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

This is what I get to wake up to EVERYDAY!
Halloween Night at a local spot

My friend Michael and I on our way to the Ambassador's house for a reception. He's going to be my nearest neighbor for the next 2 years in the Upper West!


We created a wood fire stove out of mud. We got muddy and dirty for this, it was great!
Just a random picture of some of the domestic wildlife in Ghana. Goats, Chickens, and Cows just roam around everyone's houses. The chickens and goats love to stand in front of my window and make noises at 4 AM every morning, which wake me up. Some of the volunteers that have been here for a yr. reassure me that you get used to the sounds and after a yr. it won't even wake you. I'm waiting very patiently for that day.
Our Trainers took us out for a day of fun. We went to these waterfalls that were so breathtaking. There are signs posted everywhere that say, "You have been warned not to swim, stay alive," we of course didn't listen and jumped right in! It was so fun and the water was so refreshing and cold. The trainers practically had to drag us out! We went hiking afterwards up to the top of the mountain. It was an arduous hike, but well worth it because the view was incredible!

Happy Late Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We had an African Thanksgiving, which included a fried turkey that was killed and prepared personally by a couple of people in the group. We also had sweet potatoes with marshmallow peeps that were sent in someone's package from Halloween, and we had our own version of plantain chips and salsa. The feast was great, filled with dancing and no learning, and everyone was beyond stuffed!

I apologize for not updating sooner, but we've been doing so much, so I'll try not to leave anything out! So we are still in the training phase, where we are learning our target languages and also a lot of cross cultural lessons. We just got back this week from site visit, where we all visited our respected sites that we'll be at for two years after we're finished with training. The trip was very eye opening and I was nervous to go because I had to go in with the mentality that this place was going to be my home for the next two years. The trip started out with a 13 hour bus ride to the Upper West, where I sat in a seat that had absolutely no leg room, so my friend Michael and I took turns sprawling our legs out into the aisle. I got to visit the hospitals that I would be working at and met some of the District Health Management Team that I'll be working with. I also got to meet some of the people in the NGOs that I'll be working with, such as JICA and Unicef. All in all, I'm pretty excited about my site and I'm especially excited about the projects that I'll be involved with. My primary project will be working with Adolescent Health and trying to raise awareness in malnutrition. My other project is to be working with the District Health Management Team and trying to get them going. My town has recently became the District Capital, so all the other towns its foreseeing has clinics that need a lot of assistance, and that's where I come in. I have some secondary projects too, which involved HIV/AIDS awareness and also School Health Lessons. My town is pretty rural, a population of under 2000, and majority Muslim.

I forgot to mention about the field trip we had a month back. The three sectors: Small Enterprise Development (SED), Environment, and Health/ Water Sanitation (that's me) went to various regions to visit active volunteers in our respected sectors to see the work that they are partaking in. My group went up to the Northern Region, where it is the least developed, which means the roads are unpaved. So 16 of us sat in a van (which would never in a million yrs meet Safety Standards in America) for 15 hours trying to get to our destination, and when we finally got there, we were all covered in dust from head to toe, which made us look like oompa loompas. To create a lighter moment in a tense situation, we started doing the oompa loompa dance and took crazy pictures, that I will NOT be posting for everyone to see. But just imagine me in my previously white Mariners shirt stained brown and a spray tan gone wrong. (I'm pretty upset about my Mariners shirt because it's beyond ruined!) Besides the travel part, the experience was amazing. We got to follow volunteers that have primary projects involving Guinea Worm Surveillance and Eradication. Guinea Worm is pretty endemic in the Northern Region, and there are strong efforts to eradicate it, and organizations such as the Carter Center (founded by Jimmy Carter) are working hard to rid of it, by providing free nets to every household and education about it. The nets are highly effective and so easy to use, they filter out the cyclops that harbor the guinea worm, it's basically a piece of cloth with a netting in the middle, that goes over the water barrels. So after people fetch water from the dams, they put the water through the net and it catches all the cyclops and is 100% effective when used. We got to partake in the surveillance action, in which we went to each household and checked their nets to make sure they were still viable and if they weren't, they are given a brand new one. The efforts are really paying off because a couple of years ago they reported about 1000 cases of Guinea Worm, but this year there has been less than 500, which is great progress!

Ghana has their Presidential elections on December 7th, which is so exciting for us to be in another country that will hold a major election. There are great campaigns for a peaceful election, since there has been quite a few incidents of political violence, and because of this the Peace Corps is pulling all 150 volunteer all over Ghana 2 days before and after the elections together in a town called Bunso to make sure of our safety. The elections here are pretty heated and tight, there are 8 major candidates competing for the Presidency.

Well I hope everyone is well and I hope that many of you are not affected too much by the economic downfall that's taking place. Please take care!

A Quick Update...

