Week 7: A Nice Wind-Up...and on to Paris

Whew, what a work week it was! As you know (you have been paying attention, haven’t you?), our main focus was the strategic plan and it got finished (fact) and it’s good (opinion). And, as a bonus, we started to piece together the elements of a new project that USAID will fund – although they don’t know it yet!

The team decided that the new project, The Roamer Initiative, will focus on roamers, ie mobile sex workers, since they’re so much more difficult to find than their seater counterparts and, even when contacted, less open to influence. And their HIV rates are rising while seater rates are falling.

We held a brainstorming session on Wednesday with the APP staff, about 10 Peer Educators, and 2 Social Officers. Many fine ideas came out of that meeting, and we started writing them up as material APP can use in the proposal. We were even able to write one of the actual proposal sections.

One interesting fringe benefit: the PEs – who are all current or former sex workers – really liked being considered experts with ideas to share and it was great to see them mixing it up with their bosses.

Then, also on Wednesday, APP hosted a lunch with all the other AJWS volunteers and their NGO counterparts. Since everyone is working directly or indirectly in the field of AIDS prevention/treatment, it seemed a fine opportunity for networking. And so it was: 14 of us at the Wednesday buffet at the restaurant at the National Museum. Grilled tilapia, banku, Red-Red, goat stew, palava (spinach) sauce, and lots more.

Thursday, Geoffrey and the Executive Director had a meeting with the Director of the Peace Corps in Ghana, to discuss possible opportunities for PC Volunteers, and there are a few. (Just one example: APP would like to offer skills training to sex workers who’d like to do something else but have no skills. One possibility is a volunteer to help with a center which will teach them to sew high-quality goods, then form a coop to market those goods.)

Then, in the afternoon, the APP team had a meeting to discuss/brainstorm possible solutions to the “condom problem” – they’re sometimes unavailable or prohibitively expensive. (APP distributes about 5 million annually – and that figure will more than double if the Strategic Plan is realized!)

(To understand how terrible this problem is, consider that APP, through its Peer Educators, has convinced thousands of sex workers – more than 25,000 in total – that they’re better off if they insist their clients use condoms. Now that the sex workers are convinced, it’s critical that they have access to a steady supply. As one seater sex worker said during our visit, “Without condoms, I die.”)

And it looks like the brainstorming may have worked! We came up with an interesting way of seeing the problem and the players, which led to a possible new approach and the Executive Director has already started making calls and setting up meetings to make it happen. That felt pretty exciting!

Friday we put all the pieces of the Strategic Plan together, made our emotional farewells, and were surprised with some very nice Ghanaian clothing as gifts. Now that it’s over, we feel quite good about what we were able to accomplish. We believe APP is perched for growth: reducing the incidence of HIV/AIDS by doing what it does well in more locations with more Peer Educators and sex workers, plus offering some new services as well.

Saturday was our last day and to help us solve the what-to-do-until-the-late-night-flight problem, our friends, the other AJWS volunteers came over “to Paradise” for a poolside barbecue – a very nice way to bring our 7 weeks to a close.

To speak more broadly, our impressions of Ghana have evolved during our time here.

When we first arrived, we fell into the trap of comparing Accra with the other West African city we know well – Dakar. We were unsettled by the city’s not being laid out particularly aesthetically, by the less interesting food, by the much hotter climate and yaddayaddayadda.

But we changed.

We’ve come to admire the Ghanaians enormously: their friendliness and, simultaneously, their competence and modernity. Granted, we still think Kumasi is aesthetically more pleasing than Accra, but so what. We’re so impressed with the vigor and openness of the press here, with a variety of newspapers, and the free discussion of political issues. And tolerance and respect – black/white, Christian/Moslem, Ashanti/Ewe/Ga/etc – are deeply stitched into the day-to-day consciousness.

One of the amazing and admirable things about Ghana is the rampant spirit of free enterprise. You see it in the markets and in the thousands of small – really small, often only about 8 feet by 4 feet – stores that are everywhere and sell just about everything and are open just about all the time. This is one of many on our block.

