I have only heard this once during my first few days, but all Ghanaian behavior certainly reflects the meaning of this Twi term, Welcome!
The flight was long, but survivable. I tried something a little different for jet lag, choosing to re-schedule my first meal on the plane for breakfast in my new time zone. I think it mostly worked, but the days have been so busy that I've been exhausted at the end of each day anyway.
Arrival went smoothly. Passport control was in some ways more intense than anywhere else I've gone (they took my picture and scanned my fingertips) and in some ways more lax (they didn't actually ask any questions). I collected my bags quickly, then waited probably for another 30 minutes until my mother managed to get hers. Only a few people were pulled aside for examination of bags, and fortunately, we weren't those people.
We met our guide, Joseph, and proceeded to the hotel. Ahh, to decompress. As with Vietnam, the pace here is a bit different from the US standard - I told Joseph that I wanted to get a phone around 2:30pm, and between waiting for our driver to return and having lunch and then just some unexplained sitting around, we finally left at about 4:45. But the trip was successful, and I managed to get cash as well.
For dinner we were joined by two local ex-pats and more members of our delegation. We sampled some local food, and it was quite tasty - I hope the rest of it is this good! But, after a long 2 days of travel and a week prior to that with minimal sleep, I was exhausted.
On day two we met the Paramount Queen Mother of the Krobo people, the King of the Krobo, and had an extended audience with Manye Esther, the deputy to the Paramount Queen Mother, who is largely responsible for running the Every Child is Our Child program that our church is contributing aid money to. We had lunch with the Queen Mothers, saw performances from the kids the program is supporting, and visited a few of the homes of the children, then headed back to the hotel.
The kids singing for us
A few girls performing a traditional dance
The mother of two of the students supported by the program, herself disabled, receiving food gifts
We went back to the Krobo region the next day to meet with the school district officials and see the schools that the kids are attending. They were all laid out a bit differently, but had many things in common. Each asked for a library, and some pointed out the foundations that had been built for a library. They also wanted computers - three had been donated by a family on a previous trip, but only one school had electricity to charge the battery, and one computer had completely died. And the one school that had a useable computer said it wasn't enough to teach practical ICT (integrated computing and technology? something like that) to the 400+ students who are currently trying to learn it through drawings on a blackboard. Most buildings were run down, with little money available to support repairs, although our team leader, Bruce Knotts, could see that some improvements had been made since his last visit. We left them with gifts of pens and pencils, paper, books, soccer balls and frisbees, and a jar of candies. The kids and teachers were all very friendly, and many asked when we would come back, and if we could take them with us. I'm hoping to go back later this summer, with photos from my first trip, and maybe I will be able to spend some time with the kids then and really get to know some of them.
The foundation and some of the bricks for the unfinished library that will cost ~$15-20k to complete
A typical classroom, with the weekly schedule on the blackboard in the background
My sister and I with a group of kids at one of the schools
After visiting the schools we went to the local hospital to discuss the health coverage of the kids in our program and to find out if they are getting the yearly physicals they are supposed to be getting under our watch. The hospital mentioned several key difficulties - bed nets, although distributed free of charge, are often not used because it's much hotter to sleep under them; there has been a recent outbreak of Cholera; HIV is highest in this region compared to the rest of Ghana; and malnutrition, although low for Ghana, is still too high. Both the hospital and the schools had posters up about health and wellness, which I really liked. Far later in the day than planned on our schedule, we returned to our hotel in Accra.
One of the posters in the schools. Although a little simplified (vegetables are not ACTUALLY medicine), it gets the message across to eat more vegetables, which I liked a lot
An important message about sanitation and food handling!
On day four, called "dignitary day" by the group as a whole and "Jen day" by my family, I joined three other team members - Bruce, our leader, Peter Morales, the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), and David Overton, who has been involved with the project since its inception and is on the board of an organization called Mercy Ships - to meet with the Peace Corps office here in Ghana. We discussed with them the value of having a peace corps volunteer stationed in Odumase, the major city near our project, and they told us about the work that they do here in Ghana. I took lots of notes and got a lot of great ideas for side projects during the rest of my time here. After the Peace Corps office we went to the embassy and met the Ambassador, who talked with us for several hours. More great notes. We expected to have lunch after meeting with the ambassador, but because he gave us so much of his time, we didn't have a chance before heading over to UNICEF, where we got a comprehensive breakdown of the health and education status of the children of Ghana. While most of us were at the meeting, Katrina, the trip coordinator, stopped at the supermarket to pick up snacks for us, so after the UNICEF meeting, we had some food before our next meeting with the Ghana AIDS Commission.
The Ghana AIDS Commission was probably my favorite meeting, whether because it was all about a subject I'm familiar with or because I'd just had snack and was fully awake or because I'd had practice from the other meetings, but I was finally able to ask pertinent questions in that meeting. A couple of the most striking things for me were that HIV testing is not mandatory for pregnant women, it is "opt-out", and only 4% of males and 7.8% of females know their HIV status. ARVs are not supported under the government health insurance, which makes them inaccessible to many of the country's poorest. It is no wonder, then, that most people choose to not get tested, when they can do nothing about it.
We finished out the day with about half of our group going to the family home of a former Peace Corps Volunteer who stayed in Ghana and now has a family here. They cooked dinner for us, chatted with us, and as with all of the other people that I met, they have offered any help they can give for the rest of my time here.
I was supposed to join the rest of the group for a trip to the former slave castles on Friday, but I caught a stomach bug which has kept me in bed now for nearly 48 hours. I can tell I'm on the mend, but not quite ready for the outside world. I may try to at least leave the hotel room (but not the hotel) in the next hour or so.
Tomorrow my family heads back to the US and I'm off to Kasoa where I'll be living for the next 10 weeks! And on Monday, I start my placement. I can't wait!!
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