Hey everyone! I just wanted to let you know what I've been up to for the past week. I have been relocated to a host family in a town called Old Tafo. They have taken me in for the next 9 weeks until we finish training. It has been an interesting experience because they speak no English whatsoever and we can only converse in Twi. I will post more details about them later and post some pictures. I also have some news..... We have all received our site assignments and I will be heading to the Upper West Region to a town called Wechiau where I will be mainly working to build up the Health Clinics. The language of the region is called Dagaare, and I have been learning it for the past week! It has been so difficult because I have been going to language classes for Dagaare in the morning and than I have to head home to a family that only speaks Twi, I don't recommend learning two completely different languages at one time on anybody!
Also, I have posted my address here in Ghana in a earlier post, but I think I may have made a mistake and forgot the Ghana part, so here it is again:
Sinae Hong, PCT
Peace Corps Ghana
P.O. Box 5796
Accra North, Ghana
West Africa

but if the carrier doesn't P.O. boxes the address is:
Sinae Hong, PCT
26 West Cantonments
Switch Back Lane
Accra North, Ghana
West Africa

Oh, I also have a phone here, the number is 011233240685458. You need to dial this exact number (I have added the country code and everything). I will try to make some calls out too, but even receiving a text message from y'all would make me the happiest girl in the world!
Well I hope everyone is doing well, more to come soon!
Love, Sinae

Pictures!

Kath, there's a Deloitte in Accra! It made me think of you!
This is the new Presidential Palace, it's supposed to look like a stool on the top of the building
The 6th graders in Agoue Fie

Everyone wanted to be included in the shot! This definately made me think of home back in the PNW! When it rains here, it REALLY rains!

This is just the beginning

Hey Everyone! This is my first official blog post from Ghana! I just wanted you all to know that I'm doing well and I have officially fallen in love...... with Africa of course and all it has to offer! This past week has been such a whirlwind and so much has happened. I promise to post some pictures soon, but I'm currently at an internet cafe with not much time to spare. Here is a brief recap of my journey so far...
We landed in Accra and did a couple days of training there, just basic language and safety lessons. On the third day, we were sent out with a partner to explore the city and boy was it scary! Here in Ghana, they travel in minivans called tro-tros that go fast and if you're not careful it will start driving whether you're fully in the car or not! Every driver on the road has the most aggressive road rage I have ever seen! People are honking left and right, and no one pays attention to speed limits or pedestrians/bikers for that matter!
After Accra, we all were sent out on a vision quest where we were to follow a current Peace Corps Volunteer in their village or town for four days. I was sent to a town called Agoue Fie, which is in the outskirts of the Volta region and about 9 hours away from Accra. It was survival of the fittest and each man its own because everyone was expected to figure out their own way to the site they are to be at. I personally, had to ride a 4 hour tro ride to a town called Ho Hoe and then take another tro from Ho Hoe to Nkwanta. Here in Ghana, there are NO bus schedules so the buses only leave when it is full, so I had to wait 3 hours for the bus to get a move on and when it finally did, it took about 3 hours to get to Nkwanta on unpaved roads. At Nkwanta I was greeted by my host volunteer and from there we waited another 3 hours and had to convince a driver to take us to Agoue Fie, which is in the middle of nowhere and cars only drive through twice a week! Agoue Fie is a small village composed of multiple tribes, with no running water, no electricity, and no shower. So I was forced to take bucket baths, use a latrine, and sit by candlelight and listen to the BBC on a battery powered radio for entertainment. We were asleep by 9 and awake by 6, since the sun sets at approx 6.30 and rises at 6 every day and night! Being in Agoue Fie has really reinforced my desire and passion for joining the Peace Corps in the first place because I really got to experience firsthand the great things volunteers are doing here and the sense of real world perspective he has attained by living in this village. I got to see the community latrines that he has installed with the help of the villagers, learned about the malaria and family planning campaigns that he has headed, and also visited the local school where health lessons are taught at. I got to have a try at the teaching, so I taught the kids about diseases that could be contracted without the use of shoes or sandals. What can I say about the village kids? They are absolutely wonderful, they are well mannered, curious, and always so eager to learn. I have a lot of pictures to post of the kids, because they are obsessed with the camera! Every time, I take out my camera, kids from all corners will come out of nowhere to swarm to the focal point, so they could be included in the shoot. The next obstacle was figuring out how I was supposed to get back to our next training site in Kukurantumi. We waited for hours for any car to pass through town, but we had no luck, so the Peace Corps van had to personally come get me the next morning.
Now, I am in a town called Kukurantumi for 10 weeks where I will be completing my training and then on December 13th, depending on whether I pass all the tests or not, I will be officially sworn in as a volunteer and then the next day I will be sent out to my site where I will be for 2 years!
I just want to thank everyone for their emails, I promise to reply to them the next time I have some time, but please keep writing me because they make me feel soooo loved and make me feel at home! I miss you all and am thinking of you always!
Love, Sinae

P.S. Here is my address where I can receive mail,
Sinae Hong, PCV
Peace Corps Ghana
P.O. Box 5796
Accra North, Ghana
West Africa

but if you plan to mail me something through a carrier that doesn't deliver to P.O. Boxes, here is an alternative address,
Sinae Hong, PCV
26 West Cantonments
Switch Back Lane
Accra North, Ghana
West Africa