Almost there...

I hope this blog finds you all doing very well!
I am finally back in the South in Anyinasin with my home-stay family after a long but rewarding time in Gushie for technical training. I learned more about latrines, water pumps, and malaria than I ever thought possible, but it is fascinating work and great to gain some practical experience before I head out to site and have to educate people on my own. We had the opportunity to build a Mozambique-style latrine and a trench latrine, we dug a soak-away pit for water drainage, and taught several health-related lessons. I personally taught a lesson to some food sellers about proper sanitation when preparing and selling street food, an HIV/AIDS lesson to a class of junior high students, a hand-washing lesson to a class of 1st graders (so cute!), and a malaria lesson to a huge group of Ghanaians at a football match set up between Peace Corps volunteers and young boys from a local community (The game was very reminiscent of the Ghana vs. US World Cup game, except we lost by way more points in our game...). Needless to say, I am starting to feel very comfortable with teaching health, which is good because it is going to be a large part of my job when I get to site.
I mentioned earlier in my blog that I had a malaria scare last week, which was a little scary.... I got body aches, a quickly rising fever, chills, and other lovely stomach problems of which I will spare the details... The symptoms came on me fast, and I had been late to take my malaria prophylaxis about a week and a half earlier, which is how long it usually takes for symptoms to manifest. Thank goodness I was in a house with 12 other trainees, 2 of whom are nurses, so they administered an at-home instant malaria test, which came back as negative (we were all thankful). I was started on some antibiotics and I was feeling in tip-top shape the next morning, which was miraculous considering I thought I was at death's door the day before (if that's even close to what malaria feels like, I wouldn't wish it upon anyone...)
My trip wasn't just training and near-malaria experiences; we also got to explore a little of Ghana. One of my favorite days was a trip we took to the Upper East Region to visit a couple of sites and go site-seeing. We went to Paga Crocodile Sanctuary, which is basically a lake in a town called Paga where crocodiles live and come out to play with humans. You see, crocodiles are the totem of this particular area, which basically means they are sacred and therefore protected from being hunted by humans. It is an amazing site to see, because people in the community were just hanging out at the lake, washing their clothes, etc... while crocodiles were chillin' out right beside them. At the crocodile sanctuary, you can pay a small fee to have one of the Ghanaians lure over a VERY large crocodile (and all of its smaller friends) that conveniently parks itself on the shore so that tourists can sit on it. Yes, sit on it. So that's exactly what we did (pictures are on Facebook...). It wasn't actually very scary to hover over the crocodile itself because it looked like it was either asleep or dead at the time. The scary part were the other crocodiles who wanted in on the action and lurked behind the Ghanaian workers. I just kept thinking, "I hope I'm faster than a crocodile, or at least, I hope I'm faster than the other trainees..." Anyway, we all emerged safely and with some great pictures.


Now that technical training is over, we're back at with our home-stay families for a few more weeks as we close out training. There's a general excitement with the thought that we're ALMOST finished with training and ready to settle into our sites. Swearing in will be held on August 12th, just a few short weeks away, so you better believe I'm soaking up these last days of language classes and delicious, home-cooked meals from my home-stay sister. I hope your month of July was as good as mine-I can't believe how fast the weeks are flying by.... Much love from Ghana!