2 Weeks to Relax!

We left Sunyani a week ago with the rest of the Canadian team, and had two days with them in Cape Coast…on the coast of Ghana. After the rest of the team left Amanda and I found ourselves on our own again, but this time with no project to work on and no schedule to follow! What would we do with ourselves?! It did take us a couple days to settle into the fact that we really had nothing to do. Once that was accepted we quickly fell into the routine of sleeping in, reading books, napping, eating and then repeat the sequence! We did leave the place we were staying at to go into the town of Cape Coast to get to the internet and pick up some things we needed, and visit a new friend.

The group left on the Sunday, and on the Tuesday we went to a nearby town called Winneba to meet a little boy that is sponsored by a friend of Amanda’s in Red Deer. We had called ahead a few weeks before to arrange the visit with the organization that he is sponsored through. They met us at the bus stop and took us to the school that he goes to which is on the same grounds as a Church. As we arrived they explained to us that we were the first sponsors to visit this particular project site, and they were so excited for us to come that they had arranged a church service in our honour! As we walked into the church the people inside all started clapping and cheering! It was definitely more than we had expected, and was a little overwhelming! They had a short service about the gift of children, and then there were performances by some of the children…poems, bible verses, and dances. They were SO CUTE! After the service (which had included some dancing which we got to participate in!) they brought the little boy Kennedy, aged 7, and his family over to meet us.

He has two brothers and two sisters, and he is the youngest. We went back with the family to their house, which was quite dark and run down, and we gave them some gifts we had brought. The mother spoke about how having Kennedy sponsored had helped their family; by not having to pay his school fees and for his uniforms and shoes etc it enables the family to spend their money on other necessities. He also goes to a private school now, and she told of how when he was in the overcrowded public school he didn’t want to go. Each morning now, he is excited to go to school and always makes sure his mom has his uniform ready for him. They were very sweet and so thankful to us for coming to visit. The day was not at all what we had expected, but it was definitely a highlight of our stay here in Ghana.

From Cape Coast we moved farther west to an eco-lodge I had read about in our guide book called The Green Turtle Lodge. It is owned by a young English couple, but the daily running is all done by local people from a nearby village called Akwidaa (Aqui-day). The place runs off of solar power and has self-composting toilets and employs about 30 people from the village. They have also started a community fund which some of the profits of the lodge go to, as well each time someone from the lodge goes on a tour, part of the payment goes into the community fund. The fund is then determined how best to be spent by a community committee…they are in the process of paying to have power poles and lines put in to the village, which is a huge deal! The lodge was right on the beach, great food, cute huts…I didn’t wear shoes for the entire 6 days we were there! Good times!

We are now back in Cape Coast for a few days then we head into Accra for the weekend before we fly out on Monday eve! We are less than a week away from home, and I must admit I’m getting pretty excited about heading home!

For those of you that read Amanda’s blog as well, you will know that she was in a car accident three weeks ago…for those of you that don’t, now you know! She was in a taxi that got t-boned by another taxi that was trying to avoid a dog on the road. She was a bit banged up and bruised, but seems to be all healed up now with the exception of a bit of a sore knee that bothers her once and a while. It was probably one of the scariest times in my life. I actually called her as it happened and could hear shouting and ciaos and when she didn’t actually say ‘hello’ I thought I must have dialed the wrong number, so I hung up and called again. This time when she answered she was crying and said that there’d been an accident and she was bleeding! She was only a block away from the dorm, so I grabbed our friend Vincent and we ran down the street to her. I’ll never forget running up to the crowd of people that were around her and making eye contact with her as blood ran down her face, arms, and chest. Yikes! It turned out that most of the blood was from small cuts caused by the flying broken glass, and she wasn’t badly hurt. We all went to the hospital and got her checked out before taking her home. Thankfully one of the faculty from Malaspina was a nurse, and she was able to talk to the doctors and then assisted with the cleaning of cuts over the next few days. I would have done it, but was happy to have someone else take responsibility for all that!

