Digging In

Post #2: Digging In

As always, things have started to make more sense after two weeks. We have a deeper understanding of what APP does, how it does it, and what we can try to do for them. And we also know handy-dandy things like, for example, where to go for filtered water that comes in little bags (for teeth-brushing and tea/coffee) instead of schlepping only the heavy bottles of mineral water (for drinking). And we have a community of other AJWS-ers with whom we get together at least once a week.

Another huge and very welcome change is the weather. The harmattan winds have officially arrived – they’re the winds off the Sahara that bring with them a cloud of fine sand in the upper atmosphere that effectively makes the weather both cooler – maybe 5-10 degrees – and drier. It’s expected to last 4-6 weeks, perfect timing as far as we’re concerned.

As for pictures in this posting, it seems our camera, unbeknownst to us, gets switched into the “video” setting from time to time, and those shots aren’t usable, so there aren’t as many to use here as we would have wished. Sigh.



Last Saturday we went to La Beach – remember, that’s the beach at La. It was a perfect little excursion: lots of sand (see the photo of the most incredible sand sculptures EVER), a bit of breeze, funky little restaurants with umbrellas, lots of activity – acrobats, musicians, horseback-riding, and, yes, some swimming in nice temperature water.


There was only a narrow channel where the lifeguards allowed swimming, and the walkout was very gradual so it took a long time to get deeper than your thighs, but you could definitely dunk.



Then, of course, came the big day, Tuesday the 20th. We watched the proceedings on CNN at the W.E.B. DuBois Center on a big monitor with 500-600 others. First there was a great jazz band, then some local speeches, and finally what we’d all been waiting for: CNN video was joined by audio and it was THE MOMENT: a singular moment under a canopy of acacia (we think) trees, beautiful cool weather, a smattering of American flags in an audience consisting of young, old, white, black, everyone focused on the joyful transition, lots of applause and tears and, at the end, hugging one’s neighbors.

In case there’s any doubt, by the way, everyone here loves Obama. When we wear our Obama baseball caps (which we gave away), we get comments from everyone, including kids on the street. It’s true that probably some love him only for the fact that he’s African-American, but many – from our co-workers to the taxi drivers – listened to his speech and “got it.” They may not realize all the reasons there are to be enthusiastic, but they get most of them and the symbolism alone is enough to make us proud. Hooray for us.

[Here's where we would have included a picture of kids selling Obamiana by the side of the road and another of our taxi driver with his American flag.]

From the sublime to the ridiculous: we went out the Accra Mall where we saw what was playing at the (6!) movie screens and went shopping at ShopRite. Funny thing is, ShopRite was pretty similar to the ShopRite in Warwick, where we take it 100% for granted, even complain about it from time to time, whereas here it’s absolutely mind-blowing.

As to the work, we’ve made a lot of progress.

Every Monday morning, the APP team has a staff meeting, and we’ve started to piggy-back our work on those meetings. This week, we did a SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) analysis and there was much consensus: a lot of strengths from staff to intervention methods to history of success to relationships with the target population and one big weakness/threat, the difficulty of continuing to chase funding. The team is gathered in the photo below.

Then on Wednesday we went into the field to visit two communities of seaters. We always find that on these assignments, it’s on the field trip where we “get” what the organization does, whether it’s orphans, mountain gorillas or sex workers. We were accompanied by two Peer Educators in their bright chartreuse APP polo shirts, of which they were very proud. The PE’s are the ones – usually still-active SWs - who have been trained by APP to teach the dangers of HIV/AIDS and STIs, the benefits of condoms and of going regularly to the STI clinic.

In the first community, all the women gathered in a group to talk to us, together with their landlord. At first, there were only a handful, but by the time the meeting ended, there were perhaps 25 or so.

They came in all shapes and sizes and ages and degrees of sexiness, some with children, with her own room – they don’t live there, only work – with a curtain across the doorway. The women are now such “converts” to condom-use that they say they couldn’t live without APP’s subsidized prices. (They’d cost about 75 pesewas each, or 60 cents, in the pharmacies instead of 1 pesewa from APP. And remember, they use a lot of them.) As one of them said, “Without condoms, we die.” We desperately wanted to take some photos, for ourselves as much as for the blog, but it would clearly have been a violation of trust.

In the second community, we shadowed the Peer Educators as they went from door to door, checking in on the women and selling condoms to those who need them. We saw one of the rooms, furnished with a TV and various DVDs for clients to watch. The conditions were pretty raw, including a rank public toilet with a painted sign on the wall that said it was open only 17 hours a day.

Then on Thursday, we met with the Board of Directors. We discussed the SWOT analysis and, together, came to some conclusions of our own concerning funding and future directions for APP. It was a very good meeting – we thought so and so did they – and we’ll talk more about it in future postings.

Finally, on Friday night we went to observe some roamers, accompanied by four Peer Educators and their supervisor, a Social Officer. We went to three locations: the highest priced was a lively street with folks walking up and down and the PEs spotting the women they wanted to talk to. The middle-priced was an area where the women stayed in one spot, relatively inconspicuously. But the low-priced area was a scene that’s difficult to describe. In a relatively open area that served as a bus depot by day, there were hundreds and hundreds of people, all there for the same reason with no pretense. Even in the dark, it was clear that the women were quite provocative (a few with the kind of extreme dropped waistline we usually associate with plumbers) and some were also quite young. At one point, the police chased some too-young girls. It was unsettling, to say the least. But, again, it was the best way to understand exactly who is the target population APP is working with.


Lunch at the Country Kitchen. (It's not a great picture, and wouldn't have made the cut, but it's the only other picture we could upload.)