I arrived back in the US last Friday, had a wonderful weekend at home with Zach and our dog, saw friends, ate my favorite foods, and came back to work at GSK on Monday. Lots has changed, but lots has stayed the same, too.

It feels like I’m getting back in a routine, but with renewed appreciation for everything. My inbox has finally been sorted, I’m getting through some action items like software updates and new trainings. Just today I submitted my expense report for the last few months and started working on my case study for PULSE. My eyes are killing me from staring at a computer for long hours since I’m not used to it! But I’m grateful for my supportive and welcoming coworkers, for the convenience of the GSK cafeteria, and for the amazing technology that makes our lives and work more efficient.

I’ll post again when I’ve had a little more time to reflect on my experience and get through the rest of my pictures!

Due to the Ghana Independence holidays, I found myself with a 5-day weekend at the beginning of March and suggested to Esra that we take a trip to Togo and Benin!  The timing worked out so that our New York Project Manager, Liz, and Esra’s friend from home, Burcu, were visiting us in Kumasi and they were up for the trip, too.  My multiple-entry work visa is only good for 60 days at a time, and this holiday would mark the end of my 60-day stay, so leaving the country and coming back would automatically renew it as well. Togo and Benin visas can be obtained at the border for American citizens, but we ran into a few kinks for Esra and Burca who are Turkish citizens, and due to timing, they would skip out on Benin and let Liz and I continue on alone after Togo.

We started off Saturday with a flight from Kumasi to Accra, and planned to spend our first night in Ada Foah, a coastal town at the mouth of the Volta River about halfway between Accra and the Togo border.  After the short flight we tried finding a taxi to take us the distance, and we found one, but he couldn’t drive us for another hour.  So, we headed for the Movenpick hotel, an incredible luxury that I had no idea existed in Ghana.  We had good coffee in the lounge (no instant coffee here!) followed by a wonderful lunch (I had a Caesar salad!  With real shaved Parmesan!  In Ghana!  With a glass of South African Chenin Blanc, I might add, since I was on vacation).  After a few relaxing hours in the hotel (everything is late in Ghana…), we headed out and arrived two hours later at our Ada Foah hotel.  The Peace Holiday Resort was on the river, and we took a ride in their motorized boat down through the estuaries, past villages and beach camps.  We dined on fresh seafood that night sitting on the deck overlooking the river.

Sunday morning was spent lounging by the pool, because the Togo/Benin tour guide we had hired was late picking us up… Boris, our guide, finally showed up though, and it wasn’t long after we were on the road that we started to understand why he was late.  Between Ada Foah and the Togo border, we were stopped at several police barricades where we had to pull over, Boris was told to get out of the car and open the trunk, and only when he was out of our sight would they start hassling him for money.  I’ve seen this kind of thing in Kumasi, but typically they’ll wave you through if they see you have obroni’s in the car.  Not these police, however… Boris was a slick talker though, and got away without paying them, although it did take a little longer. 

At the Ghana/Togo border, we were met with the bureaucracy that I was hoping to avoid at the Kumasi immigration office.  First, we had to accompany Boris to an office to process paperwork for his car to leave the country.  Then we had to get exit stamps in our passports at the Ghana immigration office.  Next, we crossed the border and walked up to a single desk under an open-air corrugated metal roof where a lone Togo immigration officer stamped our passports with a Togo entry visa.  I was glad I had the foresight to exchange some Ghana Cedis for West African CFA francs back in Kumasi, since that’s the only currency the official would accept and there were no ATMs in sight.  After paying 15,000 CFA each for my and Liz’s visas and 10,000 CFA each for Esra and Burca’s we were officially in Lomé, Togo.

Lomé is a gorgeous beachfront city where motorbikes rule and French is the word.  The Hotel Bellevue was our home for the night, with its open courtyards and beautiful, breezy views of the sea.  The French restaurant on site was amazing and the fine-dining atmosphere and menu was a complete shock, but a very welcome one!  After checking in, we needed to exchange money, and Boris took us to the best place to do that: a gas station near the border where men hang around with bricks of cash. The transactions offered fair exchange rates and conveniently (legally?) took place right outside the car.  So, with money in our pockets we were off to the main attraction we wanted to see in Lomé: The Marché des Féticheurs.

