Ghanaian babies are the cutest babies EVER. Seriously.

Hello all!
I just left my vision quest, and I honestly don't even know where to start! On Wednesday morning my vision quest hostess, Shawn, made the short trip down to Tamale to meet up with me and my friend Mike and take us back to her place via one VERY PACKED taxi. Shawn is a volunteer in a small village called Gushie (pronuonced goo-shee-ay) in the Northern Region, and she actually extended her Peace Corps service, so she has been in Ghana for about 2 and 1/2 years and has about 6 months left here. She has a small house to herself with semi-running water (she doesn't have to fetch water, but her bathroom is a pit latrine) and no electricity. Although the entire village is made up of mud huts, she lives in a cement style house since that is the basic amenities that a Peace Corps volunteer receives. Shawn is a WATSAN volunteer, which is what they call the health and water educators (that is my job as well), so it was really amazing to pick her brain and learn about all of the different projects that she's doing in her village. Shawn is highly motivated and has a lot of great ideas and passion for her community, so at times it was even overwhelming to see all of the things she has come up with and started because I feel like I have nowhere near the skills required for these jobs! We followed her around and helped her do some of her duties, such as meeting with local community leaders to discuss a health conference, checking up on the carpenters who are building her nursery school, and running a reading program after school for children in her village.

When we weren't helping her or observing a job that she was working on, we were mostly meeting people in the village and talking with them (well, Shawn was talking in the local language, Mike and I were mostly smiling and waiting for translations!). I realized more than ever that the job of a volunteer is ALL about the relationships you make with the people in your community. By having strong relationships, you build trust, and your projects come naturally out of the needs you see. I was really inspired by Shawn in this way, because she absolutely LOVES the people of her village and they have a strong love and respect for her too. We always felt extremely protected and cared for while we were there, which is why I'm definitely looking forward to finding out where my future site will be!

Shawn made us some amazing local dishes, such as ground nut soup with rice balls, and we were sure to taste many dishes that the Ghanaians were serving as we wandered around. My favorite part of the trip, though, were the babies! When you walk into a family compound, which consists of about 3-4 huts circled around a small open dirt area with a fire (called the "kitchen'), you will find mostly women and LOTS of children, especially babies. The women loved to hand us their babies and we gladly accepted! We spent a lot of time sitting around fires, holding babies, and laughing with the women (Shawn called it baby therapy)... I could definitely get used to this!! This morning we went to a baby naming ceremony, which was an incredible opportunity to take a peek into the lives of Ghanaian villagers. Basically, after a baby is born, it stays with its mother in a hut, where neither the baby or the mother can leave until after 7 days. The baby does not have a name during this time, until the 7th day, when tons of the village comes together to celebrate the baby, because after this time it is assumed that the baby will live and the baby finally belongs to the village. We hung out with the men outside the huts for a while and chewed coca beans (one bean has about 5 times the amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee!), then we went into the compound where all of the women were gathered with their babies, making food and celebrating the new birth!

Overall, vision quest was an amazing experience, and it got me SO EXCITED for my future site! I would love to write more, but my friends are calling me to watch some soccer and get a Ghanaian beer, and I can't resist that! :)

~Katie