"There's a village in my backyard!!"

I AM IN LOVE WITH LUNGBUNGA!!

Just wanted to say that first. After visiting my site last week, I now feel like Peace Corps is something I can actually DO! I have an amazing house, am surrounded by amazing people, and think Northern Region is beautiful.

My home is in teachers quarters, meaning I am surrounded by JSS and primary school teachers. However, I have the same amount of space all for myself that most teachers share with THREE other people! I have a living room, bedroom, kitchen, courtyard, bath area, and bucket flush toilet all to myself!! It was built within the past year, so the bat shit hasn't started seeping down the walls through the roof, like most other people's homes. Lucky me. (I do have bats though - I almost got hit in the face with one while eating dinner in my courtyard one night.)

I am working with people who are called things that I aspire to have in life (not kidding, their names are Justice and Comfort). Comfort is a midwife who already started calling me her daughter. My counterpart/contact person who I will work with on projects is great; he brought me meals three times a day. And supplied me with all the groundnuts I could eat!

Personally I think Northern Region is just beautiful. When I got to my home I opened the back door, looked out, and literally exclaimed "There's a village in my backyard!!" I'm not sure what else I expected, but when I look out my back door I know I am in AFRICA. There are round mud huts with straw roofs, women cooking over fires, beautiful trees, and big open sky.

I don't have electricity, which I actually don't mind too much (surprisingly!). I can see so many stars at night! During dry season when it gets really hot I will probably be sleeping in my courtyard and will have beautiful stars to look at. And reading by candle light really isn't so bad!

My project description is still pretty vague and ambiguous, but I can deal with that. I do have two years to figure out something to do. Fortunately there is a clinic in Lungbunga, so I can go there a few days a week to help out, which will give me some structure.

So that's my site! I LOVE LOVE it and can't wait to go back up there. Only two more weeks until I swear in and become a real volunteer...crazy.

Thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes! I had a good birthday. I was at site. My "supervisor," a former Peace Corps volunteer doing Guinea Worm work, brought Andy and Ana, my two closest neighbors, up to Lungbunga to celebrate. He brought me beer and cake! I even attempted to SHOTGUN a beer!!! I'm sure those who used to drink with me are shocked by this. AND I ate a double cheeseburger and french fries the next day when we spent the night in the Kumasi Sub-Office. Shotgunning beers and eating double cheeseburgers...I don't even know who I am anymore!

Thanksgiving was also fun. A friend and I went into the nearest big city to eat American-ish food. We had egg rolls, french fries, and ice cream for lunch. Delicious.

On another note, when I move to site in the middle of December I will have a new address! Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has written me (yes, all three of you)...letters are so much fun to get. Packages are also wonderful and I am surprisingly easy to please these days. So if anyone is feeling especially in the Christmas spirit or just wants to do a good deed, feel free to mail something!

Here are some things I can ALWAYS use: books, shampoo, candles, incense, St. Ives Apricot scrub, Arm and Hammer toothpaste, magazines/newspapers, and any kind of American food. And of course letters!

Address:
Catherine Trottman, PCV
P.O. Box 962
Tamale, N/R
Ghana, West Africa

Given people's track records, I would be willing to bet that Bro Paul and his friends will be the first to put together a package and mail it. Haha...I'm hoping to put a little competitive spirit into this!

So those are the updates for now! My homestay family wants to celebrate my birthday on Sunday - we'll see what all that entails. I'm sure it'll be a good story. I have my technical and language exams next week...I better study up on Dagbani! I am happy and healthy (still!) and so so excited to move to Lungbunga. It is my Ghanaian 214 Mitchell Lane (minus Whitney, Dylan, and Gobi of course!).

Nice Long Entry for Dad

This week we leave for SITE VISIT!! I am so so excited. I can't wait to find out what my house is like. After all, I will be living there for two years (hopefully haha!). I hope it lives up to 214 Mitchell Lane standards.

Also during site visit is my 23rd birthday (on Nov. 24 in case you didn't know)! I doubt I will tell my Ghanaian community about it...they don't really make a big deal out of birthdays like us Americans and I don't want anyone thinking I'm expecting anything. But I will get to celebrate in Tamale with some fellow Peace Corps friends on Tuesday, Nov. 25 which will be nice. And also on that note, I don't think I have good cell phone reception at site with my current phone number. So if anyone wants to call or text happy birthday messages (which I'm sure you DO) you should wait until I go to Tamale on the 25. And yes I'm aware that I'm shamelessly asking for birthday attention!

I also get to meet my counterpart this week. My counterpart is the person living in my community who I will work closely with on most projects. Very exciting. I'm extremely relieved to see training almost over. It's great to be with lots of American Peace Corps volunteers all the time (I really do love them), but I'm tired of homestay and not living independently. I'm ready to move to my new home, settle in, and work on some projects. Swearing in is less than one month away!!

The Ghanaian national elections are coming up! On Dec. 7 they will elect a new president. It's all pretty exciting and interesting to see how an election happens over here. On my taxi ride to the internet cafe we drove through an NDC rally. Pretty intense!

MOST EXCITING NEWS SO FAR: I have TWO kitten possibilities!! My homestay family offered me a baby calico who is gorgeous. And there is also a tiiiiiny kitten I found at the spot (bar) on Friday night who I fell in love with. The spot owner said she is a "lost cat" (maybe I'll name her Losty haha) and they really want me to take her. So hopefully something will work out. I am very lonely without my baby boy (Dyl) and I need some animals in my life!

