More About Zebilla - infrastructure and facilities

Coming to Zebilla from Bolgatanga (Bolga to everyone here), twenty miles away, the road passes through several villages.  These are really no more than collections of homesteads, built mainly in the traditional style of a “compound” comprising a couple of larger, rectangular “houses” with corrugated zinc roofs plus several smaller, thatched, circular buildings, built around a yard, sometimes with a nice shady tree, all surrounded by a containing wall.  Some of the villages have a school, and some have a communal “awning” which provides shade from the hot sun; and in some there are small tables of produce on speculative sale to the passer-by.  A couple have “customs barriers”, where there are iron gates which can close half or all of the road, and an awning where the officials or police can sit out of the sun.  

Zebilla is distinctly different - much bigger, many more buildings of more modern construction, fewer compounds visible from the road, and much more infrastructure.  There is a petrol station (here they are fuel stations, pronounced “foo-ell”) before you reach the customs barrier and another after it; at the barrier there is the equivalent of a motorway service-station in the form of a large crowd of women selling produce and food (freshly cooked on open fires under the trees by the road), and girls with sachets of “pure water”.  There isn’t a loo though!

Also before the barrier, you have passed the Bawku West District Assembly building (a second three-storey construction in Zebilla!); and next to that, some modest and rather uninspiring single storey buildings which are home to the Ghana Education Service (where I work) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

It’s half a mile from the customs barrier to the centre of town.  You pass a private (ie NGO-funded) clinic with adjoining internet café (which has in the past also housed a micro-finance/credit agency but that seems to have run into the sand), a guest-house/motel, numerous shops and businesses (as previously describec), the police station, and an electricity sub-station.  On your way out the other side, you see a sign to the hospital (quite large, with three wards for, respectively, women, men and children, and a laboratory where they run the blood tests for malaria etc).  There is a rather nice-looking new building which says it will house the post office and looks to be almost ready; we have been told vaguely that it might be open at the end of the year, though the person who told us that didn’t think it was actually going to be a post office in the sense we understood it!  And there is a bank – which would be impressive except that it isn’t connected to the internet and can’t do any significant modern transactions for you (but this part of Ghana is almost entirely a cash economy).  You can at least (and I suspect at most) put your money there in preference to having it in a sock under the mattress! 

You also pass a small school, which on closer inspection turns out to be a private kindergarten and primary school – it’s one of two private schools in Zebilla alongside four or five similar state schools, three Junior High Schools (plus a private one outside the town) and a Senior High School.  Opinions vary as to whether private schools are better than the state offering, but the people with money presumably think they are.

So in terms public infrastructure, Zebilla definitely has a lot more on offer than the surrounding villages.  People from the surrounding area come into Zebilla quite frequently – the market is a major draw, of course.

There are other recognizable utilities.  Public transport is one.  Jane has described to “tro-tro” service that connects Zebilla with Bolga and Bawku.  Having smiled at her description, you should conclude that getting around by public transport is distinctly possible and widely done; that the vehicles and the road they run on are dreadful and dangerous; that people take their lives into their hands quite recklessly and seemingly without protest; and that tro-tro operators and drivers needlessly put their passengers at serious risk and really ought to have more of a social conscience and be subject to some serious regulation. 

There are also buses, including some (a few each day) run by the nationalised Metro Mass Transport Company – whilst they don’t go anywhere meeting the demand for travel between Zebilla and Bolga, they are decent quality if somewhat basic.  From Bolga you can get a luxury air-conditioned coach to the main towns further south, at only slightly higher cost than Metro Mass – which is very affordable (you can get to Accra, the full length of the country, for under twenty pounds – there’s a direct bus which apparently leaves daily at 4am).  There are no railways this far north, and the nearest airport is Tamale.