The project time was a real success. Each theme team was able to provide some great knowledge transfer events, and even better they were able to make some great personal connections and provide info and resources to assist in each topic area in having some movement that will continue now that we are gone from Sunyani.
Yes, we are gone from Sunyani. The whole team left there on Friday. It was so sad to say good bye to all the great people we had met and the friends we had made. I think my favourite part of Ghana was also my biggest surprise, and that was the people here. Not that I thought they would be mean or unwelcoming, but I hadn’t really thought too much about it as my experience is that you can’t really know a culture until you are there, and so I didn’t give it too much thought. But to my pleasant surprise I was continually amazed at the kindness, hospitality, and generosity of the people here. We were welcomed into families, made friendships that were far closer and honest than many I’ve had in Canada, and taken care of in so many ways. I know many people that have been to Africa and say that you will leave a piece of your heart there…if the people of Ghana are an example of people in Africa, then I can see why. I will be leaving a piece of my heart here with all of the people that have touched it in the last 4 months.

There are more posts to come in the next few weeks; many more experiences and times to share about. For now, know that I am happy and relaxing on a beach! ...and missing you all, of course!! ;)

Busy Busy Busy!!

It has been awhile since I last wrote for a few reasons…one is that the rest of the team has arrived and it’s been very busy around here, and the other is that the power and the internet have been more off than on in the last couple weeks. This would have driven me CRAZY a couple months ago, but I now find myself taking it all in stride and not getting too upset about it. Amanda would tease me when we first got here about how frustrated I would get if the internet wasn’t working for one day!! Amazing how things can change.

We went to Accra last Monday to pick up the team on Tuesday evening. It was very exciting to see familiar faces coming off the plane! We had a couple days in Accra and then came back to Sunyani to get started. It was a rocky couple of days for Amanda and me when we first arrived back. I felt very responsible for ensuring that everyone was safe and happy, and that is hard to do when you have a team of 11 people! I had to really take a step back and let some delegating happen. I also think that we suffered from a bit of reverse culture shock. It was quite overwhelming to have 9 Canadians suddenly in our daily lives after having 10 weeks of our routine with our Ghanaian friends. I think we have worked through it though, and now that we are full steam ahead with project work I am very happy to have the whole team here.

There are about 27 team members including Canadian and Ghanaian students and faculty. We have split into 5 theme teams and have decided on a variety of knowledge transfer strategies to implement in the next three weeks. Some of the ideas are:

*HIV/AIDS prevention and educations – assist the newly formed resource centre on one of the campuses, research stigma around testing, create partnership with public health nurses and nursing school, present at a primary school and at an orphanage

*Bushfire Management – connect with bushfire club on one of the campuses and create a bushfire management plan for the university’s community forest, work with volunteer fire fighters in neighbouring communities

*Plastic Waste Management – establish a composting initiative on one of the campuses and with a community woman’s group, hold a ‘campus clean-up’ on both campuses, assist in creating environmental club in community primary school

*Ecotourism – visit potential ecotourism sites in the area and do a needs assessment, create a brochure for existing sites in the region, work with newly formed ecotourism department on campus to assist with curriculum

*The SODIS Water project – test the SODIS process in the area, gather data on water borne illnesses in the area and present SODIS and data to Health Care professionals, get program set up to pilot the project with WASA (Women’s Action Solidarity Association) Widow’s group in Wenchi in the future

I am working on the SODIS Water project which I am really excited about!! If your interested in more info check out www.sodis.ch , but it is basically a way to use uv-rays from the sun to clean water of harmful bacteria to provide safe drinking water to rural communities. I have to admit I was pretty skeptical when I first heard about this process, but it seems to be working really well in a variety of places in Africa and around the world. I’m still researching it further so I am very clear about what it does and doesn’t do, but it’s pretty exciting. In a continent where HIV/AIDS is so prevalent, clean water is desperately important as most victims die of illnesses or dehydration due to poor drinking water.

3 weeks until we leave Sunyani, and 5 weeks ‘til we are home! Wow!

My Apologies!!

It has just been brought to my attention that the links to pictures were not available to non-facebookers!! Nobody said anything! Anywhooooo, I think I have fixed that. Check out the links to Amanda's pics of our time here so far. Let me know if any of them don't work, or if you are not a member of facebook let me know if you can access them ok!
Sorry about that!

L.

Catching My Breath!

