I hope all is well in your corner of the world. Things have been good here in Lawra. I recently returned from being in the south of the country for two and a half weeks. I went to the town of Takoradi on the coast for "in service training" for the Peace Corps. Once you have been at your site for a few months, they bring everyone in your sector back together and give you additional training (in my case my sector is Health and Water/Sanitation). It was a chance to learn some new skills and reconnect with volunteers who are in parts of the country so far from me that I never see them. After the training I had a few days of rest n relaxation on the first clean beach I had seen in Ghana. Being a Peace Corps volunteer often feels like you are working 24/7, even when you have a day off. Those few days were the first days I felt like I had off since I came here. I am now feeling re-energized and ready to continue he work I have been doing.

After the few days on the beach I went to visit the old slave castle at Cape Coast where they held the slaves they were importing and exporting, which was naturally a sobering experience. One of the craziest things I learned there was that the English had an Anglican chapel as part of the castle that was directly on top of the slave chambers. It is hard to imagine people worshipping God with 150 people packed into a small room suffering below. If you were a seditious slave they packed you with 60 other people into a one-room confinement with no windows. They would leave them there to starve until they die. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t remove a person if he or she died and would wait until all 60 had died before coming in to remove the bodies and fill the room with the next crew of “troublemakers.” Bizarrely there is now a Ghanaian Anglican church directly across from the slave castle. It was strange to see people filing into the church knowing the church was started in the slave castle across the street.

After the slave castle I went to Kumasi for 2 days for another training. This training was to be a part of the Peer Support and Diversity network that essentially provides peer counseling for volunteers. I learned some good counseling skills and once again got to reconnect with some volunteers I had not seen in some time. Once the weekend was finished I returned to Lawra ready to get back to work.

One of the differences I have found between the culture here in Ghana and back home is the difference in the emphasis on convenience. Because we are so focused in the West on things being convenient, this translates into our interpersonal relations. I was very conscious of not doing things in the States to inconvenience people. This is one of the ways I have seen myself change over the course of my time here. People in Ghana are incredibly friendly and helpful. It is particularly acceptable when asking someone for directions to say, “I don’t know this place very well, can you show me?” For example, when I arrived into Kumasi for the Peer Support and Diversity training I needed to get to the suboffice, which is inconveniently located a 10 –15 min drive outside of town. I knew I had to get to a place called Roman Hill to get public transportation there, but had no idea where it was. Kumasi is the second biggest city in Ghana and is a big place. I asked a man how to get there who was in the middle of a conversation and he said, “one moment I will show you.” I apologized for interrupting his conversation and he quickly finished talking with the other man. He then walked 20 minutes with me snaking through the city to my destination. Once we got there, he asked someone for the appropriate minibus and got me exactly where I needed to be. At that moment I was struck in the difference in African and Western culture. Could you imagine interrupting a conversation on a sidewalk and saying, “I need to get to this place but I don’t know the city. Will you drive 20 minutes out of your way so I can follow you to where I need to go?”

That is one thing about Ghanaian culture that I really admire. People are constantly helping each other out. At first I had a hard time finding certain things in the market. Then I realized I just ask a young boy or girl (referred to as small boy or small girl) to show me. Small boys and girls, referred together as “smalls” do a lot of chores around the house and are often sent to run errands for the household. I think it is the fact that smalls are raised to always be helping out around the house that translates later in life to always helping out other people.

I am back at work in Lawra now. I hope everyone is enjoying spring over there, the rains have started to come occasionally to alleviate the heat. Thanks to everybody who sent packages, you are my heroes and sheroes!