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!