Movie Star, Babies & Rabbit Pizza

We had a great week at a current Volunteer's site in Kpendua in the Northern Region. Besides eating really good food and having fun, I learned a lot too! Monday tested our patience a bit since filming for the movie was supposed to started in the morning but didn't until after lunch in the afternoon. I am definitely learning patience with all the waiting that happens quite often in daily life here. The drama team in the community wrote, practiced, and filmed a full length drama in Dagbani. It was really cool to see how motivated and passionate about the project they were and how the Volunteer played a background support role. The five of us trainees all got to play bit parts- one of the guys and I got to wear Ghanaian army uniforms and run to capture the bad guys. We biked to a nearby community (which made me really excited to get a bike at site) and a lot of the members came out to watch the filming process.

The next day we broke into groups and conducted a survey about malaria in 6 households with the help of 2 nurses from the clinic. It was really interesting to collect information on how many people in their house had malaria recently, if they had/used mosquito nets, and their general knowledge level about the disease. I think it would be a useful way to assess the need in my community as well as meet people. We had the chance to help put up 2 nets in a house so joked that we did our saving the world for the day. Market day in a surrounding village was in the afternoon so we headed there to delight in finding hats, eating fried cheese (wagachi) and doing our grocery shopping. One of my favorite parts of the week were all the cute kids hanging around the house with us. There were two darling sisters who would just wander over to the house on their own (would never happen in America) and hang out for hours on end. My big accomplishment for the week was teaching them to parrot me and say 'I love you.' I also got the older one to repeat 'Say it again' as well completely by accident. It was pretty great. I hope to get some photos posted soon!

Wednesday morning we awoke to lots of rain which basically means people do not go out. It makes a lot of sense that downpours here shut everything down since cars aren't readily available to shield you from the storm. Baby weighing was supposed to happen at the clinic starting at 8am but because of the rain didn't start until much later. So instead we learned about grant writing and even practiced by coming up with a sample HIV/AIDS project on our own. Mothers bring their babies in monthly for the first two years of their lives to track their weight and make sure they are healthy. We helped by weighing the babies and recording their weight in their books. Of course the first baby I was given to weight screamed bloody murder- ah no wonder babies terrify me. There were some super adorable babies thought so I couldn't help but enjoy myself. For our last night in Kpendua, we made rabbit pizza! A man came buy in the morning selling rabbits he killed so we bought some that he then roasted (the product of which was disgusting looking) and then one of the nurses fried for us. It was amazingly tasty! I was grossed out by the prospect of eating bunny (yes I know it makes it worse to use that word) but it really was delicious. Especially on top of our awesome pizza with homemade dough, fresh tomato sauce, cheese, onions, and green peppers. Plus we made macaroni and cheese! It was a glorious food night.

Beginning on Thursday we started out journey back to the training hub stopping over in Tamale for the night. Now I am in Kumasi and tomorrow will be heading back to Kukurantumi. We decided to travel in small small (popular Ghanaian-English saying) legs to break up the travel. On the very long travel days I just tell myself it will be completely miserable so then I expect it and accept it so I don't get too frustrated. I am excited to see my home stay family since I've been away for a while now. I also feel motivated to return to the classroom for more Buli learning after going to site visit and being reminded of how much I have to learn.