HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Its hard to believe that only 2 short weeks ago I was leaving my village - for good. I had really settled into life in the village and derived a lot of pleasure from the seemingly mundane, but necessary things. I've mentioned before about how it was much harder to leave the village than I had originally anticipated it would be. By the end, I truly felt like I was part of the family, truly felt welcomed and appreciated and it was daunting leaving that space where I had created a life for things and places I was uncertain about.

Certainly I was excited for our travel time, as I was thrilled for the opportunity to explore other parts of Ghana, but I was truly sad to leave my village and my new family behind.

Immediately after leaving the village, we headed north to a city named Tamale where we committed to assisting with the dinner preparations for a clinic run by a man, who is, without hyperbole astonishing. Allow me to mention that he runs a free clinic for the poorest of the poor, the destitute, which here includes those suffering from mental illnesses as well as running an HIV/AIDS hospice, which is virtually unheard of in free medical clinics. He also supports a 'leper colony'. In addition to the free clinic, he runs a food program that each day delivers food to the mentally ill, guaranteeing them at least one meal a day.

Here's the kicker: the man has never fundraised for a cent in the 20 years he's had the clinic. He counts on divine providence. For example, on Christmas eve day, while we were cutting the first batch of 700 kg of chicken, he mentioned that the clinic's garden hadn't produced enough cabbage for the dinner. Then, as the second load of chicken arrived at the site, it had encountered someone who saw the truck and gave a truckload of cabbage for the dinner so we weren't short!

He started Shekhinah, the clinic 20 years ago because he was frustrated working in the government run health care facilities. He has always wanted to help the poor as he is the only one of his 10 siblings to survive. The rest died of poverty-related diseases while they were young.

Christmas day we served 3550 people a meal and gave them some clothing. The Doctor was a huge presence throughout the day, running around and giving out candy, playing with the children, dancing and exclaiming "leave the socks! we'll take those to the leper colonly!" then skipping off to talk to someone. The energy of the day was amazing. Having the chance to be surrounded by laughter, joy, generosity and high spirits despite the chaos made for a pretty amazing way to spend a Christmas.

My time in Tamale was short, but long enough to see how different the northern part of Ghana is from the south. The differences are reflected in the landscape, people and culture and it was nice to get a chance to see this other part of Ghana and certainly it was wonderful to be a part of what happens each Christmas at Shekhinah. It was kind of the perfect follow up for me after the village because in a sense it gave me a purpose, allowed me to feel helpful and I was also reminded of why I'm here.

After leaving Tamale, myself and 2 other groupmates began to head east, towards the border with Togo, where we visited the famous Wli Falls. Wli falls is a huge waterfall, inf act its a double waterfall separated into the upper and lower falls by a pool of water. There are also approximately half a million bats flying around overhead! We were even able to walk into the falls and underneath them - shower style!

After the falls, we headed to a place called Tafi-Atome, which is an example of community based tourism and runs a monkey sanctuary! We went to visit and feed the mona monkeys bananas straight out of our hands! Who knew monkeys ACTUALLY ate bananas?

Tafi-Atome is really interesting because it only recently became a sanctuary for the mona monkeys. It was a Canadian naturalist who had heard the story and encouraged the local population to protect them. The story is essentially this: the Ewe people of Tafi-Atome believed may years ago that the mona monkeys were able to communicate with the Gods because they would always be hanging around the various shrines in the forest. If you remember from a previous post, I mentioned how people in my village believed a woman died because the river god placed a curse on her. In Tafi-Atome, there were shrines set up in the forest because people believe that one cannot communicate with God, so they communicate with the river, mountain or stone gods. Once the shrines were set up, people began discovering that the mona monkeys were constantly around the shrines, so people began to believe they could communicate with the gods and began to view them as sacred.
With the influence of Christianity, people started to hunt the monkeys for different reasons and the populations began to decrease drastically, until a few years ago when the sanctuary was started. Now, the monkeys are not hunted, but are protected and the money that is coming into the community as a result of these monkeys is staying in the community and being spent in ways to benefit the residents.

Next, we headed to Mt Adaklu, another community based eco-tourism project where we were able to hike the mountain. Our time in the Volta region (Ghana's most easterly region) was really interesting, it was very untouristy. Even though we visited these eco-tourist sites, we were often the only white tourists, to our surprise. The landscape in that region is stunning, its so mountainous and lush, just amazing.

After leaving the eastern part of Ghana we ventured to the west coast to do some swimming and relaxing. The west coast is, in a word, gorgeous. I really enjoyed the scenery, but with beautiful scenery and beaches come a lot of tourists and higher prices. I personally at this point felt a little lost because coming from the village, I didn't feel like the tourists who were staying at hotels and doing different tourist sites each day, but at the same time, I am a tourist. It was also a challenge realizing that while I wanted and very much appreciated and learned from my travel time, my village family would never be able to afford going to these places and doing these things.

That being said, I did enjoy the ocean and the opportunity to be in the salt water and feel the sea breeze once again :). The place where we stayed was an eco-lodge, which had extraordinarily high food prices, so I ended up walking into the nearby village for food, as part of my goal in Ghana is to leave on 2 Cedis of food a day (about $2) and meals at the lodge were 10 cedis!!! It was a challenge sometimes to explain to people why we were always walking into the village for food and not staying at the lodge, but it also reconfirmed my commitment to this goal.

I am now in a town called Kumasi, on retreat before we all split up to our various work placements. Here we have the chance to properly debrief the village and revisit/recommit to our group goals, and the opportunity to relax before starting work.

Its really strange to think that this is my life now! And that there's only 2.5 months left! You know what they say....time flies.

I hope you all had an extremely happy new year and I look forward to hearing from you!