Julie's Ghana Adventure

final update maybe?

2011-07-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-07T13:32:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-21T03:44:00.000-07:00

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

2011-01-26T07:34:00.000-08:00

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.

Pictures: Reverse Chronological Order

2010-11-25T13:17:00.000-08:00

This only shows about 1/8 of the boat, but there's the navigators and a view of the White Volta river

Beth about to chomp into a very scary fish caught from the river

Afayili community members engaged in the Risk Game after learning the basics about HIV

Sadiq helping Liz and Lizzy teach the Afayili health volunteers games to use as tools to teach others about HIV

The Bee Camp crew with their three completed bee hives, one wood box hive and two clay pot hives

Sadiq, Faisa, and I dressed nicely for Eid Al-Fitr, the holiday at the end of Ramadan

One clinic building after the masonry and carpentry were finished. Kinda hard to see, but there are some new roofing sheets, many cracks fixed, and an apron built around the building, with additional work done inside.

A few guys from the community helping out by mixing cement on the veranda

The two masons working and a JHS kid, Okasha, who was awesome and helped out everyday

Boat Trip!

2010-11-18T00:20:00.000-08:00

We finally did the boat trip! Some people said they had never heard of this boat trip until my last entry, so here's a summary of the planning process. We were talking about copying an HIV boat trip that was done on the lake since like our first month at site. We originally planned to do the trip in May, at the end of the hot season, but getting approval turned out to be an incredibly difficult process. When we finally got approval, in September, we got moving quickly. The trip officially started on Nov. 7th and finished Nov. 16th. I would call it a very successful trip by Peace Corps standards.

We started in Nawuni (GOD) and hit ten to twelve villages (depending how you count it) on the way to Yapei. The boat was way bigger that I thought it was going to be. I would say it was a 50ft wooden boat clearly made for transporting goods more than people because it had no seats, just planks going across. It had twin outboard engines and went about as fast as I used to like tubing when I was little, which if you know what a chicken I was as a kid, you'll know is pretty slow. It was great to be on a boat on the water though!

To give all the details on the trip would take forever, so I'll give a synopsis of what we did and try to highlight a few good points. In general, in each village we split up the community education and health volunteer education. Each village has about 4 health volunteers who we trained more in depth on HIV and we gave them a kit with games to teach about HIV and a wooden penis to do condom demonstrations. We also gave them four boxes of 144 condoms to sell so they could buy more and always have condoms available in the communities. We taught the community about the basics of HIV, played a game with them, and did a condom demonstration. At the same time, we hired nurses to come do free HIV testing and had an excellent turnout for that. Then we gave them a movie about family planning and HIV that they could watch in the evening.

I guess I should explain the ten to twelve villages thing, since I should probably have an exact number for the villages we went to. We planned to go to ten villages, and although we made some changes along the way, our goal of ten exactly never changed. Apparently some villages on the water are named after the bigger village they are near that is inland. So, when we were told we were going to Wala, for example, the nurses thought we were going to the inland one and we though we were going to the riverside community. Luckily for the first few this got sorted out before we went and we didn't have problems. However, things got interesting in the last few villages. We did one village without testing because the nurses wouldn't test on a Sunday, or so we thought, but they called us while we were doing the education saying they were in the next village and where were we. So we were off by a day with the nurses there, no problem, they would test Sunday and we would educate Monday. Monday, we show up to what we think is Tedrope, but when asking how to spell the name of the village, Kim finds out we're at the fishing camp. We were already into the education and couldn't stop then, so when we finished with the fishing camp we walked the mile or so to Tedrope and did the education again. That adds one village, so we're going for eleven at this point. The next day, the nurses were supposed to meet us in Kito. At 7:30am we get a call from them that they are on their way. We were already in Kito. We started the education... finished the education... ate lunch... where are the nurses? We finally left around 2 and never saw the nurses. Later the nurses talked to Kim and said they came but the village hadn't seen us. I'm curious what village they actually went to, because it clearly wasn't the Kito we were in. So I guess that makes twelve.

Now, I'll throw in a few funny tidbits. First, when you spend 10 days in close quarters with a few friends, you run out of normal topics to talk about. By the end, we were challenging each other to do monologues on things like packaging materials, going to the latrine, chilean mines, and other random stuff. "Julie Goes to the Latrine" was apparently the best monologue, but I unfortunately was going to the latrine at the time. We somehow got obsessed with asking questions about "if you were stuck in a chilean mine..." and saying who you would want there (choosing celebrities, PCVs), what meal, book, movie, song you would want if you could only have one for the whole time, etc. Basically, I think we went a little crazy but we're better friends for it.

At one point I got an eye infection and luckily was in a town with a pharmacy so I got eyedrops. No problem, but the funny part was... the same day I got the eyedrops I was playing with the cat that belonged to the PCV whose house we were in and I noticed the cat's eye was swollen shut too. So, being the kind person I am, I shared my eyedrops with the cat. I don't think she appreciated it as much as she should have but her eye was much better later. My friends like to say I gave the cat the eye infection, but I like to say the cat gave it to me. Either way, I think I shared a disease with the cat.

Along the way, most of the villages were very small, some had less than 100 people. And being small villages in the middle of nowhere, they did not have toilets. We anticipated this and brought a hoe with us to dig and bury when we had to go. So, around the 3rd village, I finally had to go. I wasn't sure where exactly to go, so I asked a girl and she grabbed the hoe and walked me to a nice clearing out of site. Then she proceeded to dig the hole for me and walk about 30 feet away to wait. I went while three other kids went about 10 feet away from me at the same time. Then, I asked for the hoe so I could bury it myself (I thought that was the polite thing to do). Unfortunately, I broke the hoe in the process and the girl had to come back and fix the hoe and finish burying for me. It was slightly awkward. I know I tell too many poop stories on here, but that's a good one, you have to admit.

Those are the funniest stories I can think of at the moment, but if you want more stories see my friend Kim's blog: ghanakimsuri.blogspot.com. I'm not sure if she updated it yet, but she will soon and it will be pretty detailed.

Long over-due update

2010-10-13T04:48:00.000-07:00

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?

Girls Camp and Wedding

2010-08-15T04:05:00.000-07:00

I've had a long, but good, two weeks. We just had our Girls Leadership Camp in my district. I don't remember if I wrote about this much before, but it was a week long camp for junior high school (JHS) girls in my district. We asked the headmaster of each village JHS (we didn't include the four town JHS's) in the district to have the 5 best girls from their school apply. Then we chose 3 or 4 from each school to attend, for a total of 50 girls. It was an overnight camp at the senior high school (SHS) in our district capital. We also had 6 SHS girls come as mentors and leaders for the JHS girls. So, we spent 3 days buying stuff and preparing for the camp, then 3 days of training of trainers (meaning we trained the SHS girls), then the 6 day camp.

At the camp, we played a lot of teamwork games, which were fun and funny. Since there is no concept of personal space here, some of the games were extra funny and slightly violent. We also did HIV, STI, hygiene, and budgeting education. Finally, we did lots of leadership and goal setting stuff. We had pretty much every minute of every day from 7am to 9pm scheduled. This camp was started by peace corps volunteers last year and I think its one of the best projects we've done in our district. The change in these girls just throughout the week is huge. The first day they were too shy to volunteer to speak and most of them spoke quietly with their head down. Then everyday they were more confident and energetic. By the end of the camp I think there were maybe two girls left who were still looking at the ground while talking. I was especially happy that one of the girls from my school was always the first one with her hand up to volunteer to read something out loud.

We also brought 4 career women to come and speak to the girls about how they got to where they are and to motivate the girls to set high goals for themselves. It was fun for me to go and find the women to come and speak and then see how the girls reacted. I think they really liked it. We tried to get women from a variety of jobs, so there was a university professor, restaurant owner/carter center worker, orphanage owner, and tie-and-die woman. When I was going around asking for people to come it was really nice to see how people were happy to do it. I was trying to get a banker (which failed because the camp was during open bank hours) and got sent to the highest manager in every bank I went to and they were all very interested if it had been on a weekend.

Apart from the girls camp, I went to a wedding yesterday of a peace corps volunteer who married a man from her town. It was a nice wedding at the church in her town. There were a few hundred people who came and there was tons of singing and dancing during the ceremony. Not at all like the weddings I've been to in the US. She looked beautiful and although I hadn't met her husband before, he seems very nice. After the wedding, a dance troupe in her town put on a performance of many cultural dances from Ghana. That was really cool. Then there was a reception just outside her town and we got a ride back to Tamale from the caterers. Before the wedding, all of us who were going got the same cloth made and had clothes made from it. So we were a big group of white people all wearing the same fabric. Stood out a little I think, haha. It was a lot of fun.

YAY

2010-07-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

THANK YOU a thousand times over to those who donated to my clinic renovations! We finally raised all the money and in a few weeks when it gets to my account, we will start the work. My community is going to be ecstatic!

On another work related note, I recently had a health dance in the community. The women have a traditional dance here called the tora-tora. For a couple months now, I've been trying to plan a day to have the tora-tora and have my women's group teach the other women about nutrition and safe drinking water. We had to delay a few times, but finally had the event. I'd say about 200 women and girls came out to dance and we stopped about an hour in to teach them about nutrition. It was a bit chaotic, but the women from the group split up and each talked to a small group of women, using the nutrition handout I made for them as a guide to teach about nutrition. They also talked about the importance of drinking the borehole water over the dam water. Before the event, the women made me promise to dance, so I agreed of course. I dance the tora-tora for about 10 minutes and then they made me stop because I "must be tired". At the end though, they had a session where everyone got in a circle and one person at a time would go in to dance. They made me dance there too, and everyone loved it. Then I made my counterpart dance too (he never dances) and they loved it again. It was a very successful event and I hope to do it again sometime.

