Training's over, Let the dog days begin!

Sooo it's been awhile but i am finally safe and settled at my site in the Volta Region. We had our swearing in ceremony on Aug. 12th which a ton of fun. We had the ceremony on a really nice school campus where all of our homestay families were invited as well as some big shot Ghanaian's and the deputy ambassador to the US embassy. All the volunteers showed up wearing local garb that our families had prepared for us, which was awesome. ANd i must say we were a very colorful bunch. My fabric was light pink and green and had "High Life" written on it which is a type of Ghanaian music style. The ceremony lasted a couple of hours and then we headed off to the local spot where we set up the after party. Most of the families didn't join in at the spot but the after party was really for the PCV's to celebrate surviving Pre Service Training. And our class actually did really well! Out of the 72 of us only one person ET'ed (Early Terminated) which is great compared to the universal Peace Corp statistic that 30% of volunteers leave during PST. So the party started with a couple shots of Apeteshi and i became DJ for the night and made a kick-ass mix keeping us dancing until the wee hours. Even our country director came out for a couple of hours and bought us some drinks. pretty sweet. The next day we left for site early in the morning…not so fun.

The ride up to Volta was nice and short, mainly because our tro tro driver was speeding like a madman but that's how all the taxi and tro drivers are in Ghana, at least in my experience. We did pass though a police barricade where an officer had a radar gun but usually drivers can get out of a ticket with a little hush hush money which just sucks…but hey it happens. I traveled up with a few other volunteers who are near my site which is always nice, makes the ride a little less scary. It's been fairly quiet around here for now since a lot of students are gone. The new semester starts in October so I have about a month or so to kill. But i try to keep busy with little projects here and there. Like cooking, cleaning, list-making, clothes washing, etc. Isn't my life exciting!? haha no but its actually nice to have a little down time. Training was definitely taxing on my mental and physical state and i am happy to be through with it. And I meet up with other PCV's a couple of times a week so you know catch up and shoot the shit. So its fun and relaxing which is great cause im also really nervous about the semester starting and being a teacher. gulp. Im meeting with my counterparts soon so ill have a better perspective on what exactly ill be doing and teaching. I have two counterparts, they are both males and are fairly quiet but seem very nice. So now is my time to go into my larger community and integrate! Ill let you know how it goes :)

Ghanaian Funeral

Ghanaian Funerals

So a Ghanaian funeral is, for the most part, a happy time. Its sad that the person and/or people have passed but they would rather celebrate life and have a big party in their honor than mourn them quietly. When i first came to homestay the weekends were pretty quiet because apparently the chiefs of a lot of the surrounding communities had put a ban on funerals for awhile. Im not sure what the reason was but just judging from seeing them now they do get very loud and people get extremely fired up and rowdy so maybe they were trying to calm everybody down for a bit. They lifted the ban on funerals a couple of weeks ago so now, starting every friday, there are mass amounts of people flooding the streets and there is constant music playing and everyone is wearing black, red or white or a combination of the colors because that is the funeral attire here. Usually when there is a funeral, it is for more than one person. I think it averages between 5-10 people a weekend. So the person or people may have actually passed a long time ago but they wait for a free or scheduled weekend to "celebrate" them. I've heard families waiting months to give their funeral to a family member who has passed. This past weekend there were a ton of people staying at my homestay who were attending a funeral in my village. I have not found out yet who actually died but ill keep researching. But it has been very busy at my household and really nice to meet some of my extended homestay family.

The art of watah fetchin'

So the other day i the opportunity to try and fetch water from the local bore-hole. I wanted to experience doing this at least once during my time Africa so i was eager to help out my homestay family. The bore-hole where my family goes is about a 1/4 mile away but down a little hill. The first bucket i carried back to my house was just plain agony, but i tried not to show how much pain i was in, ha. I set it down for my sister to fill the large barrel with, while i stood there panting. She laughed and then told me we need to fetch water 3 more times to fill it. and of course i was like, Okay! So by trip number 4 i couldn't feel my arms any longer and my neck had squished down at least a half an inch, sweet. But actually after settling i felt good, well i felt mentally good. I thought that we got a lot of attention by just being foreigners but when you step it up to being a foreigner AND carry water i think whole village was looking at me but in a supportive way :). They were all impressed by my initiative to fetch water and would shout out "are you tired yet" and "way to go" in the local language. So all-in-all, 'twas a good day.

