Ça fait deux jours!

I can't believe I'm saying this, but: I've been busy. Too busy to get online often or even write a proper blog post. The past two weeks I've been working a girls camp in village. In May and early June, I organized and selected a small group of girls to participate in a 5 week long camp during their summer break. Then, I left for Ghana, came back, celebrated the 4th of July, and started camp immediately upon my return to village. Probably very, very poor planning on my part. But with the help of some incredible fellow volunteers and some smart, hard working young girls, I don't think the first week could have gone any better.
For the first week, these 10 girls and I (and, for the first week, several very helpful volunteers) discussed life skills issues such as gender and culture, role models, risky behaviors and decision making skills. Honestly, I know not everything stuck--these are topics that they have probably never talked about and it was addressed in a way they were not use to. They didn't even know what it meant to have a role model. But now they do, and if that's the ONLY thing they got of the first week, I would still be thrilled, because the idea of a role model could have an impact on them for the rest of their lives.

This past week, and the following three weeks, the girls are split up into two groups: Health and Commerce, each meeting once a week. The health group will be discussing the various health issues that face the village and work to create sensibilizations (informational sessions, whether they are purely sessions or take the form of theater sketches or informal talks) to inform the rest of the village how to better take care of their health. The commerce group will focus on the importance of record keeping and budgeting, and we will be developing a product to sell to the village for, hopefully, a profit. On the third day of the week, all the girls reconviene to share what they learned and also to learn english (at their request!). These are girls who are busy all day washing clothes and dishes, going into the fields to help their families farm, cooking--and yet they are voluntarily taking time out of their days to spend with each other and learn. And what is even more surprising is they come early! Their enthusiasm and high spirits are truly inspiring, and its keeping me going during rainy season, when most people in village are busy out in the fields.

So, Ghana was great. In many, many ways. I spent nearly two weeks in Ghana with a group of fellow Burkina PCVs. Ghana is the paradise of West Africa: lush green fields, clean (depending on the beach, some were covered in human waste…) pristine beaches, beautiful castles, lobster, a variety of cold beers, burritos, ocean water... We began in Accra, the capital of Ghana, which is the closest thing to an urban, western looking city I have stepped foot in since October of last year. Accra, in my newly developed perspective, is a booming city. All the streets were paved, and paved evenly. There were over passes and streetlights and sidewalks. There were many, many tall buildings. There were toilets (instead of latrines). The electricity didn't cut out. A laminated, multiple-page restaurant menu serving sandwiches, muffins, crepes and a variety of other diverse foods unheard of in Burkina was looked through with far too much excitement. We were even thrilled to find (and keep, of course) discarded garments and trash on the side of the road that was perfectly fine and need not be thrown out. Accra, essentially, was the big rock candy mountain to a Peace Corps Volunteer living in Burkina. From Accra, we went to Cape Coast, a cute port town, home to the Cape Coast Castle and probably the most picturesque views I have seen since coming to Africa. Several castles line the coast of Ghana, as they were once used to keep far too many Africans in far too small, unkempt spaces to be shipped to Europe and America as slaves. The floors, while made of rock, were covered in a thick layer of what looked like tar. Our tour guide explained to us that this layer was actually human waste of these tortured Africans that had long since become one with the castle.

From Cape Coast we headed to the National Park. Unfortunately, we saw no exotic wildlife like monkeys or elephants, but we did nearly die on a canopy walk! Wooden platforms were suspended 200 ft high on massive, beautiful trees which were connected by a thin, wobbly bridge made out of some rope, metal, and a little bit of plastic. You’d think it would be these bridges that would be unstable. It was actually the wooden platforms that proved us wrong, when one fell about a foot and a half down the tree as 9 of us stood atop it. Two fellow volunteers had their hands trapped between the tree and the metal cords that become taught against the tree from the fall, and the rest of us panicked, unproductively, with our lives flashing before our eyes. Their hands were quickly freed, though, and we all managed to return to solid ground. And after calming down a bit, we all ranked our near death experience as one of the best parts of the trip. Naturally.

The rest of the trip was spent beach side, relaxing and eating burritos as often as we could. I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated a vacation as much as I appreciated Ghana—running water and electricity for 2 weeks in and of itself was a luxury. Throw in some wonderful friends, great food and drink (including lobster and red wine, a classy touch to a classy vacation), shopping, the beach, and an exciting near death experience and you’ve got yourself an incredible time.

So, all in all, the past two months have flown by in a wonderful way. And it appears as if the next two will fly by the same way. Right after my girls camp finishes, my parents and brother, who is just coming back home from his two year Peace Corps service in China will be flying into Burkina for a two week visit, and then I will go completely crazy in Paris with them, not knowing what to do with myself first. It has been 10 months since I've seen my parents and nearly a year and a half since I've seen my brother, so I am so thrilled to see them.