Other than that, I've added a fridge to my collection of electronics. I now have ice cold water at my house everyday :). If I put the plastic bottle against the back of the fridge it will even freeze! And, my vegetables last much longer and the lovely things sent from home that are supposed to be refrigerated, like maple syrup and mayonnaise packets, now won't spoil.

Lastly, I've been told to put an updated list of requests for things in packages, so here goes:
pasta sides
freeze dried meals
canned chicken
bacon
cheese packets
parmesan cheese
seasoning packets (like chili seasoning and those things)
maple syrup
cookies
chocolate
candy

Things not to send:
mayonnaise packets (they're good, but I have plenty)
canned chicken or tuna salad (plain chicken and tuna are great, but the canned salads aren't so great)

As always, I miss everyone at home and hope you are all doing well. Thanks again for donating to my clinic project and for all the packages I've received.

Fans!!!

2010-06-25T02:55:00.000-07:00

After my electrician took three days for this father's funeral, as is the muslim tradition, he came back and finished the job. I had a meeting in another village while he was doing the work, but he apparently had to crawl around in my ceiling a lot and spent about 3 or 4 hours working on my messed up wiring. But, when I got home, I had working fans and lights!!! I never gave fans enough credit when I was home. They are the most amazing things in the world! It's sooo nice to sleep under a ceiling fan now. The lights attract bugs, but are useful sometimes, but its the fans that I am incredibly grateful for.

Also, Nicole asked about my garden. Well, we planted some yams, corn, and carrots, but after a very windy night, the goats got into my garden and ate the corn that had started growing. So, I think we'll have to replant the corn, but I have high hopes. We are also nursing tomatoes, peppers, and onions, but that isn't going great either. I think the onions won't make it but maybe the tomatoes and peppers will be okay.

Finally, thanks for all the clinic donations so far! Only about $1,000 to go. You guys are great, keep spreading the word about it.

LIGHTS!!!

2010-06-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

That's right, I finally got electricity! On wednesday evening they came and hooked up the electricity on my village. I've never seen my community so excited. The MP (Member of Parliament) for my district came for the event and gave a little speech on the night that they hooked it up and then the whole village ran back to their houses to see if their lights were working. Most of them were, but since then, there has been a steady stream of electricians flowing through the village fixing problems with people's wiring. Since my house was wired over 5 years ago and has been sitting in poor shape since, I was worried as I walked back to find out if everything was working. Let me tell you, I had reason to worry. Unfortunately, only one light in my house works and it is the outside security light. And, none of my fans work. All of my outlets seem to be working though.

The first electrician that came to look at it said he would have to enter the ceiling to find the problem but he thought he was too heavy and would break the ceiling (but I'm pretty sure he really just didn't want to dirty his clothes), so he left. The second one wouldn't enter the ceiling that day because of his clothes and it was getting a little late. But, he came back the next day and put on some sweats and climbed all around in my ceiling. Unfortunately, he couldn't figure out the exact problem because a pole burned in a nearby village and we didn't have electricity most of that day. In the afternoon, he came back and told us his father had just died and he had to go immediately. So, he will be with his family for a few days and then come back to hopefully finish the job.

Eventually, I hope to have working fans and lights, but for now it is nice to be able to charge my phone and plug things in. Also, in my lack of faith in actually getting lights, I had left most of my electronic stuff and my adaptor in Tamale for when I am here. So, when I get back I will have an adaptor and at least be able to plug in the fan Aunty Cindy sent me, which will make me very very happy.

Back to site and work

2010-05-26T03:24:00.001-07:00

The abcess saga has come to an end. I got back to site about a week ago and you'll be very happy to know that my armpit is doing very well. However, the adjustment to life with no lights, AC, or TV was a bit of a struggle. I don't know what it is about TV, but its very addicting and can cause withdrawal when you don't have it anymore.

Luckily though, the rainy season is on its way up here, so the weather is getting a little cooler sometimes. This is also a love/hate thing for me though, cause I hope for rain everyday and when it doesn't come, which is most of the time, I am disappointed again. But, since it is coming, I am starting a garden outside my house. My counterpart has been working very hard on building a fence around the area so that goats and sheep won't come in and destroy the garden and I just bought seeds in Tamale. I bought tomato, onion, carrot, and pepper seeds and also plan to grow a little bit of corn. I'm debating buying lettuce seeds too, but we'll see how much room I have in this garden. I am also not sure that I have a green thumb. Judging by how well I took care of my Ivy plant in college (it died in a week), I might not, but I did keep couple other plants alive for my last two years of college. So, this could be really awesome or a complete failure, but either way it'll be something to do while everyone is farming in the rainy season. If any of you have good gardening advice though, please do share.

Other than that, I've been continuing with my women's group and I'm trying to work on getting the boreholes in my community fixed (we are down to 1 of 6 working). I'm also working with some people to plan a girl's leadership camp for August, which we just wrote the proposal for. It sounds like it will be a lot of fun.

Thank you to everyone who has donated to my clinic so far! We have raised about $700 already and I'm told that people are still working on it at home and sending in checks. You guys are awesome, thanks!

Clinic Renovations

2010-05-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

I just sent in my final copy of my proposal for money to fix my clinic on Friday, and guess what? Its already on the website so people can donate to it! If you haven't heard about this already, it means you are not on my email list and you're not my facebook friend. I just found out that the request was on the website yesterday and today I found out we already raised $600! Keep up the good work everyone. If you haven't donated yet, or want more information to decide if you want to donate, go to this website:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=641-295

Overall, when the clinic opens it will become the closest clinic for people in 15 villages. That means you'd be helping about 11,000 people. As soon as I raise all the money, we'll start the repairs and hopefully get the clinic running this year. Also, by donating to this project, you know exactly where your money is going. All the money donated goes directly to my project and I will oversee all the work so that I can make sure all the money is spent wisely.

That's my exciting news for now. Other than that, I'm still in Accra waiting for my abcess to heal. Its almost healed now and I should be leaving on Tuesday morning. I'm enjoying the break, but I'm ready to get back, so I hope it continues to heal well and quickly.

Thanks in advance for all your donations!

All Volunteers Conference and Other Nonsense

2010-04-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

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.

Rain Fun

2010-03-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

A small group of us came to Tamale yesterday to meet about a boat project we are planning, which I will tell you all about if we can actually do it. However, of course we couldn't only talk about work, so we decided to enjoy St. Paddy's day a little and go out for good food. We went to Sparkle's, a restaurant with American food and decided to try out the recommended pizza. It was delicious, not quite American, pizza. Then, we came back and decided to be even more adventurous and try out the "washing machine" that a volunteer's parents sent her. The day was pretty overcast, but we decided to go ahead anyway because we wanted to see how this wonder machine would work. It is a small container that you put clothes, water, and soap into and spin around for a couple of minutes to wash your clothes. We weren't sure it would work but decided to try.

In the midst of the first load of laundry, the rain started. It didn't take long for the rain to become very heavy. So, there were 3 of us outside spinning this little washing machine in the pouring rain, pointlessly wringing out the clothes before hanging them in the pouring rain. Part of the way through this process, I decided it was a good idea to bathe in the water coming off the roof instead of taking a shower and someone else suggested we wash our hair in it. So, we got my shampoo and bathed (with our clothes on) and washed our hair in the water running off the roof of the house. Our smart friend who was inside brought us towels so we could take off the dripping clothes before going inside. Overall, I think it was all good decisions and would highly recommend bathing in the rain. Also, it seems the clothes were clean today, so the miracle machine works.

Life in Ghana is slow

2010-02-27T09:36:00.000-08:00

I last said I wanted to hit the ground running after training, and I guess I have at least hit the ground trotting. Since I got back to site, I have started looking into our clinic and what needs to be done to get it openned. The buildings need a lot of work. Parts of the ceiling need to be replaced, doors need to be replaced, locks, window panes, the latrine needs to be completely rebuilt, and the place needs to be cleaned worse than any place I have ever stepped foot into. There were so many bugs that the keyholes in the locks were stuffed with bugs and we couldn't get the keys in some of them, which was fine because the keys actually don't work anyway. However, all this work is do-able if I can just get the money. So, I'm working on that now. We're going to the District Assembly monday to see how they can help. I'll keep you all updated on if and how you can help too. Hopefully this will be my big project. I'll be really excited if we can get the clinic up and running this year. Its sad that they've had these buildings for like 6 years and they've gone unused and therefore unmaintained.

Other than that, not much is going on. I'm happy to be back, but the hot season has officially arrived and it is pretty miserable. My friend just checked the weather report for today and said "not bad, its only 106 today". I've now taken to sleeping in my hammock on my porch. It's not too bad when I do that. The hammock is amazing, I kinda want to sleep in it all year. Only about 2 more months of this and then the lovely rainy season comes and I can start a garden.

I almost forgot about the crazy rain. Right now, it is the dry season and has been since like November. So, theoretically, we shouldn't have rain until like April/May. However, one night about two weeks ago we got this crazy rainstorm. An RPCV, Peter, was visiting me at the time, and in the afternoon we were like "it looks like it'll rain, but that's impossible in February". Then it started sprinkling and I stood out in it and enjoyed every drop, thinking that was all that would happen. Then it started pouring! I stood out in that til I was soaked and until the wind was so hard that the droplets stung my skin. When all the Ghanaians ran into their houses, Peter and I stayed out on my porch to watch in amazement and enjoy the storm. However, in our enjoyment, Peter went in my room for a minute and said "does it usually leak in your room?" I went in to see the damage, because it doesn't usually leak in my room, and there was a huge puddle on my floor and the same in my kitchen. After I close the windows tighter, it stopped the leak and then I soaked up half a bucketful of water from my bedroom floor. I waited til the next day to sweep the water out of the kitchen.

