PICTURES!

I'm always interested in doing community outreach. Just the thrill of going out to these remote villages, meeting the people, and sharing health information with them feels productive and interactive. So, I set off with a health team and we handpicked a community within my district that has the highest rate of malnutrition. Bulingin, is the community that we visited, it was distant and isolated. Right when I stepped foot in the community, people came from all corners of the village, so that they could see the "Nansala" (white person). We encouraged all the mothers to gather around and attend our health discussion and also have their children that are under 5 years of age to be weighed and vaccinated. Ghana is trying really hard in keeping up with the Millenium Development Goals, especially MDG 4, which is in the fight to reduce children under 5 mortality by two-thirds by 2015.

I have never before seen so many malnourished children in my life! Majority of the children were standing around with huge swollen bellies with tiny upper arm circumferences, which is the huge indicator of being malnourished. We encouraged the women to weigh their children with a scale that is hung off the limb of a tree and the child is placed in a homemade flour sack. For the mother's participation, we handed out the children's clothes that were donated to me by friends and family in the U.S. Children were also vaccinated for Polio, Measles, and TB. We held a health discussion about proper nutrition and diseases that are prevalent in our region and also encouraged the women to ask any questions.

In the end, the women were so happy and appreciative that they wished me farewell with their local singing and dancing. I hope you enjoy the pictures and video!

Visual Aids

These two girls are twins that were orphaned at birth. Their mother died during labor and their father abandoned them. They were sent to an orphanage and have been healthy and happy babies since! They’re enjoying their new pretty dresses
My friend Adam came with me to the orphanage and made a new friend
Gromit missed me too!


This is what my front yard looked like before I left for Christmas

This is what it looked like right when I got back, just 1 month later!

The American Dream
My two favorite people in the village. This is my good friend, Rukia and her baby, Inclema.

Inclema! Thank you to members of Federal Way First Presbyterian Church and to my Uncle Ty and Aunt Asa Lee for donations of all the beautiful baby and kids clothes! Some were distributed to the children in my village and the rest will be used for a future project I would like to do concerning the prevalence of malnutrition of children under 5 years old in my village and the villages surrounding me. Updates and pictures will be posted as soon as it’s available.

Back!

Greetings Everyone!
So, I was fortunate to be able to go home to the U.S. for the past month and spend Christmas and New Years with family and friends! Thanks mom and dad for putting up with me and my crazy month of rediscovering American culture. I had only been gone for 15 months, but it’s crazy to see how much technology, trends, headlines, tv shows (Jersey Shore?!), and the latest celebrity feuds have changed and evolved, since I’ve been gone! I’m not ashamed to say that I got to live like it was my last month to live when I was home, going to see Avatar in IMAX (even though I got nauseated during the fight sequences), eating whole boxes of pizza to myself, just for lunch, and spending every moment with the people I love and care about. Thanks everyone for making the month so memorable! With all the fun that I was having, thoughts of Ghana seemed distant and blurry. Realizing that I would eventually have to go back, crossed my mind from time to time, but it didn’t really hit me until the third week. I was actually, looking forward to going back, and was missing my friends in my village. The journey from the airport in Accra to my village took 4 days, it was arduous (I had 2 heavy luggages and i heavy backpack), tiring, and dusty, which made me miss the comforts of traveling in America, but as soon as I stepped foot in my village, the community embraced me and made me feel home again. I missed them, but I didn’t realize they missed me too!
So, I’m back to work and I have a busy last 10 months ahead. I hope to bring some bicycles to my village, raise more awareness about malnutrition with children under 5 years old, initiate programs concerning malaria, sanitation, and HIV/AIDS, and also help some women’s groups in two churches that I am involved with with some income generation projects and micro-financing. I’ll try better at posting more entries as updates come along.
Until then, mene kata bio (God watch over you until tomorrow)
Peace!

Oh P.S., for those of you who may be wondering. YES, the weight contest was as good as mine!