It has been a busy week! Last Friday Amanda and I realized that it would be our last free weekend until the rest of our team leaves in the middle of May and that we had better take advantage of it. We got talking about it with one of the faculty members on the project team, Sylvia, and she invited us to her house to spend the weekend with her family in Kumasi, the bigger city we had visited the week before. We also had another family to visit in Kumasi so she helped arrange for us to spend Friday night with Sam’s parents (Sam is a friend in Nanaimo that is from Ghana), and then Sat and Sun night with her and her family.

It was such a great weekend! Sam’s parents were very sweet and it was so great to meet them. We even talked to Sam on the phone while we were there which was fun. Sylvia and her husband George and their three children, (George Jr. – 7, Ebenezer – 5, and Theresa – 3) made us feel like members of the family. On Saturday we went to Lake Busomtwi, which is a lake that was made by a meteorite impact. They were very excited to take us so that we could go swimming (the Ghanaians think it’s quite funny how much we Canadians like to swim, as very few Ghanaians even know how to swim.). It wasn’t quite the cool and refreshing water that we were expecting though…I hadn’t really thought much about it honestly, but of course a lake here would be quite a different temperature from lakes at home…it was HOT!! I don’t mean warm, I mean hot! We had sweat dripping down our faces as we tried to swim long enough that we wouldn’t insult or disappoint this great family that had taken us here especially so we could swim!! We didn’t last very long, but made up for it by taking the children into the water so they could play and splash around which they had never done before in a lake. We had a little picnic afterwards before heading home. On Sunday we went to church with them, and then took the kids to a pool at one of the universities…the kids wanted to take advantage of us being there and get in the water as much as possible as neither George nor Sylvia swim. It was another great day!

On Monday we sadly said good-bye and got picked up and taken to the airport in Accra (capital city) to pick up Rick and Anne, one of my instructors and his wife. We spent one day in Accra…you wouldn’t really want to stay much longer; it’s a big noisy city! Then we left for Cape Coast for two days. Amanda and I hadn’t realized how tired we were from the last two months, until we had this down time. I think we both could have slept for the whole two days, but no rest when there are new adventures to have! We had read about this women’s NGO that teaches women how to make crafts and clothes to sell to tourist, with all the proceeds going back to these women. They also have workshops that you can do, so Amanda, Anne, and I decided we wanted to try the batik workshop. For about $20 CAD you get to design and make your own two yard piece of batik! It was great fun, and I now have a lovely new sarong that I helped make! The women that lead us through it is an amazing lady named Eli (pronounced ‘Elly’) that has really prospered partly in thanks to the women’s NGO which is called Women in Progress. She has taken her success and is sharing it with some young local girls that have dropped out of school, usually for financial reasons, and is teaching them the art of batik-ing. Once they have shown her that they are willing to work and learn, she then starts to pay them to work with her. The girls were so great, and they obviously have a lot of respect for Eli. We will definitely be going back to do another workshop before we leave Ghana!

We then got back to Sunyani on Thursday in time for our team meeting on Friday morning, and helped Rick and Anne settle in, only to head off again for the day today! We went to Bui National Park today which is a fairly large park along the Cote d’Ivoire coast that is about to be mostly flooded by a new dam being built. It is also home to some 200 hippos as well as other wildlife, and is immediately surrounded by 3 or 4 villages, all of which are going to be looking for new homes! Rick is in the process of writing another proposal for a project that could involve Bui and he wanted to make some initial contact with at least one of the villages. So we had an informal meeting with the town elders who of course are expressing concern and are fearful of what is going to happen to them as the time gets closer to the dam being completed, which will be in about 4 or 5 years from now. It really puts the daily frustrations of life into perspective when you consider what these people are going through as they are about to be evicted not only from their homes, but from their whole way of life! Heart breaking.

The rest of the Canadian team arrives in 10 days, so it’s going to be very busy around here getting everything ready for them!

ps Pictures to come...I will post the link to Amanda's new photos when she has it up!

pps I saw Hippos today at Bui! 3 of them! Sooooooooooo amazing! I can't believe I forgot to say that!? Amanda has the proof.

Birthday Fun!

Just to let you all know that I had a fabulous birthday thanks to all my great friends here in Ghana! I don't have time to write about it all now, but check out the pictures that Amanda has posted! Good times! :)
Thanks for all the birthday wishes! And a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dad today! Love you!!

