final update maybe?

I have officially finished at site and am on my way to Accra to close out my service. The last few weeks at site had some exciting developments.

First, we finished building my women's agro-processing/shea butter processing facility and had a one week training on how to use the machines. Now, the women are the proud owners of their own grinding mill and they have my counterpart's younger brother working there everyday so they can earn some income and pay the lights bill. People come everyday to grind their various crops and to make shea butter. The women have also used it to produce a lot of shea butter as a group and hopefully the man who did the training is going to set them up with some buyers for the shea butter. In the beginning of this project I was worried because I had heard from other volunteers that women don't like to use these machines because they see making shea butter as a social event, but that is totally a lie. One of the machines churns the butter for you, which is typically done tediously by hand, and people have been coming to use it all the time. This is the one that I was told would never be used. I think either I have a progressive village or the other volunteers didn't have proper training for their groups and therefore the women didn't know the value of this machine. We've already had some problems with the machines, but we're working on it and making progress. As the villagers say, everything is tough in the beginning but soon things will be running smoothly. It also helps that the machines are under warranty for the first six months, so we can call for assistance when we have problems.

Second, the district finally got their act together and almost finished up the work at the clinic. They got the painters out there and they did a nice job painting the buildings inside and out. They also sent the electricians out, who did half of the wiring and then took a break for a couple weeks, but they finally got out to finish. I managed to get some furniture and basic medical supplies, like scales, stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, and thermometers for the clinic. After all of this was done, the only things left were installing some mosquito netting and connecting the electricity. Those still need to be done, but because I am leaving now they decided to open the clinic before those were finished. So, we had an awesome opening ceremony this past Monday. There were representatives there from the district assembly, district health office, subdistrict health office, and nearby villages. The man who originally built the clinic was even there and since he is a well known political figure he invited TV Africa to film the event. Most of my village and the chief and leaders of a neighboring village all came out to celebrate the opening. It was a long ceremony in which many people gave speeches mostly thanking me and encouraging the village to support the clinic. There was even a break for drumming and dancing in the middle of the ceremony. As thank you gifts for me, the village and my women's group each gave me local clothes to wear, so I had two costume changes during the ceremony to show off my new garbs. After the first costume change, into nice traditional cloth, they told me I had to go greet the chief and led me out there with the drummers. I sort of danced my way to the chief and squatted to greet him and was shocked when he told me they were enskinning me as a CHIEF! They made me the Malititinaa, or the chief who helped them. This is a huge honor and I did not expect it at all. Since the ceremony was in my honor, they also made me dance in front of everyone as they put money on my head to show they liked my dancing (no, not like a stripper). Unfortunately though, all that money goes to the drummers. At the end of the ceremony we made the chief the first patient and the nurses checked his blood pressure. They also held a baby weighing after the ceremony so all the babies in the village and nearby villages were weighed and received their vaccinations. That was definitely one of my best days in the village and such a relief to actually have that project become a success.

The last big thing that happened was my replacements came to visit the site. I am being replaced by a nice married couple, the husband being a natural resource management volunteer and the wife a health, water and sanitation volunteer like me. I hung out with them for the first two days of their visit and introduced them to my women's group, who the husband will be working with. I showed them around a bit, but then left for the rest of the week so they could get to know the site on their own and not be in my shadow. I'm excited for them to continue my work, but its weird introducing people who are going to replace you and be compared to you all the time.

Yesterday I left my site for good and it had mixed emotions about it. Everyone in the village kept asking why I was going to go home and leave them, so I had to explain a hundred times that my family misses me and I have to go back to school. I was very sad about saying goodbye to all of my friends, but I'm ready to come home. Two years was a good amount of time and I think I did good work, but home is definitely calling. Now onto closing my service in Accra, a short trip to Togo and Benin, and then home on August 16th!

Things forgotten in last post

I forgot to update you all on some developments in my village and on my end of service plans.

We'll start with the village developments. For the past six months or so, UNICEF has been working in my village to mechanize our borehole. That means they installed a pump in one of the boreholes and installed pipes that lead to six polytanks spread throughout the village. They connected the pump to large solar panels to power it. So, now instead of walking like a mile to the borehole and waiting an hour in line to fetch water, the women can go to the tank closest to them in the village and fetch water there. Its closer, faster, and easier because they don't have to hand pump it either, just open the faucet. This is a great development and I'm hoping that the ease of fetching this water will encourage them to drink it too instead of the damn water which carries diseases.