We were not the only ones to suffer from the rain though. Since it is the dry season, it is also the season to build mud houses. A lot of people had been building houses or molding blocks to build houses or building new rooms on their houses. They were all taking their time since the dry season was not even close to over. So, this surprising rain was extra devistating. It destroyed all the blocks and many of the rooms that were already built. So, everyone who was building had to either make repairs or start all over. I felt really bad for them, but they all took it in stride and just started over the next day. I've noticed they are working faster this time though so another surprise rain can't come and destroy it again. I love the carefree attitude Ghanaians take for a lot of things. Something like this would upset Americans for weeks, to the point that I would avoid some people until the anger passed, but Ghanaians were laughing about it the next day. I hope I can take that attitude home with me.

Madelyn Marie Caron Pictures

2010-02-05T12:21:00.000-08:00

Big sister Emma

The newest member of Julie's family! Madelyn Marie Caron born while we were visiting January 17th at 3:12am 9lbs 2oz.

Mom's Visit and Life Since

2010-02-04T16:03:00.000-08:00

As you have all heard already, Sheryl and my mom had a wonderful time while they were here (or at least I hope they were telling the truth). I was a little nervous that they would have trouble dealing with the inconveniences in Ghana, but for every ridiculous setback they put on a happy face and said "this'll make a good story". I was very happy to have them here and thoroughly enjoyed living in Ghana on an American budget for 2 weeks. However, readjusting to no AC or fans at my house was not the easiest. Since they already told most of their stories on here, I'm going to move on now.

Since they left, I hung out at site and relaxed for a while. I also went to the District Health Office and found out the reason we don't have nurses in our clinic is that the buildings are not up to par, so I hope that will be my firs big project. I also visited my friend Kim for her birthday and ate delicious chocolate cake she made for herself. I was a good friend and made her a gift bag out of the stuff my mom brought when she came. I think the crummy yo-yo was the highlight of the package.

Now, I am at in service training (IST) in Kumasi. We've been here since Sunday, having workshops all day everyday. These workshops have been very useful though and are motivating, so I hope to hit the ground running when I get back. We finally learned about funding and other projects we can do. We also have our counterparts with us, so now they have a better idea of what their role is and the things we can do. I'm excited about the new opportunities for projects.

IST is also fun because it is the first time the whole WatSan group has gotten together since training and its great to see everyone. We're having fun hanging out and coming up with t-shirt ideas to make just for fun. I personally think we have the best group of all the sectors, so this has been a really fun week. After, I'm going to visit my homestay family, which I am also excited about.

I miss all of you and hope all is well at home. Give Madelynn and William hugs and kisses for me and send lots of pictures of them, not just in email, I want pictures of babies on my wall!

More pictures from our visit!

2010-01-27T08:39:00.001-08:00

Our gift of a rooster from the Chief, dinner for tomorrow!

Our gift from Sadiq's family dinner for tonight!

A walking safari at Mole' National Park above are 3 of the 8 elephants that we saw.

Julie holding the beautiful baby from across from her home.

She's 3 months old and adorable !

Pictures from Ghana

2010-01-24T08:58:00.003-08:00

A small number of children who came ot visit on a regular basis they were lots of fun and loved to spend time with us!

This is Julies village "Voggu". The people were very welcoming family is most important and they liked that we went over to see her.

As you can see when we met up with Julie in Tamale Sheryl and I were in Gahnian dress. Julie was not one bit surprised to see us in such attire!

Our first Ghanian food and drink

2010-01-23T07:45:00.000-08:00

Red Red a very popular and tasty meal. Fried plantain, beans and fish mmm-mmm-good

This meal was delicious as you can see!

Great beer Star and Club were our usual

We started out splitting a beer but ended up drinking two!!!

This is the before picture above above was the after.

Return from Ghana Adventure

2010-01-23T05:32:00.000-08:00

As you can see Sheryl and I have returned home safe and sound! This was the most amazing trip. We had a wonderful time with Julie. She was a fabulous hostess, tour guide, translator and barterer, not to mention fun to travel with. Something we could have never done on our own.
The last time we posted we were at what we call the "Garden of Eden"( Four Villages Inn) in kumasi. We went to a museum and art center there. We also med Guillermo one of Julies Peace Corps. We had lunch at a restaurant and had hoped to have some Ghanian food but to our surprise they did not serve ghanian food on Sundays!!! We stayed two nights at the inn and loved it there.
As we continued south we saw a significant change in landscape, weather, dress and culture. The more south we went the more developed and modern it was. Don't misunderstand not at all modern compared to our standards but more than the north where many places still did not have water or electricity.
On Monday we were able to take an STC bus to Cape Coast the best mode of transportation we used our entire stay. It was air conditioned and even played a movie! What a treat!!!
We stayed at a friend of Julies at Cape Coast, Nancy. She is a teacher at a school for the deaf and blind. She did have water and electricity another treat. We had a great time at Cape Coast. That is where we experienced our first" trotro". That would be a van with bench seats in which they fit as many people as possible in. No air conditioning of course. Unlike Julies village they don't put luggage and people on the top but fill it up as much as possible.
We went to Kakum National Park where we did the canopy walk a bridge built on the top of trees in the rain forest it was fabulous! We also went to a monkey sanctuary a place where a couple take in animals who are in need of shelter they had many kinds of monkeys, cats (not kitty cats) snakes, and a few more I can't think of oh yes crocodiles and turtles.
From Cape coast we headed to Accra. We were at the bus station at 6:15 am as we were told we could definately get tickets on the 7 oclock bus.
But as usual there were no tickets the second bus had broken down and the other one was already full when it left the previous location. Julie suggested we take a trotro and we did. Once again it was quite an adventure.
We stayed in a very nice hotel in Accra with a pool and had a relaxing comfortable day. After dinner the Shukans pick us up and we had a very nice visit with them. This is Julies pediatricians son and his family they have invited Julie to stay with them whenever she is in Accra it has been great.
Overall our trip was amazing. The Ghanian people were wonderful . Our flight back was uneventful. We met many interresting people throughout our trip. Maryellen and Michael picked us up in New York. It's good to be back. My shower and bed were wonderful. Not to mention some american food like cold milk and yogurt.
We kiss you Julie thank you for a wonderful visit and sharing your experience with us.

Continution of Sheryl and Gail's trip

2010-01-17T08:13:00.001-08:00

Since we last posted we have had a few more adventures! Julie and I got up at 3:45am and took a taxi to the metro station (nothing like you have ever seen!) to purchase tickets for Mole Natl Park that day. You can't buy them a day ahead of time and the station was very very crowded. They had told Julie that they started selling at 4am. However you have to understand that they were talking Ghanian time. The lady showed up at 6am. Julie was second in line for 2 hours. We purchased our paper tickets for the 1:30 bus and went back to the hotel We did get some bofrut( donut like food that a woman was cooking on the side of the road.So it wasn't a wasted trip. In the meantime Sheryl and Julies friend Beth were at the hotel. Sheryl was getting a little nervous at how long it was taking.
We arrived at the station at 1:30since Julie said it's always late and as usual she was right. We left at 4pm and arrived at the park at 8pm. We had dinner and took quick showers since the water was going off at 10pm. Nezt morning wentona walking safari. It was a dream come true. First thing we saw was an elephant, right in front of us. Then all of a sudden there were 3! UNBELIEVABLE! We saw baboons, warthogs, crocodiles,and many kinds of antelope. Just amazing.
Next morning left at 4a.m. (standard time for busses in Ghana and arrivedat 9 a.m. to our destination filthy, sweating, exhausted. Along the way we were stopped at customs and had 20-25 boxes of DVDs & home sound systems confiscated, then we ran into an accident between 2 trucks which held us up again. Really too much to tell.
We finally arrived at our wonderful bed & breakfast. It is our garden of eden after our bout in hell> Hot water, air conditioning, comfortable bed, not to mention absolute beautiful rooms.

Had a wonderful day in Kumasi today. Will keep you posted on our future adventures.

Update on Sheryl and Gail's trip to Ghana

2010-01-13T14:47:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Accra safe and sound. The flight was very nice and uneventful. It was a difficult city to get around in but we managed to get to our hotel walk around Osu area and immediately were bombarded by the market people following us around and trying to get us to buy things. That was a bit annoying so we returned to our hotel for a while and went out again to purchase our tickets to Tamale. At the ticket office we met a lovely woman from Tamale who told us where we should go in Accra and she also owned a hotel in Tamale which is where we are staying tonight and it is very nice.
Back to Accra we went to a museum, and art centre then walked around a bit and went to a restaurant on the beach and tried our first Ghanian food which was very good. We may have had a couple of beers while we were there.
The flight to Tamale was great but we had to leave the hotel at 4:30am to board at 5:45. That taxi ride was eventful but will take too long to tell you about.
Julie met us at 7:10 am what a great sight!! We went to her village and stayed there for 5 wonderful days. the people were very welcoming in fact for the first three days we constantly had people coming by to greet us and give us Ghanian food. I must confess we thought we would take to it better than we did especially since Julie likes so much of it. Well we didn't but we tried.We were also welcomed by the children anywhere from 1 to 20 at a time. They were lots of fun they entertained us as much as we entertained them. They are beautiful!
Staying at the village was a wonderful experience we survived no electricity or running water. Julie and her village people cetainly made up for that.
We were given gifts from the family of Julies counterpart Sadiq and from the Chief. Sadiq's family gave us a guinea fowl and the Chief gave us 4 yams and a rooster. So what do you think we did with them. We had already slaughtered the guinea fowl and had started preparing it for dinner that night so we had to tie up the rooster in the other room for the next day. It kept up a constant dialog with the guinea fowls and roosters outside. But we did prepare it and had it for dinner the next night and it was delicious!!! We didn't name him!!
It;s late and we have many stories to tell. This is an amazing experience so far. We are off to Mole natl park in the morning.
We are all safe and happy.. Sheryl and Gail

Waiting for Mom and Sheryl and Fire Festival

2010-01-08T11:05:00.000-08:00

I'm in Tamale now, waiting impatiently for tomorrow morning when my mom and sheryl get here. They arrived safely in Accra and called me from the hotel this morning. I hope they enjoyed their day in Accra and didn't get ripped off too many times for cabs and whatnot. They arrive in Tamale around 7:15 tomorrow morning and I will be at the airport waiting eagerly. Then in the afternoon we will leave for Mole National Park and see the animals. On Monday we'll make our way to my site and stay there for a while. Then we'll make our way south back to Accra, seeing Kumasi on the way. More details will come, I'm sure, but I've changed the plans too many times so far to think they won't change again.

