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!