Daboya

It occurs to me that I’ve never told you all what Daboya is like. It’s a relatively quiet (I’ll get back to that “relatively” part in a minute) village of about 5000 adults and 4 billion children. The village has electricity but no running water. Fortunately, there is a well-developed clean water supply system in place so not a big risk here of the nasty things carried in water available from lakes, rivers, etc. Having been scared silly by the Peace Corps, however, I still boil and filter my water before drinking it.

There is almost no traffic here because the village sits on the west bank of the White Volta River…which has no bridge across it. Therefore, everything coming from the east has to get to Daboya by canoe once you get to the end of the road. It is amazing to me what they put on those canoes, but they haven’t yet figured out how to get a car across (I should start a ferry service!). You can get to Daboya from the west and north by car or truck (preferably 4WD) but only in the dry season and then you better bring an extra pair of shocks! As a result, there are virtually no cars in Daboya. We have bikes, motorbikes (they DO put those on a canoe!), and a few tractors.

There is an active market in Daboya so, unlike a lot of my fellow PCV’s (that’s Peace Corps Volunteers for the uninitiated), I don’t have to bike or hike for miles to buy any food. I can get yams, eggs, tomatos, onions, in-season fruit, and store-type items brought in from Tamale like spaghetti, tomato paste, sugar, salt, soap, toilet paper, Coke / Fanta, margarine, powdered or condensed milk, crackers, and several other items at our local market. There is also a wide (well – OK – “wide” is stretching it a bit!) variety of fish, poultry, and meat available but, being the kind of city boy who always thought that chicken just comes in shrink-wrapped, neatly cut pieces, I’m not ready to watch mine being killed and handed to me for butchering!! I’ll likely be pretty close to a vegetarian for the next two years! I also go to Tamale about twice/month and there I get a wider variety of vegetables and groceries.

Daboya is 99% Muslim so it has 2 VERY small Christian churches and about 1000 mosques. Now let’s get back to that “relatively quiet” phrase. Since there is almost no traffic and the teens keep their “Friday night colossal record dances” down to a reasonable roar, things are quiet here……..except for the 5 times/day of required Muslim prayer. Each one of those 1000 (OK, I’m exaggerating a tad) mosques has paging horns on top and it would be easy to hear the call to prayers from any one of them all over the village. Get them all going and I’m surprised my brother and sister don’t hear it in Florida! It especially gets my attention at the first prayer time…. 4 am! I must admit that I’m getting used to it. I didn’t even wake up this morning. Maybe the power was off………….

I am more (or less?) fortunate than PCV’s (remember that acronym?) in many countries because the official language of Ghana is English but don’t let that fool you. There are something like 70 regional languages in Ghana. In the big cities, most people speak English but not necessarily so in the villages. Still, enough people speak English here that I can get by with my limited Gonja. I’m also fortunate because 90% of the Daboya people speak Gonja unlike many villages where you may have to become familiar with 2-3 languages, or more, to converse with the locals.

Weather here is hot and dry (like Phoenix) with “seasons” that are basically hot and really hot (like Phoenix) and it only rains during one time of the year (like Phoenix except that the rainy season here is 6 months instead of 6 weeks). Feb – April is the dry season when it gets nasty hot (and unlike Phoenix, there is no A/C here!). May to Nov is the rainy season when it cools a bit. Dec / Jan is Harmattan season when the strong winds blow cool air and tons of dust (from the Sahara Desert). So far, I have only been here during Harmattan and I love it. The locals think I am crazy because I walk around in shorts and a T-shirt. They are freezing and I get asked every day why I’m not cold. Well – I figure (no thermometers or radio weathermen here) it’s about 70 degrees in the evening and maybe 50 on the coldest very early mornings. It’s considerably colder than that even in Phoenix during the winter!

Oh - and that elusive phone service is still not live in Daboya! Hopefully by the end of February!

Well – perhaps that’s enough for now. Let me know by reply to this comment if you have specific questions and I’ll answer them next month. Maybe I can also give you an idea of my daily routine at that time.

Ebore Ebuganya! (That’s Gonja for “May God see you safely through the night” and DON’T check the spelling!)