Humanity

Just back from a weekend on the "Gold Coast". More on that in the next blog. For now, I'm just going to focus on our visit to the Cape Coast castle. The Obamas just visited there on their trip to Ghana. It's an old slave fort where thousands of slaves who were captured from their villages were "stored" until they were sent on slave ships to other lands. It was stunning to feel the energy of the place, walk into the dungeons and see real shackles used on people. We were able to touch a rock that the slaves used to pray on before heading onto the ships. It was truly amazing. Standing in the "male dungeon" where hundreds of male slaves were held with only a couple of tiny holes in the rocks for air and light, I was stunned to find out that the Europeans had built an Anglican church directly on top of the dungeon. So, while hundreds of humans were sick, scared, tired, in pain and in hell, the Anglicans were singing songs of praise to the heavens. Unimaginable.

It made me come to the simple conclusion: this has to stop. Whites have to stop enslaving blacks. African tribes have to stop hurting other African tribes, in order for us to have a lasting and loving world, we all have to stop hurting each other - and using God as the excuse.

A plaque on the wall said it all "In everlasting memory of the anguish of our ancestors. May those who died rest in peace. May those who return find their roots. May humanity never again perpetrate such injustice against humanity. May we, the living, vow to uphold this."

Almost Like Home

We finally got our furniture. We ordered cane furniture from a furniture maker on the side of the row in section of town where there are loads of furniture makers. Sophie & I picked out material for the couch cushions & a tailors made them. We've now got beds, a couch, table & chairs and a few shelves. Feels good to be a bit settled. Last week, I broke down and bought a small TV and got satellite hooked up. I know, that's a minor miracle. For those of you who know me at home, I haven't had TV for a couple of years. I was desperate. I needed something to keep the kids occupied so I could breathe for a moment!

Tomorrow, we're getting out of the city and staying at a small beachfront bungalow place. Sounds very off the beaten path & we're looking forward to breathing some fresh air and swimming in the ocean (and I can't wait to pass out in a hammock!). The place looks great http://www.ko-sa.com/ and is only about $35/night for a bungalow. I'll report back after our weekend.

When we return, the kids start school on Tuesday. They just got their uniforms yesterday & they look so darn cute in their little green outfits, white socks & brown shoes :)

Hopefully, I'll get around to posting some pictures next week. Missing home & all of you.

What are you doing?

I realize I haven't written much about my actual work here. I'm the Project Manager for a Grameen Foundation project called MoTech http://www.grameenfoundation.org/what_we_do/technology_programs/ict_innovation/community_health/

It's a Gates-funded project designed to figure out ways we can use mobile phones to help women get better information about prenatal care & help health workers enter & access better information about the moms and newborns they are serving.

Using technology, such as mobile phones, is becoming the next wave of ways organizations are trying to address some of the major issues related to poverty. Cool work - I'm excited to be a part of it.

Fun in the Rain

Every day is filled with gazillions of new things. Today, we had the first "real" rain. When the sky opens up here, it opens! The kids were at the main market (traditional African market with 100s of stalls and 1000s of people) with Patience, the housekeeper. We discovered that Sophie is claustrophobic. She had a bit of a panic attack when everyone huddled under cover. I was trying to get a taxi and noticed a swarm of birds above the trees. The closer I looked, I realized it was actually a swarm of bats! Never seen so many bats and certainly haven't seen so many in the middle of the day!

There's just too much to try and convey. Here's some random info. about our lives here:
- Sophie had to get French, German and English dictionaries for school
- Sometimes phone numbers work, sometimes they just don't
- Minimum wage is 2.653 Ghana Cedi a day, less than $2 (I know this because I am having to brush op on Ghanaian employment law to be sure we're following the law with hiring)
- A couple of the main "western" superstores are South African chains - the electronics they sell have plugs that work in S. Africa, but not in Ghana - you have to ask to have the plugs changed to make your appliance work
- When it rains - it POURS and in some places it's not raining at all
- When airplanes fly over, they're so low you can't even talk to someone right next to you (our neighborhood is in the flight path - luckily it's not a busy airport)
- The opening of a major oil field has made prices skyricket - my house is just over $3,000/month - it's nice, but not a palace. Anything "western" or imported is really expensive. Anything made locally or labor intensive is pretty inexpensive - a housekeeper 5 days/week from 8-5:00 makes about $200/month.
- Overall, people are really nice, patient and kind.

