Home, Safe and Sound

We are all back from Africa safely with relatively few bug bites. We are enjoying the hot showers and constant electricity that the States has to offer. Now its back to the daily grind and getting our data analyzed and published (hopefully).

We miss our friends we made in Ghana and will always have vivid memories of this experience.

Thanks to all who read and kept up on our adventures!

...and then there was one

This post could easily be titled "Where is your sister?" because that's what I've been asked all day today! Courtney left early this morning so now it's just me. Kinda weird being in Ghana solo.

Our last day at BASICS was a lot of fun. We truly were honored with the good-bye the staff and the students gave us. They brought in a cake, which apparently is a rare event, and some of the students got up and publicly thanked us in front of the other students. We received the traditional "Chorkor" shirts that were presented by some of the students. Then they children all broke out into African song and dance. A great ending to a great trip!

It's been fun being in Ghana during the World Cup as well. Everyone is really into football and the games are always being played- even in the street! In Osu, the main street was blocked off and they had a large big screen and a crowd watching Nigeria play Argentina. It should be a real experience when Ghana plays tomorrow. I desperately hope they win so I can see the craziness.

It's off to Nigeria for the week come Monday. We will see what adventures Nigeria has to offer. I am grateful for the hospitality of the Gowon family as they have invited me to stay as a guest in their home.

The Last Days

Yesterday, we taught our very last lesson about HIV to the children at BASICS. Today, we administer our post-program survey. Reflecting back on the work we have done, we feel pretty proud! It’s clear the students have been interested in the things we have been teaching them- we are often asked, “when do we learn about HIV again?” We feel the hard work we have done to put this program together has paid off. To top it off, the Associate Dean of our college has even asked us to submit an article for the alumni newsletter about our project and that’s pretty flattering.

We don’t know if we will ever fully understand the impact that we have had on the children of BASICS but hope that they have gleaned something from our program and stop the spread of HIV. We hope that they will take the knowledge they’ve gained and share it with others in this poor community.

This has been the ultimate learning experience for us in terms of truly understanding how forming a research experiment and carrying it out works. We know there are many mistakes that we can correct in the future, but without this opportunity, we may never had understood the details that often get overlooked.

We are looking forward to coming home and having constant electricity, running water, and not having to ride the tro tros!

Last Weekend in Ghana

It’s been a while since we have blogged, so we figured it was about time to provide an update on all our adventures. We actually haven’t been to the internet cafÈ for some time. Things on the HIV education side of things are going really well. We have only one more day of actual intervention before we administer the post-program survey. It’s crazy knowing we are almost finished here! Last week we taught the students how to use condoms. The students were surprisingly mature and well behaved through the entire lesson. Below are some pictures of intervention. This weekend we traveled to Kokrobite Beach. It wouldn’t be Ghana without some type of travesty with our travel transportation. We were supposed to leave on Friday night, but when we saw the line of 50 plus people long all waiting for the same tro tro we knew it might be a while. After 45 minutes of waiting, and still no tro tro in sight, we bagged the idea and decided to go in the morning. Instead we treated ourselves to a nice Italian dinner in Osu. The following morning we got up early, and with relative ease, made it to Korkrobite. We stayed at Big Milly’s Backyard, which we were highly impressed with. We spent a lot of time at the beach reading our books and getting a little sunburned. It was a nice relaxing break from the city. The only downfall of Big Milly’s was the small double sized bed we shared and the mesh curtain separating the bedroom and the bathroom. Needless to say, we are getting quite comfortable with each other. We met some other travelers who have a sweet Land Rover they drove from England and are touring the world for the next 6 years. Their set up seemed pretty intense and it made us dream of doing more traveling. Courtney leaves in less than a week and Lori is off to Nigeria shortly after. We can’t believe how time has flown here in Ghana. Things are beginning to feel like “home” here. We are starting to get anxious for the things we are missing in the States and have taken the liberty to finally starting dreaming of those things (prior to this point, it would have just been depressing). Anyway, we will keep you posted on our final adventures!

Again, thanks for all the donations. This is us with the Kindergarten (KG) group with their new t-shirts! They were so excited!!!

