End of Week 1

Hi everyone,
We finished our training and finally got a better idea of what we will be doing in the field. I am really excited about my placement. Patrick and I have different mandates than the other volunteers. We are doing research and evaluation type stuff. My mandate is to research girls clubs and good practices in starting them, training them, what they can be used for and their effect on the community. I’m really looking forward to it, because I think these clubs will have a big effect on girls and their families. Patrick is looking more and community based organizations, but I think that both topics are really neat. We are supposed to find out what has worked, and what hasn’t and the limitations and recommendations to improve the programs. We are also dealing with most of the Northern region (there are 10 regions in Ghana, which are like provinces, and 3 northern regions). But that’s cool because we’ll probably get to travel around and visit some other towns, and hopefully visit with the other interns.
We are heading up to Tamale in Monday morningand the bus ride can be anywhere from 9-14 hours. Apparently it is unsafe, uncomfortable, and they don’t stop very often so you can’t really pee. The good news is that its air conditioned and Kafui (one of the ladies who works for WUSC) said it might be too cold for us. Phew!

Also we went into the city yesterday to check it out and it was pretty crazy. It rained a bit and we split into 2 groups, but it was really cool. My team went to the Makola market, which is the biggest market in Accra. It was pretty crazy. Apparently its supposed to be the best market for beads and fabrics, but we were mainly in the food section. There were huge snails, live crabs, pigs feet and just about any kind of fruit and vegetable ever. It was super busy, a lot of hustle and bustle. It was really overwhelming at first. We didn’t get to see much of the rest of the market.
Then we found our way to the National Cultural Centre where we had some lunch and met some guys who make drums. After we finished eating they brought us around to their drum shop and they taught us how to play some simple drum beats which was really cool. The drums were beautiful and I kind of want to get one made. The guys were a little forward, but pretty cool. Then we went to the Nkrumah memorial and monument which was really neat. Nkrumah is their national hero here and they call him the founder of the country, so it was really interesting.

I'm excited to get up to the north, but again, I don't know what our access to internet will be like. We will not have wireless so we'll see. But my cell phone is cheap.
Take care everyone!