Hello Blog,

I can't believe it, but work placement is done! It's my last day in Accra before heading back to the villages. It's been quite the final week; let me tell you all about it.


Monday:
On Monday AFAWI held one of its monthly meetings for community members living with HIV/AIDS, run through the "Hope Project". It was held at our office, and got to sit in - even though it was mostly in Twi so I didn't understand everything. We had a guest speaker come in and talk about healthy living and proper nutrition. She was a fantastic speaker, and even though I didn't understand a lot of it, I could tell that the audience was really engaged. She even gave a cooking demonstration on healthy food options such as omelets, homemade soy milk and Sorrel - a drink made of an herbal infusion, ginger and juice. I got to sample some and it was ammmaazzzinnngg! She focused on foods that were both nutritious, and affordable and told the members where they could buy the ingredients and for how much. It was so great to be a part of the meeting. The Hope Project participants were all so friendly, and it really felt like they had a great sense of community and support. I'm so glad I got to see a meeting before my time with AFAWI ended.

Tuesday:
Tuesday was my last day of work, which was weird. It wasn't a very busy day, since I'd finished my final report and didn't have anything else to work on. I don't think its really sunk in yet that I'm not going back. Going to work everyday; getting my breakfast, riding the trotro, walking to the office...being at the office....coming home....that's been my schedule for 2 months and its strange that all of a sudden its over. I'm so grateful though for the time that I got to spend there. It wasn't always the most exciting place in the world, and I wouldn't call it my dream job - but I've learned so much about how NGOs function day to day, how important funding is and how difficult it is to come by; I've seen different projects and how they come together and what changes have been made; and I've also seen the challenges and the struggles they face. I feel like I have a much better sense of what terms like  'advocacy work' and ' grassroots development' really look like, rather than just thinking of them in abstract, academic terms. My final report also gave me the chance to think really critically about my internship, and about AFAWI and to come up with recommendations. In some way that's a little scary, because I don't feel qualified to do things like that. But it also felt good, because - even if my recommendations are crap or unrealistic, I took a stance and wrote it out, and I feel like I do have a certain amount of knowledge about International Development - from school, from my internship, from talking to my group mates about their volunteer work. I did feel like I was able to grasp a lot of what's going on and to form opinions about it. It feels good to be able to do that; I think it makes me appreciate my degree a lot more. I think I've just kind of been unsure about what I actually learned in school, but being able to apply it has made me realize how much I do know, as well as how much more I want to learn. It also felt good because part of the report was a summary of the work I've done with AFAWI, and it was nice to see it in writing and be like, yeah! I accomplished things! I worked on projects! I find it so much easier to picture myself working in this sector; which is both encouraging and a little frightening! I'm also really grateful that my work placement introduced me to some of the challenges facing women and girls in Ghana. This was something I really wanted to learn more about and I feel like I've accomplished that goal. All in all, I'm really thankful for my work placement and everything that its given me, and taught me.


Wednesday:

 Yesterday I had a couple of appointments at two NGOs, just to talk about different issues. First, I went to the Third World Network, which I'd visited a couple of weeks ago, but the gender officer wasn't in, so I made an arrangement to come back. TWN does a lot of research and advocacy work on things like the World Trade Organization and Economic Partnership Agreements between the developed and the developing world. I talked to the gender officer, a woman named Pauline, about how  economic agreements, and specifically free trade agreements hurt Ghanaians, and specifically Ghanaian women. Right now Ghana is in the midst of negotiating EPAs with the European Union, and looks like they are going to sign. The problems TWN sees with these agreements is that they are being negotiated from unequal positions. Ghana is not as economically or politically strong as the EU countries, so it cannot negotiate from a place of strength. This means that often agreements are disproportionately beneficial to the more powerful country. TWN also encourages countries to negotiate as part of a regional block - meaning Ghana should negotiate as part of the African Union, rather than as an individual. There's been a trend towards individual negotiations because of a kind of 'divide and conquer' strategy among developed countries, as it is easier to get what they want when only dealing with a single government. One of the major outcomes of WTO and EPA agreements has been that they opened Ghana up to foreign imports, before its local economies were in a position to compete. For instance, small scale Ghanaian farmers cannot compete with mass producing, heavily subsidized American and European farms, who flood the market with cheaper goods and put small scale producers out of business. Women are particularly vulnerable, as many of the industries effected have been  those in which women tend to dominate. for example, Ghana used to have a very strong textile industry. However, it's been damaged by the huge influx of imported, used clothing from the west. When we give our used clothing to charity shops, those items that aren't sold on the floor are usually packed off, and sold in bulk to exporting companies, which in turn sell them to dealers in the developing world. Everywhere you go in Ghana there are used clothes for sale - super cheap, for the most part. I bought a used skirt for work because it was the cheaper option, and felt more in solidarity with the poor (and its also just super easy to do). Hannah and I went to a used clothes market on the weekend to check it out and it was insane how big it was, and how many clothing stalls there were, just chalk full of used western clothing. It was like a maze - I felt like I could easily get lost in there. It's hard to imagine that there's a big enough market to support that many used clothing stalls all in one place. The upshot though, is that with all this super cheap clothing, the local textile industry has really suffered; it just cannot compete. The same goes for tailors and dressmakers, who have lost a lot of business because its so much cheaper to buy clothes than have them made (even though having clothes made is also really cheap compared to in Canada). Both these sectors have traditionally been dominated by women; women are also more likely to be small scale agricultural producers. So these economic agreements have had really dire consequences, often taking away women's livelihoods.


