Megan and Matt Go to Ghana

As a child growing up in a small American city, I learned from picture books that roosters say “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” and they wake the farmers up in the morning like an alarm clock. This is true but feels like a lie because it implies that roosters only crow in the morning. Since moving to Africa and being surrounded by chickens at all times—at our house, around the hospital, on the village streets—I have discovered what Old McDonald could doubtless have told me himself. Roosters crow all day. All day. Hens scratch and peck and rustle the grass and generally make you think someone is snooping around outside your window. They make up for this by having a brood of fuzzy little chicks that bob along behind them and soften your heart with their cuteness. Roosters do not have this redeeming quality.

When I first arrived in Nalerigu, I started taking language lessons with Angela, the journeyman teacher and my next-door neighbor. We were trying to learn Mampruli, the dominant tribal language spoken in this region. Our teacher was a young woman named Theresa, who was fun to talk with and learn about life in Nalerigu. When Angela started back to school, however, I kept taking lessons on my own, now with a man named Philip.

That’s when my language learning started in earnest. Philip, who now works in medical records at the hospital, spent many years working with Wycliffe missionaries who were translating the Bible into Mampruli and developing language lessons. He is not only a native speaker but has really studied the language. In addition, his uncle is the Nayiri, the paramount chief of the Mamprusi people, which makes Philip part of the royal family. He knows Mamprusi culture as well as language, and I’ve really been learning a lot.

For example, I’ve learned that you should only hand people things with your right hand, as a sign of respect. If your right hand is busy and you can only use your left, you should always say “gafarra goabaga,” which means, “excuse the left.” Husbands and wives should hand each other things with both hands, as a display of great respect.

Now we have started recording audio lessons for The Mampruli Project language podcasts. I’ll work on the sound editing (to remove the rooster crowing that’s inescapable around here), and then I’ll try posting the first few lessons online. Hopefully the hospital internet will be repaired soon, and I’ll be able to post the recordings to my website.

I have been addicted to sweet tea since childhood. A refreshing drink on a hot summer day, or, heck, in the middle of winter, it combines the strong, slightly bitter flavor of black tea with the palate-soothing sweetness of sugar and brightens the whole thing with a squirt of lemon. Divine. And I can even partake of this heavenly drink right here in West Africa. Lipton tea bags are readily available at local shops. Though most folks here drink it hot (British influence, perhaps?) many have given up the word “tea” altogether. Instead, it’s simply “Lipton.” The marketers will be pleased, I am sure. Despite all its availability and my longstanding love, sweet tea is now being challenged by a local usurper for dominance in my heart. I feel myself falling … for limeade.

Women all over town are selling tiny limes by the bucketful. So, I buy a bucket of them for about $3, bleach them, then cut them into halves and start squeezing. That part is not great fun. Boiling tea definitely ranks higher. Score one for the Lipton. But, pop in a DVD, sit down with a juicer and a bowl, and a few episodes of Veronica Mars later, I have enough lime juice to keep me happy for quite some time. The trick is to freeze the juice in ice cube trays. Five cubes in a pitcher of water (plus a healthy scoop of sugar) yields a treat so refreshing it just might have won my heart away from my beloved sweet tea.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are surgery days at BMC, so I went up to the hospital about midmorning on Tuesday to see what Matt has been up to. I’m surrounded by medical talk all the time, but I have so little experience with it myself that I get nervous about going into the operating room, or theatre, as it’s known here.

There was a whole group of Ghanaian medical assistants–in-training there to observe, so the operating room was pretty crowded. The first thing I watched was a C-section. The incision didn’t look so bad when Matt had it all sewed back up, but when the woman was flayed open on the table, it looked terrible. I do not want one of those. Of course, I haven’t sat in during a natural birth yet, so I might change my mind. When Matt reached in for the baby, it’s little hand shot out to grab Matt’s. After he pulled the baby (a boy) out, though, it didn’t cry and seemed to have trouble breathing. The midwife was tending it to one side, but Matt had to focus on putting the mother back together. It looked like the baby was doing better before they took him out, but it all seemed pretty disconnected.

The next surgery I watched was an exploratory laparotomy. The closed-toed shoes I had borrowed (it’s all flip-flops, all the time around here) were too small, and everyone in the room was silent. I had no idea what they were doing. They slit a little boy’s belly open and took out all his bowels, which they snipped and squeezed before sewing him back up. Matt explained the operation afterward, over lunch, but he’s promised better narration and explanation during the surgery when I come back to watch again. I’m going to try to find some better shoes to wear before then. As a side note, I have realized that I brought three pairs of shoes to Africa with me. Matt brought five. I’m documenting that fact.

Last Saturday was our much-anticipated, oft-delayed roadtrip to Bolgatanga, a city in the far north of Ghana, nearly to Burkina Faso. Matt, Angela, and I had planned to go the Wednesday before while a visiting team of volunteer doctors was working, but one of the doctors was called home suddenly when his mother died, so we delayed our plans.

The city of Bolga is significantly larger than Nalerigu, though smaller than Tamale. One of the missionary families at the hospital graciously let us borrow their van, and we recruited one of the hospital’s drivers—Issahaku— to drive us up there, since we aren’t registered on the insurance to be able to drive ourselves. It’s about a two-hour drive over some pretty rough roads, and I realized too late that I had forgotten to take my Dramamine. I didn’t want to be knocked out for our whole trip, so I gritted my teeth and bore it. It was a relief when we finally arrived. The city is known for its craftsmen and their baskets, so after lunch at a local restaurant called Swap’s (I ordered pizza; Matt had goat curry), we headed over to the craftsmen’s village for some shopping.

The baskets come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, from big round pots to long breadbaskets to tall laundry hampers. My main goal was to find a good sewing basket for the quilt I’m making, but, of course, we didn’t stop with that. In the end, we had about 11 baskets and a stack of colorful straw fans. We’re hoping these will hold up in the Southern humidity when we get home. On our last trip, we bought some local palm fans, which kicked up a good breeze in Nalerigu but turned limp as rags back home.