Good Friday

Just like at home, we have a four day weekend for Easter this weekend. We had to go to Kumasi, a big city about 2 hours away to meet with a Canadian lady working on another CIDA project that we may be able to collaborate with, so decided to get out of Sunyani on Friday to meet with Cassandra. One of our team mates with the project, Vincent, is from Kumasi and was heading home to see family anyway, so we decided to all go together and then he would get us to a tro-tro (mini-van sized bus) in the evening back to Sunyani.

So we arranged to meet with Cassandra in the morning at the Cultural Arts Centre, and kill two birds with one stone (which is really a terrible saying when you think about it!). We had a great meeting with Cassandra who is from Bow Valley College in Calgary, which has a few international projects going on, but that I was shocked to find out has no students working on any of them! She said she is trying to change that, but isn’t really sure how to make it work yet. I tried to really get across to her the benefits of having students working on projects, as we three students sat across from her all telling her about our learning and involvement with this project. I think she was really surprised and impressed when we told her how Malaspina University-College has really taken a great stance on their undergrad student involvement in projects.

Then we had a wander around the Cultural Arts Centre which was pretty quiet as it was a holiday, but it had some interesting crafts and what not to check out. After that we went to see the famous sword that is stuck in a stone (kind of like Excaliber!). The story tells that a man came to see the Ashanti King (one of the main tribes in Ghana) and commanded this sword down from the heavens saying that when the sword was taken out of the stone it would be the end of peace in the Ashanti Kingdom. The sword has been there for more than 300 years. It was pretty cool. Apparently many people have tried their strength at pulling out the sword with no luck, even Mohammed Ali when he visited Ghana many years ago.

We then went to visit some of Vincent’s family. First we went to his cousin’s house to see their baby, who is their first born, a little boy about 11 month old. Very cute! They also brought us a huge plate of rice, pasta and stew to eat, as it is custom to always feed your guests when they come to visit regardless of the time of day, or if they have already eaten. Did I mention that we had a big plate of fried rice for breakfast with Cassandra?! Vincent tried to warn us that there would be food at our stop, but we were so hungry at breakfast that we had already eaten quite a bit. Anyway we managed to eat most of the food at his cousin’s house, although I was seriously struggling with the last few bites. Then we went to some friends of the family’s house who is like Vincent’s second mom, and guess what!? There was MORE food!! A whole table full! And she told us we had better clean the table because if we didn’t it meant that the food wasn’t very good! Talk about pressure! I was SO full, and was struggling so badly that when the hostess left the room I started laughing so hard I was crying! …which didn’t help my very full tummy! We most definitely did not clean the table although we tried hard to get Vincent to eat more so it didn’t look so bad, but we did have a nice visit. We are going back there next weekend and will stay with them for the weekend which will be great.

The last stop before heading back to Sunyani was at Vincent’s mom’s house which is in an area called the Zongo. Many communities in Ghana have a Zongo area which is the poor part of the community. A building is built around an open courtyard with rooms that open onto the courtyard. These building are then homes to many people potentially from all areas of Ghana. Neighbours will cook, clean, and do laundry together in the courtyard of this newly formed community of housemates…for lack of a better word. A Zongo can be a quite large community or area of a town or city. We were warmly welcomed by his mom and all the other ladies that were around the courtyard. We had begged Vincent prior to arriving to let his mom know that we didn’t need to eat again! We actually did have to leave fairly quickly, so there wouldn’t have been time to eat, much to her disappointment, but we promised to return next weekend when we go to visit again. We’ll be better prepared for the whole eating at EVERY stop next time!

Tid-bits & Update

Wow! A whole week has gone by and no post! It seems the initial novelty of it all has worn off, and daily life seems more and more 'typical' and so I'm having a hard time knowing what to write about!

Everything is going relatively smoothly. The project is moving along and we are getting ready for our first radio shows next week (after Easter Weekend). That will be pretty exciting I think! The team has all been working really hard to get ready for the shows.

Amanda and I are doing really well. We both got a bit sun burnt this past weekend…(she says sheepishly). We spent Saturday at a hotel here in Sunyani that has a pool…and ice cream!! We spent the day swimming (or should I say floating), reading, sleeping, eating and then repeat! Ya, it was pretty rough. We also met some Peace Corp volunteers that are working in the area. It was nice to sit and chat with some other obrunies, although I kept forgetting where we were!
Oh there was also a really funny incident that happened that day. We were in the pool chatting with some Ghanaians, and Michael Jackson’s ‘Make it a Better World’ came over the speakers, so we had a little inter-cultural sing-along! Too funny! (As I write this in the internet café one of the students has the sound track to ‘Grease’ playing! Love it! Where am I?)

