Hello!

Dearest friends,

Life as always has been exciting the past two weeks! Yesterday, I went on an adventure with my host family to Akosombo Dam-the largest Dam in Ghana. On route to the dam, we saw two monkeys perched on the side of the road, a very rare sight. On the way to the dam we stopped at my host mother sisters house, which was very much what I percieved all of Ghana to be. The houses were rectangular, mud-made with palm fron roofs. When we arrived in the village we started touring around a nice man named Joseph showed us around his home and fed us Womentausen, the smalled fish I've ever seen with a sweet corn meal called Abolo. After sitting with the family for a while, we headed off the to Dam and recieved a tour. Wahab, my host brother is afraid of heights so we had a good time making fun of him for that on the way to the dam. The Aksombo Dam is on the Volta River and created the Volta Lake, the largest man-made lake in the world. The dam itself creates about 161kvolts I believe and supplies electricity to much of Ghana as well as Togo and Benin. After recieving a tour we headed back towards the town of my mothers sister and stopped along the Volta river at a fishing village to buy fish. At the fishing village I was adamantly followed by a fishing women who told me I should take her as my wife. When I said no, she said "But I love you, but I love you...say you love me too". The next fve minutes of conversation was me saying "No, No, I don't love you, sorry". At the fish market we bought the largest fish I've ever seen that had to have weighed about 25 pounds, it was like a small shark. So we headed back to the village and picked up a chicken that Auntie's mothers sister had provided to us as a gift. Armed with a chicken, a mini-shark, and a dozen small fish we headed home. On the way home we killed 40 birds with one stone and picked up mangoes, nkruma (Okra), onions, a large sack of rice, dried clams, and crawfish. So it was a very loud and full car. Nonetheless, there was a true feeling of family and we laughed and joked in the tro-tro.

My internship has really kept me busy. I've visited Old Fadama, the largest slum in Ghana, to sit it on three of the group meetings and conduct a interview session about the success of micro-business loans. I helped Philip, the emerging leader of GHAFUP, to develop a report about his travels auditing project loans. I am now working on evaluating People's Dialogues HIV/AIDS program that is funded by none other then AJWS-it's a small world. The work I'm doing with this is extremely interesting as I'm starting to understand the perceptions of slum dwellers towards HIV/AIDS. So far I can tell that many percieve it to be caused by witchcraft, a curse, or a result of past transgressions. Many percieve it to be transmitted by touch and that they should isolate persons with HIV so that others won't get infected. I'm learning a ton about self-help and about this organization's work in Ghana.

Last weekend was also particularly interesting as I traveled to Kumasi with a friend of mine named Dranaya. We left Accra at about 6pm and arrived in Kumasi at midnight, we got on a tro tro at 12am that was the most sketchy ride I've been on. We stopped along the route so people could get out and pop a squat by the side of the road. Within 5 minutes of getting on the tro there was a huge argument that spurred as one women paid the fair but lost the ticket-so one row was shouting at another and then the back joined in and the whole car was shouting for 15 minutes at least. Finally it stopped. At one point we stopped for what I thought was a bathroom break and a man and a women got off together and went behind a building, but then the mate noticed and ran after them and shouted at them for 5 minutes, I'm pretty sure whe was a prostitute and was servicing him. My view was supported as they both came back zipping and buttoning their pants. So we stayed in Guosu in a nice appartment that Dranaya owned. The next day we wondered around the time as Dranaya and I socialized with many of his friends-this was where he grew up. Eventually we made our way to the local hopsital where I recieved a tour. Then we headed to Mim and got a tour of Mim's water production facility. This was very interesting because Dranaya, having worked for the Identification service of the government, told them he was from the Identification Service and asked for a tour, after whipping out his card they agreed. It was fascinating! So then we took a walk through the bush to the timber production facility but didn't get a tour because it was closed. So we headed home and the guys (3 of us) cooked dinner for ourselves-Banku and Okra soup, my favorite. The night was a little interesting as there was a Ghanaian girl that Dranaya wanted to link me up with who later offered to wash me. When I looked at her confused she said "Are you scared, are you shy", so I said "no fine, let's go". She asked me to wait, but eventually told me "Go shower, tommorrow I will wash you". It was quite funny. So the next day we headed to Lake Bosomtwe, a very beautiful large lake that apparently is very far from Kumasi. We took one tro after another and eventually ended up in a town of Dranaya's friend who went with us to the lake, but we took three more tro-tros. Finally arriving, we spent about 2 hours at the lake as we ate lunch, drank palm wine, and I went on a small walk to a secluded spot where I could sit and reflect. It was a beautiful lake. Getting on a bus at about 4 I headed back to Accra. I got into Circle tro-tro station pretty late around 9:30 and it was quite intense. It was loud and hectic. A man pounded on the tro-tro I got in claiming I had insulted him and wanting to fight me. Thank God I was in a tro-tro already.

So as you can tell things have stayed interesting. This past week I finished my Twi class, hopefully I did well. My drumming class is very interesting as we are now studying our third song. And of course my internship will stay interesting as I start the evaluation and attending a workshop on HIV/AIDS for slum community members sometime soon.

Much love to all of my friends and family. I wish that I could be there to celebrate all the joys with you and be there for all of you during your hard times. I miss you all very much.

Yebehyia Bio,
Ben