Busy Bee

A lot has happened since Monday, aka my last post, but I thought it was all worthy of a blog update. I have been doing something every day this week and it feels great! I'm finally getting into the swing of things and projects/activities are starting to pick up. I hope the rest of my service continues like this. 

After discussing our malaria/soak away pit ideas on Monday, I met Amakye at the JHS on on Tuesday morning to unveil our plans. The JHS is comprised of the Form 1, 2, and 3 classes (6th, 7th, and, 8th grade, respectively), and there are roughly 300 students. We started with the Form 1s and made our way down the hall. I talked in English about malaria...asking them if they knew what it was, how it is transmitted, best ways to prevent it, treatment etc. Amakye had to translate my best Ghanaian English into the Ghanian English they actually understand...I guess mine isn't quite Ghanaian enough. Side note: when talking with Ghanaians in English, we Americans tend to alter our accents so that they can understand us better. I don't really know how to describe it other than that we change our inflections and talk a little slower and are probably more grammatically incorrect. Anyways, it seemed that most of the students were understanding what I was saying, but just be safe Amakye reiterated what I was saying. When I asked the Form 1s how malaria was transmitted, one boy raised his hand and said the female anopheles mosquito. I was very impressed that he knew the correct answer, especially since a few days ago an older women told me dirt caused malaria. After discussing malaria we started talking about soak aways. Amayke drew a picture of one on the chalk board and explained how to dig it and why it was important. The students seemed to be genuinely interested, so that got me really excited. Some of them have already started collecting stones for their households, which is wonderful. 

That afternoon, Alisa and I were supposed to meet with our health club at the SHS. Unfortunately, for us, it was a school cleaning day so the majority of the students decided to play hookey. We had to reschedule for next week and hope everyone shows up. I came home and rested for a bit then Amakye and I were back at work! We started walking around the community visiting households to discuss malaria and soak aways. Using the different class registration lists we were able to identify their respective houses throughout Afere. As we visited them, we checked them off and recorded how many people were at each house. In addition to malaria and soak aways, we have been collecting information from cocoa farmers. A fellow PCV is working on a project that registers cocoa farmers through CocoaLink. If you register, each Friday you will receive a text with cocoa farming tips and techniques. It's a great idea as the majority of people in this area are cocoa farmers and that is how they make a living. 

On Wednesday I went into Juaboso to have a meeting with a couple hospital staff members and some LNGO members to discuss HIV/AIDS related projects. There were four of us total and we talked for probably two hours. Another two people were supposed to be present, but one we could not find and the other is on leave. I was surprised by how dedicated the people are about combating HIV/AIDS. I was expecting to be pulling teeth during this meeting, but they did most of the talking and were throwing out many great ideas. We discussed the idea of forming a living positive support group, but naturally funding is an issue. Most agreed that if we can't provide the people in the group some sort of monetary incentive, most people won't come. Bummer. Since money tends to be a common problem in every aspect of everything over here we started thinking of other ways to reach people. We came up with an HIV/AIDS educational seminar and testing/counseling day. Basically we would like to host an all-day event at the Juaboso hospital and teach about HIV/AIDS. I have educational games and activities as well as short films that we can use for this event, and if we write a grant we can set aside some money to "refresh" those involved....aka we can give them some coke or fanta or something. If there is something free to be given, people will show. Typical. Either way I am very happy with how this meeting went. This coming week I am going to meet with one of the LNGO members to look at possible grants and decide how we want to write it. 

During the meeting on Wednesday, an LNGO member and I decided that we would give a basic HIV/AIDS talk at the hospital the next morning. We were supposed to be teaching to a group of women but due to a miscommunication we ended up talking with patients waiting to receive their medications. We had also planned on showing a short film about basic HIV/AIDS facts but due to a technical error that also fell through. It ended up being an impromptu question and answer session, which surprisingly went very well. No one mentioned any myths about HIV/AIDS, like condoms can cause it or sleeping with a virgin is a cure. When I asked what are some of the best ways to prevent HIV/AIDS transmission, one man raised his hand and said if men stop sleeping with other women and vise versa it would reduce your risk of being infected. Someone else said always use a condom. I was very impressed with what they were saying and how vocal they were in general. I really did not expect that. One lady even asked, in front of everyone, where she could be tested. This surprised me even more because HIV/AIDS is such a taboo subject here and no one really likes to talk about it, let alone announce they want to be tested. It was a very rewarding day. 

