A day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer in village

I wake up around 7 to either the noise of a rooster, guinea fowl and or one of the nine people that I live with.  I get up, grab the key to my latrine, wrap a two yard around me, and walk the thirty feet to my latrine. Once finished, I greet my bathroom lady, -a women that lives at my toilet- because it is rude to greet going to the bathroom, and walk back to my room. I then dress, make my bed-shocker I know, it took moving to Africa to make me do that- fill up my electric tea kettle- the most amazing thing ever, America you got to get into this fad- prepare my oatmeal and coffee, pour hot water and enjoy. While eating, I am usually outside on my porch reading a book; listening to music and watching my village pass by. I am going to say that this is a Sunday, since they are the best days around here. The people passing by are wearing their best outfits and going to church which lasts anywhere from one to three hours, depending on which church you attend. I will be doing this for around three hours or so, then I will come inside to my room and do some small chores; dusting, cleaning, washing, etc. Washing clothes takes a whole day, let me tell you. By this time, I start to prepare for lunch which is usually rice, stew, soup or fried yams. While eating, I am watching shows or a movie on my laptop.  Once my compound mates return from church, we talk and hang out for some time. Sunday is also the day that my farmers group meets as well as my women’s group. So I will go to those meetings if they are having them, and then return back to my place.  This is now around four pm, the sun is starting to go down and the weather is finally getting cooler (AKA under 90 degree’s). What I would do without my fan, I don’t know. The power has been going off most days now, so I try to spend most of my time outside where I might catch a breeze and stop sweating from every pore on my body.

The power being off at night is just about the worst thing I can imagine.  Waking up sweating everywhere and there is nothing you can do…Oye those are some long nights. I do not have a light in my room, so I do everything by candle light. The reason I don’t have light, yet have power, is because the bats/rats in my ceiling keep biting and destroying the cords that attach the power, so I gave up and live by candle light, which I enjoy now.  After I have prepared diner, which is mostly noodles, eggs and veggies or leftovers from lunch, I take my bucket bath and prepare for bed. Here I will watch one movie and by 8pm am so tired that I fall asleep….like an old lady.  This is a typical day for me in Mem Chemfre, my village. Peace Corps is a lot of reading, watching and learning, with a little bit of action and excitement. Each PCV of course has a different routine, but I know most will follow something like this on a daily basis.  It may seem boring to what you thought my life might be like, but it is these times where people are not staring at me or calling me white lady that are so nice and comforting. 

Travels around West Africa...Thanks Peace Corps

I have no idea how to start this blog…..there are a ton of things that I have done in the past 2 months but not sure where to start. I’ll start at the end of the food security summit that I went to in The Gambia: This journey started on a rainy evening at around 11pm, where 4 PCV’s started an intense game of Euchre. None of us were truly prepared for how long and involved this game would become, until we looked at the clock and saw that it was 3am, and time for me to get to the airport to board a plane to Casablanca, Morocco.  The 4 of us (Jordan, Chase and Aikins) had a layover for 12 hours in Casablanca, and since three of us are Americans, we got the opportunity to enter the country without a visa. We got on to the train at the airport that would carry us into the depths of Casablanca, not one of us having any knowledge of where to go next. We ended up choosing a random town to get off in and walk around….let me tell you…..Casablanca is AMAZING! I feel in love the second I stepped off the train.  For the next 8 hours, we walked around Casablanca, ate some amazing food, bought some nik naks and headed back to the airport where we had a flight to The Gambia. We arrived in The Gambia around 2 am and got a ride from Peace Corps Gambia. At this point in our journey, we were all slightly delirious and going crazy from lack of sleep, a rap song happens to come on to the radio and our Food Security coordinator begins to sing every word of it….curses and all….blowing us all out of the water and making us laugh so hard we almost peed our trousers.

