Street children

I think these are Street children taking a bath and doing their laundry by the side of a busy intersection.  

Fwd: Fishing Boats

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nancy Bullock <noflattires@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 9:30 AM
Subject: Fishing Boats
To: Jim & Nancy Bullock <noflattires@gmail.com>

Fishing is a HUGE industry here.  There are fishing boats of all sizes, some with one person on board, and some with several.  They use nets mostly.  They go out in the evenings and come back first thing in  the mornings with their catch and apparently there is always a market for it at the shore.  I didn't know before that fishing is best for them at night. 

They do not go out on Tuesdays though.  Something to do with the God of the sea.  They do repair their nets and make other preparations on that day.

Eating coconuts

Just a couple of pictures I took of some boys with their coconuts.  They were in Cape Coast near the Slave castle near a market. 

Slave Castle visit

There are several Slave castles here in Ghana along the ocean.  We visited this large one and it was really hard to hear of the horrors that took place there starting in the 1400's.  Such terrible things for so very many years!  

They showed us the different areas where men and women were kept prisoners and told of the horrible things that happened to them.  It was hard to imagine that human beings could do that each other.   Unfortunately, human trafficking is still a problem throughout the world.

Canopy Walk

All work and no play..... wouldn't be any fun at all! 

Clarence Kofi and John Buah, who we work with, wanted to take us on the Canopy Walk.  Clarence is afraid of heights so he took the short route but the one we took had 7 different stretches between VERY tall trees.  I am not too crazy about heights either but I did it!!   As you can see from the pictures there are nets on either side but I was afraid that even if I slipped and fell into a net it would be very difficult to get up and going again.  This walk was actually made by some Canadians.   We were the last to go on the walk for the day as they were suppose to already be closed so at least we didn't have a lot of people on there at the same time making it shake and jiggle more than necessary.

It was really pretty from up there.  We were in a rain forest.  It was very humid and hot though and we were pouring sweat and very happy to get back into our air conditioned truck afterwards. 

Cape Coast area Water Project - Hygiene/Sanitation Training

We drove to Cape Coast and were there for 4 days, during which, we attending some trainings of the Committees from different Villages where we will be providing boreholes or a hand dug well, as well as some latrines.   The committees are trained how to take care of the wells and also on different ideas of how they can collect money to maintain the wells and how to account for the money (ledger book).   We have a company that is contracted to do the training for us.  We were really impressed with the job they did. 

When we first arrived we had a meeting with the District Assembly for the area (first photo).   From there we went out to the training points and spend a little time with a couple of different groups that were being taught.   They met in a Church and it was so HOT!    I have included a few pictures of the training and the paticipants are presented a certificate at the end.    They are given transport money and provided snacks and lunch.  

The ones who are trained in hygiene and sanitation will go back and teach it to the village and will also keep a journal for several weeks of diarrhea and illnesses for each family.  We hope to see this decrease as they practice better hygiene.
 

Kumasi

While Dr. Hunsaker and his wife, Diane, were here doing the Vision projects we flew up to Kumasi and back one day.  It isn't far away but the roads are not good so the drive would have taken too long.  The hospital there sent someone to pick us up at the airport.  We toured the new Vision building of the hospital, where LDS Charities has donated some equipment and it will be part of the 2014 project to donate some more for them.     We also saw that they have some big water needs at the hospital and we will look into that.   I am not including pictures of the hospital but a couple of pictures of the view from the hospital.  I couldn't resist taking the picture of the guys who were having some 'down time'.   They were very busy earlier signing people up on the Ghana health insurance.