Quick Update

I recently realized that I posted pictures of my soap making workshop but never actually wrote about it. I spent the week before Easter in the Upper West at my friend Adam’s site learning how to make moringa soap. The trip itself was a little painful since we did the whole thing in one day. I think we left site around 9am and didn’t arrive in Lawra until 4something in the morning the next day. The workshop took place at the clinic where patients make the soap to earn money to pay for their treatments. Many of these workers have HIV/AIDS and the sale of the soap helps both them and the clinic. To condense a long week into a few sentences I’ll just say a few things:

It was incredibly dry and dusty. I forgot it was still the middle of the dry season and for the whole week it felt like there were 3 cups of sand in my throat. I also got sick, possibly from the soap fumes, and wasn’t feeling all that spectacular all week long.

Soap is not that difficult to make but many of the steps of the process are extremely important and cannot be done incorrectly. This pertains mostly to the mixing of the costic soda, which is extremely toxic and mostly awful. Also the carving of the soap (for beautification) is extremely tedious and far more difficult than one would imagine. In all, soap making from start to finish is a big undertaking and I hope that when my group of workers start to make it we are efficient from the very beginning. I haven’t talked with anyone about the soap making yet in my town since I’ve been preoccupied with some other things but since we now have all the equipment (which I had to drag down with me and looked somewhat like a body bag) we should be able to start soon. I brought back SO much soap that my whole smaller room is just overflowing with soap. At least the people in my town will be clean since I’ve just been handing it out everywhere since I came back.

I spent Easter getting over my dusty cough at the Kumasi sub-office while most of my friends were jumping off cliffs (literally) about an hour away at the paragliding festival in Nkawkaw. I however, enjoyed being around the bunnies and pink chickens that were wandering around outside the office (pictures on facebook).

The map is nearly finished. I wanted to have some kind of party for its completion but school ends this week and getting all the kids to come to school when it’s out is very difficult. I figure I’ll just wait until it starts up again. This Wednesday I will be taking three of my best female junior high school students to Accra to participate in a Take your Daughter to Work day event. A few other volunteers will also be bringing students and the event will be held at a television production studio. It should hopefully be really interesting and helpful to the girls. Speaking of girls, the camp in August is still a work in progress but after every meeting I feel more and more excited about our event and can’t wait till we actually have the camp.

I recently met with a student from my university who is studying at Legon in Accra. She is also a Periclean Scholar (an amazing program I was in at Elon) and will be visiting my site in a week or so. We will then go on to see the clinic built by the Periclean 2010 class in Kpetoe, Volta region, which also happens to be Dan’s site. I’m currently working on facilitating the connection between Periclean Scholars and Peace Corps volunteers because I was extremely frustrated to hear they chose a town with aPeace Corps volunteer and didn’t communicate with him at all!

Yesterday I went to church for 4 hours. That was my limit and I escaped after the fourth collection of money. One of the female teachers at the primary school where I have been painting the map got married this weekend so church yesterday was the official ceremony of that. Parts of it were really nice, and parts of it were really frustrating. The fact that I made it through 4 hours is pretty impressive, even to myself.

Our last HIV/AIDS moringa training is coming up at the end of the month but I will miss it because of our All volunteer conference. Luckily, Nana is taking charge and will do the meeting himself. This is pretty exciting since the whole point of these workshops is for him to be able to continue doing them even once I’m gone. We are hoping to provide a whole meal made from moringa for the lunch so I need to help with the planning for that this week.

I handed in my travel forms for my trip home (!) and found out I still have over a week in vacation days left. I guess I could have come home for more time but maybe I will take a trip to one of the neighboring countries like Togo or Benin. A lot of volunteers I know have been to both so I’ll get some information and find out. I might as well since I’ m here and may not be in West Africa again for a long time.

Well that’s my quick update, hope everyone is doing well!