Funerals

Funerals are the biggest social event in Kintampo. Every Friday and Saturday sees groups of people gathering dressed in red, black and brown, the colours of mourning. The women wear their cloth made up into 'kaba and slit', long skirts and fitted tops. Men wear a length of cloth toga style. Akan funerals are an elaborate, lengthy and expensive affair. On the day of the funeral ceremony the family will accompany the coffin to the cemetery and later gather at the 'funeral grounds' where canopies and plastic chairs will be set up around a central area. There the family will sit to receive visitors and invited guests. As people arrive they shake the hands of the family in greeting. A photo of the deceased is set up in the centre of the square. Music is played, most often these days from large PA systems, blasting out the latest gospel or hip-life. But sometimes as in the photos above, one can hear the traditional drumming and call and response singing, funeral songs in praise of the deceased, or expressing sympathy to the family. A young girl may dance 'adua', her bottom padded and her hands moving gracefully to the music. Those who want to show their appreciation will come to put money on the forehead of those singing and dancing. Money is important in funerals and every guest makes a donation. Funerals are costly, and there must be a careful weighing of accounts at the close, when the family might hope to have made a profit. In between the music, the arrival of important guests are announced, and the amounts donated and the names of the donors are read out to the assembled guests. Drink flows, a party atmosphere prevails, and by the end of the day many will be drunk. The following morning decorum returns and a thanksgiving will be held at the family church.

Pito bar

Pito is a very popular drink from the North of Ghana. Two pito bars are near to my house which is an area inhabited by many migrant Dagaara and Grumah families from the North who have settled in the area. The migrant groups have their own chiefs and speak their own languages, as well as Twi, the local Akan language, and Hausa, a Nigerian language spoken as a lingua franca by many of the northern groups as well as many Akans in Kintampo. Pito is brewed from millet or guinea corn which is boiled and then mashed and sieved to produce the drink. It is served 'dokodoko' without alcohol, or yeast is added and the drink is left to ferment becoming 'dendenden' - 'very hard' ie alcoholic. It is traditionally drunk from a dried calabash. Pito is a favourite drink on market days when people meet to have a drink at one of the many pito sellers. But the pito bar is a nice place to drop by after work for a calabash of the sweet brew.

Rubbish

What to do with all the rubbish? This is my local dump, a few minutes away, where all my house waste gets thrown. Kintampo has several other such putrid mounds, picked through by children, goats and chickens. Piles of rubbish are often burnt and organic matter quickly rots in the sun, but it is the discarded plastic bags which litter the town, including the plastic water sachets which hold filtered drinking water. At the base of the dump is the public toilet for the many people in town who do not have their own. For a small fee one can 'ease oneself' in private. However for many the easiest option is to 'free range'. Sometimes one sees children squatting on the dump. The hills around the town have also become free public toilets. The attendant health hazards include hook worms which can burrow into the feet.

Cape Town

Was in Cape Town for a meeting in January of a resarch consortium of the Mental Health and Poverty Project, a four country study of the link between mental health and poverty in Africa http://workhorse.pry.uct.ac.za:8080/MHAPP Cape Town is paradise - mountains, sea, clean air and wonderful food.... but poverty and the burden of history are the shadows that hang over South Africa like the clouds on Table Mountain. Paradise is only paradise for the privileged by wealth or race. The enclaves of privilege remain in the once whites only neighbourhoods with their villas protected by high walls, electric fences and guard dogs where we stayed in luxurious Bed and Breakfasts. These neighbourhoods remain largely white, as do the professional elites. This will change as the new generation comes into its own but for now apartheid remains a living memory, leaving Cape Town for me full of ghosts.

Occupational Therapy workshop

There is only one Occupational Therapist in Ghana, however the three state psychiatric hospitals have large Occupational Therapy departments staffed by Occupational Therapy assistants, some of whom are trained as carpenters or seamstresses. The staff have little knowledge of psychiatry or Occupational Therapy and the departments are largely underused and poorly managed. After meeting the OT assistants they requested a workshop to provide them with some knowledge of OT and mental illness. Emma is a British OT who was visiting Ghana and agreed to facilitate a workshop with me at Pantang, one of the psychiatric hospitals. Here we are with the participants and Rebecca, Florence and Grace, Principal OT assistants from the three psychiatric hospitals. There are plans to introduce OT training in Ghana which might be a step towards providing a more comprehensive psychosocial approach to treatment and rehabilitation in Ghana's psychiatric hospitals.



Meeting Ghana's OT assistants in July at the launch of Ghana Federation of Allied Health Professionals in Accra.