Teaching condom use

Our Ghanaian skirts and dresses. Lori is wearing a fairly common style.

Kokrobite Beach. All the African boys were running around swimming naked and the sandy butts were hilarious.

Kokrobite Beach

Learning how to use condoms!

Evening Out

Yesterday we went out to "Two for One Pizza Night" with one of our co-workers, Charles. He is planning on obtaining his Master's degree from a university in Connecticut, so we were able to talk about all the differences between countries and had some good laughs about each other's perceptions. For example, he was in awe that we have constant electricity. We were surprised to find out that goldfish for a meal is considered a delicacy. The "nicest" bus we have seen here would be considered the worst quality of vehicle in the United States- he was shocked about that. We found it hysterical that our tro tro had to get a push start, but Charles acted as if it was a normal routine procedure. Clearly we are learning lots about the world around us. Charles has also agreed to take a look at the dysfunctional jump drive in hopes to fix it. Hopefully that means more pictures to come!

Bon Appetit!

We have established some favorites and some not-so-favorites of Ghanaian food. We wanted to post some pictures of the various foods we've eaten, but the dumb jump drive we went out of our way to purchase got corrupted, so now we are unable to transfer photos again. (We may have a third back-up plan, but that has yet to be determined).

Some of our favorites:

• Kelewele (fried plantain with a special spicy seasoning)
  
• Red Red (a type of bean dish sometimes served with chicken)
  
• Fried Plantain (always our back up plan if there is gross lunch at the center)
• Fan Ice (basically frozen chocolate milk)
  
• Fruit- bananas, pineapple, mango
• Avocado (the pits alone are the size of the large avocados in the States)
  

Some of our least favorites:

• Banku (a strange mix of pounded maize)
  
• Fish soup (Banku is usually served in this)
  
• Rice ball (served in a peanut soup)
  

We don't dare try fufu or kente because we hear they are basically like Banku.

In order to protect ourselves from having to eat Banku again, Lori asks the cook daily what the meal is for the following day. She then passes the information on to all the other obruni so they can plan accordingly for lunch. This has become quite the joke for all the locals at the center.

We basically eat Ghanaian food all week so on the weekend we utilize our ability to seek out Western food. The pizza and hamburgers definitely aren't as quality in taste as what we eat in the States, but it gives us a good break from the 4-5 staple meals they eat here.

Bebeni

Bebeni is the Twi word for black person. This is as black as we get! We got our hair braided in order to prevent having to wash our hair in the bucket day after day. We think we look ridiculous but the Ghanaians keep telling us our hair is beautiful. Keep your mouth shut if you disagree.

Farewell Auntie Liz

Liz left last night to go back to the United States. She is probably in transit currently. We think Ghana will be a little bit different with just the two of us. All our Ghanaian neighbors keep asking where "the other one" is. Hope you traveled safe Liz- keep checking the blog for updates!!!

HIV Prevention

We recognize that the intention of our visit to Ghana was to teach HIV prevention but we have been so absorbed with the other things we are experiencing here that we haven’t had much of a chance to blog about how our program is going.

Teaching concepts here is much more challenging than teaching concepts in the United States- its not that the children aren’t able to learn, but the way we teach and the way they learn doesn’t always seem to mesh. We have learned how we have to slow.way.down. in order for the children to understand us. We haven’t quite figured out if they are enjoying the things we teach, or if they already understand the concepts we teach, or if it’s way over their heads. Each day is an adventure in teaching! We teach 2 groups on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Our second group is much easier to teach- there are less students and a bit more engaged in the process. We are realizing how many misconceptions these children have about HIV and are grateful we are hear to help clarify the things they don’t know. (We just hope they are absorbing the things we teach!) Some of the common myths: it’s not okay to touch someone with HIV, you can get HIV from kissing someone with HIV, and sharing a tooth brush with someone who has HIV also is a way HIV is transmitted. Today, we are playing a myth/fact game with them. It’s our first time implementing an actual game, but hope that it will reinforce the concepts we have taught thus far.

