Mole and more

I just returned from a five day whirlwind trip to Mole National Park where we got to walk uip to elephants, feed baboons and Mona monkeys, and wake up to the sounds of wild warthogs eating outside our window. We took a walking safari as a group in the morning, and then in the afternoon I went with seven other people who were at Mole on a driving safari for two hours around the park. I was sitting on top of the car along with two Dutch boys, when we came across a lone elephant feeding. The car must have spooked it because he started trumpeting, and he turned away so we stopped to watch him. He evidently changed his mind about us because about thirty seconds after we stopped he tunred back around and charged us, trumpeting and throwing branches. We had to hold on for dear life as the driver gunned the car to get us away from the elephant, and he followed us to the road and stood in the middle of it making noise as we drove away. It was incredible but frightening at the same time. On our drive back from Mole yesterday we stopped at the Kontampo Waterfalls, and had a wonderful afternoon relaxing besides the most beautiful waterfall.
I am in Accra now and will be heading back to Keta this afternoon to get a good four days of building in this week. Last week we finished the foundation so tomorrow we will start to lay bricks and build up the walls, which is a faster process than the foundation was. We have been having some problems with the locals I have been working with, but thanx to a good friend from Accra we will be able to make our money stretch farther than I had been told at the beginning of the summer. It is absolutly astounding to see the building being erected day by day, and how with hard work from the volunteers we can acomplish so much in one day. On Thursday with eight people, one mason and two local laborers, we managed to mix cement, using shovels which is incredibly tiring, an carying headpans full of cement on our heads to the site, we finished half the floor of the clinic. I have been taking pictures everyday of the site and when I get I fully plan on making some kind of slideshow which documents the progress we made. All is well and I hope everyone is enjoying their summer.

breaking ground!!

The volunteers have been here for a week now and it has been a whirlwind ever since they touched down in Ghana. Alyssa and Caisa arrived a day early, on Thursday, so I along with some Ghanaian friends took them out for a night in Accra. Early the next morning we all trooped to the airport for the third time in two days to get the rest of the group, Dana, Michael, and Lauren. The five volunteers are all colleagues of mine at UPS so it was very strange for me as my two worlds collided, people from back home arriving in Ghana. Once I got over the shock of seeing five Yeevus (white man in Ewe) whom I knew get off the plane we jumped straight away into orientation. The first three days, Saturday, Sunday and Monday were spent in Accra at the Volunteer Abroad house, where Kersten and Poppo, the VA country coordinators, went through a comprehensive list of problems the volunteers could encounter and how to appropriately deal with those situations. We also took breaks in between classes and went to the beach, a five minutes walk from the house, or out dancing at local night clubs. Tuesday afternoon we rented a trotro, basically a large van, to take us to Keta, but as there where eight people, lots of luggage, and broken down beds which we were taking with us, and it started raining in the midst of packing, it took us a lot longer than expected. We reached Keta by 6pm, and only had about 45 minutes of daylight, so we rushed to get the beds set up before night time. The first night in Keta was a shock for everyone as they had been getting used to the modernized city of Accra, but they all survived, mosquito netting and fanless. The last few days have been consumed with building and getting the volunteers orientated to Keta. The first day of building was Wednesday, and as it was ridiculously hot we had only one task, consolidate the cement bricks which were laying over the entire section of land we needed to build on. Sounded easy, but lifting heavy bricks of cement and packing them in concise stacks, in the open sun, is actually quite tiring, but rewarding, as work on the clinic had begun. The next day, Thursday, was our first real day of actual building, and we got so much done. The team of local masons we are working with and the volunteers in one day had dug the outline of the main room and the office, and filled the outline with cement. At the end of the day, the outline of the building had appeared,and I was caught between jumping for sheer joy and crying out of overwhelming happiness. Needless to say, the experience so far has been beyond words, to see the project which I and so many others have so hard for actually coming to fruition. I remembered how much I love this country, the people here, and the atmosphere of relaxation, understanding and moving according to your own time, and the positive effect it has on me, especially after the craziness of school. I will try to post pictures when I can, they are beautiful and I am taking as many of each stage of the project as I can . I am tan, working hard, and have never been happier!!

