kakra kakra

I think that just might be my favorite word here in Ghana, kakra kakra. It means small, small.  Like meti twi kakra. I know a how to speak a little twi. Or medi kakra.  I eat a little.  But ask me how the work is going here in Ntonso and I will say, kakra kakra. We are moving forward kakra kakra.  (about damn time right?)

 

Anyways, I’m finally a bit excited and happy about the way things are going with the project here.  It’s about the beginning of tourist season and we are going kakra kakra towards the directions of making this destination a five-star stop! (okay, we are still a long way… but a girl can exaggerate to make herself feel better.)  Step one toward making it five-star… actually being OPEN! Check.  We’ve been opened for just about a month now and have received about 65 visitors! I have a feeling now that we have been in contact with some tour guides and started passing out our brochures (Thank you Cal Lu Printing Services! You guys are awesome!) that more will start to come.  Step two, bring artisans to come and work at the visitor centre… half-check.  We have got a calabash carver to come and work at the visitor centre about a couple times a week and upon request when tourist come.  We have kente looms and I think I’m going to start weaving soon! (usually only men weave, but I figure I have plenty free time, so I should weave too!)  We are working on getting others to move, but no luck yet. The only downer part of this whole thing is that we are opened every day because I make sure we are open (not very sustainable, since I will be leaving at the end of the year… and for a month in june, but we’ll see how it goes).  But I do think now that people within the Tourism Management Team see the potential that this place has to generate money for the community they are more committed to making it work. With that being said, we still have a lot of things to work out, but like I said kakra, kakra.

 

(can I get a hoorah!)

 

Mmm, so the other weekend was Easter weekend and although there was no Ho Easter (sad) Easter just might be my favorite time here in Ghana.  Just for the fact that it always includes good friends, good food, and something exciting.  This Easter it was something legen… wait for it… dary! (haha, sorry I’m like obsessed it everything Barney) Anyways, the Ghana Tourist Board puts on a festival in the Eastern Region for the Easter holiday which includes street jams, paragliding, lots of kebabs, and crazyness.  (although, being here has decreased my crazyness… one night there was this music festival that started at 8 pm that we all wanted to attend, but when the time came around we were passed out.  I woke up at like 9 trying to get people to go, but no one wanted to, so I just went back to sleep. I know, I’m uber lame now. Happy dad?)  Anyways, back to the story… so I went paragliding!!! I jumped off a cliff and went up, up, and wayyy up in the air!! I was up there for so damn long that I felt sick at the end. Haha. But it was totally awesome and worth it. 

 

I guess that’s about all for now, we are going to have an all-volunteer conference at the end of the month at an uber nice hotel. (wifi and pool for a week!) There is suppose to be a talent show (I was thinking about playing the harmonica) and a PROM!  So all in all, I’m finally really happy with every day here… so happy that I’ve submitted a request to extend for a third year!!

 

(april fools… or maybe not. It would seem like a pretty good deal though, a year more I get to go home free for a month during the holidays and I get like 10G after I finish! JK, I can’t wait to come home and eat delicious food and go to Vegas! Oh and I guess get a job. And find my Honda! Oh and I guess hang out with all my family and friends!)

 

Okay well, miss you all tons back home… hope everything is going extra fabulous!!

 

 

Also why I kinda love being here… so today I  was walking along and I see a group of kids with tin cans searching in the bush.  They were all on the hunt for something, telling one kid who was under a log about where something was.  I figured that they were finding those flying bugs so they could attach it to a string and play with it.  So I continued on, went to talk to my friend and then started headed back in their direction, but they were off to a new place, looking under a tree… and so I’m really curious now as to what they are doing.  So I peak into their cans and what do I find… lots of snails. So pumba and timon… sometimes I’m a bit jealous of the fact that they LOVE snails.

 

 

 

 

 

ps. internet is being stupid. so i guess i'll upload pictures later. and on another sad sad note... i have a fricken mouse again. and guess what it fricken ate... my blackberry track ball!!!! stupid stupid mouse. but i will get the last laugh.

i'm getting better at being faithful... sorta.

hmmm, so whats new?

lots of stuff, but i really don't feel like typing... and we all know you hate to read. so pictures it is! (: 

i started my world map project at my local market. basically you paint a map of the world on the wall to help increase geography literacy.  i figured the market would be a good location to do it because a lot of people frequent the place to buy their groceries. (and by groceries i mean, onions and tomatoes.  because thats all you can buy there. jk. but majority of it is onions and tomatoes.) but anyways, i decided to get the children involved thinking itd be a good idea. well, ha, baaad idea... well, first off. if you want an accurate map, you should only get adults with some what of a knowledge of the world to help.  if you want new countries and seas to exist, your local children are good at that.

