Happy July 4th

For July 4th I met a bunch of people at a PC sub office where we grilled sausages and made a potluck of random foods. I wish I had a single picture to show you guys as proof, however it was a frenzy to get at the food so in interest of my hunger I decided to go for the food rather than my camera. We had mashed potatoes, coleslaw, popcorn, sliders, lo mein (I had a craving for it so I decided to make it haha), cheese cubes, rice and fish, fruit bowl, chips and salsa, and lots of drinks. It was a really fun way to celebrate America. We read the declaration of independence and sang lots of songs. All in all we celebrated the fourth in a very American fashion I believe.

I have planted the Moringa Trees at my village. Last Friday my women and I met up and planted nearly 500 trees. So hopefully I'll have pictures for you guys soon of that fun day.

Everything else here is going quite well.

Happy Fourth!

Camp Time

It's almost time for the Northern Region Food Security Youth Camp! Aka a camp for 30 lucky middle school/high school kids to learn everything from better food storage practices, diversifying foods, improving nutrition and much more. The camp (renamed Camp GLAD- Growing leaders in Agriculture Development) begins Thursday and finished Tuesday. I'll let you all know how it goes!

As for the Moringa going on in my village it's been going slow. We've had a drought for the last two weeks so we were unable to transfer the seedlings to their permanent location. It was very lucky that we didn't plant the moringa though because the drought would have definitely killed much of the moringa. Hopefully this drought will end soon though, for all the farmers sake!

I'm training for a Marathon that will be held in the capital of Ghana (Accra) at the end of September. In order to get a good idea of how far I'm actually running Ran and I measured out 3 miles using a 100m tape measure. So in case you were wondering how we pass time here sometimes.... I still need to measure out 4 more miles. Wish me luck.

Updates

It's been a busy last few weeks, lots of meetings, floor pounding, and building!

My village is nursing 120 Moringa trees currently with plans to plant 100 more by rainy season. We've had weekly meetings and are fast underway with the construction of the garden fence. So far the Moringa project is continuing at a smooth steady pace... oh except that one time a bag of cow dung that had been soaking in a barrel of water for two weeks split and splashed me and my foot quite thoroughly.

Now is the time for floor pounding and it never gets old. The amount of work that goes into flattening the compound floor always surprises me. What never gets old though is the singing, pounding, and dancing. I had a JICA (Japan Peace Corps) come visit and my village loved seeing two white people who spoke completely different languages haha.

Also I just returned from a training event hosted by Peace Corps about the care and conservation of Shea Trees and am happy to report we have been passing on the skill of grafting Shea Trees to the women of my village. Slowly but surely. It takes 20 years for a wild Shea tree to fruit, but by grafting (combining an older Shea tree with a younger one) the trees can fruit in 6-8 years.

All in all everything here is going well. In my spare time I am still reading and still talking Dagbani. Things have been rolling along very well and soon we'll all be running out to the farms to start planting crops. The future holds more organic fertilizer training and Moringa training.

Sorry the posts become shorter and fewer in time but I will try to make an effort to be more diligent about posting and keeping you guys updated.

Back from Vacation

Hey everybody I just got back from Vietnam and it was such a fun trip! For 1 month Ran and I traveled up the coast of Vietnam and also made a side stop in Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. It was a great trip and vacation but there's nothing like coming back to Ghana and feeling like you've come home.

The welcome back to my community was so uplifting, I mean, it's pretty hard not to break out into a big smile when 40 children are running over to you screaming "Madam Weeeeelcome! Madam Weeeelcome!!" Haha jeeze.

So after being gone a month the rabbit project I've been working on for the past year seems to be continuing in a sustainable manner. The rabbits seemed healthy and even 1 house's rabbits gave birth while I was gone. So far so good!

In a 2 weeks we'll be going to "All Vol" our annual all volunteer conference where every PC volunteer in Ghana will be meeting up. How interesting it will be to see everybody again.

Current projects:
Starting the tree nursery and the women's group to be associated with the nursery.
More world map lectures.

Bush Fire

It's that time of the year again, bush fire season. It hasn't rained in almost 3 months and everything in the bush is a matchstick waiting to be stuck. Due to habit or a lack of education about the consequences of a bush fire, several farmers purposely start bush fires. Some of them think that it makes the land look "pretty," some do it just because "that's what we've always done," and others just do it because everybody else is.

It's strange because every time I tell them about how bush fires take nutrients away from the ground (thereby making next years harvest yield less) and how they kill saplings and cause soil erosion, I'm almost always met with a, "Yes I know. It's a bad practice." So I'm not sure if it's a few strange pyromaniacs who don't seem to believe that bush fire consequences exist, or whether farmers just really don't believe it's that big of a deal. Personally I think it's more the latter.

Now with this introduction it's time for me to begin the story...

The other day I was at the school when I noticed this huge black cloud.

