Northern Region - Part 2

Day and Night in Yendi

In Yendi, we visited an Islamic NGO that works for female education and women empowerment. We heard a little bit about what they do and then visited one of their work sites, a shea butter collective. We got to observe women extracting shea butter from the shea nuts and learned about the process. We were also followed around everywhere in Yendi by a huge group of children. We were able to explore the town and market in Yendi, and for dinner we tried a local specialty, tee zed (kind of like a solidified ball of porridge) with groundnut soup and guinea fowl. Our group also visited the District Assembly in Yendi to see more of how the government is involved in development work. The guy we were supposed to talk to had an urgent security meeting though so we didn't end up meeting with him. That night, we went to an amazing Gonji Performance and got to embarrass ourselves by dancing solo or in doubles in front of over a hundred locals. Let's just say, they laughed a lot. In Yendi, there was a photographer (either for the town or for the NGO?) who went many of the places with our group taking pictures. We also saw some pictures from last years Calvin group at the NGO's headquarters. That night Joel and I went out with Samuel, our tour guide who is a grad student at the University and has gone on all our trips with us. His mother-in-law lives in Yendi, so we went to her house, which was pretty cool. Joel and I each got to ride on our photographer's motorbike, and then he had us both get on and brought us the rest of the way. It probably looked pretty rediculous with 3 grown guys on a motorbike. It was fun though. The next day, after waking up and having breakfast at the hotel, we went to visit one of the few female chiefs of Ghana. We had to take our shoes off before entering her compound, and then we had a short conversation with her. She was quite old and had gotten out of the hospital just the day before so we kept it short. After this, we left Yendi and headed back to Tamale, which was our home base during the Northern Region trip.

Chichi tries her hand at crushing shea nuts, the first step in obtaining shea butter

After crushing the nuts, the powder was heated and then mixed with water for a long time until the "butter" stared seperating out. This is a woman mixing the shea butter mixture.

Me and Melinda at the shea butter collection site

Joel and I with one of the women who worked at the shea butter collection site.

The gonji performance. There were gonji (a one-stringed instrument) and gourd rattle players. It was a very interesting sound and a fun night.

Two from our group dancing and the large audience watching

A man with a gonji at the female chief's compound

My new friends at the female chief's compound

More pictures/stories to come including:
Biking around Tamale
Being within 10 feet of warthogs and elephants right outside my hotel room
Seeing kob, waterbuck, bushbuck, elephants, warthogs, baboons and other monkeys at Mole NP
Visiting Larabanga Mosque (the oldest mosque in Ghana, built in the late 1400s)
My second warm shower of the semester at the hotel in Kumasi