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. 

Change, it is a coming!

I have found that as I get older, different things start to mean more to me and other things have lost their pull on me.  For instance, I now know that wherever I am, is home to me, whether this be for 2 days or 2 years, when I get to a place where I know I am safe and solid, it becomes my home. Just ask any of the Peace Corps Volunteers that I stay with; I set my bag down and it explodes, where within an hour, it looks like I have been living with them for the past 2 weeks. Some might think this is a bad thing, but I think it shows how Adaptable (Peace Corps Key Word!!!!!) and comfortable I am with myself and the person I am staying with! I have also learned the valuable lesson that I can’t do everything by myself; in fact I SHOULDN’T do everything by myself. I have learned so much more by asking other for help and input. This sounds like an easy thing to do, asking for help, but let me tell you, it wasn’t! Pride can be a virtue, until it kicks your ass, and your standing in a puddle of mud, which you can’t get out of. Thank goodness I have learned this lesson and now put trust into others to do what needs to be done.

Something that has lost its pull on me is food, this is not to say that I have lost the need and WANT to eat American food…all the time….but it now does not take up as much time on my daily schedule as it used to.  Food and I have never gotten along, well other then the fact that it was made to be eaten and I was made to eat. More, it was that I did not have control on how much I ate and it just kept being a temptress and making me weak with want. But no more!!!! I have more control of my body and my mind.

I have always been good at moving around, meeting new people, starting a new life, but not always good at keep contact with those in my past. Since moving to Africa, I have learned that family comes in many different forms and it takes work to keep a family together. I have had many families in my past: camp families, blood family, school family, theater family and now Peace Corps family. Each of these families hold a different part of me, and that part will always be there. I have depended on each of these families at different times in my past, and I know that I can always count on each of them when I need their help. Since being in the Peace Corps, I have come to rely on them more and more, and don’t know what I would have done without them. Never turn down a family, because even if you leave them physically, they will still have you and you will still have them as well.

Change….It happens, no one can stop it, so I say embrace what happens and go with it, cause if you don’t, life is going to take LOONNNGGG time for you!

How is stay clean in Africa....

How I stay clean in Africa!

Here is the run down on how I stay clean in Ghana and how most Ghanaians keep clean as well.

There are no showers here, so to stay clean here these are the steps I take:

Step 1: Get a med. Sized bucket

Step 2: Fill bucket with water

Step 3: Get a med. Sized cup

Step 4: Place cut into bucket and fill with water

Step 5: With cup in hand, rise hand above your head, and tilt down

Step 6: Repeat steps 4 and 5 till clean

There are no sinks here to clean my teeth, so here are the steps that I take:

Step 1: Fill a med. Sized cup with water

Step 2: Put toothpaste on toothbrush

Step 3: Walk outside your room to a place where you can spit, for me this is outside my room near a tree

Step 4: Brush teeth

Step 5: With cup of water, wash out your mouth and spit

*Side note: Some Ghanaians don’t use toothbrushes, they use a chew stick, which is a small stick from the Neem tree which grows throughout Ghana and has an anti-bacterial property, to clean their teeth.*

There are of course no laundry machines here, so I use two buckets to clean my clothes:

Step 1: Fill both buckets with clean water

 

Step 2: Put washing powder (like OMO, tide or any of the others) in one of the buckets

Step 3: Place dirty clothes in bucket with washing powder

Step 4: Wash each piece of clothing separately by hand in a circular motion, while dunking the clothes back into the soapy water

Step 5: Once washed, ring out clothing and place into the clean bucket of water

Step 6: Repeat steps 4-5 till all clothes are washed

Step 7: With the already washed clothes in the clean bucket of water, take each piece separately and agitate them in the clean water to remove the excess soap

Step 8: Ring the clean clothes out of water

Step 9: Turn inside out and hang on line to dry

 

*I want to challenge all of you, to see if you can also stay clean with such little water!*

A Peace Corps Success Story: One Person at a Time

In Peace Corps, there are a lot of pre-conceived thoughts about what you should do during your service. They come from   your friends, family, Peace Corps community and of course yourself; you are your own toughest critic.  But what most of us don’t release until further on in our service is that all it takes to cause a chain of reaction is a simple conversation.

This is one of my greatest success stories to date: I am not a small woman, I understand this, and I also understand that in Ghana, big is beautiful, but as an American women  it hurts when someone across the street for me calls me Obolo (fat, in the local language)  to get my attention. The fact that this happens multiple times a day, from both men and women can get old, very quickly. I live with 9 other people in my compound, and for the most part, they understand where I come from and how they should treat me. After a rough day of travel, and just a rough day in general, I come home to one of the boys (when I say boy, I mean he’s around 25 years old) in my compound telling me that I look fatter and should do something about it.  I won’t lie, I lost it a bit, and in my sternest voice, explained to him that he just insulted to the highest degree possible. To an American, being called fat is not only insulting but also hurtful and painful. I wanted to make sure that he understood where I am coming from and that at my home, in my compound, I would rather not be insulted. He was very sorry, and pledged it would not happen again. In Ghana, you are never sure if they are really listening to you or just agreeing with you because you are white.

