Long over-due update

Sorry I've been bad about updating my blog. I tried to put pictures of the clinic on here a while ago, but the internet wasn't working well or something. Anyway, things are going pretty well. The work on the clinic has started, but this is going to be a long process. The masonry and carpentry work is almost done, and the district came to look at it and made an estimate of the costs of painting and wiring. The village is very happy that we are working on this, but all of us are worried about how long the district will take for their part. I will put pictures up here soon, I promise.

Other than that, I spent the last week in the Upper West region learning about bee-keeping. It was really interesting and bee-keeping is much easier than I thought. Its requires very little work and the starting costs are not too high. I'm hoping to bring this to my village, but have not worked out the details yet on how I'll do that. Even if I don't get to do it in my village though, if the economy is still so bad when I get home from Peace Corps I can just be a bee-keeper there, right?

Last thing for work... I think I mentioned a boat trip that we are planning a long long time ago on here. Well, after months of thinking it wouldn't happen, it seems like it really is going to happen. We are planning on starting on Nov. 7 and finishing Nov. 18. The planning process has been a lot of work, but the trip seems like it will be really good.

Apart from work, life has been pretty normal here. However, I did celebrate my birthday a little. In Mid-September, we had a gathering at the Tamale office where some friends made chicken parmesan for my friend Lizzy and I. Lizzy's birthday was August 30, so we chose the halfway point to celebrate both. It was a pretty laid back time, but all of our good friends were there and we had a great dinner! On my actual birthday I had work to do to plan for the boat trip. That work included going to a village called Nawuni, which means God, where we are going to start the trip. In this village there's a huge water pump in the river that pumps water out to be purified and used as pipe water for the whole region. It was cool to see, but mostly I just like saying I went to God and saw the water of life on my birthday. They also have an area of the river where they bring people who are accused of crimes but deny it. In this area, they have a ju-ju man come and perform a ceremony type thing with a shrine to see if the person is guilty. If the man says the person is guilty and the person still denies it, they send the person into the river to bath. If the person is really innocent, nothing will happen and they come back out and go home. If the person is really guilty though, a crocodile will come and take them away. They also do this for women accused of being witches.

The day after my birthday, I decided to slaughter a chicken and make fajitas as my birthday dinner. My counterpart and I slaughtered the chicken and I made delicious fajitas with veggies from my garden. Another plus, the chicken was a hen and she was about to lay an egg, so I got an egg from inside the chicken. It was delicious the next day. See the fun adventures you can have in Ghana?