Yesterday was market day so I got my fill of white people love. It was a girls market this week, which was fine with us. Alisa and I teamed up to cut Heather's hair. I'm surprised she let us do this after a beer - we were responsible enough to wait until we'd finished cutting to start on our second beer. She even let me cut her bangs! But in my defense, I am great side-bang cutter. I used to cut my own and if you've seen any pictures of me, you know how good I looked...HA. Funny right. Market days are always fun. I'm glad I live near a wonderful group of people. 

On a cross-cultural integration note....I'm going to kill a chicken. I figure when am I ever going to have the opportunity to kill a chicken again? I don't plan on living on a farm when I go back to America...I plan on buying my pre-killed boneless, skinless chicken breasts from Publix thank you very much. I don't relish the thought of killing the little guy, but I am kind of intrigued and then I can say I killed a chicken. Good story for the grand-kids right? My Ghanaian grandmother came to the house today so we could make her aware of my plans...I guess she is providing the chicken. More importantly though, I believe after this chicken slaying my family will be preparing groundnut (peanut) soup and rice balls...aka the best Ghanaian meal ever. That totally warrants killing a chicken. Don't worry, pictures will come. 

Nothing much happening today. It is a holiday because it is Kwame Nkrumah's birthday (the first president of Ghana), so no one is working. There is a funeral happening just up the street so I'm getting my fill of bass thudding and terrible singing.

Next week I am going to Accra to celebrate Alisa's birthday and also to run the 10k. And by run I mean Heather and I are going to walk. We'll run some, but I'd rather not have a heart attack. 

So that's what has been going on these past few days. I'll keep you all updated!

Amakye demonstrating how to build a soak away pit

Teaching the class about malaria

Rolling Right Along

My counterpart, Amakye, is finally back from his summer courses, which makes me happy. Since he is a science teacher at the local JHS the only time he is able to go to school is during school breaks, so I'm left on my own for a while, but I manage. I've met a lot of other people from my town that act as unofficial counterparts, so it works. I finally went to the school today since classes have resumed. I sat with the teachers in their room and discussed project ideas and how they spent their vacations. We also talked about the final examinations from last term and this terms entrance examination. I was cringing the whole time. How the teachers can deal with teaching here is beyond me. I would go crazy. All the PCV Education volunteers are tough cookies.

After all this I sat and listened to the teachers argue, for about two hours, about what they think the passing level should be. Wait for it...30% or 40%. When I heard that I actually dropped my jaw a little and the teachers looked at me funny. It is really sad to me that this is what the expect the children to get in order to pass. I can remember being sad about getting a B+ during college, so I can't imagine what a 30% must feel like!

One of the teachers mentioned that he has noticed a lot of his students have trouble reading and writing, especially English. I think I've already mentioned this, but in Ghana all the teaching is done in English, so you if you can't read, write, or speak English you're kind of screwed. I thought it might be a good idea to start some sort of reading or English club that way the students can practice their English skills. I thought either I could read simple stories to them so they can hear what proper English sounds like or meet as a group and go over their homework and whatever kind of help they need. I'll keep pestering the teachers about it, but I personally think it would be a great project, if the students are interested that is.

Amayke and I met at school this morning so I could fill him in on what he missed during our Reconnect IST. I went over grants, primary/secondary project ideas, past PCV projects, and my own ideas for Afere. The soak away pits and household latrines are going to be our biggest projects so I gave him all the information Ambrose and I had gone over and our action plan. I'm really hoping things will start picking up now that everyone is back and ready to start working! If everything goes to plan I am going to be really busy these next two weeks.


