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.

Reading for the Future

Reading for the Future
For a long time, I have been thinking about how to help the kids in my
community learn English better since not only is it the national
language of Ghana, but to advance in their education, it was
essential.  I had heard about an organization that donated 20Lbs of
books to Peace Corps volunteers around the world called Darien Book
Aid (http://www.darienbookaid.org/). You can request any kind of books
that you would like, from text books to story books.
Once I knew that there was an organization that donated any type of
books, I thought about what my community needed and came up with the
perfect idea: A reading club! Now that I had an idea, I talked it over
with my counterpart and the English teacher at my local Junior High
School to make sure that it would be a good match for my village. They
both agreed and said it was an excellent idea, and that both the
Primary school kids and the JHS students would benefit from it.
So I set forth on this idea, and started to plan out the logistics of
it: Who would run it? Would it be sustainable? Would the kids enjoy it
and learn something? This is how the plan looked, I would have the JHS
teachers pick two kids that needed help speaking English or with
public speaking to come and read story books to the Primary school
once a month. I had wanted books that would be easy to read and
understand, so I choose to have story books donated by Darien Book
Aid. Not only would this benefit the JHS students reading English, but
it would help the Primary school students hear English better and more
often. There are not many people in my village that speak English, so
they are not exposed to as often as they should be.
At the first meeting, I choose the two books to be read; one was about
dolphins and had great pictures, the other was a Dr. Seuss book, Cat
in the Hat. The JHS students did an amazing job, and there were around
30 primary school kids to hear the stories. There was also a large
crowd of adults that came to hear the stories as well. We meet at the
Primary school and choose to read the books under a large mango tree,
with the readers sitting in chairs so that everyone could see the
pictures.
To make sure that this is a sustainable project, I am having the
English teacher run the club and keep all the books. There were a few
short novels in the box donated as well, and he had the excellent idea
to loan them out to excellent students, so that they had a fiction
novel to read as a treat. They are also to write down all words they
don’t know and look them up in a dictionary I gave to the English
teacher. I could not be more pleased with how the project/club is
going; I hope that it continues on getting stronger and preparing more
kids for the chance to further their education and self confidence.

A Word on Packages

It has come to my attention that many of you do not know how to send a package to Africa....and with good reason, cause how often do you get the chance to send of....bucket list item for anyone? cause i can help with that...But back to my point, here is a tip that will save you money: a padded envelope is a cheaper and easier to send for everyone. We in Ghana have to pay for the WONDERFUL packages you all send us, but  padded envelope is free for us...Joy!!! Also, make sure to put AIRMAIL or better yet, put Donations on the box/envelope cause than they think its nothing important in there...
There are no words to describe the joy of a peace corps volunteer when they receive  a package from home, as well as those around him, because if i have learned on thing, its that volunteers took the lessons from kindergarten to heart about sharing. SO please don't forget about us, and  now that you no longer have the excuse of  "its too expensive", Send away...and wait to hear the praise from all of us over here in Africa.

Tess May PCV
Peace Corps Ghana
PO box 5796
Accra-North
West Africa

P.S Items that are hard to come by here that I am in desperate need of....*hint hint*
Earphones, Backpack-used is fine...don't need to spend money on me, Memory card for my camera, Hard backed journal, BRAS-you would think in a country where the women have Large breasts, they would have large sized bras....you would think wrong, Exercise bands-gotta keep all these carbs off my body...

The Black Stone Story...

A true story told to me by a woman in my village.

 It is common knowledge that most Africans fear and hate snakes, for example,  I was traveling back to my village in a taxi, when I spotted a snake on the road,  I was super excited about it and told everyone  in the car about the snake; my mistake. The taxi driver stops his car, throws it in reverse and runs over the snake, all the while I am screaming at him in both English and Ewe to stop, to please not do this. He picks the dead snake up carefully and puts it in his trunk so that tomorrow he can sell it to the juju man.

My village knows that I like and respect snakes, so they sometimes makes fun of me, which I don’t mind at all since it is just another opportunity to educate them about the benefits of snakes and why we should not kill each one that we encounter . About a month ago, I noticed one of the primary school teachers was not showing up for class, and I started to ask around where she was. I was then told that she had been bitten by a snake and was recovering with the black rock.  I was uncertain if I had heard that right, black rock? What in the world could that mean?

