June 7th 2009

I want everyone to know that I have arrived safely back in the US. It has been a difficult couple of weeks. After resting a few days in Bolga, I returned to work again at the Clinic site. Without warning, I suddenly began to feel very ill and had to be rushed back to Bolga.

The doctors informed me that it was again Malaria(+++). The strain I’ve developed is resistant to Quinine, as well as the rest of the drugs they had given me. My last treatment was six shots of Chloroquine in combination with a mega dose of Malarone. When my condition stabilized, I was evacuated to a medical facility in Accra where further tests could be done.

The doctor in Accra determined I was healthy enough to travel back to the States. Dr. Denham and I got on a plane that night and arrived in Phoenix on Saturday. They tell me I should recover completely with a few weeks of rest.

I realize my situation over the past few weeks has left some people a bit shaken. My biggest concern now is the impact this will have at the University. This is not an event that should be buried, nor should it be used to champion some motion to restructure the project. I don’t want to see people acting as though the realization of danger is some great epiphany. I was aware of the risk and was prepared for it. This is not the first time a volunteer has fallen ill on an EWB trip and it won't be the last. Africa is not Disneyland. The danger is real. So long as volunteers are informed of the risk, as adults they should be entitled to it.

I have complete confidence in the four students left in the North. Jessica and Bryce have stepped up to manage the project and clinic construction. No time was lost on account of my illness.

I will continue to help and advise the project from my home in Flagstaff. It was unfortunate that I had to leave on such a poor note. This will not be me last visit to Yua.

-John Yatsko

June 4th to June 7th 2009

The clinic is moving along at an alarming pace. We will be building the roof tomorrow. The village seems committed to seeing it finished by the time we leave!
The day before yesterday Jessica and I took a walk through the village. Because we have arrived at the very beginning of the rainy season everyone is planting their crops. On our walk we ran into a group of five women that we know from working at the clinic. They gave a tutorial on hand planting. Here all of the work is done by hand, there are no tractors to plant the crops. The women take a sort of hoe, made out of a bent piece of wood and hit it into the dirt making the hole. Then, almost faster than you can see, they dump ten seeds from the bowl in their other hand and sweep dirt over the hole. The process is fun to watch because the women are so skilled. Jessica gave it a good try, but was only able to fill a few holes before the women took it back over.
At the clinic we have been adopted by a herd of children that live near by. We played a game of soccer with them. The ball they use is completely flat. When we left the states we brought two soccer balls with us, and will hopefully give one of them to these kids. The other one will go to the local kids soccer team. Their coach has been working with us on the site.
Yesterday there was an annual gathering of the areas Catholic churches in the village where we are staying. We attended the festivities. Though the churches do follow many practices of a traditional catholic church they do so in a very African way. There were drums an dancing, everyone was dressed in their best brightest colors. It was amazing to see! We are all beginning to have food cravings (cheeseburgers, mac and cheese, milkshakes, etc) but are loving the trip!
(Oh and make sure you look at some of the older posts as well, I was finally able to add some pictures to them!)
-Kate Dorrell

May 29th to June 3rd 2009

Though our days are increadibly long here, it feels as though time is flying by. Since the last blog post a lot has happend. Construction on the clinic should be completed by June 9th, leaving only the solar to be completed. Every day the number of workers at the sight increases. Women are constantly bringing water, on their heads of course, to mix concrete. Children help carry blocks. Men are everywhere laying block, mixing concrete, and doing carpentry work. It is chaos.

We have had great expiriences since we have arrived. Jessica and I both have tried our hand at carrying water on our heads. It is much more difficult than it looks. Connor has been touring the town on a moto (motorcycle) with his guide Razaak while they fix broken bore holes. Bryce has been working hard to fill Johns managerial shoes now that John has arrived back to the U.S. It has been a lot of work, but a lot of fun too.
Everything is so different here from anything I have expirienced in the U.S. We were able to enter a family compound the other day and see what it is really like to live in Yua. When I entered the compound I had the sense that I had stepped back in time, like some Anasazi village or something. Everything is made of a sort of mud adobe material. There are traditional rooms such as the womens room lining a large courtyard where I believe the families spend most of their time. We were shown the huge stone table where the women grind their millet into powder. It was truly amazing.
The heat and humidity is effecting the entire team. We are going through a ton of bottled water. Yesterday we were told it was 109 degrees with 80% humidity. Every night we hope it will rain to cool things down a bit. When it does rain the storms are these huge impressive thunderheads that light up the sky with lightning. This truly is the expirience of a lifetime.

