October 5th – Budget, travel, and peanuts

Budget as a Peace Corps Volunteer


The Peace Corps provides a monthly living allowance so the volunteer can live near the level of the local population. The amount varies by country. In Ghana the amount is about 325 Ghana cedis, ¢325, or approximately $100 with the current exchange rate. I do not need to pay rent or electricity – so the money mainly goes for food and travel.

Obviously things are less expensive in Ghana than in the United States, but ¢325 does not go as far as it use to, particularly as it was worth about $300 at the beginning of the last fiscal year. I am fortunate to live in the Upper West where living expenses are less – translation – I cannot buy many things here beyond basic staple foods.

I've been tracking my living expenses. (Nothing new for me – I’ve always tracked my spending - but yes this means writing down every expense for about a month.) On average I'm spending about ¢7 a day on food and minor purchases. That converts to about ¢210 per month. I should be able to get a balanced if somewhat bland diet to remain healthy and hopefully gain some weight back. I think I can limit extra monthly expenses such as other travel, sharing a beer or buying something extra (hand tools are on my list), to about ¢15 per week – or a total with daily expenses of about ¢270.

This leaves ¢55 per month. I'm donating to the local Church including the building fund – about ¢15 per month, so not 10%, but I will also be attending funerals and weddings that will require donations to come out of the cushion. So I have about ¢40 per month cushion or as savings for other projects – such as building a solar dryer.

I could easily take some money out of my U.S. bank account to make my life much easier. However, one of the reasons I joined the Peace Corps was to learn to live a different lifestyle. Well, OK, not a completely different lifestyle - I've always lived on a budget – but living on about $100 a month is a whole new experience. In addition I agree in principle with the policy of living on a small budget. Still like all other Peace Corps Ghana Volunteers I am hoping to get a raise.

Trouble with blogger


I'm having trouble convincing blogger to format the paragraphs properly and I don't have enough internet, time, or patience to keep trying to figure it out.  Sorry for format problems. 

Local travel in Ghana


On Friday I traveled to Lawra, about 20 miles away, so I could get to the bank and collect my monthly infusion of money.

The 20 mile trip costs ¢4 one way. I must take a tro – a minivan that is licensed for public transport. I need to wait for it to fill, people packed in all the seats. This may take a very short time or more than an hour in the morning. There are times it can take longer than an hour depending on the time of day. At times people don't even bother trying to go to Lawra so the tro will just not fill.

Anyway, enough about that. We filled in the morning and were on the we are on the road after about a 45 minute wait.

The road is partially paved and parts are dirt road with huge potholes – takes about an hour if all goes well. The hour long trip to Lawra this time was relative easy. I got to the bank and spent some time shopping and relaxing with other Peace Corps Volunteers in the area – thanks for the visit – Kristen, Sidney, and Emily.

Then there was the trip home. I started waiting for the return tro at 3 pm. One came by, but quickly filled up. By 4 pm I was able to climb into the next one; because I was a white man they made some people cram closer together. By 4:30 we were stopped on the side of the road with a flat tire. The driver could not get the old tire off and the spare felt like it needed air anyway.

So the 15 or so people waited by the side of the road. And waited. One person hitched a ride on the back of a motorcycle. However, there was not much traffic on the road and we were stopped on the paved stretched so the vehicles could speed by. The tros that were full stopped to see if they could help the driver but without success. Finally a tro with some space stopped – but as there were women with young children – I thought they should make it home first. I waited with some high school students trying to get home for the weekend. (Most senior high schools are boarding schools.)

Finally, a car stopped at picked up the white man and the three female students. I got into Nandom after sunset (The sun rises and sets at about 6 am and 6 pm daily near the equator) so I had to ride my bike home in the dark. I was not entirely successful dodging rocks, potholes or rain gullies – but I made it home in one piece by 7:30 pm.

Although I am “writing home” about this travel experience – it would not be considered all that unusual by Peace Corps Volunteers in Africa. This is considered a more or less “normal” situation. If you want a story worthy of mention it needs much more drama. Still four and a half hours to get twenty miles is something new for me and I’m hoping I will not have a travel adventure worthy of mention by Peace Corps standards.

I’m working on building up my bicycle endurance to see if I can travel to and from Lawra in one day.  I have a heavy “village” bicycle with 5 gears on the rear so it is better than most in the area. I’ll have to deal with the same road and in the dry season a lot of dust. So while 20 miles might be an easy ride at home with a road bike and solid pavement, here it has a few more challenges. I’ll still work on getting my miles up by taking longer rides during my free time.

Rain and harvesting


We are not in the dry season yet. We have been receiving a lot of rain and a significant number of major downpours at night. This has put considerable pressure on the harvest as everything needs to be dried in the sun before storage. This means that some crops, such as the millet, are being left in hopes it will dry out enough to harvest before it spoils in the field. Some early crops are already spoiling in the field. The farmer's problem: either too much or too little rain.

Peanuts

This is the time for peanut harvest. Again, the wet ground has taken a toll on the crop with some spoiled.

Peanut plant in the field
Another plant another butterfly.  Notice the pebbles on top of the ground




























 The plants are first pulled up. This is normally performed with brute manual force rather than a spading fork or other implement. The plants are piled in coarse piles in the field.



Pulling peanut plants
Plants in a pile.




Due to the heat and humidity the peanuts should be shocked (pulled) from the plant so they can start to be properly dried the same day as harvest. So other members of the community, such as the elderly and the young come to help. The peanuts are shared with the workers so this means that for at least a short period of time the kids have something in their stomachs for breakfast and as a snack during school.

I helped shock the peanuts for a couple of hours.  Some plants had just a few mature peanuts and some had maybe 15 or so.  I don't know the normal productivity of peanuts but this seems low.

I noticed a few peanuts had sprouted and a number had bug holes.  These had to be tossed away.  After the peanuts are dried in the sun for a few days that will be sorted again.

Closer view of peanut plants


Pulling peanuts from the vine.


The vines are left in the field or buried for a green manure. Before Christmas the pigs will be allowed in the fields to find anything left. I’m not sure why they wait, but it could be that there is plenty of other food for the pigs at this time and foraging the field before Christmas may fatten them enough to bring a good price before the holiday feast.

For me, peanuts (called ground nuts locally), is a pretty much daily food of one form or another. Rather than peanut butter I need to ask for ground nut paste at the market. Unfortunately, no way to get or keep grape jelly for my sandwich. 

However, with sugar there is also peanut brittle. I’ve found it interesting that the Ghanaians who put so much sugar in their coffee and tea cannot take the sugar in peanut brittle. Oh well, more for me.

Home made peanut brittle


Love always – John



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