Christmas and Fire Festival

Merry Christmas everyone!!!! This week has been tiring, but great. We started off the week with Camp BALL (Beat AIDS, Love Life). Which was a football camp put on by two other peace corp volunteers. About 12 PCV's came to be the coaches and to help out with the camp. We had 3 members of the Tamale professional football team come to actually coach the kids in football, since I don't know anything about it. We were able to lead them in a few drills during the morning, but it was great having the RTU guys to actually give some validity to camp. During the afternoon we did HIV education, Team building, and goal/future planning. We also had 3 wonderful guest speakers come talk with the kids about a bunch of different topics.

I was coach for the Blue Eagle Stars, which comprised of 9 wonderful girls. It was great to watch the girls grow from being shy and not knowing anyone to having confidence and meeting a bunch of new friends. They were able to break down a lot of the social barriers that are enforced on them everyday. I'm hoping that they maintain the friendships that were formed and that they really do reach the goals that we all planned for.

One of the bummers of the camp was sleeping on the floor for 5 days, that was pretty rough. I'm pretty use to non-ideal conditions, but floor sleeping is still not my most favorite thing. It was pretty great coming back to Tamale and getting a mattress.

Christmas here was a potluck affair. JB and I made Kal Bi-ghana style. Since we can't get short ribs here, we went to a butcher and just got some beef and made skewers that we grilled. They were amazing. Best meat I've had in Ghana so far. And the other PCVs enjoyed it as well. For breakfast we made fried rice, which was also very tasty. A bunch of other volunteers made other food. We had homemade Lasagna, green bean casserole, quiche, mashed potatoes, and salad. It was very tasty and just great to be around a bunch of friends. We had a white elephant gift exchange in the evening, so people were able to open a present.

We missed having Christmas with family and friends, but this was a pretty good time. I hope that everyone else had a joyful holiday time! Thanks for all the lovely wishes!

Long Time

Sorry to everyone for not writing for a long time. I can't believe I've been in country for 6 months already. Time has been flying by and we've been having a good time. There have definitely been stressful times, but they're small and easily overcome. We have fallen into our own routine here and have made a little home for ourselves. When I'm traveling, I long to come back home and be able to relax in my personal space. I believe that's a good sign for a home and means that I truly feel comfortable here.

The US Ambassador was very generous by extending invitations to all PCV's in country to have Thanksgiving dinner at his home. So JB and I traveled down to Accra for that. It was marvelous. We had a wonderful dinner and were able to see a bunch of our friends from all over the country. We were able to stay in the home of an ex-pat and are very thankful for feeling welcome in her home. She was amazingly generous and kind to us. It was definitely a great mini-vacation. There is definitely a fishbowl affect here and it's truly wonderful to let down our guards and just be ourselves for a little bit.

Following Thanksgiving, JB traveled back up to Zabzugu while I stayed in southern Ghana and then attended my Inservice Training (IST) down in Kumasi. JB went through is IST before Thanksgiving. So now that we've done our IST's we're both really motivated to start up our real work. Well, JB is already doing his job and has just finished his first term as teaching. But for me, I now have a direction that I'm aiming for. Before, I was just integrating into our site and with my villages that I'm working with. But it was difficult having motivation, but not knowing what I should be doing. Kind of like treading water, knowing you want to swim somewhere, but unsure which direction you should go in. Well now I know my direction, so I'm not just treading water. Whoo-hoo!

This week is the Fire Festival up in the Northern Region. So I'll be taking pictures and giving a more detailed post on all that later this week. I'll hopefully be getting pictures up this weekend as well. I'm sorry for not being very good at keeping everyone up to date. I'll be trying to be better at that. :) Sorry this is a short post, but more will be coming soon!!!

Villages

So JB and I are finally starting to get down to business here in Zabzugu. School started this week for him. Although it raining both Monday and Tuesday mornings, so really not much was accomplished. Life sort of shuts down here during rain. Which is pretty understandable. (Queue side-tangent on rain)