-Kate Dorrell

May 27th 2009

We finally made it to the north! This morning we drove twenty minutes from Bolgatanga to our home for the next month in a village called Sirigu. The place is called swopa and it is run by a women’s group from the area. The place is a series of four sleeping huts, a kitchen, a dining hut and a large courtyard with several trees. There is roof access to two of the buildings. All of it is painted in a vivid traditional red black and white tribal paint. It almost looks very Hollywood Africa with its grass roofs and bright colors.
We did not linger long in Swopa, merely claiming our huts and introducing ourselves to the staff, before jumping back into the car and heading to Yua.

For me it was very difficult to tell where Sirigu ended and Yua began. Other than the market places the traditional mud made family compounds seem to be equally spread out between the villages with little delineation between the two. The market areas were made of many buildings sitting much closer together and with a greater mass of people milling about.

We arrived at the clinic expansion worksite to a multitude of men women and children. The elementary school building right next to the clinic was apparently in session when we arrived because as soon as the jeep pulled up children began literally pouring out of the doors and windows. Everyone greeted the team with happy smiling faces and handshakes. We stumbled through the local greetings and managed to take a look at the site.
Though not as far along as he had hoped, John and the village had made a lot of progress on the clinic. There were many workers there and it looked as though the foundation was almost finished.

Next the whole team stopped by last years project, the water plaza. Unfortunately two of the three water spigot had been broken. We were told that they were broke by fighting women and therefore we will be having a meeting with village members in the near future to explain that this is unacceptable and they will need to make and pay for the repairs although we will help them do that.
The rest of the day was spent greeting various contacts around the village, such as the Afrikids representatives as well as resting after out long journey. Tomorrow the work begins.

-Kate Dorrell

May 26th 2009

Bryce and I woke up at 5:50 am, and were at the truck by six. Kate and Jessica joined us shortly after, then we piled into the back with our bags and rushed off into the morning traffic of Accra.

Accra is overwhelming; sight, smell, and sound, all in a wave, too much to really process. The roads are clogged with people on foot, bicycle, and motorbikes, along with cars, busses, and trucks, all surrounded by hawkers and beggars. Not to mention chickens, goats, stray dogs, cows, and the like. The way to announce your presence to others on the road is to honk repeatedly until everyone knows exactly where you are.

There is no such thing as an individual sound in Accra; just one congealed mass of noise. In any instant you will hear cars honking-motorcycles roaring-engines sputtering-women singing-babies screaming-children laughing-hawkers shouting-goats baaing-sheep bleating-chickens clucking-dogs barking-radios playing-all rolled into one furious transcendent roar. It’s more awe-inspiring than anything.

The smell is another story: mildew, smog, dust, feces, urine, burning garbage, too many people, dirty water, sewage. It smells so bad, it tastes sour. It was not too bad at the hotel, with the sea breeze coming in off the Atlantic, but a block away in the back of the truck, it hit me like a wall.

We pulled into the bus station early, and grabbed egg sandwiches at the bus depot which were pretty good. There were some adorable little kittens in the diner, eating the roaches off the walls. When we got back and climbed aboard the bus we were pleasantly surprised by the general good shape of the thing, and the blessed presence of air conditioning throughout. I was sad to leave Accra so soon, but excited to finally see the North.

At eight we rolled out of the depot and through Accra. It took us about an hour to get out of the city, in a cloud of dust. I still have no idea how big Accra is, because it just sort of peters out, after wrapping around hills and through the Southern jungles. The trees there are towering things, with smooth grey trunks up seventy-five or one hundred feet before spreading into a wide green canopy. The bigger one sheltered entire shanty-towns in their broad shade.

