Peter DiCampo

The North

You stay in a place for so long that you no longer know how to tell its story. This is me, in between other photography projects and my Peace Corps work, going outside with a camera and trying to tell you about the place I lived in. It's not enough - your soul can't smile when you suddenly realize you can speak to people in their language, and your heart can't break when the kid down the road falls ill and dies. You can't breathe the dust or taste the shea fruit or hear the drumming in the night. Very few pictures have that power, and these ones don't come close. All the same, here's the tiniest glimpse of daily life in northern Ghana, a place that I once called home.

Click here to view an audio slideshow about my first four months as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana.

Children play in discarded groundnut plants after helping their families harvest on a farm outside Wantugu, Ghana.
   
Community members work together to build a new room on a house in Wantugu. Because people cannot farm during northern Ghana's dry season, they use the time to accomplish other necessary tasks.
   
A group of young men plays football in a field in Wantugu. The area lacks vegetation during northern Ghana's long dry season, but it serves as farmland once rains begin to fall.
     
  
Young boys play soccer in Tampion, Ghana.
   
Young boys cook bush-rats over a fire outside of Wantugu. Food becomes scarce during northern Ghana's dry season, so people burn brush outside of the town and kill the animals that run out for their meat.
   
The body of a car thief in Krobo, Ghana. The man was caught stealing a taxi and was beaten to death by a mob the previous day.
     
  
A mother breastfeeds her newborn infant after giving birth at the clinic in Wantugu.
   
A bride applies makeup before presenting herself to the groom at their muslim wedding in Wantugu.
   
Women fetch water from a dam in Tampion.
     
  
A girl lies in discarded groundnut plants to take a break from harvesting on a farm outside Wantugu.