First update from Ghana

Sorry this is so long, but here goes...

Hello Everyone!

I’m sure you are looking for updates on my Ghana adventures. We are just now getting into the intense part of training. For the first two weeks, we got an orientation into Ghana, which included learning that nothing is ever on time and patience is seriously a virtue. We spent the first week or so in Accra, the capital, where we were introduced to all the Peace Corps staff and mainly got to know each other. During that time we went on an “Accra Quest” in which we were split into groups and sent into Accra on our own to find certain places. It was fun to learn about the public transportation here and actually be on our own for a while. My group went to the National Theatre, which is a beautiful building, and to a tro-tro station. We finished early so we decided to have a snack under a nice tree, but it started “raining”, which meant that it was barely sprinkling, and a worker at a bar (called a “spot” here) invited us to sit in there to get shelter from the rain. One thing about Ghana, and I think most of Africa, is life stops when it rains. I LOVE when it rains because it cools everything down, but they think that I am weird for that.

After our week in Accra, we were sent out on a “Vision Quest”, where we went to spend 5 days with a current volunteer in our sector to see what they do and how they live. We were supposed to travel to this alone too, but there were 7 of us going to the Northern Volta region, so we traveled in a group to that too. That region has the worst roads and the worst tro-tros in the whole country. It was ridiculous. I took a full day to get to my host’s site and by the time I got there my skin and clothes were a completely different color because of all the dust. I had to take three tro-tros and a car to get to her site. It was quite the adventure. In her site, she has the bare minimum requirements for housing. She has a bedroom, a kitchen, a courtyard, a latrine, and a bathing area. However, the courtyard is shared with her landlord and his wife who live in the room next to her and the latrine and bathing area are shared with about 15 people. Everyone in the town was very nice though and I enjoyed my time with her. The town has no electricity and is very small and remote. They have a primary school (elementary school), but the teachers only show up about once a week or less, so we went and taught a couple of lessons for fun. They have a clinic, too, which is good for such a small town. We got the kids to plant a Morenga garden next to the clinic one morning before school, which was a good health/environment project. Morenga is a tree that grows very nutritious fruit and can be used for many different things, and every part of the tree can be used. It is one of the things that peace corps is pushing a lot now to promote good nutrition and it is easy to grow around here. I also learned how to cook on a coal pot and learned a couple of good recipes. Overall, it was fun and I got to realize some of the struggles I will have at site, so I will be prepared to deal with those when I start.

Then, we stayed in a hotel in Kukurantumi, a couple hours outside of Accra, for a few nights. During this time we had our site interviews, learned some survival Twi, and had a lot of free time. On those nights, we also went out to a spot a lot and got to really hang out socially. It was a lot of fun, and don’t worry mom, I only had one beer and mostly drank fanta. I don’t see the fun in getting drunk when you have to be up at 6am everyday. Oh yea, I forgot to mention that I have not slept past 6:30am since I was home, and typically wake up by 5:30 without an alarm, it’s kind of scaring me a little bit.

Now, we finally found out where our sites will be, who our neighbors will be, and what language we will be learning. I will be in the Northern Region, in a village called Voguu. It has a population of about 1600 and has no electricity in the whole town. I am learning the language Dagbani. There are four of us learning that language and I will have quite a few close neighbors. The other trainees that will be close to me are really great and I am guessing the volunteers who are already there are great too. I will be doing a lot of work with guinea worm and HIV/AIDS, so I am very excited about that. I will have my own house, which will be a cement house with a zinc roof. It obviously has no electricity, but has a bucket flush toilet and a bathing room to take bucket baths (which I really like, by the way). It has a bedroom and a living room. I don’t know about the cooking facilities, but I hope to get a little propane stove because I am not too far outside of a major city, so I will be able to refill the tank when I need to. Also, I’m almost an expert on a coal pot by now, haha.

We also are finally at homestay. I am living in an interesting house. My host mom is an older woman whose children are grown and live in Accra and Canada. There are no kids. She also rents rooms to a teacher and a driver. The teacher is a 22 year old girl who speaks English very well and is fun to talk to and hang out with. I am very glad she is living here. The driver is never around because he drives a taxi, but he is a nice guy about my age as well. Soon I hope to start cooking with my host mom so that I can learn to cook Ghanaian food, and learn to cook in general. Since I am still a guest, she makes me eat alone in my room, which bothers most people, but I kind of like it and don’t know if I am going to ask to eat with her anytime soon. Tonight I played football (soccer) with a couple other trainees and a ton of the guys in the town. The guys are really good and we looked like fools, but it was really fun and one of the other girls actually scored a goal. It was so nice to finally do something active again and I think I will keep playing with them a few days a week. Oh yea, one bad thing about my homestay is that there are GIANT cockroaches in my “toilet”, which is a toilet type structure over a latrine, so I had to sweep a huge cockroach into the latrine before I could squat over this thing to do my business. And for those of you who do not know what a latrine is, it is a huge hole in the ground that you build an outhouse over with a hole in the bottom and you poop into the hole in the ground, obviously a very pleasant place.

So, that is my life in Ghana thus far. I am sure there are a million things I left out, but I’m also sure you are tired of reading by now, so I will stop. Hopefully if I start updating more often, I will have less to write each time.

I miss you all, but I am very happy here and am looking forward to living here for two years. Please send me letters or cards. Packages are nice too. I was so excited when I my first letter, which was from Auntie Paula (thank you!). I am trying to write letters too, but it costs 1.5 Ghana Cedi to send a letter and right now we are making 2 Ghana Cedi per day, so don’t expect too many letters while I am in training. You can send me emails, too. I’ll leave you by saying “tin nya taba”, which means see you later in Dagbani.