What day of the week were you born?

How many people actually know the day of the week they were born? I know that my brother, Shawn, was born on a Tuesday because it was election day. I have looked up the day before, but I can’t remember for the life of me. My best guess is Wednesday, but I’m not certain. Mom, can you shed some light on this?

I didn’t realize that this was an important fact in Ghanaian culture. When I went to mass for the first time, they had a special collection at the end of mass that they collect on the first Sunday of the month. Each person files up by the day of the week they were born. I said, ok…I was born on Wednesday- sure.

When I went to the World Vision office for the first time that following week, someone at the security gate asked me what day of the week I was born and I said, “Wednesday.” I was subsequently named by the day of the week I was born, Wednesday in Twi (the most common language in the Ashanti region farther south.)

Now, I am called Equia. It seems easier for people to remember because it is in their own language and while Melinda is not difficult, World Vision staff members take a lot of pleasure in calling me Equia and saying, “Etisen?” meaning, “How are you?” in Twi.

Weekend Activities

I had a great time this weekend meeting up with the local Peace Corps volunteers and learning about PC Ghana. Their system is slightly different than PC DR, which is interesting to learn about. First of all, volunteers are placed in a community and then 2 more volunteers will follow them from the same sector to ensure continuity and sustainability of the projects. In other words, one community will have three different Americans for a total of 6 years. They found it shocking that PC DR didn't want to place volunteers in each other's communities back to back. Personally, it would be terrible to be that last volunteer because either the project has failed or succeeded by the time you arrive.

The world turns out to be fairly small, because the volunteer that is leaving Ghana, who the party was for, graduated from Northwestern in 2003 and was in the Integrated Science Program. Basically that means we probably passed each other in Tech a whole lot. He is now starting a PhD program at MIT in August. It turns out that another volunteer in the Northern region also graduated from NU in engineering in 2004- as a coop so he would have started in 1999. Crazy! This is a volunteer I was going to contact because he apparently lives in a great traditional village.

I'm planning on visiting a volunteer this weekend, who has a 2 hour walk or 35 minute bike ride from the main road to her community. She's going to send her bike out to the road for me on Saturday. The village is on the White Volta River and has no electricity and a newly installed borehole (courtesy of the people in my World Vision Office) that no one will drink from because they like the taste of river water better. Have I told you all how much I love behavior change?

I've already determined that there is no hope for these solar water bags. Maybe I'm a bit of a pessimist when it comes to behavior change, I guess my development experience has done that to me. I am in the region of the world with the second largest number of guinea worm cases (Sudan being the first.) If you can't get people to pour their water through a cloth filter (which prevents guinea worm) that is free then how are you going to get them to put alum in the water and stir, let the water settle, pour clean water into the solar bag, place solar bag on the roof for 4 hours, take bag off the roof and let water cool before drinking said water the next day? I think it's a little too much to ask. Oh, and did I mention that the water bag would not be free.