Courtney administering our survey to some of the children. You'll notice all the children are in uniforms- that's because they come straight from school to BASICS.

Totally unrelated to HIV prevention, but Lori is playing memory with the children.

Again, unrelated to HIV prevention...but the internet is finally cooperating to allow us to post pictures! This is Liz helping some of the children during arts and crafts. We are grateful for all the donations people gave us to bring to Ghana. We were able to fill 3 suitcases full of supplies and the organization and children are very grateful!!!! It's crazy to see what kinds of materials they use to operate on here- they don't have a lot of extra resources so every little bit helped.

Making Exercise

Obviously, we are a little out of our regular routine in Ghana, including our exercise regimen. It’s been 2 weeks since we’ve left the States and haven’t exercised since we stepped foot in Ghana. Today, we changed that. We went running around our neighborhood early this morning before the traffic got heavy. “Going running” isn’t really a common thing in Ghana- and we were mocked mercilessly. Everyone we ran past made a jogging motion, some began jogging with us, but most just laughed or smiled as we passed. Our housemates joined in our post-run stretching routine and kept talking about how uncommon “making exercise” in Ghana is. Nevertheless, we felt much better getting out and moving!

Weekend Adventure

We are back from our “relaxing” weekend in Cape Coast and Beyin. We have had some high highs and low lows.

The first indicator that this might be a rough trip began Saturday morning as we were attempting to leave Accra to go to Cape Coast. The attendant at the bus station took our baggage and told us to watch our bags and get on the bus when he told us too. In the meantime, our bus was over an hour late (which is becoming standard affair for Ghana). When we began to board, the lady taking tickets told us to wait- and that we didn’t have tickets to board this bus. After figuring out what was going on, we realized the bus attendant made us miss our first bus and was trying to put us on the wrong bus- which we didn’t have tickets for. He attempted to blame it on us, saying it was our fault we missed the bus, but Courtney persisted using her American culture to argue our way onto that bus. We had already been waiting so long!!!! Then they assigned Liz to a “special seat” in the stairwell- it’s really challenging to describe on the blog, but Courtney and Lori couldn’t stop laughing at situation. It was at least a good stress reliever from the earlier frustrations.

Then, the bus broke down leaving Accra and we had to turn around and get on a new bus that was even smaller than the original. We were worried that we were going to get kicked off this bus as well, and things weren’t looking good after getting kicked out of our seats 4 separate times. Fortunately, we were able to somehow stay on. At this point, we were about 4 hours behind schedule for our busy weekend.

We arrived in Cape Coast and quickly headed up to Kakum National Park. We took the taxi ride of our life up there- Lori kept having to tell Courtney to “just close your eyes” as if that was going to make the situation any more safe. Kakum itself was incredible. We went on a canopy walk in the jungle. There are only 5 canopy walks in the world, and the one in Ghana is the longest and highest. We basically crossed bridges made out of wood, nylon, and a little bit of steel- these were extremely high in the air over the jungle and very rickety. It was an adrenaline rush, but so cool! On our way home from Kakum, we had our driver stop at Hans Cottage to touch the crocodiles- yet another adrenaline rush. We were surprised to see that crocs hands look very similar to human hands.

That night we slept in an air-conditioned hotel room. Absolute bliss. Lori actually was unpleasantly cold for part of the night- something that none of us have felt for some time.

The final destination in Cape Coast was the Elmina Slave Castle- where the slaves were imprisoned and traded for. It was an extremely sobering experiences standing in a place where such horrible things occurred.

The next part of the adventure gets a little crazy- at least it was for our stress levels. We were trying to make it over to Beyin, which is the very western corner of the Ghanaian coastline. We taxied to Takaoradi where we were planning on taking a tro-tro the remainder of the way. We had settled on an adequate price from Cape Coast to Takoradi, but begin budget travelers we were unwilling to pay anything more. Once in Takoradi, we realized that tro-tros do not run consistently or often on Sundays. So now we were basically stranded here. With few options remaining, we bartered again with the taxi driver to take us to Beyin. It was much more than we wanted to pay, but we didn’t really have a choice. On our journey from Takoradi to Beyin, at one point Lori asks the driver if he knows where he is going. When she showed him on the map and he realized how much further it was than he originally thought, he was no longer willing to accept the price we previously arranged. That’s when all hell broke lose. Lots of arguing occurred and frustrating emotions was to be had. Still feeling like there was no options- and they were decreasing by the second- we concluded we would continue on despite the price.

