Accra

Hi Friends,

I got to Accra Monday night. Sorry I haven't posted until today, but the internet service here is almost as bad as Comcast! I have been to the internet office twice now with Peter to try to get them to connect the internet. Peter is the Executive Director of Africa Change International which is one of two projects I'm working on in Ghana. Peter is trying to open an internet cafe to raise money to provide basketball coaches to schools and orphanages here. The idea is to train kids that show talent at an early age so they can win scholarships for schools (and eventually university in Europe or the US), and apparently, scholarships for jobs in Ghana. They are also going to use the internet cafe as a computer lab to teach kids to use computers responsibly.

But of course you can't charge for a service that's not working, so no money coming in right now. They have an employee to work on writing grants for them since they are an NGO, but of course that will take time. I would like to get a seed grant of $1000 to help them for the first couple of months while they wait to get a grant. (It's $300/month to pay the basketball coach that they have already chosen and $350/month to pay utilities.) Mary, can you help me put a paypal button on my blog like you did last time?

I'm going to try to post a picture of me with the kids at one of the schools I'm at. I'm at a different Internet cafe and they don't have a really good photo program.

Anyway, the school is for the children of policemen and women. It's called Police Depot 3 and 4. Maybe the Belleville Police can hold a fundraiser, Laura? The school runs a "shift system" which means that half of the kids go to school in the morning and then the other half goes to school for the afternoon. Obviously, they would like to have volunteers come and help them out so there is enough teachers for the students to go full-time, so if you know anyone who wants to teach at a school, let me know.

Besides going all around town meeting people like the CEO of the National Sports Council and ambassadors at embassies to raise awareness about the program, I've also ate sugar cane for the first time (yum!) and alot of other things I've had before but are much better here, like fried plantains. I basically eat fruit for breakfast and have some combination of rice or yams with vegetables and fish for lunch or dinner. There is a girl named Matta who cooks. I don't know how old she is, maybe in her late teens. She's going to catering school in another town and is here for a month to make money. Also there is a young guy named Paul who basically does anything like open the door or watch the office when we're out. They are both very nice. We all stay at Peter's grandmother's house. She's really nice too. They speak Twi mostly, but enough English so that I can communicate with them. I haven't really learned much Twi yet, except "obruni" which means "white girl."