As for my life recently, there was a great festival a couple of days after christmas, well named as the Fire Festival. The history of this festival is that a long time ago the chief's son was lost and the village all went out looking for him at night and carried torches for light. After a long time of searching, they found him up in a tree and they were so excited they had a celebration. So, now every year they have this celebration where the traditionalists sacrifice animals during the day to get "juju" from them that will protect them from any harm. At night, everyone dresses with their juju items and carries torches. They parade down the street with their torches, burning everything and everyone (not badly) on the way, and throw the torches into a tree outside the village. Somehow, the tree does not catch fire and all the grass that catches burns out without spreading to houses or anything. Then, they pick fresh branches from another tree and carry them to the cheif's house and other leaders houses. At those houses, people have made concoctions that they sprinkle/pour on the villagers while the villagers dance and people play the drums. The next day you are supposed to boil water with the leaves from the branch that got concoction on it and bath with that water so that you will be protected for the year. It was a ton of fun and dangerous at the same time.

Before the fire part of the festival, I watched some traditionalists sacrifice chickens for the juju. For the first chicken, they did a chant and cut its throat and dripped the blood onto they're juju items. For the second chicken, they did a chant, cut its throat, and let it flop around to see how it landed. Depending how it landed it may or may not give them juju. However, I think they told the chicken to get me before they killed it because when it was flopping, it kept landing on my feet and when I would hop out of the way it would turn towards me and land on my feet again. I couldn't get away from the thing. So, I had some chicken blood on my feet and leg and had a dying chicken flopping all over me. I think I must have extra juju for that.

Sorry it's a blurry picture, but its hard to get pics of people and fire at night while walking. But this is the parade of people about to throw the torches into the tree.

This is the traditionalists bleeding the chicken onto their juju items.

Off to Ghana for a visit

2010-01-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

Sheryl and I are leaving for Accra tomorrow at 4:35pm and should arrive 7:35am on Friday morinig their time. They are 5 hours ahead of us so the trip is about 10 hours. We are Sooooooooo excited and will try to post a couple of time if possible. We will meet up with Julie on Saturday morning in Tamale. Should be interresting, adventurous, exciting, emotional and a great experience. I understand many of the people in the village are going to prepare ghanian food for us. Once again should be interresting. I figure if Julie can eat it I certainly can because she is much more fussy than Sheryl and I. In fact we'll probably like it.
If your reading the blog please comment even to say hi Julie loves to hear from you!!

Merry Christmas Julie

2009-12-27T09:28:00.001-08:00

Julie was certainly in our hearts this Christmas we missed her but were also very happy that she is following her dreams!!! Sounds like she and her friends made a very special Christmas for themselves!
Julie made the angel for the tree when in grade school and Paul and I talked and laughed about it, and our memories of the great deal of teasing every year when we place it on the tree. Once again our tree is decoratedwith many memmories and Julie was certainly with us when we did it. Happy New Year to all her followers.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-26T03:20:00.000-08:00

Christmas here was obviously much different that at home, but my friends and I still made it a nice Christmas. I didn't feel like the holiday was really coming, being in a Muslim village and all, but on Christmas Eve, a bunch of us came to Tamale to celebrate together. There were 10 of us and we did stockings stuffed with things from packages we received from home and a grab bag gift exchange of cheap gifts. One of the volunteers here, Hannah, is also a very good cook and made a delicious lasagna dinner for all of us. We all sat around the table and had a family style dinner together. We also listened to christmas music and even watched some christmas movies. Overall, it was a pretty good Christmas. I still missed everyone at home and hope you all had a good holiday too!

On another note, I haven't been receiving a lot of letters that people have been sending me, so I am going to revert to the original address I gave people for sending letters. So, send letters to:

Julie Bordua, PCV
Peace Corps Ghana
P.O. Box 5796
Accra-North, Ghana

You can still send packages to either address though.

Life Update

2009-12-11T09:36:00.000-08:00

I’m sorry it has been a while since my last entry, but the internet has been down a lot at the Tamale office and I don’t have a lot of patience for slow internet cafés. Things have been going very well though. I did some HIV/AIDS work in the community for a couple of weeks. I taught about the biology of HIV/AIDS and how HIV is transmitted in the junior high school. I did a bunch of condom demonstrations, and we had a testing day where 98 people got tested, which is really good. I was excited that it went so well.

All of the HIV work was in preparation for the testing day and for a film showing that we also had. The girl that I replaced at this site was a videographer and made a film about Kayayo when she was here. Kayayo is a term for when young adults travel to Kumasi or Accra (the big cities) to work in the markets. They do this because there is not much work for them in the north and there is not much money in farming like their families do. In theory it is a good idea, but in practice it can be very dangerous. They live near the markets in very poor areas that have high crime rates and frequent fires that destroy dozens of their homes at a time and often kill people. They also tend to find significant others while they’re there and may come back with an unwanted pregnancy or an STD.

Alicia, the girl I replaced, came to show the film and another RPCV (returned Peace Corps volunteer) who is a photographer, and took photos of Kayayo, came to show his photos with the movie. They also brought a crew of singers/actors to put on a show for the village before the movie. Literally half of my village showed up to the movie and then we had the very successful testing day after. It was a very eventful two days, but the village loved it and I was really happy to see that people here are very willing to work with me.

Another project I am working on is the Village Bicycle Project. This is an organization that gets bikes donated from the US and Britain and fixes them up for people living in poor villages in Africa. They sell them to the villagers at about half the price of a normal bike and have an 8 hour workshop to teach bicycle maintenance. It’s great for the villagers because they can farm in areas farther away and therefore have bigger farms. It also makes life easier in general, considering our closest market is at least a 20 minute bike ride away (if riding fast). It is turning out to be a lot of work already though, and I am just starting it. However, if I successfully do this, I think my village will love me forever.

Outside of work stuff, I went to Accra for Thanksgiving, along with about 70 other volunteers. The US Ambassador invited all of us to his house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was incredibly generous of him and a delicious dinner. We had all the traditional Thanksgiving foods, along with an open bar with beer and wine (and sangria that the Ambassador kept making). He also let us swim in his pool before the dinner. He also invited some people who work at the embassy and Fulbright scholars that are working here.

The peace corps was great about getting accommodations for us when we went there, too. We were all hosted by Peace Corps or embassy workers. I ended up staying with an embassy worker who I have a connection with from home (not by coincidence, I called him on my way down). It turns out that my pediatrician’s son works at the embassy, and since my mom is a labor and delivery nurse, she is still friends with my pediatrician. So, she got his contact information for me and I called him to say I would be in Accra. He offered to let me stay with his family at their house, which is gorgeous, and they were wonderful to me the whole time. I was worried that I would be sad to be away from my family on Thanksgiving, but it was actually a great holiday.

That’s it for my update, but I have heard that people also want to know what I would like for Christmas packages. People have done really well with sending good packages so far, but here’s what I can think of off the top of my head:
Candy (chocolate especially), cookies (not homemade, they don’t travel as well), parmesan cheese, mac-n-cheese packets, drink mixes, snack foods, spices, any food items you think will travel well, photos of all of you, news magazines (not celebrity gossip), and random surprises are always good.

Pictures

2009-10-31T17:21:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-12T02:22:00.000-07:00

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!"

Site Update

2009-09-08T14:38:00.001-07:00

I am in Tamale, buying more things for my site and exchanging some faulty things I bought. I spent the last two weeks at my site, just trying to adjust. I like my community very much, but I am still getting used to it. It is harvest time now for groundnuts (peanuts), so the village is very busy and most people are at farm during the day. I have been trying to walk around a lot and just greet people and attempt to use the language. I am having a very hard time understanding them, but I can usually express myself. As I sit with people and just listen though, I am learning to hear it a little better. I still spend most of my day on my porch, but I'm working on this and will get out more. Now that I have my own space, I am a little in the American mentality of wanting to spend time on my own and in my own house, which Ghanaians think is very strange because they never just sit alone. My goal when I go back tomorrow is to start spending a few hours out of my house everyday, and just hang out with new people in the community.

One thing that has made it hard to spend time out of my house, though, is that the stove I was so excited about, that I bought in Tamale last time I was here, doesn't work properly and got continually worse over the two weeks. It has two regular size burners and a small burner, but only the small one has been working and it won't even boil water. So, meals that should take about a half hour to prepare take over two hours. Basically, I was spending 3-4 hours cooking bad meals every day. I brought it with me to Tamale and plan to argue with the manager where I bought it until he gives me a refund or a new one that works.

