(July 6)

So I was given a pretty cool opportunity the other day. A friend of mine who works for the Environmental Health Department in the Zabzugu/Tatale District Assembly was preparing to go out and gather data from various communities (villages) in the southern part of the district and was willing to take me along with him!

[As a quick point of reference this picture is of the Zabzugu/Tatale district. I live in Zabzugu town (the point about 1/3 from the top of the map where the 5 roads meet) and the area that my friend is responsible for is the bottom 1/3 of the map]

 

[Another point of reference. This picture is like a zoom in of the bottom 1/3 of Zabzugu district; the are my friend is responsible for. He drew this map by hand by visiting all 83 communities! During my 4 day adventure I was staying in Nakpali (circled in red), on the first day I visited Gor-tanie and Gor-lanyili (circled in green) we ate lunch in Matindo (purple square), the second day was Finlanyili, Bagmani, and Laribanga (circled in blue). The third day was Kukpalga and Sabongida (yellow circles); and the fourth day we roamed to a bunch of different communities and just chatted with people to build relationships.]

We were visiting the communities to gather information related to community health. Each of the communities had Community Based Health Volunteers (CBHVs), which were created as part of a Donor program. On top of that a couple of the communities were also CLTS (community led total sanitation) communities; part of another donor program. The net result was that in each community we had to sample 10 families and fill out a bunch of information ranging from family size, to whether or not they weeded around the house and everything in-between.

Now that all the background information is out of the way let me give you a run down of the trip.

FRIDAY

5:30 am – Time to load up on provisions for the journey. 2 loaves of bread to offer to a couple key folks as a sign of respect (3 cedis). 1 case of water sachets (1 cedi). Breakfast for the two of us (2 cedis). Fuel for our grossly overloaded motorbike (15 cedis).

9:25 am – We’ve arrived in the first community Gor-lanyili. It’s a mix of two different tribes (Dogomba and Konkomba) and I can’t claim to speak either of their languages so it certainly made things interesting… We were being taken around by a teenaged boy who spoke English and while doing the rounds we spotted another young boy weeding around the compound. He asked if we’d like to help… seeing as I’d honed my weeding skills on the yam farm I was more than excited to get in there! A decent amount of people came out of their compounds to watch my attempt at weeding (both with a cutlass and a hoe), they got a pretty good laugh out of it; but more importantly it made for an excellent ice breaker when entering peoples homes.

10:45 am – camera battery dies…

11:45 am – We’re in Gor-tanie (which is one of the CLTS communities). At this point I realized that we’re talking predominantly to men, a fact that I found slightly odd because most of the questions we were asking related to “women’s” work. I asked my friend about it and he claimed that the women would be more inclined to lie which was why we spoke more with men.

1:30 pm – lunch time! We decided to go to Matindo, a fishing community that has some excellent Akpali and fried fish. I strongly recommend it if you’re ever in the area. Though if you ever are in the area make sure you go by motorbike (as I did) because there’s absolutely no way a car is getting down or back up that rocky hill.

3:45 pm – We’ve made it to base camp! Nakpali! By this point I was incredibly tired, and to be honest a little bit frustrated. Field work is not easy at all. It was/is really draining moving around communities with the sun beating down on you while you’re trying to chat up the locals. Add to that my very limited Dogbani skills and my slightly less limited Twi (which I was surprised to find was spoken by some Konkombas) made it ridiculously difficult for me to communicate or even move around the villages on my own…

SATURDAY

5:30 am – wake up, brush my teeth, wash my face, hunt down some breakfast and get ready for day 2.

8:40 am – Finlanyili

11:30 am – Bagmani

11:31 am – My feet are SERIOUSLY hurting…

1:45 pm – So… what happens when you’re on the back of a motorbike and a storm hits?… Well. You take a nap of course.

3:20 pm – After a quick power nap we’re on the way to Laribanga! When we first arrived in this particular community I was pretty quite, but after meeting with the first family I decided to bust out a little Dogbani and they loved it! The whole compound erupted in laughter.

SUNDAY

8:20 am – Arrive in Kukpalga and realize that most people have gone to the farm so we ended up chatting with a whole bunch of kids and a couple women. The quote of the weekend “the sanitation officers are here… quick everyone clean up!” [said in Dogbani of course].

noon – Last community on the list is Sabongida, it was a CLTS community, it was also one of the pilot communities for the CBHVs program so the community is pretty far advanced as far as community health goes.