Once we got to Beyin and saw the place we were staying and how beautiful it was we determined it was worth it. The beach was gorgeous, the weather was cooler, the water was warm, the food was amazing, and we had the place to ourselves! Like we said before, low lows lead to high highs.

In Beyin, we saw the local stilt village (a village built on stilts over the river) and got to relax on the beach.

Our journey back went a lot more smoothly- granted we had to get up at 4:30 am to begin the journey (making our way to the tro tro with a headlamp because the sun wasn’t up) but we thankfully had next to no issues. We are glad to be back safe and sound and grateful we had such an adventure filled weekend.
Today is AU (African Union) day. There are celebrations for Kwame Nkrumah’s birthday, the first president of Ghana.

Lori and Courtney on the canopy walk at Kakum National Park. These pictures don't even do justice to the place!

Beyin Beach Resort- it was a beast to get here but so beautiful!

Petting the crocodile!

Menial Tasks

We are quickly learning how much we take convenience for granted in the U.S. It takes a long time to get things done here, partly because of the slowness of the culture, and partly because they/we lack the ability to do things conveniently. Example: Lori needs a new jump drive to upload pictures to the blog. In order to get a jump drive, we have to take a tro-tro to an area of town that sells this type of electronic equipment. There is no Wal-mart, Office Max, Target, whatever, on everyone corner...just one place a distance away that carries this type of device. Washing clothes also can be an all day event considering we have to wash by hand. Thankfully, one of the girls we live with offered to do the wash for a fee. That was the best spent money since we have been in Ghana.

We also are heading to Cape Coast/Beyin this weekend. We are excited about the trip, but a little nervous about our ability to competently travel independently in Ghana. We have so many friends in Chorkor/Mamprobi that are so helpful with our incompetency. Unfortunately, we will not have their help available to us this weekend.

Wish us luck and expect pictures next Wednesday sometime!

"Obruni"

This is the phrase that is constantly shouted at us. It means "white person." Obruni usually is meant in a welcoming, friendly manner, but today we feel like it shouldn't be such a good title. See, we culturally are missing a lot of the basics. We take a lot of things for granted that sometimes make us look like fools. For example, the water frequently is not on- this means, you can turn the knob to the faucet and no water will come out. Our first instinct is "Shoot! No water!" which means we have to find a different way to wash hands, wash dishes, wash our bodies, etc. Well, apparently today we left the faucet on...so when the water finally came back on, the kitchen sink was beginning to fill. The problem: everyone living at the house was at work and the compound was locked. Thankfully, the issue was noticed and resolved, but it could have resulted in a flooded house. The next, embarrassing circumstance had to do with the electricity. The electricity is not billed in Ghana like it is in the States. Instead, you prepay for electricity and when it runs out it runs out. The electricity, like the water, also goes off from time to time. Sometimes when it comes back on it surges and can cause fires. Or...if you leave the fan on (like we did) it will just run out the prepaid electricity until you don't have any more. In this case, if you get home and the prepaid electricity is finished you will have to sleep in a deathly hot bedroom until someone can go the next day to pay for more electricity. *This didn't happen to us yet, but if we continue to make these mistakes the chances of it occuring are high.

Usually the inconvenience of the water/electricity outages are really not that challenging to deal with...until the fans don't work at night and we laid in bed all night saying our seperate prayers that we would either fall asleep or the fan would come back on. Not sure if either of those prayers were answered :)

The jump drive we usually use to load pictures on to the blog is currently missing, but hopefully we will be able to locate it soon- we know that pictures are much more interesting than reading the boring banter written here.

Finally, two pictures

On the tro-tro

This is at the local soccer match. This photo is hilarious. Can you figure out why?

Rainy Season!