The voodoo fetish market is a sort of traditional pharmacy where people come for ingredients needed in a prescription that a fetish priest can prescribe and prepare.  A fetish is an object or potion that is believed to have magical or spiritual powers.  The market was quite a sight to see (and smell) since it was full of thousands of dead animals, skins, and bones.  The sun was starting to set, so after paying our tourist entry fee, we were released into the market to take pictures and have a guide tell us how all these gruesome things were used.  They had a few “voodoo dolls” on hand for the tourists, since that’s not really something that locals are interested in.  They have other ways of putting a curse or vex on you if they were interested.  A lot of the items were for good, though, like the “thunder rocks” (below) that you can put in a bath of water and rub on you to relieve pain.  As our tour concluded, they invited us to meet the fetish priest and he had a candlelit blessing ceremony set up with good luck items we might be interested in purchasing (they’ve definitely caught on to the tourist circuit and are taking full advantage…).  Since it was mostly dark out now it was all a bit creepy and freaked me out a bit, but we survived (so far, at least!).

The next morning, Liz and I said goodbye to Esra and Burca at the Togo border, and continued on with Boris to Benin.  The drive along the coast was beautiful and full of palm trees, and in about two hours we were at the Benin border.  Togo is really small and here we had to deal with another immigration process: exit stamp at the Togo office, walk across the border on foot, show our Yellow Fever vaccine card, and pay for a Benin visa at another open-air “office”.  The border visa at Benin is only good for 48 hours, which suited us just fine since we were only planning to stay one night.  Overall, the process was pretty easy, but I’m definitely glad we had Boris with us to translate!  When we were back in the car and about to drive off, Boris made us check the dates on our stamps… They had marked February instead of March!  We went right back to the officials and they laughed.  Oops.  They had been writing 02 instead of 03 all morning and thanked us for catching it!

Benin was a lot like Togo, but this part was more rural than the cosmopolitan Lomé.  This road trip was eye-opening as we saw families of four on a single motorcycle and of course no one was wearing a helmet.   We also saw lots of glass jugs on the side of the road, and assumed they were palm wine until Boris corrected us.  Evidently, some cars here are altered so that their gas tanks can hold a dangerous 400 Liters of gasoline.  These cars drive over the border of neighboring Nigeria, where gas is cheaper, cross the border back to Benin, and sell it on the side of the road in big glass jugs.

About two hours after crossing the border, we arrived in Ouidah, a quaint city with cobblestone streets that I would love to revisit to spend more time.  The city is known for its Voodoo temples and festival, and also as a historic departure point for many slaves who were taken from across West Africa.  The slave route is now marked with many monuments, memorials, and artistic statues that made for a very powerful and moving, but somber tour. 

Our first stop in Ouidah was the Temple des Pythons, a sacred voodoo temple that contains- you guessed it- lots of snakes.  The temple is used in ceremonies for the people in town, who celebrate not only their traditional beliefs, but are also devote Catholics that pray in the cathedral directly across the street.  Pythons are considered sacred, since they saved the people from their enemies during a war long ago.  Within the temple, a large tree in front marks the altar, where sacrifices are made (like an annual sacrifice of a cow, for instance).  Within the compound, there’s a python cemetery, and of course, a room that contained around 40 pythons.  The guide brought a few out, draped on himself, and tried to get us to try one on.  No thanks!  I did manage to touch one, and had my Indiana Jones moment inside the room when I crouched down for Liz to take my picture. 

We stayed the night at a lovely beach resort, Hotel Djegba, arriving just in time to see the sunset.  We dined on the beach, eating fresh grilled fish, and in the morning Liz and I got up to take pictures of the sunrise.  The local fisherman were starting to show up and I instantly regretted wearing sandals when we saw one with his pants dropped, squatting in the sand and doing his business while looking out to sea in the morning light.  Reality check- we’re still in a developing country that struggles with sanitation issues and the ocean is seen as a big toilet.

Our first stop on Tuesday morning was to the Sacred Forest in Ouidah before heading to Ganvié, a stilt village built on Lake Nokoué.  The Sacred forest was a peaceful sanctuary with dozens of statues to voodoo and animist deities and I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland as we walked under the huge kola nut tree in the center and amongst the idols.  After touring the forest, we got in the car again for a drive out to Ganvié, or more accurately, the dock where we would depart for Ganvié.  The village built on bamboo stilts was established during the 17^th century, when the Tofinu people fled here to escape Dahomey slave hunters who thought it was bad luck to cross the water.  The people living there are in extreme poverty, but they do have a school, church, and mosque.  I saw a sign for a medical clinic and a place that must have had a generator since their sign read, “Charge your cell phone here.”  The market isn’t in a building, but rather takes place on the water amongst different boats.

