Festival was pretty slow all week until Friday when all the chiefs and big men went out to a small village with muskets and home brewed Akpeteshie. I didn't think this "Firing of Musketry" sounded all that safe and I ran 22 miles that morning so I took a rain check. When they came back and I saw what state they were in I'd say I made the right choice but they gave me a hard time. Should PEACE Corps volunteers be firing guns anyways?
Rest of the day was just awesome. The national breweries sponsored a street Jamboree Fri and Sat nights. The roads were packed and I won a towel, t-shirt, and Guinness jersey. Saturday was the Grand Durbar complete with VP of Ghana and South Korean (Chrissy musta sent him) Ambassador. They carried all the chiefs and a small girl in canoes from town to the grounds which is now Julie and I's long term goal for next year. There were at least 20-30 obvious tourists and 1,000s of Ghanaians so hopefully the ads we put up helped.
The only negative would be the quality of some of the people that came. I love the people of Kpetoe but not always the big city people. 2 characters from Accra tried to make me pay to take pictures. Our strength is that we don't do crap like that to our tourists so I was not happy. All in Eve (somehow) I asked them where they're from, told them I lived here, and that I'm sure my personal friend, Paramount Chief Nene, would be intrigued to hear about his personal photographer being harassed. They seemed to lose some authority. The next day a friend of mine had 2 phones stolen from her. That stuff never happens in my village and if I would have told Michael and crew they'd still be looking for the culprit.
The next day Oscar and I took off for Kumasi for the HIV/AIDs workshop we're at now The hotel has wifi!!! Doesn't always have water but still awesome. Kpetoe to Kumasi is like Jackson to Grand Rapids. We left at 8:30, 7 cars, 2 breakdowns, and 10 hours later we arrived.
I think I need these 2 weeks of conferences as a break but I'd still rather be at site. Around the 1 year mark it's not supposed to be easy and lately I haven't been quite as excited about being here. Others in my group are similar. We all love it here but have been here so long and are still not even half way home.
Today we had to say what we're doing for HIV/AIDs awareness and I talked about the basketball court plan and how my family raised $1,000 via garage sale. The whole room applauded, wish you guys coulda been here for that. I'm getting some great ideas for how we can maximize the effectiveness of the court once it's built. Alan and Marian are trying to beat me to filling their proposal. They're retired so their friends hopefully don't still have college loans like mine!