of being independent, but I am also realizing that this will be my last extended trip to a developing nation. Life continues on, even if you don’t feel connected to it. I have been hesitant to look for permanent jobs in the Midwest (mostly because I hate the cold weather), but I miss my sisters and mom. I miss my nieces and nephews and feel like I am failing to see them grow up. I am still open to faculty positions on the east coast, but I am also looking in Minnesota and Wisconsin. I haven’t seen any great postings as of yet, but I am sure something will come along!
Next time I will post some pictures…