There were many learning opportunities for us over the weekend. For example, if you buy pirated DVD movies, expect to pay (somehow). Well, they did work, except they skipped and had hideous screech in the audio every minute or so. So we didn’t get to watch the movie.

Our learning took on a cultural flavour when we learned about the role of the village and tribal chief. We will be visiting the home village of Aba Hagan who was in Canada in October as part of the CCA women’s mentoring program. She has told me that we will be meeting with her chief. On Saturday, at a joint board dinner with Tafo and Bunso, we learned about the role of the chief.

The chief is very revered and rules in disputes of all kinds. Petty theft, adultery, land encroachment, estate settlement are among the more serious items. The chief is even used as a resource in the courts if a dispute lands in court. The judiciary will ask the chief to provide advice and counsel in open court when rendering a decision. So their role is not just as a figurehead, but they have a real role in maintaining order.

I also learned that it is customary to provide a gift when meeting a chief and that schnapps is in order. Yeah, right – where am I going to find schnapps? Well, at the local gas station – yes, we walked in and they had a bottle for 50,000 cedis – about 5 bucks. So I am prepared.

On the weekend we also learned that when I present gifts for Aba (shirt, school supplies, etc) that I am to present them to her husband – not to Aba. There is still a lot of gender inequality here.

We visited with Sammy and his mother. She recently had a stroke and is recovering. Part of the tradition is to bring a small gift if you visit, so we brought her a loaf of brown bread. She was pleased.

At the joint board dinner

The joint board dinner was for Barry and me to thank us for our time with the two credit unions from CRIG. Last year, the credit unions didn’t have a dinner for me and Marci, so it must have Barry’s charm. The dinner and socializing was fun and we were presented with several Ghanaian shirts and a smock to bring home to Canada. They will be quite a hit on business casual days at the office I’m sure.

We did a lot of driving on the weekend and of course hit some road construction. This is a big selling opportunity for the vendors as the traffic gets stopped in each direction to allow for the traffic to pass. Swarms of vendors see the obruni (white man) and rush over to try and sell us any and everything. Plaintain, toothbrushes, water, coconuts, bananas, ground nuts – you name it. Then they young kids just want to talk and hear us say a few words in Twe. They laugh … I think more because we try vs. the quality of our speech.

Part of our trip was in to visit with Sammy’s mute brother who is a poultry farmer. We had said to Sammy we wanted to look at some pottery, so he planned to take us to the farm. We had to correct him that we said pottery – but we did go and see his brother’s farm – 120 broilers, 1000 chicks and 37 pigs. The broilers sell for 50,000 and the chicks for 10,000 each. Clearly there is a strong market for chicks.

We are now at our last credit union in Begoro. St. Theresa’s which used to be a teachers closed bond credit union that is now open. There were some “entrenchment” issues with the previous board, and some lavish spending. There is a new board in place now in preservation and correction mode. We can help provide them with some direction.

Tomorrow we are off to Techiman at the end of the day – this is where I was posted last year.