Pictures

The primary school students are all smiles, after receiving their toothbrushes!
Cultural display of dancing at the Hippo Sanctuary’s 10 year celebration!


This is in one of the community outreaches for the HIV/AIDS program. The people are watching a film show that was recorded in my community about the truths of HIV/AIDS.

The students and the volunteers at the Hippo Sanctuary, discussing the positive things they’ve done in their communities.
The starting line of the Race to the Hippos!

Ghan-a long time!

Hey Everyone! Sorry about the horrible pun I started this entry with, but can you believe I’ve been gone for a year now? September 30th was our one-year mark since we’ve arrived in Ghana. There are days where it definitely seems like its been longer, but I think I’ve learned more about myself and about the world in the one year I’ve been here, than my whole four years in college. Some of the volunteers who have been here for two years and are getting geared to leave keep reminding us that the second year goes by in a flash. At first, I was relieved, knowing I’ll be back home where I can drive my own car, go to baseball games, and eat glorious amounts of goldfish crackers and apple pie, but than I felt sad, realizing that I’ll eventually have to leave all the relationships I’ve developed, and the community I’ve been living in, behind. Well enough of the reflection, here’s what I’ve been up to in the past few months.

The month of Ramadan just came to an end on September 20th, which is a lunar-based holiday. The people in my community are mainly Muslim, so the whole community was partaking in the month of fasting. They were only allowed to drink water and eat food before 5AM and after 6:30PM. In support of my community, I also decided to attempt the fasting, but unfortunately, failed miserably. I didn’t even last 7 hours! On the first day, I was feeling so hot and dehydrated by noon, so I had to drink water. I have so much more respect for the adults and youth as young as 14 who do this year after year. People would ask me how I was doing with the fasting, but I had to confess that I had to give in, but I promised that I would try again next year. They just laughed and told me that I needed to build a stronger body. I also admire the strong dedication the Muslims have to their faith. They do their prayers five times a day, without ever missing, even one! I hear the loud call to prayer every 4:30AM, 12:30PM, 3:30PM, 6:30PM, and 7:30PM, selfishly, knowing the daily schedule of prayers has become very convenient for me, since I don’t need to rely on a clock anymore.

There’s a hippo sanctuary that’s 18K away from my village, and is known to be a great tourist attraction. It’s a community based ecotourism site, so its run entirely by community members and all the profit goes right back into the community. They were started up and supported by the Calgary Zoo in Canada and also by an NGO called NCRC. October 10th marked the Hippo Sanctuary’s 10th year anniversary, so we had a grand celebration! There was a lot of dancing and dancing.

Many of the people who live in my village have never even been able to enjoy the hippo sanctuary, even though they live so close. So, I decided to create a program called, “Race to the Hippos!” I proposed an essay contest to all the Junior High school students. The prompt being, “what does it mean to do good in one’s community and what kinds of things have you done/plan to do?” The prize would be a free night stay at the hippo sanctuary and a riverboat tour to see the hippos. I had a lot of entries, and the hardest part was having to pick the six best essays. I also invited some of the volunteers within my region to bring a student in their village that exemplified being a positive role model. All in all, we had 12 students and 10 volunteers participate in the event. So, this is where the word “race” comes in. I challenged the students and volunteers to run the whole 18K to get to the sanctuary to promote healthy lifestyles. We had seven student runners and only two volunteer runners (me, being one of them). The rest of the people biked. I think during the race, I hated myself all the way, but at the end, it was well worth it! At the sanctuary, we took the riverboat tour and saw some hippos. In the end, I think the students really enjoyed the experience and appreciated the value of the sanctuary in their community even more.

I was donated some oral hygiene products from an organization at UNC. With the products, we did an oral hygiene lesson with the Primary school students, forms 1-6. We had a student come up and demonstrate the correct technique of brushing one’s teeth and we discussed the various diseases one can acquire when we don’t have proper oral hygiene. After the lesson, as the students walked out the door, we handed them a toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste. I think the kids enjoyed the fun designs on the toothbrush more than the toothbrush itself.

