FAVOUR IS A WOMAN ... IWD

I'm a phenomenal Woman.

“Favour is a woman”. I read that somewhere in one of the millions of novels I have read in my short lifetime. I fell in love with it at once. Not because of the obvious bias of the situation, but because it said so much about life’s ways in such a short, sharp point.

It is women who hold the nurturing and insightful essence of (hu)mankind. We’ve heard it a million times how women are this and that, and oooh, how wonderful and yet so complex we are; often in comparison to men (who else?). Pardon me if I apologise unregretfully and unrepentantly, but you are about to hear it all over again.

Yes, women are the essence that holds everything in life and the world together, but in patriarchal places like Ghana, women are fucked over and plundered mercilessly in more ways than one. Choose whether the pun intends for you or not.

We are externally-oriented people, who often focus on what The Other Person needs, considers,thinks, and is. We instinctively put others first, and almost always knee-jerk in care and concern wherever the situation arises. We love to be cared for, and we love companionship. Give me a sceptic Arnold Schwarzenegger female look-alike, watch me pair her with a caring, loving man, and see her melt into Rampunzel or Cinderella before your very eyes. No matter how successful, how strong, how illiterate, how mentally crazed, how sceptic a woman is … there is always still a little piece of her that cares about the other person, the helpless, the endangered, the needy.

We are also the more creative of the sexes, and the deeper thinkers who can better conceptualize and direct affairs and dreams than the men.

We love our men though, and a little bit too much. They are the center of our world, the clouds above our heads, the weather at whose mercy we exist. From our mothers who over-pamper their sons and insist on getting silly wives for them, to our sisters who allow our brothers to go scot-free no doing chores or house-maintenance, to our girlfriends and wives who permit our husbands to run riot whenever and wherever, male members free and ready to plunder any permitting female member within reach.

We give them way too much freedom to be unethical, inconsiderate, unselfless, and scheming – and we’ve paid for it with a highly patriarchal society kept alive by women, but constantly diseased and abused by men. We thus, have created for ourselves a vicious situation – we create the men who create the disease, and we are the same women who must tend to the diseased society. Where do we step off? Oh, I don’t know. To me, it seems like we’re in for a long ride.

But I made a choice some years ago to jump off that bus, and face whatever the consequences may be. And I broke quite a lot of bones, and a lot of male egos too. But I healed; my bones set, and my life went on. You can jump off too.

Every now and then, some young girl reaches out a window from that trundling bus and calls out for help. I reach out to them too. Some jump, others don’t. But I know they’ll come around, ‘cus you see, with every circuit that damn bus makes, more and more girls jump, and less and less remain in there. You can’t tell me that that is not infectious. It is! So come join me if you’re a woman who also jumped some time ago. Let’s get more girls and even other women off that bone-shaker and onto solid ground. Let’s increase our numbers, and begin shaping up our societies and our country.

I know that bus-driver looks damn good and handsome. I know he’s promised you lots of good loving and little bundles of joy who look just like him. I know he’s promised you the cruise of a lifetime. Heck, not on a bus like that, he ain’t!

Close your eyes and jump off! Some brothers of his are out there, who understand us and support us. Find someone amongst them. You will, I know it.

So jump, little lady. Jump big sister. Jump, my mother. Onto this solid ground called Me. Onto this solid ground called Liberation. Onto this solid ground called Endless Possibilites.

You can build that machinery. You can invent. You can run that business. You can actualize those thing that you only did in your mind. You can. You too can.

It is necessary, in a world so ruled by men that many women have now been forced to live like men, just to keep up and survive. We are losing our care and love; and we’re growing large egos.

Ah, egos. The sport of man.

A man will do anything and everything to preserve the sanctity of his ego (and even that of his fellow brother). A man will keep a crucial truth to himself for life, pine himself to death in pain, watch his woman walk away, see his children lose the light in their eyes, lose a potential lover, cause a war … if it will preserve the sanctity of his ego!

I don’t know what it is with that, but it has changed women for the worse.

It doesn’t have to be that way. I am certain.

And I am more certain that it shall not be that way … as I watch my sisters from all over the world slowly rising up from the mire of patriarchy, abandonment, abuse, disrespect, and make it!

Does it offend any man or dis-oriented woman that” I walk as if I have oil-fields pumping in my backyard? Or that I walk as if I have diamonds at the juncture of my thighs?”

Now you know why.

Ah. I have said much, haven’t I?

But in the end when all is said and done, if more has been said than done … then we have a problem. So, if you can, take a stand.

To borrow from something my American sisters say, you do not have to like this (me), or agree with it (me); but you will respect me.

Shout- outs to women like this/me who are leaping off that bone-shaker. Who run the world?! Ha!

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY!!!

BornAgain! Funding our projects from within ... will it work?

Our eco label ... "BornAgain!" ... of old tyres (Line1)

You may all know by now that I have spent the past 5 to 6 months trying to raise funds for a Biogas plant for a little village in the Upper West Region, called Tuori. If you don't know about it yet (*giving you a strange look*), then click here and have a gander: Energy for Tuori (and all the others)!