basically, at the end of day two of map work we had the united states of mexico annnd chargentina! also, the black sea became a country and so did some huge lake in canada. among other mistakes that i've found along the way. way to go children! 

but on a positive note, the reason why i'm doing the map is so that they know that the united states does not extend to the east side of mexico, and so forth. and its somewhat working. today i was painting with a boy and playing wheres that country! he now knows where japan, china, russia, egypt, there is not an extended piece of land on the east side of mexico. 

annnd, now that i've finished it my friend tells me that she sees all the children looking at it after they finish from school. wooot. success!

i've started feeding children. hahaha. 

the kid that gave me skin diseases. no joke. i helped this small boy clean his hands... and after i finished he pointed to his hands and said something in his language that i didn't understand but i figured he was telling me about the disease that he had on his hands. annnd, now. i have those same bumps on my hands. ): last time i play with dirty small children. ps. we slept on the roof, behind. it was pretty damn awesome. 

awesome signboard in tamale... thats right kids, it retards development!! fight, fight, fight!

ps. no matter where i seem to move electricity hates me ): i seriously am literally juuust outside from where there is electricity. it sucks. i have this beautiful house and the shack (literally a shack) that like 5 feet from my house has electricity. 

twi word of the day: wo hu nu bruni won ka se bruni

(when you see a white person, don't say obruni.)

helloooo. hellloooo.

hello faithful followers:

i apologize for my lack of blogging. i could give you a million excuses but i wont. i think i'll just show you pictures. i'm alive and well. and realized that i could live my whole life without running water and electricity and bacon (who wouldve thunk!) as long as i had a toilet to sit on. 

 so i finally moved from this little shindig. i miss these girls. a bit. but what i don't miss is their screaming, crying, and singing at 5am. 

i wanted to be among. 

there was a camp, i taught business and we made them run one. they sold juuuuice! it was a hit.

okay, internet won't let me upload any more.

more to come later. i'll be more faithful to you. 

xoxo.

more more pictures!

the final two teams, my team is in blue and my neighbors team is in green.

this man stole all the glory! so my town played his town in the championship match. our team was better but couldn't score. it went to shoot out, and we all know shoot outs are bullshit.

the senior high school drama troupe did two dramas... one on hiv/aids and one on tourism. this drama is on hiv/aids... about a pastor who helped a man after a car crash and contracted hiv. these students did an amazing job.

and of course we promoted tourism... so they brought their stuff to show off.

i'm teaching this small girl everything that she needs to know in the world. heineken is everywhere, but i can't seem to find americas king of beers. boooo.

and can't forget to teach her about my home country of asia.

long time friend.

sorry for the delay, the two months after returning from america have been rough. every sickness/emotion that one person could have in their entire life i've had in two months. but don't you worry... i'm still alive. somehow. (:

Mephloquin, mice, and scorpion king:
So you all know that I’ve had a mouse problem for some time, but lately its been annoying. I know where it hides out, but don’t know what to do with it. Do I kill it? How will I kill it? But what happens if it jumps at me again and I get rabies? So, since I have no idea what to do and keep forgetting to buy the stupid mouse trap, I guess it will just be my annoying unwanted company until I figure out something.
Then one night, I saw a massive scorpion in my room. At first I thought I was hallucinating. you see, I take mephaloquin (its malaria medication) and it causes you to intense and crazy dreams. Which, I didn’t have at first, but now I’m having. If I haven’t seen/talked to you in the past couple of years that has all changed because I have done so within the past month due to this medication. Anyways, back to the story, so I woke up in the middle of the night because I had to pee, and then with my flashlight I see a HUGE scorpion behind my shelves. I didn’t know what to do and had to pee bad so I just left to pee, and when I returned it was gone. (thus why I believed I was hallucinating) so I just went back to sleep… actually I think I took out my “where there is no doctor book” and looked up scorpion bites, when I realized it wasn’t a huge risk to my life, I went back to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up, looked behind the shelf and saw nothing… that’s when I really thought I was going crazy. But luckily, when the night creeped around, it appeared and reassured me that I’m not crazy. I didn’t know what to do with it, like the mouse… so I poked at it a bit with a stick, and it went back into hiding. I played this game with it for about a week… poke it and hide. I was going to leave it for my friend to come and see, but good thing I didn’t because he didn’t end up coming. So one night, I was reaching for my toothbrush and something started to crawl on my arm. Of course, I screamed like a little girl (it was a dirty small cockaroach) and then the people outside asked if I was okay. I told them yea… and was like, well, I do have this scorpion inside my room. They were like scorpion?! And I was like, yeaaa! And so the lady came in with a broom and smashed it! it was pretty awesome, and I’m quite jealous that I never had the guts to do it.
So, scorpion down, mice still around… I guess we can’t have it all.

huge? i tend to exaggerate at times. especially when it comes to critters. that could potentially kill me.

