Serendipitous!

As I hack and sweat my way through exams and final papers, wishing against all hope that I could have more legitimate excuses to research and blog, someone comes along and makes the quivering unknown of Life in my Placement Village –much- less…quivering?

Long story short, thanks to the grace and presence of mind of the fantastic Kyle Baptista (this dude->)

I was promptly hooked up with not one, but TWO previous JFs who lived in Nalerigu! This eases my mind to NO end—me, the one constantly trying to figure out what the hell she’s in for.

And what AM I in for, you may inquire? Apparently, I should expect

-about half the houses to have electricity (most of them solar powered, from a government project 10 years ago),

-about half the male population to propose to me at least once in an attempt to solve their financial problems,

-latrines and well-water,

-being called a Salaminga over, and over, and over (translation: White person. Surprise.)

-4-5 hour church services,

-complete stymieing on the local language Mampruli, which is apparently incredibly complex and difficult to retain past greetings and basic nouns (note: Looking at how intense Dagbani is, Mampruli’s close linguistic cousin, I can DEFINITELY believe it. Maybe there’ll be a miracle.)

-freezing after it rains, especially after I acclimatize to sweating my face off like any Aryan-looking northern girl would,

-being woken at 6am to Muslim prayers every morning,

-3 hour tro tro rides to an internet source in Tamale,

-a slight lack of fruit,

-the friendliest people in the world (which everyone says, so I’m trying to take it with a grain of salt)

According to Marka, anyway. I have yet to pick Dave’s brain.

On the 27^th, I have a phone conference with the brilliant Kristy, my coach overseas, who hopefully will have more work-related details for me after her endless stack of paperwork and schedule of meetings with PARED.

I also read in some past JF blog that a bunch of the Northern Ghanaian JFs got together to celebrate Canada day….and since it’s my anniversary that day, and I’ll probably be pretty homesick, I’d like to pass the motion that we plan on doing something like that too… just a thought…please?

Back to paper-hacking. One more gargantuan monstrosity of a paper to go, then a final, then I clean my house.

Oh, as another sidenote: I've discovered some of my fellow JFs are quite the writers in their own right: Points to Kim and Emily for informative reporting (and extra points to Em for awesome homespun map-alteration), points to Henry and G-Unit (the great and marvellous Glynnis) for cheek and entertainment, and points to Brian for somehow finding a way to keep the world updated on the goings-on of apparently every single member of Team Zambia regardless of how far away they may actually be from him. We have one of those in the Windsor chapter; we call her VP Stalker. **But we can call you VP Omniscience, Brian!

Twelve kids of awesome. I miss everyone already.

7 days to finish all this junk and go home, and

14 days til Pre-Departure craziness starts and I may or may not share a bed with Sylvie and Glynnis again.

-Ash out.