pictures!

Finally some pictures in no particular order...

A man cutting the grass outside our apartment...he's using a large blade

We live near the Centre's kitchen so there are vultures everywhere

April and I outside our block of apartments (ours is at the very end, Ashley's is the first door)

Read the sign. Perseverance Spot is in the back (it's the closest restaurant-ish)

Negotiating a taxi fare--please look at what the windshield says

The three of us at the Tono Dam

Inside market (the mostly non-food area)

Us with a local soccer team

Navrongo

Helping women fingerprint (instead of signing) informed consent sheetP

another picture-less post

Hello, hello! For the first time in a while I actually have some things to tell everyone about. When last I posted I said that April and I were headed off to the HIV/AIDS clinic with Dr. Williams. The clinic is at the regional hospital in Bolga and doctor visits occur on Fridays--the reason that Dr. Williams goes then. While Ghana doesn't have a terrible HIV/AIDS problem, the numbers are increasing and the health care system is working as quickly as possible to address the issue. After arriving at the clinic April and I sat with 2 different health workers who were taking basic data on the patients. The nurse I was sitting with was taking vitals (blood pressure, temperature, weight) and I got to help with the weighing. At one point the thermometer slipped from under a woman's arm and fell to the ground where it broke. There was no replacement and for the rest of the day, there was no temperature put on any of the charts--it really made me realize what limited resources the health system here has. After weighing people for a while, I got to go sit in the consultation room with Dr. Williams (April sat with another worker also in the consultation room). Perhaps the most interesting thing about sitting there was watching as Dr. Williams prescribed the drugs. Because of limited funding and resources, the drugs that they have to give at the clinic are first line HIV/AIDS drugs. This means that it is very, very important for patients to stick to their drug regimens so that resistance to the drugs does not develop. When patients didn't seem as though they would comply or hadn't attended adherence counseling (something they must do in order to get drugs) Dr. Williams was almost harsh with them. At first I was taken aback but then I realized that if they are not very upfront with the patients, they will have problems with adherence and if resistance develops there will be no drugs to offer patients. Despite having a sore bum after sitting on benches all day I am really glad I went but it was tough to sit in a room full of people who are walking around with a disease that is a death sentence, especially when those people where pediatric cases.

Friday night was a lazy night which was nice after a tiring day. Saturday April and I woke up to Ashley yelling through our window telling us to get up and open the door. We did as she said and found out she had received a phone call saying that 2 of our friends from Ouaga were on their way to visit for the weekend which we weren't expecting at all. They made it here despite some visa troubles and we had a fun weekend--even if we weren't prepared for visitors it was still really nice to have them. After they left on Sunday, we were invited to the home of one of the workers here, Armstrong. His wife, Mercy, had made us red-red (the plantains with bean stew) because Armstrong knew that is one of our favorite things to eat. Not only was the food delicious but we got to play with Michael, Mercy and Armstrong's 7 month old son who is adorable. It never ceases to amaze me how kind and welcoming the people are here.

This week has been on the busier side. Dr. Williams is out of town for the week so April and I have been meeting with CD, another one of our supervisors, to get our projects set up. It was the first time we had met with him one-on-one and prior to the meeting he scared us a little (don't know why). But after talking to him we realized that he is not scary and is incredibly helpful. My project has changed many times since last I posted and until I have a final one set up I won't tell you what it is. We did, however, get to meet our field workers this morning who will be collecting our data. Both April and I are working in the realm of maternal and child health so we have female workers who speak both of the local languages. As an added bonus they are former fieldworkers from the Centre so they have interviewing/surveying experience which is great. I think we will be training them either tomorrow or Friday depending on how our meeting with CD goes today.

Well that is all to report for now--it's April's 21st birthday today so we are going to go out to dinner tonight which should be fun. Other than that we have no big plans for the weekend--we may go to the pottery making place about 20 km from here in Sirigu or we may go to Tongo and see the rock formations/go hiking there. But we shall see since our weekends don't always go as we plan. Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the fall weather (while we continue to roast here!)!

long time, no post

I apologize for not having posted anything in a (long) while, but not a whole lot has been going on here. The past couple of weeks have been taken up by paper writing and research topic finding. In terms of Georgetown and our grades there we have 3 things that we have to do: weekly journals that we have to submit to one of our professors, a health systems paper, and our big research project. We finished the health systems papers last week--they were 20 pagers on an aspect of the health care system here in Ghana. I looked at the introduction of the sector-wide approach to financing in Ghana and the impact it has had on the health system, particularly on a district level. Because we haven't been doing anything heavily academic here (not that we haven't been learning a whole lot), it was hard to get in the paper writing mindset. On top of that I was sick with something or other for 5 or 6 days which made the writing that much more annoying. But the paper is done and I am more than glad to have it out of the way. I also just turned in my proposal for my big research project for the semester. If it is approved than I will be looking to see if there is a relationship between child nutritional status and the nutritional knowledge of mothers, especially as relates to the level of formal education obtained by the mother. I had come up with a number of ideas for projects and the one I really wanted to do couldn't be done because I had no way of finding the proper sample population to survey. So after throwing around a number of other ideas which weren't things I was super happy about doing, I came up with this topic so we shall see how it goes...

