YAY

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!!!

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!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Women's Group

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

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

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