Alright well its been awhile and a lot has happened so lets take this opportunity to get a little caught up.  Just because my mind is a little backwards ill start off by saying that today November 8th 2011 is the first day I have traveled by myself in Ghana. I successfully made it to the PEPFAR site in pretty good time.  I had to leave Nkurakan by trotro to Koforidua and get a trotro to Nkawkaw from there I was instructed to take a car up the mountain to Nkwatia. Instead I got on a trotro which is cheaper and it turned out ok but I'm lucky that they understood where I wanted to go because I surely didnt!  I told them I needed to get off by the police station and they did just that. There were actually two Ghanaian guys walking the same place and so I chatted with them a little and they were going to try to get admission for the younger one. As I walked into the school area I understood why they would want to come to school here. Its pretty big and from what I can tell a fairly good school. The peace corps volunteer I am visiting is a teacher here, I think math and science. Anyways when I left my site this morning I wasent sure what today was going to be like but so far so good!
Counterpart workshop
I left home stay with all of my belongings piled in one of the Peace Corps Land Rover. Luckily Masse was picked up first and therefore our stuff got to be inside the vehicle, Agynasin people had to put all there stuff on top of the car and tie it down. Luckily everybodies stuff made it to Kumasi well before we did!  The pick up time was supposed to be around 12 but due to delays because the AC wasent working we didnt actually leave until around 2 which turned out ok for the local economy because as americans we all just went and bought a few snacks and sat around for 2 hours. Half the bus ride was without AC so the windows were open and hair was fling everywhere. Another side effect of that is the sun was hot on our faces specifically my forearms and collar bone which turned out to be burnt that evening. We got to stop at Kumasi sub office for a little bit, enough to use the bathroom and take a quick peak around and oh man is it sweet! Lots of books, seating areas and a TV to watch movies oh and did I mention a real kitchen with an oven! I think i might need to run up there a couple times to bake some cookies! We arrived at the hotel we would be staying at for the next four days and besides having everybody's things in our room the place was amazing! AC in the rooms a swimming pool, hot water, and a shower spicket. I did have a few complaints which include the room smelling very strong of a "room refresher ball" which was put in our sink and bathtub, it reaked!  I caught on a few days into it and threw them in the trash can.
The counterpart workshop was good. I say that with a bit of a sigh because it was so long and I dont really think I got much out of it other than meeting with my counterpart. Through the day we had sessions on topics that we have already covered but had to go over again because some of the counterparts are new to Peace Corps and everybody needs to be on the same page. It wasent all horrible because we participated in energizers and breaks for snacks but I didn't know you could get so tired from not doing anything! The event was sponsored by PEPFAR which in the Presidents Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief started by President Bush. The HIV/AIDS sessions were interested at first but dragged on. The topics we covered on domestic violence and household societal norms was interesting and brought out many cultural differences, good and bad. Ghanaians do respect women to a point but if a husband and a wife are not getting along its the woman that leaves or is forced out of the house. They try to work though many problems but most of the time the issues are just forgotten and people just have to get over their problems. I haven't had to experience this first hand which is good but that also means I dont know much about it other than what the counterparts brought up at this conference.  In the evenings when we should have been practicing our languages most of us where either grabing a drink poolside or on the wifi that was in the hotel.  Dosent sound too bad right! But all good things do come to an end and by the fourth day I think we were all ready to get out of there.
SITE VISITS!
About half of our group had to get up and go very early in the morning in order to make it to their sites by night fall. The rest of us got up and had breakfast then made it to the road side to catch a cab.  My counterpart and I were the last ones to be standing there and when some PC cars drove by I think they felt sorry for us and picked us up to give us a ride to the trotro station. It was nice of them if they knew where they were going but that wasent really the case. We stopped at a fill station and got a car to take us which was much easier. Transport was pretty easy and everybody tells you where to go even if you dont know where you want to be going so I was happy my counterpart was there to help me go in the right direction.  We made it to Nkurakan by early afternoon and went to the office to met everybody. Joshua who runs Krobodan was out so we waited around for a bit and I got to chat with Debora who is a lady that helps around the office but she wasent feeling very good that afternoon so we just talked a bit. After meeting Joshua and Fred we went to the part of Krobodan that I will be working with just a little which is the beads company. I met some of the ladies who were making the bracelets and stringing the beads but also my site mother who is in charge of quality control. After stopping my Joshuas house and meeting his dog that he actually adopted after one of the volunteers left. I loved seeing that they are taking care of them after the volunteer leaves because I really want to get a dog but I think I wont be able to take it when I leave especially if I want to travel a bit before I land back in the USA. 