Since I came to Voggu, I've been told that the village leaders were working towards opening the Voggu market. This was literally mentioned in my first meeting with the chief in August 2009. For a long time I thought it was just something they talked about and not something they'd actually achieve since the market had been closed for like thirty years. To my pleasant surprise, they opened the market about a month ago. We now have a market every six days in the field right across from my house. It's a HUGE improvement for the village. Not only does it bring income to the villagers, but it makes life so much easier now that they don't have to travel to get to a market every week.

So, since I came to Voggu, they have gotten electricity, a mechanized borehole, and a market. My replacement is going to be so lucky! And, if you all say a few prayers for my work, the clinic should be open before I leave. The district finally got their act in gear and have delivered the paint and should start painting tomorrow.

That's it for my village, not onto my returning home plans... I'm sorry to say that I will not be returning home. I didn't tell everyone, but I have had a Ghanaian boyfriend here throughout my service and I want to stay and marry him in November. We'll stay in Ghana for a few years at least and decide where to live after that.

Just kidding! I hope I tricked at least one person with that. I will officially be coming home on August 16th. I finish my service on August 3rd and will travel in Togo and Benin again before flying out. Once home, I will hightail it to Vermont and relax by the lake with some sailing and kayaking. Then, I will head back to Springfield to go to STCC and fulfill a couple prereqs before applying to grad school. I can't wait to see all of you when I get home!

Long Overdue Update

Sorry for my lack of motivation in updating my blog. For a while it was because nothing was happening here. I spent a couple of months trying to get a grant approved, trying to get the district to do their part for my clinic, and planning another girls leadership camp. At that time, I filled my time with going to the school a lot. Our school received two computers donated by a police commissioner (or something like that) in Accra who was originally from our village. Since there are new computers and I know more about computers than any of the teachers, I offered to help teach the computer classes to students and teachers. It was fun for a while, but the teachers were not very interested and its very hard to teach three classes of 40 students on two computers. Its still great that the school has them though, and I think it will be a big step up for the kids to even have a little time on actual computers before senior high school.

In April, my life suddenly got very busy. First, my grant proposal for an agro-processing plant for my women's group was approved. This is at the risky end of the dry season because it actually had been raining every once in a while, and as you can imagine, mud buildings under construction don't do so well in heavy rains. We lucked out though and my counterpart worked with local builders and the women in the group to build, roof, and plaster the building by the end of April. I also put a deposit on the machines needed and they should be done early next week. The hardest part I think is going to be getting electricity hooked up to the building. I bought the form (yes, you have to buy forms in this country to apply for things) for that yesterday and will try to go through the process as quickly as possible.

Second, we had another Girls Leadership Camp in my district. Kim and I worked with the three new volunteers in our district to hold another camp for 50 outstanding girls in JHS. We had to make a few changes and cutbacks from last year, but it still went very well and I hope the new volunteers will continue the tradition. The girls seemed to really enjoy it.

Third, we had our Close Of Service (COS) conference at the end of April. Our whole training group went and learned how to close out our service while facing the reality that we are leaving in a few months. It was a lot of fun to hang out with friends I haven't seen in a year and to have our whole group together again. It was also probably the most useful Peace Corps conference I've been to. Oh, being at a hotel on a river with a pool wasn't bad either.

Immediately after COS conference we had an All-Volunteer Conference. If you can't tell from the name, all the PC volunteers in Ghana got together for this. I expected it to be insane like last year, but it was actually a fun and fairly relaxed event. We had "informational sessions" as time fillers before the fun events in the evenings, which included a talent show, date auction, and pirates and ninjas themed prom.

After those three busy events in a row, I was happy to go back to site and relax for a bit. And now, I'm in Tamale for an "End of the World" Party. We partied it up last night because, in case you weren't aware, judgement is coming at 6pm eastern time today. So, I hope you all read this before that.

