More pictures

We make chili...that's right, real chili with hamburger and cheese

Sarah likes baby animals, and sometimes can't keep herself from picking them up

All good things have their cost...electricity means they have to cut down treasured trees.

I get to watch Planet Earth with some friends. BBC videos blow their minds!

Students at the school get their CSM (cerebral spinal meningitis)

Eggplant paninis

Vegetable spring rolls

Some of tarsor's groups rabbits

What a cutie

We try to make a clay pot into a beehive.

This was amazing. We made salmon burgers complete with onion rings, fresh lettuce, tomatoes, eggplant etc

Ghanaian school cafeteria ladies

Ghanaian assembly place

Ghanaian school bell

Ghanaian school playground

Ghanaian school bathrooms

We sit and pluck groundnuts (peanuts) from their roots brought from the farm to their houses

This lady has to be 80 years old and plucks groundnuts sitting on the ground for about 8 hours a day

I didn't believe them when they said baboons were in the bush, but I guess I was wrong. This one is a pet now, apparently abandoned by its mother.

A good person to 'look up to' :)

September/October 2012 pictures

Yams, kinda like potatoes grow in mounds here like this!

Mimuni, a friend of mine at his corn farm

This is actually what peanuts grow like

We talk with an agriculture outreach agent about proper spacing of your crops and the importance of knowing the size of your fields

Jordan and the school group bait the bars for a bee hive with bees wax

Then we make it smell sweet by rubbing lemongrass all around it to attract the bees

The top bars are replaced and we're finished baiting

Issah and I transport the grafted mangoes to the general garden project

Jordan gives a small talk about nutrition of mothers and their children.

Now the beehive is ready and in place out in the bush

The three circles represent who is central to the cooking of nutritious foods in the community. It is obviously the mother in our community. This was arranged by RADFORD, a local NGO.

Sarah prepares to janga dance

She enters and starts circling...

showing the characteristic moves

here she comes! —

and the butt tapout! —

More pics!

before grinding mills could grind corn and other things, the women would grind using stones. this ceremony reenacted the songs they would sing all together

Our latest lizard friend...So cool

We make a green pepper nursery at the general garden

We finally get some other gardeners to come do some really heavy work.

After showing these guys the picture, this was the direct quote. Issah (holding the pot): "me looking like a small boy and Saidu (without the shirt) like a macho man! Kie!"

Tomato Seeds in bulk

Funny Quotes and the Funny Stories that Inspire them

Hey all!  Sarah here - instead of a boring update (because that's usually what my blogs are) I thought I'd give you some quotes that occur in our daily life, and a small update on the story that inspired it, to give you a glimpse into some of our daily pleasures here in Tarsor :)  Enjoy!

"Kai!  Wonderful!  God has made life different, different!" - Issah (Our good friend and neighbor that Jordan works with on multiple projects in the village)

Jordan has been watching episodes of Planet Earth at night with Issah, and sometimes with some other friends, and they LOVE it!  And, we love watching it with them, it makes us appreciate the beauty and wonder of our great earth even more, because their reactions remind us how wonderful it is!  It's a great chance to let them see all the other places earth has, since their world can seem so small as many people in our village don't even get to leave the district/region!  

"You're the cheatingest cheater I've ever seen cheat, you cheatface!" - Jordan

Jordan and I play a couple hands of gin rummy (and think of Grandma Panzer and Grandma Butcher while doing so!) most nights at dinner, and right now, he is losing VERY badly to yours truly...and NOT because I cheat!  Although, that one time he did see a mistake in my addition of points...hmm...must have been tired that day from all the math at school... :)

"If the latrine smells like rotting animal, it's because a mouse crawled into one of the toilet paper tubes inside the plastic bag, couldn't get out, and died.  I removed it, but it still smells...just a word of warning..." - Jordan

Upon arriving home after evacuation, etc, we came back to a VERY messy house!  Dust and spiderwebs everywhere, moldy pillows (yuck!) smelly clothes, and a few dead mice!  Awesome that they died and are not eating into our food stuff, but not awesome that they died because of Jordan's poison that dehydrates them so that we don't necessarily know WHERE they died....  We found a few right away in the shower (I screamed out of surprise and Jordan made fun of me for being afraid of mice, let alone DEAD mice... :), another a few weeks later on the shelf where our pots are (it was small, the place is shaded, and they blend in perfectly to the color of the wood!), and another just a few weeks ago in the toilet paper tube when we went to grab a new roll for the bathroom.  So now, when you spin the roll to get a few squares, you're not greeted with the smell of fresh flowers like some of the fancy plastic rollers you can by stateside - you're greated with the smell of rotting mouse :)