Monday

We spent part of Sunday evening and most of Monday going around other communities and just chatting with people. The thing about being field staff is that you have to build relationships, hear and care about the community’s issues; the only way to do all of that is to drop in for a visit from time to time… which is exactly what we were doing!

Peace and Love,

(finished June 28)

A couple weeks ago I was strolling around Zabzugu trying to find a soap dish and making new friends along the way when someone asked me a really good question… What, exactly, am I doing at the district assembly? After a 30 minute conversation with the fellow, during which we touched on an array of topics, something dawned on me. I don’t think I’ve told any of you what exactly it is that I’m doing in Zabzugu.

So on that note please bare with me as I try to explain some of the areas that I’m working in. My work so far has been mainly in three areas; the annual action plan, some WATSAN (water and sanitation) stuff, and the Medium Term Development Plans (MTDPs)

The work with the annual action plan in many ways is just as it sounds. Each year the district makes a plan of the various projects that the different departments will be executing. With each project they put the estimated cost, the communities that will be involved, and the success measures. My role in this has been two fold; firstly I’ve been working with the budget officer to verify the costs and decide which projects get executed as money comes in. Secondly, I worked with the various departments (because each department is responsible for their contribution to the plan) to come up with a standard format that the district could use for future annual action plans.

My work with the WATSAN has centered around data and capacity building. The WATSAN team has an intense amount of data which they renew on a monthly basis; half the data is still on paper, the other half is split between Microsoft Word and Excel. So one of the first pieces of work that I did with them was to help transfer all the data into Excel, from there I worked with them to build an Excel tool that could summarize the data into a few key reports so that they wouldn’t have to do it manually. While doing this there was some capacity building in the form of Excel and Word training. Additionally, I got to go to the field with them a couple of times to monitor some CLTS (community led total sanitation) projects [check earlier posts].

The last piece of work with the MTDPs only got off the ground in the past week. The vision with the MTDPs is that the various communities (i.e. villages) make an action plan that can be fed to Area Councils (which are collections of villages) then fed to the various decentralized departments (i.e. MOFA, WATSAN etc) so that they can make plans that reflect the needs of the peoples. From there the plans are merged (usually by the planning office) into 1 document that describes the plans of the district. The district plans are then sent to the regional level to be combined with the plans of other districts to make a regional level plan. Then the various regions will send their plans to the National level to make a National level plan for all of Ghana. In this way you can see that the National level plan should reflect the needs of the peoples! Which is pretty exciting!

So, looking forward over the remainder of my placement there are a few things that I’m hoping to get done. Firstly, I’m hoping to get some formalized Microsoft Office training going (because there seems to be some interest). Secondly, I’m hoping to continue working with the WATSAN folks on another tool that we’re building. Thirdly, I’m hoping to go out with the WATSAN field staff on a 4-5 day trip to visit a bunch of different villages and see how they collect data. Lastly, with the MTDPs I’m hoping to find a low/no cost way of gathering the community action plans,  and getting the District Assembly and decentralized departments firing on the same page! So that’s roughly what I’m hoping will happen in the next 7 or so weeks.

On that merry note,

Peace and Love,

PS. Sorry for not putting up a post earlier about the work that I’m doing, but in truth I’ve been trying to write this post for a while now. The fact of the matter is that in the beginning things were changing pretty quickly and I didn’t feel like I could give a clear enough picture. Hopefully you’ll forgive me.

PPS. As I’m writing this post I’ve just returned from weeding the yam farm and I’m pleased to inform you that I’ve “seriously improved!” but also “left plenty of room for improvement”…

(June 24)

I think that coming into the JF placement there are things that I expected to be bad at. Things that I hoped to be good at. Things that I expected people would laugh at. And things that I knew I could not expect or anticipate. What made things interesting was when something that I expected to be in one category turned out to be in another!… My tailoring and hand washing (of clothes) were prime examples.

Coming into the JF placement I was no stranger to the sewing needle nor the bucket of water and laundry soap. I’m not going to try and convince you all that I sew on a regular basis or wash all (or even most) of my clothes by hand. BUT I will tell you that when it comes to replacing buttons, mending rips, or dealing with stains… I’m your man. So coming into the placement I figured I was in pretty good shape… apparently I figured wrong.

