SO. MANY. SHEEP.

Apologies for the long gap between posts. No, I didn't sink into a depression after Ghana was eliminated from the World Cup after being soooooooo close, though it was pretty sad those first couple of days. I lost access to the Internet for a bit, but thankfully it's back. For now, at least.

Last Wednesday I went out to the field with the organization OIC Ghana. OIC stands for Opportunities Industrialization Centers, and it was founded by an African-American minister in Philadelphia to train people for various vocations. The OIC program based in Tamale focuses on the 4 components of agriculture, water and sanitation, maternal and child health nutrition, and microenterprise development.

Part of the microenterprise facet includes the distribution of sheep and goats. OIC Ghana is solely funded by USAID (United States Agency for International Development), and uses the money to buy the animals. As you can see in the picture, there were SO. MANY. SHEEP.

This picture doesn't even capture the constant bleating of the approximate 200 sheep kept in the pen. It took a good hour for the men to rope up and load the very unwilling sheep onto the trucks to deliver to the lucky women of the Langantire community in West Gonja, about a hour and a half drive from Tamale. The sheep arrived before we did, waiting impatiently in groups of 5. Before simply handing over the sheep just like that, proper documentation had to be done. The women had to provide their thumbprint as a signature. Their husbands also had to be present to stand as witnesses.


Numbered sheets of paper were given out to the community kids, and they stood by each group of sheep.


To ensure fairness, the process of giving out sheep was based on a ballot system. That way no woman had any unfair advantages over one another.



I watched the women walk home with their new assets, happy for them, yet not really understanding how rearing sheep is considered an income-generating activity. Aren't they only useful for their wool and meat? It was only later that I found out just how lucrative sheep could be. From May through August, there is no harvest, meaning no food. The task of finding food for the family is transferred from the man, who farms, to the woman. I thought you could just kill one of your sheep for its meat, but what would you eat it with? In communities such as these, meat isn't consumed often and is more of a luxury. Instead it's much more profitable to spare them and use the money to buy maize flour, and even pay hospital bills and school fees. Better yet, when the sheep produces offspring, you give the kids to another family so that they can raise their own sheep. This is known as "passing on the gift," which not only repeats the cycle, but also fosters unity in the community.


Wow. Who knew sheep could be so useful? Hats off to you, sheep of the world.