"Jordan, you know what would be a great way to work on the second goal of Peace Corps tonight?" - Sarah

The second goal of Peace Corps is to teach Ghanaians about American culture.  Jordan and I do this daily in all forms!  This can come from showing my students American magazines, to listening to American music at the garden.  But one of our favorites is having Jordan do things here that are normally things only women do, like washing clothes, fetching water (and carrying it on a pan in his head to boot!), helping to cook dinner....and (where this quote stemmed from) washing the dishes :)  It was more a joke, since we switch off on nights to do the dishes, but Jordan's male friends from the garden (all male, and all husbands) were coming over to watch Planet Earth, so I thought, hey, what a great way for them to see some American culture in action! :)

"Sarah, don't move, turn around very slowly..." - Jordan

Lizards are like squirrels here, but never cease to be exciting!  Usually they're just small and fun to watch run around really fast or sunbathe on the walls.  Sometimes, though, we see a bigger one

"Dude, I just got drooled on, I mean literally, saliva just came out of a kids leg and landed on my leg...gross..." - Jordan

Jordan and I have kids over to "paint" (color in coloring books) around once a week, and in order to get a coloring page, they first have to go learn about numbers and letters with Jordan before getting one.  Lots of the little kids go over by Jordan first, even though they are too small to be learning it, and just lean over his leg.  One of them happened to drool a bunch, oh well, all in the life :)  Sometimes it's gross!  We make sure to wash our hands thoroughly after having the kids over :)

"But let's not look at the scientifics of it, both are just telling us to be good people, and how we should act." - Issah
"We don't mess with the Jesus!  We don't play with the Jesus!" - Simpatico (another one of the farmers that works at the garden that Jordan interacts with daily)

We've been having some good conversations about differences and similarities between the Islam and Christian religions, and it's been really good.  The Muslims we live with in the village are so open about their religions, and very relaxed - not the extremists we see on the news all the time!  We've been learning a lot, and it's been a good chance to just learn about our different cultures in an open and non-judgemental environment.

(Say this one in the voice of Meril, the chef with the tv show) "First you take some wata', and cook it til it's boiling, then put in the dehydrated meat, stir it a little, and BAM! You got ground beef." - Jordan

Many people from home have sent and are sending some of the things we miss most from home, and recently, we got to try out the dehydrated ground beef we got from Jordan's mom, and it was a HIT!  Spot on!  You literally just mix a pack of this stuff with a cup of boiling water, stir it, wait a little bit, and you have ground beef!  We made chili with it, also using a can of sweet corn from our Danish friends that they gave us before leaving (thanks Kirsten and Kenth!) and it was fantastic!  

"Well, everything you want in life has it's costs..." - Jordan

This is the biggest news we have to report on from the village: drum roll please....Tarsor is getting electricity!...most likely...GMT (Ghana Maybe Time) :)  Workers moved into the village the last week of September, and every day they put up more poles!  We have been told that within 2-3 months, we will be connected!  Whether or not every home can then pay for hooking up said electricity to their homes, installing lights and outlets, and then buying appliances that use electricity is another story.  For us, we're torn: we enjoy living without electricity, since we are some of the few volunteers that are left in Ghana without it.  But at the same time, who are we to stay that our village shouldn't have that modern convenience?  Since it's coming (hopefully) so close to the end of our service though, we don't know if we'll even pay to get wired.  We'll get the meter installed and electricity connected (since that's free) so that the next volunteer won't be mad at us :), but may not choose to pay to get lights and such, since we wouldn't be able to reap the benefits for very long, for how much it would probably cost us.  Plus, it will be way more fun to live by headlamp at night for the time that we have it, right? :)  (I know most of you are rolling your eyes, but we actually do enjoy it!  It's just like camping!)   We will keep you posted as they progress!!!

Wow...it's already the end of September!!!

Hi again!  Jordan and I made it back to site safely, after a nice comfy ride in a vehicle belonging to an NGO of our friends from Denmark (that left the end of August to go back home).  That made the two day trek back to site a lot easier!  Upon returning home, we were greeted with a few surprises: a few dead mice in the shower...and moldy pillows!  Apparently having everything shut up for 6 weeks during the middle of the wet season keeps everything VERY moist!  So we spent a full day cleaning everything we could, and it felt like a nice home again when we were done!