Another thing I’ve been meaning to write about is about religion:

I knew before I got here that religion, specifically Christianity is very important to Ghanaians (although there are a number of Muslims as well). I didn’t realize just how important it is. While at home we ask people what they do for a living, or where they live in our first few questions upon meeting. Here in Ghana one of the first three questions that they will ask you is what kind of church you go to. It still sometimes catches me off guard, the bluntness of the question.

We attended our first class (or lecture as they refer to them) last week, and the instructor was late getting to class (in typical ‘Ghana time’ fashion). The first few minutes of waiting were spent with the students milling about and chatting. Then one of the students took the opportunity to go up to the front of the class and lead the class in a short prayer and worship time. The class all joined in and thanked the student afterwards. I am constantly amazed at their dedication and commitment.

We have also attended a few church services here on Campus. They have a student lead interdenominational service with a visiting pastor each week from various churches in Sunyani. The services are a bit like what you would see in a movie of a southern Baptist church complete with the singing, clapping, dancing, and shouting Hallelujah and Amen! It’s a cultural experience all on its own!

Well, if there are any topics that I haven’t written about that you are curious about please drop me a line. I would welcome some topic suggestions! :)

Happy St.Patrick’s Day!

Social Events

First of all, the internet connection has been a bit of a problem lately, so I apologize for the lapse in posting.

Thursday was Ghana’s Independence Day. 51 years of independence. Very exciting! We went to the town square to watch the festivities, and play 'spot the obruni' (white person)...you can spot one a mile away! Amanda has a nice write up about the day so check out her blog link at the top right.

This holiday also happens to be the same time that the forestry university organized its annual Faculty Week.

The forestry campus here in Sunyani is a satellite campus from Kumasi (a large city about 1 ½ hours away). Each year as part of Faculty Week, the three faculties from the two campuses, the Forestry Faculty here in Sunyani, and the Natural Resources and the Agroculture Faculties from Kumasi, get together for a day of sporting competitions. The winning Faculty of each event gets a trophy and bragging rights over the other two for the next year. This year the event took place here on Friday in Sunyani at the community football stadium. There were three sporting events; men’s football (or soccer as it’s known at home), women’s football, and men’s volleyball, with one team for each from each of the faculties. The teams and their fans from Kumasi were bussed in to Sunyani for the festivities.

It was an all day event at the stadium full of drumming, cheering, singing, and of course the games themselves. Even if you’re not a football fan, I think most people know about the type of fans that this sport has…very passionate, and very dedicated to the sport. This type of fan is definitely alive and well here in Ghana! Perhaps you can imagine the excitement and noise that happened when our own Forestry Faculty took the trophy in ALL THREE events! It was so much fun to witness and be a part of congratulating all the teams and players, although I think my ears are still ringing from all the noise! Definitely a cultural experience!

The Project team got together last Wednesday evening for a social get together. We realized that due to the fact that Amanda and I are living on the forestry campus, we’ve had lots of opportunities to socialize with those students. We haven’t had as much opportunity to get to know the students at the S.Poly campus, so we decided it was high time.

We arranged for snacks and beverages for the evening, and invited everyone on the team to the office (which is quite a large room) at 7pm for a games evening. The early part of the evening was spent listening to music and just milling about chatting, and then Amanda led us all through a game of ‘Telephone Pictionary,’ a very fun game which just as you would think, is a blend of ‘Telephone’ and ‘Pictionary.’ We then split into smaller groups and played some Canadian and Ghanaian games. I think everyone thought the evening was a great success, and we will make a bigger effort to have more social time with all the team members in the future.

The Project

So the project is moving right along. It is the most confusing but rewarding projects I have been on to date. The confusing part comes from it being a community development project. What I mean by community development is that the community decides what the project is and how to accomplish it. The community in this case is two-fold; one community is the project team that is made up of students and faculty from three universities (two in Ghana and one in Canada, Malaspina), the other community is actually four communities that are neighbouring villages around Sunyani. At this point in the project we are mainly working with the project team, and in March and April we will start more actively engaging the neighbouring communities.