Galla Galla Galla!!:
So my neighbor and I have been planning a football gala for sometime now, and yesterday it finally came! Of course like most things in Ghana, the event was suppose to start at 9 am, but we didn’t start until 10:30. But other than that, I think the event was pretty damn successful. We had education on HIV/AIDS and tourism during the halftimes and breaks of the games, the grand finale was a speaker who was living with HIV. Voluntary testing and counseling was also available at the event, they said they tested 200+ people which I was happy about because people kept telling me that no one would come because of the stigmatization that goes along with HIV. We just went to check with the district health services and found out that out of all the people they tested that day there were no positives, so thats a good sign, but still plenty education needs to be done to make sure that it is kept that way.

Motivation:
I’ve grown to HATE this word. Every time I went to the District Assembly to meet with the Cultural Officer to discuss the football gala with him, he kept telling me that I needed to motivate him. So I asked him one day what his job description was, and he said it was dealing with cultural events in the district, which includes anything dealing with kente, adinkra, woodcarving, etc, which includes tourism. This event was basically helping him do his job. Plus, all he does is sit on his ass all day and do nothing… and all the jobs we had for him to do, NONE got done. (causing much stress the day before, scrambling to find buses and security for the event) Then, after I paid the health worker for doing the testing at the event, she said it was too small (it was $15, which may seem small to you, but farmers who slave all day in the fields make $5 a day and I make $7 so I should’ve told her to shove it) and that I should add more to it. When I told her thats what the Head Nurse told me the fee would be, she demanded I give her toffee. So I just looked at her and walked away. Ugh, I can’t stand it sometimes. Everyone always asking asking asking for money. For toffee. For my bag. For my tshirt. For anything really. Kids I’m a little bit more understanding, but man, adults… especially the more educated one… I just can’t handle.

Peace and Unity:
I also started a club at the senior high school in the town next to mines (I wanted to do it in my town, but it was a Seventh Day Adventist SHS, and the headmaster told me I couldn't because I wasn't "one of them") Anyways, I haven't been able to meet with them weekly because of all the event drama, but I finally got to meet with them the other week. At first I thought it was going to be bad… when I first came to the school no one was there, and a teacher I ran into asked me if I reminded the students, kind of implying that if I didn’t they weren’t going to show up. I asked one of the girls who was standing around to look for the president, but when she returned, she told me he left for home. I was a bit disappointed, but thought I would hang out for a bit to see if anyone would show. Then a girl came in, and said that they were having classes or cadet, but said that she would go around telling them I have arrived and that they would be in shortly. And shortly, they started to come! The last week that we met we did the tangled arm spider web, and it was a complete failure. Half because they didn’t really understand my instructions, and half because I don’t think they are given enough freedom to make their decisions/problem solving. So when given a task where they have to make decision to help them get out of something, they are a bit confused. Its quite sad, everything is about memorization and you wouldn’t dare think about questioning or thinking for yourself. But this week, we tried again, and it was some what successful. I was sooo happy. Then we went to talk about capital for the company and splitting them up in different departments, like human resources, public relations, finance, production, and marketing. They've decided that they want to start a bead business, so once they've sold their stock and got money, we are going to buy beads, produce them, and start selling. sooo, anyone interested in beads? holla.

the cultural officer and the district chief executive talking to the players before the start of the match.

visual aids and lovely peace corps volunteers that came to help that day.

the speaker that we had for the event... he did an AMAAAZING job. more people were asking about being tested after he finished his speech... been living with HIV for 5 years now.

three generations of volunteers with mama major. and nana.

twi word of the day: mEhu wo kyea. (its been a long time)


***more pictures to come of the galla galla galla!!!

no longer clean. ):

so in the spirt of being back to the dirtyness that is ghana. i've decided to express them in pictures.

haha, sorry, this is just a mockery of jessica simpsons twit picture. and for those of you that don't get it... sorry. there is one thing that i know about whats going on in america that you dont! whoohoo. point poop. but, i guess since its whats going on with jessica... it doesn't really count much. minus point poop.

and here is my N A S T Y latrine. if youre wondering what those white spots are on the inside of the toilet... well, they are maggots. yup, i barf nearly every time i have to go near this disgusting thing. oh wells. worse things could happen?!

also, people have been commenting on how fat i've become. here in ghana, if you are fat, you are happy. when i first got back to my site, my friends were like... you mustve had a good time with your husband... you've become fat! 

then today, my supervisor was like, i don't even need to ask you how you are anymore... i can tell by just looking at you that you are happy. (so basically he said i'm really fat.) 

i hope i just never get k-fed happy. cause that boy B L E W U P. like fat albert status. 

okay, a serious entry to come... this one is just for shits and giggles. (:

xoxo.

no longer in detox.

going on hiatus... see you suckas sooooon!!!






just kidding dad. (: