One week down, one hundred and three to go

Quick post today. I had plans to do a longer more involved one with pictures and everything but the internet is being temperamental.

Anyway, I have been officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer! It feels absolutely no different than it did before swearing in but I guess that’s typical for arbitrary commencements and the like. Shipping off to site was relatively traumatic as me, and my fellow volunteers, were thrown into our isolated sites and ripped away from the people we have spent essentially waking moment of the last three months with. There is a definite attachment that has grown there which makes the separation difficult, but I am guessing that is just a Stockholm Syndrome-esque response and that I will quickly realize exactly how much I despise all those obnoxious obrunis.

I am now living in Bormase, and those readers whose loyalty I have not yet failed to exhaust will remember it as the village where I will be spending the next two years of my life. There are approximately five hundred people in the town and we make gari! I do not want to spoil the joy I felt in my virginal experience of gari, so I will let those reading do their own research to discover for themselves what this magical treat is. I will follow up with a more detailed look at Bormase when I finally upload photos.

There are four other volunteers living near me, and we are all working with Krobodan(Pronounced with a super hero like emphasis on the -dan.) Three of these lovely people are in my training group and we have been going through many of the same trials together. Kofi Adam, our gentle giant, has generously taken up the cross of the serial pooper for our quartet. Not that any of us are lacking on that front but he has notably gone above and beyond the normal human capacity for excretion.

If you weren’t aware, Christmas is next week. Ghana celebrates it too! My only insight into how they celebrate is when my friend in town took me to the local distillery to get Akpeteshie, the local moonshine. It is amazing stuff. Puts hair on the chest and then can be used to burn it right off again. He purchased two gallons of it.

I want to send some postcards home to friends and family but strangely I lacked the initiative to collect addresses before leaving. If you would like me to send you a postcard you can message me your address via facebook, email (jveritas334@gmail.com), or through this blog. I will very likely get around to sending something to everyone in the two years while I am here. If you would like to ensure your name at the top of that list you can mail me something first! My address is:

Joseph Stein – Peace Corps Volunteer

Peace Corps Ghana

P.O.Box 5796

Accra-North, Ghana

I gotta go. Send me something. Or don’t. I will only love you marginally less.

Merry Christmas!

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post do not represent the views of the Peace Corps.  They only represent those of the author.

The Newtown Shooting

I just recently heard about the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. There are no words to accurately describe this tragedy. I cannot begin to imagine the depths at which this is being felt back everyone back home. The victims will live on in my heart and those of all of the Peace Corps and Ghana. We will pray for the families and loved ones of the deceased, as well as the survivors, at church in Bormase this Sunday.