A Brief Tour of the Past 3 Months...

Oh my, sorry about this. I know it’s been a long time, so I’ll try to update you all on what’s been going on and maybe throw in a few of my thoughts while I’m at it.
Well, since it’s been over 2 months since I’ve updated, I’ll start with my December-February updates in rapid-fire fashion, since I have no intention of sitting in front of this computer all day long…

Late December
-Christmas came and went, and actually ended up being a whole lot more fun that I thought it might be. Not to say I was dreading the day, but so many of my Peace Corps friends had plans to visit their friends and families back in the states that I was not particularly looking forward to reading Facebook updates and getting calls from people stuffing their faces with treats and spending quality time with their families singing Christmas carols while the snow fell gently outside… But to my surprise, Christmas ended up being one of the better memories I have from recent months, thanks in part to the used Christmas hats of all shapes in sizes that me and my friend Kristina had been collecting from the local market for months and forced everyone to wear on Christmas Eve (I was especially proud of the hat that I wore, which was a Santa hat with something akin to Viking braids coming out of the sides). A wonderful group of volunteers assembled for the Christmas Eve party and we all donned our Christmas hats while we wandered around the town of Tamale singing rousing renditions of our favorite Christmas carols and wishing our (mostly Muslim) Ghanaian brothers and sisters a very happy holiday.
January
-Hoping to top last year’s painfully boring New Year’s Eve, which consisted of me reading in my bed and falling asleep around 7pm, I met up with three other volunteers at one of my friend’s houses and we all planned to go to a spot in her town for a New Year’s toast and plenty of dancing. Unfortunately, my body had other plans. While my friends had a grand time drinking Stars and mingling with our Ghanaian friends, I was stuck on the guest bed to celebrate New Years by throwing up and burning up with a 102 degree fever. Don’t worry, everything cleared up a few days later and I was back in the village, wondering why illness generally strikes on the times right before I want to have a good time. Here’s to hoping that next year’s transition into 2013 is a little more fun…
-I spent most of the rest of January in or near my village, working with my health committee and spending a lot of time hanging out with the kids in my village (I can never get enough of those babies…). I did leave the village for a week to go to “Training of Trainers,” which consisted of training sessions, planning the training for the group that was to come in February, and creating lesson plans. This was a total departure from the usual work that I’ve grown accustomed to doing here, and it both reminded me of how lazy I’ve gotten when it comes to paperwork and how much I’ve missed the school-style atmosphere of writing, planning, and working under a deadline.
-Toward the end of January, after a significant amount of thought and prayer, I basically decided that I was not going to pursue grad school in the fall, like I had originally planned on doing, and I really settled into the idea that I want to return to Grand Rapids after Peace Corps and push on school for a little while. This decision had a little to do with the fact that I dragged my feet when it came to school deadlines and had missed my major window of opportunity, but it had more to do with the fact that I felt a strong leading toward going back to GR, despite the fact that I had no idea where I might live or what I might do (more on this later).
February
-The beginning of February was tough for me. After returning from the training of trainers conference, I came back to the village expecting my dear friend Sanatu to be the first one greeting me when I arrived home. To my surprise, she was nowhere to be found that first night back, and the next day I went to her house, thinking that she just hadn’t heard the news that I was back. I came to understand through my broken Dagbani (and later through my counterpart’s translations) that Sanatu had gone on Kayayo. I’m pretty sure I’ve explained this word before in a previous post, but Kayayo is basically the migration of northerners (mostly young women) to southern Ghana to be porters (ie: carry/sell things on their heads) during the dry season, when farming gets slow and money gets tight in the north. Because of the health risks of the work that these girls do, their sub-standard living conditions, and the prospect of prostitution as a way to make more money, I was devastated to hear that one of my best friends had left to go to the capitol city, Accra, for Kayayo in order to make money. I was both upset at her, for leaving while I was away for the training and not telling me where she was going, and her parents, for allowing their daughter, who they took out of school after the 5th grade to work on the farm, to go down to this strange city and potentially put herself at risk in order to make a little money. After getting over my initial reaction, I’ve since come to peace with the fact that she did what she thought was best and may ultimately even benefit from the experience through learning better English and seeing life outside of the village. However, I am still distraught at the fact that she has been gone since the end of January and may not return to the village until late next year. By that time, I will have left Ghana, and I hate to think about the fact that I might not have gotten the chance to say goodbye and tell her what she meant to me…
-The rest of February kept me busy, working with the Children to School Project on expanding their school feeding program in my village, and going to fulfil my duties as a trainer for the new health/water, and sanitation trainees (soon to be full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteers). I had a fantastic time in the south for two weeks, helping to run their training and enjoying the entirely different geography and culture of southern Ghana. I managed to eat a whole lot of local food (delicious!), learn a few more words in Twi (the local language of the town in which I was staying), and hopefully was able to impart a little bit of knowledge and experience to help the newbies make a smooth transition into life here.
March
-March has been a whirlwind, as I finished out my stint at the training site, had a great reunion with my Peace Corps friends in the northern region upon my return, and have since been writing lesson plans for the upcoming “intense technical training” for the new volunteers-in-training (my duties are far from finished haha), dipping my hand into various projects around my community, and have been prepping my village for the arrival of the new volunteer (my replacement) next month. Despite being busy and coming to the realization that I have only a few short weeks left alone in my village before a new “siliminga” comes to work with me, I have also made sure to carve out time to soak up my “village” experiences while I have them. I’ve been quick to say yes when kids come knocking on my door to color, or to accept invitations to things like the Tamale chief’s funeral (absolutely incredible, pictures and videos to come). Time is passing so unbelievably quickly that I just want to hold on to these moments as long as I can. Meanwhile, many many things have come together in my life for my return home around August. I will be moving into a beautiful house with 4 girls in Grand Rapids as soon as I get back, and I have incredible job opportunities lined up for me. The knowledge that things have come together with God’s incredible timing has made me appreciate my time here so much more. I’m not stressed about the future, which has totally helped me seize the present in a way that I don’t think I’ve been able to do in a long time.
So those are my updates for now. I just realized that I totally forgot to mention the beggars who rode in on camels from Burkina Faso to my village (you better believe I rode a camel!) and so many other things, so I’m sure another update will be in order very soon. Cheers!