The next morning, we get to business and go around Banjul, the capital of Gambia with a few PCV’s from around that area. Throughout the day, more PCV’s from all over West Africa begin to show up and settle down. The morning of July 2, the summit begins! For the next 5 days, we learn all there is to know about Food Security and what each country is doing with it. After the summit, we again leave at the butt ass crake of dawn, with a flight leaving at 3am for Monrovia, Liberia, for another 12 hour layover. This time we are not so lucky and got greeted with resistance and a bribe. They wanted 50 US dollars EACH to get into the country…..umm Hell no! but we got ourselves out of it, but saying that we will not leave the airport, so from 5am-5pm, we were stuck at the airport…with not much to do, but on the bright side….they had American plugs….which was cool to be able to plug my computer straight into the wall again.  We arrived back in good ol’ Ghana around 7 pm and got back to the office for some much needed sleep.

The next big thing I did was help out at Operation Smile, an organization that comes to third world countries and fixes cleft palates and cleft lips for free. It was more than incredible to watch a child with a cleft lip come out of surgery and see their face for the first time. I cannot imagine what it would feel like to change you physical appearance so much in such a short amount of time; the fact that they can now walk around and have no one stare at them openly is such a gift.

And last but not least, I have designed a cross sector boot camp for the new education volunteers who just swore in today (CONGRATS EVERYONE). I am SO excited for this boot camp because I feel that this is just an important part of training that we do not cover well here in Ghana. But starting tomorrow, I hope to give each EDU PCV a better idea what they can do at their sites with health, water, sanitation and food security. It is set up so that in the morning, they will learn all about the sectors with different presentations that current PCV’s have created, and in the afternoon they will do hands on, practical’s about all that they learned in the morning.  It starts tomorrow and ends the 19^th, I will make sure to write another blog about how fabulously well it went…Until than!

This is the Real Africa

When we think of Africa, most of us in the western part of the world, think of mud huts, naked children running around and boobs, but i am here to tell you that things have changed in Africa and its time that we catch up with them. Before joining the Peace Corps, I had this grand view of what my life was going to be like; no electricity, no running water, some very interesting food, and dirt floors. This is what a lot of us wanted and expected when joining the Peace Corps, but we soon learned that Africa has moved on and left us 100 years behind in our thoughts.
Just last night i was Skyping with a friend and she asked "How does one get to Ghana? Do they even have an airport?" I was taken aback, how could she not know that all African nations have airports, cars, internet, cell phones....how is that Americans have such a simplified view of Africa? Where in our education are we lacking, that we still portray Africa as it was 100 years ago. I'll admit that it has taken me months to get rid of the stereotype that has been imbedded so deeply into my mind of Africa; that even while living here, i wanted to see and experience the Africa that i was brought up on. But i have now come to terms with this "new" Africa that i live in and its time that Americans also face the fact that Africa is changing, quickly, and we need to keep up with what it’s really like over here.
Here are some examples of what the real Africa is like now: most people in West Africa have at least two cell phones and as many as 4 different numbers, in Ghana there are 7 different cell phone companies competing against each other, the number of cars and motos (small motorcycles) on the road are just as plentiful here as in America, internet cafes can now be found in smaller and smaller towns and villages, watching TV and movies is now a favorite past time, there is formal education here all the way up to universities, which can be found all over the country, there are paved roads popping up everywhere, and many other examples. Now, i understand that Ghana is more developed than other African countries, but i am sure that many of these examples can be found in other countries as well.
This is not to say that most African nations are now out of the third world category, this is more to point out that people are changing; life styles are changing. Something that many Africans don’t realize is how we view them; they don’t understand that when most Americans think of Africa, they don’t see tall buildings and complete infrastructure; they see wide open land, filled with wild animals and people who still live in small huts and live with their "tribes". It’s time to open your eyes America, and appreciate how far Africa has come in this new millennium; it is our own fault that we see them as less advanced, that we don’t allow our self’s to experience what Africa is like now, not 100 years ago. If you don’t believe me, you are invited to come experience what Africa is really all about and start a change within yourself and back in the states; my doors are always open.