From my latest entry, I mentioned that I was working on a PEPFAR proposal to fund my HIV/AIDS program. Well, I got word that the proposal was accepted in late July, which prompted us to begin with the preparations. Since late August, we’ve started the program and have been doing outreach in various communities that we have mapped out in advance. So far, we have reached out to about 25 communities, tested about 600 people, and educated about 8,000. The program has been going pretty well, but nothing comes without its downfalls. Unfortunately, we are in the middle of rainy season, and the weather has been tempestuous. This has caused some of the roads to become inaccessible due to flooding and/or cancel the program due to the rain. Other than that, I’ve enjoyed venturing to some of the communities. It’s incredible how isolated some of the villages are and the reaction I get when they see me. You can tell that some of the people have never stepped foot out of their villages, by the sense of bewilderment they get by seeing their first “white person,” magically appear in their village.

Well, that’s all for now. I hope that everyone is healthy and happy!

Peace!

Obama!

President Obama came to Ghana this past Friday and Saturday. He met with the President of Ghana, Atta Mills. He also went to Cape Coast, which is in the Central Region of Ghana to tour the main entrance and exit point during the time of the slave trades. After he finished his tour, he gave a farewell speech at the airport. Select Americans that are living in Ghana were invited to attend the speech. Peace Corps volunteers got to go in VIP and stand in the very front of the crowd. I pretty much was 20 feet away from him the whole time! One of the first things he started his speech with was a shout out to the Peace Corps volunteers, and he also ended his speech with it. At the end of the speech, right before he entered the plane back to America, he went around to greet the crowd. I got to shake hands with him, and not only with him, but also with Michelle Obama! Here are some pictures from my encounter:


The helicopters, carrying Obama and his family from Cape Coast to Accra International Airport to give his farewell speech. The Obamas

President Obama with President Atta Mills

This is how close I was to him during the meet and greet at the end

Getting back on the plane, back to America

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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Life shown through pictures

The Junior High School here in my village received some school supplies from an organization in Canada. The students and teacher are pictured here with Wechiau Naa in the center (Wechiau Chief).

This is a view of a section of my village. It's the main hang out place, where people will gather at the end of the day and just relax under a tree.

These women are on the way to market. The women here carry everything via on top of their head and will walk for miles to the next market. Women walking around with 30 pounds of charcol on top of their head is very normal

A few of the volunteers and I visited another volunteer's site, which is a Monkey Sanctuary. We got to see these monkeys that just roam about in the villages, so they aren't afraid to get up really close to people.

Meet my cat, Gromit. I've grown up with only dogs and never had a cat, so this will be a new experience.