The saying "when it rains, it pours" really applies here. There is very rarely a drizzle or light rain, it's totally a "go big or go home" mentality with the rain. I have very rarely experienced the force of rain in the US that we've been getting here. It's quite amazing actually. You can see the storms come in from a distance, just massive clouds rolling across the sky. But since you can see so far into the distance, it actually takes the storm quite some time to reach us, which is nice since you very rarely get caught unawares. And then you start hearing the thunder, which is so different that what I'm use to in the US as well. The lighting and thunder time delay seems very off here. I very infrequently see the lightning, which might have something to do with it. But when I do, there is a huge time gap between them. Unless it's right on top of us, and then it's instant. But the thunder doesn't really "crack", it rolls for at least 10 secs. Which doesn't seem like a very long time, but when it's loud and just going on, it's amazing. I love the storms here. Then there's the what seems like gail-force winds before it actually starts to rain which in itself will wake you from a sound sleep. When it actually starts to rain, it's as if the sky just opens up and dumps a bucket of water on you, there's not small warning that it's going to start, it's instant. Since we have a tin roof, the noise is almost deafening. And then it just stops, utterly and completely stops. Sometimes you hear the thunder rolling in the distance as it leaves you, but not always. And usually the sun will then come out. Crazy! Anyways, sorry about the ramble.

So, school has started for JB, but nothing really happened the first two days. Usually the first few days are spent cleaning up the school. This includes cutting the grass by hand with machetes by a hoard of children. The black boards are repainted. The school furniture is brought back into rooms. The hallways/porch-like areas are swept of goat and sheep poop. And finally school and officially begin. JB is definitely excited to get to work.

My work schedule has been a bit more random. Since I don't really have a set job with set times, it's been a bit more difficult to firmly tact down what I'm suppose to be doing exactly. I definitely have a job description and a goal, but that's about it. I'm also a "first generation" volunteer here, which means that I'm not inheriting a project from an existing volunteer. So I have to meet all these people and slowly work out with them, what I'm suppose to be doing and what they expect from me. But I'm getting there slowly. :)

I do have 4 outreach communities that I'll be working with and now with my bike I'm able to actually get there. However it's farming season, so it's very hard to catch people actually in their villages unless it's very early or very late. I'm working with the District Assembly (DA) so I've been meeting some DA people at my villages to do some assessments, which has been very productive. The bike riding has been a challenge though. My bike (although beautiful and orange) is not meant for this type of biking. The first village I biked to was an hour away and I crested 3 large hills, while my bike was stuck in high gear. Ugh, it was brutal. Also because it's raining season, the road is kind of similar to a river bed, filled with rocks, streams, and loose gravel. I'm hoping to find a mountain bike next time I go into Tamale, but who knows. I know that it's doable to bike to these villages, just not easy. So I'll survive either way, plus I hope it gets easier once raining season ends.

I've finally been given a Dagomba name here. It took some arm twisting to get it, but I succeeded. "Stephanie" as it turns out is very difficult for people to say, so they usually just ended up slaughtering it or saying something I could hardly recognize. Therefore a local name was needed. So my new name is Mandeya here. It's a proverbial name which from what I can gather means "I accepted, but be warned". I'll have to ask a few more people what they think it means to really lock down a solid meaning. It means that I've been given a hard task (leaving my home, moving to Ghana, and then come to the Northern Region, followed by being very far away from the city), but I have accepted it where other people have not. Kind of an empowering name. JB has yet to get a Dagomba name, partly be JB actually is a name here for Twin. So they've been slow on assigning him one, but we're working on it.

Ground nuts

Yesterday was market day here in Zabzugu, which is always an exciting day. Although there is a small market in town everyday, the actual market day draws people from all the surrounding communities as well as people from Togo. People will spend all day either walking or in tro tros with all their wares to get here. Although there isn't a lot of variety in the things that are sold, there's definitely a better selection. So still the only veggies to buy are tomatoes, onions, okra, garden eggs, and ginger, but usually they look a bit fresher and are typically in better shape. Market day is also the only time to buy plastic things like jugs and buckets or to buy clothes that aren't tailored.

Haha, I should point out that the clothes are considered "dead obroni clothes". Obroni being white people and the only way they'd part with what seems to be perfectly good clothes is if they had died. Sort of morbid, but makes you think about home much clothes we waste in the U.S. So basically it's like a big garage sale of clothes, you either sort through a pile or they sometimes hang them from the sides of their stalls. It's pretty fun to go through the clothes. I haven't found any good finds yet, but some of my friends definitely have.