Zebilla has electricity and many houses are connected.  The quality of the wiring in the houses isn’t great (for example, you regularly have to jiggle the plug in the socket to get the electrons to flow), and it cuts out when there is a heavy storm in the rainy season.  This happens frequently enough for there to be a bespoke term for it in Ghanaian-English (“lights-out”).  Ghana actually does very well for electricity, with most being generated via the hydro-electric infrastructure of Lake Volta (which is the largest man-made lake in West Africa, lying on the eastern side of Ghana adjacent to Togo) and distributed via a national grid.  I don’t recall seeing any power stations and I don’t know where the rest of the electricity comes from.

There is also water.  Outside the town there is a small dam (one person told us there are crocodiles there but others have been skeptical – one day we will check it out) and water is pumped from there to storage tanks at individual houses.  These are known as “polytanks”, and they are black, generally a bit taller than a person, and stand on elevated structures outside the houses.  Where there is vegetation growing elegantly around them softening their visual impact, this is almost certainly an accident or adventitious use of a convenient place to grow pumpkins or water melons; it has nothing to do with aesthetics.  This system of domestic storage tanks is needed because the water is only pumped in the morning.  In theory each tank has a ball-cock system which should shut off the supply when the tank is full.  Ours doesn’t work – I suspect it isn’t unique.  Thus I have to open and close a tap/valve (which is buried in the dirt) to ensure that we don’t run out of water, but that water doesn’t overflow and run to waste.  It isn’t a big deal once you get used to it, but few people would put up with it in the UK.

Not every house is connected to the water - so there seem to be some communal polytanks equipped with a tap, which serve several houses; and there are also quite a lot of bore-holes with manual pumps.   I don’t think many people have to carry water more than a couple of hundred yards.  Before you conclude that all is well, just reflect on how heavy water is and whether in a modern world anyone should be expected to carry it even that distance.  Carrying water is women’s work, and small women start joining in at a young age.

We are told that the water from the dam is treated and is ok to drink – but I don’t know if the local people actually do drink it.  I haven’t been told that the borehole water is safe to drink, but neither have I been warned by local people that it isn’t.  When we arrived, the VSO doctor advised us to filter and boil our water, regardless of where it came from – and that’s what we do.  People here seem to consume a lot of “pure water”, which is bought in polythene “sachets” containing half a litre.  You can buy these everywhere, and they are cheap (about 3 pence each).  People drink quite a lot of water because of the heat here and my impression is that most of it comes in these sachets.  There isn’t running water at work, or in any school that we have visited.   

The other end of the water infrastructure is rather less satisfactory.  Waste water from the sink and bath runs out of the house and drains into the ground, as often as not into the “street” (most of which you will recall, are not paved).  In the rainy season this water mingles with whatever has fallen from heaven – when there are puddles on the ground, the household effluent adds a slimy consistency and vaguely unpleasant odour; but when it rains after a dry day, the effluent is diluted and washed away leaving the place cleaner than it otherwise would be.  In the dry season it drains away quickly, but the pong never quite disappears.  In Bolga and Tamale there are open gutters down which this effluent flows (or stagnates, as the lie of the land dictates).  Mosquitos don’t actually breed in stagnant water but I must say I struggle to see that this system isn’t a health hazard one way or another. 

In our house, the toilets are connected to a separate septic tank.  Other people’s toilets are either similarly connected or compost directly in the ground – so mercifully it isn’t the case that raw sewage runs through the streets as it did in our country in mediaeval times.  However, toilet infrastructure doesn’t seem to be well developed in Ghana (no doubt Jane’s blog will cover school toilets at some point and I might treat you to a description of the facilities at the office).  For entirely understandable reasons, there is plenty of evidence of people “doing their business” outdoors.  It’s clear that toilets have been added fairly recently to some houses (possibly shared between several) – they are outside the “compound” at a respectable/sanitary distance from the house.  I don’t think I have seen any public conveniences in Zebilla (or Bolga, or even Tamale – about which more another time; it’s the largest city in the northern half of Ghana with a population well over half a million people, and we have just spent a week there doing motorcycle training).  There are well-established means of minimizing the health hazards associated with all this, one being that people eat with their right hand and wipe their bottoms with their left – but diseases such as typhoid are quite common here and whilst one should acknowledge the progress that has clearly been made to date, there is definitely scope for further improvement in this particular aspect of public and domestic infrastructure.