Trip home and Voodoo Festival after

After my trip home for Christmas, I think I have a better idea of how many people actually read this blog... not that many. But those who do read it seem to like it and its kind of like a journal for me too. So, I was home for two weeks, not quite long enough, but it was very nice. I got to see Meme one last time, all my family, and many of my friends. I think you all are included in that list, but if not, I'm sorry I didn't get to see you, two weeks is not a lot of time. I'm in the home stretch now, though, and it won't be too long til I'm home for good. I would expand on my trip home, but since most of you were part of that trip, it would be boring to read. So, I'll just say it was very nice to see everyone. I really missed people from home and enjoyed having time to relax and enjoy the luxuries of America.

When I got back, I rushed to get my next vacation approved, which was a trip to Togo and Benin. After running around Accra like crazy, getting the visas, bring forms everywhere to be signed, I left for Togo on the 8th. I traveled with five other volunteers, which apparently is the perfect number because we filled taxis easily (yes, six people is a normal number for taxis). In Togo, we didn't get to do a whole lot, but saw Lome, the capital, and went to the beach for a bit. We met a bunch of Togo PCVs there and they were great, helpful and fun to hang out with. The best thing about Togo, in my very short visit, was the baguettes! Since Togo was colonized by the French, they have much much better bread than Ghana. I think we each ate about 2 baguettes a day throughout the trip. The worst thing was, that none of us spoke French. That was actually a problem throughout the trip, but since we are used to not understanding what people are saying, we managed "small small" as they would say here. Funny thing was, I was one of the people who spoke the most french, using what little high school french is left in my brain after Dagbani pushed the rest out.

After staying in Togo for one short day, we got up early and traveled to Benin for the Voodoo Festival. As I'm sure you can tell by how far in advance I planned this trip, I knew nothing about this festival. My travel buddies were equally clueless. So, we went into this thing blind. We found a decent place to stay and wandered around until we found white people who looked like they could be in the peace corps. On our second try, we were right (we have a look to us). So, we met up with a bunch of Benin PCVs, also great people, and they told us about the festivities and where to go.

We were there for two days of the festival. The festival included people dressed in big crazy colorful costumes. I think they were supposed to be the ancestors of the tribe or spirits or something. But they danced around and acted crazy. The crowd would be gathered around them watching them dance and they would get angry or something and charge at the crowd. The crowd would all run backwards to get out of the way, sort of running each other over. One of my favorite characters was one that had a fake head and a bunch of leather straps hanging off the back of his head. When he got angry he would charge at people and flip his head forward quickly, swinging the fake head and straps so they smacked on the ground and anyone/thing in the path. There were also creatures covered in a pyramid shaped thing covered in colorful hay. These ones danced and charged the crowd too, but every once in a while they would start to shake, lean forward, and an animal would pop out. I saw a turtle, chicken, and small bird come out of one and supposedly a snake was coming soon. I don't really know what any of this meant, but it sure got the blood pumping and was fun to watch.

At the same time, there was a cultural dance performance going on at the beach. We went to watch it for a while, but it was hard to see and wasn't too exciting. So, we walked around on the beach for a bit, took some pictures at the Port of No Return, and went back to where the interesting stuff was. Another thing in that town, not related to the festival but still awesome, is a python temple. This is not exactly a temple, but it does contain a lot of pythons. There were a bunch of little huts, like the ones people here use for their animals and the guy attempted to tell us about them in his Frenglish and then brought us into one that had the pythons in it. I walked in first and did not know exactly what I was walking into when I saw snakes all over the place. There must have been like 30 snakes in this small room curled up all over the place. I was legit afraid I might step on one. Then the guy calls one of the guys in our group over and puts a python around his neck and tells us to take a picture. We negotiated the picture price while our friend was standing there with the snake hanging around his neck telling us to just take the picture. Then we each took a picture with it around our necks. I haven't seen my picture yet, but I'm pretty sure I have a terrified look on my face.

After the Voodoo Festival, we headed north a bit and learned a little of the history of Benin. It was in the little bit of English that the guide knew, but it was a tour of a museum portraying the history of a major tribe in Benin that I cannot remember the name of. The main thing I remember was that there were lots of cannons because the slave traders came and this tribe traded their people for cannons. The next day, we made a very long trip all the way back to Ghana. The day after that I made another very long trip from Accra to Tamale. Needless to say, I was exhausted and happy when I finally got back to my house and was able to rest.