Yesterday, there were many women selling ground nuts (peanuts) and lately I've been wanting to try and make peanut brittle. Why, you might ask, because it's amazingly tasty and I haven't found the one lady in town that actually makes it, so I figured I'd take matters into my own hands. I've run into a few problems with this though. First, all recipes I've found call for corn syrup, which just isn't going to happen. So we're going for the good old fashion kind, but without a candy thermometer, so I'll let you know how this turns out. Anyways, we bought 2 cedis worth of ground nuts, which turns out to be about 3 lbs...yikes! The second problem is that these 3 lbs of ground nuts are raw. So now I have to sort through all of the nuts for rocks and gross things, and then roast them. haha. This morning I attempted to roast a few cups of ground nuts. And now I would recommend that everyone try this, because fresh roast peanuts are by far better than store bought ones. These things are tasty and I'm sure in the U.S. you don't have to do the "sorting of rocks" step, so it shouldn't take you too long to make them. Try it, it's good. So once they cool I'll move onto the peanut brittle step...should be interesting.

Other news, JB has acquired a follower. We discovered him (or he us) one night when we were watching a movie. During it we heard a voice behind us through the window turns out to be a boy wanting to greet us and bring us yams the next day. I personally do not stand for people peering through our windows, so I told him that to greet us he'd have to come to the door and to get away from our window! The following day he came to our door, not wanting to talk to the wife, he asked for JB. Many awkward events followed with the end result of him, his name is Swali, now coming our door at least once a day, typically a few, to greet JB and to talk. It'll be interesting to see how this all ends up. He's a sweet kid, if a little pushy.

Orange Lightning

After much debate I have finally gotten a bike. I thought that I'd have to buy one in Tamale in order to get one that would meet my needs. Most of the bikes that are up here in the North are old fashion road bikes. They typically single speed with thin tires. Which would be fine for riding through the streets, however my four communities are all a few Km away on dirt trails. And my biggest fear at the moment is for this poor bike's life. So while walking to the market on Friday my eye catches this orange bike and low and behold it has 3 speeds! So, lets see how long Orange Lightning is going to last. The guy I bought it from gave me a basket for the front and put on new tire tubes, which was very nice of him. However my back tire is already flat after just sitting outside my door for a day...so...we'll have to go have another chat.

JB and I ran into a fun lapse of communication also on Friday. We talked to Hasa, our local Home Depot man, this past Monday and ordered 2 sets of shelves/bookcases. We got a great deal, essentially only paying for the cost of the wood and a little bit for labor. Each was suppose to have 3 shelves and be about 3 feet long. So on friday when we went to go pick up these shelves, we discovered that they just made us six shelves to hang on our walls. One main problem, our walls are concrete. So after some debate and confusion, Hasa will come to our place and supposedly drill the concrete for 3 of the shelves, but we're having him actually put sides on the other 3 shelves to make a book case. Although a little confusing at first, everything is working out. So far all of our communication barriers have been easily solved and very good natured. Our little home is getting more cozy every day!

Market

One of the objectives for a PCV is to integrate into your community. For many reasons, but it's important to try and belong in your community. One of the ways of doing that is establishing relationships with the people you meet frequently in town. It's sort of a daunting task to begin, since we live in a such a large community, who do you befriend first? And when we go to market, how do we know which lady to buy from first, who will give us the best deal?

So JB and I have tried to go everyday to the little market to buy one or two things. This way people start to know us and us them. So far I think it's working quite nicely. We already have an onion seller, a bread boy, a coke lady, soap lady, and a garlic guy. We try to say hello to each one everyday. Yesterday we didn't go into the market because we just didn't need anything, so that today when we went some of our market ladies commented on how we were gone for a day. It may not seem like a lot or a big accomplishment, but it truly. The ladies are starting to know us, call out to us hellos (by our actual names!), and wonder where we are if we don't show up. It was a pretty nice feeling today. Also the coke lady now lets us take home coke bottles since she knows we'll bring them back! It's the small victories that count. :)

Making a Home

Well, JB and I are in Zabzugu for the long haul now. Our trip up from training was long. I don' think we'll be traveling down south more than a few times. It takes about 14-20 hours for the trip and needs to be at least 2 days, but possibly 3 depending on what fun things come our way. So that's a major turn off for long distance traveling. However we are close to Tamale which pretty much has everything we'd need, and that's only 3 hours away. Our town of Zabzugu also it fairly large as far as Peace Corps placements.

As we've been going out looking for things for our new home, we've discovered that Zabzugu has pretty much everything we need. The permanent shops have a lot of the basics, such as sugar, eggs, powder milk, and random household needs. And the market is very large, so every 6 days we'll be able to do major shopping. However, things are very similar that are for sale. When it's tomato season, most stalls will have tomatos, and then for the rest of the year they will be hard to come by. So there's always at least one veggie that will be available I believe, it just might be what we eat everyday for a month..haha...should be fun.