Some things I did at site in the past few weeks were... visit two nearby markets, meet some higher ups in my district assembly, meet some guinea worm workers, and meet the cheif of my village. For the markets, there are two markets that are each about a 45 minute bike ride away. I hope to get good enough at shopping that I can only go to market once a week, but that is hard when you don't have a fridge to store food and this heat makes food go bad so quickly. So, maybe I'll go to both markets, since they are on different days. I like market anyway, it is fun to shop around and see all the surprised faces when I speak Dagbani. Also, market talk is like the only Dagbani I am fairly good at. Meeting the higher ups at the district assembly was good. Found out there is a bed ready for my house, but it is in Tamale, so I don't expect it anytime soon (still have a mattress on the floor, so I'm good for now). It is interesting how in Ghana, its even ok, and actually very good, to just stop by and greet someone like the District Cheif Executive. I know you don't know what that is, it is an important job, but I can't think of an equivalent job in the US. I greeted some of the health workers in the district who I might work with or ask for help, so its good that they know who I am now and I can go see them anytime. Finally met my chief (he doesn't live in our village but comes by like once a week or less). He is very nice and has called me to check how things are going. I found out the two biggest goals of my community at the moment are getting electricity and getting a market, which I would be incredibly excited if they achieved even one of those goals.

Overall, a pretty good two weeks, but nice to have a break and see other Americans for two days. Sorry no pictures, but hopefully next time. I still have to put ones up of swearing in, you will love them, and I will get to it. From now on, updates will probably be every two weeks or even less frequent than that, since I will be at site most of the time and getting out of site is difficult.

Oh yea, I realized I am very behind on my dagbani lessons for you all, so here are a few market phrases:
I am going to by ... how much? : N yen dala ... ala?
That's too expensive : Di mali shaara
Please lower the price : Jaande, booima
Please, give me a dash : Jaande, twahima
May God bring you more business : Naawuni ni larigi

Site

2009-08-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

So, I've been at site for a few days now, and it still hasn't quite hit me that I will be there for two whole years. I like my house, especially that it is now bat free! It seems even the lizards and mice have mostly gone away. However, I do have toads now, but only outside, on my porch, and in my toilet room. So far, I have been mostly cleaning and unpacking. My house is nice and big, so there is lots to clean, but luckily there is also lots of storage space, so organizing is not so bad. My kitchen is the big project. Since I am replacing someone, there is tons of stuff in there. Also, since she moved out about a year ago, it is all filthy. I am now trying to clean all of it, set up the kitchen, and then I will get rid of stuff I don't need, which will be a lot. She had lots of random stuff, and some stuff is just gross because it sat for so long. I'm very lucky to have everything she left though, because now I don't have to buy many kitchen supplies, just a propane tank and burners. So far, I have been cooking on a coalpot, which was fun for about a day and is very old now. It takes me longer to start the fire than it does to cook most of my meals. However, I have yet to start it completely alone because a young girl, Aisha, always sees me doing it and comes and helps (and brings hot coals to help) and yesterday a high school aged boy did the whole thing for me twice. I love that people think I need help, haha.

Now, I am in Tamale, getting some big supplies I need for site. Today I bought a bike and a bunch of food, since you can barely get any food in my village. So far, my mom's package with mac n cheese and pasta sides has been a total life saver! Now I'll have real food though. Tomorrow I am going to buy the propane tank and burners and figure out some way to get it all back to my site. Should be interesting.

And here are some pictures. Sorry some are very low quality, but I was in a rush, meaning wanted to get this done in less than a few hours. Enjoy!

The front of my house, doesn't it look huge? Puumaaya is the dagbani name of the girl I'm replacing and it means happy stomach.

My porch, where I spend the majority of my time

The back of my bedroom, with a wardrobe and desk

The front of my bedroom, notice the nice mirror that was left for me

My bed, or mattress on the floor that will be taken away any day now, should get a real bed soon

My kitchen, it will be great once it is cleaned

My bathing area: no, there isn't a roof, and yes, the walls are crumbling, but it is very nice to watch the sunset as you bathe

My bucket flush toilet (don't be fooled by the useless back part), cleaned and sit-worthy

My almost useless sink, almost because there is no running water, but if I pour water in the sink it does go down the pipe to outside

Storage area in the leaky room, maybe I'll make use of it during the dry season

The canister I use to fetch water (and for now keep water in, since I don't have a water barrel)

The front of the meeting room that is in my house but anyone in the community can use (notice the missing ceiling panels where it leaks badly)

Back of the meeting room

My backyard, endless farms

Kids who visit me everyday and give endless entertainment even though I barely understand a thing they say

Cooking my first meal on my coalpot, probably the only time I was happy to use it

Officially a PCV

2009-08-14T05:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was swearing in and we are all now officially Peace Corps Volunteers! Since my last post, we had our language exams, final assessments, and final interviews. All went well for all of us. I even scored above the minimum requirement for language. All the assessments went very well and I am excited to finally be finished with training. Swearing in was a great ceremony with some good speeches, drumming and dancing, and skits from each language group. All of our homestay families were there to support us and so we could thank them for everything they did for us. It was a very nice ceremony, and very ghanaian, with dancing interludes when people had been sitting too long. Now, we are on our way up to site. It will take a few days because we stopped in Accra to get some of our things and then we have to buy a lot of things for our houses on the way. Should be an interesting next couple of weeks getting settled in and making my house into a home. Good news though, they are currently getting rid of my bats before I get there! I'm excited and nervous to get started. I'll write more next time I get on here, but don't have much time now. Hope to put pictures up soon.

Site Visit

2009-08-02T06:51:00.000-07:00

I just visited my site for the first time and spent five days there. It was enlightening and intimidating at the same time. First, I’ll tell you about my community. It is fairly small, about 1600 people, almost all farmers. Everyone was very nice and laid back. They were all happy to greet me, but also willing to give me space and let me just hang out at my house a lot. My village is absolutely beautiful, with a lot of open space and farms everywhere. They literally farm almost every foot of land that is not covered by a house or building. So, the whole village is rows of plants, mostly maize, with paths throughout and housing compounds scattered throughout. Since it is a mostly Muslim community, most families have multiple wives and they all live in one compound. So a compound is a circle of mud huts with thatch roofs connected by a mud wall, creating an inner courtyard. I’ll get pictures of it on here at some point to make this clearer. We do not have a chief right now because the chief died and they cannot replace him until they have his funeral. But, they cannot have his funeral until the funeral for the regional chief, who died 7 or 8 years ago, is held. That funeral has not been held yet due to political issues, but supposedly will be held soon. Confusing, I know. The village has a primary school and a junior high school, which is great. It has a clinic, but no one to work there, so it is not functional. And, that is about all that is there. Oh yea, and there were about 2 latrines in the whole village and no soak away pits that I saw, so I already have some projects in mind.

As for the location of my village, as the crow flies, it is very close to Tamale, a major city. But, as the tro-tro rides, it is about 1.5 to 2 hours away from Tamale due to the not so well maintained roads leading there and the not so direct route taken to get there. To get in and out of my village, there are two tro-tros per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and two tro-tros per day out of the neighboring village that leave about 1 hour after the ones in my village. These tro-tros all go to Tamale and I can go wherever I want from there. So basically, I will have to plan carefully if I want to travel from my site because I might not get back into my site that same day. This shouldn’t be a problem though, as Peace Corps has an office in Tamale where I can stay for free when I need to.

Now, onto my house. I am lucky to have my own house. It is at the edge of town, but not far from town at all. It is a yellow cement house with some murals on the outside that were painted by the previous volunteer. The house has four rooms, three of which are mine. The fourth is a community meeting room. It also has a “screened in” porch, but the screens are falling apart, so its not really screened in anymore. The four rooms of the house are all in a row, connected by the porch. The rooms on the two ends, the meeting room and one of my rooms, leak very badly when it rains, so I won’t really be using that last room. The two rooms in the middle do not leak at all and are pretty nice. One of them is a kitchen with tables and lots of supplies left by the previous volunteer and the other is my bedroom which has a wardrobe and a desk in it and should have a bed by the time I get there. On the porch, there is a long table and I take chairs from the meeting room for people to sit. I have a bucket flush toilet in a small bathroom off my porch, so I don’t have to leave my house to use the toilet, which is very nice. Outside, I have a bathing area with a nice view of all the farms and open space. A bathing area is a small area, maybe 4’x4’, with mud walls to about shoulder height and no roof, where you go to bucket bath.

While at site, I did not do a whole lot. My counterpart brought me around to meet all the elders and opinion leaders. It’s interesting meeting elders here because in this culture you have to squat down when greeting an elder to show respect, and you cannot ask an elder how they are doing. So, it’s them asking all the questions and you answering “naa” repeatedly. Also, when they greet you, they ask a bunch of questions. A typical greeting might be: Good morning, how is home, how is work, how is your father, how is your mother, how is your husband, how are your kids, how were your travels, and how did you sleep. For each thing, the response is “naa” until they ask how you slept and then it is “gombiene” and you don’t really wait for them to finish the sentence before saying “naa”. And, when you say naa, they can respond with naa, so sometimes you have a mini conversation of just saying naa back and forth. It’s fun. As for the language, I really did not understand anything but the greetings, so I am going to have to work hard on that and hope to get a tutor at site. This is totally normal though, so I’ll end up learning quickly, I think/hope. Whenever I was home alone, I would sit on my porch and go over my language notes, and a bunch of kids would come to hang out with me. They were really cute and entertaining. They also were trying to help me with the language, which is cool. I learned a few words from them and they learned some English from me. We also visited the nearest functioning clinic, which is actually a very nice clinic. There are two doctors who work there, which is very unusual, and a bunch of staff. It looked very busy, but the doctor who was working was very nice and introduced me to the director as well. I’m hoping to do some work with them because they will be very knowledgeable and I was just impressed by the clinic. I hope it actually runs as nicely as it looked.

I hope that entry was not too long, but there is still more I left out that I’m sure I’ll talk about when I actually move to site. Overall, I liked my site very much and think I will be happy there.

Pictures

2009-07-18T09:46:00.001-07:00

Here are some pictures, kind of in reverse chronological order. Hope you like them. I'll try to put pics up more regularly from now on.

President Obama and President Mills at the Accra airport. Absolutely amazing!

My future puppy if all works out. So cute!