The roles that Amanda and I are playing are quite undefined, and that is where the confusion comes for me. We are currently acting as facilitators, leaders, and participants of the team, and in any one meeting we may play all three roles! The Ghanaian team members seem happy to let us lead, as last year the Canadian team took a more leadership role with ideas and plans for their time here. Yet in order for this project to be sustainable the Ghanaians need to take the leadership so that when there are no Canadians here, the project will continue. So even while Amanda and I take leadership roles we are also constantly putting ideas and decisions back to the group to make as a team. Having to constantly make decisions as a group can be very time consuming and very frustrating for some, yet it is imperative so that the team feels completely responsible for the direction and objectives that are being determined. This buy-in from the team will ensure that they have ownership of what is happening.

Despite the time consuming nature of community development, the team is moving ahead very quickly. The team has split into three groups that are each responsible for one of the topic areas – HIV/AIDS education, Plastic Waste Management, and Bush Fires (for now we have put eco-tourism on hold). We have been busy researching the topics, looking at the findings from surveys done in the neighbouring villages last year of perceptions on these topics, and visiting various local authorities of these topics. The information is being compiled and put into a radio show interview format. Radio is an important media medium here and so we will be taking the education to various radio stations to reach the target markets each topic has identified. We will also be distributing informational posters from various authorities on these topics to the neighbouring villages and the campus’s. Then in April when the rest of the Canadian team arrives, we will be formatting the information we have gathered into educational programs to take to the schools in the various villages. We will pilot the programs this year with the idea that they will be improved upon and revisited over the next few years.

It’s all very exciting! Amanda and I are constantly discussing the project, the team, the progress, the culture, the people, etc etc. It is keeping us busy…mentally, as much or even more so than physically.

Life in Ghana

It is very hard to believe that we have been in Sunyani for almost two weeks! We have settled very nicely into life here. Living in the university dorm has given us a great way to meet people, as with 400+ students in the building there is always someone around and lots of new people to meet and visit with. Ghanaians are very social people, and there is always something going on in the dorm.
We are learning and practicing Twi, which is the most common tribal Ghanaian language in the country. As with many cultures I have encountered, the people here are thrilled when we attempt to use their language…even if done poorly. The cleaning ladies in the dorm building speak very little English, and have made it their mission to ensure we learn more Twi while we are here. We also try and use as much Twi as we can when we go to the market for groceries. We have got a few regular stops now where we shop and we practice our Twi with them. We go to a really sweet lady named Akua (pronounce Aqueea) for our fruit, and yesterday her 17 month old daughter was there with her. She just stared at us with her big brown eyes…not sure what to make of these two obrunies (white people).
We have also become regulars at a stall that sells nice tomatoes. The first time we went there I smiled at one of the ladies and she looked so surprised to see my braces. She pointed and said “your fingers!” The other ladies around started killing themselves laughing and saying “not fingers, TEETH!” The woman became very embarrassed but eventually told me that she though my teeth looked very beautiful! They think I have ‘bling’ on my teeth! Now when ever we go there, they laugh and tease the lady about my ‘fingers!’
Vincent, one of the students that was part of the project last year, and is again this year has become our Ghanaian culture guru. We have a ‘code’ that we (meaning both us as Canadians and him as a Ghanaian) can speak very frankly about our cultures and our values etc and discuss them openly and honestly. He is a gem of a guy! We had our first cultural booboo this past Friday evening and a true test of our 'code.'
There was a German exchange student here for four months named Jan, and he was leaving on Saturday, so we decided we should all go out and celebrate his last night here. We told Vincent that he should invite who ever was close to Jan, the more the merrier. Vincent called me a little later and asked if it was okay to invite one more friend. I told him of course, he should invite who ever he wanted. Not long after the call Vincent was knocking on our door a little concerned. It turned out that in Ghana if you invite someone to go out, it means that you are offering to pay for this person. So we had put Vincent in a very awkward situation as he didn’t have enough money to pay for other people’s dinners, but we had told him to invite people! Poor guy. It was great though that he felt comfortable enough to come to us to explain the situation. It all got sorted out, and we had a great evening.
Oh, BTW I unfortunately left my camera cord at home in Canada, so I can't access my pictures to share, but here is a link to a few of Amanda's pics. They are a bit out dated...from when we first arrived, but more should come soon. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=93568&l=937f2&id=855290180

Water, Glorious Water!!