March update

For some time now, I felt like I was adjusting well to the constant heat and thought that I had experienced the worst, but was I in the wrong! It’s been getting hotter by the day and there’s no relief at night. I took a temperature reading at 10AM and it had already reached 98ºF! I look forward to my nightly bucket baths, even though my water barrel sits in the scorching sun all day, the warm water cools me off, even if it’s only for a few minutes. I’ve also resorted to sleeping outside; bringing out a cot and hanging the mosquito net on the clothes line; it’s just me and everything in the night sky. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stars or noticed the vast presence of the moon until I’ve come here. Call me selfish but I hope that villages such as mine never get overtaken by big skyscraper buildings, city lights, and cars/trucks/SUVs, or people would never be able to enjoy nature at its best.
March 6th is Ghana’s Independence Day. It’s been 52 years since they acquired their Independence. To mark the occasion, schools hold competitions for the best group march. They are judged based upon uniformity, creativity, and presentation. All the smaller communities around, came and gathered here in Wechiau to participate in the competition. The enthusiasm and discipline of all the students were clearly evident throughout each school’s march and most incredible to witness. On a typical school morning, the students line up outside of their respected classrooms. As soon as the drumming begins, by grade levels, the students form their straight lines and begin their march towards the classroom. Their whole bodies are involved; swinging their arms in perfect parallel with the precise coordination of their feet, it’s really an amazing thing to see. I’ll stand on the roadside of the school some mornings and watch this impeccable precession and be in awe every time. Whenever I see the students, I shower them with compliments and comment about how I love to watch them march, but they just look at me shyly and ask, “Don’t students march in America?” I promise to take a video of it with my camera, but my obstacle lies in finding an internet café that has a connection fast enough to post videos, so far, I’ve been unsuccessful in even trying to post pictures.
Oh, so did I mention that I got malaria? Well, unfortunately, it happened, but I lived to tell about it. The symptoms struck me hard and very sudden. I felt feverish and took my temperature, which read 99, but than 1 hour later, it rose to about 103. My trips to the toilet were hourly and on top of that, I wasn’t able to hold any food down. I started the Coartem treatment and the symptoms faded after a few days. After a day or two of feeling somewhat recovered, I felt feverish again and my stomach was in severe discomfort, so I called the Peace Corps Medical Officer, who than diagnosed me (strictly from the symptoms I told her over the phone) with Amoebas. I was put on medication, but the medication made me feel worse than when I was without them, so I endured the pain, and finished the treatment in four days, only to be told that I have to take another set of medications to kill any remaining cysts that could be left by the Amoebas. So I’m fully recovered now and back to my normal self. You could be asking how I got the malaria in the first place, since that was the very question I ask myself, since I have been taking all the precautions in preventing it, such as taking a prophylaxis every week (which makes my hair fall out, I’ll probably be bald by the end of my 2 years here), sleep under a mosquito net, use bug spray on exposed areas of skin, and try not to stand outside during the time when mosquitoes are active. I guess some things are inevitable and now I realize why malaria is classified as one of the three most prevalent diseases worldwide (HIV/AIDS and TB are the other two) and very endemic in African countries. I have experienced the misery people in my community go through when they’re struck with this illness; so this has motivated me to strive towards greater malaria education and prevention efforts in the communities around me. Even though contracting malaria has furthered me to do something, let’s just hope that my motivation to stress HIV/AIDS and TB education isn’t going to be through contracting them.
Work-wise, we’re gearing up for the second round of the National Immunization Campaign (NID) against Polio. We did the first round in mid-February, but for the vaccination to be complete the children are required for a second dose a month later. We will seek out the children who had their pinky marked with an indelible marker during the first round and after they’ve been vaccinated the second time, they’ll be marked on their index finger.
Life-wise, I’m still trying to form more relationships with people in my community, but one of the major obstacles has been the language barrier, since most of the women never attended school in their younger days, they don’t speak or understand any English at all. Between my small vocabulary of Waale and their small vocabulary of English, it doesn’t make for a good conversation. So LOTS of hand gestures and smiling are required. I’ve also been meeting other foreigners who are working with various NGOs and organizations, they’re all very nice, and most importantly, they’re all doing respectable work here.
I just wanted to thank everyone for their support and encouragement. Of course there are times that I wish I could be home and eating comfort foods such as pizza, ice-cream, anything cold, milk, broccoli, strawberries…. sorry I’m rambling, but my point is that, I’ve learned a lot since I’ve been here and am still continuing to learn about myself, culture, health disparities, and poverty, so I’m really grateful to be here and don’t regret any part of my decision to come. I just wish that I had a private plane (fuel-efficient, of course) that could usher you all here so you could come visit me, but that’s only wishful thinking.
Stay well and all the best,
Sinae

Long awaited update

A very late update…

Hey Everyone, I apologize for not posting an update in awhile. It’s been pretty hectic this past month, but here’s what I’ve been up to so far.

Well, I completed training and officially became a Peace Corps Volunteer on December 12th, there was a ceremony held for the 40 trainees, which included a dance that we prepared, skits performed by each language group, and speeches. The US Ambassador in Ghana came out and also the Peace Corps Country Director. The ceremony was also recorded, which was to be broadcasted on GhanaTV, but I didn’t get to watch since I don’t have a TV or cable for that matter. The following day, we all said our goodbyes and parted ways to head to our sites all over Ghana.