I decided to take matters into my own hands to go and visit her and ask her about what had happened. This is what she told me “I was going to farm early morning, and started to get to work before the heat of the day came. I was pulling weeds around my maize (corn), when I bent down, I felt a sharp pain on my lower arm, and I looked down and saw two holes. I knew that a snake had come and bitten me. I than dropped what I was doing and ran to the medicine man. He looked at the wound and said that it was a poisonous (venomous is the correct term) and I would have to try the black rock”. I stopped her there and asked more about this black rock. She said that the medicine man gets it from a special place and it takes the poisons from your body. You must place it on your body, where it sticks till it has taken out all the poisons, than drops off. You than take the rock and put it in milk for 24 hours; I was unable to find out why, but it seems to help heal your body completely.  After the milk bath, she said you take the rock and bury far from your house, to keep the poisons away. That is the story of the black stone.

After hearing this, I had no idea what to make of it, did this work? Where did this magical black rock come from? How had they come to this discovery? Sorry to say, I was not able to talk to the traditional medicine man before leaving again, but I will talk with him when I get back to my village. After recounting this story to a fellow PCV, they said it sounded a lot like a leach….and then it donned on me that, that did sound plausible. I hope to soon bring this black rock tale to completion with a talk to the medicine man and a viewing of the black rock its self. 

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.

Paragliding, Prom Queen and President

April has been and will continue to be a month where I won’t stop moving. It started off when i decided that i needed to jump off a cliff (literally)! Here in Eastern Region of Ghana, there is a Paragliding festival that happens each year on Easter weekend. Being a Peace Corps Volunteer, how could i pass up this opportunity? Well i couldn’t! And it was one of the most AMAZING things i have ever done! Being up in the air, attached to a very attractive man ( not all of them were, so i got lucky) flying over one of the most beautiful places in Ghana...I wish i could have just kept going and never land; super addictive, i would do it again in a heartbeat! After this stupendous adventure, i headed down to our All Volunteer conference. This is where all the PCV in Ghana (all 162 of us) get together and learn some new things, get a chance to brag about all that we are doing, and have a GREAT time together. If i have learned one thing about Peace Corps, is that we really are a big ol' family....no matter how corny that sounds; you have your "mom" and "dad" types that will help you out with anything you need, you have your crazy, odd, not sure what to do with them, aunts and uncles, you have the Super annoying younger bro's and sis's that you kinda wish weren’t there, but could not imagine life without them and then there are the ones that make you a better person and know will never get enough of them.
So with all these different personality types brought together, we somehow worked together in harmony and had an amazing 4 days. The Highlights: 1. Talent show- the amount of talented people shocked me!!! 2. Craft fair- gotta love the chance to shop and not get haggled about prices 3. Date Auction: this is where a PCV can design a "date" to sell, like taking someone horseback riding in Accra, or treating someone to an AMAZING Meal (bugers, fries and beers), and all the money goes towards GYD (gender youth development) 4. Prom: Yes, i know this sounds silly, and a bit odd that a group of 162, ages 22-75, all got together for a another go at prom, but it was awesome! We all put on our best 2 yards, and were looking good! On a personal note about all the stated above activities, i did two songs for the talent show that i wrote ( a play off of "I wanna be a billionaire...or I wanna be a Ghanaian, and a little mermaid parody), I was one of the announcers for the date auction, which was a lot of fun, and I was nominated for prom queen ( Who would have ever thought that in high school.....for sure Not Me) and then ended up sharing the crown (Mean Girls style) with the other 2 lovely ladies who were also nominated. It was a Blast! During All-Vol, we also met with all the committees that we have, and i am now president of the Food Security committee, which works with USAID and Feed the Future initiative. I am very excited to have this opportunity to get things started and bring a new outlook to the group.
I am now waiting in Accra, trying to get my visas for Togo and Benin, since a small group of us are going to the West African Trade Hub Shea Conference, which starts this Saturday. Now the bad part about this is that it falls under the same time as my regions GLOW (girls leading our world) camp...Which SUCKS cause i won’t get to go to it....but i will be learning ALOT that will help not only my village, but all of Ghana. So that’s where i am in my life at the moment, I can’t wait to get back to site and just have some down time and hang out with my friends there. I will write again about the adventures of the other West African countries I’m going to, so till than!