We loved our neighborhood, its authenticity as an African neighborhood that’s on its way up, even if it’s not there yet. And we came to love the lilt of the Ghanaian accent as they emphasized different words than we would. We even started saying “sistah” (sister), “Jokah’s (Joker’s Pub),” and the clearly enunciated “You are welcome” which somehow seems so much less perfunctory than “you’re welcome.”

And, one mo' time, we love the kids on our street going off to school in the morning, but this time we got a picture of them.

We’re grateful we got the opportunity to meet sex workers, a group we’d never interacted with before – in the U.S. or anywhere else. We came to appreciate them and their difficulties, and applaud the success and growing self-esteem of those who became Peer Educators.





We’ll never ever forget Bob and his amazing sand sculptures. (This one was a little racier than his others, presumably because it was created for Valentine's Day.)


All in all, it was an enriching seven weeks with lots of new experiences, new friends, and new memories.

And now here we are, ready for the next chapter. (But no more postings on the Ghana 2009 blog. Bye-bye.)

Week 6: On the Road

This post is about travel, not work. The APP team was gone for most of the week which meant that we were “off-duty” and since our good friends Jo and Dick are visiting, we took off on a road trip. It was our first trip outside of Accra and it was wonderful.

Thursday morning we headed west to the Cape Coast Castle, a World Heritage site, and one of the primary slave embarkation points from West Africa. It was wonderful and awful, powerful and shocking. We all “know” about slavery – the capturing, the overland treks, the pre-sailing imprisonment, the crossing, and then the life once they got to the other side.

But we didn’t know. We didn’t know about 200 male captives living – those that didn’t die – for up to 3 months in an underground chamber about 40x60 with almost no light or ventilation, and absolutely no “facilities.” Literally, the waste simply piled up to a depth of roughly 3 feet (the marks were still visible on the walls) until the men were led out the “Door of No Return” to the canoes that would take them to the ships.

So our first horrible impression on seeing the small room – “There’s no space for people to lie down” – was replaced by the even more horrible realization that no one would even dream of laying down.

And one other thing we didn’t know: immediately above this underground hell, the British had erected their Anglican Chapel and as they sang praises to their God, they were forced to suffer the unspeakable indignity of the offensive cries and smells coming from below them.





Of course, there were other parts of our Cape Coast stay as well. The coast itself was rocky and dramatic, the way the fishing canoes raise small sails was ingenious, and things like the great sign for a woodworker, the lovely mural we found on a small house near a shrine, as well as the shrine itself restored our spirits a bit.





















On the way from Cape Coast to Kumasi in the center of the country, we made a stop at Kakum National Park and walked the canopy walk, a linked series of 7 tree-to-tree rope walkways, suspended about 200 feet above the forest floor. Let’s just say we put one foot in front of the other – right in the middle of the narrow walkway – and made it, though we didn’t intentionally bounce the walkway like the adolescents in front of us. Then again, we didn’t squeal like the school girls behind us.



On to Kumasi, the number two city in Ghana, which we really liked. It was greener and tree-ier than Accra. It had the feel of a city that hangs together (unlike Accra, which sprawls). And it had sidewalks, which we’d never realized can make such a difference.

A friend in Warwick had asked us to deliver an envelope to Frank, a doctor who’d been supported through secondary school, university, and medical school by the friend’s husband ever since the time he’d been a Peace Corps volunteer and met Frank. [There’s much more to this wonderful story, but it’s too much to tell here.]

How lucky we were to have met Frank and his wife Tina.

Tina took us to the market Saturday morning. This may not sound like a big deal, but it was a VERY BIG DEAL. This market is reputed to be the biggest in Africa. It’s impossible to describe the enormity of the space it occupies, every square inch filled with someone selling something.

We walked and walked and walked, attracting a bit of attention, following along behind Tina as if we were her ducklings. (We felt like a rock group, Tina and the Four Obrunis.) The vendors were overwhelmingly friendly and open and curious. We thought we’d seen markets but… And we never could have done it without Tina.

Then, Tina handed us off to Frank, who had just finished his morning shift at his maternity clinic. He took us to a wood-carving village, an adinkra-cloth village, and a kente-cloth-weaving village. Then he went for his second shift, this one at the hospital.