Elyse, Beth, and I wearing matching shirts by pure coincidence. I typically match someone in my group everyday by pure coincidence.

Traditional dancing performed for us on field trip with Cynthia and Zoe joining in.

Learning a traditional dance with about 100 kids watching us.

The house I stayed in during vision quest (view from the courtyard shared with the landlord and his wife)

My host family. I live with the grandmother, and my host sister and her daughter live in Accra.

My roommate, Katherine, for the first two weeks and my substitute mom while I'm here for two years. We were at the Ambassador's house for a welcome party.

Animals

2009-07-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

I thought I should dedicate a blog post to my recent animal friends.

While we were on field trip, my mom's dog had puppies! I was waiting for this the whole time I have been here and they are soooo cute! Of course I am in love with them already and they have not even opened their eyes. They are about a week and a half old and just adorable. There are only two, and I have claimed one and my friend Elyse claimed the other. We are hoping to bring them to site when we move there. First, we are going to see if it will be appropriate during site visit (dogs aren't so popular in the north) and then we will deal with the travel problem. My mom is excited to give me one though and I am really excited that I might have a puppy to keep me company during my first lonely nights at site.

My next animal friend is one that I met this morning. I woke up at 4:45am to the sound of plastic rustling on my desk where I keep my bread. From my experience last summer in Boston, I knew some creature was eating my bread. After a few minutes of getting the guts up to find out what this creature was, I turned on the flashlight to look. I still could not tell exactly what it was through the mosquito net, but could see a creature scurrying around my desk. Another minute of guts building and I lifted my protective net and saw that it was a mouse, thank god. The mouse had no where to go and wanted to escape, so it went on the floor and ran back and forth for a minute. Then it climbed my doorway about halfway up and went splat on the floor. It was fine and did this about 5 times while I sat on my bed and watched, laughing. Then it climbed across my second bed (not the one I was on) and onto my luggage and tried to climb out the window, which was closed. This was also entertaining from my protective mosquito net covered bed. I finally decided I had to do something and went and woke up my mom and sister. They came in with big sticks chasing the mouse around the room trying to kill it but could not catch it. It was pretty hilarious to watch my sister with murder in her eyes at 5am chasing a mouse. It was still there at lunch time, but my mom assures me that she is buying poison to "kill the rat", which is actually a small, kind of cute, mouse. It was a very entertaining morning though.

Obama's Visit!

2009-07-12T06:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was an amazing day! President Obama was only in Ghana for one day and we got to see him and listen to a speech right before he boarded Air Force One to leave. We went to Accra in the morning, got our tickets to the event, and headed to the airport for the event in the afternoon. We were in a crowd of probably over a thousand Ghanaians and Americans going to this event, but got basically front row seats. There was a section for American citizens about 30 feet from the stage where President Obama and Ghana President Atta Mills both gave short speeches. We had to wait a few hours for them to arrive and the event was only about 30 minutes, but it was amazing. They welcomed the presidents with drummers and dancers. President Atta Mills gave a short opening speech that we could not really hear, and then President Obama gave about an 8 minute speech in which he gave multiple shout outs to Peace Corps. Of course we went crazy everytime he mentioned us. It was a great speech about development in Ghana and how America will be their partner in every step. After, he went around and shook hands of course, and Michelle shook hands too. I was not quite aggressive enough to get a handshake, but it was still great, and I shook hands that shook his, totally the same, haha.

After, 8 of us stayed in a hotel type place in Accra, near an area where tons of ex-pats live, so it was very American-like. We went out to two bars with current PCVs and had nice cold beers, enjoyed American music and saw lots of obrunis. At one bar they were even having a tribute to Michael Jackson by showing a ton of his videos on a projector outside. It was a lot of fun, but we were out 'til about midnight, which is very late here, and I am very tired today. Totally worth it though to see the city nightlife in Ghana, even though I will very rarely get to Accra from my site.

Now for the next Dagbani lesson: To ask someone how they are doing you say "agbihiya" which literally means how did you sleep, and they respond "gombiene", which means they are doing well.

update 3: maybe meet Obama?

2009-07-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

We found out today that we might get to meet Obama, or at least see him, on Saturday when he is here. It will be a quick 30 minute event before he leaves, but if we can get transportation, we will be there. I'm so excited! That's all on that though, now for real updates.

We just got back from field trip, which included going to the Northern Region, kind of near where my site will be, and then to the Volta Region, where I had my vision quest. It was really fun except for the extremely long tro rides. We were the only group to not get a peace corps vehicle for travel, so we had a chartered tro driver and an interesting tro. The first day was an 11 hour ride to the Northern Region, followed by meeting two chiefs, and eating amazing chilli for the 4th of July. It was nice to see the Northern Region for the first time and get a slight taste of what it will be like. It looks more like stereotypical Africa up there, which is nice, and people are less in-your-face, which will also be nice. But, it is hotter. While there, we got to meet people from the Carter foundation who are working to eradicate guinea worm, which will be my main project. We also got to see some of the ways they are trying to prevent it, with filters and platforms to stand on while fetching water. Lastly, we played a fun football game against the local team and gave a guinea worm presentation at halftime. It was a great experience for me because I got an idea of some things that I can do at site.

We got there on Saturday, and on Monday we got back in the tro and spent about 10 hours traveling on the worst roads in Ghana to the Volta Region. I don't think my butt will ever feel the same after that trip. Once there, we met people who are working with 3 NGOs to promote family planning, empower women, teach about HIV/AIDS, prevent domestic violence, and other great things. It was also very interesting and pertinent to what we will be doing, but we were so exhausted that I kind of just wanted to get to bed. The next day, we went to a girl's site in that region and met the clinic nurse, saw dramas performed by students about pertinent health topics, and saw traditional dancing. It was a lot of fun and again gave good ideas of what we can do at site with the dramas.

Today was the last day of field trip and we spent another 9 hours 9 in the tro on the worst roads in Ghana. But, now I am in an internet cafe that is working so far and I got my phone unlocked, which I've been trying to do for a couple weeks. So, its all good. BTW, since my phone is unlocked I might have two phone numbers soon, but I'll let you know about that when the time comes.

Well, I was going to try to put pictures on here, but apparently the cafe I am at does not allow you to use a pen-drive, so I guess I'll have to try that some other time. For now I'm going to try facebook. Wish me luck.

Dagbani phrase of the day is the name of my favorite meal here, which they don't have in the north so I have to enjoy it here while I can. It is called red-red in English and is fried plantains with beans. In Dagbani it is "tuya ni boraade chimda", literally beans and plantains fried.

Update number 2, written on 6/25/09:

2009-06-27T09:40:00.002-07:00

I am starting to like homestay even better now that the town is getting used to us and my mom is serving me better food (or I’m getting used to some Ghanaian food). I am called obruni much less now and people are not as fascinated by us, so they leave us alone more. Some highlights of homestay so far are: playing football with the guys in town, learning some Ghanaian dancing and drumming with about 50 kids watching, drinking cold orange juice with the queen mother, and dancing in front of the chief and most of the town at a festival. For this festival, we were planning to meet the chief in the next town for their festival, but the community here saw us walking with firewood (the traditional gift for the festival) and told the chief that we were coming to see him. We could not disappoint the whole community, so we waited while the Peace Corps people went to get schnapps to also bring to the chief and then went to the festival in our town. The community waited for over an hour for us to show up and then made us unexpectedly dance in front of them. It was fun, but mostly funny. Also, I am apparently part of the queen mother’s family, which means I got a ride to church on Sunday (yes, I went to church) in a Mercedes and then went to her house after for snacks and COLD orange juice.
Anything cold here is amazing! We are obsessed with this treat called fanmilk, which is like frozen yogurt in a bag. There are three flavors but chocolate is my favorite, it is like frozen chocolate milk and then the end is like cold chocolate milk, both delicious! I even had an “ice cream cone” the other day, which was like sherbet on a cone and I am obsessed with having cold fanta whenever I can. In case I ever complain about running out of money here, it went toward cold items and my phone.
Which brings me to my next story: I got a phone. This was a project and a half and is still not finished. So, we heard that the phones were cheaper in the official store. After asking many people for directions, we finally got a cab there and found out that they are cheaper, but they are locked and cannot be unlocked. This means that we could only use one service provider and never switch, which is very inconvenient here. So, we went to another store to buy unlocked phones. Well, those were locked too and the system to unlock them was apparently down. After a long hassle, we bought the phones anyway. Later, we find out that our phones will not receive calls or texts. A nice guy at an internet café fixed mine for me, but I still cannot receive international texts, which definitely sucks. I’m hoping to get that fixed when I get the phone unlocked. We’ll see, but for now, feel free to call me, I will put my number in my next mass email.
Today, my language group went to one of the neighboring towns to meet a Dagomba family, who speak Dagbani. We just showed up at their door unexpectedly and asked if they would help us learn Dagbani and, being typical Ghanaians, they invited us right in and were excited to help. It was great, except that we found out we were pronouncing some things totally wrong and they had other meanings the way we were saying them. This language is going to be very hard. For example, there are four words that sound very similar that mean: I reached my destination, thank you, my wife, and giving someone praise. Very different meanings, but very similar words. Luckily, the family said we could come over like once a week and talk with them, so this should help a lot before we get to site and realize we know nothing. They also gave us Dagomba names based on words that sound like our names, and mine meant something like “no one likes me”, clearly fitting for me.
And by Meredith's request, the new word is Gafarra, and it means excuse me or is what you say when you approach someone's house and want to know if they are home. The response is Garima.

First update from Ghana

2009-06-24T04:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry this is so long, but here goes...

Hello Everyone!

