Hi all,

I apologize for the ridiculously long absence. We are alive and well do not worry! The last couple of weeks have been a complete whirlwind of goodness. We are leaving Tamale tomorrow evening (I still cannot really believe that I will be saying goodbye to everyone here in just 24 hours) and then we will be traveling in the Cape Coast for a week. Then, we return to home sweet home! Since we have been gearing up to leave the past couple of days have been an emotional rollercoaster. But I am not ready to fill you all in on that yet so this post is just to inform you all about what we have been up to. (It's a lot!)

Mole National Park:
Dave, three other volunteers, one of the Ghanaians who lives with us (Baba), two of our students and I went to Mole National Park last weekend. We saw FIFTEEN elephants! It was incredible. The park did not have any lions, giraffes, or tigers but seeing baby elephants and their mothers and fathers walking around, visiting the water hole, and playing with one another was priceless. Surprisingly the elephants were black. They look gray/red most of the time because they put dirt on their backs to protect their skin from insects. It was awesome to see them enter the water gray and emerge from the water black. It was also great to see the girls and Baba's excitement at seeing more of their country.

In addition to the elephants we saw antelope, wart hogs, lizards, snakes (one of which was in our "shower") one monkey, and Dave had a run in with a spider above his bed that was so big it was carrying a cockroach on its back!    

Getting home was a bit iffy because we did not anticipate the park costing as much as it did (we had to pay to enter the park, to take the tour, to buy food, to buy the tour, to pay the tour guide, etc. None of the costs were very high but all together they added up quickly.) We managed to save enough to buy our bus tickets home (the bus picked us up at 4 am ha) by not eating lunch on the first day and breakfast on the second day. When we got home we had 2 Cedi (Less than $2) left between Dave, Nir (our good friend who is a volunteer) and I. Whoops!

Sex Education/HIV/AIDS Class (say what?!):
So, this actually happened and it went really really well. The director of our organization's wife, who is a nurse, led the class with me. It was really helpful that she was there because she was very informed about AIDS from personal experience treating individuals with AIDS and she could speak to the girls in Dagbani. Around 25 girls ages 14 to 18 came to the class.

We structured the talk around HIV/AIDS (only one of the girls knew what AIDS was) by beginning with what the disease is, how it is contracted, what you can do to prevent contracting it, and how/where you can get tested for it for free. After discussing condoms we gave each of the girls a male condom and discussed what is is, where to buy it, how to open it carefully, the importance of checking the expiration date (one of the female condoms expired in 2009!) and how to use it. None of the girls had seen a condom before. They knew the word but I will never forget the look of surprise/facination/excitement/fear on their faces when I told them that they were each going to open one. After the male condom we demonstrated how the female condom works and then wrapped things up by reviewing the condom and AIDS. I think the class went really well. I was worried that the tone would be either scary or uncomfortable but the girls were really open to asking questions (which does not usually happen) and I think they felt informed afterwards. If I was living here longer it would have been great to get the parents involved in sex education (since most of them do not use condoms and do not talk about sex in the home) but there is just too much to organize! So though this is only a short term thing, I can only hope that a few of the girls who came are able to discuss using a condom with their boyfriends once they feel ready to have sex.

Ok I am running out of time so I am just going to list a bunch of the things we have been doing and I will say more about them later.

1. Sleeping in the village at two of my student's house.
I slept with their mother, the two students, and their 5 younger sisters in one room on the cement floor. Though I did not sleep very well it was really cool to get to see how the nuclear family in the village interacts with one other.

2. Buying, "hunting", killing, and eating a chicken.

3. Performing with the dance/drumming group that I have been training with for all of the Maltiti girls. It was terrifying at first but once we started playing I loosened up and it went really well!

There is more but I will have to write it later. I think that will we will have some down time in Cape Coast so I will try to update maybe on Wednesday. If not then, then I will be home in a week and will write more.
Thanks for all of your support. This experience has been truly incredible for both Dave and I and I cannot wait to tell each of you more about it once we are home!