Ghana is in their rainy season now- and today was our first experience with the rain. It was a downpour like we have never seen before. Because we are novice in the Ghanaian ways, we didn't shut our windows before walking to work....thankfully Pat was gracious enough to drive me back home so I could close the windows. Apparently when she left her windows open once she came home to floating suitcases. Thankfully, the rain brought much cooler weather, which is a great break from the swealtering heat we have been experiencing.

We also got to explain to the staff about our program. This made us feel a little more confident about what we came to do. Tomorrow, we administer the survey to the children and begin!

We had kelewele for the first time tonight. Everyone raves about how fantastic kelewele is- and it lived up to it's hype. Kelewele is a type of platain fried with spice. It was really cheap and we will probably go back in the future for more.

We are still having issues with the computers and uploading pictures, but the problem should be resolved later this evening.

Signing off to plan our weekend adventure to Cape Coast. Pat gave us Monday off because Tuesday is a holiday so we are going to enjoy a nice long weekend at the beach, the stilt village, and the national park, Kakum!

Dumb Computers!

We were hoping to load a few more pictures and a video...but the computers aren't allowing it right now. Hopefully another day we will have more cooperative computers!

First Weekend

Greetings from Ghana! Just another brief update on our adventures. We are still having a great time and still learning a lot.

Yesterday, we spent out on our own scoping the area. We made it back down to the Center for National Culture where we practiced our bartering skills again and reunited with our new friends. We were taught how to play African drums and watched a local futbol match.

We attended church today and found the congregation very welcoming and friendly. We took our first tro-tro to the church. A tro-tro is a mini-bus where they jam as many people as possible on to the bus. It is much cheaper than a taxi and after the Ghana Cedi’s we spent yesterday we figured we better learn to conserve.

At church, we met Linda who has offered to be our seamstress and has quickly become a close friend. We are so grateful for the welcome we’ve received!

Some other things we find really funny about Ghana:

The children are obsessed with the camera. The minute they identify us as Americans they are asking for their picture to be taken.

The people here are very God-oriented, which is not a bad thing, just hilarious that it infiltrates every aspect of their lives. Some business titles for example: The Lord is My Shepard Refreshment Center, God is Good Plantain and Yams, and Lori’s personal favorite, Store de Hot Jesus. Many of the tro-tros also have religious phrases printed on their windows, like “Go to Church.”

Tomorrow we start work!

We are Here and Surviving

Greetings from Chorkor, Ghana- and excuse the possible punctuation and spelling errors (typing on international keyboards is always slightly different).

Let's see- where to begin. We made it here safely and despite the awful heat, we are surviving. Yesterday we spent becoming familiar with the BASICS compound and the area of town we are living in. Pat, the director of BASICS, took us on a mini-tour of the area. We stopped by the Center for National Culture, which is an area where local tourist items are sold. We got to experience the swarming Ghanaians- it's a strange phenomenon that as white people we get so much attention. I don't think any of us are quite used to the treatment. It's a bit uncomfortable actually. Liz and Lori practiced their bartering skills and purchased their first souveneirs- African paintings. We ate at Frankie's, in Osu, which is apparently a popular restaurant. Yes, we all had American food of burgers and fries.

We are living with 4 Ghanaian girls who have been extremely helpful. They've helped us learn the tricks of the African culture- how to flush the toilet, how to fetch water, how to wash your clothes by hand, where to buy water, how to use the different appliances, etc. They also helped us get a taxi so we wouldn't get cheated. We are grateful for their generosity and kindness, because this clearly is a different culture and a shock!

It's apparent this is a developing country- their standards of living are very different. It's pretty normal to see people urinate on the side of the road, there is trash everywhere, and Pat took us to "Lavender Hill" which is where the dump trucks unload all waste into the ocean. It's a sad reality.

We also got to interact with the children at BASICS briefly yesterday. They were so sweet and we anticipate the more frequent interactions that will occur with them. I think we are all a little more nervous about implementing a successful HIV prevention program after we've seen the reality of the circumstances these children live in. We are so impressed with the mission of BASICS and all they are trying to accomplish for the Chorkor community. (It's clear this a very poor region of Accra and the world).