Probably less than a week after I moved in with my host family I realized that I needed to do laundry. So I purchased some soap, filled up a bucket with water, and got down to work! I decided to start off small, you know, build up my confidence before getting to the big ticket items… so I started with a handkerchief. The sun was beating down on me that day and two of my friends were sitting nearby watching me work/melt in the sun, and speaking Dogbani. Naturally I figured they were admiring my tremendous skill level!

1.5 hours later I’d washed 1 handkerchief and 1 shirt (which, to be honest, really wasn’t all that clean when I finished) when my teacher friends came and stood around me.  “Mr. Mike, at your place (Canada) do you wash clothes by hand?”, they asked, “only rarely”, I replied. “Yea… We noticed”, they replied as they broke out in laughter. Apparently I was doing it all wrong; using 1 bucket instead of 3, not using the right type of soap, and my technique… Terrible!

The reason I remembered that story was that today I went to get a needle and thread to do some patch work on a couple pairs of pants. With materials in hand I took a seat beside a couple of my teacher friends and started charting my plan of attack. “Mr. Mike, can you sew?”, “oh, of course,” I replied; “ok then, we’ll watch.” Surprise surprise… my sewing brought on more laughter.

At this point my washing skills (or lack thereof) have become the main family joke. People (myself included) love to refer to it and measure my skill level in other areas against my washing ability. You’ll be proud to hear that my sewing ability surpasses that of my hand washing (but only ever so slightly).

Anyway, just a random thought that came to my mind and that I wanted to share.

Peace and Love,

PS. Pesewas are the equivalent of cents. 100 Pesewas = 1 Cedi (which you could think of as a dollar). And Wachei is rice and beans (which is quickly becoming my staple breakfast).

(June 10-15)

So, we’ve been in Ghana for roughly one month now, spent time in our districts, found host families and had a whole lot of learnings… perfect time for a JF retreat. The retreat was split in half with the first half being relaxation and reconnection time for the JF’s and the second half being more of a down to business/pooling our collective knowledge and observations type thing.

For the first half of the retreat we got to go to Mole National Park which was pretty unreal. We got there probably around 7 am and were concerned that we might not get a chance to see the elephants; but low and behold 3 minutes into our 2 hour excursion a couple of my friends came out to say hi!

The park was a beautiful collage of sites, sounds, smells and energy! There were animals who were hard at work

Others who were chilling out

Others sleeping

and others taking their morning bath

All in all a pretty successful outing I’d say!

But I’d be remise if I didn’t mention that retreat isn’t all about exotic excursions; in fact there was a considerable amount of work going on behind the scenes. Seeing as we had been in Ghana for 1 month by that point it was the perfect opportunity to regroup, share our learnings, and start tackling some of the bigger questions around our sector strategies! So in reality it was a pretty packed 5 days; I would say that we work hard and play hard but somehow that expression seems played out… So on that note I’ll leave you all till another day.

Cheers,

(May 30 2009)

Today I got to go out and work the Yam farm for the first time in my life with my teacher friends. We were weeding Mr. Mohammed’s farm (one of the teacher’s older brothers). Keep in mind that I’ve never farmed in my life, and realistically I’ve never done any serious yard work before either. So you can imagine the response that I got when I offered to go the the farm… laughter and the occasional “are you sure” in-between the laughs. But I was excited and I wasn’t going to let a little laughter set me back.

The day started bright and early with a light bike ride out to the field.

[This isn’t the farm that I was actually working on but it’s the only picture of a Yam farm that I had. The man standing there is actually my host father, Kabona]

We were weeding a farm that was roughly the same size as the one in the picture above and only needed to weed about half the field. I don’t think anyone expected me to do more than 5 minutes worth of work, and in fact they insisted that I stop after about 3 minutes. But I had other plans… I told them that so long as they were working the farm I too would keep working! It was a team effort and until we were finished we’d all keep working; granted they were far FAR better than I was and moved about 3X as fast but I gave it my all for 3 hours and we cleared our portion of the field.

At the end of it all I was feeling pretty good about myself, the teachers were pretty impressed with my effort, and everyone within seeing range had gotten a good laugh out of my attempts to farm. So all in all I think it was a successful learning and trust building exercise! So much so that I’ll be going out to the farm again (weather permitting) in the next weeks, this time to work the maize farm!

That’s all for now,

peace,

PS. I don’t care what Bowflex or the Ab Roller claim, working on the farm was definitely among the most intense workouts of my life…

PPS. I managed to get video footage of myself and the teachers working the farm. Ask me about it when I return and I may show you!

