Site Announcement & The Unexpected Challenge

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope the holidays treated everyone well and you’re all enjoying the cold weather, which I never thought I’d come to envy, but here we are. I spent Christmas Day in nearly 4 hours of Catholic Mass (I thought church was boring when I could understand the language but that was nothing!), making French Toast with “syrup” for lunch (with a curious neighbor who insisted on singing Reggae the whole time) and watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” in the evening. Protip: Don’t watch that movie when you’re homesick.

I am happy to report that I’ve officially graduated from a PCT (Peace Corps Trainee) to a full-fledged PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer). This means that I’ve moved to the village that I will be living in for the next two years (otherwise known as “site”) to begin integrating into the community. It also means that I’m not allowed to leave my site for any meaningful amount of time, including overnight trips, for three months.

Site announcement takes place about half way through training and is an exciting day for most volunteers. However, there had been a pit in my stomach about it. For context, a couple of days after arriving in Ghana, I was interviewed by some of the staff about where I’d like to be and what I’d like to be doing. I subsequently got placed in the Ewe language group. This meant I’d be in the Volta Region because that’s where the Ewe tribe live. It also meant that I knew already a lot of what I had asked for in my interview (to be in the north, to speak Twi, and to be in dry heat) wouldn’t be granted. I had known going in that I wouldn’t get everything I asked for though and since I had also asked to live alone and be in a more challenging environment, I figured they had focused on those things. Still, I couldn’t shake the pit in my stomach as the big day came.

The announcement event itself is a really fun event. They draw a big map of Ghana in chalk and then match each volunteer with the designated contact person from your assigned village as you walk to your location on the map creating a visual representation of where everyone will be living throughout the country. Sure enough, I met my contact person and we walked into the Volta region. I spent the next hour talking with him and learning about my new home with a confusing mixture of excitement and disappointment. I would be living in the Ghanaian equivalent of a palace with a husband and wife. An 8 foot wall surrounds my house, which has electricity, a flush toilet, a shower, tiled floors, an oscillating fan in my room and even a freezer in the kitchen. So in the end, I got nothing that I asked for. What made matters more frustrating for me is that people whose sites I envied were in love with my situation. Additionally, because my site is in the South-East corner of Ghana, I’m a full 2-3 days travel away from some of my closest friends in country.

However, my contact person could not have been nicer and more excited to have a volunteer. The desire to help his community was evident in his words and I felt that I would be needed. After the announcement, I spent a few days visiting the village and it became even more clear that my contact person was an apt representative of a community who was eager for help and I was overwhelmed with their welcome to the point that I became deeply attached to their well-being and future almost immediately, something many of my fellow volunteers did not experience. Additionally, I will be the first volunteer ever at this site, which makes sense given my entrepreneurial background and admittedly adds an element of excitement. Among the highlights, I met the paramount chief in an official ceremony, was welcomed by the entire community with a traditional Ewe dance and then participated in said dance as about 1,000 onlookers lost their collective minds. I am still searching for a video of that glorious moment and words can not describe how epic it was. [EDIT: I found it and posted part of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk2mwFa76Ag)

Still, I spent a couple weeks after the visit in a bit of a funk until I realized something that completely changed my attitude. I came to Ghana for a challenge – it was an important enough of a factor that it was one of the three key decision points I listed in my very first blog post about why I joined the Peace Corps. And I had been preparing mentally and physically for a very specific challenge – spotty electricity, long and arduous walks for water, a large language barrier (the Ewe tribe speak English comparatively well compared to others in Ghana). But here I was, in a situation I didn’t want or ask for feeling … challenged. And I wasn’t handling it well. Perhaps this is EXACTLY what I asked for – a situation that I hadn’t been envisioning and would need to make my home anyway.

Once I remembered that overcoming obstacles, even ones I didn’t intend to encounter, was the reason I was here, I put on my game face and got to work preparing for my new environment. Plus, there are a lot of perks to my site. My South-East location means I’m near Togo and Benin, two countries that have Ewe populations, and I’m near the ocean. The couple that I live with communicate with me almost strictly in Ewe so my language learning should progress at a reasonable rate. Also, I’m in close proximity (~3-4 hours) to the capital city of Accra, which has a bunch of American/Western-style restaurants, a movie theater and a real grocery store! Plus, it’s convenient to see the Peace Corps doctor and meet any visitors coming into town (ahem).

Interestingly, now that I’ve spent the past two weeks as a PCV living at site, my “Ghanaian equivalent of a palace” is not as it first appeared during my visit. The fan in my room was removed, the tiled floor was filthy and carpeted in dust that blew in through the windows, there’s no running water because the town hasn’t paid the water bill (plus the dry season just began and already the community is facing a water shortage in the well), the freezer is only turned on some of the time to keep electricity costs down, and I’ve been cooking my meals by making a fire to heat charcoal in a little grill. I’ve started to make adjustments for some of these things but it’s a process.

It’s worth nothing that I’ve made some suggestions to the Peace Corps Ghana staff about how to improve site placement in the future and they were very receptive to my feedback. In the end, I don’t believe it will affect my success or failure as a PCV, but hopefully the next crop of trainees can benefit from my suggestions.