Well, being a busy person who does many other things, and the NGO being a self-funded one, you can imagine how difficult it's been  keeping the momentum going in the face of the general suspicions and financial hardships of most Ghanaians ... N O T  G O O D. 
Haha. Okay, so now I can laugh about it. 
But only because I spent the last 2 months of the past 6 months of the fundraiser building up a careful structure for internal funding for the NGO's projects, so we don't have to keep worrying y'all with our beggar's aluminium cup ... yeah, the noisy one. And no, I don't sing and roll my eyes when  go begging.


Aaaannnnd, after weeks of thinking and careful planning, I came up with "Born Again!", an entity within the NGO which recycles and re-uses old and 'wasted' stuff, and makes them trendy-useful and affordable for people.
We then market it like every other usual service/product, sell it at competitive prices, and put ALL the profits after expenditure into the NGO's projects!
To start with, I looked at the huge numbers of tyres all over the city (and the country), and how difficult it is to find uses for them after car-owners discard them ... and I came up against two 'walls'.


I had decided previously to have them stripped and shredded, the strips to use in addition to wood and metal, or by itself ... for furniture. But soon after gathering a number of tyres, and purchasing some from vulcanisers (if you want it, they sell it ... cus they figure if you have a use for it, thing got value! Sigh ... I love my peoples), my shredder expert told me that there are 2 types of tyres: the wire-mesh (more common) and the nylon thread. The nylon thread is what CAN be stripped, NOT the wire-mesh.


Oh Lord. So I went back into town to get the nylon thread types. Then whilst he went to work shredding em up for my wood/metal combinations and the eco-friendly footwear line,  sat down with my sketch pad to design things that can use the wire-mesh tyres whole .... WHOLE, I say.


I came up eventually with 2 trendy designs : one for a seating facility, and one for a funky, eye-catching table design (which has a lot of oomph!).
So over the next 12 weeks, we will launch our first 3 eco-products for raising funds for our projects (very very crucial projects): an eco-seat made out of whole wire-mesh tyre .... an eco-table with wood-glass-rope combination also made out of whole wre-mesh tyre ... and 2 or 3 footwear designs made out of nylon-thread tyre with fabric-rope combination.


We hope (and intend) it to sell well to you, my supportive peoples on here, and your social circles and business associates ... as well as the general public not just in Ghana, but internationally. We hope to make good sales not only because our clients will want to support a good cause, but also because these eco-friendly products REALLY DO make your mouth drool, and make you feel real proud to own them. 
We guarantee you, they WILL BE quality, all through and through.


To show you how, follow this link to see some of our first few pictures of the TYRED.UP! an eco-seat under the BornAgain! label. Click The TyreSeater - BornAgain!
Give me all the feedback you want to ... but more practically, give me all the orders you can make! Haha! 


.... oh, and a Merry Christmas in advance. Make the rest of 2011 count. ;)


Golda.


P.S: the link also opens up other albums for you on trips and work done so far, so feel free to browse through all the albums and pictures.
And if you want to keep updates or follow discussions, join us on Facebook by just clicking here. :)

The train for the Wa Fire-wood Alternative Project TAKES OFF!!

The 4-unit Briq-a-lizer ... our first model

Danny & I working on our first briquette pellet with our first briquette-maker

One of the various briquette types we did that day with the machine

En route to Aburi

It’s 4:00am … Sunday.

I’m sitting on the floor by my bed, peering through my glasses at the pictures and notes scattered in front of me containing the details and progress markers of the Wa firewood-alternative project I have been working on since last year… thinking through the rudiments, necessities, costs to be covered, and the time limitations.

My 3-year old son lies muttering to himself on the bed, deep in sleep … I wish that was me. He laughs in his sleep … I frown darkly at him … is he laughing at me? Did he read my thoughts by some surreal, supernatural means through his dreams?

It’s 4:00am … I can’t sleep. My little project of 5 to 10 women to start with, just swelled into 3 communities … COMMUNITIES, two of them more than 500 kilometres apart. What to do? How to handle? I can’t help but feel overwhelmed at the sudden growth of this project. I tell myself, perhaps it’s all the usual Ghanaian noise-making … I will get there and meet only 5 – 10 women actually willing to walk the walk and not just talk. But what it that is not the case, the other me asks …

The last phone call from Yargpelle carried all the excitement of this upcoming training with it … I peeked at myself in the mirror facing the bed. The room was dusky, and in the light of the bed-side reading lamp, all that showed prominently in the mirror were my glasses … reflecting what? Hope? Determination? Resilience and Persistence? Sigh …

This past week, I have been to Aburi a few times, keeping track of the design for the briquette-maker(s). Time is short, I have little to spare with the vacation over … Danny Quaynor (of Design Niche, engineer-creative designer with a passion for appropriate technology as much as metal-work designing) has been very patient and understanding with me, of me. He has turned up ideas and produced them in actual, working designs quicker than I could have hoped … but as quick as I needed. He understands, miraculously … how well and yet quickly we need to work on this.

