June Update

Hey Everyone! I haven’t had very much luck with the internet, or the electricity for that matter, so that is the reason for this much delayed update. I’ve been busy working on some projects, some of which are going well, and some of which, are giving me some grief.

About three months ago, I started a Health Club with the Junior High school students in my village. I wasn’t sure how it was going to fair with the students or if they would even be interested. So on the first club meeting, I was expecting 10 or 15 students to show, but I was proved wrong when I had about 60 interested students attend. We’ve had about 5 meetings now (1/week) and we’ve been talking about rules, objectives, and doing elections for officers of the club. The objective of the club is to in the end, have the club members be trained to be health educators within the community. I want them to be able to promote healthy lifestyles among the adults, youth, and children. So we’ve been starting each club meeting by doing a different health lesson and finding creative ways in which it can be taught, through activities and visual aids. The students show up to the meetings on-time and on a consistent basis, which makes me very happy to know that they’re so eager to learn and promote health lessons.

For the past two months, I’ve been working on a proposal to fund a project relating to HIV/AIDS. The proposal will be submitted as a PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief), it’s a program that was started by President Bush. The project that I’ve proposed consists of a mobile outreach team that will involve me as the facilitator, health educator(s)/provider(s), language interpreter, and VCT counselors (Voluntary Counseling and Testing for HIV/AIDS). The district that I live in is known as the most under-served district in the most under-served region of Ghana. For this reason, the health disparities are vast, due to the lack of infrastructure and inaccessibility to health care. Most of the villages are in complete isolation and they have many barriers in reaching the nearest health facility (some would have to walk 50+ km on dirt roads), so they opt not to go, even in dire situations. There are 226 communities in my district and we want to go to one of the communities each night and provide health education, basic health care services, promote HIV/AIDS testing, and clarify myths/stigma of HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS is heavily stigmatized here, so an accurate statistic of HIV/AIDS prevalence is unknown, which makes the distribution of ARVs (Anti RetroVirals) and the degree of disease surveillance needed on HIV/AIDS impossible. Another component of the project will consist of a radio program that will be hosted by some of the members of my health club. We will buy an hour of airtime from a radio show once a week, and the health club members will address various health topics and listeners will be able to call in and ask questions anonymously. So, the proposal has taken me a couple of months to write, because I had to do some research, design a micro-plan, and also create a detailed budget break-down, so that the allocation of the funds is well documented. Now, I’m just waiting for it to get approved from Washington DC, so all I can do is sit and wait patiently.

I’ve also been working on a secondary project that isn’t really health related. I’ve been working with a women’s group that are shea nut pickers. Women have been picking shea nuts for years in Northern Ghana, where it grows like wildflowers. The shea nut is encased in a fruit (that is delicious to eat). They pound the nuts and make it into a butter that is used as an oil for cooking. An organization here called Savannah Fruits Company (SFC) wanted to help women in Ghana rise above poverty and provide some income generation opportunities, so they have helped the women grow and pick the shea nut under strict guidelines to classify it as organic. With the organic certification, SFC buys the shea nut from the women at a premium price, to which they will sell to companies in Europe and America like the Body Shop, etc. I’ve been helping to oversee that the group is following under the organic guidelines and also managing any women's group meetings that need to occur.

About three weeks ago, I hosted a program for 12 Junior High School girls to spend a day with three professional women that have well-respected careers in the community. Here in Ghana, actually I can probably say in most developing countries, girls and women are expected to be mothers and take care of ALL household chores. For this reason, many girls are pulled out of school (at about 8th grade), and forced to sell produce from the farm in the markets, be a farmhand, or just do all the household chores. Also, if a family is not able to afford school fees, only the boys in the family will be given priority to attend school and the girls will just be forced to stay home and work or be married off. For this reason, I wanted to do something that would help motivate girls to see the benefits of staying in school and pursuing high school and tertiary education. So the girls I chose, were girls in 7th and 8th grade that I knew could be successful if they had a bit of support. I talked to some women in my community, and the three women that agreed to be mentors were a Pubic Health Nurse, a District Director of Health Services, and a Finance Administrator for a local NGO. For a whole day, the girls were able to talk with the women and delve into their struggles in how they got to be where they are in their careers today and how they overcame the struggles. The girls got a bit of perspective from women that have overcome the same obstacles that they are also facing and have encouragement in the fact that they can overcome it too. The girls were able to ask the women questions and also find out more about the women’s careers. The girls were also given the contact information of the women, so that if they have any questions relating to their education or career choices, they could have someone to ask. In the end, the girls seemed to enjoy the program and also the mentors were happy to know that they were able to inspire and become mentors to some girls in a community that provides many challenges. I hope to do this program with different sets of girls every other month, so that more girls can be given the opportunity.

So, life here in Ghana has been busy, but I’m also making sure to have time for myself to relax, enjoy the country, and make new friends. Health-wise, I’ve stayed relatively healthy, except for the frequent bouts of indigestion, nothing to worry about. I’ve been getting more accustomed to the culture, local dishes (eating with my hands is pretty much normal to me now, fork and spoon? Puh-lease!), and the language is coming along. I miss you all and hope everyone is doing well. As I mentioned earlier, internet and electricity has been very inconsistent, so if I don’t reply to your emails, I apologize sincerely, but I really appreciate getting them, THANK YOU!

Peace, Sinae

P.S. I’ve been having some problems in the amount of time it takes for me at site to get my mail from the Peace Corps office in Accra, so some of the volunteers in my region and I have pitched in and got a P.O. Box in Wa (which is my regional capital, and much more closer and more easily accessibly than Accra). Both letters and packages can be sent to this address, but please don’t feel obligated to send anything.

Sinae Hong

P.O. Box 523

Wa, Upper West Region

Ghana, West Africa

Pictures!

My community had a festival one night, filled with dancing, bonfires, and music. It was a lot of fun! There’s a tribe of people called the Lobi’s in my community and they are known for their xylophone playing. The man in the picture, is a blind xylophone player, he is a phenomenal musician and very entertaining.

My friend Haruna with a freshly killed and plucked duck. He tried to get me to help him pluck it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it without gagging.
Some of the Junior High school girls that participated in the program. The girls really enjoyed getting to meet and talk with their new mentors.

Since the rainy season has started, it has brought with it some crazy and interesting bugs!

This is a funny picture I took in Wa. There was a bus parked on the side of the road, that had a bunch of goats (alive) piled on top of the roof, being ready to be transported somewhere. P.S. This isn’t anything uncommon, on many occasions, I’ve seen cars with multiples cows on top of roofs being transported to the slaughter house (sad, but true).

My cat. He’s growing so big! He’s great to have around because he keeps the bugs, lizard, and various creature population down, in and around my house.

Some of the village children. They love to have their picture taken.
I’ve gotten many emails asking me how I get my water. So I get my water from a bore hole. It’s a type of well that has a pump, it’s quite deep into the ground and the water is fairly clean, although I still put it through a water purifier. Bore holes are very hard to install in villages, because it can take months to locate a water source (which is pretty much discovered by trial and error; drilling holes in the ground that might seem possible).
This was one of the women’s groups meetings. We were discussing the standards and guidelines under which the term “organic” falls under. There is no word for organic in the local language, so a common term had to be created. The term that was agreed upon is a Waale term that translates to, “Good Farming Practices.”
These are some of the shea nuts. The nuts are encased with a green fruit. The fruit is sweet and has a texture similar to an avocado. The nuts are pounded into shea butter, which can be used for cooking or as a skin moisturizer.

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