Around noon we began the long drive back to Ghana, and even though it should have taken 7-8 hours to return to Accra, it took us more than ten because of the hassle we endured from Ghanaian officials.  Getting back through the Benin and Togo borders was uneventful, but we hit our first snag at the Ghana border.  It took nearly 2 hours for Boris to get his paperwork approved at the vehicle office- not because there was a line, but because the Ghanaian official was too busy watching TV to be bothered to do his job, unless you wanted to “dash” him something extra (bribe him) to get it done.  After we finally crossed into Ghana, what should have been a three hour journey to Accra turned into four hours because we were stopped a total of TEN times.  There were ten police barricades where the police expect a bribe in order to let you pass.  When they pulled us over and asked Boris to get out of the car, I started getting out as well to stretch my legs because I found they were more expedient and less likely to harass him with an obroni to witness the event.  We made it through without having to pay anyone off, but it cost us in time.  Thank goodness I had brought some granola bars on the trip, since that was our dinner for the night.  And thank goodness for Boris’ unending patience and perseverance!  He truly made this trip happen for us.

Originally, I was planning to travel to Togo and Benin with Zach once my assignment was done, but back in January I changed my flight to come home early since it felt like Africa was getting under my skin…  The corruption I’ve experienced in Ghana bothers me immensely and I see it every day with government workers as well as NGO employees.   While this has tainted my time here in Ghana, I’m glad it didn’t stop me from taking this memorable trip.  The small amount of Togo and Benin that I was able to see in just two days was wonderful.  I loved experiencing the francophone atmosphere, eating the amazing food, and learning about their religions and traditions.  Those are the memories I will take with me!

See my complete photo album here, but a word of warning that some of the Voodoo market pictures are a bit grisly!

The past few weeks of school visits have reminded me of the amazing impact technology can have on our lives. Since the workshop in Microsoft Excel a few weeks back, Wilfred and I have visited with all 45 teachers individually to further reinforce the training. During these follow-up visits, we helped the teachers convert their paper-based grade sheets into an Excel spreadsheet, complete with formulas. The teachers commonly teach classes of 50-60 students each and calculating their grades at the end of the term can take days of their time. Fortunately, all the teachers have discovered what an awesome tool the computer can be and I got the chance to share something essential to my job at GSK- spreadsheets!

Teaching Excel to these teachers has opened their eyes to how using the computer will save them time and effort, and do so with increased accuracy and reliability. Previously, teachers would have to sum up four assignments from the term adding up to a max of 60 points, rescale that sum to 50 points, then add it to the final exam, which is out of 100 points but needed to be scaled to 50 points as well. In Excel, we were able to use simple equations to accomplish these tasks, and once the formulas were written and Autofill applied, each student’s grade automatically appears once the assignment and exams scores are entered. Ta-da! Technology has just saved the teacher from hours of tedious work with a calculator, going blind from staring at rows of numbers, and using whiteout to correct all their mistakes (if they happen to find their mistakes). I took it a bit further and helped the teachers create a “RANK” function and a nested “IF” function to apply a class position and actual grade for each student within the spreadsheet. The ICT teachers loved learning the advanced equations and all the teachers loved that their template was now setup and ready for data entry. The teachers took real pride in creating their own sheets, which in turn has sparked a greater interest in using the computers.

In my final week of school visits, I’ve also rolled out an ICT lab maintenance protocol for the schools. Computer labs have been riddled with viruses here and schools seem more concerned with getting more computers than taking care of the ones they have. So, playing on this desire to acquire more stuff, we’ve created a bit of a game for the schools: If they follow our checklist of maintenance tasks for all their computers for the next four months then they will win a projector! Now, updating their antivirus software and scanning the computer at least once a month may seem like a simple task (in addition to others), but with costly and unreliable Internet, it becomes more of a burden. Because of this projector incentive, however, I’ve now seen schools making progress to fix their broken routers, connect their entire computer labs, and finally take advantage of the local unlimited Internet plan that we were able to negotiate last November. The GSK PULSE volunteer on this project last year, Michelle, created a Lab Maintenance Instruction manual and this year Wilfred and I updated it and added additional chapters. Since the first edition was never published (MCI was supposed to, but never got around to it…) Wilfred and I published a 2nd Edition and delivered it to all the schools with their protocols. I’m already seeing positive effects of this training and enticement and I feel like our work here will be sustained long after we’re gone.

Next week I’m giving final workshops on PowerPoint to prepare everyone for the projectors they will hopefully earn! The PowerPoint training is also a summary training in disguise that will review the MDG’s I taught when I first arrived, Internet research, and even Excel (they’ll have to make a chart and paste it into their presentation to show progress on one of the MDG indicators). I hope it will be a great conclusion to my time here and will show the teachers how far they have come in the last six months.