Let There Be Rain

So, the rainy season has officially begun here in Ghana. Currently it is pouring and there is some pretty intense thunder and lightening. Luckily it didn't start until long after I got home from work. Speaking of work, we got another volunteer today and one more is going to start soon. They both came through Ikando too, so we all know each other already. It's really nice to have other people in the office. Work is going well. I have been going into the schools and having a great time. It is kind of stressful when they don't really understand what I'm saying and are more fascinated by the fact that I'm white rather than interested in what I came to teach them. They're really sweet though and I think that is going to be my favorite part of the internship. Every time I come in to the office, I am told something else that they want me to do while I'm here. A few days ago I was told that I need to organize a training for students to be peer educators and train them on a bajillion topics in four hours. Right. Then a few days after, I was told that they want me to organize a drama group to perform in front of the school. Umm, I don't know about that. This will be interesting. One of the new volunteers will hopefully be helping me with the TB project, so that will be really helpful.

I have started putting together the TB client booklet with the interviews we did on Wednesday. I'm not very good with all of the formatting stuff, but I think it's coming together pretty well. At least I know for sure that I will have some sort of tangible product for my internship requirements (now I just have to finish getting my internship approved...).

Other than that, not much is going on, just life as normal. This weekend I'm hopefully going to Makola market to get batik fabric and have some stuff made. I can finally look legit. That's about it though. See? Not that exciting. I have, however, come to appreciate certain things a lot more since being here:

1. wireless internet that doesn't cut out every 5 seconds. Yeah that gets to be really annoying.

2. Smog checks. These do not seem to exist here. Driving down the road, if you happen to get stuck behind the wrong vehicle, you have to sit there breathing in the black plumes of carcinogenic fumes. I might get lung cancer just from this summer.

3. Covered sewers. Yeah, remember those ditches? Totally sewers. And sometimes they smell really bad. Like REALLY bad.

4. Waste removal services. Here they don't really have a garbage collection system. Everything just gets thrown in the streets or sewers. Some days on the way to work I see people cleaning out the massive amounts of rubbish that blocks the sewers. Definitely not my dream job, folks. If I learn nothing else from this experience, at least I've learned that I don't want to be a sewer cleaner.

There are a lot more things, but if I wrote an exhaustive list, this post would go on forever and you and I would be extremely bored. So here is where I will end for the day.

Quick shout out to Alicia and Eric: Happy 10th wedding anniversary! You guys are awesome!