It has been good to be back. I noticed I have been very grateful since I got back from the UK, especially to many of you. I was reading Paul Farmer’s biography called Mountains Beyond Mountains. There was a line in there about the different people who have supported him throughout his career, about lives of service being based on lives of support. I was just thinking about how my life is better because of the support of so many of you on this list. I recently got new music from my friend Jeremy in England and David in Brazil and have been getting lots of work done with the inspiration of new tunes. I thought about how happy I am that I have the camera that Sara gave to me, or how my meals are so much tastier because Julie shared her spices with me before I left. About how I am so much more comfortable because Anthony helped me to get comfortable clothes that I wear all the time. About how I had one of my favorite meals I made in Ghana so far (mmm chicken n black bean soft tacos) I made with the taco sauce Sharif and Catherine sent me and the beans and tortillas that my mama and grandma sent me. I am just very thankful because on a daily basis these are the little things that offset the discomforts of living in West Africa and keep me connected to all of you. I know I am digressing but I did want to say thanks not only to those mentioned but everybody who helped me out before I left and since I have been here.

The project has been doing well since I got back. We finally heard from Ghana AIDS commission and we did get a grant, but it was 30% of what we asked for. The program is “managing” as they like to say in Ghana. When you ask how people they are, they always say “oh, we are managing.” Which usually means persevering with very little resources. That is a good way to describe our project. We are ambitious in the range of services we would like to provide. We have 2 new clinic attendants who were trained as nurses and have begun working in our new functioning out-patient clinic. We are providing services not only for our HIV+ clients, but to people in the community who don’t have money to go to the hospital. Our services for our HIV+ clients are expanding as well, we now have 25 people, over half of our association, on antiretroviral drugs. We are supporting the HIV affected orphans with education and healthcare. And also we are still supporting mothers with malnourished babies and children.

Our self support projects have been expanding as well, which has helped us to sustain our growing services. We grow this plant called Moringa Oleifera, which seems to be sort of a growing craze in Africa now. It is really good for people who are malnourished and have little money to have a varied and balanced diet. We have been giving it to our PLWHAs and it helps to keep them healthy. It supposedly has all kinds of medicinal uses and certainly helps people out a lot, but there haven’t been enough scientific studies done on it to see what it most effectively used for treating. Anyway, we have been growing and processing Moringa to sell and this part of our project has taken off due to the popularity of Moringa now. Also we have a soya milk processing machine so we have been making soya milk for sale as well.

So that is all for now, I hope things are going well for you in your corner of the globe.