We're starting to feel more and more settled. More soon.

A Very Long Week

I'm sitting in bed at 1:45 on Friday afternoon writing this. The good news is, I finally have Internet access at my house. The not so great news is that after a week of getting "the basics" in place, I am completely exhausted.

Imagine setting up a new household - starting from scratch - needing everything from toilet paper to pans to furniture. Then, image needing to figure out how to get around - finding temporary transportation while also looking for vehicles to purchase. Then, imagine establishing a new legal entity for doing business and navigating all the legal aspects, logistics of finding an office, getting equipment and then imagine managing a major project with a lot of stakeholders and needing to establish a team & hire staff. Oh, and then imagine having 2 kids who have been dropped onto another planet as far as they're concerned & you're their only familiar thing (thus, they are with me & needing me every moment they're not at day camp - including sleeping in my bed). Not easy - then add the additional element of doing all this in a developing country, not having any friends or support network yet.

So, I guess it's understandable that by 9:00 this morning, it was really clear to me that I needed to spend at least part of the day in bed. Hoping to get some photos up soon - my Iphone was "unlocked" to so I can use a local SIM card. It was also wiped of all Iphone software, so am having a hard time with syncing it, uploading pictures, etc. One of many things yet to sort out.

The first "real" day

The first “real” day
I’m sitting in bed on what is (hopefully) our last day “living” in a hotel in Ghana, writing this on a word document, hoping that tomorrow I’ll have internet access and will be able to sit down long enough to upload this to my blog. Yes, I used the word “hope” twice in the same sentence. It has come to define life here for me as I try to get our lives as settled as possible.
Today was the kids’ first day at day camp at their new school and my first day actually heading out to an office and working. We were up at 7am, had the hotel breakfast buffet and by 8:00, we were off to conquer the world – the kids armed with snacks I had stashed overnight in the mini bar and I armed with 2 laptops, 2 cell phones (more on that in a moment) and a large bag of dirty laundry.
The driver couldn’t find the kids’ school. We called the school 3 times for directions and must have stopped & asked directions at least 5 times. Finally, we arrived, about 40 minutes later to the school which was only about 2 miles from the hotel! There were several other kids there, mostly under age 6. The kids had a good time doing tae kwon do, tie-dyeing, dancing and art. By the time I picked them up at 4:00, they were both covered with a coat of red dirt – looking like they’d had a great day. They even said the food was good – rice with a chicken stew on top.
My day was incredibly busy and another test of taking deep breaths and letting go of the outcome. I won’t even get into my Iphone unlocking story, but eventually, I was able to get my cell phone to work and one laptop but still can’t access my old contacts very easily. We don’t have an office yet, but have started pretty much camping out at the office of another micro-finance organization and hoping they won’t kick us out until we’ve got a place to work. My day was filled with everything from viewing potential office space, to trying to get internet connected at my house to buying things for the house to meeting a new contractor for our project to completing a lengthy expense report (without a fax machine or scanner to send receipts). I’ll give you an overview of getting laundry done and that should pretty much sum up how the whole day went:
I have a fabulous housekeeper/nanny, Patience. She was at the house this morning as I arrived with a bag full of laundry. I gave it all over to her. Later, when I stopped to check in with the internet guy, she had been able to wash the clothes but not dry them. My machine is brand new & European-style where the same machine both washes & dries. She finally asked me to look at it & I couldn’t get the drier to work, either (yes, I even read the manual). I finally called the realtor, who called the dealer who called the realtor later and told her that we have to switch off the master power switch on the outlet on the wall after the wash cycle, turn it back on and then start the dry cycle. Not exactly intuitive. In the mean time, Patience had laundry hanging all over the place and had to hang it all in the kitchen when she left for the evening. Tomorrow, I’m hoping I’ll get the kids to school on time, that the hotel driver will help me schlep all our stuff to the house, hoping the mattresses will actually be delivered & the bank will let me pull out enough cash to pay for it (almost everything is cash – no credit/debit cards) and hoping the internet will get installed. High hopes, I know.

What a Week!

I'm sitting by a pool in Ghana, watching the kids swim. It's been quite a week! I got completely moved out of the house (with a lot of help from friends & Mom) and the kids and I had a good flight here. I'll post pics soon of the whole packing ordeal.

Ghana: the kids are loving it - everything is new and interesting. We all LOVE our house. It's even nicer than I had remembered it. They finished some renovations on it this weekend, I stopped by a roadside stand and ordered furniture, made our way through over an hour of polluted Accra Friday afternoon traffic to order mattresses and we should be able to move in Tuesday. Until then, we're staying at an over-priced, under-serviced hotel. But, they have a pool and that's really all that matters. The wi-fi doesn't reach up to the room, so I can only get to email in the lobby or by the pool.

My housekeeper/nanny is great and starts working Monday. She is aptly named Patience and used to work for an American woman from USAID. The kids start summer camp at their school on Monday and are excited to meet kids & see what the school is all about.

It's been crazy having to figure out EVERYTHING. I feel like I"m in college again, trying to set up my first ever house. Need everything from toilet paper to beds. We ordered furniture from a furniture maker on the side of the road - beautiful bamboo & wood stuff. I got a queen bed, double bed, bunk bed, table & 6 chairs and couch for about $800! Pretty good, but it does feel like prices of anything imported (e.g. towels, pots &pans) are obscene. I paid about $18 today for a single, mid-quality white towel! I saw blurb on tv the other day that said "inflation slows to 20%!" It's crazy how prices are going up & up.

It also took me a day or so to arrange a driver so we could run around the city on our buying spree. My two colleagues from Grameen are also here now & we've been looking for office space. May have found something today. I've been bribing the kids with ice cream - they've been troopers while I've had to just get stuff done so we can get settled.

I'll post up pictures once I get moved into my house and have internet. Should be by mid-end of the week. We are missing and loving you all.......

Hair Pulling, Post Office Madness & Sweet Goodbyes

My goodbyes have been going on for weeks. I have so many friends that don't live on the island, so have been saying goodbyes one by one whenever possible. The island goodbyes are kicking into full gear. We're all holding excitement and sadness. Sophie & Xavier, who normally adore each other and rarely fight, are escalating into all-out, hair-pulling warfare at the smallest of infractions. And, the intense emotions coming out sideways isn't just reserved for the kids. I found myself in a cross-town argument with Cedric that started at Cafe Luna and progressed to the post office. Nice.

Last night, Ced had a small going away gathering for the kids. It was a beautiful mix of friends who've been a part of all of our lives. As I looked out across gaggles of kids swimming in a pond, playing around a fire pit & dashing into the woods and our friends who've been a part of school drop-offs & pick-ups, play dates and hanging out, I realized how rich our lives are. And, I also realized it will probably be the highest concentration of blond children I'll see in a while (of 10 kids, 7 had white-blond hair, 2 were red heads and 1 brown). Yes, the Northwest is very white & Vashon is even whiter. We are about to hit culture shock!

Movers came yesterday & got most everything out of the house. When I got home from the party last night, I realized the house echoed from emptiness. I feel very ready to shed this huge house and move to a simpler life. We just have to get through the next intense weeks.......

Countdown

The countdown has begun - 1 week from now, we'll be on the plane headed to Ghana. I'm currently in Washington DC meeting all the Grameen HQ folks. I'm exhausted from 2 incredibly full days of meetings and amazed by the fact that in my new world a trip to DC feels like a quick 2-day hop.

When I get home, I've got the final move-out of the house, the packing of everything we "think" we'll need into about 6 suitcases and the wrap-up of busy work like filling out forms, banking stuff and generally tying up loose ends in the US. And, all they goodbyes. They've already begun, but the big ones are ahead of us.

My hope is that I get through the week with efficiency in getting the "stuff" done and presence and grace with saying goodbye and enjoying moments with friends & family - while staying well nourished & rested (whew!). I keep reminding myself that there's email, Skype and airplanes. Please use them :) All for now - off to catch a plane back to Seattle.......