Saturday Morning in the Village

“It’s in the bush! You want to go to the bush?!” One of the young English speaking girls replied when I told her that I wanted to accompany the women on their morning fire wood gathering mission.
“Yes – is that okay? Can I go with them?” I replied. I was standing in a small circle of short and wiry Ghanaian women holding hand made axes and cutlasses (machetes). They looked me up and down.
“But you don’t even have long sleeves!” I looked at the women who were going. They were dressed in their standard attire of a baggy long dress with short sleeves and flip flops. One of the younger girls didn’t even have shoes on. Nonetheless, I was sure that it was probably in my best interest to cover as much skin as possible if I was heading out with them. I went and changed into long pants, rubber boots, and a long sleeved shirt. We were off.

After 30 minutes walking down the red dirt road and another 15 minutes of bushwhacking, I found myself sitting in 12 foot tall grass and shielding my eyes from the hot sun as I watched one of the women, in a satin finish pink dress with flowers, climbing a large dead shea nut tree with a cutlass in one hand. About halfway up the tree, she stopped and steadied herself on a branch before beginning to hack away at the other branches with her cutlass. The heavy branches flattened the tall grass as they fell around the tree.

The firewood was further chopped into smaller pieces and tied on u-shaped basket frames to be carried back. I helped a few of the ladies hoist their incredibly heavy loads on top of their heads, and then asked if I could try carrying the load that was earmarked for the youngest girl (who appeared to be about 10 years old). I tried to lift the load, but needed assistance to make it up above my head. I put the firewood on my head for maybe 10 wobbly seconds before the women insisted on taking it from me. I didn’t complain – it was far too heavy for me to carry even 10 feet, let alone the long journey back.

I learned many things that Saturday morning in the village. One of them was that collecting firewood is really not my forte. I probably didn’t need to come to Ghana to figure that out.