Drying chillies

Home preparation of foodstuffs for sale is common - cottage industries of food production in compounds and open patches of ground beside the house. Clay ovens for baking bread, corn cobs spread out to dry, palm nuts cracked on a stone for palm oil. As I took this photo I could smell the pungent aroma of the chillies in the hot afternoon. Food in Ghana is rarely without the piquant spice, as part of the dish and as an accompanying relish.

Dressed for church

Sunday morning and the drums are beating in the many smaller churches which surround my house. Kintampo has many churches - some represent the 'orthodox' churches - Methodist, Presbyterian and Catholic. Others are larger international Pentecostal churches - the Assemblies of God for example, and others such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists. Then there are national churches such as the Church of Pentecost, one of the oldest and largest Pentecostal groups in Ghana, and smaller churches set up by local pastors. Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are the most popular and the most prolific, offering opportunities to do what Ghanaians love best - singing and dancing. Walking around my neighbourhood on Sunday morning, everyone is dressed for church, the women in beautiful 'kaba and slit', often in black and white, the men in suits or generous lengths of cloth worn toga-style. Some clutch Bibles in Twi or English. I met these children on their way to church all dressed up in their Sunday best.

Making batik

Ghanaians wear beautiful cloth custom made into outifts, most often the 'kaba and slit', a long skirt and a top in a variety of designs. Cloth is sold by the yard in a variety of colourful designs in wax print, tie dye and batik. Esther makes tie dye and batiks at her home which she sells at her shop in town. When Katie, my niece, was here in September we went to see Esther at work. Esther has a collection of wooden stamps which she uses to apply the wax to the cloth. They depict designs such as the Adinkra symbols which each have a special meaning, the most popular being 'Gye Nyame', seen everywhere on plastic chairs, taxis, and most recently in the designs for the celebrations of Ghana's 50th anniversary. It's meaning 'except God', reminds everyone that without God, nothing can be achieved. Esther carefully dips the stamps in the hot wax and applies it to the cloth. The cloth is then dyed and dried in the sunshine. It will be sewn into outfits, and also in my case bedsheets, curtains and chair covers. Thanks to Katie and her artist's eye for the beautiful shots.

Akonwa nie - a chair is here

This is the house I rent in Nwoase, one of the many little communities of Kintampo. Here live a mixed bunch, representing many of the different communities in Kintampo, a meeting place of migrants. My landlady, sister Agatha, is from Ashanti region, but married and moved to Kintampo. Now a widow, she has her hands full raising six sons, plus two 'adopted' children. Most families have this kind of inbuilt flexibility - incorporating children of sisters, or poorer relatives, and often children who not related at all. They are brought up as part of the family, although sometimes, perhaps often, they retain some lesser status, and often take responsibility for many of the household chores. The system can work as an effective form of 'social security' but also provides a possible avenue for abuse.

Sister Agatha has built this new house which will eventually be her own home, an upgrade from her smaller house across the compound. The house is in the usual village style, made from concrete with a corrugated steel roof, and slatted windows. It is also built with the usual haste - walls, doors, windows even electric sockets askew, and rudimentary plumbing which springs frequent leaks. The waste water flows out around the house where the hens pick at the food scraps. Sewage is stored in an underground concrete-lined pit which will be emptied once it is full. Not the most pleasant of tasks I imagine.


Whenever you visit a house people hurry around to find you some form of seating - usually a plastic chair if they are better off, often a simple wooden bench or stool. As they do saw they invite you to sit - 'Aknowa nie', a chair is here. My living room, definately at the luxury end of the scale in Kintampo, features a dining table and chairs made by one of the many local carpenters, who also made the wardrobe and desk. Ready made furniture is not the norm in Kintampo - but the carpenters do a busy trade in wardrobes, beds, and sofas, as well as chicken coops, shoe racks, tables for traders to display their wares, and the ubiquitous little stools which are used to squat on for cooking, doing the laundry, eating or entertaining. The cane sofas are not common here, but made in Accra or Kumasi, again to order and by hand.



This is my landlady's compound next to my house. The wooden benches positioned in compound yards, or under the shade of mango trees, are used for entertaining visitors, and in my case for interviews. They also serve as church pews in the poorer churches or double up as beds for an afternoon or evening snooze. Sister Agatha uses her benches for her weekly Jehovah's Witness Bible study meetings which are held in her compound. The boys also gather on them to play Oware, a local game. And most evenings after eating her daily bowl of fufu, I find sister Agatha balanced with apparent ease on her side on one of the narrow benches, eyes closed, her head pillowed on one arm, lost in dreams.


On my verandah is another form of local seating, these chairs, ingeniously woven from slender sticks of wood bound together with strips of old rubber tyres. A couple of cushions and they make a nice chair for lounging in. The old men next door position them under the trees to while away the day gossiping, greeting me with a warm 'Akwaaba' - welcome- when I return.