The next day we headed home, but stopped along the way at the village of Nkwatia (en-kwat-EE-a), way up on a cliff-top, where the air was deliciously cooler. We visited the school where Dick, back in 1961, had been part of the Crossroads Africa group that had started the construction of the first building, the one in the picture. And that school has sprouted into a beautiful and huge (and still growing) campus, reputed to be one of the best schools in Ghana. A thrill and a half for Dick, a nice experience for us too.

Back to Accra and a quick trip to La beach. A great ending to a great trip.

Week 5: The Home Stretch

Work first – for a change

Not much going on our day-to-day lives, so we’ll start with a quick work update.

We had a major meeting this week with what APP refers to as the Technical Team –the Acting Director and the 2 Program Heads – to review and make semi-final changes to the strategic plan. All went well, we input the changes, sitting by the pool, and will hand off the almost-final draft of the plan at our weekly Monday morning meeting.

For those who are interested, here are the “strategic priorities” APP has set for itself:

• Expand from the present 12 sites to 30 sites (seaters and roamers)
• Start a major new program aimed specifically at the harder-to-reach roamers
• Play a lead role in coordinating the work of the several NGO’s that are working in HIV/AIDS work with high-risk groups
• Secure stable, long-term funding
• Design and implement a better system for procuring and distributing 15-20 million condoms a year
• Gradually explore new program areas like skills- and literacy-training for sex workers who’d rather be something else

We – and more importantly they – feel these targets are both ambitious/achievable and worthwhile. If they get to early 2014 and each of those points has a check mark next to it, then APP will be on more solid ground and the overall HIV/AIDS outlook in Ghana will be much improved. Et voila.

And, by the way, just in case any of you (Americans) are wondering how you can help with the ever-important condom-supply situation, you already are. APP just got a delivery of 100 boxes just like this one, totaling 300,000 condoms. Consider that you’ve been sent a big “Medassi” (to which you can reply, “Aw shucks, akwaaba.”)




The life front

Since nothing much has “happened” since our last entry, we thought we’d write a little bit about our observations, mostly about our neighborhood, but also the bigger picture.

Our end of the block, here in South La you-should-excuse-the-expression-Estates, is funkier than the other end. Just the way we like it.

When we leave “home” to go to work in the morning, there’s always a steady stream of kids going to school and they’re always wearing their freshly ironed school uniforms – meaning that they are washed and ironed every day. Down at our end of the block, the uniform colors are yellow/orange shirts and brown shorts or pinafores, but at the far end, it must be a different school, because the kids are in bright blue and white.

Like kids all over the world, younger ones are holding the older ones’ hands. They almost all have backpacks. (Exactly what is it about a little kid with a too-big backpack holding an older kid’s hand that causes instant melting??)

But it’s the fresh ironing, complete with creases, that’s so astounding, when you see the houses the kids come out of. The contrast is stunning. We’ve never been in one, but from the outside they’re small shacks and look like many of them may not have water or electricity. And yet … those crisp creases.

Here’s Margaret, the daughter-half of our favorite plantain-chip family, from whom we buy a bag or two every night on the way back from the internet café which is on the less funky end of the street.










Also all the way down at the other end of the street, past the internet café, funk begins again at Tawala, our Gulf-front, music-blasting, fish-grilling (with banku or rice) bar/restaurant. Not too shabby:



Finally, religion is big and small and everywhere here. You see – and hear – it all around. It’s next door to our apartment – a large unfinished building, The Apostolic Church of Ghana – that has exuberantly loud, lengthy services 7 nights a week.


But it’s also the awning-covered tabletops in the markets with a miked preacher, a few tracts and a huge set of speakers. And it’s all over the place on business signs, on cars and even on water tanks. Our personal taxi favorites (especially considering the way they drive here) are “Oh Christ” (pictured below, right) and “Forgive them.” As for business signs, you can see the two pictures below (Stay Blessed Real Estate and Thanks to the Holy Trinity Water), but we didn’t get a shot of the shack that’s the “Almighty Electric Company.”












Our good friend Dick arrives from the U.S. tomorrow, and then his wife Jo on Wednesday. We take off the day after that for our first Ghanaian road trip. We’ll tell you all about it next week.

