I hope everyone is well in their corner of the globe. I wanted to write first of all and send a humongous thank you to everyone who donated to my project. I found out I raised $1655, which was almost $1000 over my goal!! I will be able to make sure that they get the drugs they need until they get their funding from Ghana AIDS commission in May. In May the grant they receive will provide money for care and support for my association of People Living with HIV/AIDS for one full year.

I decided to use the surplus I raised to help them with their income generation activities and become more self sustainable. The women in my group now have 6 looms and are making traditional cloth that gets made into smocks, a typical style of dress for men in the Northern part of the country. So far they have learned how to weave the cloth, but with the additional money I raised we are going to have a smock maker come from the largest city in the North for 3 months to teach the women how to make high quality hand sewn smocks. What this means in the end is that they will be able to make 4 times as much money off the smocks as they can from the cloth itself. So once again, thank you, this will help them out a lot. I want to get pictures of the women weaving the cloth for you all, but will have to wait until I have access to highspeed internet when I go to Accra in February.

So it is a very exciting time to be in Ghana. Ghana is the host for the 2008 African Cup of Nations, which is basically the African equivalent of the world cup. There are soccer games happening in 4 different cities in Ghana and you can hear the sound of people shouting at TVs at night when their team of choice scores a goal. Everyone’s favorite is of course the Black Stars, who are the national team for Ghana. The tournament began on the 20th of January and will continue until February 10th. The country is filled with soccer madness, it is a lot of fun and I enjoyed watching the first two game the Black Stars played in (Ghana beat Guinee 2 to 1 in the first match and beat Namibia 1 to 0 in the second).

Finally, I have some great news. I was accepted into my graduate program at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine! The degree is a Masters in Public Health, and the program is specifically for Public Health in Developing Countries. It is a 12 month Masters and includes one month of research. The program begins in the end of September so I will be moving to London in the fall. I have to go and get back to my town today but I hope all of you are doing well.