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