So I haven’t updated this in a while. There are two reasons for this. One is that I was genuinely busy and the other is that I just didn’t feel like it. Honestly, I don’t even really feel like it right now, so this post isn’t going to be the most well-written you’ve ever read. The three biggest things that have been keeping me busy were Camp Informatique, building latrines, and Camp UNITE.
Camp Informatique was awesome. I want to thank everyone who donated money. The kids had a great time and they learned a lot. A few of them went back to villages with volunteers posted there, and the volunteers told me that they were all pumped up about computers. But I think the best part of this project was the organizers. They did most of the organizing themselves and I have a lot of confidence for next year. If they can find a source of funding, I whole-heartedly believe that they could organize the camp totally on their own, and wouldn’t need a volunteer what-so-ever.
And the latrine project. With the help of some very motivated young guys, we built 10 latrines in the section of town called Watuwa. I took a big leap of faith and just deposited 2,500,000 cfa ($5000) and said “ok, show me receipts for everything you buy” and they did an excellent job. They built all ten latrines in only a few weeks and the receipts they gave me added up exactly to the amount of money I gave them. In addition to the actual construction they taught each family who received a latrine how to properly clean it, what can and cannot be put down it, and proper hygiene practices such as washing your hands with soap every time.
Camp UNITE was as awesome as ever. We had a great time learning Life Skills and doing the challenges and winning our planks back from Paggi. It was pretty much the same as last year, so just go ahead and check out that post. I’m sure I wrote about it.
And so this is the beginning of the end. As of today, I only have 43 days of Peace Corps service left. Emily left just over a week ago, although it feels like a lot longer, and now I’m really anxious to get back. The last month in village is going to be weird. I’m not gonna do a bunch of “work” but I do have to fill out a bunch of final reports and get my house ready for my replacement, and figure out what I’m taking with me and what I’m leaving.
So, if you really want to send me something, now is your chance. If you wait too much longer, you risk it getting here after I leave. If I were you, I wouldn’t send any packages; I won’t even have enough time to eat/use whatever is in it. But I’ll tell you what I can do. If I get a letter from you before I leave, I’ll let you buy me a beer when I get back. Deal?
Tuesday 28 September 2010
Tuesday 27 April 2010
Im fine. Im just in Ghana.
I'll be here for... well, i havent decided how long yet, but maybe until the first. you can reach me at (+233) 548039036 and if that doesnt work, I'm back in Togo. I lost my phone but I'll try to get the same number back as soon as i can. the number is (+228) 986 1792. until i get that one back, i dont know what number i'll have, maybe Emily's: (+228) 938 5229. I'm fine though. Don't worry about anything.
Thursday 15 April 2010
Anasara, il faut me donner vingt-cinq
You’re on the internet; obviously, you know how to use a computer. Why not help a kid in Togo learn how to do the same?
Katy, the volunteer in Sokode, and I have organized a camp for high school students called Camp Informatique. It’s a weeklong formation for the #1 ranked student in their junior year of higschool from private and public schools located all over the Centrale Region of Togo. Because we’ve selected the top-ranking student from each school, they have the best chance of going to university in the years to come. Unfortunately, many of these students have never used a computer before. Writing a term paper would be slightly more difficult if you don’t even know what Microsoft Word is, let alone how to use it.
We are funding this project by means of a Peace Corps Partnership. This program provides a means through which friends and family in America (or anywhere, really) can donate money. One rule of this program states that, to show motivation, the community has to contribute at least 25% of the cost. In our case, the community is donating well over the required percentage. After all of the money has been donated, only then will Katy and I receive the funds. The camp is scheduled for the second week of June, so if you are interested in helping out, it would be much better to do so sooner, rather than later.
This will be the third year this camp has taken place, and every year the organizers from Sokode are one step closer to being fully self-sufficient. Obtaining the funds is the most difficult part. But this should be the last year a Peace Corps Partnership will be necessary.
The students who attend this camp are wonderful. There are a thousand reasons why a Togolese student won’t make it to high school. Not only have our students made it there, they are the #1 student in their class. These kids are brilliant and really motivated, but one of the biggest factors holding them back from a successful completion of university is a sheer lack of computer skills.
If you’d like to donate some money, you would really be giving these kids an opportunity that they otherwise won’t have. Please, check out our proposal, and instead of going to the movies this weekend, put the 10 bucks toward our project. Of you know, if you have a few hundred lying around, we’ll gladly accept. Thanks.