(May 29 2009)

Today was one of my best days at work so far. I got to go out with the water and sanitation team and one of their donors to see a community led total sanitation (CLTS) project. The community we were going out to was about 1.5 hours away so we piled into the big white SUV (the epitome of development vehicles) and made our way out there.

First let me give you a little background on the project. The community had been undertaking to build latrines and stop open defecation. They made an action plan and identified some different obstacles and how they would deal with them then went about their work. 

[This picture is of the community’s action plan]

The first round of latrines that the community dug were pretty good, but the challenge they were facing was that they were using wooden slabs for people to stand on while handling their business. The challenge with wood is that it may break… So an NGO saw the initiative that this community had taken and was quite impressed; so much so that they decided to help out by providing cement slabs.

[This picture is of the community meeting that we attended, where we got to hear the views of different members]

 

[The pics on the left are the types of latrines that the community was building. As you can see it’s all local materials which was pretty incredible because it meant they weren’t dependant on anyone for anything! The pic on the right shows the cement slab that the NGO supplied (in total they supplied 94 i believe)]

In all honesty what I saw at the community was pretty inspiring: the way the community had mobilized itself, taken action, and even the level of involvement that we saw in the meeting. Granted, we were only there for a maximum of 2 hours (which in and of itself poses some really interesting problems in terms of finding out and reporting what’s really going on in the community), but that’s more coffee shop conversation than blog post material.

Until next time.

Peace and love,

(May 18)

Desba (good morning in Dogbani, to which you would reply Naaa)

I’ve been having some really interesting conversations and along the way there is one particular joke that seems to come up quite often. It’s the “take me to Canada” joke…. To be quite honest I have not yet tired of this joke mainly because it always comes in new forms; but it certainly has me wondering why it’s so common.

So, with that in mind I decided to investigate the situation a little bit and ask people why they wanted to go abroad. I got answers ranging from people trying to pursue post-graduate education to people wanting to live the lives that they think people live in North America.

As I spoke to more people I began to think that perhaps the majority of images of N.A. that make it here are those of lavish houses, million dollar cars and ludicrous amounts amounts of jewelry…. But, as I’m sure many of you reading can attest, this isn’t the life of the average North American. I think it begs an important question; why are these images the ones that make it? Why is it that the “average” lifestyle we portray really has nothing average about it?… But to look at one side of the coin and not the other would be unfair. So, what about the images of Africa that make it to North America? Well, from what I remember seeing on T.V. the images were usually of political instability, shanty towns, and starving children fighting with local wildlife for scrap food; which definitely isn’t a fair representation. I mean these issues go far beyond Africa, they’re problems that affect all corners of the globe and rest assure there’s A LOT more going on in Ghana than that! So, with that in mind; why the 1 dimensional representation of both continents?… I have my hypothesis (which I may be willing to share with you if you buy me a drink) but I’m far more interested in hearing (or in this case reading) yours! (Levi this one’s for you).

I wish I could say that I hadn’t fallen victim to this 1D view but it appears that I had. The other day I had the shock of a lifetime. I was chilling at a friend’s compound (which in reality was a series of mud huts and mud walls), and it was getting dark. My friend flipped a couple switches and within seconds there was light! My mind was blown; since when did mud huts have lights!?

The other day I think it really hit me that I was in rural Ghana. I was at my friend Kabona’s brother’s compound (a traditional mud hut compound without electricity), watching a couple women cook some local food [pronounced T – Zed] over the open fire and looking up at the stars. Not that this image is representative of the whole continent or even the country, but i think that at that very instant my current reality stood in such stark contrast to the reality that I had known roughly 3 weeks prior: but now I had the time to lie under the stars and soak it all in… BEAUTIFUL!

Peace and Love,

(May 13)

As I sit here Wednesday evening reflecting on my first days in Zabzugu a  few things strike me…

The first thing is related to accommodation. When I was in Toronto it was pretty easy to sit around and say that I could handle the rural life. But when I first arrived in Zabzugu… let me tell you I was straight up nervous! I remember as Shamir and I were walking around town looking for rooms I was struggling to comprehend that in 18 hours he would be returning to his district and it would be on me to have impact and be a positive change agent in my new home… I remember after seeing the first two rooms I was ready to call it quits. I didn’t feel (at least at the present time) that I was mentally prepared for the task at hand. After all I had been in transit for the better part of the last 7 days and had been in 4 towns in the last 36 hours, so perhaps it was fatigue or maybe even culture shock but at this point the Presidential Lodge [where the District Assembly has put me] was looking pretty nice!…

This morning my friend Kabona came to pick me up and take me to his home.