Week 4: The Half-Way Point

The Obrunis Go Shopping:

Last weekend, feeling we just hadn’t done enough exploring (it’s not a great walking-around city and have we mentioned how hot it is?), we decided to go to the Kaneshie market at the western edge of town. We’d read in the guidebook that there was “a woman on the second floor” who was a great source of beads.

Now, we’re not market-novices. We’ve been around. We’ve seen a lot of African markets. So believe us when we say this market was VERY BIG. There was all the stuff you’d expect to find at an African market – vegetables, baskets, fabrics, meat, fish, and tennis-ball size snails, with the slimy part hanging out like a big dog’s tongue (yuck!) – plus lots of idiosyncratic kinds of stuff like tupperware, surge protectors, flip-flops, and Q-tips.

Needless to say, there wasn’t a “bead section,” but we looked around and found a few bead women. We settled on one, and Carole picked out a few nice necklaces and then …

the bargaining. The bead lady started at 85, Carole countered 30, then in small steps to 60 vs 40, until finally settling on 50 cedis (about $40) and both sides seemed fairly happy.

The necklaces were put in a bag and Geoffrey got out his wallet and started to hand over two 20’s and a 10. The woman took the 10, disappeared around the corner, and returned 30 seconds later with two 5’s. She gave one to us and kept the other, shook our hand and told us to come again soon.

It took us a second to realize what had just happened. Ghana recently re-denominated the cedi, basically dividing the currency by 10,000. But some people still use the old way of talking, so when she said “50,” she didn’t mean 50 cedis, she meant 50 thousand old cedis or 5 new ones.

Thank goodness “our” bead lady either didn’t realize what dopes we were or was too honest to take advantage. But she must have laughed up a storm when she told her friends about us.


A Nice Visit

On Friday, a delegation from AJWS – who had been here all week, visiting some of the organizations they fund – visited “APP,” and gave us the chance to wear our spiffy new team polo shirts.

It was a great opportunity for them to understand what the organization, and especially the peer-educators, actually do. These incredibly-poised, 20-something women , most either active or former sex workers themselves and several HIV +, spoke of various aspects of their work, including a kind of role play to show us how they use anatomical models to demonstrate the proper use of both male and female condoms. [PHOTO]

Then we accompanied the delegation on a visit to a seater community, a powerful and sobering look into a part of the world far removed from their reality. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a few weeks since it was removed from ours too. The visit ended with a poignant moment as one of the FSWs thanked us for taking the time to visit them and care about them and respect them.



Finally, we – all 6 AJWS volunteers in Accra – were invited to Shabbat dinner with the visiting AJWS delegation at a very fancy hotel. It was quite a treat and Carole marked the occasion by dressing a l’Africaine (in a dress she bought about 35 years ago in the Ivory Coast!).

From the left: Geoffrey, Bruce, Susan, Aseye (the AJWS in-country rep), Lisa, Maurice, Carole.


A lovely Saturday

We tried a different beach – Kokrobite Beach, about an hour (though only 20 miles, in heavy traffic) out of town. It was low key and untouristy with a heavy dose of rasta and it had all the right ingredients: sand, water, food, fishing boats.
At the end of the day, we went to the African Dance performance arranged by AJWS at their hotel. (Jason, the video at the end of this post is for you! It may take a few seconds to get going.)

Work

As for our work, things are definitely happening. Think popcorn.

We’ve made a lot of progress on the 5-Year Strategic Plan and it’s shaping up nicely. The major task right now is to get everyone’s feedback and make requested their changes. But since all the ideas it contains came from the team in the first place, it’s definitely THEIR plan, not ours, and we’re pretty sure they will feel the kind of ownership of it to keep the plan “alive” after we decamp.

Interestingly, it is looking like one of those situations where the minute the APP team chose to directly address their challenges, positive things started happening. Even for their biggest challenge – how are they going to get funding on a reasonably long-term basis – answers in the form of some really promising opportunities are starting to emerge. We didn’t exactly solve the problem for them, but somehow the planning process, their collective focusing on the issue, may have.

Week 3: A Little More On....

The Life We're Living

Here’s what our typical day looks like: after having the coffee or tea we’ve made with the filtered-water-in-a-bag which one reader said she couldn’t visualize, we usually get to work somewhere between 7:30 and 8. We get there by taxi, which always costs 3 cedis (about $2.50) for the 15-minute ride, although often there is some brief haggling until the driver realizes that we do this every day.