School started back up for me (Sarah), with the fun that accompanies a new school year, but also some of the normal frustrations: the first week is spent weeding, the second week was taken up by entrance exams to determine what grade levels the kids will be placed.  The idea behind this is to see who is dedicated and going to study for the exams, regardless of how well you did on the end-of-term exams from the previous school year.  The logic actually somewhat works here, because the kids that want to do well will sit down and study, and the ones that don't care, well, won't.  The third week of school we got going with classes.  My first class period, I had the students make a goal chain to hang in the classroom.  You know those chains of red and green strips of construction paper you make at Christmas and hang in a chain?  We did that, but each student got a strip of paper, wrote their name on one side, then wrote one goal they had for the school year on the other.  Then we linked them together, and hung our chain in the classroom.  I was trying to show that we link our goals together because we have to help each other out to achieve them, and also we hung the chain where we were always looking at it in the classroom so they would always have a reminder to work hard for their goal....that's my thought anyway, we'll see how it work!  They at least like having things hanging to beautify the classroom, so that's good!

Jordan's garden and tree nursery was a JUNGLE when we returned.  He's spend the majority of the last few weeks working with Issah and a few other men from the garden area to clear the grasses, free the trees (many of which survived and grew very big!) from the creeping vines connecting them all together, and fix the shaded area that is situated above the tree nursery.  He's been working very hard!  We both agreed that having to be gone for that amount of time gave us a good indication as to how sustainable our project was - it's something we will work harder on in the future!  We also checked up on our rabbit rearing project in Kulfuo, and there are baby rabbits!  The group seems to be working well together, and they rabbits are doing great!  Now we just have to get the Tarsor group going, and find some rabbits to stock that hutch!  Then, pretty soon we'll be eating rabbit stew! :)

I came down to Accra this week to attend a meeting to improve the PC Ghana Education Project Plan.  It was a long trip for a one day meeting, but worth it to attend, and I got to get some other essential things done at the same time, so all in all, a great trip!  And fun to see our friends The Murphy's down in Accra again (and live in little America for a few days :)  Sue, Jordan's mom, also booked our flights home for December!  We're working out the days we will be where, so let us know if you'll be around between December 5th and January 4th...we'd love to see you!!! 

We'll post some pictures the next time we get to internet.  Thanks always for the continuous support, we think of everyone back home often!  Stay classy :)
Sarah and Jordan

The Panzers trip, and, WE'RE GOING HOME TO OUR VILLAGE!

Sorry its been so long since we’ve updated this.  A lot has happened and its been a long time away from our normal Peace Corps lifestyle.  We’ve been all around this country in the past month or so.  We’ll start from the last post: 

We learned that there wasn’t going to be a chance to take Kevin, Phyllis, and Jake up to see our site.  This saddened us immensely.  So many people in the village were preparing for them to arrive and were asking about when we were coming back.  Sadly, for a long time we had to tell them we didn’t know. 

     In the meantime, the Panzers arrived and Sarah went to go pick them up at the airport since there wasn’t room for Kels and I.  We were all so happy to see family again.  For a few days we “eased” them into Ghana life by staying at Hotel del Murphy and we took them around Accra a bit.  We then met up with the car that we would be using for the next 10 days.  We had a driver and a guide, and we were only expecting one person.  Well it was early in the trip and we were trying to be flexible…no big deal.  We headed off to Volta Region.   The first night we stayed at this really awesome place called Roots Yard run by the nicest couple and their 2 sons.  The place was very low-key and chill.  They allowed us to bring food to eat if we chose, as long as it was vegan.  All the food on their menu was vegan and delicious, so I think we ate there both nights we stayed there.  The first day we went on a hike near the lodge and tried to get high enough above the trees to overlook Lake Volta.  Unfortunately, we never got there.  Sarah and Phyllis headed back a little earlier and Charles (our Ghanaian guide), Kev, Jake, Kels, and I continued on.  Regardless, it was beautiful to be in the mountains and jungle at the same time.  Then on the way down we walked through the small village and Charles asked if the women sitting there had seen Sarah and Phyllis.  They said no one had come through there.  Uh oh.  So Charles went back to look on the trail and with one cell phone and Kels, Jake and I walked to the road to see if they had just slipped by.  Luckily, they had just taken one wrong turn and weren’t too lost. 