So I ended the day at my site. my place. my home for the next two years. that is if everything goes according to plan. I will have 2 rooms to myself and share the bathroom and living/tv area with Rachael my site mom and some of her grandchildren/niece. Its really hard to tell peoples actual relations because everybody is sister or brother. The older one I think might be going to school when i get back but im not sure she is 20 years old and needs to finish up her secondary school. Anyways my bed room is fairly large and I didnt get a close look into the second room because they are still finishing it up and they were currently drying their corn in there. I think I will use that room as a kitchen and maybe a workspace but we will see. I really want to do most of my own cooking. One because I dont want to bother my mom and two because I think I can make food that I will actually like to eat. They have lots of veggies but they dont eat them that often. It was a odd situation, being at site, because I felt like I wanted to just make the place my own and get settled but I had to leave after just 3 days. 
The first full day at site I met with Emmanuel (my counterpart) and we were supposed to go out to some of the communities that the program works with. These were new communities and one of the easy first things that they are taught (if they ask or are interested) is vaccinating their chickens from New Castle Disease. The vaccination actually goes into the eye of the bird. It was great to get a little sneak peak into some of the training that they provide. Oh before we headed out we made a stop at the new office building they are putting up. They are currently in a rented house and what their own place for training farmers and to have all their chickens in one basket so to speak. It will be a lot easier to have farmers come to the training spot to see what they are interested in other than having the field officers go out to the communities all the time. I got back home pretty late and had a bite to eat before joining my mom at the kiln. She was busy firing beads that she had made earlier that day, its quite a process and i will post some pictures in the future.
The second day was Sunday. I had decided I was going to try to go to church with my sister. She attends the Presbyterian church and oh man three hours later and two corns in my purse I dont think I will be going back. I enjoyed being welcomed and meeting people but it was very overwhelming and I couldn't understand anything! I think I might go once to my moms church in her village out of respect but already I am not a very religious person and theres not really a middle ground when it comes to religion here. During the service I actually really missed my church back home. I thought it would make me feel more comforted by going to church but really it made me feel more like a outsider. Lesson learned and new experience checked off the list. We made it home by 1 ish and started helping make the beads. They start by putting in a stem and cutting it with a razor to make the hole, then they dip the plates in lye, and fill with ground up glass with some pigments added. The glass comes from bottles from around the community. The plates are then fired for a while depending on what size and shape. Then its my turn to help I pick them out of the plates and put them on the wire. There are close to 500 beads on one wire i think. They then sell the beads to Krobodan for about 60 peswoas (cents) then are paid again for the time they make the bracelets or beads for sale. It seems like a little and it is but it helps make the ends meet.
Monday the third day at site I met with Fred Joshua and Emmanuel to get a better idea on what I will be doing as part of my job. Oh man I was a little sorry I even asked! There is a lot to do!  Everything from updating the program paperwork to record keeping of the communities to helping with training of the farmers with bee keeping, rabbits, goats, chickens, also introducing some agroforestry to the crop farmers to decrease the amount they are paying for the land and diversifying what they are growing. There is  a lot and it all depends on what the farmers want. I think that was the biggest thing Krobodan already has a great foundation of communication with farmers and telling what is available and what the farmers want in-order to increase profit and diversify their income. It was a bit over my head because I dont know how to do those things yet but I think I will be able to down the road. I am excited to learn all these new things and just need to keep in mind to take one day at a time and to try not to do to many things at one time.
One thing I am struggling with is the three month integration period. I think I will shoot for not getting too busy in the first month and focus on getting situated in my new place as well as make some connections with people in town but i think three months is a bit long. I know peace corps dosent think so but having a NGO already in the communities and having those lines already open makes getting started a lot easier. Also it will be a transition period for Krobodan as well as they start to move. They want to be moved in by Febuary when some of the foundation leaders from Denmark come to visit. Having a new place makes changes a little easier but also forces us to notice flaws in their systems and ways to improve them, which hopefully I will take part in.
FREE MEDICAL CHECK UP!