TWN also does work on extractive industries, especially in gold, and so Pauline and I talked a bit about that as well. They focus on helping mining communities negotiate with companies (most of which are foreign, and many of which are Canadian), to try and ensure more of the profits from mining get reinvested into the community. The organization hasn't done too much work on oil, but we talked about that as well and it was really interesting to hear her perspective. Since being here, I've heard and read a lot about the discovery of oil in Ghana, which they've now started drilling. For the most part, its been heralded as a magic pill; it will save Ghana, it will help development etc. I've been skeptical, because oil has often actually been detrimental to development. Pauline is also skeptical, and believes that the growing industry will help only certain Ghanaians, possibly leading to inflation without raising the incomes of the majority. She does not believe that Ghana has the resources and capacity for monitoring, which will allow for a lot of corruption to develop in the oil sector (as is often the case). She made  a really good point too, in saying that for a long time, gold was supposed to be the key to Ghana's development; Ghana was, during colonial times, known as the "Gold Coast". But that hasn't been the case, because gold is merely extracted, and the profits invested elsewhere. There's a need for downward linkages in these extractive industries - for Ghana to be involved in the processing and manufacturing, in order for real economic growth to come from natural resource industries. If foreign companies come in and extract the natural resources, the money doesn't get reinvested, it gets taken out of the economy, depleting stocks without adding much in the way of economic development.  This could definitely be the case in the oil industry, even though there's been a lot of talk about ensuring that profits stay in Ghana. But when dealing with international oil companies, can Ghana really ensure that? I'm doubtful. We touched briefly on economic concerns as well - again, discussion how Ghana doesn't really have the capacity to ensure environmental protection. Anyway, it was a really interesting conversation. I'm definitely going to keep an eye on how Ghana's oil industry does develop, and what the consequences are, good and/or bad.




When I had first emailed Pauline to set up an interview, she also recommended (based on my interests) that I contact an organization called Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights. I hadn't been able to, but then on Monday, at the Hope Project meeting, I was chatting to one of the resource people who - amazingly - it turns out works for ARHR. Emily (the American volunteer at AFAWI) visited ARHR on Wednesday afternoon, and talked to a woman named Henrietta about the organization's work. ARHR does work on HIV/AIDs, as well as on maternal health and family planning. They focus on research and advocacy, as well as monitoring of government projects. Henrietta's focus is on maternal health, and so we talked about some of the issues facing maternal health in Ghana. Mainly, there's a problem with access to health care, especially in rural areas. Many women are unable to get pre-natal care, because there are not enough doctors, nurses, midwives  nor are there enough medical facilities or equipment. A lot of their advocacy work focuses on trying to get the government to improve services; especially emergency obstetrics equipment and blood - as hemorrhaging is currently the leading cause of death during childbirth in Ghana. They also focus on education; emphasizing to parents that they have a duty to seek medical care, even if that means temporarily moving closer to a health facility as their due date approaches.