Our focus – designing AND producing briquette-makers for use in Ghana; with affordable, available, accessible, rudimentary, durable materials, looking out for ease and flow of design, good end-result of product (briquette pellets), etc.

On my first trip, I accessed the local ‘materials’ available in Wa, and our preparations are therefore utilizing animal poop, household biodegradeable waste, plant waste (leaves, weeds, post-harvest residues, etc) … which is mostly what the women will find easily and in large quantities to use for this green charcoal.

They are skeptical about how these overly common, disregarded things can actually be turned into coal/fuel for them … cannot believe it is true that will very little, so much can be gained by them … I can imagine them saying “You lying … what!” to the propagators of the training in their communities.

For people whose social status, daily lives, health, incomes are defined by how much firewood they can gain, find, sell, use … getting to know about other such fuel alternatives is like the average Accra socialite being told, “Here … for every organic product you buy at your local supermarket, we ‘dash’ you half the price of that product … free.” … It makes no sense, and you don’t see what the catch is, or how … but in both scenarios, you are probably only being given back what excess you yourself paid for without being aware of it.

You are being cajoled to go for the right thing, and you are rewarded for it by being given back what is really your right, which other services or products have been holding back from you for so long you have now absolutely no idea it was your right … until now.

So here I am, and here is Danny … and we’re preparing, preparing, preparing (See ALL the pictures of these trips, trials of the machinery, the resultant briquettes, etc at http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=490726360996&set=a.432593560996.235017.561970996

Or : http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=432593560996&id=561970996&aid=235017)

How did I get the poop? And how will we be getting more poop for our commercial-scale productions here in town and other locations in Ghana? I know you’re curious, because my sister sure bugged me to share it! :)

Okay, so I was due at Danny’sin Aburi on Friday morning for the testing, and I had a funeral on Thursday and other appointments to sort out … what to do? Shrug … just do it (says Nike) … so I did!

So, here I was … Thursday morning … in my sharp black pencil skirt, belted-up chic blouse, fresh shoes, hair all done up, looking like I had a meeting with Obama … looking for poop at the Jamestown beach-side slaughter-house in Accra.

I had swung by the beach right after the funeral in Adabraka, and drove up to the entrance, where two typical hard-core Ga guys sat assessing me and the car. I got out and strutted over, and let drop my best typical raw, hardcore Ga … “I want poop,” I said. “Fresh one.”

They looked at me like … “Whattthhheeefuuuccckk” … I repeated myself.

They were now sure that the lady spoke Ga, was not timid, and yes … was really looking for shit.

They said, “For real?” I said, “Like yesterday, mehn.”

They said no probs … we got goat poop … it’s all over, but not a lot cus we kill ‘em here … not rear ‘em. But if you want, we can gather up sacks and sack for you … so discussing it jovially, in nice, raw, hard Ga (I realised how much I missed my growing up days in that area at my Dad’s family house around Mamprobi, during this session) we talked business, and I joined them, bent over in my skirt, picking up … you guessed it! Glorious, fresh goat poop! Haha!

Talking to those guys was refreshing … we’ve got survivors in Ghana ooo!

So, big-ups to Nii Ankrah and his giant of a dude friend “Haggler” who helped me out … if you ever get to read this blog, you guys gon be my first first ever employees for the briquette-business, mehn! You were great, and customer service in the hoods … first-class. They didn’t ask for nothing, no money, no ID, no bitchiness, no rudeness … they helped purely and simply.

You don’t get that that nicely in those “first-class” thingies, you know.

So that’s how I got my poop!

And now, I need about 10 – 15  twenty-unit briq-alizers (the one in the pics is 4-unit … we will make the standard a 20-unit, and I need 15 of those) to train these communities …. BUT, I’m financing all this myself and it’s not easy , so I have ordered 2 to start with from Danny, might likely push it to 3.

That way I teach all of them, but leave the 3 models with a select number of them, and go back on subsequent trips to deliver the rest to other women showing promise …

I must consider cost of the machines, cost of the trip for the team (2-way trip), cost of accommodation, food, drink, cost of the vehicle renting to drive us around the communities, cost of fueling, cost of personnel helping (tips here and there) … and miscellaneous.

Give or take GH1200 to GH3000 will be spent before the project is over or halfway through.

I have some friends who have hinted at helping … may they do! But if not, once you promise to help … difficulty or no, you gotta!

I will be keeping y’all updated as usual as we set off.

I’m exhausted as heck, coordinating all this with my income-deriving jobs, school, motherhood … but as I always say … when I go to sleep at night, even when on a less-than-full tummy, I sleep peacefully. ‘Cus I know I have kept my word.

One love, people!

4:47 am

Sunday

23^rd Jan., 2011

Accra, Ghana.