WAWA - West Africa Wins Again

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Hello Everyone,
Not much happened this past week. Hot, dry weather, classes, the usual. However, Wednesday was the last real day I got to spend with the girls at my internship. Hopefully I'll be able to visit them once or twice more before I have to leave, however, just in case I took lots of pictures and said some informal goodbyes. After distributing some school supplies and candy we brought for the girls and putting up a badly needed world map, I informed the girls that they would later be receiving some school supplies sent from high school teachers, students, and Lodi, Wisconsin community members. The girls were so overjoyed that they insisted I take a whole group picture of them for all the people at home who are working so hard to help them. I too am so thankful and touched by all the hard work that my former teacher and mentors, fellow community members, and current students are doing. These girls will benefit so much from your actions and thoughts.
On Friday night we had the biggest storm we've received since being in Ghana. At about midnight I awoke to thunder, lightening, and machine-gun sounds of water droplets hitting our leaky, tin roof. For the next six hours I tried to ignore the thrashing palm trees outside my window, the blinding light that cracked the sky and the deafening noise that followed it. However, when the chorus of bullfrogs began outside, I gave up. Of course I didn't find out that they were frogs until morning and so I spent the night wondering what on Earth humans did to deserve the plague of such an awful, earsplitting noise. The only way I can describe it is to inappropriately say that it sounded like pigs were systematically being slaughtered outside my bedroom window all night. The noise eventually became so unbearable that I had to dig out the earplugs that my mother packed for me..."just in case." I've never been more appreciative of my mother's sensible packing techniques.
Although the storm brought cooler weather, the power in our entire district went out. My housemates and I are used to the power coming back on within at least 24 hours, however, we were glad for our last CIEE trip to the beach on Sunday when the power outage was approaching 48 hours. About 45 minutes outside of Legon we arrived at the beautiful Bojo Beach. We basked in the ocean and soaked up the sun until 3pm and then headed home, all the while praying to the electrical gods. We were all relieved to find that the electricity was indeed back on when we got home. Because I had not gotten any sleep Friday night because of the storm and frogs, and hadn't gotten any sleep Saturday night because of the unbearable heat due to the lack of electricity and therefore fans, I quickly showered off the ocean and beach remains from my body, climbed into bed and immediately drifted off to sleep.
And that's really all that happened this past week. As always thanks for reading and I hope all is well.

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Photos

the library that we started at Today's Choices
can you tell I'm sweating?