Pictures

Hi everyone, I wanted to let you know that I am trying to upload pictures onto the blog, but the internet here is so slow that it is taking me 20 minutes at least to try and upload one. I am working on a way to upload them faster, and will let you all know as soon as I have done so.

Thank you for your patience!

Lana.

Week 2

Tuesday

I woke up early this morning to go see all the children in my old classroom at Divine Star. I haven’t seen the kids in over two days as we have been so busy gathering all the building material for the new site, and because the site is about a 15 minute walk from where the school is now,I tend to spend a good amount of time there to make sure everything is going ok before getting back to the hotel and heading to the orphanage.

So this morning, I woke up and made it to school at 8am at which point the children were getting ready for assembly before making it to their classrooms. As I got closer to the gate, I could already start hearing the screams “Madame Lana, Madame Lana, we thought you left us!”. Not having been to the school in two days had depressed my kids who had started to believe I had gone home without saying goodbye to them. The boys bursted out of joy when they saw I had brought a soccer ball for them to play with during recess. We spent the entire morning learning about personal hygiene, and then after 12 I headed home to get ready to go to the orphanage where I stayed until about 6pm playing with the kids and helping them bathe in the river.

Wednesday

Today did not start out as great as I had hoped. Although thrilled that the masons had worked faster than anticipated and used up all the blocks and the cement that we had available on the site, they showed up in front of my hotel room at 6am to let me know that they had nothing to do since they were out of materials, so we would have to go get some more.

Problem 1: the bank doesn’t open until 8.30

Problem 2: I opened up a local account to have better access to the funds raised, and mom transfered all the funds from my Dubai Barclays account to my Hohoe Barclays account, but the transfer is taking way too long and I will not have any cash for the next 3 days.

With all the work in hiatus and no money to resolve the issue, I headed to the bank where I spent the next 3 hours trying to sort it out. Finally, Allala, one of the staff members I have been dealing with daily gave me the cash I needed and advised me on the necessary quantities of blocks and cement we would need to order. Van-li (my local Ghanaian friend who is helping me supervise the site), Prosper, Paradise, (Prosper and Paradise are the two master masons on the site) and Isaac (headmaster at Divine Star) headed over to the block factory where we ordered 1000 blocks and 100 bags of cement. We hired a truck to deliver all the material to the site, but as it was beginning to rain, we decided we would resume work the next morning at 6.30

Thursday

By the time I made it to the site this morning, I was pleasantly surprised with how fast the classrooms were coming along. I decided to spend the rest of the day at the orphanage as it was my friend Abby’s last day in Hohoe before heading back to the US on Saturday. We are planning to head to Akosombo tomorrow, which is about 2.5 hours away from Hohoe and spend the night there. Akosombo is right by the volta river, which the dam powers the entire region. We will spend Abby’s last night there before saying goodbye to her on Saturday morning and heading back to Hohoe as Sunday was going to be a big day for us.

Sunday

I woke up this morning very excited. Most of my attention has been focused on getting the classrooms started as I want them to be done by the time I leave, but today my friend Paul’s dad, who is the head accountant for the entire volta region will be taking us for a drive to show us his 50 acres of farm land. After I shared my plans to start farming at Eugemot, Paul mentioned it to his dad who was kind enough to provide us with two acres of land where we will be able to farm for Eugemot. He showed us the huge space and gave us a basic breakdown of the things we will be planting: maize, rice, yams, green leaves, beans, tomatoes... This is really getting very exciting. He assured me that his laborers will do all the work and even deliver the produce back to Eugemot afterwards, so our only expense is going to be getting the crops ready. Mr Lord Benjamin Boni (Paul’s dad) informed us that the next harvest season doesn’t start until July, so we will need to wait until then to begin work on the crops, after which the crops will be ready for harvest a few months later. In the meantime, we are setting up a food plan for the orphanage to make sure they get enough nutrients until we can begin to utilize the farm.

Paul’s dad sells the produce from his farm and sells it across the region, but he has also been providing free maize and rice for Eugemot while we were away, so he has promised us to keep doing the same until everything is up and running.

Monday

Today is a sad day. After the orphans make it to Senior Secondary High School, the orphans have to leave the orphanage and move to a boarding school, which is sometimes a few hours away. They come back every few months for the holidays to see their brothers and sisters before having to return. Francis, who is 15 years old and one of the smartest kid I have ever met, is heading back to his boarding school and so I will not be seeing him again. Saying goodbye to him was extremely difficult as I have gotten very attached to him over the course of this year (we have written letters to each other constantly) and the mere thought of not seeing him everyday was very depressing. I wanted to spend the rest of the day at Eugemot to console the orphans, many of whom were crying, but unfortunately Paradise the mason called and informed me that we would need to go meet the steel bender right away and get him some rods and wires as he would need to start work in the morning. I also met with the carpenter and bought 50 boards of wood so he could begin work on the frames and support for the pillars.

I spent the rest of the night up with Annie, my good friend who is here with me from Utah, planning a sports competition we will be having at Eugemot on Wednesday. The kids are getting bored and do not have much to do, so we decided that this would be a great and exciting way to spend the day. We will have 8 teams of 5 compete in various activities with prizes to be won, and fruits, snacks, and juices to be enjoyed.

I hope you have enjoyed the pictures I posted, and I look forward to sending you my next update next week!

Week 1 cont'd

Days 4,5,6

Today was a big day for the project. I had received all the quotations for the work to be done on Divine Star and Eugemot orphanage prior to my trip to Hohoe, but in Ghana, prices can vary substantially based on the color of your skin or your acquaintances in town.

