We arrived in our town, Wiamoase, on Thursday afternoon and immediately received a warm welcome.
We first toured the Salvation Army Clinic with Dr. Samuel. The clinic seems fairly nice although it does not have running water. Like the rest of Ghana, it also is on a scheduled rotation for electricity. John has already been able to spend one morning there observing and helping. They serve a lot of mothers through their pregnancies, deliveries and post natal care. John actually watched a child birth on his first day! He is pretty excited about the things he will be learning this summer at the clinic.
We are figuring out this little town pretty well and making some friends. The Dr. and his wife are really helping us makes contacts in the community for our individual research projects. His wife, Ester, especially is like our Ghanaian Mom. 
She is always concerned about if we are eating enough or if we need anything. So she has offered us the help of her niece who has just finished secondary school, the equivalent of high school. Right now she has just helped us with the routine things like laundry, cooking and cleaning. These are all things we are learning but I think it will end up that she just does most of these things for us and we will pay her. It will make things a lot easier on us and provide her some income too. We have traveled into the nearby town of Mampong for church and for a celebration. They celebrated African Union day last Friday. We were very excited, however, when we arrived it turned out it was just a fundraiser for a college and they barely mentioned the holiday. It was pretty fun though because like any fundraiser in the US, there was a ton of energy and enthusiasm. We saw students our age dancing and singing and at one point they even asked their “BYU visitors” to join in the dancing. On Sunday we also went to Mampong and sat in this crammed, hot, little school for church. Everything is in Twi so three hours really tested our patience. I have so much respect for the members of the Church here. They sacrifice a lot and are so faithful. It is really inspiring. We will not be able to use the Internet in Mampong on Sundays so we have to make another trip during the week back to Mampong or into Kumasi. We are not sure how this will work out emailing may be less consistent than we had hoped. We are so grateful to be here, to be making friends and learning to become apart of the community. Today I will volunteer at the secondary school where Ester works which will be a consistent routine I hope.
We first toured the Salvation Army Clinic with Dr. Samuel. The clinic seems fairly nice although it does not have running water. Like the rest of Ghana, it also is on a scheduled rotation for electricity. John has already been able to spend one morning there observing and helping. They serve a lot of mothers through their pregnancies, deliveries and post natal care. John actually watched a child birth on his first day! He is pretty excited about the things he will be learning this summer at the clinic.
We are figuring out this little town pretty well and making some friends. The Dr. and his wife are really helping us makes contacts in the community for our individual research projects. His wife, Ester, especially is like our Ghanaian Mom. 
She is always concerned about if we are eating enough or if we need anything. So she has offered us the help of her niece who has just finished secondary school, the equivalent of high school. Right now she has just helped us with the routine things like laundry, cooking and cleaning. These are all things we are learning but I think it will end up that she just does most of these things for us and we will pay her. It will make things a lot easier on us and provide her some income too. We have traveled into the nearby town of Mampong for church and for a celebration. They celebrated African Union day last Friday. We were very excited, however, when we arrived it turned out it was just a fundraiser for a college and they barely mentioned the holiday. It was pretty fun though because like any fundraiser in the US, there was a ton of energy and enthusiasm. We saw students our age dancing and singing and at one point they even asked their “BYU visitors” to join in the dancing. On Sunday we also went to Mampong and sat in this crammed, hot, little school for church. Everything is in Twi so three hours really tested our patience. I have so much respect for the members of the Church here. They sacrifice a lot and are so faithful. It is really inspiring. We will not be able to use the Internet in Mampong on Sundays so we have to make another trip during the week back to Mampong or into Kumasi. We are not sure how this will work out emailing may be less consistent than we had hoped. We are so grateful to be here, to be making friends and learning to become apart of the community. Today I will volunteer at the secondary school where Ester works which will be a consistent routine I hope. 
No comments:
Post a Comment