One thing that's been an interesting development is how myself and fellow PCV's have evolved our tastes. While I was a picky eater as a child, in recent times I feel like I have definitely expanded my tastes. However, now that's to a whole new level. It's amazing how the body craves certain nutrients. I wasn't a huge egg eater back in the US, but now they're quite tasty, mainly because they're a major source of protein for me. JB and I will always eat what small veggies make it into our meals first and if we get meat to eat, we'll eat it all. Also some volunteers eat the bones of the chicken, which I still can't do, but they enjoy it.

No food here goes to waste, if you're not going to finish your meal, which is kind of unlikely, then there will be another volunteer or neighbor who will eat the rest. But there are no garbage disposals in the sinks here (there are very few sinks for that matter) and there isn't a readily available place to throw out your rubbish. So everything is used to the full extent. Quite an amazing contrast to the US.

We wanted to thank everyone for the packages. They truly are wonderful to get! The food is wonderful to eat and really brings home here to us. And the random assortment of goodies are great just to have around, use, and entertain. I now have many a puzzles to complete, books to read, and comforts from home. So thank you very much!!! Even the bags that things are mailed in are being put to use! (see there is no wasting here)

I hope that everyone's summer has been enjoyable! Hopefully everyone has soaked up enough sun and are ready for the fall. Oohh, another random tid-bit, is that we're not tanning here! Kind of strange considering the amount of sun we've been exposed to, but the malaria meds we take are preventing tanning...so I'll be pale in two years when you see me, even though I've been living in Africa. Anyways, enough of my ramblings. We miss you and love you guys!

Back at homestay

So we're back at homestay now. JB got in yesterday evening and I got in later in the night. JB was up in the North checking out our site, while I was elsewhere in the North (Gushie) doing tech training. Tech training was pretty fun, we learned at bunch of different skills that we'll need throughout our service here in Ghana. We also did a lot of hands on training, which was great to do. We build (dug) two different types of latrines, made a soak-away pit, and taught different lessons. The lessons were really great, because we got over our awkwardness and learned what worked and what didn't. So I'm glad to get that out of the way. Now I'm excited to get into my community and start planning some lessons out.

Another "highlight" is that I got my first sickness out of the way. Not quite sure what I had, but antibiotics cured it, so I guess that's all that matters. It wasn't malaria, so that was a good point. So far I haven't really been bitten by many bugs and I've been good about taking my malaria meds, so I'm pretty hopeful to not get malaria. But first illness down, who knows how many to come. We have great medical care here, so I'm not really worried about anything serious, just a bunch of little bumps in the roads. :)

An actual fun highlight was the floor pounding we went to. I don't have the time to find out the characters on this computer to spell it out for you (Dagbani uses about 3 letters that aren't on an English computer), but I will someday and let you know it's actual name. The floor pounding is done when a family needs to re-do the floor of their compound. I believe this is only done in the Northern Regions, but I could be wrong. Anyways, the old floor is torn up. Small rocks and dirt are then collected and spread on the floor. A mixture of cow manure and water stirred and poured over the ground. Then a bunch of women from the community come together and pound the floor with these wooden feet things. They'll all stand together and pound together while singing and slowly moving across the floor. Once even thing is pounded (takes a few hours), it's dried and then concrete is poured over and smoothed out. It was a blast! But really hard work.

We also made it to a baby weighing day, which was awesome. We went to a small clinic that is set up for baby days every month or so. The babies are weighed, giving shots, and the mothers are given some education. It was a real joy to hang out with the mothers and hold some babies. Since a lot of these communities don't have easy access to hospitals, this might be the only medical care the mothers and children receive unless it's very urgent. So it was great to be able to help out the staff with weighing babies.

While up in the Northern region, we played a game of football (soccer) of America vs. Ghana. We tried our best to regain America's glory, however....we lost pretty badly. I'll attribute it to wearing chacos, eating lunch right before, being hot, and against a team that actually had uniforms. But really...it was probably just all skill. We held them off for the first half, but then they scored 4 shots I believe in the second. haha...it was fun.

