Ada, my first field visit.

(The title is an inside thing....)

Again I feel as though so much has happened in the last week that I am not entirely sure where
to begin.

Last Thursday Jacky and I left Accra to travel, once again to Ada, but this time for work. We were the only two representatives from AFRRI, and although excited, I have to admit I was a little nervous at first. Luckily, there were two representatives from Ada Radio that spoke the local language, Dengbe, and one of which had done some field work of this nature before. Their names are Philimon and William and they are very pleasant to work with. Our goal was to conduct a focus group regarding the current AFRRI program being aired in Ada about Market Information Service. Also we were asked to conduct one-on-one interviews with locals to find out their opinions of the program and to gather some success stories on the last program regarding animal housing. This process had to be repeated in three communities, Adedestkope, Ceaserkope, and Ayisa.

The goal of the program was to inform local communities on marketing techniques and to improve their marketing skills. One of the main aspects of the program was that it announced the prices of goods in markets outside the district of Ada, and outside the 3 communities. Prior to the program, people were not aware of the price of goods beyond their communities, and so had no incentive to expand. Now that the prices were being announced and even predicted on the radio, people could plan their trips to the markets, and ship some their produce to where it is in demand and where they can get a higher price for it. The program also taught farmers about harvesting bit by bit, rather than in bulk, in order to meet the demands of the market place and sell more efficiently. These are only some of the main points of the program.

The first community, Adedestkope (pronounced: Adédé ch kopé) was lovely, but difficult to mobilize. While waiting for enough people to organise a focus group we walked through other people’s backyards, asking them politely is we could interview them about the program. Jacky and I each got five interviews. Philimon did the talking for me and translated while I just took notes and asked any additional questions or for clarification.

Most of the houses in this community were grass or mud huts or houses. Some of them had tin roofs, but with boulders holding them down. A lot of them had grass roofs. The roads were all dirt roads naturally, and transportation was mostly done by motorbike! This was my favourite part. There are guys just riding motorbikes up and down the streets and you flag them down much like a taxi and hop on! They didn’t speed with us considering we were a bit nervous and the lack of helmets didn’t help. But it was so much fun! I am telling you, I am not a morning person but a nice brisk motorbike ride across the country-side helps. There were a lot of bugs while we were working though, and did it ever get hot in the afternoons! I came back with a tan. Oh! I should note, however, that AFRI set us up in a very nice hotel. We were pleased with it until on the second night they decided to do construction on our rooms and help themselves to our things... nothing got stolen but bags had been rummaged through and when we thought that Jacky’s ring was missing (it got swept up with the garbage) well... it was not a pleasant sight.

So anyways, back to talking about work. So we did the one on one and that was great but we still could not manage to mobilize enough people to conduct a focus group. The men seemed to be off to sea fishing and no one knew exactly when they would be back. So we decided that the only thing we could do was to come back in the morning. We returned there after having confirmed the time with the community, however, when we arrived in the morning there appeared to be another community meeting going on that kept people for an additional 2-3 hours. Finally when people started to come we were informed that someone in the community had unfortunately just passed and everyone was busy with the funeral preparations. We offered our condolences and asked whether we should come back but it appeared that enough people had come together to do the focus groups for a short while.  The whole process was interesting. We left and AFRI gave them a solar paneled radio and some phone credits to call in during the program. Before we left the members of this community gave us some Ada names: mine is Adede (pronounced: Adédé) which means first born. Jacky’s is Kabukini meaning first girl. They were very nice in the end, and very grateful, as were we.

We then headed to the second community. There was a big Neem tree under which we held the focus group. I loved this tree as it was actually very relaxing to sit in its shade and discuss. More people came to this focus group and we only had to wait for 45 minutes for enough people to come and sit on the benches that were procured. One man even said that he was from a neighbouring community but that he had heard on the radio that there were two people from Canada coming to conduct a focus group on the program and that he wanted to come and take part. There were many more participants in this group and afterwards we managed to do the one on one interviews and success stories. We said thank you and grabbed a taxi back to a market where we could then take a tros-tros to our hotel.

The next day was the final community, Ayisa. This community was even more organised than the last and there were many participants in the focus group. Also this community was mostly grass and mud huts (some with metal roofs) again, we were surprised at how clean and organised and beautiful it was. We could clearly see the animal housing that has been built since the last program that aired. The ground even looked swept and there was no sign of any pollution or garbage. Everyone was really nice. They even offered Jacky and I a Guinea Fowl as a token of gratitude. A guinea fowl is almost like a turkey but it is black and white and almost looks checkered in pattern. We had to decline... but we did get to hold one.
On the way to Ayisa we stopped in a market (the name evades me). It was massive and you could get anything you ever wanted there. We bought lots of fruit and vegetables, bags of sea salt for cooking, and some pasta. I think all together it may have costs 5 cedis...and we got a lot of stuff.

The tros-tros ride back to Accra was, interesting to say the least.
I will write more later. Oh! For those of you who are wondering I did not go to Cape Coast last weekend...Instead we celebrated Nicks Birthday at the hotel we first stayed at. Juliana works at the hotel everyday and she takes very very good care of us. Even now that we have moved on she checks in to make sure we are all ok. We visit often and Nick is her son. He is adorable, and on Saturday was his 2nd birthday. We all bought gifts and ate cake. Afterwards, we headed to another birthday party for someone from India that we had met the weekend before. Never have I mingled with so many Expatriates. Haha. The music was a good mix and we danced the night away.

I am hoping to go to cape coast this weekend. Fingers crossed.

-Cassie