Site

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

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

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

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

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!

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?

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.