One day till arrival

So the first volunteer arrives here tomorrow morning, the eight are coming from all over the US and Canada and arriving at four different times over two different days! I just came from Keta, on a three hour sweltering trotro ride (basically a broken down VW bus that goes about 30mph and is packed full of people and luggage)where we hopefully figured out the living situtaion for the volunteers. The house is close as I said before, currently without water, a toilet, a shower, a sink, or tables and chairs. Classy right? Over the next five days those will be remededied though, and when I bring the volunteers to Keta for their first time next Tuesday, I will be seeing the completed house for the first time as well, so all I can do at this point is cross my fingers and hope for the best. I am doing really well here, slightly sunburned in awkward places, the outline of my hand is burned into my skin when I fell asleep in the trotro today, but otherwise adjusting nicely, and remembering all the things I love about this country. My Ewe is coming back to me, the language spoken in Volta Region where the building project is, which is exciting, but I still don't know as much as I would like. It is a great feeling to walk down the one street of Keta and not only be able to greet everyone in Ewe, but half the people who I see are friends I have made over the past two years. People here think I am Ghanaian, truly, many have asked if I am ofiri, basically an albino Ghanaian! I am a bundle of nerves right now, in between excitement to be back and for everyone to arrive and apprehension and worry that everything go ok. We have already started to buy materials for bulding the clinic, though things are costing more than we expected as the currency has changed and inflation has raised prices. It sends a small thrill of elation everytime I drive by the bulding site and see the land cleared and dozens of cement blocks waiting for our inexperienced hands to mold. Hope all is well with everyone, and please keep me updated as to how you guys are doing!

Finally Here!!!

I'm back in Ghana after a year of planning, conniving, and thinking about this trip every second of everyday, and it feels good to be back, like coming home. I am currently in Accra, the capital working with Kersten, the woman from Volunteers Abroad who is coordinating this with me. I have already ben to Keta to see the site, and it was so surreal driving by the land for the first time, seeing it cleared and row after row of cement blocks laying on the ground, waiting to be used. The house which the volunteers will live in is a one minute walk from the site which is incredibly lucky. We have to connect water to the house so they will have access to it, but otherwise everything looks good. We have been compiling a more updates version of how much everything is going to cost, and unfortunately it is about 4,000 more than we expected, so we will have to scale down what we will work on. Instead of building the porch and overhang, we will focus on the main building and get as much done as possible with the money that we have. Feel free to email with questions, concerns, topics which you would like to hear more about, I am all ears.

So, my departure date, June 13th, is looming ever nearer, and I am getting more excited. Once I am in Ghana, I will not be able to write very frequently, it will depend on when the village I am staying in has electricity or not. When we break ground though you can bet I will let everyone know. I am staying for the first two weeks with the same family that generously took me in the last two times I was in Ghana, and I cannot wait to see them. This will be my last post before I touch down in Ghana, so the next time you hear from me I will be sweating profusely, probably cursing the abominably slow internet, but will be incredibly happy to be back!

Leaving in two weeks!!

So, I finally recieved my malaria medicine, and hopefully my visa will be arriving next week, which means my departure date of Friday June 13th, is a go. This will be my third time to Ghana, and this time around we are actually bulding the clinic which Yingor Development and I set out to accomplish two years ago. To provide a little background for those who do not know much about my previous experiences in Ghana, I will tell the very shortened version of the rollercoaster that has been my life. I took a year off school my sophomore year of college from University of Puget Sound and worked three jobs for eight months to get my self to Ghana. I went on a volunteer program in spring of 2006, and initially started off teaching at a local elementary school. After working with the children for about two and a half months, I decided I needed to expand my horizons, and found a local non-profit called Yingor Development. Together with the help of Ken Kponor, Yingor's director, and Simon Avevor, who acted as my translator, I started teaching HIV classes around the village Keta, a small coastal town. During this process I realized that many inhabitants of the Keta Peninsula did not have access to HIV education or healthcare. So, Ken, Simon and I started looking for a place to build a clinic devoted to HIV testing and counseling. We found a perfect piece of land, put the down payment on it, had blue prints drawn up, and put into motion the beginnings of a clinic. I had to leave around this time and go back to school, where I raised the rest of the money to pay off the land, and to get me back to Ghana the following summer. I returned to Ghana for six weeks during the summer of 2007 where we worked to get the logistics of the building down, how much things will cost, etc.. After a hectic, but amazinf six weeks I returned to school, and began raising money and awareness with the hopes of being able to build the clinic in the summer of '08. I became involved with a Canadian volunteer group, Volunteers Abroad, who agreed to take on my project. I then recruited members from my school and around the community, till we had a team of ten who signed up to go and build. I leave in two weeks before everyone else does to get things ready for the volunteers to start building, and I am sill in shock that I was able to pull this off. We are still looking for volunteers and donations, as bulding an entire clinic is fairly costly, but we are able to at least put the basic structure up and hopefully start using it as an educational base.