Inauguration, and Pizza
Wednesday, June 14th, day 41 - This day was a bit interesting. We began with normal lecture, though while we were doing so people were running around getting the room ready for the larger event. Among those who notably came in and tooks seats were five chiefs. I noted that a walking stick seems absolutely obligatory for a chief. And apparently for one specific chief the plastic chairs that were out was not befitting his dignity and a bigger more thronelike chair was brought.
Around 11 we finished the normal lecture and began the inauguration ceremonies for "The Northern Ghana Beekeeping Association" or something along those lines. During our training last year we had had several sessions where Dr Courage had had the participants (who were all the more experienced beekeepers of the area) get in groups and discuss how they could better organize themselves. I hadn't been really involved though I will take credit that as soon as I'd been recruited on to this project one of the first things I had said was that training is all well and good but we need to organize them into associations or co-ops so I had put that out there as a necessary high priority for the project. And then kind of unbeknownst to me (no one tells me anything) it had all been coming together all this time and here we were.
So with five or six of us at the dais on the stage, the five chiefs sitting behind us, the fifty participants of this current training in the audience as well as at least as many people more, we had about two hours of speeches. There were two performances by local dance troupes. I recorded about five minutes of one, I'm just on my mobile data here but when I get back to a hotel with a deep well of data.
Also I was dragged down to dance with one of the dance troupes. People obviously took pictures but I don't have any yet. The second troupe also tried to drag me down but I successfully volunteered Arne as the second sacrifice.
And I was relieved to find myself not on the speaking agenda, but then was told I would be inserted with about 5 minutes warning. I could imagine this could have been terrifying for some people, but fortunately I had done Model United Nations for many years and have carefully honed the speechifying skill such that I can stand up with absolutely no idea what I'm about to say and in my humble opinion make a pretty good speech (hey I regularly won awards so I don't think thats just a dunning-kruger effect misbelief).
Mainly just to see what it would come up with I had asked my new friend snapchat ai bot to write me a speech about the value of beekeeping development in Ghana. It wrote a trite little concise essay (in a matter of seconds of course) hitting the predictable points. I was surprised it failed to make it look like a speech though, so then I told it "that looks like a concise essay, please use common rhetorical techniques of a public speech to make it sound more like a speech" and then it came through with what looked like an actual speech. If I had no imagination I could have gotten away with using it, but trite and predictable isn't my style.
Arne had suggested I talk about myself, what led me to be here and what it means to me to be here but I didn't really fancy talking about myself either.
But it occurred to me everyone was talking about how great and valuable the project would be and about it coming together but no one had really talked about the fundamental question of why beekeeping. So I talked a bit about how we're all aiming for the development of Ghana, to promote and create new industries to create income and jobs, but most industries have negative externalities such as pollution, big land use footprints, noise, potential eyesore factories; but beekeeping has none of these, how it actually benefits the environment and the surrounds farms, etc. And while also most other activities may have big initial costs to get started, to invest in the machinery, or even high specialized education required, that beekeeping can be started by any individual getting just one hive and then scaled up from there piece by piece to an industrial level. Etcetera and so on in speechifying style.
When all that was over there were of course some pictures taken and then we got ready to go out to the field. Sam came along and said to me "Kris we have waakye for lunch will you have it?" and I didn't remember terribly loving it but what do you say to that so I said "ok"
It was in a styrofoam to-go contained which makes everything a bit less appetizing. Waakye is a combination of rice and beans and a bit of spaghetti. And I don't know that _sounds_ quite alright, looking at the wikipedia page about it to looks alright. And I don't actively hate it. It doesn't have an objectional flavor or consistency. But somehow every time it's served here I only manage a few spoonfuls. It's just, I don't know, dense and heavy and even if I'm hungry I can't summon up enthusiasm for it. Anyway I was trying to have at it and making very slow progress and Courage came along and said "its okay we'll get you pizza after the field visit if you want?" and I jumped up enthusiastically and said yes that would be good.
Then we went to the field. The bees were very calm, the owner of these hives actually stood there without any protective gear at all. And while Williams wasn't looking several of the guys took off their gloves to handle the bees. Which as mentioned I think is great.
That evening Rashid (our driver, who is local here so knows the places) took Sam, Williams and I (Arne wasn't feeling well), to a nice restaurant called Oasis. It was really nice. I got a pepperoni pizza and the others shared a (beef and chicken?) pizza (chicken on pizza is blasphemy btw, in my book of things that are blasphemies). The pizza was delicious (mine was more garlicky than your classic pepperoni pizza, I liked the twist) and I devoured my entire pizza.
And now I'm late for breakfast Thursday morning. Gotta run.