November 9, 2007

Question of the day: what are you doing after Peace Corps?

I'm flying home the third week in December. My family is planning to spend the weekend before Christmas Day together on the beach in Wilmington, NC. I'm excited to 1) see a clean beach, 2) see holiday decorations (but avoiding malls and any other place where I might have a nervous breakdown), 3) eat milk products, and 4) most importantly, see my family! Post-Christmas plans include making my way down to Atlanta to see friends and other family!

It's recommended that volunteers spend the last few months wrapping up projects and saying goodbye to friends. Against the advice of Peace Corps and unlike most other volunteers, I've spent my last few months starting new projects and will be extending my service a week to get them finished.

I'm still working on several HIV/AIDS projects. Our bi-weekly radio show continues. We are having a lady living with HIV/AIDS come on the show next week for an interview. We are gearing up for World AIDS Day which takes place Sat, December 1st. All over Ghana, they will be doing free testing that day at major hospitals and health clinics. We are doing a campaign to promote the free testing. We are printing sheet banners to hang in the cities, organizing durbars (town hall meetings) in smaller communities with guest speakers/educators, using our radio show to encourage and educate about testing, and working with the hospitals and clinics to prepare them for an increase in volunteer testing (we hope!) that day.

I was recently asked to be resource person for a one-day workshop for HIV/AIDS orphans, other vulnerable children, and their caregivers. I did a general education on HIV/AIDS - fluids that transmit, ways that people think transmit but actually do not, and ways to prevent. There were more than 100 children (ages 5-18) and several adults from all over the district. 

Village Bicycle Project is a non-profit organization based out of the U.S. (http://www.pcei.org/vbp/) Their mission is to get durable bicycles to villagers and then teach them how to maintain the bikes (making this a more sustainable project). The bikes are donated from all over the world but I think mostly from U.S. and U.K. and then shipped (300 at a time) to Ghana. The bikes are sold for approximately half the price of an equivalent bike in Accra (except you can't even find bikes at this good quality in Ghana). They are shipped to the village and the recipients attend a mandatory 8-hour workshop to learn how to maintain the bike. Bike fitters in each community are also invited to attend the workshop and given a set of tools so they can fix the bikes when needed. VBP typically works with Peace Corps volunteer because we handle the community logistics (informational meetings, collecting money, organizing workshops, & hosting VBP trainers) while they handle transporting the bikes and the actual training. Well, VBP is coming to me with 100 bikes on Nov. 21st! I've been traveling to each of the villages meeting with the communities and getting ready to host 3 trainers at my house! We are doing 5 workshops in 4 different communities - one of which will be for my BWFA women in Binaba. I can't wait to witness 20 women farmers learning to fix their new bicycle!! :)

I told you about the flooding in the northern part of Ghana in my last update. Entire farms were condemned and many house walls fell. BWFA's onion store also suffered substantial damage. Two outer walls and several storage racks inside fell down to the ground. I wrote a proposal for a grant to repair the structure and also rehabilitate the main office building, including our literacy classroom and other store rooms. I'm hoping the funding will be approved before I leave but chances are slim.

As if all of that is not keeping me busy enough, I'm working with a group of students and their art teacher to paint a 36 square foot map of Africa on one of the classroom walls of a nearby JSS (junior high) school.

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