"Rain, rain, go away" Abokobiisi Part 2

Being in Abokobiisi really illuminated the fact that the rain is both a blessing and a curse for Ghanaians.

For a farmer, the rains- completely unpredictable and out of your control-determine your ability to thrive or suffer. Beyond this, the rains can be deadly.
In this post, I will highlight some few anecdotes to demonstrate how the rain affects the lives of some of the incredible Ghanaians I have met so far.
"The rains, Ah! They have been TOO much!"- (in Ghana-speak). None are unaffected; for the children, if it rains, they do not attend school that day. Can you imagine in Canada if school was canceled every day it rained or snowed? The amount of time and knowledge lost must be incredible, especially during the rainy season.

*Quality of education is greatly hindered by the rains.*

For the womens' group in Abokobiisi, when I inquired of the status of their Soya fields (funded by Ryan's Loan Program), they said things haven't gone as well as they expected. Due to the rains, and the fact that the field is a great distance from the home, they were prevented from weeding and applying fertilizer at the right times. The path to get to the field currently requires you to trench through rivers, puddles, and mud; not very practical for middle aged women, or anyone for that matter, and not conducive to high yields.

*So in this case, the success of this womens' group loan (a big business risk) is now in jeopardy.*

In Bongo, a woman's mud hut collapsed on her during a storm, breaking her leg. She returned from the hospital, feeling okay, and the next morning she was found dead. Similarly upsetting in nature, in Tugu a woman's mud hut was struck by lightning, setting fire to all of her belongings, and knocking her unconscious.
*With less than structurally sound housing, the rain can be fatal.*
Less seriously, the rain simply decreases the overall productivity of Ghanaians. Take this example: I was scheduled to go to the field at 5:45 am, and due to the rains, we could not leave until after 11. Further, many Ghanaians are petty traders eking out a living in markets and along the streets, selling from small stalls and shops. However, when it is raining, you are hard pressed to find a single place to buy any food or products. The success of any farmer's harvest is obviously dependent on the rains; when it is too rainy, fields flood and completely wash away all potential crops, or other fields are simply inundated with weeds, requiring farmers to weed more frequently if they are to prosper.

*The rain prevents Ghanaians from earning more money.*

I regret the fact that this post appears to be very negative; I merely wanted to elucidate how something that all humans experience- rain- can have a drastically variant effects on peoples' lives, prescribed only by your place of birth/residence. To me, it has been very eye opening... in Canada, the worst side effect rain has had on my life has been a bad hair day.

So the next time it rains, I hope you will join me in singing "Rain, rain, go away, come again another day"!