First look at our future home!

Jordan here: |’m sitting now in Tumu during my site visit. As Sarah said, we live about 40 km from Tumu. We will probably come here every so often to use the internet, charge our batteries, get some food, and visit friends. Although the roads into and out of our community are dirt roads, it will be a nice bike ride.

After my long journey in one day (wow that was a long day), I pulled into our site with my counterpart (the person who will be looking out for me while we stay here) so I saw our site in the dark. At first it wasn’t what I expected, but when I woke up in the morning in a better mood, I started exploring. We have a ton of space, 2 full rooms, and lots of space for a vegetable garden! The site needs a little upkeep ie mending the window netting, a leak in the roof, and some clean up since no one has lived there for 10 years. My counterpart, Asuma, says they will have everything ready for us when we come in September. We have a shower room inside our room, which is nice so we don’t have to walk outside to use it, an outhouse to ourselves and a fence around our whole area. There is a bore hole (basically a water spigot) about 50 yards from our house so we will have to haul water, but not far. The water will be clean enough to drink, especially after we filter it. I have been meeting sooooo many people in the village of Tarsor and Kulfuo (a neighboring village that shares the school Sarah will teach at). I greet the chief and the elders of both communities almost everyday. They are very wise and everyone has welcomed me to the community. I am still working hard on my language and when I try to speak it, many laugh, but mostly because they are delighted that a foli (word for white man) is speaking their native language. They all help me to learn new things to say, but I have a long way to go. Our village is small, about 1000 people maybe. There is no electricity, but many people own solar panels which are very effective. There is a community station where you can bring things to charge. I will see if they will allow us, and have enough juice to charge our laptop! I will meet with the youth of the community this evening. I think word has spread about Sarah and I liking to play futbol (soccer) and I think the youth are excited. On the 2^nd day in Tarsor, Asuma arranged a mass greeting for me in the community. I haven’t been that nervous in a long time! I didn’t want to say the wrong things, or not say anything at all, but eventually they all clapped for me and it was good. Another friend in the community I have met has taken me on a couple walking tours of the community so I can learn about the land. He is a fluent English speaker and has helped me learn a lot of language in a short time. It is difficult since the dialect we are learning at training is different than what we will speak in our community.

I think our home will turn out fantastic once we get a chance to settle in. I will leave much of my stuff at the site so I don’t have to travel with so much. I started a stock pile of sweets that my mom sent. We’ll have to ration them so they don’t disappear too fast! The land here is beautiful. It is the rainy season so everything is green and growing. The land reminds us a lot of the the ‘otas (south Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota) since it is flatter with a few gently rolling hills. I wish I could up load pictures but I don’t have the transfer cable with me. When Sarah and I get to Wa, the regional capital, we will each buy a bike so we can get around easily. It was a relief to find out that a really awesome current volunteer lives only 1 kilometer away. His name is Jonathan. He lives in Bugubelle and that is where we will buy most of our continuous basic necessities. Each week every town has a market day. We will buy most of our food there. We are excited to find out that when yams are harvested, fried yams are common. They resemble French fries and taste like them too! You dip them in a little pepper sauce and it is awesome! Also, the main tree grown for profit is mangos so when those are in season, we will be able to eat tons of them! Women here collect ground nuts (peanuts) and shea nuts from the ground and process them so we will have plenty of those as well. In brainstorming for projects, I wonder if ‘Fair Trade Shea Butter and Peanut Butter’ has any potential? Also, since there are no bright lights (only a few solar street lamps in the whole community) the stars on a clear night are incredible!!! Since we have two rooms that are in two different buildings, we will have plenty of space for visitors, although the road from Wa to Tarsor is rough J We are also glad to see that there will be places to hang the hammocks so hopefully Kels can bring them in an extra bag for us when she arrives in Tamale. Although my mom has already been spoiling us with care packages, we will definitely be able to use D batteries for the fans, food from home, and lots of pictures. I would also like to put up things about America like maps of our state and the nation so when I tell people about our area, they will know more about it. We’ll make a better list soon. Any packages will be welcomed, although they are expensive to send and take a while to get here. So if you want to send one, go in with a couple other people to share the cost!