Ambrose, Amakye, and I met at school for a couple hours this morning to discuss our action plan for the soak away pits. Lucky for me, Ambrose knows a lot about soak aways already and was drawing different versions of them on some scrap paper. He has already enlisted some students from the JHS to go around town and collect stones to fill the pits with. Ambrose, Amakye, and I all know the benefits of having soak aways...health/hygiene reasons and general community attractiveness...so we decided we need others to realize this too. Since we are using the students of the JHS to collect stones, we are going to start our education with them. Tomorrow we will visit the individual classes of the JHS (Form 1, 2, and 3 - the equivalent of 7th, 8th, and 9th grade) and discuss the benefits of soak aways as well as do some small malaria education. Once we have finished educating the students it is our hope that they will then go home and educate their families, but I'm not getting my hopes up. In order to make sure our message is understood and community wide, we will be taking a list of names of the JHS students and visiting their individual households. Since we will have already taught the students, we are planning to use them to help educate their families on soak aways and malaria. On Wednesday evening we start visiting the households and get this ball rolling.

We have also discussed the possibility of doing a household latrine project. I thought it might be a good idea to do this project in conjunction with the soak aways. Something sort of like, "if you can build your soak away and understand the benefits of it, then we can help you get a household latrine." Ambrose and Amakye seem to like the idea so we are going to tweak it to our needs and hope for the best. I'll have to write a grant for the household latrines because it is a higher cost project than the soak aways. For the soak aways the families will provide the necessary materials, which isn't much.

Tomorrow afternoon Alisa and I will be going to the SHS in Juaboso to meet with our health club. Our plan is hold elections for President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasures and so on and so forth. Last term they gave us a list of topics they would like to discuss, so we will revisit that list and hopefully add to it. I'm really excited about this club and I think the students are too. They also speak English a lot better, which makes things easier.

Hopefully on Thursday Alisa and I will be teaching a health lesson at the Juaboso Hospital. We are still working out the details as far as what we want to do. We need a translator, but usually we can get someone from our LNGO to help us. A couple weeks ago we did an impromptu malaria education session and it went really well.

I called my HIV/AIDS man this morning but I learned that he has traveled and won't be back until next week. I really want to get this project started. Even before I came to Peace Corps I was very interested in HIV/AIDS and hoped I would be able to do a related project, so if this is successful I will be very happy. I'm going to start going to the VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) days and observing how things work and gauge interest in forming the support group. If not, we can still do some HIV/AIDS education, individually or in a group.


My biggest cultural exchange of the day happened in my courtyard this afternoon. It's really hot outside so I thought I could soak up some much needed sun. Pasty doesn't even begin to describe my upper legs (I never wear anything above knee-length). So I put on my tank top and Nike shorts and sat in the sun. After probably three seconds, my Ghanaian mother comes running up to me shouting "Nana Akua, daabi daabi daabi," which I met with a confused look. "Daabi" means no in Twi. She told me I needed to get out of the sun and sit under the tree. I explained that in America, and many places in the world, lighter skinned people sometimes like to make their skin darker. She couldn't believe this. I kept saying I do this all the time in America and its ok. She just laughed and eventually went back to grinding her pepe (spicy pepper, like salsa almost). My legs are still white, but tomorrow is another day and hopefully it doesn't rain!

What's Been Going On

Well I’d like to say that I accomplished everything I said I would since my last post, however some things fell through the cracks. As long as I can get at least one thing crossed off on my to-do list, I am pretty happy. Timing is usually a reason why things don’t always happen as expected. I was talking with my dad last night about my frustrations with Ghanaian time and sticking to schedules. I was always the girl who showed up ten minutes early to class in college and ditched school once in high school (and it was second semester senior year…quite the rebel, I know). Meeting starts at 8am? Alright, I’ll see you there around 9am. And that’s what happens. Every Sunday the Afere Health Committee meets to discuss health and sanitation issues faced by our community. The meeting is supposed to start at 4pm, but the first person usually shows up around 4:45, and the meeting eventually gets going around 5:15, if we’re lucky. This is usually how things work over here and it drives me crazy. I don’t know why I keep expecting things to start on time, even though I know they won’t. All part of the Peace Corps experience.

