Sorry it has been so long since I have written. Lots of traveling lately has made me busy while at site. So in the beginning of October we had our annual festival in Lawra called Kobine, which is a harvest festival. I found this description of the festival:

Every year around October, the Kobine (pronounced "Kó-bin-ah") festival is celebrated in Lawra, Ghana. It serves as both a harvest celebration and as a homecoming for people who have left Lawra. People come to Lawra from as far away as Accra (capital of Ghana) or Ouagadougou (capital of Burkina Faso) to join in the festival. The Kobine festival lasts four days. The second and third days are the official festival days. The festival begins with the procession of the traditional chiefs. Each festival participant is clothed with their most beautiful smocks while walking under huge parasols. The procession is led to the festival ground by a group of men portraying elephant "hunters". The "hunters" are dressed in traditional hunting atire, including bows and arrows, and "hunt" a small group of "elephants". These "elephants" are another small group of men holding huge, dried elephant ears, which are waved back and forth. These "hunters" and "elephants" are accompanied by a large group of musicians and drummers from the Lawra Chief's (Lawra Naa's) palace. An incredible amount of people watch the performance which starts at the Lawra Naa's palace and continues to the festival grounds. There's lots of dust and excitement in the air and lots of drumming and dancing.

Unfortunately I still don’t have my photos up on the net but you can check out my friends photos who are British volunteers, they got some good pictures:

http://horrocksfamily.net/Kobine%20October%202007/index.htm

There were 7 Peace Corps volunteers in the area who traveled to witness the festival with me, we had a good time enjoying the drumming and dancing and pito (a sour local brew made out of sorghum).

After Kobine I had to travel for a meeting in Kumasi (the second biggest city in Ghana), I am the regional HIV/AIDS representative for the Upper West and we have 3 national meetings a year to discuss all the HIV work going on in Peace Corps, it is inspiring to hear what kinds of work people are doing across the country. A couple weeks later I traveled to the capital for my mid service medical examination and was declared officially healthy.

Now I am in Tamale, the biggest city in the North to join other volunteers for Thanksgiving. I am cooking dinner with 15 other volunteers and we will have some of the standards like mashed potatos and even a turkey!

I have to go for now but will try and write an update of what has been happening at my project soon. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!