Volta= The California of Ghana

After returning home from job shadowing, things slowed down a bit. We had intensive language training for the next week and a half so mostly we were filling our heads with the local language for about 6 hours everyday. After that we had our counterpart workshop beginning on the 18th and then site visit on the 21st. The counterpart workshop was held about 10 min away from my homestay in a town called Bunso. There we had the chance to meet the people we would be working with at our sites for the next 2 years. We stayed at a college which was much like the first place we stayed at, Valley View. The workshop included sessions about diversity, safety & security, what to expect working with americans, etc. Some of the sessions were helpful but entirely too long and it made for an exhausting couple of days. I got to meet my headmaster and one of my counterparts who were both very nice. My headmaster was even a Peace Corps language trainer a couple of years ago which is great. On our last day before leaving some of us got together to play football(soccer) and were joined by the local ghanaians. It was a lot of fun, too! We weren't neural as good as the locals but they were pretty cool and patient about us playing with them. Its funny, the one consistent thing i see in every single town i pass when traveling in Ghana, even in the poorest communities, is a nice football field. It really is the general pastime here, which is probably why almost every ghanaian we play with is so good.

We were able to pack up most of our things from storage and homestay because after the workshop we were then traveling to our sites to see what they would be like. On the 21st we left at 5am for the long trip to the Volta region. I slept for most of the morning but woke up when we climbing this huge hill that looked over much of the middle-southern region of Volta. It was really beautiful and a little scary; We were def not on the best of roads. I was traveling with 3 other volunteers and our counterparts because our sites were all relatively close to one another. By mid-afternoon we reached my town, Jasikan. Jasikan is about medium sized but still pretty quiet. I will be staying on my college's campus. I think in all the PCV's mindset before site visit is to have low expectations about accommodations and other resources in the community (i.e. internet, market). But i must say my house is above and beyond any expectations i had. Apparently there was an american woman living here about a year ago involved in an NGO called SRC(im still not sure what that stands for) who did the whole set-up for the house and bought everything but ended up getting sick and had to return to the states and left everything here. So i am greatly appreciative! I met with the headmasters wife who showed me around and even took me to Hohoe ( a neighboring larger city) to buy some food and supplies. She was super helpful and very nice, it is always nice buying things with Ghanaians because usually the seller will not give you the Obruni(foreigner) price. I got to buy a lot of veggies and finally could stop eating meat! One of the great things about going to site is being able to prepare my own food so i can go back to being a vegetarian :). Although i do like some of the ghanian dishes, they mostly involve some kind of meat base and i think i have exhausted my ability to eat anymore fish. It will be great to eat some more greens and less fish and carbs.

After a couple of relaxing days at site, i met up with some other PCVs in Ho, the capital of the Volta region. We headed out to a couple of different spots and ventured to this fresh juice stand that was incredible and really cheap! The only that kinda sucks for me about living in Volta is that mostly everyone in the entire region speaks Ewe, another ghanaian language, and im learning Twi. My community in Jasikan is one of the rare few that speaks mostly twi and some ewe, so it looks like ill be learning both…struggsville. but alas i will have a lot of free time to do so. So there ended being a lot of us who got together and we stayed a little ways outside the city at a hotel/hostel called Ho farms (ha). But we had a great time, training is pretty stressful most of the time so it was nice to have a little chill out time. We split off into mini groups the next day and made our way back to the hubsite in kukurantumi. Im really excited about my site and living in volta which i like to call the california of ghana because of all the palm trees and the people there just seem so chill.... so only about two more weeks till im officially sworn in and i can start my service!