Humjibre, the "Resting Place"

In the local language, Humjibre means “resting place.” People settled here long ago after coming upon a fresh water source, which continues to supply water to the 3,500-4,000 people here today. It’s now a concrete pool with a few deep wells that people fetch water from every day – except women on Wednesday (we’ll get to that). This area is lush and green and is the perfect place to grow bananas, plantains, and the main cash crop, cocoa. Every family here has land that they farm, and when they are not in school, at church, or at one of their other jobs, they are working their farms – even the GHEI staff, who are plenty busy already. Don’t ask them if they had a relaxing weekend…

The only day people do not go to farm is Wednesday. Wednesday is market day in Bekwai, the next town over, and it’s also an opportunity to give the spirits that occupy the forest and the water a break, to show respect and gratitude for what they have provided. Since women do the lion’s share of the water fetching, no women are allowed to visit the water source on Wednesdays – in fact, there’s a specific spot along the path that they cannot go beyond. If they need water, a man must go for them, or they believe the spirits will get angry and do something bad to the woman. I’m not sure why the spirits only hurt women, but this gives the ladies a nice break from fetching water and allows them to go to market.

The Bekwai market is a fairly typical African market, with a little bit of everything – machetes, piles of used clothes and cheap sandals, plantains and cassava and yams galore, dried fish, very large snails (they eat them), freshly ground peanut butter… Not a huge variety of fruits and vegetables available here, so we’ll have to get creative. Not surprisingly, the diet here is pretty low on those; the vegetables are usually mashed up or boiled down into a stew that is eaten with starch in one gooey form or another. It’s not exactly a vegetarian’s paradise, but somehow we’re making do. It is currently mushroom season, which has been a treat, and Bryson even found cauliflower the other day.   

Humjibre is made up of several neighborhoods, bisected by the main road through town. This road is a main thoroughfare for miners, loggers, taxi drivers, and buses going to Kumasi or the coast in one direction, and to Cote D’Ivoire in the other. It makes for a slightly terrifying stroll, dodging taxis, buses, and watching out for the log trucks barreling through with their precarious piles of enormous tree trunks, all while trying not to fall into the gutter.

The GHEI compound, where we live, is in the neighborhood of Canada. They named it Canada because it’s supposedly colder over here… There is also Israel (named because it’s a peaceful place…), Left Bank, Right Bank, Low Cost, Habitat (Habitat for Humanity builds houses there every year), and Zongo (where the Muslims live). Ghanaians in this area are predominantly Christian (of course, mixed with traditional beliefs like spirits in the forest), and it’s a huge part of people’s lives. Most people go to church on Sundays, and in Humjibre alone there are Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, Twelfth Apostle, Seventh Day Adventist, and Presbyterian churches, plus a few others. We’ve gone the past two weeks to the Anglican church up the street, and although we can’t understand any of it, it’s a nice opportunity to meditate, meet people, and be part of a closer community.

So, I’d agree that Humjibre is a nice, peaceful place…with a few exceptions. Every morning starting around 4:30am, it starts with a rooster crow or two, then the sound of a man’s voice over the community loudspeaker. These are the morning announcements and advertisements. They do it this early in order to catch everyone before they head off to farm, and every morning I want to blow that speaker to pieces. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just a few minutes of calm, reasonable communication, but this usually goes on for at least an hour and a half and is pretty much a steady stream of shouting. I don’t know what he’s saying, but this guy gets pretty worked up about whatever it is. As the town is blasted out of their slumber, this grows into a cacophony of animal sounds, children crying, horns honking, women sweeping, buckets filling, people singing, etc, etc, until it’s impossible to rest anymore. A year’s supply of ear plugs might have been a good idea…