There are various routes taken by our taxi drivers, but the sights along the way can be a study in contrasts -- from a typical street scene to the National Theatre .

















We normally work in “our” office, which we share with the Program Officer at APP. Actually, the office is pretty cushy because it used to be the office of the Executive Director but at the moment, there isn’t an ED. The cushiness is the good news; the bad news is that each office is its own world, cut off from the others (with closed doors because of the air conditioning) and there’s no open common area where people mill around and interact informally.

As you can see, the office is decorated with great AIDS-related posters, or, as we now say, Behavior Change Communication (BCC), that APP has created.


We work until the neighborhood of 4:00, except on Friday, which is both a half day and African-dress day, not only at APP but at many workplaces here. Even we obrunis – the Twi word for people of the pale persuasion – are encouraged to join in.













Then we go “home” and have a swim, a daily delight that is an important part of our wind-down and cool-off process. Afterwards, it’s down to the internet café on our street, open 24/7. Connection time is reasonable, prices are great, but the constant loud rap music (oh, the language they use!) keeps our stays shorter than they might otherwise be. Dinner, reading and/or dvd, bed.

To return briefly to Twi (pronounced chwee, with the ch being hard like in chair), the most common of the many languages in Ghana, here’s a very short lesson, short because, so far, these (plus obruni which you already know) are the only words we’ve learned/remembered:

Akwaaaba: Welcome
Medassi: Thank you


… The Work We’re Doing

You know that APP works on preventing and treating both HIV and STI among MARPs (Most At-Risk-Populations), consisting primarily of FSWs (female sex workers), their clients, their Non-Paying Partners (NPPs), and men who have sex with men (MSMs). (This is definitely an acronym-rich environment!) Here are some facts and figures:

• In Ghana, a country of about 22 million, the HIV infection rate is 1.9%, down from 3.6% not so very long ago. For an African country, this represents a real success. We’re not sure what Zimbabwe’s rate is, but it’s probably at least 10-20 times as great.

• There are about 3,000 seaters in the country and perhaps 20,000 roamers. The HIV rate among seaters is over 50% and it’s about half that among roamers. (The higher rate among seaters is because they’re older and have been in the business longer.) But the important fact is that both these numbers are down dramatically from where they were 5-6 years ago, largely due to APP.

• APP’s Peer Educators sell more than 5,000,000 condoms a year. It appears that once educated by the PEs, FSWs use condoms almost all the time (about 98% with clients, though lower with NPPs). In fact, condom use is so high that having access to a continuing supply of condoms is getting to be a problem.

• Every one of those condoms used is a potential transmission of HIV/STI averted.

Our job here is to help APP develop and write its 5-year strategic plan, which we’ve started to do. We will be presenting the draft of about half of that plan this coming week. Part of the draft is this great – our assessment – schematic of the what and how of APP’s approach. You probably won’t be able to read it, but we hope you’re suitably impressed.



Stay tuned.

Digging In

Post #2: Digging In

As always, things have started to make more sense after two weeks. We have a deeper understanding of what APP does, how it does it, and what we can try to do for them. And we also know handy-dandy things like, for example, where to go for filtered water that comes in little bags (for teeth-brushing and tea/coffee) instead of schlepping only the heavy bottles of mineral water (for drinking). And we have a community of other AJWS-ers with whom we get together at least once a week.

Another huge and very welcome change is the weather. The harmattan winds have officially arrived – they’re the winds off the Sahara that bring with them a cloud of fine sand in the upper atmosphere that effectively makes the weather both cooler – maybe 5-10 degrees – and drier. It’s expected to last 4-6 weeks, perfect timing as far as we’re concerned.

As for pictures in this posting, it seems our camera, unbeknownst to us, gets switched into the “video” setting from time to time, and those shots aren’t usable, so there aren’t as many to use here as we would have wished. Sigh.



Last Saturday we went to La Beach – remember, that’s the beach at La. It was a perfect little excursion: lots of sand (see the photo of the most incredible sand sculptures EVER), a bit of breeze, funky little restaurants with umbrellas, lots of activity – acrobats, musicians, horseback-riding, and, yes, some swimming in nice temperature water.


