New Season and a Makeover

New Season
The Harmattan season has begun, and rainy season has ended. The Harmattan season is named for the Harmattan winds, which blow down from the Sahara desert. It looks like there is a fog covering everything, but really it’s just dust from the desert. The sky is grey with dust. It now cools down at night enough to where I sleep in a long sleeved shirt. Afternoons are even hotter than they were before. At 6 a.m. today, the thermometer on my alarm clock said 74 degrees, and yesterday afternoon it said 92 degrees. My room is usually a tiny bit warmer than it is outside. Leaves are falling from the trees. The people here hate this season, and everyone is kind of listless right now.

Make-Over Ghana Style
When the women here are not cooking, hauling water, making Shea butter, or tending their children, they will do each others hair. They put it into tight braids wrapped with a plastic thread. These braids can hold for up to three months, and they can wash their hair with the braids in.
Older women also use zappelo on their feet, and sometimes on their hands. I think this is like a henna dye, but I’m not sure. It looks like dried and crushed spinach, and then they mix it with water and spoon it onto their feet. Then they let it dry, and peel off the dried mixture. This process is repeated several times. The first time leaves your feet orange, but it gets darker and darker with repeated applications. When I tried it, I did two coats. That was almost two weeks ago, and my feet are still orange, although it is fading.
Some people associate the zappelo with weddings, but others say that it’s just something that women do to make themselves more beautiful, like the way Americans wear make-up. I got the impression that it traditionally was used for weddings but is becoming more of an everyday sort of thing.
When they were putting the zappelo on my feet, the women were fascinated by my tan lines from my sandals. I showed them how much darker my arms are than my belly, and they were horrified. People here like lighter skin- the lighter the better. People who can afford it spend a lot of money on creams to lighten their skin. They told me I should wear long sleeves everywhere so I wouldn’t ruin my light skin. I told them that in America people will pay a lot of money on tanning lotion to make their skin darker, which they thought was bizarre.
People will sometimes cut the cheeks of their children to produce scars for beautification. Among the Dagombas, this is optional and only done to make the child more beautiful. Some other tribes have tribal markings, meant to identify the person with their tribe. Usually, the cut is either diagonal across both cheeks or vertical. Both men and women have them.

Making Shea Butter
Many women make and sell shea butter here. This is done by roasting the shea- the women put the shea into big pots over a fire and stir, stir, stir. After it’s roasted and cooled, they take it to the grinding mill and have it ground into a powder. They then put the powder into a big bowl with some water and use their right hand to stir. It looks like a giant bowl of chocolate cake batter. Hot water is added in small increments until it gets to the right consistency. Then cold water is added, which causes the oil to rise to the top, where it can be skimmed off. The water is then discarded. When I helped, the women gave me a small bowl that some of the younger girls were using. I wondered why, until about 10 minutes in when I was struggling to keep stirring. The consistency is very thick, and you have to slam it down to get the oil to separate. My arm was sore by the time I finished, and I had only a small bowl and someone was helping me. I guess that’s why the women here all have toned arms. My hand was soft from the butter by the time I finished.