Katy, the volunteer in Sokode, and I have organized a camp for high school students called Camp Informatique. It’s a weeklong formation for the #1 ranked student in their junior year of higschool from private and public schools located all over the Centrale Region of Togo. Because we’ve selected the top-ranking student from each school, they have the best chance of going to university in the years to come. Unfortunately, many of these students have never used a computer before. Writing a term paper would be slightly more difficult if you don’t even know what Microsoft Word is, let alone how to use it.
We are funding this project by means of a Peace Corps Partnership. This program provides a means through which friends and family in America (or anywhere, really) can donate money. One rule of this program states that, to show motivation, the community has to contribute at least 25% of the cost. In our case, the community is donating well over the required percentage. After all of the money has been donated, only then will Katy and I receive the funds. The camp is scheduled for the second week of June, so if you are interested in helping out, it would be much better to do so sooner, rather than later.
This will be the third year this camp has taken place, and every year the organizers from Sokode are one step closer to being fully self-sufficient. Obtaining the funds is the most difficult part. But this should be the last year a Peace Corps Partnership will be necessary.
The students who attend this camp are wonderful. There are a thousand reasons why a Togolese student won’t make it to high school. Not only have our students made it there, they are the #1 student in their class. These kids are brilliant and really motivated, but one of the biggest factors holding them back from a successful completion of university is a sheer lack of computer skills.
If you’d like to donate some money, you would really be giving these kids an opportunity that they otherwise won’t have. Please, check out our proposal, and instead of going to the movies this weekend, put the 10 bucks toward our project. Of you know, if you have a few hundred lying around, we’ll gladly accept. Thanks.
Saturday 10 April 2010
Wash, Rinse, Repeat
Life is full of ups and downs, arrivals and departures, sines and cosines. Even fire (dry season), rain (rainy), and sunny days that you swear to god will never ever end (any time of year, really). Since I’ve experienced- nay, endured one rainy and two dry seasons, I decided to make a “pros & cons” list for both. If you ever want to visit West Africa, feel free to use this list as a guide when choosing which personality of the region you’d like to “experience” (ou bein, endure). But keep in mind that the best current feature of West Africa (me) won’t be around for too much longer.
(Note: This was formatted in a nice little chart before I had to edit it because Blogger screwed it up)
Rainy Season
(April-September)
Pros
· Built-in excuse not to have to be anywhere
· Can wear a hoodie, drink tea, and watch the rain on the front porch
· Everything is green and alive Much better selection of produce au marché
Cons
· Rivers are now where the roads used to be. Good luck getting around.
· Laundry takes two days to dry; clothes grow mold if you go too long without wearing them
· Instead of evaporating, sweat likes to stick around and keep you company
· Tons of mosquitoes! (and bugs in general) Mud everywhere (on feet, pant cuffs, splattered up back of pant legs, in house, etc)
Dry Season
(October-March)
Pros
· Cool enough at night to sleep
· Roads aren’t laced with canyons and riverbeds (still though, good luck getting around)
· Don’t have to bring rain jacket absolutely everywhere
· Can put off doing laundry till last possible minute cause clothes dry in about 30 seconds (read: can wear last pair of underwear while washing all of the others)
Cons
· Everything is dry, brown, and dead
· Nose constantly feels like it would be clogged or runny if it could only muster enough moisture to produce some snot
· Lips crackle like Rice Crispies
· Feet are constantly dirty from walking through dust all day
· Have to dust and sweep the whole house daily
Although it’s nice to be able to see kilometer after kilometer unobstructed by plant life during dry season, I personally prefer rainy season. The ubiquitous millet and tall grasses that tower overhead make me feel more like I’m “in” someplace and less like I’m “on” someplace. This opinion may have roots in the streets Philly or the Pine Barrens of South Jersey, but I prefer jungle (concrete or otherwise) to desert.
(Note: This was formatted in a nice little chart before I had to edit it because Blogger screwed it up)
Rainy Season
(April-September)
Pros
· Built-in excuse not to have to be anywhere
· Can wear a hoodie, drink tea, and watch the rain on the front porch
· Everything is green and alive Much better selection of produce au marché
Cons
· Rivers are now where the roads used to be. Good luck getting around.
