Gold

August 28, 2010

Today started early as I promised my kids during the second week I would go to the forest with them on Saturday. Looking back these past two weeks went by faster than I can remember. It also means I have only one more camp to run, as the second camp finished yesterday.

In the second camp, I decided to focus on doing sound workshops and completing  the research component, as the basics in terms of the schedule and division of labour where already laid upon from the first two weeks. This camp I had 19 kids, 9 girls and 10 boys, although one of them wasn’t there for most of the time. This student was unable to fully attend because the salary of one of the fathers got stolen. I have found that each household can contain as many as 50 people  as the family extends as to how many wives the father has or sometimes many families come together to from a household. Interesting story from Bernard was that the father gathered the entire household and ‘laid’ a curse of sickness on the one who stole the money. The meaning of this curse is that the first person to get sick was the one who stole the money. When one child got sick, the father and everyone in that household looked down upon this boy, but the mother blamed Safia, one of the girls attending the camp. Then Safia and the boy had to come by and meet with the father every day to talk things over. I haven’t gotten this part straight though and don’t know how the problem is going to be resolved but I thought the whole witchery was interesting. I have heard many stories having to do with witches and spells, giving way to a country where ‘free will’ isn’t the norm.

Coming back to today’s adventures, Francesca and I got picked up by Ebenizer –our new taxi driver- as I told him that I needed to go to Sherigu this Saturday. It was 7 am and we went on our way without knowing what to expect from the field trip. We brought Hilda along who is one of Francesca students from the first two weeks who always hangs out at Sumbrungu library, a very smart girl with a bossy attitude. The kids were surprised to see me, but I told them that the only thing that matters is your word. We waited for more to arrive and in the end we departed with 9 boys 2 girls Joe and Felix –two of my assistants- and Francesca and me. We had prepared with 2 liters of water, but what we didn’t realize that it wasn’t going to be enough. As we went along, we passed the Chief’s house, a very discreet set of clay huts I thought. The kids told me that they disliked the Chief and asked me if I would agree to be chief if I was offered. I asked what the Chief’s responsibilities were, and got to know that he got to set the law for the people of Sherigu community. The Chief’s house was at the outskirts of the community and we started seeing the farming areas. This was about an hour into our trip and my legs were already started to feel sore as we plugged through the morning sun. We walked by the dump area, where all the trash from Bolgatanga is collected, a tree with three huge bee-hives, fruit trees from which the children collected some food and huge termite homes as I haven’t yet seen before. It was a very long walk into the forest to the gold site, but I got encouragement from the fact that once we were there, there would be a ‘shortcut’ back to the library. Three hours afterwards we reached a stream, not the cleanest by any means, where the kids bathed. The stream meant the gold was near, we just needed to plot through the fields where about 6 men and women were digging with basic carving tool rocks that looked like they could be grind to get the gold out of them. We asked one of the workers to show us a rock where you could see some gold. They then passed us a small rock where you could see just some tiny gold specks shining on the surface of the rocks. I thought that was cool and decided to jog along to see if I could find my own gold, but Joe said it was worthless since the rocks on the surface of the road were worthless. In the end I picked up some rocks to try my luck but Joe, who is experienced in this field, told me they were worthless. On our way back we diverted through the fields not knowing that a three hour way back awaited our tired bodies with no more water left. I think it was going with the kids that helped me keep going as I thought that many of them hadn’t taken water and were still going. At one point, I was worried for them, but they didn’t say a word. Our 360 degree scenery was all green, a true inland experience in Africa. Joe said that if you walked out of the rock road in any direction you would probably encounter wild animals, in the lines of lions and tigers, we decided to stick to the road. Anyways if you tried to walk into the fields you’d probably run into snakes, not the worst of your problems anyways. I kept asking Joe how long till we get some water, and he kept saying ‘small small’, giving me a better understanding of his distance perceptions. We came upon a car that was stuck in the muddy road. It was their lucky day, and we gave them a hand by pushing the car out of it, with a little bit of a struggle though. Our luck wasn’t on our side, as soon as we pushed the car out it died on them, abating our already weak spirits. We waited about 10 minutes to see if they got it fixed so that we could get a ride home, as it was a truck with a big plate on the back. With no luck we decided to keep going as our thirsty bodies pleaded for water. It wasn’t until an hour more that we came upon a water well. The kids were already there, as they picked up speed as we drew near. I decided it wouldn’t kill me if I drunk a little and bathed my burning head. From there to the library were another 20 minutes, as I sit in my room writing this accounts I have barely moved since we got back. It was worth it though.