I have finally tried those freeze-dried ice cream sandwiches, courtesy of my sister Carol and my friend Phyllis, that I had seen for years at the REI stores. They are a little weird but not bad at all - especially when you are in Ghana and probably 3000 miles from the closest Haagen-dazs store! I tried putting mine in the freezer but that really didn't make much of a difference. Anyway, thanks Carol and Phyllis for sending them. I even held off eating either of them until my birthday so I could have it as a treat!
But tonight I hit the jackpot! I'm staying at the Peace Corps sub-office in Tamale. Another PCV from my group, Alicia, came over with a box of Vienetta Brownie ice cream! We have indeed seen this rare animal here in Ghana but it is outside the bounds of a Peace Corps budgetso it has always stayed on the other side of the glass. She was in a store this evening as the store managers were about to throw this treasure out due to the fact that it had long passed the expiration date. After much animated pleading, cajoling, and just plain begging, she convinced them to give it to her ..... FREE.... but with a stern warning that she would probably get sick since it had expired in March. She, of course, shared this warning with me but anyone who knows me knows that I never pay attention to expiration dates.....right, Kara??
Hell - March was less than 5 months ago. That's still this year! In light of the fact that the fridge is broken here, we decided we would just have to eat it all NOW. It was SO GOOD!!! If I get violently ill later tonight, it was still worth it!
But you probably didn't come here just to hear about my just desserts so what else can I tell you? Progress on the Tourism project is going slow primarily due to the fact that we are in rainy season. This slows things down for two reasons. First - this is the busiest time of year for farmers and just about everyone has some kind of farm here - at least enough to grow food for their own family. So that means you can only have effective meetings on Friday (since this is a Muslim community, nobody works on Friday). Secondly, Ghanaians don't come out in the rain. So, if you have a 4:00 meeting and there are ominous clouds at 3:00, nobody will come. No, really ....NOBODY will come!! That wouldn't be such a big deal except that THIS IS RAINY SEASON!!! It doesn't rain EVERY day but on any given day it's a pretty good bet that you will get some rain at some time. I just have to hope that it's not anywhere close to our meeting time. Given all of that, we are making some progress. At our next meeting, I'm hoping to form committees to begin work on the 7 projects that we have identified as those we can complete or get a good start on by the end of this year. They are: rounding out our Tourism Management Team by adding two representatives from each of the 13 areas of Daboya, completing our constitution, creating a visitor registration area, defining and pricing our tourism "products", identifying home stay and stand-alone guest accomodation sites for overnight visitors, implementing a sanitation plan to provide a clean, healthy, attractive environment, and providing a clean, decent toilet facility for visitors. If we can at least get a good jump on all of those by January, we'll be going in the right direction.
I'm also hoping to be chosen as one of the 2nd year PCV's (that's right folks - by the middle of next month I will have been in Ghana a year!!) to participate in the pre-service training for the new batch of PC trainees who will arrive in September. I found the contribution of the PCV's to my training class to be very valuable and would like the opportunity to pay that back. Plus, I think it would be a lot of fun ..... a lot of hard work, but a lot of fun. And since I spent 13 years as a trainer I think I have something to offer in that capacity.
OK - that's it from your roving reporter in Ghana. Sending you all my love and hoping everything is going well in the land of Ben and Jerry's and Baskin Robbins (I know Sherry, Haagen-dazs is the only REAL ice cream....but I'll take anything I can get!)
Love and Hugs..........Larry (Chief Quarterswura)
