Food; an inescapable aspect of Ghanaian culture

By Jonathan Kwesi Amoah and Jason Gallacher

It's the end of week three here in Savelugu and team NFED has been working well. We've settled into the office routine, twice met the communities we'll be working with over the next nine weeks and gotten to know each other pretty well. We are gradually learning about the people of Savelugu; in Ghana, food is an inescapable part of their culture, here are our experiences...

Jason

Food here tends to be repetitive; chicken, rice, TZ, soup, over and over again and maybe there's a yam thrown in there somewhere. To someone from the UK, and living near London, my food choices have gone from a thousand to a handful. Saying that, I do have it pretty good compared to my colleagues. My host mum, Azumah, is an incredible cook; she told me that she used to cook for a group of French volunteers while she was living in Accra, apparently they told her that her food was the best they'd ever had and that she had to come back to France with them and continue to be their cook. This is coming from French people. When I first arrived at my host home one of the first things I told Azumah was that when it came to the food, I'll try anything. She hasn't disappointed, I've had a very large variety of Ghanaian cuisine. I've found I prefer the southern banku over the northern TZ, and that plantains and paw paw are as good if not better than bananas and pears, actually all fruit and veg tastes better over here although it is surprisingly hard to come by.

Jonathan

Finn, from Bournemouth, enjoying a taste of TZ

Coming from the Southern part of the country, the bell of cultural difference rang in mind when I came to the North, knowing very well that my cultural orientation differs from that of the north. Like any other cultural group in the country, food is an integral and unavoidable aspect of culture in Northern Ghana. Being in the North without having a taste of traditional meals like Tuo Zaafi (TZ), Waakye, Kooko, Koose, maasa, and yam-fufu, is like, “going to the Vatican without seeing the Pope.” Being a Ghanaian, most of these meals are familiar to me and I have no problem enjoying them. In fact, I can`t go a day without having kooko and koose for breakfast and either yam-fufu or TZ for lunch. My taste and preference for these traditional Northern meals throws my colleagues and some of the In Country Volunteers (ICVs) into a state of wonder. Same cannot be said about my UK counterparts, because these meals are unfamiliar to them and most of the struggle to eat some of these meals, even though others do enjoy. When my host home counterpart, Finn, first tasted TZ, this was what he said about the meal, “Hmmm… It`s nice, the sauce tastes good! I like TZ, it`s lighter than fufu.”

Women in Jana making shea butter, one of their main income generating activities

Jason

What's not at all hard to come by is rice which you'll find on your plate at least once a day, and at the NFED International Service office, I feel like I'm talking about it a lot each day as well. Rice is a main commodity of all six communities that we working in. The twelve of us are separated into pairs to focus on each community, me and my partner Abdul are assigned to Jana, home to the Maltiti group of 30 women who run the production. They make rice and shea butter; during the wet season they can relatively thrive but in the middle of the dry season where we are now, they are struggling. They can't grow the rice and shea nuts themselves so they have to travel into Savelugu market to buy it, they produce the product in their homes to bring it all back to the market to sell it, where they get thoroughly ripped off on the price. It costs them 238 cedi per bag of rice and shea nuts to do this, they rarely make more than razor thin profits but often make big losses. Having just had an awful farming season due to an inability to transport their goods and resources, there’s lots to consider working together in the following weeks. It can be quite alarming but it is also very inspiring to see these groups going through these huge challenges, whilst still producing food to feed the community, their family, as well as to make a living. Their willingness to cooperate and work together to achieve their goals - better futures for their families - shows that despite the challenges that they face, they are an extremely determined and able group of women and we will certainly learn a lot from each other in the weeks to come.

 

Abdul learning about shea butter processing!

Jonathan

Just like Jana, local farmers in Manguli are disadvantaged in terms of resources and financial assistance, and they do struggle with their production. Manguli, which is about five minutes drive from Jana has an organized group of 24 women who engage in the same activities as those in Jana, and they faces the same challenges as well. To get clean and potable water for their production is an obstacle in these communities. These women have to walk for more than an hour to get water for consumption and farming activities. And it really affects their production. The most surprising fact about the group in Manguli is that they have had contact with only two NGOs including International Service.

The distance travelled to fetch water is a big challenge for our income generating groups

Jonathan & Jason

Coming from different cultures it has been intriguing to see a way of living where food is so culturally important and yet its security can be so fragile. With our brief being training and awareness raising, we will be definitely be leaving our communities, Jana and Manguli, with better skills and hopefully they will see their profits increase, making some of the challenges that they face easier to overcome. Being in this environment we recognise how important it is that we all act on issues like this one – food security – and it is for that reason that it has been gratifying working with NFED Savelugu so far, and we will continue to work with them to positively change the lives of the people in these communities.