My health has been miraculously great thus far. With the exception of dusty lung I have had no sickness. I'm very lucky. I'm also getting more accustomed to the food (I even asked for fufu the other night. By the way, fufu is basically pounded yam. It's a doughy consistency and used to scoop up soups and stews). Old Tafo (my homestay community) is a bit intense for my tastes -aggressive and in your face a lot. After visiting Northern Region I am so excited to move there. It was much more laid back and relaxed. It is also predominantly Muslim, which I imagine will have to be quieter than the Christians down here in the south. Except for the 4AM calls to prayer...

I am also still making lots of good friends in Peace Corps. I have created a little family for myself, it's wonderful! Consuelo, my surrogate mother, is AMAZING! I hang out with her all the time and she is even going to help me PACK for site visit today! Two of the married couples in their mid and late 20s have adopted me as their baby sister too! So I am surrounded by lots of wonderful people. At site I will be living close to Ana and Andy, two other good friends in the WatSan sector. I'm lucky.

So that's that for now! My mother says she likes short blog entries and my father says he likes long blog entries so I have to do some of each to appease them. You are a dedicated blog reader if you made it to the end of this one!

Midnight Prayer

So at home I was woken up in the middle of the night by smoke detectors, drunk roommates, or parties. These days it's a bit different...I am continually woken up by the girl who lives next door to me because of her LOUD PRAYING!!

These Ghanaian Christians are OUT OF CONTROL. They sing, clap, stomp, speak in tongues, chant, drum...anything to be as loud as possible. The other night some dogs were attacking each other outside of our window, so my neighbor began loudly praying to make them go away. She said the dogs came because of her failure to go to church that night. I strongly encourage her to attend church EVERY night, to avoid dog attacks as well as midnight prayer sessions.

Anyway. Yesterday we went to an herbal HIV treatment center. It was very interesting! They use ARVs still too and refer patients to the hospital, but rely a lot on herbal remedies. They showed us mysterious bottles which could supposedly cure stroke, menstrual cramps, all sorts of things...interesting, to say the least.

Obama, Obama, Obama

So now that I'm not (as) delirious, I have more to add about field trip.

Well one thing really - on the way home from Tamale, I FELL OUT OF THE TRO!!! My skirt got caught on one of the jump seats and I kept going and my skirt stayed there. The skirt ripped and I fell backwards out of the bus, skinning and bruising my leg, scraping my back, and bruising my hip pretty badly. And now I'm back in Old Tafo with what feels like dusty lung or something. Pleasant.

I am so so so excited Obama won!!! And so proud of my little blue North Carolina. It's been fun watching it over here. And by watch I mean refreshing CNN.com and half-listening on a wind-up radio. But people here are actually really excited. Yesterday in the car ride home from class an Obama song came on the radio! It was mostly in Twi, but the chorus was "Obaaama, Obaaama, Obaaama!" Amazing. Haven't heard any McCain songs, that's for sure!

Dance Marathon in Ghana

I think most of you know the hellish experience of Dance Marathon. Either you did it with me (lucky you Whit, Bro Paul, Luke, Blake, Angela) or you've heard about it. But I think you know the gist - on your feet for 24 hours with the same people. There are moments of fun, agony, exhaustion, and delerium. I am writing this entry at the Tamale sub-office, at the end of what I would consider my Ghanaian version of Dance Marathon.

These past five days were spent on what Peace Corps calls "field trip." It is an opportunity for volunteers to travel to different parts of Ghana with their sector to learn more about other volunteer's day to day lives. Since we are the largest sector, WatSan was split into two groups - one gong to northern Volta region and one going to Northern region. Please refer to your nearest map of Ghana to try to understand Peace Corps' brilliant idea: in an effort to save money we were all taken in one vehicle from Koforidua up through Volta region to drop people and then up to Tamale in Northern region. This is not the most efficient way. Especially with road conditions taken into account. Our vehicle is a 22 passenger yellow minibus. Some of these are not even real seats, but ones that fold out to fit extra passengers. There are also lots of cockroaches living in the bus. Most of the roads are not paved and all are riddled with potholes.

We leave Old Tafo at 5:30am. We arrive in northern Volta at 3:30pm. Thinking that the bulk of our journey is behind us, most of us are excited. Little do we know that we have another EIGHT HOURS TO GO. On the worst roads so far. And since we are trying to arrive before dark (ha), there is no time to stop for dinner! By the time we get to site at 11:30pm we are absolutely FILTHY. Literally. The dust is so bad that our skin is a nice orangeish-brown color. The guy in the back left corner of the bus changed color so much that we nicknamed him Sandy Andy. We are all in very foul moods.

So here we are on field trip. The first night we sleep outside, which was nice, until we woke up and there was so much dew we thought someone had played a joke on us and poured water everywhere. All day we do WatSan activities, including inspecting boreholes, visiting chiefs, discussing sanitation, and playing cards. We also participate in a football (soccer) match with Ghanaians, who were taking it WAY more seriously than we did. I don't play (of course) but most of the rest of the group does. Our team sustained minor injuries.

I think the highlight of this field trip was the random fit of hysterical laughter that plagued me and my friend J.J. We are teaching children about HIV/AIDS, hand-washing, malaria, etc. but most of these kids don't speak English very well. We are trying to encourage them to create a song, dance, or drama. After receiving only blank stares for a good three minutes, one boy softly (and robotically) sings, "Wash, wash, wash your hands..." After an awkward pause, J.J. and I realize that this is the entire song. For whatever reason, this combined with the vacant stares sent both of us into a fit of hysterical laughter right in front of the children!! We both had to turn away, had tears streaming down our faces, and had to get someone to replace us. The rest of the day we could hardly look at each other without the rumblings of hysteria.

It is now 2:18am and I am STILL AWAKE!! This is another reason why this field trip is like Dance Marathon. I haven't stayed awake this long in ages! I am waiting for election results and also have to be up at 4:00am to drive back to Old Tafo, so I figured I would try staying awake. I feel delirious.