Another piece of infrastructure which doesn’t work well here is disposal of rubbish.  I have hinted before that relatively little goes to waste here and that’s a blessing - there seems to be a lot of re-use and recycling driven by poverty and scarcity of resources.  In Zebilla there are no rubbish collections and no communal or public infrastructure for dealing with refuse.  There is litter everywhere.  One of the two main components is the black polythene bags in which you buy your goods from the market (and from shops).  These are provided liberally and people seem to expect them – and they then end up on the ground or blown in trees.  The second component is empty water sachets, which are also polythene bags, quite robust and made of quite thick polythene.  Being heavier they don’t blow about as much.  We’ve heard that some people make beads from them (presumably by melting them down); and a nearby entrepreneur who has a tree nursery plants his seedlings in them.  But activities like these barely make a dent in the litter problem. 

We have heard from VSO volunteers elsewhere in Ghana that there are rubbish collections where they live.  Be that as it may, Bolga, Tamale and Accra are as litter-strewn as Zebilla.  Everyone drops litter, even the educated and well-paid.  It may be a cultural relic, since presumably in the past everything was organic and would compost away (or be eaten by the goats) – whatever it is, a significant culture change is definitely overdue. 

We have been told that we should burn any household rubbish that is burnable (and this seems to include polythene); and that we should throw vegetable waste onto the fields, where goats and pigs will eat it (this seems to be a system that works better in the dry season when vegetation is generally scarce and the animals can’t afford to be picky).  We haven’t had a fire yet and we have quite a collection of burnable rubbish waiting for the day.  We also have cans, nicely washed and ready to be recycled…

To finish on a positive note, the mobile telephone infrastructure here is excellent.  Several networks compete, and Ghanaians join in enthusiastically and quite often seem to have a phone on each network (so that they can benefit from any intra-network offers!)  We understand that this has all come about over the past five to ten years and has transformed this aspect of communications – there is either virtually or absolutely no fixed-wire telephone infrastructure. 

There isn’t a postal service either – if you want to send something you first have to take it to Bolga, and you can receive stuff there poste restante.  Ghanaians don’t appear to be great letter-writers though!  But there is local and national radio, and you can get both satellite and terrestrial TV.  

More about Zebilla - the market...

You buy fresh food in the market.  The range of recognisable food (to us) is quite limited.  Local produce includes sweet potatoes (in season now and fantastic) and tomatoes (apparently year-round and full of flavour; texture can be a bit hit and miss); yams (though we have seen these arriving in lorries so we’re not totally sure they are local); ground nuts (that’s peanuts).  There are onions but they might not be local; green peppers, which we think aren’t local and are pricy; red peppers, which we have experienced once and were so fiery that we’re giving them a seriously wide berth; and there are a couple of varieties of a mysterious green vegetable which goes by the name “garden eggs” and looks a bit like a tomato but is a lot more dense and tastes bitter until you’ve cooked it for quite a long time.

The fruit we’ve bought so far seems to be imported though some of it could come from other parts of Ghana – oranges, apples and bananas.  We’ve had pineapples twice from Bolga and we’re told they will make it to Zebilla but they have got here yet.  Zebilla supplies its own needs for watermelons and exports them within Ghana – we got one from a friend (and it was unbelievably delicious) but we haven’t succeeded in buying one yet.  We also got a pawpaw in Bolga but misjudged its ripeness and ended up throwing it away. 

The way selling works is that the seller makes little piles of her wares on a mat on the ground – so you get 4 or 5 large tomatoes for 0.5 Ghana cedis (15 pence) or a bigger pile (or maybe a small bowl) for 1 cedi.  We haven’t seen people haggling over prices but we’re told that they do – we normally pay the asking price but when we do it’s common to find a couple of extras put in too, which might mean that we should have haggled.  When you’ve bought, the wares are put into a small black polythene bag (known locally as a rubber).  We seem to be the exception in having a shopping bag.