I’m sure you are looking for updates on my Ghana adventures. We are just now getting into the intense part of training. For the first two weeks, we got an orientation into Ghana, which included learning that nothing is ever on time and patience is seriously a virtue. We spent the first week or so in Accra, the capital, where we were introduced to all the Peace Corps staff and mainly got to know each other. During that time we went on an “Accra Quest” in which we were split into groups and sent into Accra on our own to find certain places. It was fun to learn about the public transportation here and actually be on our own for a while. My group went to the National Theatre, which is a beautiful building, and to a tro-tro station. We finished early so we decided to have a snack under a nice tree, but it started “raining”, which meant that it was barely sprinkling, and a worker at a bar (called a “spot” here) invited us to sit in there to get shelter from the rain. One thing about Ghana, and I think most of Africa, is life stops when it rains. I LOVE when it rains because it cools everything down, but they think that I am weird for that.

After our week in Accra, we were sent out on a “Vision Quest”, where we went to spend 5 days with a current volunteer in our sector to see what they do and how they live. We were supposed to travel to this alone too, but there were 7 of us going to the Northern Volta region, so we traveled in a group to that too. That region has the worst roads and the worst tro-tros in the whole country. It was ridiculous. I took a full day to get to my host’s site and by the time I got there my skin and clothes were a completely different color because of all the dust. I had to take three tro-tros and a car to get to her site. It was quite the adventure. In her site, she has the bare minimum requirements for housing. She has a bedroom, a kitchen, a courtyard, a latrine, and a bathing area. However, the courtyard is shared with her landlord and his wife who live in the room next to her and the latrine and bathing area are shared with about 15 people. Everyone in the town was very nice though and I enjoyed my time with her. The town has no electricity and is very small and remote. They have a primary school (elementary school), but the teachers only show up about once a week or less, so we went and taught a couple of lessons for fun. They have a clinic, too, which is good for such a small town. We got the kids to plant a Morenga garden next to the clinic one morning before school, which was a good health/environment project. Morenga is a tree that grows very nutritious fruit and can be used for many different things, and every part of the tree can be used. It is one of the things that peace corps is pushing a lot now to promote good nutrition and it is easy to grow around here. I also learned how to cook on a coal pot and learned a couple of good recipes. Overall, it was fun and I got to realize some of the struggles I will have at site, so I will be prepared to deal with those when I start.

Then, we stayed in a hotel in Kukurantumi, a couple hours outside of Accra, for a few nights. During this time we had our site interviews, learned some survival Twi, and had a lot of free time. On those nights, we also went out to a spot a lot and got to really hang out socially. It was a lot of fun, and don’t worry mom, I only had one beer and mostly drank fanta. I don’t see the fun in getting drunk when you have to be up at 6am everyday. Oh yea, I forgot to mention that I have not slept past 6:30am since I was home, and typically wake up by 5:30 without an alarm, it’s kind of scaring me a little bit.

Now, we finally found out where our sites will be, who our neighbors will be, and what language we will be learning. I will be in the Northern Region, in a village called Voguu. It has a population of about 1600 and has no electricity in the whole town. I am learning the language Dagbani. There are four of us learning that language and I will have quite a few close neighbors. The other trainees that will be close to me are really great and I am guessing the volunteers who are already there are great too. I will be doing a lot of work with guinea worm and HIV/AIDS, so I am very excited about that. I will have my own house, which will be a cement house with a zinc roof. It obviously has no electricity, but has a bucket flush toilet and a bathing room to take bucket baths (which I really like, by the way). It has a bedroom and a living room. I don’t know about the cooking facilities, but I hope to get a little propane stove because I am not too far outside of a major city, so I will be able to refill the tank when I need to. Also, I’m almost an expert on a coal pot by now, haha.

We also are finally at homestay. I am living in an interesting house. My host mom is an older woman whose children are grown and live in Accra and Canada. There are no kids. She also rents rooms to a teacher and a driver. The teacher is a 22 year old girl who speaks English very well and is fun to talk to and hang out with. I am very glad she is living here. The driver is never around because he drives a taxi, but he is a nice guy about my age as well. Soon I hope to start cooking with my host mom so that I can learn to cook Ghanaian food, and learn to cook in general. Since I am still a guest, she makes me eat alone in my room, which bothers most people, but I kind of like it and don’t know if I am going to ask to eat with her anytime soon. Tonight I played football (soccer) with a couple other trainees and a ton of the guys in the town. The guys are really good and we looked like fools, but it was really fun and one of the other girls actually scored a goal. It was so nice to finally do something active again and I think I will keep playing with them a few days a week. Oh yea, one bad thing about my homestay is that there are GIANT cockroaches in my “toilet”, which is a toilet type structure over a latrine, so I had to sweep a huge cockroach into the latrine before I could squat over this thing to do my business. And for those of you who do not know what a latrine is, it is a huge hole in the ground that you build an outhouse over with a hole in the bottom and you poop into the hole in the ground, obviously a very pleasant place.

So, that is my life in Ghana thus far. I am sure there are a million things I left out, but I’m also sure you are tired of reading by now, so I will stop. Hopefully if I start updating more often, I will have less to write each time.

I miss you all, but I am very happy here and am looking forward to living here for two years. Please send me letters or cards. Packages are nice too. I was so excited when I my first letter, which was from Auntie Paula (thank you!). I am trying to write letters too, but it costs 1.5 Ghana Cedi to send a letter and right now we are making 2 Ghana Cedi per day, so don’t expect too many letters while I am in training. You can send me emails, too. I’ll leave you by saying “tin nya taba”, which means see you later in Dagbani.

News From Julie

2009-06-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I am doing well. I am having fun and getting ready to really start training now. We are on our way back from vision quest where we got to stay at someone's site for about 5 days. I was at a site way out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity or running water. It was fun and opened my eyes to a lot of the issues I will have to deal with. I will be fine with the living conditions, but we'll see about dealing with the community issues because there are many. I am excited to find out where my site is next week. We have our site interviews in the next couple of days, and then we find out where we are going and start learning the language. I don't have much time right now, but thought I should let you know that I am doing well and having fun. I dont have my address book with me so I don't have other email addresses, so please spread the word that I am doing well and I am happy. Mom, you can update my blog if you want. Oh yea, and I think I am getting a phone sometime in the next week or two so I will let you know my number and all that.

Love and miss you all!
Julie

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News From Ghana

2009-06-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

I just found this email from the Peace Corps FINALLY!!!

Hello to all friends and family of Peace Corps Ghana. I sent thise-mail to you last week. Unfortunately, I have learned that many of you did not receive it due to internet problems here in Ghana. We have created this gmail account to send e-mails like this only until the problem is fixed, so please do not respond to this address, as I will not be checking it regularly. We can receive e-mail at our Peace Corpse-mail address, the problem is limited to sending e-mail only. Thanks for your patience.
Greetings! The 67 newest members of our Peace Corps Ghana family arrived safely in Accra yesterday morning. More incredibly, every piece of luggage arrived as well! They all are a bit tired from the trip, and we have them fully engaged in the first phase of training here in Accra, so Iwanted to take this opportunity to let you know that although you may not have heard from them yet, they are doing well. During the first few weeks they will be very busy and will have limited opportunities to access the internet and phones. Usually after the first week or two, our Trainees begin to establish regular communication with family and friends back home. Yesterday, they enjoyed a traditional welcome ceremony with staff and religious leaders, and then uttered a collective groan as they had to fill out yet more medical and administrative paperwork. Today, they are completing the required paperwork, touring our offices, and obtaining photo ID cards. This weekend, they will have a chance to explore Accra, Ghana's capital, under the watchful eye of some of our more experienced Volunteers. On Monday, they will attend a welcome reception at the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana's residence (Ambassador Teitelbaum) and will then enjoy their last evening of "hotel-style luxury" before venturing out to some of the more rural areas of Ghana to visit currently serving Volunteers. They will see first hand what kinds of experiences await them ten short weeks from now when they "swear-in" as Peace Corps Volunteers. Peace Corps Ghana staff are very energized to have the new group here and we are looking forward to getting to know them during the next 10 weeks of training. Thank you for providing moral support to your friends and family members as they embark on their Peace Corps service here in Ghana. We are very excited that they have arrived safely and in good spirits! I hope that you are looking forward to sharing the experience with them. All the best, Mike Koffman
Michael KoffmanCountry DirectorPeace Corps -
GhanaP.O. Box 5796
Accra-NorthOffice
Tel. 233-21-773-831
Mobile Tel. 233-27-755-0027
mkoffman@gh.peacecorps.gov

Travel update

2009-06-03T10:28:00.000-07:00

Julie left for Philadelphia Tuesday morning and has officially begun her Peace Corp orientation.She has met up with other voluntees who are very supportive and lots of fun. They are driving to New York where they will take a direct flight to Ghana (11 hours). Her flight leaves at 6PM so once again when you think about her say a little prayer for her and all of her new friends. They are beginning a wonderful life changing experience.

One day left !!!!

2009-05-31T22:39:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to make sure that I could actually sign on and post without Julie's help and I did it! As you know we will be leaving at 5:30 Tuesday mornig and Julie's flight is 7:15am. So when you wake up Tuesday morning think of her and say a little prayer. I'm sure this will be a wonderful experience. Lucky are the people that Julie will be living and working with!!!

Welcome to my blog

2009-05-18T14:24:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone and welcome to my blog of stories from my adventure in Peace Corps Ghana. To answer the questions that everyone has asked me repeatedly so far, I am leaving June 2, 2009. I will be in Ghana, but I do not yet know what part of the country I will be in for the 27 months. In case you didn't catch that, it is a 27 month commitment, and I am not sure if I will be visiting home at any point, but you are all invited to visit me at some point after the first 6 months. I will be a Health and Water Sanitation Educator, which can mean many things depending where I am placed. I will probably be working on the eradication of Guinea Worm, which is a water born parasite that is common in Ghana. I will have internet access sometimes, but it will not be fast or reliable. I will update this blog as much as possible, so keep checking it to keep up with my life. I'll hopefully put pictures up here too when I can. While I'm gone, I'll miss all of you and will greatly appreciate letters, emails, and packages. Mail will be slow but it'll make my day everytime I get letters and packages, so keep them coming! My mailing address, at least for training, will be:
Julie Bordua, PCT
Peace Corps
P.O. Box 5796
Accra North, Ghana
West Africa
I hope to get a cell phone while I'm there, and when I do, I will let you know my phone number. If you get a calling card, it won't be too expensive to call me and we can keep in touch that way as well.

