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