Hello!  I have to make this fast.  This is the only time we have off for weeks.  I am in Techiman for technical training, then back to Kukurantumi for a week, then we swear in and I'm off to site!

Ok let me tell you about my project!  I have been to site, I am seen my house and met my community.  I have to outline all I need to say.
My neighbors
My house
Meeting the chiefs
MY PROJECT.

K.

I am working (I think this is what my position will look like) as an Agriculture Extension Agent for the Bontanga Irrigation Scheme.  In the 80's a British (I think) company built this big dam that surrounds 495 hectares (about 1200 acres) of land that 500 farmers can farm during the dry season, or all year round.  Point is they have access to water.  This is funded by ADVANCE, which I think is funded by USAID.   Not sure how all that works, not having google readily available stinks.

I have complete faith my house will be done by the time I get there.  Right now it looks like an abandoned old house.  The carpenter left the back door open so goats started living in there.  There was goat poo everywhere and old broken furniture and open wires hanging from the ceiling.  The PC needs to fix the toilet I guess and thats officially the only thing that needs done.  OH YEAH I HAVE RUNNING WATER.  AND ELECTRIC.  I am very lucky and I know it.  Lemme tell you why else I consider myself lucky: Although I am in the middle of no where (I'm NOT in the village, I am 3 miles from) and I was honestly scared the first night, my community is awesome.  Across the road there are Assemblies of God missionaries, the wife is British, the husband Ghanaian and they have two CUTE kids and because they spend half the year in England they have cute accents.  I stayed at site for 3 days and I borrowed many DVD's from them and they say I can borrow their hammock because they never use it.  I was staying in their guest house. (To my family, living in the guest house reminded me a lot of the old house at the farm, you have what you need but everything is very old.  And you're seriously isolated from town and you think you hear scary noises, but in Africa there IS someone outside your house screaming bloody murder but its always a goat.)

So on that note the Kings Village is a school the missionaries run and 300 kids go there and they're all sponsored by people in the UK and US.  Note:  330 students go there and 100 still need sponsors, just saying.  ALSO, they have set up a medical center that serves people 24 hours 6 days a week.  Its closed Sunday but like all things in Africa, if you need attention, you just go to the Dr.'s house and he will help you.  For 12 GC (about 6 dollars) a year people get unlimited health care.  So that is within walking distance.  Also, the community is so used to white people, no one looks at my twice.  Apparently white people stay in the guest house all the time.  There is a British couple coming in January to stay for 6 weeks, and they come twice a year.  I cannot wait.

So I net my neighbors, one is an extension agent!  Okay I have to say there has been discussion among volunteers about assignments, like our encouraging hybrid corn and improved variety.  So I asked my neighbor who is growing corn behind our house, what he thought of the improved variety.  He said he will not grow it because while you get more corn, the protein content is lower.  AND with the native corn, they can do all the things they want, it has many uses but the new variety has limited use, like you cannot use it for all the different foods they make.  As we stood in the field, shucking corn and talking varieties all I could think was "Gosh, this is all I want to do!"

I have lots of land around my house and they've offered me a plot inside the Irrigation Scheme that I will use for demonstration.

Today we had a lesson/overview of extension and I got so overwhelmed.  I just feel like all the agriculture that comes second hand at home, I do not know here and there is so much I need to learn!

There are not subsidies here.  They do not have crop insurance.  Someone said today that Ghanians think you cannot grow corn without fertilizer and they apply way too much.  Everywhere I turn I feel like there is work to be done, but OH WAIT I do not know enough about the issue to do anything.  I wish I had text books.  I wish I brought my soils text book.

Okay, now the chiefs.  Since I am in the middle of no where, I will be working with a few different villages.  I went to meet the Wabu chief.  He was sitting on a reclining chair outside his hut surrounded my other elders.  We crouched on the ground and say "Naa, naa, naa"  Which is what you say when someone greets you.  And then we sit and my counterpart Alhassan explains who I am and what I am doing and that I am staying for 2 years.  The PC said I should bring cola nuts or money or alcohol to meet a chief, but the chief gave ME cola!  Its a red bulb kinda that you break in half and bite into.  It is very bitter and everyone laughed when I ate it, but apparently its really high in caffeine.  They planned a big party for me but then someone died and they decided to postpone till December.  Later in the week I met another chief.  I walked into his BIG round hut, thatch roof.  Tell me why there were LARGE barrels of Calcium Chloride in his hut?  And 2 motorcycles and half a dozen men on the floor shelling peanuts.

k I have to go!