Anyway, my time is about up, so I’ll wrap it up. I know this entry was random but I thought you wouldn’t mind J Hopefully I’ll load many pictures soon. We love and miss everyone, and keep posting comments!

Jordan and Sarah

Another exciting week in Ghana!

Quick update just to let everyone know we're feeling great and are okay!

I (Sarah - or, the better half of the marriage as Jim calls me ;) ) was back at the KSO last night, to travel back to the Eastern region today, and Jordan made it all the way to our site last night! He had a long trip, traveling from Kofuridua in the Eastern region, all the way to Tarsor (40km south of Tumu if you want to look it up on a map). We had one of those, wow, the world is a small place moments yesterday. I was traveling from Wa to Kumasi and leaving at noon. Jordan was traveling from Kumasi to Wa and leaving at noon. There is one road from Wa to Kumasi. When I was three hours in, our tro stopped for a lunch break for 10 minutes, and when we got back in, I called Jordan to see where they were, and two minutes into our conversation, I was staring out the window, and there's Jordan at another roadside stop, talking on the phone to me! It was so funny! We had to explain to everyone else in the tro that that was my husband along the road! We're hoping to meet up when I am at site in a week, since he'll be doing his off-site PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) activities with another volunteer in the Upper West who is located not too far from our site. We're the only couple that has to be split up for this long, but I think we'll be okay since they keep us so busy and we're with other volunteers the majority of the time.

Fun thought for the day that we were talking about the other week: all of the things Jordan and I have been talking about wanting for awhile, we will be able to get in Ghana. Our first house, our first garden, our first chickens (I'm still working on convincing Jordan on this... :) potentially our first pet, it's crazy!

Anywho - lots of people want to use the computer at the sub-office here, so I'm going to head out - I'll try to update soon! We're really enjoying ourselves here - thanks for the updates from home!

Love Sarah and Jordan

A month of traveling around Ghana!

Jordan and I are in for an eventful and exciting month - though not together :) Schedule is as follows:

I left this morning from our homestay in Kukurantumi to travel to the PC sub-office in Kumasi, where I get to stay for the day to relax, potentially make pizza for dinner(!!), hang out with current volunteers at the office, and head to Wa early tomorrow morning. The four upper west education volunteers will be in off-site language training for the next week, speaking our languages on the streets. Wa speaks Dagaare, so I will be speaking Sisaali with another volunteer with a separate Sisaali-speaking population in Wa. It's a long bus ride up there...The following week, I will be back near Kukurantumi to meet my counterpart (the individual that will be helping me at my site the next two years) and going through HIV/AIDS education training, as well as more language training. At the end of that week, I will be traveling up to my site with the help of my counterpart, meeting people in the community, dropping off stuff, learning my way around, etc. My fourth week will be spent at the location of another volunteer, helping them with their current HIV/AIDS project. Then back to Kuku on August 6th.

Jordan will be attending counterpart training near Kuku for the next week (we have separate counterparts), heading up to site (he'll be there before me to get the scoop and see our place - hopefully he'll be able to put pictures up then!!), going to an HIV/AIDS project education project site, and then spending two weeks traveling around to various SWEET locations around Ghana for technical training. HE will have some cool stories the next time he can post! One of the places he'll be is a place where you can feed a chicken to a crocodile and then sit on its back - how cool is that! He will arrive back in Kuku on August 13th after 5 weeks of travel...whew!

Then for both of us, it's lots of language training and other final tech training until we go to Accra the last week of August for our swearing-in the last day of August (I think the 31st?). When we map it out like that, the rest of PST will fly by!!!

