Nate's Ghana blog

What i look like when i live in Africa and don't shave

2009-08-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

mmm... breakfast.

2009-08-12T07:34:00.001-07:00

A day at the beach with the kids continued

2009-07-26T11:03:00.001-07:00

A day at the beach with the kids

2009-07-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

Rhett and I teaching

2009-07-26T10:46:00.000-07:00

A night in Kakum national forest

2009-07-26T10:35:00.001-07:00

Cape coast castle (former slave trade castle)

2009-07-26T10:26:00.001-07:00

Cape Coast

2009-07-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

Wli falls, and lake Volta

2009-07-13T11:40:00.001-07:00

The kids

2009-07-02T09:01:00.000-07:00

The market

2009-07-02T08:57:00.001-07:00

2 weeks in Ghana

2009-06-23T09:13:00.000-07:00

Things are going pretty well. So far i think the food has been my biggest struggle. With my luck, they have to put fish on nearly every single dish. Which of course happens to be one thing i absolutely despise. Besides that, things are good. The last few days i have been working on staining the wood on the bunk beds in the kids rooms, because the beds were never actually finished correctly. They have the beds, but unfortunately since they weren't finished correctly, the kids are still sleeping on the floor. So that has been a pretty big project considering there 5 beds in each room, and there are 3 rooms. Another volunteer came from Utah, he actually lives in draper only about 10 minutes from my house, he is the same age as me, and we get along great. It has been great to have someone to talk to without an accent, and someone with similar interests, we have become pretty good friends. He will be staying until the end of august, so almost the entire time I am here. I was stoked about that.
The kids are great, always very desperate for attention. and always willing to take any food i don't want :) I wish i could find parents for all of them. they are such great kids. they deserve more..
well that's it for now.

2009-06-19T09:36:00.001-07:00

2009-06-19T09:32:00.001-07:00

2009-06-19T09:24:00.001-07:00

2009-06-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

The school yard.
The bricks are for a wall they are building around the orphanage.

2009-06-17T08:50:00.001-07:00

This is the school

2009-06-17T08:29:00.001-07:00

The soccer field. you can't really see the goals, that is because they are made from just two bamboo shoots.

2009-06-17T08:26:00.001-07:00

This is one of the classrooms at the school.

2009-06-17T08:18:00.000-07:00

This is Junior and Matilda, both are about 4 years old.

2009-06-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

These are good examples of what the area looks like.

Living quarters

2009-06-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

This is where the children and the teachers live. Pardon my amateur picture taking skills :)

This is my house. I share a room with one other person, and there are 3 other rooms. One is occupied by Kingsley, the director, and the others have some Americans that are adopting some of the children.

1 Week in Ghana

2009-06-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

Well, things have been going well here in Ghana. I am in a city called Buduburam, which is located about 20 miles west of Accra, the capital, and only about 4 miles from the coast. The weather is about what you would expect for Africa, hot and HUMID. The orphanage is also a school, some of the teachers live here at the school as well. The children are great, so full of energy and very desperate for attention. There are about 40 children that live here at the orphanage, and another 50 that come to school here, but live in foster homes in the surrounding area.
I have been doing various kinds of work. I have helped them with building a wall around the orphanage, which includes carrying loads of bricks and digging a trench for the foundation. I have also been typing up the the exams for the school, the only copies they have are hand written, which makes it hard to replicate in a timely manner, so i have been inputting them on the computer and then i will send them to someone who can make copies and send them to the school. A lot of time i just spend time with the children, they are very wanting of attention and love, so they take all they can get.