...since I posted. The internet cafe was shut down for a few weeks by the IRS of Ghana because they owed them a bunch of taxes. Anyway, I wrote this entry on Valentine's Day, I hope all is well in your corner of the world.

14 February 2007

I have to apologize for not posting for so long. The only accessible internet went down for a few weeks so unfortunately I was out of luck for awhile. So things are good in Lawra, we have been really busy at our NGO (non profit organization). The Harmattan, or the windy season, has gone and the hot season has come. They say it has come early this year and it promises to be one of the hottest years on record. We have already had a couple days where it was 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Thankfully I have a fan in my bedroom and one in my kitchen, it makes the heat much more tolerable. But every 5 days they turn off the electricity from 6 pm to 6 am to conserve energy, and that is when the heat is the hardest. They say they have a lot of funerals in the host season, because it is too hot to sleep at night anyway. I guess I should explain that statement since it wouldn't make sense from an American context.

So people in Ghana often have 2 funerals, one when they first die and then a second sometimes a year or more later. The reason why the second one happens so long after they die is that it is a big party and often the family has to save for a very long time to be able to afford it. Many of the funerals I saw, especially in the South, have sound systems and often t-shirts made for them and everything. Funerals are community events and important social functions. You may not know someone very well but you would still be expected to go to his or her funeral. Not going would be an insult to his or her family. The funerals here in the North are a bit different. The first and sometimes only one (if the person is wealthy enough and doesn't need to raise money they only have one) has xylophones and drums that play and the corpse is suspended in a chair above the crowd. It is covered on 3 sides with cloth and open in the front. People throw coins at the base of the platform that holds the chair and also at the xylophone player and drummers. The funerals last for 3 days, the first day is a lot of moaning and wailing and usually what you would see at American funerals. Then the second day is the big party day and the drumming and dancing goes on all night long. I was telling my mother how strange it is to tell someone "oh enjoy yourself!" when they are going to a funeral, but it is a big celebration and one of the main sources of entertainment here. So during the hot season people hold their second funerals because people have a hard time sleeping because of the heat so they might as well party. :)

So my work has been going well, we have been very busy. I have finished all the end of year reporting and we had our quarterly planning meeting with Action Aid International, the NGO that supports all our activities. We submitted our budget for the first quarter and are anxiously waiting to find out which programs they will continue to fund. In the meantime, it has been a challenge to maintain our activities with no money. It is almost half way through the first quarter and we didn't have any funding left over from last year to carry us through. So unfortunately we haven't been able to sponsor our regular trips for our clients to go for antiretroviral therapy. We also have a couple of new clients who desperately need to go on ART so we are in the process of trying to secure some emergency funding from our NGO so that they can go. Right now we are currently providing care and support for 35 HIV + Ghanaians. I have been discovering the rewards of direct service and the challenges of working in a developing country. It has been much busier than I expected, I have just now finally caught up from the gap when the last volunteer left and I came. It has dawned on me over the weeks that unlike most Peace Corps Volunteers who do general and varied work with a community, I have an actual jobby job with deadlines and everything. I had 12 things on my to do list last week. Even though I had that many things on my list in one day of previous jobs it is a whole new ballgame working within "Africa time." Incidentally another consequence of the importance of funerals is a lack of control over my workflow. If something needs to get done right now, or now now as they say here, a funeral may come along and delay it for a few days anyway. And since they happen quite often, it can be problematic.

Now I am on my way to Tamale where I will participate in the quarterly meeting for the Methodist church and meet the Bishop of the Northern Diocese. Since we are a Methodist project, we need to participate in the meeting. When I return from the meeting I will be working on a proposal to the Ghana AIDS commission, the government agency that funds most of the People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) associations in the country. When I am finished with the proposal I will go to Accra in the beginning of March to present it to them. I will also be there to celebrate a huge event in Ghana the celebration on March 6 of the 50th year anniversary of Ghana's independence from Britain. Ghana was the first country to gain independence and this celebration will be the kick off one for all the independence celebrations on the continent. It will also be good to get out of the Upper West region where I live for part of the hot season. Evidently in March and April it gets up to 120 degrees. I am still trying to mentally prepare for it, it will take some time for me to adjust.

Speaking of which, it is going to be really difficult to cook over a stove when it is that hot and Ghanaian food takes a long time to cook. So if you have been contemplating sending me a care package at any point, now would be a great time J Below are some suggestions of mostly lightweight and quick things to prepare. Don't feel like you have o send me a big box of stuff. Even if you just got a few things and threw them in a bubble wrap padded envelope and sent them to me I would be really, really happy. In fact I have heard from other volunteers if you send under 4 lbs you can send it USPS Express Air Mail for slightly more than USPS regular Air Mail and it will get here in 2.5 - 3 weeks instead of the 4 - 5 weeks it takes for my family's packages to get here. They say it takes something like 6 - 8 days for the regular mail to get here but they lie J. It may take 6 - 8 days to get to Accra, but it may still take another month for the Ghana mail service to finally get it to my post office. Anyway, if you feel like sending me something you can send it to my address in Lawra. It is:
P O Box 44
Lawra, Upper West Region
Ghana, West Africa
I hope all is well for each and all of you in your corner of the world and you had a wonderful Valentines Day. My love to you from across the ocean!

Package possibilities:
Trader Joe's trail mix with m&ms
TJ's fruit leather
dried peaches, apricots, apples
dried black beans
Annie Chun's Udon microwavable bowl
Good ramen
Instant Pad Thai (Thai Kitchen is good I think)
dried soups
Fantastic Foods Creamy Potato Soup dried
other dried Fantastic Foods stuff
pasta sauce packets like alfredo, pesto, etc
Velveeta cheese
Peets or other vacuum sealed coffee
Reisen chocolate candy
flour tortillas (preferably resealable ones and with preservatives like El Paso brand)
salsa seasoning packet (Concord Foods hot salsa is good)
Chicken of the Sea brand pink salmon in a pouch
basically anything dried and asian or mexican flavored
DVDs of movies or TV shows
MP3 CDs (new music please!)

p.s. I think I gave some people the wrong impression in my last post. I do have limited internet access but feel free to email me anyway. Just please don't be offended if it takes me weeks to respond. I know it is considered rude in our culture if you take 2 months to respond to an email so I just wanted to make sure you all were aware of why it takes me so long. But please, by all means, keep writing me I love to get news from home.