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.