There are various sorts of flour which is either sold in transparent polythene bags in quite small quantities (maybe a pound weight); or there are much bigger bowls, which however you seem only to be able to buy from if you have a container to put it in (and the skill to carry it away on your head).  There is also millet and maize – mainly in the large bowls; and ground nuts are sold the same way, and there are also a couple of varieties of dried beans.

Our impression is that people mainly buy quite small quantities – enough to last until the next market day.  Some people do have fridges – but certainly not everybody and my guess is that the majority don’t – but there is a ready supply of fresh food so there probably isn’t much point in trying to buy in bulk. 

There is fish – sometimes you see quite large, fresh fish, but mainly what you see is quite small fish, up to the size of a sardine, which have been dried in the sun.  The stall-holder has a big pile and you indicate what volume you want and agree a price.  We haven’t tried this – we’ve stuck to canned fish, you can get mackerel in tomato sauce and sardines.

If you want poultry, you go to a different market place and select your bird live.  They arrive at (and leave) the market in small cages beautifully woven from local rushes (maybe the stalks of millet), or with their legs tied together and slung over the handlebars of a bike or motorbike.  This is an eminently sensible way of ensuring that you get fresh and healthy produce.  We haven’t overcome our squeamishness about this yet.  You can also buy quartered fowl, which has already been cooked. 

Eggs are for sale both fresh and pre-boiled.  They are all free-range of course, and they come with various natural material adhering to the shell, as living proof.  The yolks are surprisingly pale, which makes me wonder whether the more vividly yellow yolks we are used to have had their colour artificially enhanced in some way (I recall hearing on the radio once that if you feed a chicken on maize, its meat will be more golden than one fed on other grains…)

There doesn’t seem to be a regular market place for goats, sheep, pigs and cattle, and as a general point these creatures seem to be for keeping rather than eating, except on special occasions.  We went to the tail end of a funeral recently and were told that they had slaughtered a cow to feed the guests, and there was a recent muslim festival when we understand livestock were killed – but it isn’t something we have directly experienced.  There is an abattoir in Zebilla if you don’t want to slaughter your own; and in a couple of places in the market, there are butchers’ stalls where you can see the whole animal minus its skin, in various stages of being cut into manageable pieces.

Along the road by the market there are small stalls/shops with electrical goods, hi-fi, hardware, clothing and the like.  And there are people hawking their wares around on their heads – quite a lot of pre-cooked food (“street food”) comes this way, and bananas tend to also (apparently because they bruise a bit less than they would on a stall?)  Recall at this point that Jane has previously described all the stuff that walked past on people’s heads when we were waiting for the bus from Accra to Bolga -  basically anything that can be hoisted up there (and a good many that you wouldn’t think can) stands a chance of coming past.  Zebilla doesn’t boast a particularly wide range, there is more in Bolga.

What I haven’t really attempted to describe here is the bustle of the market, its colours and its smells.  The market is a lively environment, thronged with people and activity.  The participants are predominantly women, but there are plenty of men there and neither shopping nor selling are entirely female pursuits as far as I can see.  There are plenty of children – mainly girls - and in school we have been told that pupil attendance on market days (ie every third day) is significantly poorer than on other days.  It’s quite common to see small children – certainly as young as eight and maybe even younger than that – walking round the market with goods on a tray on their heads.  Water in sachets is a common item for children to sell.

In Zebilla there are two quite large covered/roofed areas, each maybe the size of a tennis court, where sellers set out their wares.  There are also smaller stalls, which are recognisably market stalls, and have a roof which keeps off the hot sun (and rain in the wet season).  But in addition to this, at least as many sellers again, probably twice as many or even more, simply set themselves up on the ground.  People selling similar items tend to congregate together, so for example there is a large tree outside the main market square where vegetable sellers assemble; there is a street of yam sellers (at present infiltrated by sweet potato sellers); we recently learnt that water melons are sold further up town at a different place – that might explain why we haven’t seen one to buy yet, so will have to be checked out urgently (the water melon season isn’t long so one has to gorge while the opportunity presents itself).  