So since the ceremony, I’ve been at my site here in Wechiau. It is in the Upper West Region of Ghana, which is the newest and most underdeveloped region, so it’s very rural. My village has a population of roughly 2000 people, we just recently got electricity, but there’s yet to be running water (so we fetch water out of a bore hole), and no cell phone reception whatsoever, except in various obscure locations like in a tree or next to the public latrines (which I only stand next to in desperate measures). Only a small section in my town has a paved road and other than that, the roads are just dirt and sand. I can get little food items in my village, like crackers, tomatoes, rice, and tomato paste, but usually I have to wait every 6 days for market day, in which I can get items previously mentioned plus rice, oranges (occasionally), onions, and local already prepared Ghanaian dishes. Wa is the regional capital and is the town that I have to come to, to get food I can’t get in my village, use the internet (when its not down)/my phone, meet up with other volunteers from various organizations and NGOs. Even though Wa is the regional capital, there are many things that I still can’t get, which makes me miss home even more, like cheese, Kit-Kats, pizza, yogurt, and dried fruits, so I’ve had to improvise and substitute cheese with laughing cow (definitely not the same, but close) and one of the stores recently just got in Halloween Reeeses peanut butter cups (which are old, but worth it). I only come into Wa once every other week because it takes about 2 hrs to get to one way (if the car doesn’t break down), but what really deters me from coming to often is the transportation. The roads to Wa are not paved and are VERY VERY dusty, so designating an outfit specifically as traveling clothes is a MUST, preferably clothes you don’t care about getting dirty, and darker the color the better, to see less dust. The cars that we ride in are very pick-up trucks that have put benches on the sides of the cab to fit 5 people on each side, and in the middle there are 2 smaller benches for 2 people to sit on per bench, but facing in opposite directions, cramped wouldn’t even describe the feeling when riding in these cars. They also pack stuff on the roof of the car that can reach a mile high, and occasionally see goats or cows strapped to the roof. Also, the cars are in pretty bad shape and very old, most of the cars have odometer readings in the hundreds of thousands! There were many trips that involved the car breaking down and having to stop in the scorching sun for hours while the people tinker around with various parts, which could involve strings, hammer, and glue as tools. I once was in a truck that broke down 5 times, so when it broke down the 6th time, I opted to walk, which ended up being a 8k journey back home, in which I still ended up beating the truck back.

Job wise, I’ve been working with the District Health Management Team (DHMT). It’s basically the Public Health center for the surrounding 6 sub-districts and the smaller communities in between; it oversees the entire Wa West district. It is a team that consists of a District Director of Health Services (she’s my Peace Corps appointed Supervisor), Disease Control Officer (he’s my PC appointed counterpart), an Administrator, Public Health nurse, and various field investigators. We mainly deal with disease surveillance, mal-nutrition, setting up small community health facilities in various locations, community relations, prevention of disease spread, and epidemiological data, just to name some of the major tasks. So far, I’ve been working with the epidemiological data and disease mapping of some of the more problem diseases such as meningitis, AFP, and Pertusis. I’ve also been doing going on some of the field investigations, which involve going to smaller villages and checking up on known TB patients to make sure they are keeping up with their medications (which involve 5-6 months of various medications to prevent resistance), check up on the progress of their health, and also making sure that family members and people in close proximity to the patient aren’t infected themselves. In a couple of weeks Ghana will be having a National Immunization Campaign, in which all children 5 yo and under are being vaccinated against polio. This event requires a lot of planning, which we have been doing for the past week. The main obstacle of living in a rural village is that we don’t know the exact number of kids there are or for that matter, where they even live. So during the campaign, we go out in pairs with a vaccine box (keeps the oral vaccines cool for a couple of hours) and go throughout the assigned part of the village and find all the children that you can, and this may require walking through swamps, muddy waters, and over landfills. After you give them the drop, you mark their right pinky with a paint pen, which indicates that they have already been vaccinated. The campaigns are successful and get the job done, I’ve had the pleasure of being part of one earlier in October, but it occurred in another part of the region and I had no part in the planning process. So it’s been pretty fun and rewarding to be a part of the campaign in the early stages and see the components it takes to plan something as major and important as this.
Other than that, I’ve been keeping busy and befriending people in my village. Greetings are very important here, so whenever I go to the stand to get crackers that would take a minute to walk to from my house, usually turns out to become a 30 minute trip because I’m greeting EVERYONE I walk past and stopping to have conversations. The native language in my village is called Waale, which is NOT the language I learned during my training, but it is somewhat of a similar dialect to Dagaare. I’ve been learning Waale just by interacting with the people and whenever I do the greetings in Waale or say one of the few phrases I know, the people just laugh and tell me that I’m doing well, which is somewhat encouraging.
Thanks to everyone for your emails, texts, and phone calls, and I apologize if I haven’t replied or written a longer email back. The internet is not so reliable here and the connection is very slow. No one from the Accra office has brought up mail or packages for us here since December, but I’ve been told they’re coming sometime in February, so I apologize for not confirming on receiving your letters/packages, but I will as soon as I get them and am anticipating receiving them. I hope everyone is well and stays that way.
Love, Sinae