Six days down in Ghana!

This is the view from the window at my NGO.  I am working with a group called PEYORG, which is the Progressive Excellence for Youth Organization.  It was a fishing day where they were bringing in the catch.

Another view.

So this is a little out of order, but the uploader is being a pain in the butt.  I uploaded this as a shout out to Tommy Giessmann, since he reads my blog to find out what his wife is up to in Ghana, and as it is a picture of his lovely wife, Sarah, right before she devoured her pizza.  Although, she only ate half and totally picked the onions off of every piece and in the dark no less.

This is my friend Daniel, he's on the trip with us and we split the pizza to save a little money.  Our pizza had chicken, beef, shrimp, onions, peppers, and kalamata olives on it.  It was seriously the best pizza I have ever had.  The restaurant was called "The Goil" and its owned by a Turkish guy.  Turkish pizza = AMAZING!!!

This is what the fishermen live in, its totally old school driftwood huts with thatched roofs.

My NGO did some HIV/AIDS testing so we had to go pick up our nurse at this clinic.  Yes, that yellow thing is an ambulance, look at the next few pictures and then I'll explain.

So the first thing about ambulances in Ghana, they are Mercedes Benz's, which is pretty cool, now if only we could get the University to order us some Mercedes for saving lives. :-P  You can see the insides in the previous shots, there is seemingly no drugs, all the stuff that is normally on the outside of the ambulance is in that compartment to the left of the stretcher. There is a ramp to get the stretcher in and out, but other than that, it seems like our first ambulances over in America that their only purpose was just to get the person to a Doctor.

The hospital also does a lot of work on family planning and antenatal care.

  That is the nurse up there talking to this village.  When we got there, we got to meet the chief.  He's behind the guy in the yellow and you can't see him.  VERY old man, and incredibly respected, it was so cool that he came out to hear us talk.  We went through this ceremony with him in his house when we got there.  He said a prayer to bless our work, and then offered us all a drink of this REALLY strong whiskey.  The thing is that under their customs here, when a group comes to talk to a village, they take the chief a bottle of Schnap's if he accepts you are at peace and may talk to his village, if he does not you are at war.  When all is said in the meeting, he offers everyone a drink of hot alcohol and if you don't accept, you are saying you are at war with his tribe.  So, really, we didn't have a choice but to accept the drink or put the USA at war with this tribe in Southern Ghana, and none of us wanted that. ;-)  Man did it EVER burn though.

That is Makayla, she went to UNL, and is our site leader here in Cape Coast.  Her and her boyfriend came along to our program with us.  She was playing soccer with all the little kids.

When the kids saw me take her picture, they all wanted their's taken too, so I did.

Me and my little goats, they are just so darned cute.

This little guy had just been born, his umbilical cord was still attached.

So after the program is when we went to the Goil, then came back here and went to bed because it was a LONG day.  The 7th is up next!