BIG NEWS! I've created a PayPal account for the Abigail/Nadia clinic, and if you just look thataway, ------------------------------------------------------------>
you will find a convenient link! I have often had kind people ask, "How can I donate?" and it has come to my attention that there are easier and more secure ways than sending a check in the mail. So, here it is!

Also, more knowledgeable people than myself have offered to research how to make the Abigail/Nadia Clinic a tax-deductible organization. I am very excited about this possibility!

Cape Coast is buzzing today despite the dusty hazy weather...Ghana goes up against Morocco in the African Cup of Nations tonight, a big game! Every street stall is selling Ghana flags, belts, hats, noisemakers, anything you can think of; you can't look anywhere without seeing red, gold and green. This reminds me of Summer 2006 during the World Cup, when I was lucky enough to be in Ghana as they maneuvered through the tournament. After defeating the U.S. and Czech Republic among others, they finally ceded to Italy. The night of that game, Ghanaians still celebrated the success they'd made with dancing and parades through the streets. Truly, I've never seen a people with as much spirit as the Ghanaians have. This tournament has the added excitement (and pressure) of being on home turf, and it is definitely felt.

I’m back!

Sincere apologies for my ridiculous lethargy with this blog! Happily I have much news to report:

I arrived in Ghana last week after a month’s vacation at home in Boston to begin my Northeastern Co-op focusing solely on the clinic in Nsanfo for the next six months! I can’t say how excited I am to have so much time and possibility ahead of me. Accompanying me are two Northeastern students, Amanda and Kim, who will be volunteering at the clinic Monday through Friday while experiencing Ghanaian life with a host family in Nsanfo and exploring the sights around Cape Coast on the weekends. Already they are getting a taste of how energetic and proud Ghanaians are—Ghana is hosting the Africa Cup of Nations this year (soccer, what else?), and on the very first game of the tournament on Sunday night, Ghana won against Guinea by one last minute goal; the girls compared the scene in Cape Coast to a Red Sox night back home!

The clinic promises to progress in huge strides in the next few months. On Tuesday our Northeastern volunteers had their first day of work at the clinic, while the community continued to set concrete blocks for the new building. Amanda and Kim were inundated with young kids from the town’s primary school during break, who were encouraged to come to have wounds (mostly from rough soccer games) dressed for free with donated first aid supplies. Today, Wednesday, was the day for adults of Nsanfo to come for free first aid as well, most of these from work in the farms. Together with the head nurse Lawrence, they also put together a list of most commonly called for medicine so that I can search for the best prices outside of Nsanfo and sell them as needed at the same flat price in the clinic so that we can continue to restock our supply. In addition, we will be purchasing a bulletin board for the clinic to post nurse schedules, clinic inventory, and any new announcements or donations to the clinic. In the next few weeks we will also be constructing a partition in the main hall of the clinic to create a more traditional clinic setup with a waiting room, overnight patients’ room with toilet and shower, and two private consultation rooms.

The matter of nurse schedules is particularly important, as I am hoping to add two more Ghanaian assistant nurses to our roster. They have been working sporadically for the last month but have had trouble with the long and expensive commute from Salt Pond, about 15 miles away. As it is Nsanfo’s responsibility to provide housing to any government workers such as teachers and nurses, I will be appealing to the community to do so until the new building is constructed.

We have a lot ahead of us for the next few months!

Clinic Status Update

The progress of the Abigail/Nadia Clinic in Nsanfo continues! Although I am planning to wait until January to focus entirely on the clinic's development (I am currently a full-time student at the University of Cape Coast), we have never the less decided to keep moving forward: plans have been drawn to erect a new building adjacent to the current clinic for expansion. This building will be a simple living space for the state-employed nurse, who has very amenably been living in a single room attached to the clinic for the past year or so. It will also accommodate any volunteers or visitors to the clinic. In addition to finally giving the nurse a more comfortable home, this change will allow an expansion of the clinic-- we are all very excited to get started!

Having drawn up blueprints, hunted around for the best prices of building materials, surveyed the land allotted to us, hired a foreman to oversee the project, and gathered a group of volunteers from Nsanfo to build, we are expecting to begin the physical work or building in the next week or so (ironically just as the cool season ends and hot, dry days begin)!

More information to come as the building progresses...

Food shopping here in Ghana is not exactly like going to Super Stop & Shop at home. Rather, each item is sold from a separate person throughout town, and a shopping trip to get a week's worth of food more closely resembles a scavenger hunt.

This week's shopping list:

• Bread
  
• Eggs
• Pineapple
• Bananas
• Mango
• Pawpaw (papaya)
  
• Plaintain chips
  
• Groundnuts (peanuts)
• Onions
• Lettuce
• Carrots
• Cucumbers
• Green peppers
• Spring onions
• Tomatoes
  
• Hot chocolate mix
• Nescafe
  
• Evaporated milk
• Pasta
• Cheese
• Paper napkins
• Raid spray

There is a method to everything, and this is no exception. The vendors we buy from are the same each time; I've gathered this to be a mix of continued patronage and confidence in the food. We begin at the top of the hill buying the bananas and groundnuts from one food stall-- for whatever reason these two foods seem to be paired. It is acceptable to hand pick the ground nuts, but for the bananas you have to explain how ripe, how big, how many, and the vendor will select them herself. Next down the road is the pineapple; same procedure explaining how ripe and big, and then indicate whether or not you want it cut. Further down the road is the vegetable stand where the vendor will listen as you list off the things you need and she picks them for you. We wait to buy the onions, which can be bought more cheaply along the street if we see someone walking along selling it, and the tomatoes, which we like to buy from a young girl from our neighborhood. Usually the papaya and mango is found at the vegetable stall too. Even though the eggs are sold adjacent to this stall, they will have to wait until the very end-- they are sold from large crates and put into plain black plastic bags (called 'rubbers' here), and you can imagine its a little scary to carry a plastic bag filled with eggs all over town! Since its close to the junction where we will pick up a taxi to go home, its no problem. We continue up the road to one of the many general shops-- while they all seem to carry the exact same things, we only ever shop at one or two of them. And so we pass over about three of these identical shops while dodging taxis, people carrying huge basins on their heads, street gutters (sometimes covered, sometimes not, about three feet deep and filled with trash and dirty water), and stopping about every 20 feet to say hello to one person or another. We arrive at our shop of choice, a small room filled top to bottom with canned, boxed, non-perishable things. Here we get hot chocolate mix, Nescafe, canned evaporated milk, pasta, cheese (laughing cow-- the only kind widely available here), napkins, and Raid. Most likely by that time we'll have spotted a woman with plaintain chips walking down the street-- its a chance we have to take, because there are no specific stalls for it. We double back and buy the bread along the way, and finally the eggs across the street. Shopping done! We grab the next taxi headed home (taxis here follow specific routes and pick up other people along the way, like buses).

I'm sure if this is the way I'd done it my whole life I would think nothing of it-- but this is for me one of the biggest adjustments as far as living here rather than traveling through. Hopefully in time it will become second nature.

Ok, yes. I'm about two months ahead of my departure date. But can you blame me for counting down the days until this is the view from my front door? Its just about all I can think of!

Here I'm hoping to share experiences with friends and family of my time in Ghana-- the stories that swirl around in my head each time I come home and try desperately to fish out when people ask, "How was your trip?" If I'm diligent enough, maybe this will be a catalog of sorts. If I'm impatient enough, it might also include some packing lists!

Either way, here's hoping that the time between now and then passes quickly and quietly!