Apparently there is a system for allocating market stalls (official and unofficial) to sellers, and that you’re not allowed simply to pitch up with your wares.  I don’t know how true this is or whether it’s enforced – many laws in Ghana clearly aren’t vigorously enforced, but I have the suspicion that the market is such an integral part of local life in these rural areas that it’s rules will be a matter of keen public interest and hence complied with and enforced by peer pressure even in the absence of an efficient regulating bureaucracy.

More About Zebilla...

Our insights into how Zebilla works come from three different perspectives.  One is that we are working here - for the Ghana Education Service.  Thus we have direct contact with schools and the education system, and we operate alongside the local government structure.  A second is that as citizens of Zebilla we have to do all the things that constitute daily life – buying and eating food, consuming electricity and water, contributing sewage and waste, using our mobile phones and the internet, and travelling to Bolga to get our laptops fixed.  A third is that we are spectators of what goes on around us, and we interact with at least some of the local people, see what they do and hear what they say. 

Our training with VSO put a lot of emphasis on not jumping to conclusions, and on being aware of our own culturally pre-determined expectations and prejudices.  We have only been in the town for 8 weeks.  So there is obviously the risk that we will fall into these traps.  Partly for that reason, but partly also because most of the time I feel genuinely positive about the place, I’m going to concentrate mainly on the positive aspects and the things which, sometimes contrary to all expectations, you actually can do.

Zebilla functions as a town and as a community.  People go about their daily lives and rub shoulders with their neighbour and generally get on with things.  The day starts early – the muezzim’s first call is just before 5am when it is just beginning to get light, and over the course of the next half hour you can hear that a few people are up and about.  Occasionally you can hear a heavy lorry passing along the road.  There is an excellent practical reason for making an early start here.  By 8am it is getting hot.  An hour later it has got hot.  It gets progressively hotter still, peaking around 4pm, and it’s still hot as the sun goes down.  So if you can get stuff done early it is more comfortable.

Let me insert here that the animal population gets on with its own thing.  Cocks crow, pigeons coo, guinea fowl – I don’t think there aren’t words to describe what guinea fowl get up to but let me tell you it’s noisy – pigs, sheep and goats rootle and gruntle and trample around giving the impression that they are 20 times their actual size.   But it seems to be the case that those creatures which aren’t nocturnal make an early start too.

Every third day is market day, which gives rise to more traffic of all types.  By the time we set off for work (a bit after 7 if we are going into a school, or around 8 if we are going to the office), the streets are distinctly “in action”.  Building work is usually already going full swing.  The women who run the many roadside shops are there, and those who cook have their fires going and something boiling or frying in a pan.  Roadside businesses – be they vehicle repair, bed or furniture making, metalwork of various sorts, tailoring and seamstressing – are getting ready for action but are mainly not quite out of the starting gates yet.  A key activity is greeting – people here stop to pass a few words with their neighbours before they get on with the business of the day – and the air if full of “do-awela” (how was the night?) and “lafubay” (I’m fine, I’m healthy) (plus plenty of other things that we can’t translate – note that life at the local level goes on in Kusaal). 

Outside the police station there will be at least one officer in uniform surveying the world, probably another cleaning a car; likewise at the customs barrier on the edge of town, the official personnel are in evidence.  The road is busy with a lot of motorbikes and bikes, plus tro-tros (see Jane’s blog – janehartleyghana.blogspot.com ), a few cars and the occasional bus or lorry.  There are children on their way to school, though we understand that a lot are at school shortly after 6 (we haven’t quite worked out why).   At school, the ladies who cook food to sell to the children and teachers are at their stations and preparing their wares.  Especially on market day there are many women and a few men carrying things to sell – the women carry heavy things in tubs on their heads, the men generally exert themselves rather less.  Among the heaviest things they carry are firewood and water.  I have an aspiration to take a photograph of a woman carrying a load such as this (and another aspiration to post it in my blog…), because seeing is believing and without a photo I don’t think you would.