· Laundry takes two days to dry; clothes grow mold if you go too long without wearing them
· Instead of evaporating, sweat likes to stick around and keep you company
· Tons of mosquitoes! (and bugs in general) Mud everywhere (on feet, pant cuffs, splattered up back of pant legs, in house, etc)
Dry Season
(October-March)
Pros
· Cool enough at night to sleep
· Roads aren’t laced with canyons and riverbeds (still though, good luck getting around)
· Don’t have to bring rain jacket absolutely everywhere
· Can put off doing laundry till last possible minute cause clothes dry in about 30 seconds (read: can wear last pair of underwear while washing all of the others)
Cons
· Everything is dry, brown, and dead
· Nose constantly feels like it would be clogged or runny if it could only muster enough moisture to produce some snot
· Lips crackle like Rice Crispies
· Feet are constantly dirty from walking through dust all day
· Have to dust and sweep the whole house daily
Although it’s nice to be able to see kilometer after kilometer unobstructed by plant life during dry season, I personally prefer rainy season. The ubiquitous millet and tall grasses that tower overhead make me feel more like I’m “in” someplace and less like I’m “on” someplace. This opinion may have roots in the streets Philly or the Pine Barrens of South Jersey, but I prefer jungle (concrete or otherwise) to desert.
Monday 18 January 2010
Ca fait longtemps, non?
Yeah, I know it's been a while since the last post. I'm not going to apologize. I don't know, the internet just means less and less to me anymore. Sometimes I go a month or two without ever thinking "Hey, I wonder what's waiting for me in my email?" If I'm going to sit down and write something, I'd rather write a letter to someone than a blog post. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. I'll let you decide.
So some things work out and some things don't. The science club was definitely my most successful project last semester. The World AIDS Day thing worked out, but not as well as I had hoped. And the Camp UNITE kids hardly even got off the ground.
-Science Club-
The physics professor I was working with (Djeri) is a rockstar. That's one of the big reasons the science club worked out so well. The kids were all really motivated and genuinely interested in the activities we were doing. We kicked the year off by building an electrolyzer and then using it to do things like separate water into hydrogen and oxygen and make bleach. We also did an activity where we measured the volume and mass of different materials to figure out their density. But then toward the end of the semester, we started to run out of activities to do. We did math and logic puzzles one day, and the kids seemed to like that. But the biggest problem with this club is just a sheer lack of resources. It's not like Djeri can go home and look up activities on the internet. Even when I get a chance to use the internet, it's hard for me to find things to do. So Sekou, a volunteer in the Maritime Region, has a book full of science activities. The only problem is that it's in English. So he said that one day he's gonna come up to Tchamba, sit down with Djeri and explain the experiments to him. Then we can re-write the activities in French, and make a document to send to volunteers and high school teachers all over the country. And that's the best part about Djeri- he's brilliant. If I explain the general concept of an activity I read about on the internet, he'll understand and can stand up in front of the class room and just rock the session like he'd been doing it for years. So this semester, we're going to keep the club going but I think we might just meet every other week instead of every week.
-World AIDS Day-
The idea was great in theory. In practice, it didn't really work out the way we had expected. Heather and I organized a group of middle-school kids to have an event for World AIDS Day on December first. In theory, it was supposed to work like this: The latter half of September and all of October was to be spent on teaching our kids all about AIDS. All the stuff they normally don't get to learn about. How the immune system works, what a virus is and how they work, the life-cycle of the AIDS virus, and what makes AIDS different from other viruses. And the kids loved it. They don't usually get a chance to ask a lot of questions (the school system here isn't the most interactive of media through which to learn), and with us they got to, and Heather and I were really responsive, which I think the kids really appreciated.
Then every Wednesday in November, it was their turn. They had four weeks to organize an event for December first. We reviewed all the information they learned and we showed them games they could play and skits to help them illustrate the different concepts pertaining to how AIDS affects the immune system, etc. They broke themselves into groups and assigned themselves to different subjects. Then each group practiced teaching the stuff they learned to the rest of the groups to prepare for World AIDS Day (which we moved to December second for logistic reasons).
December second was the beginning of the end. First of all, we were going to have teachers from the middle school policing the kids to help keep them in order. Heather and I knew we didn't have enough authority to keep a crowd of middle school kids under control. But then the morning of the event, we were informed that there was a big school board meeting that all of the teachers had to attend, and that they wouldn't be available to come to our event. Great. And we got a DJ to come so we'd have a microphone to help us organize and music to play during the games and stuff. Then there were no plugs close enough to where we were to plug anything in. It took us a while to find an extension cord to run all the way across the school grounds so we could start the event.