I traveled from my site to the PEPFAR field training by myself, most trainees traveled in a group to visit their PCVs but since im the only one in the Eastern region I get to travel by myself, i figure its just a head start.  Anyways my PEPFAR event was a free HIV testing day. We had arranged for nurses to come to a community and provide HIV testing. It takes quite a bit of organization to get the nurses, chairs, tables, community space, and the ok from the town chief. The chief wants to get paid for everything when really its not work for him. The nurses also want to get a bit extra for doing the job they are already paid for but as a volunteer we don't really have extra money to accommodate those requests. The way a PEPFAR event works is that we write for a grant and budget everything but the community is expected to contribute 30%, understandable right because they are the ones receiving the service but its hard because they want money from you to put on the event! I was glad I didnt have to do much of the coordinating ... or any of it really! My contribution was making fliers that we actually had to print twice because not many people will come if you just say free HIV testing because of the stigma related to the virus but if you say free medical check up with blood pressure weight and HIV testing you will get many more people. So thats what we did on top of an educational HIV flier we made medical check up fliers and went around to most the people in the community handing them out and talking to them about coming to find out what their status is. With my little bit of Twi language I had to talk to old and young community members, most of the time they understood but I got a few laughs at my attempt to communication. The area we did the event at is very educated and has two colleges near by so English is pretty well understood.  I was so tired at the end of the day but I think we tested around 100-125 people Im not sure the actual statistics but it was a success!
Adventure to Techiman
The day after the event I traveled to Techiman to start our technical training. Once again traveling by myself is quite an experience. Everybody is so nice and friendly but the trotro that I took to get to kumasi stopped before the station and everybody was told to get off because the traffic was so bad that we could walk faster. So I lugged my backpack out of the trotro and started walking, I didn't actually know where I was going so I just fallowed the sea of people. I finally made it to a station.
Ok wait i need to explain what a station is. When I think of a station with my American brain its a very organized place with signs and seating areas for people waiting. In Ghana its a market like area with massive amount of trotro in lines. If you dont frequent the station very much you have not way of telling where certain trotro are located that are going north or south or to specific cities. So you walk around just asking everybody saying "mee ku Techiman" and just looking lost they tell you or point you in the right direction. This is how most large stations work.
So thats what I did wondered around a very poorly organized parking lot with vendors trying to find the right trotro. The trotro I got on is probably the nicest trotro I have seen in Ghana so far. It had actually comfy seats and enough space for everybody so I guess it was worth the hassle trying to find it! I made it very easily to Techiman considering they actually took us to the station. I took a drop taxi to the hotel we are staying at and to my amazement I was the first one to arrive. Its much easier to travel my yourself time wise but I think it would be better to have a buddy along with you. Some of the groups had up tp 9 people going the same places so traveling took longer just to accommodate everybody.
Technical Training
The first day of technical training we debriefed a lot about our site visits and a little about PEPFAR although that was mostly just us catching up with everybody after not seeing anybody for about a week.  Most people had great experiences but a few wernt as smooth which is to be expected, remember we are in Ghana and things rarely work out as planned.  After debriefing and a little session on the Food Security Program that most of us are involved in just because of the nature of NRM and our farming counterparts we got to learn how to process Moringa. We learned how to make soap, creams, and nutritional powders. All of them are very easy and take little money to start. However I dont think I will be doing this as a side project unless the ladies at the beads company what to start doing it, but who knows I can ask if its something they want to start and if so I now know how too!  Its a pretty easy process and you can change it to make a few different kinds of soap. The draw to it is that moringa is supposed to help with hair growth and help cure skin aliments like bug bites and rashes. If you grind up the dried leaves you can add it to food as a supplement for many vitamins for children and pregnant women.  I thought the whole process was very cool and if I dont find a group to make it with lots of other volunteers are already working with women's groups making it so I can just get a couple bars every once in awhile, even better is to get some of the shea butter soap from the northern volunteers!
It is nice to be back together with everybody at a comfortable hotel and hear of every bodies stories. We all have to share about our sites and the struggles of the first few days of trying to learn what our jobs and lives are going to be like as volunteers. Our PEPFAR stories are also very different I think we all did different programs from painting murals to lecturing about HIV/AIDS in schools to my project of doing testing. Its so nice to get a better understanding of the projects that we can run when we get to site and how much effort some of these events actually take.
Its kind of crazy to think that in about a month we will be sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers and begin our service. On the one hand it feels like we have been in Ghana for a long time but on the other hand and in actuality we still have 26 months to be in Ghana. Im looking forward to getting to site and settling into a routine, maybe not even a routine but just slowing down and having the opportunity to actually get to know Ghana from a stable point of view. As trainees we are comfortable being together because that is all that we have known so far but I'm more looking forward to becoming comfortable with my community, my coworkers, and my farmers. 




Until next time
Live in Love