I am very lucky to have Barclays Bank behind me, and the branch in Hohoe has been more than helpful. Mr Allala, one of the staff members at the branch here, has been overseeing everything and making sure that I am not being taken advantage of, which proved to be more than useful when he was able to bring the quotations down by more than 2000 cedis (about $1500). We spent the entire day meeting with different masons and carpenters trying to negotiate rates for the three classrooms we will be building at Divine Star. After hours of arguing and even yelling out of frustration, we finally reach a consensus: the two most reasonable masons will join hands and work together!

Friday was not so much of a good day. After having finally picked a team to begin work on the project, we compiled a list of all the materials we would be needing for the first week: filling sand, smooth sand, concrete sand, cement, blocks, wood...the list goes on.

Problem n.1: the bank will only let me withdraw small amounts of cash everyday. Not ideal when I need big chunks of money to pay the workers who will be bringing all the materials in the morning.

Problem n.2: the ATM is busted for the day: nothing I can do. The day is wasting away and unfortunately we are all frustrated and angry. Thankfully, my dearest mom (lifesaver) was able to figure out a solution and I will have access to some of my funds later tonight

After feeling angry for not being more productive in the afternoon, I decided that the perfect way to cheer myself up would be to head to Eugemot and spend the evening playing with the orphans. I was right, there is nothing else I would rather be doing.

I spent a good two hours that day talking to Mama Eugenia (the woman who owns Eugemot orphanage) and some of the caretakers, to come up with a solid plan for Eugemot. Their main problem is food, and after a lot of thinking I have come to realize that I want to implement a more sustainable way for them to get the proper nutrients rather than starting a meal plan, as the whole idea behind this project is to teach them to be self-sustainable.

Therefore, here is what I plan to do: we are going to teach them how to farm. One of my local friends’ dad owns a lot of land where farmers grow vegetables, rice, yams... He has been generous enough to offer to give us a plot of land where his farmers will be responsible to start the project going. We will buy all the material necessary and the farmers will teach the orphanage how to take care of the land and farm.

Also, as the orphanage is lacking a lot of school supplies, we went to to town at night and bought over 200 exercise books and notebooks, as the kids spent most of their school day sleeping since they had nothing to do.

Saturday was a busy day as we spent a good chunk of the day on the new site of Divine Star overseeing the truck which was delivering all the required elements to begin the construction on Monday. Yes, I do mean one truck. One truck which will be making 14 trips back and forth to deliver everything. We started at 6am, and did not finish until 7pm.

I also spent a good amount of time thinking of a way to set up a water filtration system for the orphanage as things are really getting worse for them, as well as trying to figure out how to start our teachers’ training program.

Tomorrow is Sunday, and most people will be at church until 3pm and since everything is closed, I plan on spending the day relaxing with my friends in the hotel.

Good morning to everyone! Today is Monday and we have finally started work on the new site at Divine Star! I am really excited to see what the outcome will be, and will be posting pictures tomorrow hopefully. I will keep you updated on the progress made throughout the week.

Week 1

Days 1,2,3

I landed in Accra on Thursday May 20th where 2 of my friends who had arrived a few days before, picked me up. We stayed in Accra until Saturday afternoon as another one of our friends from the US was arriving Saturday morning, and after picking her up, we began our 4 hour journey back to Hohoe on a “trotro”. A trotro is a really old busted minivan that has twelve seats but will fill up at least 20 before it decides it has enough passengers to leave. As you can imagine, it was a pretty unique experience.

The first three days in Hohoe were spent mainly walking around town, trying to re-familiarize myself with the village and the people. We were accosted by waves of people at a time, many who remembered us and wanted to talk to us, greet us, or hug us, and some who just wished to befriend the “yevus” (white people) that everyone seemed keen to talk to.

The hotel we are staying at is the only proper hotel in town (a 1 star hotel to be more specific) but it is pretty decent. I am sharing a room with two of my very good American friends from my previous trip to Ghana, and there are currently six other previous Hohoe volunteers occupying the rest of the rooms. Most have returned because they missed their kids and wanted to come back and teach, and there is one other person also working on a project at one of the orphanages. We are all pretty busy during the day but always meet up at around 5pm for dinner, and just hang out after as there is nothing to do after 6pm, which is when it gets dark.

I stopped by Divine Star Monday morning to see the children, as they were the only thing I could think about all night and as I walked in, all the children started screaming “Madame Lana, we miss you!” and hugging me. Knowing that after 7months, all of the kids at the school still remembered me was one of the greatest feelings anyone could have. However, to my surprise, only 10 of the 45 students in my old classroom were present, and I was horrified to learn that most of the children at the school had been sent home until they could pay their $8 a semester school fees.

Tuesday was a national holiday (African Union Day) and it rained all day on Wednesday (the roads get really muddy when it rains and it is really hard to go anywhere) , therefore I was not able to go to school and see my kids.

My afternoons were spent at Eugemot orphanage, where we had a big bonfire on Monday night and introduced the concept of roasting marshmallows to the children who were so excited to try an “American dessert”. Most of the children did not eat more than two as they all started complaining about how American candy was too sweet and it would give them a stomach ache.

The orphans are still the same bubbly children they were back in September, but many of them have lost weight. There are two new orphans aged 11 and 13, and two of the babies can now walk so they are always running around.

I was shocked to find out that their water situation has worsened as the children now have to walk about two minutes to get to the river where they take their daily bath.