We had been working with our friend Moctar, who had helpfully written a proposal to PSI to give us some stuff to give out. We got T-shirts, condoms, pamphlets, and stuff like that in addition to a huge box full of toys that my third grade teach, Mrs. Schilling and her class had donated (Thank you Cathy!). Little did we know that this would be our downfall.
The kids did a great job leading their classrooms. They taught their classmates all of the stuff that we had taught them the month before. They asked questions and wrote stuff on the blackboard. Each group of our kids had their own classroom, each dedicated to a different subject (immune system, prevention, stigmatization, etc). Heather and I devised a system to verify which kids had visited which (and how many) of the four rooms. We gave stickers to our student-teachers to put next to the subject they were teaching on a piece of paper given to each participant. But what ended up happening was that the kids went berserk about the stickers and didn't even really care about what they were being taught, they just wanted a sticker next to every subject.
Then after the formations were over, our goal was to ask the kids questions about the information that they learned, and to give out prizes if they got the answers right. This is about the time that the earth split open to release all of the deamons from hell. Their animal instintinct kicked in and they went clinically insane for the rest of the afternoon. Nobody cared about the questions we were asking, they just wanted a football or a box of condoms or whatever was on the table to be given away. We got swarmed and lost control pretty quickly. This was one of the reasons we wanted the teachers present. I felt like I was in a cartoon, like I had just crawled out of a dust-cloud with tattered clothing and two black eyes only to be grabbed by the ankle and dragged back in.
After the event, Heather, Emily (who came to help out), Moctar, and I went to the bar to have a beer or three and to reflect. It wasn't a lost cause. I'm sure some of the participants learned some useful information and I know that our student-teachers got a lot out of it. Not only did they learn a bunch of stuff about AIDS, they also got to experience what it's like to run a classroom. Maybe now they'll have a little more empathy for their teachers.
-The UNITE Kids-
The wings fell off of this one before it even got the runway. We got a good number of Camp UNITE participants from the area together for one meeting at the begining of the year. We talked about some possible projects we could do and they wanted to do a sensibilization in a nearby village on the subject of gender equity. We got as far as actually going out to the village (Alibi I) to talk to the director about when we could do it, and that's about when the kids stopped showing up for meetings. The only time during the week they had free was Wednesday afternoons, and neither Heather nor I could come because that's when our World AIDS Day class was. I don't blame the kids for not coming, I mean, I'd rather play football with my friends than organize a sensibilization too. And I can't really blame myself, cause it's not like I wasn't doing anything- I was busy at the middle school every wednesday. So, I don't feel too bad about losing that one. I think the lesson here is that if you're going to organize kids as peer-educators, you need to give them a ton of structure and just have them fill in the gaps.
That's what I spent most of my time doing last semester. I'm sure I did a lot of other stuff that classified as "work" as far as Peace Corps is concerned (like building a school in a little village 40 kilometers away), but none of them are big, long-term(ish) projects like the aforementioned.
I had my 12-year-old host-brother from training come live with me for a good two weeks. It was tough. I felt like he was bored the whole time, but I'm sure he had a good time. He had keys to the house, I let him come and go as he pleased. We had a good time cooking together and listening to music. But I think the most important thing he got out of the trip was experience. He's never traveled more than a few kilometers from his village, so there were a lot of things up here that he'd never seen before. He speaks Ewe in an Ewe-speaking village, so for him to hear people speaking Tchamba and Kotokoli was something completely new. He asked me "Why do you keep saying 'aieeyo'?". "That's how you say 'no' in Tchamba". And it gets cold up here at night- well, reletively cold. I shiver if I don't wear a hoodie after the sun goes down (not until after my grandmom sent me a thermometer did I realize that it only goes down to 72 at the absolute coldest). So that was new for him too. And he asked a lot of questions about Islam: the writing, the calls to prair, the washing, etc. He wasn't entertained every minute of every day, but I'm sure when he got back to Agou, he wouldn't shut up about all the stuff we did and how different every thing is.
