This is the final installment of a series of stories written by Kelly Lower and Taylor Yarbrough, research assistants to Dr. Kathleen Ragsdale and Dr. Mary Read-Wahidi of the Mississippi State University’s Social Science Research Center. As part of SIL’s Socioeconomic and Gender Equity Research (SGER) team, Dr. Ragsdale, Kelly, and Taylor visited the Northern Region of Ghana to conduct the second wave of the Soybean Uptake and Networking Survey (SUNS II) in collaboration with SIL’s in-country partner, Catholic Relief Services/Ghana (CRS). The SGER/CRS team is working in four districts in the Northern Region, Chereponi, Karaga, Saboba, and Tolon. The SGER/CRS team has also begun conducting focus groups centered on gender and land tenure with men and women smallholder farmers in each of the four districts.
Taylor: Traveling to Ghana was a profound yet humbling experience for me. After seeing many Ghanaians who were street vendors working in the streets of Accra, Tamale, and Yendi, in order to provide for themselves and their families, I found a new respect for life. I began to appreciate all that I have and consider how blessed I was. During this trip, I vowed to no longer take my life for granted or complain about the minute things that I do not have, but to be grateful for the bare necessities.