What have I been doing the past 5 months? A lot.

Back in January and February I began contacting all kinds of borehole people to ask for their help in getting a borehole installed for Yapalsi so we could all have clean water to drink. All information about this can be found at www.youtube.com/user/DianaHsieh1

I spent a lot of time running around my backyard (miles and miles into my backyard, also known as, the bush) hunting for different animals to accompany my family and my own evening meals. I had it in my head I was going to catch a rabbit one day. The best I ever did was a bush mouse.

  

There was a random week I spent translating for a Chinese man who had been living in the town I go to to buy groceries (Savelugu). He had been living there for almost two weeks and spoke only Chinese. He had there to assemble a machine that a Ghanian man had bought to make soda products. Apparently there had been a language barrier between Dagbanli and Chinese. Enter 3 Ghanian men at my house in Yapalsi at 7pm at night. They came and asked for my services and I vainly hoped that they were confused and it was actually a Japanese man that was here. But they were correct and it was a Chinese mandarin speaking man there. So I spent a week being driven to my market town and I learned a lot about how soda is made. Did you guys know that soda bottles come in little test tube looking things that hot air will be blown into it to shape it into the shape of the bottle? It’s pretty cool.

Then I went home for a month and ran all over America putting a little over 5,000 miles on my Mom’s car  (Thanks Mom!!). I went to South Carolina and met my best friends from college, I went to Utah for a week of backpacking, and then I went to Chicago to meet my boyfriend’s parents. All went well.

Now I’m back in Ghana and I had just gotten back from a Shea Tree Training event held in Tamale (the capital of the northern region). I brought one woman from my village (Sanatu) and I think she really got a lot out of it. The process of making Shea Butter is well known here in Ghana, however the process of making high quality Shea Butter is less known (or practiced). We’re going to have a meeting where she passes on her knowledge to the other women here in Yapalsi.

The borehole grant has been funded so that will be what I will be working on the next few weeks. Some of you have expressed regrets that you were not able to donate before the grant was funded, but let me tell you there will be another chance! The funding may not be sufficient (inflation and unforeseen costs) and I will therefore need to alter the original budget. If and when that happens I will cry out again for all of your wonderful donations that you weren’t able to give yet.

Pictures on the next post. The internet isn't able to upload anything other than text today.