I've seen lots of bush fires but I haven't seen one that could cause such a massive smoke cloud. I went out to go and see how big the fire was and where it was. About a 30 minute walk outside of town I find the fire and it is raging. I'm watching it as it swallows up trees. I'm almost tempted to walk closer because I'm naively thinking that if nobody else is paying attention to this fire it must not actually be as bad as it looks. Then a gust of wind comes and the fire jumps 5 feet forward and 10 feet high devouring everything around it. I hightail it out of there.

Many times before I've asked whether this fire was going to become a problem or whether that fire was going to move in toward town. Every time I am met with a no. So naturally I've become accustomed to thinking none of them will ever make it into town. About 2 hours later I come back out to see the fire almost in our backyard. At this point I'm still somehow amazingly unaware of the fact that this fire has traveled 2 miles in the direction of my village and that it probably will not just suddenly stop and burn out by Yapalsi's backyard.

I'm taking still more photo's and videos commenting about the fire and how close it is to my house (the house on the edge of town and therefore first in the path of the fire) literally never really thinking that if this fire continues it is going to start all of our grass huts into one big bonfire.

Luckily others are not as unaware and I start seeing people gathering at the edge of my town with sticks and machettes cutting down growth by the village. It is at this point that I realize this is actually an immediate problem.


The village have a very specific sound they make to alert others of a fire. Make this sound and every person who hears it will do two things; grab a bucket of water and run in the direction of the sound, and recreate the sound to pass it along to those who didn't hear. Within minutes you'll have the entire town force running over with water. This was a really interesting thing to witness and the coolest fire service I've ever seen.

For the next 20 minutes my village and I throw buckets of water at this bush fire. The women carrying the water the men either beating the fire out or spraying it with their farming equipment. It's a really tense 20 minutes but we get the fire put out.

Then about 30 minutes later I hear the fire alert, "waaa-yee... waa-yee" and before I know it I'm running out with a bucket of water. The fire we put out earlier has restarted! So again we pour water everywhere. This time we take extra care to douse everything that was once on fire. And once more the fire is back under control.


How did the fire start to begin with? A farmer started it to try to create a fire belt around his yam farm. On this particular day though, the wind was particularly strong and the farmer didn't clear the area before starting the fire. The wind just picked it up and ran with it. The farmer lost his entire yam farm to a fire of which he created. You might think it's karma but I know first hand that this kind of thing happens all the time. My house father lost half of his cow pea farm from doing the exact same thing 1 week earlier, only on this day the winds weren't as bad so the fire didn't make it very far.

My house made it out okay though and the village made it out okay too. Talk about memorable moments.

The fire behind my house

The Village deciding they would create a fire belt around Yapalsi to prevent further scares.

Also, bush rat is back in season. Can you guys believe it's been over a year since I've come to Yapalsi!

Happy new year!

Hey everybody happy 2013!

For Christmas and New Years it was a relaxing and uneventful (Muslim community, remember?) but I enjoyed it none the less. I've been hard at work on a world map in my community and have just finished the painting portion of it (leaving the labeling). It's been a fun 2 weeks and the children in my village really seemed to enjoy helping me paint.
I also had to go down to the capital of Ghana (Accra) for my mid-service medical checkup. The results say I'm healthy and happy, so sleep peacefully Mom.

So a new year and some new projects planned:
1. More soak away pits
2. Start a women's group making a moringa nursery which will eventually lead to two things: better nutrition for family cooking and extra income for selling the extra seeds/leaves of the moringa tree.
3. TBD

Also the world map is coming along quite well!

The past 3 months

Hello everybody! It's been a busy past few months so let me catch you up right away.

So since harvesting what have I been up to?

1. I have given a discussion on the importance of keeping records to farmers in my village. The rabbit project is going well and some houses are on their second litter of rabbits (mine included)!

2. My mom came to visit me in my village! We had a great time together. My Mom spent 3 days in my village where she got to experience a local festival, eat local cuisine, and respond "Naaa..." to everything asked of her in Dagbani (well almost, "ney" sounds close to "naa" right?). She got to watch people carry water from the local watering hole and take bucket baths. She got to experience the pleasantries of a latrine and the joy of listening to animals talk to each other at all hours of the day (night). She was able to combat malaria by taking slightly hallucinogenic malaria medicine and she was able to reorganize my entire room (thanks for that Mom).
      She was ready to leave.
      We went to Mole National park where we got to see a bunch of different animals- baboons (man do they have red butts), warthogs (Timon!), monkeys of all types, antelopes of all sizes and stripes, birds of varying colors, but no big cats (no Simba) or elephants.
      She survived the trotro riding experience where it's always a fun game to see what somebody next to you will be carrying (chickens? their 3 children? a goat?).

      She participated in making local pottery! Any ceramics teacher could learn a thing or two from these very talented pottery makers.
      Then she had to wave "byebye-yo" to everybody as she flew back to the land of promises and dreams, though some people still think she drove home...

On that last point....

3. I've started working on a world map to be drawn on our elementary school. 6.5 feet by 13 feet.

 4. Fire Festival! There is a festival to celebrate the end of harvesting everything and that was a blast. Pretty interesting to watch everybody dance with fire. I tried my hand at it and was not good. I almost set a child on fire. Yeesh.