And that's about it. After a fun-filled (yet tiring) break between semesters, I'm winding back up for the second half of the school year. I just got back from teaching some women how to make liquid soap and tomorrow I'm going to start making phonecalls about Camp Informatique. Emily and I are taking a trip up to Ouagadougou in the begining of February and then were on stand-fast (we're not allowed to leave post) for a couple of weeks in March for the election. That's about all I have on the agenda. Keep sending letters, I appreciate every one that I get. You'll hear from me the next time I feel like typing up a post.
Some random things that have happened that I don't feel like writing out:
My cat died mysteriously and I bought a new one.
Spent a week in the Med-unit.
Organized a girls' soccer tournament in Wassarabo.
Published an issue of The Griot.
Took a trip to Ghana with Emily.
Had a phone pick-pocketed, then a really nice woman named Paulina gave me hers.
Biked a good 10 or 15 kilometers at night with no flashlight.
Biked to Sokode and back in the same day (70 kilometers).
So some things work out and some things don't. The science club was definitely my most successful project last semester. The World AIDS Day thing worked out, but not as well as I had hoped. And the Camp UNITE kids hardly even got off the ground.
-Science Club-
The physics professor I was working with (Djeri) is a rockstar. That's one of the big reasons the science club worked out so well. The kids were all really motivated and genuinely interested in the activities we were doing. We kicked the year off by building an electrolyzer and then using it to do things like separate water into hydrogen and oxygen and make bleach. We also did an activity where we measured the volume and mass of different materials to figure out their density. But then toward the end of the semester, we started to run out of activities to do. We did math and logic puzzles one day, and the kids seemed to like that. But the biggest problem with this club is just a sheer lack of resources. It's not like Djeri can go home and look up activities on the internet. Even when I get a chance to use the internet, it's hard for me to find things to do. So Sekou, a volunteer in the Maritime Region, has a book full of science activities. The only problem is that it's in English. So he said that one day he's gonna come up to Tchamba, sit down with Djeri and explain the experiments to him. Then we can re-write the activities in French, and make a document to send to volunteers and high school teachers all over the country. And that's the best part about Djeri- he's brilliant. If I explain the general concept of an activity I read about on the internet, he'll understand and can stand up in front of the class room and just rock the session like he'd been doing it for years. So this semester, we're going to keep the club going but I think we might just meet every other week instead of every week.
-World AIDS Day-
The idea was great in theory. In practice, it didn't really work out the way we had expected. Heather and I organized a group of middle-school kids to have an event for World AIDS Day on December first. In theory, it was supposed to work like this: The latter half of September and all of October was to be spent on teaching our kids all about AIDS. All the stuff they normally don't get to learn about. How the immune system works, what a virus is and how they work, the life-cycle of the AIDS virus, and what makes AIDS different from other viruses. And the kids loved it. They don't usually get a chance to ask a lot of questions (the school system here isn't the most interactive of media through which to learn), and with us they got to, and Heather and I were really responsive, which I think the kids really appreciated.
Then every Wednesday in November, it was their turn. They had four weeks to organize an event for December first. We reviewed all the information they learned and we showed them games they could play and skits to help them illustrate the different concepts pertaining to how AIDS affects the immune system, etc. They broke themselves into groups and assigned themselves to different subjects. Then each group practiced teaching the stuff they learned to the rest of the groups to prepare for World AIDS Day (which we moved to December second for logistic reasons).
December second was the beginning of the end. First of all, we were going to have teachers from the middle school policing the kids to help keep them in order. Heather and I knew we didn't have enough authority to keep a crowd of middle school kids under control. But then the morning of the event, we were informed that there was a big school board meeting that all of the teachers had to attend, and that they wouldn't be available to come to our event. Great. And we got a DJ to come so we'd have a microphone to help us organize and music to play during the games and stuff. Then there were no plugs close enough to where we were to plug anything in. It took us a while to find an extension cord to run all the way across the school grounds so we could start the event.
We had been working with our friend Moctar, who had helpfully written a proposal to PSI to give us some stuff to give out. We got T-shirts, condoms, pamphlets, and stuff like that in addition to a huge box full of toys that my third grade teach, Mrs. Schilling and her class had donated (Thank you Cathy!). Little did we know that this would be our downfall.
