All Volunteers Conference and Other Nonsense

This week, we had our All Volunteers Conference, where all the PCVs in Ghana got together at a hotel with the Peace Corps staff and had lots of sessions on how we can improve our work and new ideas and all that good stuff. Its being held at a nice hotel in Ho (yes, that is really the name of the city) in the Volta region. We have nice rooms with AC and a pool. Every night has basically been a huge pool party with lots of people ending up in the pool with their clothes on, some willingly and some not. Last night we even had prom. It was a lot of fun. People dressed up either in nice clothes or in ridiculous outfits, including a couple of guys in dresses. Some of the staff even joined us for the festivities and one almost became prom king. Tonight, we have a talent show, which should make for another night of ridiculous fun.

Right now though, I am in Accra because my skin hates Ghana. My skin is always getting irritated here and most recently I developed some absesses in my armpits. If you don't know what they are, they are lumps that form when bacteria enters your hair follicles and your body tries to attack that bacteria. Basically a big pocket of pus forms and sometimes heals itself and sometimes keeps growing until you have a doctor cut it open for you. I am lucky enough to have one that the doctor had to cut open. Even the doctors said it was an impressive one. Not sure if I should be proud of that, but I am a little. The cleaning process was very painful, but I feel much better now and I'm on antibiotics to make sure it heals well and doesn't spread. It was so painful all week that I sometimes avoided the pool and couldn't even dress up for prom (not that I would have gotten too dressed up anyway). I'm glad to have it taken care of and advise everyone to avoid absesses.

So anyway, that is my life recently. I hope I didn't gross out too many people with that story, but I like gross things and thought I should share.

Women's Group

I finally started a women's group in my village. I have wanted to do this for a long time but never knew how to get started. So, I finally decided to just gather some women who are motivated and start a health group with them. I am still trying to figure out how this is going to go and how I can make it sustainable. So far, we have been talking about nutrition and water. I talked about the importance of drinking borehole water over dam water because of parasites and the feces and stuff that get in dam water. I also gave them some colored strips of paper to measure small children's arms to see if they are malnourished. Finally, I talked to them about food groups and the importance of eating energy, protective, and body building foods in every meal. I want to try to have them teach other women some of the things we talk about at baby weighings. They seem to be learning and enjoying the group, but they are discouraged with a lot of the things I tell them because they do not have the money to buy some of the foods that I say they need to eat. Money is a serious issue here, but it is one that I don't have the resources to solve also. We'll see how it goes.

I am also preparing to hand in my proposal for fixing my clinic. I have all the estimates done and am just trying to finish the final copy of the application. So, hopefully soon you will get some information from me asking for donations to fix up our clinic. Other than that, I'm trying to get some projects started, but seem to keep running into clitches. Oh well, it all works out.

Sorry such a short post, but not much has been going on.