Bringing in the New Year with Gin and a Slaughtered Goat

Happy New Year to my loyal readers!  Christmas and New Year tend to blend into one very long celebration in Ghana.  In Helekpe that means every night there is drumming, dancing, and some very drunk men.  It was definitely interesting to see but I never spent more than ten minutes each night watching the festivities.  Cool to see but the possibility of getting talked to by a drunk Ghanaian was more than enough to send me home early.

However, that isn't to say I didn't bring in the New Year in style!  Apparently when you buy, or in our case rent, land in Ghana you do more than simply pay for it.  AYEC is renting five acres to start our new farm which should generate enough income to make AYEC self-sustaining particularly in terms of paying school fees for our scholarship winners.  The cost to rent the land was 30 cedi (22 dollars) per year per acre.  However, we also had to go through the tradition Ghanaian customs.  That meant a few weeks ago we had to go and see the land with the landowners and bring them to bottles of gin.  Then we paid for the land and went back to make it official by writing a contract.  When we went back we had to bring two more bottles of gin, a big jug of palm wine, a live male goat (confusingly known as a rum), and fifty cedi cash.  We did this all on New Years Day at 6am.  As custom dictates I took a shot of gin and then watched as the goat was slaughtered.  To be clear they use both the goat and the gin to offer some as a sacrifice to their ancestors who first claimed the land.  It was certainly interesting to see, but I don't think when I leave here I will find myself longing for the days of slaughtering animals.

That being said AYEC now has a farm for a year and when we harvest our first crops around June we should be able to use that money to secure the land for somewhere between five and ten years!  It is definitely exciting because it means AYEC does not have to ask future volunteers for money and it means our scholarship winners will be paid for.

January will mostly be spent getting the farm ready to go so that the planting can happen when the rainy season returns in late February or early March.  The other big plus of starting a farm is that one of the local teachers majored in agriculture in training college and has offered to help, so the farm is in good hands from the start!  Other than that January will be used looking to raise some more money so that we can use February, oddly enough my last month here, to renovate the local middle school. It won't be easy but if we can get it done all of our goals for my time will have been accomplished.

Other than that not much to report from the motherland.  As always your comments and emails are appreciated.  If nothing else please pray for the Ravens for the next month!