The kids did a great job leading their classrooms. They taught their classmates all of the stuff that we had taught them the month before. They asked questions and wrote stuff on the blackboard. Each group of our kids had their own classroom, each dedicated to a different subject (immune system, prevention, stigmatization, etc). Heather and I devised a system to verify which kids had visited which (and how many) of the four rooms. We gave stickers to our student-teachers to put next to the subject they were teaching on a piece of paper given to each participant. But what ended up happening was that the kids went berserk about the stickers and didn't even really care about what they were being taught, they just wanted a sticker next to every subject.
Then after the formations were over, our goal was to ask the kids questions about the information that they learned, and to give out prizes if they got the answers right. This is about the time that the earth split open to release all of the deamons from hell. Their animal instintinct kicked in and they went clinically insane for the rest of the afternoon. Nobody cared about the questions we were asking, they just wanted a football or a box of condoms or whatever was on the table to be given away. We got swarmed and lost control pretty quickly. This was one of the reasons we wanted the teachers present. I felt like I was in a cartoon, like I had just crawled out of a dust-cloud with tattered clothing and two black eyes only to be grabbed by the ankle and dragged back in.
After the event, Heather, Emily (who came to help out), Moctar, and I went to the bar to have a beer or three and to reflect. It wasn't a lost cause. I'm sure some of the participants learned some useful information and I know that our student-teachers got a lot out of it. Not only did they learn a bunch of stuff about AIDS, they also got to experience what it's like to run a classroom. Maybe now they'll have a little more empathy for their teachers.
-The UNITE Kids-
The wings fell off of this one before it even got the runway. We got a good number of Camp UNITE participants from the area together for one meeting at the begining of the year. We talked about some possible projects we could do and they wanted to do a sensibilization in a nearby village on the subject of gender equity. We got as far as actually going out to the village (Alibi I) to talk to the director about when we could do it, and that's about when the kids stopped showing up for meetings. The only time during the week they had free was Wednesday afternoons, and neither Heather nor I could come because that's when our World AIDS Day class was. I don't blame the kids for not coming, I mean, I'd rather play football with my friends than organize a sensibilization too. And I can't really blame myself, cause it's not like I wasn't doing anything- I was busy at the middle school every wednesday. So, I don't feel too bad about losing that one. I think the lesson here is that if you're going to organize kids as peer-educators, you need to give them a ton of structure and just have them fill in the gaps.
That's what I spent most of my time doing last semester. I'm sure I did a lot of other stuff that classified as "work" as far as Peace Corps is concerned (like building a school in a little village 40 kilometers away), but none of them are big, long-term(ish) projects like the aforementioned.
I had my 12-year-old host-brother from training come live with me for a good two weeks. It was tough. I felt like he was bored the whole time, but I'm sure he had a good time. He had keys to the house, I let him come and go as he pleased. We had a good time cooking together and listening to music. But I think the most important thing he got out of the trip was experience. He's never traveled more than a few kilometers from his village, so there were a lot of things up here that he'd never seen before. He speaks Ewe in an Ewe-speaking village, so for him to hear people speaking Tchamba and Kotokoli was something completely new. He asked me "Why do you keep saying 'aieeyo'?". "That's how you say 'no' in Tchamba". And it gets cold up here at night- well, reletively cold. I shiver if I don't wear a hoodie after the sun goes down (not until after my grandmom sent me a thermometer did I realize that it only goes down to 72 at the absolute coldest). So that was new for him too. And he asked a lot of questions about Islam: the writing, the calls to prair, the washing, etc. He wasn't entertained every minute of every day, but I'm sure when he got back to Agou, he wouldn't shut up about all the stuff we did and how different every thing is.
And that's about it. After a fun-filled (yet tiring) break between semesters, I'm winding back up for the second half of the school year. I just got back from teaching some women how to make liquid soap and tomorrow I'm going to start making phonecalls about Camp Informatique. Emily and I are taking a trip up to Ouagadougou in the begining of February and then were on stand-fast (we're not allowed to leave post) for a couple of weeks in March for the election. That's about all I have on the agenda. Keep sending letters, I appreciate every one that I get. You'll hear from me the next time I feel like typing up a post.
Some random things that have happened that I don't feel like writing out:
My cat died mysteriously and I bought a new one.
Spent a week in the Med-unit.
Organized a girls' soccer tournament in Wassarabo.
Published an issue of The Griot.
Took a trip to Ghana with Emily.
Had a phone pick-pocketed, then a really nice woman named Paulina gave me hers.
Biked a good 10 or 15 kilometers at night with no flashlight.
Biked to Sokode and back in the same day (70 kilometers).
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