So my last update was about two months ago, and that was about something that happened two months prior, so I guess I have a lot to write about. As you may have noticed, the grant application was put on my blog. About a month ago, the entire grant had been filled. I hadn’t planned [...]
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Echoing the refrain of every little kid I pass on the way to school, I thought I would let anyone out there reading this that you can now donate money to be used to help build the computer lab at the school where I teach. The link to the website is here: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=641-296 I know [...]
[On April 25th, I traveled with three other Peace Corps volunteers, friends of mine, to the city of Ho in the Volta Region for the Peace Corps Ghana All Volunteer Conference. Over the course of the week, the four of us, along with 122 other Peace Corps volunteers from Ghana attended HIV/AIDS education workshops, handled [...]
I’m back from my vacation. I’ll try to compose a post in the coming weeks on my trip to Ho for a Peace Corps conference, and then to a beach resort near Takoradi. Meanwhile, I uploaded some new pictures of my recent trip, as well as a day trip I took earlier in April to [...]
There is a fatalism here which I’m afraid I’ll never understand. Every outcome and occurrence is resigned to the realm of the divine. Every instance of fortune is determined by the whims of the supreme. Every consequence is singularly the work of God. This belief, not merely in God, but in the absoluteness and immutability [...]
Looking to expand my culinary horizons, and reaching the limitations of a propane fueled stove top, I decided it was time to build an oven. Working off of the assumption that an oven is essentially just a box that gets hot inside, I started looking around Yefri and Nkoranza for some metal that I could [...]
Thursday marked nine full months in Ghana. Every time I sit down to try and figure out what I’ve learned, what mistakes I’ve made and what I’ve done right, I can’t do it. In my mind, the whole process of articulating these things, of formalizing my opinions and my perceptions and synthesizing and inducing, of [...]
I submitted my application for a grant to Peace Corps last week. Part of the application involved writing a considerable bit about the project and its aims, the community and their needs, and plans for implementation and sustainability. Below, I’ve posted most of what I wrote for the application to give you all an idea [...]
For the last month or so, with a few brief exceptions, I’ve been very busy. The end of the Fall term was a little hectic, as I didn’t really know what the hell I was suppose to be doing. Not long after that I my site to travel up north for Christmas and [...]
The air was cold outside when I left my house in the morning the day before Thanksgiving. It was still dark out, but in the moon light I could see my breath. I was freezing. I had on shorts and a t-shirt and I jumped in place and shifted my weight from [...]
I’m almost done writing a post on my Thanksgiving trip and I have more photos that I will upload soon enough, probably this Saturday or Sunday. There are some photos from Thanksgiving at the ambassador’s residence in Accra if you follow the link on the right hand side of the page. I hope [...]
The road to Yefri winds through the luscious, low rolling hills of central Ghana, cutting down through a radiant, quintessentially African landscape. Where the road starts, in Nkoranza, the street is paved and there is a taxi station. The station is a dusty dirt parking lot surrounded by shops, and it is here around which [...]
So I realize that my last post deals with events which took place in the middle of August, and it’s now closer to the middle of November. The next posts will all deal with my site, the people, the school, the computer lab, etc. I’ll update again in a few weeks.
Meanwhile, I just uploaded some [...]
I had to meet Jim at the taxi station in New Tafo by 9 that morning. In my bedroom, there was a rather large heap of clutter, mainly papers, pamphlets, some small books. They were still strewn across the top of the dresser and I had to do something with before I left. [...]
Here I am, six weeks into my service as a volunteer, and I still haven’t really figured out how I feel about Peace Corps training. By now, it’s a moot point; nothing, other than this blog post (which I’ve been poking at for the better part of a month), is contingent upon me formulating an [...]
Unfortunately, I was not able to complete my next entry on life here in Ghana in time to upload it this weekend, but I was able to upload some new pictures. If you follow the link on the right hand side of the page, you can see the pictures I have taken of my house [...]
The last post ends on a somewhat macabre note. So no tears, ok?
At some point in the middle of July I found myself stranded, having stayed in New Tafo past sunset. I had been out in the afternoon with some friends, enjoying beers at a spot near the internet café in town. Despite parting ways with my company during daylight, and intending only to reply to the [...]
Unfortunately, the nearest internet cafe to my home stopped working three days after I moved here in August. It was to have been fixed next week, for the last three weeks, so your guess is as good as mine as to when it will actually be back up. In the mean time, I [...]
I was able to upload some pictures over the course of yesterday and today. If you click on the link to my pictures on the right hand side of the page you can view them. Unfortunately, my camera is not very good, so the quality of the photos is quite poor. I am going to [...]
So I’ve been trying to get to the internet cafe for the better part of the past week, but due to technical problems at the internet cafe, being busy, and being violently ill, I wasn’t able to make it until today. I passed my language exam last Thursday, as did everyone else, so our [...]
On that Thursday I sat perched on a worn smooth wooden bench in the breezy shade of a mango tree at the high school compound in Asafo. With the lush, verdant boughs hanging in my face, I jiggled my leg impatiently. The man I was waiting for, a Ghanaian and one of my [...]
Three quick things. First, I added a link on the right to www.peacecorpsjournals.com, which is an index of blogs by Peace Corps volunteers from all around the world. The page linked to on the right lists all the blogs from Ghana, but if you navigate around the site you can see the other countries as [...]
I met Gladys early in the afternoon on Thursday. We were under an expansive, cement floored pavilion with all the other Peace Corps trainers, trainees and host families. The dozens of people, well over a hundred, gave each other exaggerated hugs and made small talk in English as one by one, trainee met [...]
I realize my last few posts haven’t exactly been lacking verbosity. Guilty as charged is perhaps too strong and precipitous a declaration, but I’d certainly plead nolo. Writing that short novella brought about a peace within my consciousness unlike anything else ever has. It was not a purging, cathartic peace, such as [...]
This will be really short, but I’m in Accra right now and all the new trainees are being taken to see Barack Obama. I’ll take some pictureres and maybe some video.
I met Patrick, my Vision Quest host, in the center of the recently crowded dirt parking lot where the bus had dropped us. It was 8:00pm, but the sun had long since set and the lot was illuminated by only a handful of street lamps around the edges, projecting into the center and casting shadows [...]
I’ve fallen into a morning routine here in Asafo. I wake up between 5:30 and 5:45 every day in order to go running while the air is still cool and damp and the sun has yet to ascend high into the sky. Any later in the morning and the air would be hot, [...]
I sit here on my cheap foam double bed with the pink comforter and the wooden frame sweating profusely. But I am relaxed. I am calm and content. I have been in Ghana for two weeks now and I have for the first time been able to unpack most of my luggage. [...]
Here are some photos I took while laying out all that I am brining with me to Ghana. I don’t know if I consider it a lot or a little. I don’t really know how it compares to what everyone else is bringing. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow. The majority of my clothing is [...]
Hello friends and family. Hello current, future, and former volunteers. Hello world.
Like most other Peace Corps Volunteers, I decided to start a blog chronicling my 27 months with the Peace Corps in Ghana. As of today, I don’t know how much internet access I will have, either during the first ten weeks of training in [...]
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