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.