Yes, the water started running yesterday afternoon! Woohoo and Yipee! Amanda and I were so excited that when our friend Vincent (another resident of the dorm) came to visit we were high five-ing and jumping around and telling him how we had flushed the toilet without a bucket! And when we paused to get his reaction, he was laughing so hard because he had no idea what we were talking about, we had been talking so fast! Once we slowed down, he was just as excited! He hadn’t even realized the building had water again. So we had our first real showers this morning since arriving in Sunyani…cold showers of course. Let’s not get too carried away!
I had a real moment of reflection yesterday afternoon that had me pause, and get a bit emotional actually. I realized that I have laughed more, longer, and harder since I got here then I have in…months! I feel like I have reconnected with a part of myself that had gotten lost in the daily grind of school and work etc. This awareness is really having me look at how I live my life. I don’t think I have been very good at balancing my time with work, friends, family, exercise, and time for myself. I think this is a common struggle for people...so how do we change? This is something that will have me thinking for awhile and hopefully making some changes for the better when I return home.
The first team meeting yesterday was a real success. We tried to focus on just getting to know each other and building a foundation for the future success of this team. There are four students from the two Universities and six faculty members in total. I’m very excited about all that are involved. They all seem very keen to be part of this project and are looking forward to getting started on the creating the objectives for this year.
I feel so honoured to be here and have this opportunity. Already I feel like my brain has been working overtime since we got here analyzing, questioning and learning about the culture and how this will impact the project. I feel like we have enough time here to actually make an impact on the future of this project, and that is very exciting.

Settling In

Our transfer to Sunyani was postponed by two days, as some of the faculty from Sunyani Polytechnic (or S. Poly as they call it) was in Accra for a workshop and it made more sense for the van to pick us all up at the same time. We were disappointed not to be heading out, but were also able to spend more time with George and Sandra which was nice.
We arrived at the dorm for the Forestry University at about 6:30pm after the bumpiest 8 hour drive I have ever been on! In Ghana they use speed bumps to try and slow people down…‘try’ being the key word! There will be 3 -9 speed bumps as you enter a town or village and then a few throughout, and then another 3 -9 as you leave. Over the 450km distance, there were a lot of villages!! But the van was air conditioned and for that I was truly thankful! :)
We were greeted by some of the students that Amanda had befriended last year, with whoops of delight and lots of hugs! Our accommodation is in a four story cement building that is built around large common grounds that are still under construction, but will eventually have some grassy areas, a badminton court, and a basket ball court. They are working very hard to get it completed. We are on the fourth floor in our own bedrooms that have a shared hallway and bathroom. They are quite large rooms, and each has a balcony, though not much of a view. The only down side to the accommodation is that the day before we arrived there was a power outage that affected the water system, and so we are without running water. We take buckets across the street onto the campus and fill them up to wash with…it’s pretty sad how weak we are compared to the other students here!! They carry the buckets without too much difficulty, some even carry two at a time, while we can only accomplish ten or twenty steps at a time before we have to stop and rest! I don’t know who laughs harder at us try to carry it, us or the other students watching us. I don’t know how long we will be without water, but we will definitely get stronger in the mean time…once we get the water back to the building we then have to carry them up 4 flights of stairs too!
I had my first really local food today. It was banku which I have no idea what it is made of, but it is kind of like a dough that you pull pieces off of and then dip it into the groundnut (a groundnut is a peanut, but I didn’t really detect a peanut flavour) soup that had fried chicken in it. The banku was not my favourite…although I figured out if you take very little pieces it was not so bad. The soup was quite spicy and had me sweating even more than I already was, but was pretty good. Only time will tell how my stomach reacts to the meal! I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
We went into town yesterday and bought some equipment to enable us to do some of our own cooking, so we do not always have to go out to eat. I think we are both feeling very good about this arrangement!
We have met most of the students and faculty that we will be working with, and have scheduled our first team meeting for Monday morning. I’m very interested to see how this all plays out, as while we have ideas about how we should proceed, this is a community development project and so as a group we need to decide how to best move forward which can be very time consuming. Also we are students and so I’m not sure how our input will be taken. I’ll keep ya posted!