The architecture was fascinating, mostly due to an apparent lack of any guiding principles. Block, mud, brick, mud brick, concrete, metal, glass, wood, bamboo, and millet stalks all seemed equally acceptable and used. Usually, one material dominated, but sometimes there were combinations, but not always. Expansions were often in the process of being built of completely different material from the others. For example, a bamboo second story on a cinder block first, or, just as ok by local convention, a cinderblock second story on to of a bamboo first. It’s all good in Ghana.

The advertisements along the road were works of art. Billboards are amateur hour here. If you want to sell your product, you paint your logo several times on every standing structure visible from the street for a city block or two.

The bus ride itself was an adventure where we slept when we could, and the bus stopped every three hours or so for food, water, and a break. Not to mention some totally sketchy food. The bathrooms were spotlessly clean, fancy, and pay-to-pee.

I could write a book describing the bus trip, and all the things we saw, but suffice to say it would be pointless, because some experiences are empty when put into words.

I will say a word about Ghanaian travel movies, though! Oh, wow! The stories are basically soap opera-ish, with terrible sound editing. It will drop down to near silence, too quiet to make out the dialogue, then, you will jerked from sleep by a blood curdling scream as the heroine is stuck by a car and paralyzed—don’t worry though, she’ll be struck by lightning and healed in time to tell the girl who’s stealing her husband.

“She will rot in Hell.”
“Yes, she will rot in Hell.”

All the vendors work out these metal crates, sort of half shipping containers, labeled Zain. No idea what Zain is. I’ve got to wrap this up. We’re all having an amazing time so far. I’ll leave you with my top ten best Ghanaian store names for the trip:

10. Except God General Store
9. In Him is Life Electronics
8. Good Husband
7. It’s Just a Day
6. Roll Model
5. Still Flamingo
4. Commercial Company
3. Best Coca Cola
2. Club de Texas
1. Stupid. Stop Urinate Here.

-Connor Rickett

May 25th 2009

Today Connor, Bryce, and I arrived in Accra, the capital, at 9:00 a.m. Over the previous 48 hours we calculated that each of us had accumulated about 6 hours of sleep in the last 48. Needless to say we were exhausted and thrown into a culture completely different from our own.
Leaving the airport in Accra was chaos. There were three of us, carrying a ridiculous amount of camera equipment, three fifty pound oversized boxes of solar panels, and all of our personal items. In front of the airport people wait to help carry your bags for a small fee, this means there are about twenty people surrounding you vying for your attention while you try to shoo them away and keep a hand on your stuff. However, we made it out of the airport just fine and into the back of our driver’s truck. I, the only female in the group at the time, sat up with the driver while the boys piled into the open back of the truck with the luggage and our driver’s kids.
The drive to our hotel was an excellent way to see the city. As I’m assuming it is in all developing world cities, it was easy to see the poverty on the streets, malnourished children, beggars, a canal so dirty you could smell it about a mile before we drove by it. However, we were also greeted with smiles and waves. Maybe I’m completely wrong in this opinion, but the people don’t seem unhappy for the most part. In fact I was overcome with a sense of vitality.
The people are extremely active. Women carry amazing loads of goods on their heads while they walk down the streets chatting with others and selling their items. Children rove the streets in packs, playing soccer and rough housing. The men laugh and talk while they work. Everyone in the city seems to be busy.
Our hotel, Affia Beach, is owned by an Australian woman. It is a very nice place to be even by American hotel standards. After our first quick tour of the hotel we went back into the city to gather supplies for the next days bus ride. We purchased cell phones, a few other basics and Bus tickets. This took us nearly four hours. When you buy things in Accra you must go to all of the different booths along the street to find all the components you need as well as the best deal. We would go to one booth to get the phone (a used Nokia brick that says, “God is my shepherd” every time it is turned on), then on to another booth for the charger, then on to the booth of the charger guys brother to get minutes and the card that makes the phone work. It is a very long process.
After finally purchasing our bus tickets for the next morning we went to get some much needed sleep in the hotel. The air conditioning worked, a wonderful thing in a city that averages 100 degrees, with 80% humidity. Aaron and Jessica arrived in Accra safely around eleven at night, tired but otherwise doing well. The day was extremely successful and tomorrow our adventures really begin as we head to the north of the country.

-Kate Dorrell