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!