I tended to blog about details (times it takes to get places, things I ate, prices of things, etc) when Katie and I were in Europe, so I'm going to *try* not to do that here. As a start to that, I wanted to post about the crazy overwhelming feeling I get whenever I have to remind myself that I'm in AFRICA. I get this daily when I look up from staring at my feet when I'm walking to make sure I'm not going to step in poop (from various kinds of animals, as well as humans, for that matter), mud, puddles, etc etc, to be rewarded with a view of palm trees, the pink sky with lush rolling hills in the background shrouded in mist, birds hanging low over the trees, and as Jordan said, the call of ahhhbroni from far off....I'm in AFRICA! Sometimes that "I'm in Africa" thought comes with sadness, knowing that I won't see the US and all of the people we love for two years, and I have a low point. But literally within the next minute, I'll think, "I'm in Africa", and be filled with a sense of wonder that this Peace Corps dream (from 7th grade, good grief) is finally here! And even though there will be times (many of them) that I'll want to pack up my bags and head home, I still know that this really is living a dream of mine and Jordan's, and there will be time for everything else that we dream about to happen back in the US...

Right now, I'm looking forward to being able to actually see where it is we are going to be living, how bad the roads ACTUALLY are (because we've heard they are terrible in the north, which makes me nervous, because we'll want to go to bigger places on the weekend for internet, seeing other PCVs, and stocking up on food), and seeing other places in Ghana! In Kuku, it's VERY green, lots of plants, trees everywhere. Where we will be living in the Upper West, it's...not. We've heard there are more trees where we will be living, but it's the desert. Dry heat. Nice for drying clothes, not nice for Harmattan (the dry desert wind that blows from the Sahara from December to March). Use Google images of the Upper West to get an idea :)

Bye for now - we are going to walk and find some lunch and hopefully buy ingredients not only for pizza for dinner, but also to make banana bread for later on!!! Miss you all - thanks for the posts - they make us feel connected to you still! We'll try to post pictures soon! We will also let you know of care package items that would be much appreciated for those that have offered. It sounds like D batteries would be AWESOME, since we don't have any, and will be necessary for our fans that Jordan's mom sent (THANK YOU SUE!!!) - which will be a life-saver during the hot season when we don't have electricity (but will hopefully be sleeping outside in hammocks to stay cool...and BE cool, ha :)

LOTS OF LOVE from GHANA!!!
Sarah and Jordan

Love Sarah

Ahhhhhbrony!!!

Hey folks!

Sorry for the lapse in blogging – internet is not as accessible as we originally thought, and PC has been keeping us busy! The last two weeks were very full, which is good, since we don’t have much time to sit around and feel homesick and miss all of you J

What has Sarah been up to? I arrived at our homestay family’s house two and a half weeks ago, and was very excited to have Jordan show up a week later! The place we are in is nicer than some other volunteer’s, and not as nice as some others, so we are probably middle – we share the room with a dead cockroach, termites (now hopefully dead too after we sprayed some raid) lizards (we can hear them running around above our heads), and a mouse (which Jordan just heard the other night in one of the wooden cupboards we don’t use). Fun roommates! Thankfully we don’t spend too much time in our room, and when we are sleeping we are enclosed in our mosquito net J We share our outside space with our homestay family: Host mom Benedicta, Maude (Benedicta’s cousin), and Nana, Godfrey and Francis (Benedicta’s younger brothers). They are a fun bunch to be around, all between the ages of 17 and 32, so we all get along pretty well, and they are determined to always have us VERY full after meals (one can only eat so much rice, banku and fu-fu at any one meal before you are “maame pa” (Twi for very full – we say this during and after every meal we have here J).

I started teacher training last Monday, and taught in a local Municipal Authority JHS (which is government run) the last two weeks – the equivalent of 7^th and 8^th grade math and science. It has given me a whole new appreciation for the hard job teachers have, and the career my dad has had teaching junior high math – it is tough to get students excited about decimal fractions! Especially when their knowledge level where they should be is a grade level behind, and you find out in the middle of a class that the students don’t have a good grasp of doing long division! This whole journey will be a learning experience in patience and expanding my view of how to convey information. We’ve also started language training, as we were assigned our site!