Well I think that's all for now. We'll be swearing in soon as official Peace Corps Volunteers. We're both happy and healthy. Just excited to move into our new place and make it a home. Our mailing address has changed. The original one will still work, however the new one is closer to our home and therefore easier for us to use. We miss you guys and will try and keep you updated. :)

Training

Hey Everyone,
So I have currently been in Gushie, up in the Northern Region, for my technical training with the rest of the Health, Water, and Sanitation PCVs. We're staying in a house that has running water, but not electricity...but you take what you can get. :) We've been learning the skills and techniques that we'll need in the next few years for our service here. I'm doing a program called Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), which is to motivate people to use latrines. Nothing fancy, but definitely needs to be done. I will also be working with the District Assembly on other projects, but I'll have to wait until I'm at my site to know more about that.
I met my counterpart a few weeks ago when I went to go look at my site for the first time. Our place is pretty nice, we have 2 rooms with electricity...and that means Ceiling Fans!!!!!!!!!! I'm very excited about that. During the hot season it supposedly gets up to 120 at night....so that fans are going to be nice. We also have running water (most of the time), so flush toilets and showers! You have no idea how nice that is. A flush toilet is almost impossible to come by, and a shower is luxury. Although I have come to love bucket baths, I'll miss them. I will be working in 4 outreach communities surrounding Zabzugu, which is found out are quite a few km away, so that's gonna be tiring during the hot season, but 'when in Rome'. :)
I don't have much time, so I'll leave at this...I updated photos! I miss you guys and I hope that everything is going well back in 'Merika!

Dagbani

Hey guys,
This week has been packed full of language lessons. I don't feel like I've really done anything besides that. I'm learning Dagbani with about 8 other people. It's going well and I think I'm really progressing, but it's pretty slow. My brain hurts a bit. We do language lessons for about 6 hours everyday...which is just intense.
So I brought my flash drive in today to get pictures up, but it doesn't work in this computer. So you'll have to wait a bit longer until I can bring in my computer. Sorry guys! I promise soon there will be photos.
I'm still getting called Obroni every where I go, but oh well. It's funny. And you wouldn't believe the kinds of noises that goats can make. It's hilarious. I wish I could video them for you to here. They sound like a mix between what you think a goat would sound like, a baby wailing, and someone gargling....it's hard to explain, just rest assure that it's funny.
I have discovered that my favorite food here is red-red and fried plantains or coco-yam leaves with boiled cassava. both are very tasty and anyone who comes and visits me I'll make it for ya. :) JB and I are really just looking forward to moving into our site. These next few weeks of training I think are going to go by really fast and then we'll move up North. We miss you guys!

Zabzugu!

Hello again from Ghana!!

JB and I are currently doing our training, while living in a home stay. We are staying in Anyanisin, near the town of New Tafo. It's a small village, but all building are made out of concrete. There is one main road that runs through the center and there are a few shops that sell the main things you need like onions, yams, soap...the basics. Our house is about a 10 to 15 min walk from the main road. Our house has no electricity and no running water, so it's been fun. Basically we go to bed around 8 or 9 and wake up around 5am, our life follows the sun. Our host family is very nice. Selena Okwampa (not sure how to spell that) is a great cook, but wants us to eat a lot of food! It's very difficult to eat the amount of food they give us, but it does takes good. Samuel Okwampa is a teacher, so he is gone all week and only comes home on the weekends. In Ghana, teachers usually live in separate villages from where they live, so they have teacher compounds that they live in during the week.

It's interesting living in a small village down here, sometimes it can try your patience. It is expected that you greet everyone you pass, so walking places takes a long time. Plus all the little kids yell "Obroni" when ever you pass. Obroni means "white person" in Twi and it seems as if they are taught this as one of their first words. There are kids that can barely stand, yet they still will say Obroni. sort of funny. JB and I think it's funny, but others find it very trying.

We have found out where in Ghana we will be stationed. We'll be in the Northern Region in a village called Zabzugu! (pretty fun name!) The closest city is Tamale about 3 hours (I think) away. And the closest big town will be Yendi. Zabzugu is on the Togo border in Eastern Ghana. We will be learning a language called Dagbani. So far, it's difficult, but do-able. We believe it will be a fairly large village/town since it's the major commercial hub for trading with Togo. We will be living in a teacher compound with two rooms to ourselves. We will have electricity and I believe pipe-borne water, so hopefully an actual toilet. I will be the first Health/Water Peace corps person to be stationed there, so I'll have my work cut out for me. There has been a teacher volunteer before us, but I don't think recently, so JB will also have a lot to do.