The next week, someone came into my compound and proceeded to call me fat.  One of the boys that got my little sermon the week before, stepped up and explained to the visitor  that in America, calling someone fat is a great insult and to make sure to respect not only me, but in the future respect other cultures.  I sat in shocked silence……did that really just happen? Did he really listen and learn to what I had said? Pure Joy radiated through my body; there is no other situation that could have made me prouder to be a Peace Corps Volunteer and an American woman.  

It’s these little things that make your service so fulfilling, and rewarding. You don’t have to do a huge project to feel completion and success in your service, all it takes is a conversation and confidence in yourself.  

I live in a Carnival.....

I live in a carnival….it has taken me some time to come to this conclusion, but after being in Ghana for 15 months, I have arrived at this fact, living in a carnival means never having a dull day.

 Let me take you through a day at the carnival, in a city or should I say a fair, called Kumasi.  We start in a tro, which is very much like a roller coaster; the bumps, the slides, the fast and slow movements of the tro,   just like you would expect in a coaster, only this coaster is longer and a little less safe at times, but none the less, always exciting and different each time you get in one.  Once off the tro coaster, you land in a place surrounded by people and noise; most of which you can’t understand or make out, but exciting all the same. You walk down a path filled with objects you have never seen before and people trying to call and get you to come and see what they, just like a barker would do:

“HISSSSSSSSSS, You, come, see, Come, many new things to show you”.

So many people are trying to get your attention at the same time that it’s difficult to know where to go and what to see. All the while, people are bumping into you, pushing past you, and calling to each other. As you continue down this path, music of all sorts are pumping out of huge speakers along the way, making you want to cover your ears, it being so loud. You round a corner and run into a man with a microphone and a set of speakers, preaching about something or someone with much vigor and zest.  You dare not stop for fear he would bring you into his web and start to discuss his subject of zealous retribution with you. As you continue your walk, you start to notice all the colors and shapes that you pass by, no two looking the same, and always something to see that is new to you, and as you see those unique features, another one of your senses is being assaulted, your olfactory glands. The smells that waft up to you range from divine to disaster. Many you cannot place, and most you would not want to know where it came from or what it is. Despite all of that, you can still appreciate how quickly the smells come and go, and how rich and exotic some of them are.

You find a booth that interests you and the game begins; you want this, for this price, but the vendor has other plans. His goal is to get as much from you as possible, always with a smile on his face and a lie behind his eyes. With your wits about you, you might win, but not always, sometimes they get the upper hand and you storm away knowing that the next time, you Will win! With all these things going on around you, it’s easy to lose your head and go insane, but if you let it all wash over you on step at a time, you can and will get out alive with more confidence and strength then had when you first arrived at the carnival known as Kumasi.  

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!

Wait...When did i become an Adult???

 It has come to my attention that life has snuck up on me. When I was younger, I had this grand idea that when you become an “adult” everything about you changed; you were smarter, more respected, and completely different from who you were as a ”child”. Much to my surprise, I find that this is not the case, we are all still who we were as children, only better…. I hope….   This fact came to life when I realized that I was doing grown up things without even noticing, and people respected me for it.

They say Peace Corps changes your life, and it’s true, but again, I had the wrong idea about how that would happen. I figured that an epiphany would hit me and I would wake up and feel different, think different, view the world differently; for me, it was much more gradual and subtle. An example, I have worked at six different summer camps all over America, and enjoyed each one very much, but since being in Peace Corps, I figured out what it was that I loved about it so much, I have a passion for trainings; I love setting up and implementing trainings of all sorts. This knowledge came to me by accident and I have run with it; all it takes is one person to be a catalyst for how the rest of your life might be shaped. Two people that have been my catalyst for where I am now are Nicole Abrams, an RPCV Morocco- 2010-2012, who first told me about Peace Corps (which I had never considered before) and Kris Hoffer, my DPT (Director of Programing and Training) in Ghana; without these two women, I would not be where I am today.  Again, all it takes is a simple idea to form, for your life to be changed forever. 

This past week, I was invited to attend the first ever West Africa Food Security summit in The Gambia, where 8 different Peace Corps counties came to together to discuss where as a region, we wanted to take Food Security. We, as a region, have been chosen to be the “guinea pigs” for the new Feed the Future imitative, being funded by USAID.  This is next big project being funded around the world, by many different NGO’s and countries; the problem: to many people, and not enough food. Many of the wars going on right now are over land rights for the production of food. That’s why we are here, to help farmers in third world countries, implement better practices that better utilize the land they have and better preservation of said land for future use.   A quote I read recently sums up one of my main reasons for being SO passionate about this topic:  

“Helping people to emerge from poverty is one of the best things we can do for the environment.” – Bjorn Lomborg, Turn on the Lights, Please Newsweek, June 4^th 2012   

As president of the Food Security Task Force in Ghana, my main job is to help PCV’s plan, organize and facilitate In Service Trainings (IST) for other PCVs in country. In the upcoming 3 months, we will be holding 5 separate trainings on topics, ranging from bee keeping, to Vetiver grass planting, and how to build a rabbit/chicken coup. At each of these trainings, there will be around 10 volunteers and   their counter parts (their partners in their villages that work with them) making each training around 20 people. They last anywhere from 1 day to 5 days, depending on what we will be learning about. These trainings are one of the main things that the task force is focusing on; education is the first time to change.

 In summary, Peace Corps has changed not only who I am, but how i view the world and the place i hold in it.