Zebilla doesn’t have what a westerner would recognise as commercial buildings – factories and warehouses.   This work happens mainly in the open air.  There are what you might describe as awnings with corrugated iron or zinc roofs, which keep the rain off and provide some shelter from the sun.  A carpenter’s workbench will be under one of these.  Things are put away at night but there isn’t exactly high security.  We haven’t heard that there is a need for greater security, though we have been told that there is quite a bit of theft of livestock (pigs are apparently an exception because they make an infernal noise if you try to grab them, but goats and sheep seem easy to rustle).

Shops are small, square (cuboid) structures without windows, which lock securely at night.  They contain the stock on shelves and, once again, have an awning at the front where the shopkeeper resides.  To buy, you join her under the awning and either tell her what you want or point.  Each individual shop carries a fairly limited stock and seems quite specialised.  One we use quite regularly sells soap and washing powder (but washing-up liquid was a special order which generated enthusiastic positive noises but hasn’t materialised yet); mosquito coils and fly-spray; a narrow range of tinned food; cartons of fruit juice and cans of soft drinks (including some cold stock in the fridge); dried milk; digestive biscuits (a luxury item, twice the price of the UK).  She also sells phone credit, which I will explain later.  Once you know where to find it, you can buy most things that you need for daily life.  “Need” is perhaps the operative word; one thing about Zebilla is that it teaches you quite quickly what you can do without.

There are more specialised shops.  There are a couple of “cold stores” which are basically big freezers, which sell deep-frozen items, including meat and fish but also some other delicacies – one we were shown recently is frozen yogurt (yum).  There are mobile phone and accessory stalls, and you can buy electrical goods – the stalls which sell these tend to have big speakers and blare out quite horridly distorted music (a rather bland brand of reggae which one could easily allow to get on one’s nerves). 

Another “shop” sells auto parts.  We haven’t had call to go in and see what they have.  There aren’t all that many private cars here but there are a lot of tro-tros which are minibus-type vehicles.  These all seem to have been bought second-hand from Europe, probably with six-figure mileage and usually with their previous existence still painted on their sides– I imagine that they might be a ready market for all sorts of car parts.  The various NGOs (non-government organisations), and also the public institutions have chunky 4-wheel drive vehicles which are in good condition; I don’t know what the service contract arrangements are but they must also need parts. 

I don’t think you can buy a whole car here.  However, you can buy a motorbike – new or second-hand - and also those African special vehicles which are motorcycle at the front and two-wheeled trailer at the back.  We have heard that it’s cheaper to cross the border into Togo to buy a motorbike, and since we have been here we have heard of one young man who did just that, then was involved in an accident on the way back, and died.  (We haven’t heard what happened to the bike…)

You can also buy a bicycle – which we have done.  There are a lot of bikes here, and there are a couple of bike sellers who both carry a surprisingly large stock of basically identical machines.  Large (I mean really large) lorries come past, piled high with bikes.  Ours are Chinese imports.  Bicycle repairing and maintenance is another street-side business.  The repairers seem to be busy, and I have the impression that tools in general are expensive, and good quality and specialist tools difficult to acquire – so most people get someone to do their maintenance and repair for them.  I also have the impression that bikes, and indeed cars and motorbikes, and probably everything else come to that, are run on a regime of breakdown rather than preventative maintenance.

A final observation is that prices here are pretty low.  It’s easy to understand why – most people here don’t have much money so you don’t have much chance of selling anything expensive.  As a consequence, the things you can buy are not particularly good quality.  Your kitchen knives have flimsy blades and won’t stay sharp.  You eat off plastic or melamine plates and bowls because you can’t buy decent china or pottery.  The electrical goods are all bottom end of the market.  There isn’t any sense of branding – there are no fancy trainers in Zebilla (but there are some hilarious counterfeit articles – we spotted an ahmahny recently).  I don’t mean that there aren’t people with money here – our impression is that there are, and there are certainly televisions and satellite dishes, washing machines, fridges and such.  But there don’t seem to be enough of them to support shops that sell higher end goods, so presumably their finer possessions come from elsewhere in Ghana.  Given our experience with the internet (and also from talking to people) I don’t think they are bought on-line…

There is lots more to tell, so I’ll come back to this topic.