Pictures

These are in reverse chronological order (oops), but I guess that goes with the layout of the blog.


At the end of Ramadan there is a festival where you go to prayer outside in the morning, eat tons of food, greet a million people, and there's dancing. This is me dancing with the women. In the dance, you stand in a line singing and clapping and when you get to the front you sort of run out towards the drummers and back, booty bump someone, turn around and booty bump the next person, and get back in line. It was a lot of fun.



This was my outfit for the prayer part of the festival and some of the greeting. We decided I should wear the traditional clothing. The dress is actually mine that I had made here, but the scarves are borrowed.



This is the prayer service outside in the morning. Its neat to see everyone praying together and dressed in the beautiful scarves.



Here's the new desk and chair the the District Assembly gave me.



Here's the new bed they gave me too. My counterpart and his friend brought this from the district capital on the back of two bicycles. I wish I could have seen it.



This is me with Cynthia, another fresh volunteer, at the after after party after swearing in. We started at a bar in the next town over and ended in this bar in our training village. It was a great night. And yes, I'm just wearing a two-yard piece of cloth, but it is much more comfy than the dress I had worn to swearing in.



This is my host brother and I at swearing in. My host mom had the dress made for me for the event. Terribly uncomfortable!



This is all the new volunteers going to the Northern Region. Don't we look good in all our ghanaian clothes?



Two of the best outfits at swearing in! Our host parents must have had a blast playing dress-up with us.



This is all the new WatSan volunteers in our glorious Ghana gear.



The Dagbani language group. Clearly the best language group ever!



The first time I wore the dress my mom had made for me was for church. After church, she paraded me around town to show off my beautiful new dress. Towards the end of training my mom would surprise me with random new dresses or skirts to wear. I began to feel a lot like a doll.



There's nothing like waking up early in the morning in an African village and digging a big hole in nasty smelly mud and filling it with rocks! We built a soak-away pit during training and it came out pretty good. Soak-away pits are built under the drain pipes of bathing areas in people's houses and are used to prevent malaria by preventing standing water where mosquitos can breed.



This is a beautiful waterfall we hiked to towards the end of training.



And here are the girls at the waterfall, excited to be doing something fun and not training related.

Starting Work

Sorry it has been so long since I last updated, I haven't been on the internet in a while. I'm in Tamale now to use the computers for some work and finally give you all an update. Its been so long that I don't actually know what to write. I guess I'll start by ending my stories from last time...

For the stove, the manager was very nice and had someone repair it for me the day I brought it in. When I picked it up, he said there was dirt blocking the gas flow and that it was fixed. However, at site it worked that night and stopped working completely after. So, after having about 5 men from my village trying to diagnose and fix the problem for two days, we decided the regulator was the problem and I had to come back to Tamale. I made it a quick day trip, and the man who sold it to me remembered me and gave me a replacement no problem. I went back, and finally, my stove was working properly. I've been cooking fairly good meals ever since, and even some very good ones (by my standards).

As for my bed, it also finally arrived. My counterpart and his friend rode two bicycles to the district capital about an hour bike ride away and brought back the bed frame and mattress on the bicycles. Unfortunately, I was not at my house when they got back to see their amazing maneuvering to manage that, but I'm very impressed and happy that they did it for me. The bed is very nice and they also gave me a new desk and chair the next day. I think I have nicer furniture than most PCVs.

Also, my birthday was almost two weeks ago, so I am now the old age of 24. The weekend before my birthday two of my PCV friends came to visit my site to celebrate with me. It was nice to have people visit and my village loved it. We didn't do much celebrating, since there is not much to do at my site, but we hung out and played cards and enjoyed each others company. I also made them my favorite meal so far, which is spaghetti with meat sauce (the meat is canned corn beef, but I swear it's really good). However, while there, they ruined my reputation of being good at Dagbani. They are both more outgoing than I am, so they love to be loud and talk a lot, whereas I like to listen more and talk when I know I'll say something right. So, when we were greeting everyone, it was decided that I don't understand dagbani but my friends do. I expected this and was prepared, and within a day or two, everyone forgot, but it was funny at the time. However, I told them they aren't invited back until I'm fluent, haha. My language skills are actually coming along though, and I think I might ask one of the teachers to tutor me.

Ghanaians do not celebrate birthdays because they don't usually know when they were born. So, my actual birthday was very uneventful, just another day. I got a lot of phone calls and texts from home though, so that was nice. I explained birthdays to my counterpart, but he still didn't really get why we celebrate them.

Other than that, I finally started doing actual work. I started my census of the community. So, I've been going house to house asking how many people live there, what their most common health problems are, if they have a toilet, if they have mosquito nets, where they get their water and if they filter, and if they know about family planning. I'm going to use this information to find out where to focus my work. So far, it seems they need everything, so I'm still not sure exactly where I'll start, but there certainly won't be a shortage of projects. This takes up about 3 hours everyday, which is nice. I also like it because I am really meeting everyone now.

Hmm, I also met with the guinea worm volunteers in my community. They are very nice and eager to work with me. This was a good meeting for me to go to because I learned who to go to for organizing the women, which seems like it will be difficult. The women are ridiculously busy everyday since they do like 90% of the work.

Other random stuff... I rearranged and cleaned my kitchen and covered the hole the mice use to enter. However, they made another hole and forced me to start using the poison. I've killed two so far, and hope there are no more. This country is also increasing my hatred of bugs, but they seem to love me. The rainy season is dying down, which makes me sad, so it's starting to get hotter. Harmattan is coming though, which is supposedly the coolest season of the year. So cold that "people won't even leave their house. Sometimes they'll even be inside until 9:30" and "you'll have to wear a pullover". These things make me laugh, like I do when the ghanaians are shivering and wearing coats when it rains and I'm comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt.

And now for the closing dagbani lesson, a conversation with me that ghanaians think is hilarious:
A: I'm cold: "Wari malima"
A: Are you cold: "Wari maliaa?"
B: No, I'm not cold: "Aayi, wari bi malima"
B: I like the cold a lot: "M borila wari pam!"