Drum roll please….Jordan and I were assigned to the Upper West Region of Ghana, to a small village called Torsor (we’ve also seen it spelled Torso or Tarso) which is approximately 60km south of the border of Burkina Faso – whoa! Neither of us wanted to be sent that far away, as it takes at least a day’s trip to get anywhere of significance (except to a hospital, don’t worry, there is one only a 40minute taxi ride away, as our nearest larger city is Tumu which should show up on a map of Ghana). We also found out that we don’t have electricity, which after being here, we kinda expected we would, so it was kind of a let-down to realize we wouldn’t have it, especially after realizing the importance of a fan to get any kind of good sleep here in this hot weather! But after considering the fact that there were very few other locations where we could have been placed (maybe one), and considering the fact that we at least have each other and are located closest to the Tamale sub-office and will get to see Kelsey more frequently when she moves to Tamale in December, we were excited about our placement. The Upper West also place a high value on education, so hopefully that means I have students that are excited about learning! We also heard there are many different NGOs that are located in Tumu, and are interested in working with different organizations in the next few years as well.

As long as I stay busy, I don’t think too much about home, but I can’t tell you all (everyone that’s reading this) how much this has already made me appreciate you and miss you and love you more than I could imagine. It’s hard to think of not seeing your faces for so long, so I will make do for now by looking at your picture daily in my photo album – or just send us an e-mail with pictures of all the fun things you are doing back home to make us feel connected J LOVE SARAH

Jordan here: Much of the important stuff has already been said by Sarah, so of course that makes my entry easier. But how about a little about my experience. Since Sarah is in the education sector and I am in the group of ‘everyone else’, cleverly nicknamed ‘omnibus’ which means all together or something like that. This includes the health and water sanitation group aka Wat/San, and natural resource management group previously known as the environment sector. Education and omnibus are seldom together in training, even though Sarah and I have the same home stay family. The rest of my NRM group lives in a town called Maase, and Sarah and I live in Kukurantumi. PC did this so the wives don’t have to travel everyday to get to training. While Sarah has been busy teaching and a couple hours of language training, I have been studying language for 6 hours/day and then traveling to a different town to a new subject each day. Our language up in the Tarsor is called Sisaali, which is apparently only spoken by 30000 people world wide; I guess make that 30003. Other than Sarah and I, one other person is learning this language. He is also in education and since we do language training at different times, I get my language teacher all to myself for 6 hours! The subject I have been learning in NRM training include ecological zones of Ghana, environmental clubs, tree taxonomy, soil types of Ghana, clay stoves, and agroforestry 101. In a week I will leave to travel the country training in several sites for up to 5 weeks! On one of the days I was off-site in training at the Bunso arboretum (awesome!! Pretty much the rainforest) the group voted to stop at a legendary rest stop and get pizza! Yes, real pizza! I was nervous telling Sarah since she couldn’t come and I knew she’d be jealous. Today we are visiting a nearby larger town called Kofuridua, checking out some shops and markets, and then heading to another town to hang with much of the of the other Volunteers in Anyinasin for a little 4^th of July celebration! We’ll play a little futbol (soccer) make some American food, and maybe have a Castle (our favorite Ghanaian beer). Then we’ll come back and I have much studying to do to prepare for language class on Monday.

Something I forgot to mention: ahbrony. This is a word well-known by Ghanaians. I swear it must be the first word the utter as a child. It roughly translates as ‘foreigner’. We’ve been made sure to know there is no negative connotation involved because whenever there is a sighting of a white person, most time, especially from kids, we hear ‘ahbrony!!!’. Some volunteers let it bug them, but as most of you know, I love attention and I feel like a rock star when everyone notices you and wants to get your attention J I literally hear it said to me 40-50 times per day. I will be walking across a field without a house for 200 yards and hear a faint, yet exhuberant, ‘ahhhhhbrony’, letting me know I’ve been spotted. We’ve been told by locals to go ahead and respond with ‘ohbibany’ which roughly translates to ‘black person’ and they think its hilarious. I usually respond with a wave and a smile and go about my day knowing that all eyes are on me and the 68 other white people in town.

Be sure to check out some of the photos. Most of our homestay activities and family. Please make comments and let us know you’re following us. Like Sarah said, we miss everyone at home and want to send our best wishes to everyone reading this. We are incredibly grateful to have each other here. Happy 4^th of July to everyone!