Marla

For our last big Ghanaian adventure we went again to the beloved volta region. This time we set off in search of the country's highest mountain Mt Gemi with aim to climb a bit of it and spend some time at the village at its peak. After we arrived in Fume, a villabe at the base of the mountain we caught a tro tro to a mid point village. From there we took the footpath up the rest of the way up the 885 meter mountain. It was verrrrry steep and hot, and i will admit that my climbing wasnt on top form. This was NOT helped by the 60+ year old residents of the area who repeatedly passed me up, or by the shoeless children balancing bowls of bananas on thier heads while skipping past ... read more

I have looked into sponsoring a bit more and have decided to sponsor a 9 year old girl named Sedi. She is currently in Grade three, and i will sponsor her with mom for the next six years until she finishes junior secondary school. Here is a summary of her story and why i picked her. On an average day sedi gets up at 4am. Her father is a chauffer for white people, so that means they have to get up really early so he can drop her to school before he needs to be at work. In school Sedi studies Twi, French, English, Math, ICT, geography and other subjects. At the age of nine she is already competent in/ learning 4 languages. She gets good marks, and is among the top of her class. After ... read more

What exactly does it mean to help someone? Coming here i thought i would be able to help countless people just by being around, and ive realized that its just not true. Im not skilled in the right areas to really help, and im not here for long enough to really follow through with anything or start a project etc. Theres a LOT of red tape to cut through if you want to join an NGO, which personally i think is wrong since it means a lot of people will never even get the chance to help out even if they want to. I wanted to work at an orphanage, and that definately didnt work. Its also difficult to decide who really needs help. Of course everyone needs help at some point in thier lives, but ... read more

So we are walking along one evening when someone starts desperately speaking french in our direction. The man approached us and asked if anyone spoke french. One of us did. At this point he prays and thanks God in front of us and begins to cry. here is his story in summary. He is a Student from Benin ( only about 8 hours from where i live in Ghana). He came to study topography and english in Ghana. He arrived on a bus with his diploma and went immediately to an internet cafe to write his family about his safe arrival. There, he met a man from Gabon who also spoke french. Speaking no english, the Man from benin left with the man from Gabon and got into a shared taxi to get to the campus. ... read more

So ive had some time to reflect lately on how much ive changed my perspectives since ive been here, and in some areas im finding that i think quite diffferently. Take for example my room of residence here. At first i thought it was, well, very dingy! the matteress is gray and covered with stains, the walls are brown with dust, the light are florescent etc. When i arrived i thought it was rather like prison to be honest. very industrial with few amenities... My, how my ideas on that have changed!!! Having slept on the ground both inside and outside on my various traveld around the country, and having peed in ditches, female urinals, and maggot infested cess pits, you come to have a different understanding of what luxury means. I can assure you at ... read more

Heres how exams are set up in Ghana. Its a very different system than the north american one, but from what i hear its not so far off from the british exam system. We found out our exam dates a few weeks ago, but the location is not given out until two days before the actual test. You need to enter the hall a half an hour before the exam starts to find your student number. Numbers are written in chalk on desks around the room, and you must sit at your corresponding desk. Usually the exam halls have more than one exam taking place at the same time. For example in my language teaching exam, there was also a food sciences exam taking place in the same room. Exams are 2.5 hours long and are ... read more

So on sunday morning, still at the eco village, i began to feel a bit off. I thought it was just exhaustion from the day before combined with the awful overbearing heat of the morning sun. unfortuantely that was not the case. Within a few hours i had a raging fever of what i estimate to be around 103-104 because i was nearing delirious. Of course, we were on a non accessable peninsula so we has no choice but to boat it back to the mainland. someone carried me on the boat and we made it back to the mainland alright, but i was feeling like crap, to put it lightly. my options were to go to the remote clinic, and risk a mis diagnosis, or get in a trotro and drive for three hours untill ... read more

Last weekend we went again to the infamous Dodi island to do some more medical work and plant some more mango trees etc. This time we stayed on a peninsula that is only about 15 minutes by boat from the main land rather than staying all the way out on the island. Technically the island IS on the main land of course, but its not accessable unless you have a jungle motor bike. This peninsula is owned by an uncle of one of our friends, and it is being developed as an eco village. Although this peninsula is only a few miles above the hydro electric dam that supplies electricity to most of Ghana and the surrounding countries, neither the peninsula nor the island recieve any electricity. This issue is one of the many that Kojo ... read more

heya sooooo my whole thing of being a medic was rather entertaining. I didnt have too much to work with, but i had some anticeptic concentrate, gentian violet, bandages and heat spray. The first match was a bunch of kids, they were pretty funny to watch since most of them are so gangly that theres no real muscle behind their charges etc. At the end though, ALL of the kids came up to me ( once they found out an obroni girl was doing the treatment) and wanted some attention. Some of them even made there own scratches to have need for treatment. some of the older ones, prolly around 13-14 years old, decided that they should marry me..... jajajajaja Next were the women, and they were the scariest to watch because they were viscious! but ... read more