We also talked about family planning, as this is something I'm becoming really interested in. I was really shocked to hear that only 17% of women use contraception in Ghana; and that number has declined in recent years. Their studies have shown that price and access are minimal barriers - both condoms and oral contraceptives are cheap, and you don't need a prescription to get them (which is an issue in and of itself). The biggest barriers are misconceptions about side effects - which I'm thinking are probably not helped my the whole not needing a prescription thing. There's something to be said for having to have your doctor explain it all to you; both for confidence, and for the real health concerns. There's also this perception in Ghana that if a woman wants to be on birth control, or use condoms its because she's sexually promiscuous. In some marriages and partnerships, the man in particular will object to their use for this reason. Women often hide the fact that they're using birth control, meaning that instead of going to a doctor or health facility, they get their information and possibly the drugs through friends, or other unofficial means - not exactly ideal. We came back to the issues of women's education and financial empowerment. Henrietta explained that an illiterate woman in particular is not seen as being in a position to argue with her husband, or take part in discussions about family planning. Just one more argument for women's education. Being educated allows a woman to contribute to discussions and decisions, increases her knowledge about family planning or how to find more information about family planning (eg. being computer literate allows her to search for information online), allows her to better care for her children and improves both child and maternal health. Ghana is also still a pro-natal country; people really value having children, although there is less of an emphasis on large families, mostly for economic reasons. As women work outside the home, they tend to want smaller families, in particular if their paying for child care. Fewer children is also just cheaper in general - so there is a trend in that sense. Still, the fertility rate is quite high (my host family has 10 children, so there's one example). Anyway, it was all very interesting, and she gave us quite a few resources which I hope to go over when I have more time. I feel very strongly about access to birth control; access also meaning that its socially and culturally accessible to women, not just that its in the shops or that its reasonably affordable. I talked about this in a previous blog about marital rape; but I'll say some of it again. I think it's really important that family units be able to plan the number of children they have, so they can invest more in these children - send them to school, feed them nutritious food etc. This is also true on a national level - and for that matter, a global level. We cannot support an infinitely growing population, especially if we want to eliminate poverty and allow everyone to live at a reasonable standard of living. It's also particularly important for women to be able to control family size as they continue to be primary care givers - which I think also needs to change, but there's kind of a chicken and egg phenomena. Ideally, either parents would share the responsibility equally; or the parent who cares for the child would still be an equal member of the partnership. However, it seems to still be the case that the breadwinner makes most of the decisions; and so not only does each new child mean more work for the mother, but it seems that it can also mean that she has fewer opportunities to work outside the home; meaning her position in the husband/wife relationship can be reduced - further hindering her ability to control her fertility and make decisions about family planning. Which sucks. And it's not like the pill is a magical solution - there are clearly deeper issues here that need to be addressed. But I do think that if women have more control over their fertility, it can have larger repercussions as far as their economic empowerment; which in turn can make them better equipped to make family planning decisions.  It's allll interconnected. Anyway; like I said, it's something I've become very interested in, and I'm thinking of looking more into attitudes towards, perceptions of and access to contraception as part of my masters next year - though I change my mind on that every other day so we'll see.  It was such an interesting visit though. A lot of what we talked about were things I thought, or had noticed, but it was so informative to have them explained and confirmed and elaborated on. Anyway, here's their website if anyone is interested!


http://arhr.org.gh/

Ok, so that was my week. Now it's Thursday, and it's been mostly laundry and packing and preparing myself to leave. I've had such an amazing two months in Accra, and I can't believe its over. This city is so complicated, and its given me so many opportunities to learn. It's given me the opportunity to compare rural and urban living in Ghana, and a glimpse at some of the economic disparity that exists in this country. It's also an interesting time to be here - lately there's been a crackdown on people selling (illegally) in the street. There's this whole chunk of sidewalk around circle where there used to be clothes sellers hawking their wares....one day though there was a raid while I was walking home and lately there have been patrols. That whole area now just has a couple of stands; its strange how much its changed. Ghana has such a huge informal economy, and transitioning from informal to formal will be difficult; I'm not even sure if I really support it. Right now, all I can think is, how will those people make money if they can't sell things in the street? There clearly aren't enough formal sector jobs for them. I don't know what will happen. I'm sure it will be a while before there's a huge transition - the informal economy is just too big, I think. But its interesting to see the process starting. I wonder, if I came back in a few years, what other areas will have changed? And what will that have meant....that the economy is stronger? That people have more opportunities in the formal sector? Or that their ability to earn a living has decreased, that they are no longer as visible but still there? So many questions....I don't know. 'Development' can such a crazy process, and not one I'm always a fan of. Ironic, given my career choice. Anyway. I do think that I'll come back here one day - I want to. For now, I'm focusing on being grateful for my time, for everything I've learned and experienced. I'm also focusing on saying goodbye, and letting go. And being excited to come home. Which I AM excited for - I know I may not have sounded like it in my last blog. But I'm finding as it gets closer, I do feel ready, and eager and excited. Not just to enjoy home, and the luxuries and food and all that (but there is that part of it - I'm only human). I'm also excited to start looking at Canada from a new perspective and to figure out things like living simply and advocating for women's rights at home. It's going to be tough. And awesomely fantastic. And it's only 2 weeks away!!!


Well, thanks for reading! I don't know what blogging will be like the next two weeks, but I'm sure I'll be back at least once more before I leave.


Peace,
Jac