There was only a narrow channel where the lifeguards allowed swimming, and the walkout was very gradual so it took a long time to get deeper than your thighs, but you could definitely dunk.



Then, of course, came the big day, Tuesday the 20th. We watched the proceedings on CNN at the W.E.B. DuBois Center on a big monitor with 500-600 others. First there was a great jazz band, then some local speeches, and finally what we’d all been waiting for: CNN video was joined by audio and it was THE MOMENT: a singular moment under a canopy of acacia (we think) trees, beautiful cool weather, a smattering of American flags in an audience consisting of young, old, white, black, everyone focused on the joyful transition, lots of applause and tears and, at the end, hugging one’s neighbors.

In case there’s any doubt, by the way, everyone here loves Obama. When we wear our Obama baseball caps (which we gave away), we get comments from everyone, including kids on the street. It’s true that probably some love him only for the fact that he’s African-American, but many – from our co-workers to the taxi drivers – listened to his speech and “got it.” They may not realize all the reasons there are to be enthusiastic, but they get most of them and the symbolism alone is enough to make us proud. Hooray for us.

[Here's where we would have included a picture of kids selling Obamiana by the side of the road and another of our taxi driver with his American flag.]

From the sublime to the ridiculous: we went out the Accra Mall where we saw what was playing at the (6!) movie screens and went shopping at ShopRite. Funny thing is, ShopRite was pretty similar to the ShopRite in Warwick, where we take it 100% for granted, even complain about it from time to time, whereas here it’s absolutely mind-blowing.

As to the work, we’ve made a lot of progress.

Every Monday morning, the APP team has a staff meeting, and we’ve started to piggy-back our work on those meetings. This week, we did a SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) analysis and there was much consensus: a lot of strengths from staff to intervention methods to history of success to relationships with the target population and one big weakness/threat, the difficulty of continuing to chase funding. The team is gathered in the photo below.

Then on Wednesday we went into the field to visit two communities of seaters. We always find that on these assignments, it’s on the field trip where we “get” what the organization does, whether it’s orphans, mountain gorillas or sex workers. We were accompanied by two Peer Educators in their bright chartreuse APP polo shirts, of which they were very proud. The PE’s are the ones – usually still-active SWs - who have been trained by APP to teach the dangers of HIV/AIDS and STIs, the benefits of condoms and of going regularly to the STI clinic.

In the first community, all the women gathered in a group to talk to us, together with their landlord. At first, there were only a handful, but by the time the meeting ended, there were perhaps 25 or so.

They came in all shapes and sizes and ages and degrees of sexiness, some with children, with her own room – they don’t live there, only work – with a curtain across the doorway. The women are now such “converts” to condom-use that they say they couldn’t live without APP’s subsidized prices. (They’d cost about 75 pesewas each, or 60 cents, in the pharmacies instead of 1 pesewa from APP. And remember, they use a lot of them.) As one of them said, “Without condoms, we die.” We desperately wanted to take some photos, for ourselves as much as for the blog, but it would clearly have been a violation of trust.

In the second community, we shadowed the Peer Educators as they went from door to door, checking in on the women and selling condoms to those who need them. We saw one of the rooms, furnished with a TV and various DVDs for clients to watch. The conditions were pretty raw, including a rank public toilet with a painted sign on the wall that said it was open only 17 hours a day.

Then on Thursday, we met with the Board of Directors. We discussed the SWOT analysis and, together, came to some conclusions of our own concerning funding and future directions for APP. It was a very good meeting – we thought so and so did they – and we’ll talk more about it in future postings.

Finally, on Friday night we went to observe some roamers, accompanied by four Peer Educators and their supervisor, a Social Officer. We went to three locations: the highest priced was a lively street with folks walking up and down and the PEs spotting the women they wanted to talk to. The middle-priced was an area where the women stayed in one spot, relatively inconspicuously. But the low-priced area was a scene that’s difficult to describe. In a relatively open area that served as a bus depot by day, there were hundreds and hundreds of people, all there for the same reason with no pretense. Even in the dark, it was clear that the women were quite provocative (a few with the kind of extreme dropped waistline we usually associate with plumbers) and some were also quite young. At one point, the police chased some too-young girls. It was unsettling, to say the least. But, again, it was the best way to understand exactly who is the target population APP is working with.


