Scenery of Ghana

When we arrived in November it was during the harmattan. That is a dry season where the winds of the Sahara dessert blow across the skiies for about 3-4 months. Finally the rainy season started. It is much prettier. Everything has turned green and the trees blossomed. When it rains the temperatures cool down to a more comfortable level. We love to hear the rain come....coming from Washington, that is a switch! At home we relished the sunshine, in Ghana we look for shade! :-) We drove to a lake about an hour from here. It was a beautiful volcano lake. We also were taught about the cocoa pod tree and tasted a cocoa pod.

Making bread

Down the road from us about a mile is a lady named Reggie. Her husband was a doctor but has passed away. She has an oven behind her home where she and her helpers make bread twice a week. They make the dough one day. Then about 2:30AM they build a fire in the oven and get it hot. About 6AM they remove the fire and put in the bread to bake. At 9:00 they bag it and send it to market stores to sell. I like to go over in the mornings and get a fresh loaf

of baked bread. It is really quite good.

Schools and clinics

We finally had the opportunity to go help at some schools and a couple clinics. We drove about 9 hours north of where we live in Kumasi to a little village of Sandema. A fellow named Jonathan makes it a business to coordinate clinics in far out rural areas where access to health care is very limited. He contacted me through church and we were able to come this time. It is difficult to get that far away. What an experience. 3 doctors and a pharmacist came from Tamale teaching hospital to see patients. They would be waiting for a few hours to see a doctor. They were quite patient. Mostly what was prescribed were vitamins with iron and other "blood tonics" since their diets are so poor. Anything significant was referred to a bigger hospital some distance away. The first day Lynn and I helped take blood pressures at the clinic. What we mostly did was go to several schools and talk and teach handwashing as well as hygiene and puberty changes to older students. I had as many as 350 students standing outside in a courtyard while I talked to them about the changes going on inside! It was rather interesting. I guess my school nurse experience paid off :-) Lynn of course jumped right in the middle of some games with students. He played a few minutes of volleyball with older students and did some hopscotch and rock juggling. Also on the first day there were some drummers that came to the clinic while waiting for the doctors to arrive. They were singing and dancing while waiting. Lynn of course, joined in!

We had to greet the chief of the village before going to the clinic

This picture is from a market. I had to put it in for all those essential oil people!

Our church sent 4 medical people from the states to run a neonatal resuscitation class and newborn care. We helped put some kits together

This is a maternity bed in the clinc we worked in. There are no stirrups anymore. It is pretty antiquated

Imagine having to ride 30 minutes over a dirt road in labor in this motorcycle ambulance on a hard cot. They would have to kick start it to get it going and take a mother who is having labor and having difficulty to the next town where there is a bigger hospital

Teaching handwashing

While waiting for doctors to arrive for the clinic some musicians came and played their drums and flutes and danced. As you can tell Elder Wardle joined in!

We visited several classrooms and did our largest group instruction in the courtyard. School nursing at it's finest!