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Jasikan, Volta Region

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Visit to Aworowa, Brong Ahafo Region

One month, holy shit!

This week we started intensive language, which means 6 hours of Twi a day. Woohoo! Actually it hasn't been that bad, I have a great teacher who speaks nine different languages so she's pretty much a rock star in the whole learning language department. Somedays are better than others but i think im doing OK, it def takes me awhile to talk in common conversation but hey i still gots two years! This week I also go on my vision quest or "job shadowing". We get to travel to a different region in Ghana and shadow a current PCV at there site. I am headed to the Brong Ahafo region to a town called Aworowa( yes i cant say it either). Its about a days trip to get there and i get to go through and stop in at Kumasi which is probably the largest city in Ghana, but not has crowded a Accra. If i haven't explained Accra before let me just say that it is has the most people and cars i have ever seen in one place. You cannot walk even 1 foot, in some areas, without hitting like 5 people. Its madness. I have only spent like 1 hour there but that was enough. Kumasi is a bit bigger landscape wise but in some places, like the tro station, it is just as overwhelmingly crowded as Accra. Especially when you are traveling and have a huge hiking backpack on.

After another 2 hour tro ride i arrived in Techiman in the B. Ahafo region. Techiman is a bigger city but not nearly as crowded as Accra or Kumasi. I actually really liked to the layout of it, in some parts in kind of looks like old time western streets with saloons and everything. After arriving at the Techiman tro station, i took a short 15 min taxi out to Aworowa. I made it to my vision queues home and was welcomed by the locals children, all eager to help me carry my things. This one kid, he must have been about 7, wanted to carry my large pack and i just laughed and sad that it was bigger than him, there was no way he could carry it and then all the children giggled. The place where i was staying was great, it was a compound home so there was my host PCV staying there as well as a family who lived there. The family was apparently related to the chief of one of the community so they were well off and had flush toilets, running water and actual showers. It was a little slice of luxury for me :). The woman who i was staying with was just the sweetest and nicest person and when i met her she came in on crutches. Apparently she had broke her foot on an excursion she had been on in April. That really widened my whole viewpoint on my PC experience. Here is this woman who has to get around on dirt roads, in this heat and during the rainy season and she is still as happy and chipper as can be. I thought, no matter what happens down the road i will always keep a smile on my face and a positive attitude and ill be just fine. We started chatting and found out that we were both from NJ originally and had recently lived in DC and we are also vegetarians and love dogs! So our convos never got boring. On Monday we went over to the school where she teaches which was only a 5 min walk down the road and i met some of the faculty and students who were enthusiastic to greet me. She is teaching at a JHS(junior high school) so it is not anything like where i will be teaching at all but it was still good to see where the teachers that i train will end up teaching at. Her school had been recently renovated through her help financially and her use of fundraising resources. She showed me pictures of the buildings before renovation and it was truly amazing how much they did to help. Almost all the buildings had been drastically improved and they even got funding to open a computer lab that was later named after her and husband. It was really wonderful to see all that she had done for her community and the locals really appreciated it and had a ceremony in her honor. SO she really set the bar high! But even if i do half of what she has done for my community, i will be more than happy.

After 5 days, i returned back to my homestay in the eastern region. For the next week and a half we have pretty much nothing but intensive language until we go on site visit on the 18th. At site visit we all make our individual trips up to our site where we can start to move our things and get a feel for our accommodations and community. Im excited, im anxious to finalllly know where ill be staying and what it will be like.