"Nansala, how are you? We are fine! Thank you!"

I thought I would start with the little ditty that I've become very accustom to hearing. Kid's chant this saying when you walk past. It's an upper west thing. From my understanding, kids in other parts of Ghana generally just yell hello, again and again. I usually make the smaller kids/babies cry. How would you feel if you saw a tall, bearded, white hairy beast of a man come towards you?

I'm currently in Wa, the regional capital of the Upper West(/Best). I'm here with another JF and Suzanne, a long term overseas volunteer and the leader of the project we are working on up here in the UW. She's been spreading herself thin over three district and now that there are two people to join her for the next few months things are really going to get moving.

Let me tell you a little about the journey here.

We hopped on the TTC to the Toronto airport, checked in 3 hours early with Alitalia and before any of the 13 of us heading to Ghana new it we were on our way to Accra, with a layover in Rome.

Adam, Gajan, Evan and myself were determined to get into the city. Not to rub it in the faces of the other JF's who decided to stay at the airport, but we had a blast. We managed to have a little over 2 hours to play tourist. We got off the train, got on the metro, and BAM there was the Colosseum. Also managed to visit the pope in the Vatican.

Arrived in Accra without any problems, and had our first fried egg and bread which will likely be breakfast for the remainder of my stay. I miss cheese already.

The next morning we got on the bus to Tamale, the economic and administrative capital of the Northern Region of Ghana. The bus broke down halfway through the 12 hour trip and we ended up chilling at the side of the road for 4 hours before another bus showed up. Plenty of writing, card playing, reading, chatting and fear about being bitten by mosquitoes.

The first day in Tamale was spent orienting ourselves. We went on a hunt to collect a few things at the Market (malaria treatment, cloth, etc). It was an overwhelming experience so I'll likely write an entire blog on the markets alone because there is so much to share. The following day was dedicated to our sector group. We spent the day getting up to speed with our goals as a group. Most the other junior fellows that are working in the Agriculture sector will be working on the Agriculture as a Business Curriculum, helping agriculture extension agents (AEAs) to facilitate and strengthen business practices for farmer groups so as to increase their income/opportunities. I, on the other hand, and working to address the reasons one of the biggest problems AEAs are having (low adoption of technologies by engaging AEAs to think more critically about the ways they work with farmers. We want AEA's to see farmers as hardworking, innovative groups who are making wise business practices, but cannot, for a variety of reasons, adopt the technologies the ministry of food and agriculture (MoFA) via AEA's are demonstrating.

I don't want to overload you with too much information. Stay tuned for to learn more about the farmer innovation challenge that I'm working on in Lawra district.

Happy, healthy and still in honeymoon phase of my placement.
Forgive me for the lack of visuals and the scatteredness of this blog ... it's proving to be extremely difficult to get pictures/videos uploaded without some sort of malfunction. Once I get into the groove of things at work and home I'll be able to share and focus my experience better.

I'm heading up to Lawra tonight via Tro-tro... which is a sort of minibus that is crammed with people. I know very little about my community but am excited to finally root myself.