Moving on. Last week the BCS volunteers and members of Ghana Health Service traveled down to Takoradi, the Western Region capital, for a training event on zinc tablets and ORS. We learned about what diarrhea is, what causes it, and how we can use zinc and ORS to prevent and treat it. There’s never enough talk about poop for Health/WATSAN PCVs! A lot of the information was repetitive for us PCVs but it was good for everyone else to hear. Plus we got to spend a few days in Takoradi, which is on the beach and you can find American food, even though it costs you an arm and leg, it is worth it.

I met with the HIV/AIDS man, Alfred, at the Juaboso hospital again. We looked at the different HIV/AIDS educational materials I have, which is quite a lot thankfully. He was very impressed. Peace Corps has provided us with a pen drive loaded with goodies. There are a lot of lesson plans on HIV/AIDS ranging from basic facts, transmission, treatment and prevention, etc. I also have a book filled with educational games and activities to make learning more hands-on and interesting for your audience. I’ve read through a couple of the activities and they are pretty powerful. They definitely provide you with a strong understanding of the virus and the emotional/physical challenges you can face. During the VCT days (voluntary counseling and testing), Alfred is going to pitch the idea of a support group and see how many people are interested and we’ll go from there. I expect the process to be slow going but I am hopefully that it will work.

On Wednesday I want to Asafo, a town about 30 minutes from me, to observe an HIV/AIDS support group meeting – People Living Positively with HIV/AIDS. I was very impressed with the amount of people that showed up, which was about 40. In a culture where HIV/AIDS is so taboo, it is hard to educate and hold meetings regarding this topic. The entire meeting was in Twi so I didn’t understand anything, but the members were very vocal and asked a lot of questions. There is a lot of incorrect information flying around about HIV/AIDS so I really hope I can get this support group started and start spreading accurate information. For example, many people believe that condoms cause HIV/AIDS and if you are infected with HIV/AIDS and you have sex with a virgin you will be cured. This is not just particular to Ghana; I know other places around the world also believe this (at least the part about the condom…so I would assume there is a version about sleeping with a virgin somewhere out there). And people believe these things with all their heart. All the more reason for PCVs to work hard and educate people about the truth about HIV/AIDS and hopefully we can succeed at reducing the stigma and improving educational opportunities for those who want to learn and protect themselves. Everyone keep your fingers crossed for me!

We have a couple things on the docket for Afere. First, we are trying to plan a project educating the community about hygiene and sanitation in conjunction with building soak away pits outside of bathhouses. Lots of households don’t have a proper place for their bath water to drain, so it ends up pooling in the streets and running through your neighbor’s yard, which is pretty disgusting. This dirty water can cause intestinal diseases and bouts of diarrhea, especially in small children who are more susceptible to illness. If we can get people to build proper soak aways, then hopefully the instances of illness will decrease, not to mention the community will look a lot prettier. I’m looking into writing a grant for some hygiene and sanitation education to be done in the community before the soak away building. Hopefully that can adequately educate community members and motivate them to improve their hygiene/sanitation practices as well as take pride in how clean their community will be.

Second, we are gauging interest in household latrines around town. Unfortunately our first option for building latrines with an organization called Ghana WASH is no longer available, so I am researching alternatives to see how we can make this happen. Open defecation isn’t a big problem here, in fact I’ve only seen it happen once in seven months, but not all households have latrines and they gotta poop somewhere! Like we would do with the soak aways, we would educate the community on what it is important to poop in a latrine and not the bush and the health benefits that come with it. I’ll keep everyone updated on these two projects!

So that is what has been happening over here. I’m going to sit down with Ambrose this evening at look at some grant applications for Afere. School has resumed again so the streets are no longer filled with screaming children. I expect I’ll be paying a visit to the schools around town soon to see what is going on and what I can help with, if they need/want it.

Seven months in Ghana tomorrow! CRAZY. 20 more months to go….