   The next day we drove to the Lake Volta shore and paid for a man to take us out to an island called Doty Island.  We thought “we’re all decent paddlers, we shouldn’t need that motor for the canoe.”  Good thing we brought it, cuz with the weight in the canoe, the weight of the canoe itself, the small size of the 4 paddles we had for 9 people, and the large waves we were going against, make it a near impossibility for us to make it out to this island in one day.  Once we got out there, we walked around this large island and climbed up a hill to give some great views of the lake around us.  Then we buzzed back to the shore and spent the rest of the night relaxing at Roots Yard.  The next day we headed out with our new friends Francesco from Rome, and his girlfriend Ricky, from Denmark.  They ended up tagging along with us for the next couple days as well.  We arrived at Mountain Paradise Lodge and found some great, high-elevation views out our front door of the mountains.  Our first full day, we found a nice loop hike that hooked up right at the hotel.  The hike was a lot of fun with a mid-hike waterfall that was swimmable.  The water was perfect and it was a great cool down before finishing the hike at the back door of our hotel.  This was also the first chance the Panzers had to try yam fufu with groundnut soup.  Admittedly it wasn’t as good as Fulera’s from our village, but it was still quite tasty.  Then our last day in Volta, we travelled to see Wli Falls (the tallest waterfall in West Africa) and to climb Mount Afadzato (the tallest mountain from base to peak in West Africa).  First was the mountain hike.  The guides said it was a 45 minute hike.  We found out the reason a big mountain hike only took 45 minutes was because it pretty much went straight up, instead of slowly going up the mountain side.  It was a little slick with rain from the morning, and that made some of the sections pretty tough.  Several times, we had to use natural hand-holds and trees or vines to pull ourselves up.  Once at the top we look around and a nearby peak was obviously higher than us.  Apparently the distinction was that those peaks, if you measure them from their base to peak, were not as tall as our mountain.  It was quite impressive regardless.  Next we went on to Wli Falls.  After a much less strenuous hike crossing several streams, we reached this very impressive, giant waterfall.  We were also allowed to swim in this fall, so of course we seized the opportunity.  The closer we got to the actual base of the falls, the more the water drop falling from the sky felt like sleet and actually would cause pain when they hit you.  The safest place was actually under water.  Down there it was peaceful and quiet, but above was loud waterfalls several hundred feet about our heads.  We took some great pictures.

     After there we headed out to stay one night in Kumasi.  Then on to Mole National Park!  After the rough ride in, we settled in and in the morning we went on the walking tour around the park.  Usually the big climax is seeing elephants, and we almost didn’t see them at all.  Until the last 25 minutes, when we saw a group of about 7 big males.  It was great!  Then the minute our time was up, we had to leave them.  Later in the afternoon, as we were taking naps, a commotion stirred us all awake.  Apparently a big male baboon had entered a girl’s bunk room and grabbed some food!  We look out the windows, and a whole troop of them is encircling the whole place!  They were wild to watch, and they entertained us for over an hour!  We also saw many deer species, warthogs, and another species of monkey.  It was great! 

    Then we made our way back down to Accra before heading to Cape Coast to see some other Volunteers.  We toured the Cape Coast Castle and learned about the history of the slave trade in Ghana and Africa.  One of those nights we got a surprise showing of an incredibly talented young drum and dance group that put on a show at a restaurant called the Oasis.  It was simply amazing!  Then we headed to the Green Turtle Lodge on the ocean.  We stayed there for 4 nights and hiked over to our friend’s place in the southernmost point in West Africa, Cape 3 Points.  Then we caught a ride back part way and went searching for lobster.  We were unsuccessful, but the food was still really good.  We spent a portion of every day playing in the ocean waves and doing some body surfing.  Won’t get to do that again!  And then we were heading back to Accra.  All but me got out of the bus in another Volunteer’s site, Jim, to witness his village’s festival.  After some eventful and uneventful days there, they met me again in Accra for the last day before they flew out.  The Panzers arrived safely home, hopefully with some new culture under their belts.

       With only a few days left of the Panzer’s travels, we found out we were allowed to return to site.  Sarah and I needed to stay to do some mid-service medical appointments.  Run a few tests, go to the dentist (I had a cavity, darn!) and now we on our way back to our excited village!  It’s been some crazy weeks for us, but at the same time, we were missing our responsibilities at our home here in Ghana.  After talking to my counterpart, Osman, tonight, hearing the excitement in his voice and talking to his daughter (my pretend 2^nd wife) on the phone, reminds me we have something very special awaiting our return.