But before I go any further I should probably explain who he is and why he was coming to pick me up. When I was coming from Saboba to Zabzugu I took a bus to Yendi. From Yendi I was picked up by a driver and another man. This other man happend to be my new friend Kabona. We got to talking on the drive over from Yendi and that evening he came by to visit me at the Presidential Lodge. I explained to him that I was looking for a place to live in the community; fortunately for me he had a room available and so we made arrangements the next day to go see it.

Now that you have the background lets continue. He took me to see the room:

[These two pictures are of the compound I live in. The door in the right corner is my room.]

[Ensuite bath (which I don’t use) and ventalition systems!]

[Master bedroom and outdoor shower (there’s something oddly liberating about bathing in the sun!)]

[His and her latrines (only about a 2 minute walk for the master bedroom)]

The room was pretty nice but more important than the room itself was his family! He had taken me to eat lunch and dinner with them and I felt at ease with them. He has two wives (a concept I found rather interesting) and a bunch of kids. All in all his family is pretty cool; they were cracking jokes with me (and probably at me) and helping me to learn Dagbani (the local language); of which I’ve mastered the greetings!

It was the first time in the last couple days that I truly felt at ease in this new community and that’s how I knew that they would be my host family!

[This is Kabona’s compound. The little boy (who isn’t actually part of the family)guarding the compound is my newest friend. When we first met he really didn’t like me, but I worked my charm and now we’re best buddies]

[The compound on the left is where I know live and the one on the right (that’s mostly cut off) is where Kabona’s family lives. The middle area is where the family hangs out most of the time]

In actuality I don’t live in the same compound as Kabona and his family. There’s a compound beside his where a bunch of teachers stay, and Kabona happens to rent a room (for guests such as myself) in that compound. So I now am renting the room from him. It actually turned out to be an incredible situation because at the compound I’m living at the teachers have received me as their brother.

(from left to right: Adams, Malik, Rahman, Suali, Centrofie)

(from left to right: Fattaow and Williams)

So it’s a pretty sweet arrangement. In one compound I’ve got a group of 20something year old teachers to hang out with and in the other compound I’ve got a family to chill with. It’s kind of interesting to look at how the livelihoods differ between the two and even speculate how one might transform into another; but maybe that’s a post for a different day.

So on that note….

Peace and Love,

(May 12th)

I’ve finally arrived! (well actually I’ve been here for 1 night and 2 days) but regardless I figured it was the perfect time for first reactions.

My first reactions were pretty good. Having spent the previous day in Saboba (Shamir’s district) I was coming in with some sort of image of what Zabzugu might look like; and let me tell you Zabzugu did not disappoint! In relative terms Zabzugu is a rather small place (roughly 13 000 people) but it has a certain energy about it in the downtown area. [Random side note, the link that i had posted with pictures of Zabzugu do not do justice to the downtown area].

 

[A couple pictures I took while biking through the downtown area]

The day we arrived in Zabzugu was also my first day at the office and you can imagine that I was dead tired. I had been carrying what felt like a baby elephant on my back and sweating harder than a pre-teen at a Rihanna concert, throughout my 5 hour journey from Saboba to Zabzugu. Regardless of that we made it to the office safe and sound, introduced ourselves to a couple of my new colleagues (who all seem pretty cool) and decided to go explore the town to find a host family for me.

But before we get into that part of the story I got a couple pictures of my office. As you hopefully remember I’m working at the District Assembly (local government). So the office is pretty nicely done up and the top political and administrative figures in the community work here.

Imagine that the office is a shaped in a square with a hollow center court yard. The offices are around the sides of the square. I actually got unlucky/lucky (depending on how you look at it) enough to get my own office. I’m currently seated in the planning office but the planning officer has gone on educational leave and will probably return after I’ve left.