p.s. about the lack of pictures…I forgot the cable for my camera to be able down load pictures in Canada! Hopefully it will be brought out with the next team members that will arrive from home, in the mean time I will try and copy some of Amanda’s. :)

The 'Cold' Season

Apparently we missed the ‘cold’ (as in temperature) season here by about a week. They say it was cool in the evenings, but I have a hard time imagining that. It is definitely not the cold season now…we having been waking up to about 30C in the mornings, and it climbs to 35 and higher during the day! The worst moments are when getting stuck in traffic with no air conditioning and I can feel myself begin to melt into the seat… ‘I’m melting!’
I’ve really enjoyed my time here in Accra. George and Sandra are excellent hosts, and have helped ease us into Africa. They've fed us well, and chauffeured us around. But I’m also really excited to head to Sunyani tomorrow and get out of the city. A Ghanaian friend of ours in Nanaimo told us before we left that locals here can tell when she is back visiting Ghana and not living here, because the whites of her eyes are actually white. It is so dusty here that the whites of peoples eyes turn a yellowy/red colour, and I noticed in the mirror last night that the whites of my eyes have already been affected.
We met with another Canadian woman today that is working on her Phd from the University of Guelph. She has been here in Ghana for almost a year, but also volunteered here for two years previously. She seemed pretty knowledgeable about Ghanaian life, and was very encouraging about our project. We will hopefully meet up with her again before she leaves in March.
I’ve had a list building in my head to share with you all. It’s the top five things I like about Ghana so far…
#5. BIG beds are very common…double kings are practically the standard!!
#4. When you wake up in the middle of the night to go pee, you aren’t rudely shocked by a cold toilet seat, it’s a nice room temperature. You ladies will know what I mean!
#3. You can buy pineapples for 50 cents, and they are delicious!!
#2. It’s HOT here! I’ve always said I was born to live in the tropics with my constantly cold hands and feet. No cold feet here!
And my number 1 thing I like about Ghana so far is…
Big bums are all the rage!

The First Leg

Arrived in Amsterdam at 4:00am home time…ugh. With statistics showing that people are increasing in size with each generation, you’d think the airlines would get a clue and start making seats that actually fit a normal sized person! With about an hour of sleep each, Amanda and I went straight to the hotel and crashed for about 3 hours. I’m still fighting this cold, and want to be as well as possible before arriving in Ghana, so decided sleep was more important at this point than sightseeing in Amsterdam.
Not much else to report yet; arrived safe and sound at the end of this first leg of the trip. We fly out tomorrow at about 1:00pm and arrive in Accra at 7:30pm Ghana time! Finally feeling EXCITED about going!!

The First Step

On February 6th I leave for Ghana in west Africa! Only 6 more sleeps now!
The project that I am going with has a website www.mala.ca/ghana if you're interested in checking it out. I don't think it has been updated with the new students involved for this year, but it has some background on the project itself.
What exactly am I going to be doing there? Well...that's a good question! Amanda Moore, a fellow Malaspina student, and I are leaving on the 6th with an overnighter in Amsterdam before arriving in Accra, Ghana on the 8th. We'll have a few days in Accra before heading out to Sunyani where we will be based. This is the second year of this five year project, so the first week or two will be settling in and reconnecting with contacts that the team made last year in Sunyani. We will also be going out to the four villages that are part of the project to reconnect and continue to build support within the communities for the project.
The four areas that we will be working on, that our partners in Sunyani have identified, are AIDS awareness/education, waste management (particularily plastic recycling), forestry management (particularity bush fire prevention), and ecotourism.
Amanda and I will be staying on campus of one of the universities that we are partnered with. They have a new dorm that we will be staying in...not sure yet what it will be like!? Staying on campus will give us a great opportunity to meet with the Ghanaian students and faculty involved. We are also planning on doing some homestays while we are there, but nothing has been finalized yet.
In mid-March one of our instructors will join us, and then in mid-April the rest of the team arrives for three weeks. There will be 11 students and faculty from Malaspina, including Amanda and I, during these three weeks!
I must admit that I have been having a hard time getting excited...not because of the upcoming experience, but because of all the stuff that has to be done before we go! I know though that once I am on that plane...!!!!! Woohooo!
We will have access to internet, so be sure to check in from time to time!
L.