Aside from the boring academic side there isn't too much to report. Two weeks ago (at least I think that's when it was) Francis dropped off the clothes that we had made. I have a cute skirt and matching top, so now I can dress like an African. All of us were so pleased with the outcomes that we plan on buying a lot more fabric and having many more clothes made! Francis also introduced to Kate, a student at the university up the road. She seems really fun and is someone I hope we get to hang out with more. Last Saturday we went to Bolga (the "big" town 30 km from here) with Francis to go to the craft center there which was a lot of fun. That same night we went with a different group back to Bolga to attend a hip life concert that was celebrating the end of Ramadan. It was a lot of fun, but a late night which is something we are not used to. This week we participated in a giant dance party in the streets up by the university; its SRC week which is when the other two campuses of the university come to the Navrongo campus for a week of fun. There have been activities all week (we only went to the dance party) but from what I understand there is some sort of parade/carnival today that we might be going to.

Despite all the adventures mentioned above, most of our days are pretty slow. We are in the routine of getting up early-ish (although it is late by Ghana standards) and doing work until lunch time. Then we head to Parliament (the canteen here) and grab some food (usually some form of rice and chicken) before working for the rest of the afternoon. April and I have been the ones to go into market recently (it tends to overwhelm Ashley) which has been fine minus the heat. Monday was a particularly great market day because we bought our first rolls of toilet paper since being here that are white and have individual squares (generally the rolls are gray). Granted it's no where near US standards of TP but hey, I found it exciting. The weather here is getting hotter by the day (upper 90s) and I can't wait for the end of November when the nights will be "cold" at about 75 degrees (the start of flu season here). It's hard to believe that October is almost over--I still can't believe how quickly time is flying here. Well that's all I have time for now, April and I are going with Dr. Williams to his ARV (HIV drugs) clinic in Bolga for the day to see the work he does there. I will try to post some more pictures later on today. Hope everyone is doing well, and once again sorry for not posting sooner!

october, october

from top to bottom: our first dinner in Ouaga (on the left from front to back are Emma, Aki, and Gunnstein, Emma and Aki's apartment mate); the view from inside the tro-tro (although it doesn't quide capture the number of people who were in it); the beautiful swimming pool we went to

Greetings from Ghana! Sorry it has taken me so long to post, but we away over the weekend and then the beginning of this week seems to have flown by. The big adventure since my last post was a trip up to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso to visit two other Georgetown students there, Emma and Aki. We finished our rotations with the various projects last Thursday and decided that we could use the free Friday as a travel day. After asking around the Centre, we determined that it shouldn't be too hard to make it to Ouaga, all we had to do was take a cab to the border and from there take a taxi or bus from the other side straight to Ouaga.

Welllll it wasn't quite that easy. Getting to the border and making it across was no big deal, especially since we were still in English speaking territory. On the other side of the border, however, things started getting interesting. We realized that there were neither buses or taxis to be found and so, we ended up in a tro-tro. For those of you who don't know what a tro-tro is, its a 12 or so seater van that usually ends up holding 20 or so people inside with a whole lot of belongings (and sometimes more people) on the roof. The big problem with tro-tros lies in the fact that they don't leave until they are full which unfortunately meant an almost 3 hour wait in the heat. Our tro-tro finally filled up and we were on our way, but we stopped every 30 min. or so to let people off or pick up more. Thus what could have been a 1.5 or 2 hour ride via car turned into a very squished 3 hour trip. Before we even got out of the tro-tro in Ouaga, all three of us were totally overwhelmed by the fact that we were in a big city (in fact, we got excited when we saw a stop light). Once we got to the bus station, a Burkinabe who had been in the tro-tro and thankfully spoke English helped us get a taxi and set a fare (Burkina is French speaking and of the three of us here only Ashley is able to speak a little of the language). Many hours after we were supposed to arrive, we finally got to Emma and Aki's apartment (just as they were going in search of us).

It was quite the luxurious weekend. There was much eating of non-African food (we had pizza and ice cream the first night) which was a nice change since that's all you can get here in Navrongo, and we even got to go swimming at a hotel. Having a break from Navrongo was nice, but at the end of the weekend I was homesick for Ghana, something I never in a million years expected to feel (don't worry Mom and Dad, I promise I will come home). Our trip back was much easier, with only an hours wait for the tro-tro and much less stopping along the way. Needless to say it was an exhausting and fun weekend but it was wonderful to get back to Navrongo.

Other than that there is not much else to report. We have spent the past couple of days finalizing topics for our first paper we have due and beginning to think about our final research projects. My first paper will be looking at the sector-wide approach to health care financing and its implication on district health funds; for the big project I have only decided that I will be doing something with adolescent sexual and reproductive health, but I am unsure of which direction I will be taking. The rains here seem to be over (which I'm a little bummed about) and it is getting hotter and hotter--I'm not quite sure how I will be able to survive the temperature change when I come back to the US. That's all there is to report for now, hope everyone is doing well!