Lunch at the Country Kitchen. (It's not a great picture, and wouldn't have made the cut, but it's the only other picture we could upload.)

Jan. 18: Beginnings

LIFE

We’re happily installed in Paradise. That’s the La-Paradise Inn. (“La” doesn’t mean “the,” as in French, it’s the name of the neighborhood, as in “We live in La.” The neighborhood used to be called Labadi but had a bad reputation; as it’s improved, they shed the last two syllables to shed the rep.)

The place is a small apartment/hotel complex (self-catering hotel is what it’s called): there are presently four small units of an eventual eight around a landscaped courtyard with a POOL! Since it’s very very hot here, the pool instantly became our favorite amenity, more than making up for the lack of internet – especially since there’s a 24/7 internet café down the block.

And we’re near the ocean, though it’s definitely not a swimming beach. The “ocean” is technically the Gulf of Guinea, not the Atlantic, which means the weather is hot and steamy. (We know we shouldn’t complain with the frigid weather some of you are having, but still …)

The photo (look hard for the sunset) gives you some sense of our neighborhood. It’s mostly the lower end of middle-class, but there are also pockets of poverty – shacks, people getting their water from a water truck that comes around, lots of on-the-street mini-businesses selling the most basic stuff.


Interestingly, there’s a “liquor store” – think “closet” – that sells mostly off-brand local stuff like Mandingo (a version of Campari, we’ve been told), but they also have a tiny selection of cheap wines, including a $3.50 Argentine red that we call “Chateau Only.”

Moving to a wider-angle lens: Accra is a big, sprawling city. Not much in the way of a high-rise downtown but pockets of mid-rise modern buildings, especially banks, ministries, National Theatre, etc. Between the pockets lies the sprawl. Lots of cars, although traffic isn’t as bad as we’d been led to expect.


One of our most positive impressions has been the Ghanaian people – friendly, open, and talkative, especially when we wear our Obama baseball caps! (It’s so nice to be in an English-speaking country, although the accent/patois can get fairly heavy.) A couple of cab drivers even have American flags hanging on their rear-view mirror.




WORK

Our assignment this time is with a local non-profit, though we can’t use its name, according to AJWS protocol, as there are some sensitive aspects to their work, so let’s just say it’s called APP, as in the AIDS Prevention Project.

Its focus is AIDS and STIs (sexually-transmitted infections) among FSWs (female sex workers), their clients, their non-PPs (non-paying partners) and other MARPs (Most At-Risk Populations). It is absolutely fascinating. We’ve learned acronyms galore and a whole lot more.

When we arrived, the Executive Director called the team together so all of us could meet each other, then gave a PowerPoint presentation on APP, its history, its activities, etc. It was extremely well-organized and put together, much more so than at any of our other assignments, and as you can see, the offices are very attractive and well maintained.

APP’s particular expertise is in recruiting, training, and motivating PEs (Peer Educators) from the ranks of the FSWs to educate others as to the benefits of condom use, as well as distributing the condoms themselves. They also encourage the FSWs to visit the STI health clinics that APP has been instrumental in setting up.

They’ve done a remarkably good job and the incidence of STIs among FSWs is dropping, which also means they’re not a vector for spreading the diseases.

This past week we met with every member of the team (5 in total) individually, to see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

ON TO THE FUTURE

The first week is always the hardest. We start out pretty clueless at work and at “home,” but between the friendliness and the competence of Ghanaians, we’re starting to get the lay of the land.

This week we’re going to start the Strategic Planning Process with APP. (We’ll talk more about the work in the next posting.) Plus we found a place to watch the inauguration – at the W.E.B. DuBois Center. Can’t wait!

Just to whet your appetites for the fascinating world we’re now immersed in, the sex workers are either Seaters (who work out of their homes, usually in a community of other seaters) and Roamers (who hang out at bars, etc, looking for clients). Seaters are usually older and have been in the business longer than roamers, so they have a higher STI rate. But they’re easier to reach because….. they’re not roaming.