Hello lovely people,

Since I haven't written in a bit and since life here has actually been moving more like that of an American life... this might get a bit long so I'll try to mix it up with some pictures...!

So Ghana... Absolutely is/was the land of dreams. Crossing the boarder the grass immediately turned a stunning shade of green, birds sang louder and while the sun was shining brighter, it wasn't the stifling humidity of Burkina. Basically Ghana was brilliant. Eight of us made the journey to what is known as West Africa's 'success story' in order to see more than 5 scragly trees clumped together, splash in a large body of water that wouldn't immediately send us to the infirmary, eat anything and everything that didn't look like a lump of white play-dough, and basically not hear our pet nicknames, Tubabo and Nasara for 10 days.

We kicked the trip off in Ghana's capital of Accra where we spent a couple days wandering through the streets and eating all sorts of unAfrican food. Cape Coast was next on the agenda where a trip to West Africa's oldest standing, slave-trading fort was a must. (Unfortunately for us we missed Barack Obama's speech there by a little over a week). Despite the fact that I've unfortunately never been much into the historical aspects of sightseeing, I'm unbelievably glad I got to check this place out. To be able to able to catch a glimpse of the living conditions that the West African's were subjected to at this time was pretty powerful. Our next stop on the trip was my absolute favorite - the Canopy walk through the Kakum National Park. First of all this place is an actual rainforest so that automatically makes it cool. Secondly, you can spend the night in the park in cabin type tents. Thirdly, the have a canopy walk high above the forest that gives you the most spectacular views. We were lucky enough to be able to spend the night in the park (and be lulled to sleep and frightened awake by all the animal noises) and were therefore able to get to the canopy walk before the busloads of school children and tourists came through. Despite the fact that we didn't get to see much wildlife, not to mention almost fell to our death when the 40m platform we were on started to shift downwards, the view from up above was one of the most stunning things I have ever seen. After being dazzled by the sights of the rainforest, we turned towards Ghana's other biggest sight for us scenery/nature starved Burkina volunteers - the ocean. The rest of the trip was spent relaxing by Ghana's beaches, diving through waves and eating burritos. By the time the bus was departing from Ghana back to Burkina, we were all seriously considering ways to get ourselves transferred.

I did manage to drag myself back to village though for 7 short days and actually had some work to accomplish before heading out again. Thanks to hard work of a fellow volunteer, Burkina will be getting computers shipped over from the U.S. that are high in quality and incredibly low in price. Since my city is one of the bigger ones in Burkina, I thought it was absolutely necessary that we receive some of those and had already spread the good word and gotten local organizations excited about purchasing them. I was incredibly excited about the response from the organizations and the local mayor about purchasing computers and developing our village... And then I found out once again how things work in Burkina. Both getting people to actually commit to a number of computers and then giving me the money in time was a huge headache. I spent every day at nearly the same organizations reminding them that they needed to tell me a number and to get me the money before I left again or find their own means of getting it to the other volunteer. It was actually incredibly disappointing to see such little follow through on their part for such huge opportunity for development. I felt like it was a chance of a lifetime that people should be jumping at yet I felt like I was begging them to take these computers that would change their village and lives. Once again it brings up a lot of questions on development - what's right, how to do it, etc...

While I wasn't continuously showing my face at these organizations I went out to the fields in order to plant some crops for the upcoming season. I was looking for any excuse to get out of it... but am actually extremely happy that I went! Oddly enough being out in the fields reminds me of one of those big church potluck picnics. Kids running around, parents chatting, animals braying, hundreds of people eating out of the same dishes... It was an awesome community feeling with everyone calling out encouraging words as they passed by. My hamstrings were of similar tightness to that of piano chords the following day but it was a very good bonding experience, not to mention earns you some respect for being able to cultivate for more than the expected 5 minutes!

A short 7 days after I returned I was back bumping along our unpaved roads towards Ouaga, and this time it was for something which was quite possibly even better than the paradise of Ghana - Coaching for Hope. Coaching for Hope is this genius idea that takes soccer coaches from villages in West Africa, brings them to the capital city, and for 8 days teaches them how to combine soccer techniques and drills with information on AIDS. I can't even begin to describe how ridiculously excited I was to be able to attend this camp - playing soccer for 8 days straight on one of the only grass surfaces in all of Burkina Faso... I probably would have even road a donkey cart to Ouaga. Coaching for Hope met all of my expectations and then some. From day one, everyone was enthusiastic, encouraging and incredibly into the training. The main coaches were extremely knowledgeable in giving out advice on how to be a better coach on the field and off as well as how to incorporate AIDS (or any other sort of life lessons for that matter) into drills. The participants were all more than willing to do all of the drills, pay attention and participate during all of the lectures and in true African fashion, lead cheers, songs and dances at the end of each day. And us volunteers... well lets just say we were ridiculously happy to be outside, to receive good food, and just be a part of a training that had so much energy. The last day of training was like the last day of camp - the big intra-squad match took place, everyone gave out numbers, people were taking all sorts of photos, awards were presented and there was a big closing ceremony which ended with our weeklong chant and dance. I'm just going to go ahead and say that Coaching for Hope was one of the best things I have done thus far in my life and I'm hoping that my two guys from village were similarly effected enough to apply all that they've learned in village.

So once again after an incredible time outside of village, here I sit in Bobo waiting for my bus to take me back to my home here in Africa. Once again it's the mixed feelings of wanting to get back into village in order to turn everyone into CFA (BF's currency) millionaires, miraculously grow crops for everyone to eat and sell and cure all types of diseases... but at the same time it's always a little daunting to head back to a place that you never really have or will fit into not to mention can't necessarily figure out what role to even be playing... But nonetheless that's where I'll be hanging out for hopefully the next month straight.. And I'll probably have some amazing hamstrings by the end of it from all the cultivating I'm going to be volunteering to do!

Hope all is well back home and a special congrats to Becky and Nate Ness on getting married!!!

Much love.