Today, we were adventurous to go out by ourselves :) We have the weekends off to travel, but were not quite comfortable trying something too crazy, so we are just becoming accustomed to the area and how we are supposed to go about doing things. So far, so good.

Our only hope is that we can begin to tolerate the weather because we know it's not really going to cool down :(


Below, pictures for your enjoyment.


This is the three of us at the top of the construction site of the new BASICS building. It should be an awesome facility for the organization and will open in July. We will get to see a lot of the changes as it is being built. From where we are, we were able to see much of the area including the ocean- which is really only about 2 blocks from where we live


Courtney and Lori after Lori and Liz arrived. These are our bunkbeds. Lori sleeps on the top and Courtney slept on the bottom, until the lack of circulation did her in and she moved her mattress to the floor. The bag Lori is holding is a satchel of water, the most common way the foreigners can drink water.


Our shower facility. The first the the water was out, so we had to use just a bucket of water- though the hand-held shower head doesn't really provide much force anyway. Might be easier to bucket-shower every single day

Feeling a Little Strange

Random realization: we are the only two white girls waiting to board this flight.

Layover 2

All we have to say is we're grateful for sleeping pills! It's been a long day/night/whatever time of day it is. The London airport is as spectacular as it possibly can be and we are ready to be in Ghana- or more like not traveling anymore. We are still wondering what we are doing. We are ready to meet up with Courtney and see how her adventures have been.

Liz and Lori at their finest (as in after sleeping upright on the airplane, not brushing teeth/washing faces, and wearing the same clothing for the past 24 hours).

Layover

Liz and Lori are on one of their extremely LONG layovers (currently in Seattle, waiting to board a flight to London). We only have 24 more hours until we are in Accra. Sad face. Courtney, is probably somewhere over the Atlantic...right now, we are a little jealous of her. She is much further along in her journey.




The picture to the left is Liz and Lori in the Vegas airport with all their stuff. (There is another bag you can't see...) We'd like to give a big thanks to those who passed us on our weight limit, even though each of Lori's bags were almost 10 pounds heavier than the maximum limit. Below is Courtney all packed and Luca (the dog).

All Packed and Ready to Go

We leave tomorrow! If the other girls experienced anything like my day has been, we've all been running around getting last minute things and throwing our junk in suitcases. (Alright, it's probably been organized a little better than that). I wish I had the chance to take a picture with all our luggage...but we all arrive and leave on separate flights so that wasn't feasible.

(Documentation that I am packed almost 24 hours before I depart)

Blog Background

We figured we should explain a little about our Ghana trip for the readers.

A friend of Lori's had volunteered with BASICS International (read about the organization here). BASICS aims to increase literacy in Ghanaian youth. After contacting the director of BASICS, we were able to identify a need for an HIV prevention program within the organization. Between Liz's nursing background, Lori's Health Promotion/Education background, and Courtney's impressive PhD candidate credentials in Public Health, as a team we were able to get this program in motion. We had a lot of help from willing professors from UNLV (Dr. T-R, Dr. Chino) and Dr. Barbara Turner (Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania) who were willing to assist us in the planning process.

So why Ghana? Why HIV?

Sub-Sahara Africa is disporportionately affected by HIV. 68% of all infections globally occur in this region of the world. 12 million children have lost one or both of their parents to HIV or AIDS. This just scratches the surface of the issues these people face- the spread of HIV in Ghana is deeply rooted in cultural, economical, and social determinants. Our specific program is targeted toward Ghanaian youth, age 10-20 years old, in hopes to increase prevention strategies. We have a myriad of activities planned in order to acheive this goal.

We are ecstatic for the opportunity to go to Ghana and hope we can made a difference!

We Should Be Planning...Instead of Blogging

Here is the start of our Ghana blog- for all those who care about our adventures in Ghana. (As in, 2 readers). Currently, we are still in the U.S. (Lied Library, Las Vegas, NV) trying to plan last minute details for the HIV prevention program we are implementing in Ghana. Still in the library on a Friday during Finals Week- most people are gone by this point.

Anyway, welcome.