Below are two letters from the Peace Corps to family and friends of volunteers. Feel free to read them.

June 4, 2009
Greetings from Ghana. My name is Mike Koffman and it is my privilege and honor to serve as the Peace Corps Ghana Country Director. My number one goal and a responsibility that I take very seriously is to lead the Peace Corps Ghana program in a manner that allows all of our Volunteers to have safe, enjoyable and productive service experiences during their time in Ghana.
I am sure that many of you are sending sons, daughters, mothers and fathers off to West Africa with mixed emotions. It is only natural. As I recently mentioned to one Volunteer: “If your family was too happy about you going far away for a long time I would be more than a bit suspicious!” I hope that, after the initial shock of your loved one’s decision, you have been able to strike that balance where your feelings of pride and excitement are equal to or greater than your initial reservations and worries.
Let me assure you that the Peace Corps staff here in the Ghana works very hard to support each of our 140 Volunteers in many areas. We have administrative systems in place to ensure that living allowances arrive on time. We have two excellent medical officers, one MD and one PA, who are available 24 hours a day to provide emergency and routine medical attention. Our programming staff works closely with Ghanaian project partners and communities to find safe and productive sites for each of our Volunteers.
The safety and security of each of our Volunteers is the number one priority for our entire staff. For that reason, we have a Safety & Security Coordinator, whose sole mission is to address any issues that may impact the safety or security of any of our Volunteers. While nobody can eliminate the risk of every day life activities, we do all that we can to make our Volunteers aware of cultural norms and differences and aware of risks specific to Ghana so that they can make good decisions and avoid trouble. I am happy to report that we have had great success in this area.
We tell each Volunteer that it is Peace Corps’ responsibility to provide each of them with safe and healthy sites, work to do and the support to do it. Each Volunteer must assess his or her own professional commitment and personal behavior to ensure that he or she is productive and maintains a safe and healthy lifestyle.
The Peace Corps experience is a very personal one. We encourage Volunteers to keep family and friends informed of their activities through letters, internet and telephone calls. However, we encourage Volunteers to test their independence, creativity and resourcefulness during this rare opportunity to walk in someone else’s shoes. We discourage visitors from home during the first six months in Ghana so as to encourage each Volunteer to engage totally with his of her new community.
If you need to contact your loved one in an emergency situation, please call the Office of Special Services at Peace Corps. The Office of Special Services will then contact me immediately and we will notify our Volunteer and either pass a message or notify the Volunteer to contact you, as appropriate:
.
24 hours a day, including weekends and holidays:
Toll free 800-424-8580, Ext 1470
Direct 202-692-1470
In closing, let me thank you for “loaning” your loved one to the people of Ghana for the next two years. Having been a Peace Corps Volunteer myself, I feel confident in telling you that your sons, daughters, mothers and fathers have embarked on a journey that will provide them with incredible opportunities for personal growth, job satisfaction and an enhanced perspective unavailable to many.
If you have any questions for me please do not hesitate to send them along. I will try to respond to you in a timely fashion (mkoffman@gh.peacecorps.gov).
Most sincerely,
Mike Koffman
Country Director
Peace Corps
Ghana

Dear Families,
Greetings from the Ghana Desk in Washington, D.C. It is with great pleasure that we welcome your family member to the 2009 Ghana training program. During the past year we have received many requests from Volunteers and family members alike regarding travel plans, sending money, relaying messages and mail, etc. As we are unable to involve ourselves in the personal arrangements of Volunteers, we would like to offer you advice and assistance in advance by providing specific examples of situations and how we suggest they be handled.
1. Irregular Communication. (Please see #3 for the mailing address to Peace Corps' office in Accra the capital of Ghana). The mail service in Ghana is not as efficient as the U.S. Postal Service. Thus, it is important to be patient. It can take from three to four weeks for mail coming from Ghana to arrive in the United States via the Ghanaian mail system. From a Volunteer's post, mail might take up to one to two months to reach the United States depending upon how far the Volunteer is from the capital city, Accra. Sometimes mail is hand carried to the States by a traveler and mailed through the U.S. postal system. This leg of the trip can take another several weeks as it is also dependent on the frequency of travelers to the U.S.
We suggest that in your first letters, you ask your Volunteer family member to give an estimate of how long it takes for him or her to receive your letters and then try to establish a predictable pattern of how often you will write to each other. Also try numbering your letters so that the Volunteer knows if he or she missed one. Postcards should be sent in envelopes--otherwise they may be found on the wall of the local post office.
Volunteers often enjoy telling their "war" stories when they write home. Letters might describe recent illnesses, lack of good food, isolation, etc. While the subject matter is often good reading material, it is often misinterpreted on the home front. Please do not assume that if your family member got sick that he or she has been unattended. The city of Accra has medical and dental facilities, and there is a Peace Corps Doctor and nurse there as well. Most Volunteers can reach Accra in less than one day's time. Many Volunteers also have access to a telephone (most have cell phones!) so that they can call our Medical Office. In the event of a serious illness the Volunteer is sent to Accra and is cared for by our Medical Unit. If the Volunteer requires medical care that is not available in Ghana, he/she will be medically evacuated to South Africa or the United States. Fortunately, such circumstances are very rare.
If for some reason your communication pattern is broken and you do not hear from your family member for at least one month, you should contact the Office of Special Services (OSS) at Peace Corps in Washington at 1-800-424-8580, extension 1470. The OSS will then call the Peace Corps Director in Ghana, and ask him to check up on the Volunteer. Also, in the case of an emergency at home (death in the family, sudden illness, etc.), please do not hesitate to call OSS immediately, so that the Volunteer can be informed in person by a member of Peace Corps/Ghana staff.
2. Telephone Calls. The telephone system in Ghana has reliable service to the United States. While few Volunteers have access to a telephone (land line) at their sites, more and more Volunteers are choosing to buy cell phones. Some sites have clear cell phone reception and others do not. In any case, most Volunteers have access to a phone (land line or cell) when they travel to a larger town within a few hours from their sites.
When dialing direct to Ghana from the U.S., dial 011 (the international access code) + 233 (the country code) + the number. Volunteers generally set up phone calls with people in the U.S. in advance, and have the distant party call them, which is much less expensive than calling the U.S. from Ghana. You may also choose to call your volunteer on their cellphone, if they decide to buy one in Ghana.
The Ghana Desk in Washington, D.C. usually calls the Peace Corps office in Accra at least once a week. However, these calls are reserved for business only and we cannot relay personal messages over the phone. If you have an urgent message regarding travel plans, etc., you can call the Desk, and the message will be relayed.
3. Sending Packages. Parents and Volunteers like to send and receive care packages through the mail. Every package mailed to the PC Accra P.O. box is opened by Ghana postal staff in the presence of a Peace Corps staff member to verify that the contents match what is listed on the (small green) declaration form. For example, it is therefore not appropriate to write "Religious material inside" if there are no religious materials inside.
You may want to send inexpensive items through the mail, but there is no guarantee that these items will arrive. We do not recommend, however, that costly items be sent through the mail. Even though most Volunteers eventually get local post office boxes, you may always use the following address to send letters and/or packages to your family member:
Julie Bordua, PCV
Peace Corps
P.O. Box 5796
Accra-North, Ghana
West Africa
It is recommended that packages be sent in padded envelopes if possible, as boxes tend to be taxed more frequently. Packages can be sent via surface mail (2-3 weeks arrival time) or by ship (4-6 months). The difference in cost can be a factor in deciding which method to utilize. For lightweight but important items (e.g. airline tickets), DHL (an express mail service) does operate in Accra, but costs are very expensive. If you choose to send items through DHL, you must address the package to the Country Director, c/o Peace Corps, 26 West Cantonments, Switchback Lane, Accra, Ghana, West Africa. The telephone number for the Peace Corps office in Ghana is (233) 21-775-984, should DHL need this information. If you send the item to the Country Director, no liability can be assumed. For more information about DHL, please call their toll free number, 1-800-CALL-DHL, or visit their web site at www.dhl.com.
Sending airplane tickets and/or cash is not recommended. Certain airlines will allow you to buy a prepaid ticket in the States; they will telex their Accra office to have the ticket ready. Unfortunately, this system is not always reliable. Many airlines (eg., KLM, Air France, Sabena, Ghana Airways) fly into Accra, but each has its own policy on pre-paid tickets. Please call the airline of your choice for more information. You could also send tickets via DHL as mentioned previously. However, Peace Corps will assume no liability in the event of a lost/stolen airline ticket.
Trying to send cash or airline tickets is very risky and is discouraged. Volunteers are meant to live modestly and not accept any additional financial resources to support their service. If your Volunteer family member requests money from you, it is his/her responsibility to arrange receipt of it. Volunteers will also be aware of people visiting the States and can request that they call his/her family when they arrive in the States should airline tickets need to be sent back to Ghana.
We understand how frustrating it is to communicate with your family member overseas and we appreciate your using this information as a guideline. Please feel free to contact us at the Ghana Desk in Washington, DC, if you have further questions. Our phone number is (800) 424-8580, ext. 2326/2325, or locally at (202) 692-2326/2325.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Brown, Country Desk Officer
Evan Baker, Country Desk Assistant