So… now that you’ve seen me at the office let us continue with the room finding saga…

The first room that Shamir and I found was in a family’s compound. They seemed like really friendly people (2 of whom spoke english) and wanted to charge me no rent for the 4 months (the only caveat being that they get to keep some of my possessions at the end of the placement). Seeing as this was the first room I had seen I told them that we would consider it and get back to them after seeing what else was available. But in truth at this point I was feeling a little weird about staying with strangers. That combined with the fact that of the 3 nearby latrines 1 was not at all maintained (i.e. it was filled with ….), the second would cost me 10 pesuas (roughly equivalent to 10 cents) per usage and was guarded by an interesting fellow wearing what I later discovered to be a toy gun around his waist, and the last was in excellent condition BUT would require me to do a serious Usain Bolt impersonation if I ever got attacked by the brown menace…

So, with all that in mind we set off to see the next room. This one was in a compound that was owned by a woman and rented out to various peoples. The interesting thing here was that when we first arrived and asked for a room they (a group of about 3 women) told us that they had none. So we left. After walking for some 5 or so minutes one of the ladies came running after us to say that they did in fact have a room… My gut feeling is that after we left they probably discussed amongst themselves whether I was welcome in the home. Anyway, they showed us the room (which in and of itself was pretty nice) and told us to let them know when we make a decision.

So… having seen 2 rooms, and with sweat pouring out of me like a water fountain we decided to return to the office for a meeting with my DCD and eventually return to the temporary accommodation that the district had provided for me.

With that I’m going to call it a night.

Peace out,

Hello all, I’m going to take you guys through my first couple of hours in Ghana, all times are in Ghana time.

9:45 pm – Step off the plane into the beautiful Ghana night, clear customs, grab our bags and hail down a couple taxis to take us to the guest house

11 pm – grab a quick dinner, take a shower and head to bed…. gotta be up bright and early tomorrow for the trip up north to Tamale

5 am – wake up, pack my bags and round up the troops. It’s game time!

6 am – hail a couple cabs and make our way to the bus stop for weigh in’s and to gaurantee our spot on the early bus.

7:30 am – the bus departs… We’re finally on our way to Tamale. I must admit it felt kind of weird rolling through Accra on our way out of town. A city I once knew (even if it was at a young age); it felt strangely familiar and oddly foreign all at the same time. Nevertheless it was pretty cool watching the landscape as we cruised through Accra, passed a couple  villages and eventually made it in to Kumasi!

1 pm – The bus makes a pit stop in Kumasi (nothing unusual here) BUT the driver tells us that we all have to get off so they can check the bus… I should have known it was a sign of things to come… So after a 30 minute wait we reboard the bus and continue on our journey.

1:30-3:30 pm – Sleep (those of you who know me well know sleeping is one of the things I do best!)

3:30 pm – (This is where the story gets interesting)! So as I awake from a not too restful sleep I realize that the bus is pulling over to the side of the road, which in and of itself wasn’t all that surprising. But once the bus had come to a full stop the dreaded announcement was made…. The bus had broken down and we needed to call for a backup…

3:30 – 4:30 pm – wonder about chatting with the other JF’s convincing myself that the bus will be here shortly

4:30 pm – Strike up a conversation with a stranger who was also on the bus (I figured no better way to start integrating than the present!)

4:33 pm – Conversation ends when my new friend realizes he needs to make a call… This integration thing is hard!

4:45 pm – Integration round 2: I managed to strike up a pretty good convo with someone else of the bus. We talked about the difference between managers and leaders, disincentives that exist in different work settings, and how we would make this bus company even better

6:15 pm – The convo’s still going strong…. This integration thing isn’t so bad after all!

6:45 pm – I find myself in a convo with a group of women from Tamale. They’re telling me about the differences between Accra and Tamale, and some of their favourite spots in town.

8 pm – The bus finally arrives! (I should point out that the drivers had been telling us the whole time that a bus was on the way from Kumasi, which was only 1.5 hours away…. seeing as we’ve been on the side of a road for 4.5 hours clearly it wasn’t quite the truth…)

8:45 pm – after off-loading the broken down bus and reloading the new one we set off on our way to Tamale.

8:45 – 1:45 am – after one more pit stop, a couple minor hiccups and a little bit of sleep we finally make it into Tamale!

2 am – Flag down a couple of cabs in Tamale and make our way to the guest house… We’ve finally arrived!

 

So folks, as you can see it’s been a ridiculously crazy adventure and we’ve barely even started so I’m pretty excited about that! Tomorrow morning I’ll be heading out to a friends district for the night then making my way to my district (Zabzugu) for Tuesday morning. From there it’ll be down to business so be on the look out for that. I’m not sure what the internet situation is like in my district but once I figure it out I’ll throw up another blog post and I promise to TRY and upload some pics!

Peace out!