Dear Supportors;
Greetings and Happy New Year from Accra! It seems that mini disasters – both self inflicted and imposed – are the subject of my January theme. No, it has not been an auspicious start to the year! For example, in my neighbourhood, during the first two weeks of January we did not see a single drop of water passing through our pipes. I kept joking with people about the wonderful New Year gift the city of Accra was giving to us! But it is not just water that is worrying me…
I have two reasonably sturdy, functional bicycles here with me in Accra. I decided that one would be enough, so, I brought them to a ‘bicycle fitter’ who transferred all of the best parts onto the one bike with the idea that I will sell the second. Well, since that fateful day, I have had nothing but bicycle trouble! Every evening, I find myself about half way home and covered with grease once more. Fortunately, taxis are everywhere and I can throw the non-functional piece of scrap metal into the boot and continue on my journey!
At the office, my laptop computer started to groan under the strain of the tropical heat and my mobile phone ceased to work. One day, I left office keys in the house and house keys in the office, and it was 9pm before I was able to bring that working day to a close. I have decided that things will be well once I get through January, so I am not fretting. But just to be on the safe side, I am not planning any major sky diving or bungee jumping adventures at the moment!
This month was another spent ‘in the office’. Year-end reports for 2005 and start up planning for 2006 occupied a great deal of time. I have begun my new duties of mentor to a young Ghanaian conservation scientist. We are the team leaders for the community sanctuaries initiative. I have mentioned some of the work on this in past updates, but today I will list the entire program. Each species is locally – if not globally – important and at risk.
1. Wechiau Hippos (and community model for the entire list)
2. Red Volta/Sisilli River African Elephants
3. Afram Lake Volta West African Manatee
4. Avu Lagoon Western Sitatunga
5. Boabeng Fiema Campbell’s Mona Monkey
6. Asumura Rockfowl (Picathartes gymnocephalus)
7. Bochipe Leopard (unconfirmed)
We have designed a fieldwork and reporting schedule for 2006, and it looks like we will be busy. Of course, projects continue at the Hippo Sanctuary with special mention to the Heather Graham Primary School and the Wechiau Lighting Initiative. Funding targets for both initiatives were reached at the end of 2005 – congratulations! - and work is moving forward at site. 100 LED lights have been purchased since the end of last year – a staggering figure, really – and we anticipate that January and February will prove to be the most important months for the payment of community tariff fees.
I continue to appreciate my house in Accra tremendously and feel like I have a little ‘hideout’ when the day-to-day pressures and struggles happening just outside my door feel like too much. It is definitely a healthy development for me. Just living in Ghana is an ordeal, and every action you take, a continuous exercise in patience. Add to that the desire to offer meaningful work: to contribute to the betterment of the natural world and the human experience within it. The feeling of being overwhelmed can sometimes hit hard. The ability to hide from all you are working towards can be an essential pleasure. Hideouts are good!
This next story exemplifies my point about hard living. The route I take from the office to home each day includes a motorway underpass. The shift from bright sunshine to shade causes a momentary lapse of clear vision. I noticed a man lying in a peculiar position under one of the bridge supports, and it took me a moment to realize that he was actually quite stiff. It is alarming to see a dead person just lying in the street completed forgotten and unnoticed by the masses. Even more disturbing though, the corpse was still there the following day. Eventually, it seems that the police came and removed him. A friend’s comment on the incident: “they collected the body just in time, when it bursts, you should see the flies Donna”.
If you have a passion for sports, you will know that the world’s biggest is football (soccer). Living all over the world, as I have, the football fan has been nurtured in me. And this is a big year for us with the World Cup in Germany this summer (by the way, the Ghana Black Stars have qualified for the first time ever). But there is still plenty of football action to keep us entertained until then…
Prior to World Cup Fever, we are warming up with the African Cup of Nations, a competition involving the 16 best teams on the continent competing for the title of African champion. Everywhere you go in Accra, small crowds are clustered around hastily-arranged televisions on street corners and under shop awnings, shouting as the action unfolds. I have heard that the American Super Bowl is the most viewed sporting event in the world. I beg to differ! I am quite sure that if every household in Ghana was able to enjoy the privilege of electricity, and that if every household could then afford to purchase a television, that, in this country alone, we could boast of 20 million viewers at each Ghana match.
Until next month…I hope you enjoyed your Super Bowl party!
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