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!