I still haven't uploaded my photos yet....so you'll have to wait a bit longer for that. But I'll to have it done my next sunday. It looks like sundays are going to be my update days, but we'll see. Now that I'll be stationary here until Aug pretty much I should be on more regularly. I hope everyone is doing well!!

Week one

It's been one week here in Ghana and it feels like I've been here for a while already. I think mainly since my days have been packed with things to do and I've just been very tired from traveling. I'm currently in Tamale, which is in the Northern District of Ghana. I came up here for my "vision quest" which mainly was just shadowing a current volunteer and to give us confidence that we can make it in the PC. From Accra it took us 14 hours of traveling to make it to Tamale, where we spent the night and traveled another hour the following day to where I stayed with a current PCV. JB did not accompany me on this trip, he stayed down in Accra. The have split up the group depending on what we're training for. So the Teachers didn't go on a vision quest. But tomorrow I'll be meeting up with him again at our long term training sight, where we will be staying together at a homestay.

So far the people in Ghana have been wonderful. Everyone is very nice and are always willing to help. Even if you ask for directions, many times they will walk you to where you are going so that they know you made it there safely. There is also a huge emphasis on greeting people. So it takes a long time to make it anywhere, because you have to greet everyone you know that you pass. But that builds a great sense of community and strength I think.

It's very different here than the U.S. or even other African nations that I've seen. Houses are small, but permanent. There are no township like neighboorhoods that I've seen, although there probably are some somewhere. There is rubbish everywhere. Water comes in little 500mL bags, that you drink out off and then people just throw those bags on the ground, so there's just trash all over. It is very hard to come by a toilet and if you do, the chances that it flushes are rare. And showers are a rare and when you have on, it will probably last for less than a minute.

All in all though, I'm loving it here and I can't wait to find out what region I'll be living in. Outside of the cities, the scenery is amazing! I could just sit in the bus and watch the land go by for hours, it's just beautiful. The people are happy, friendly, funny, and colorful. The weather, although very hot, is totally bareable.

Exciting news of the day is that Tricia (another PCV) and I rode in the back of a truck (Lory, there were benches in the truck bed and it was covered with a canvas) for an hour down a dirt road with around 12 people and a full sized BULL! It was pretty scary, cause the bull was not happy. But we lived and had some good laughs about it.

I dont' have any photos yet to load, but I will as soon as I'm able to.

More Info

I figured I should put up a bit more info about JB and my Peace Corps future. We're scheduled to be in D.C. on June 1st for our pre-departure orientation or "staging" as they call it. We'll then leave for Ghana on June 3rd. They don't really provide us with a whole lot of specific details. Such as where we'll be in Ghana once we arrive. So we just know that we'll be somewhere in Ghana on the 4th of June. :) After about two weeks in Ghana, they'll actually station us somewhere permanently. So when that happens I'll let everyone know where in Ghana we'll be located.

As for our jobs while we're there. I'm going to be a Health/Water and Sanitation Educator, which I'm really excited about. I'll be able to educate people on their health and hopefully help with waterborne illnesses and how to prevent them. I'll also most likely be doing significant HIV/AIDS education while I'm there as well. JB will be teaching science at the secondary level. He's also very excited to be able to get students to understand and become excited or at least interested in sciences and help set them up for higher education.

Right now we're both just trying to figure out the timeline from now until June 1st. There's just so much that needs to be done and we want to plan everything out so that it flows smoothly. Currently we're preparing to get rid of most of our possessions, either by giving them to friends or the goodwill. Also the matter of selling our cars. So I think we'll be pretty busy for the next 2 months just trying to get everything in order.

We're both looking forward to living in Ghana. It was definitely on my "must see" list, but now I get to live there, which is even better. The Peace Corps program there is also suppose to be great. Ghana was the first country where the Peace Corps were set up, so it's the longest lasting relationship they have with a country. Meaning there are a lot of positive relationships between the government and the volunteers, as well as a great support network to rely on. The people of Ghana are renowned for being very friendly and welcoming. It's going to be a great future for the next few years. I'm sure there are going to be a lot of challenges thrown in there, but it's going to be greatly rewarding as well.

So, Whoo Hoo for Ghana!! Here we come!

Before we leave

JB and I just found out we're going to be stationed in Ghana! We don't know the location within the country, but we'll find that out when we are in Ghana. And so we begin a wonderful adventure!!!!