What a week!!!

We have a couple hours before we head to Mole (the national wildlife park) with our friends, so I also wanted to add a new post (this is Kym by the way). Last week was one of the most emotional/amazing weeks I've had in Ghana. I was reading the book Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder about the physician Paul Farmer and his non-profit work in Haiti. It was a wonderful, eye-opening book that I thoroughly enjoyed but made me feel, even though I'm a health and sanitation volunteer, that I'm not doing enough in helping the people of Karaga fight disease and malnutrition related issues. As I'm having these emotions, our neighbor Zakaria, who's around 3, walked into our compound with this huge, rock-solid growth on the side of his neck down his jaw-line. He wasn't able to turn his head and he was lethargic, which is completely the opposite of his personality. He's the kid who literally comes running into my arms every time I see him, about 10 times a day. So this is when I start having a small panic attack and start reading our Peace Corps book that helps us self-diagnose any issues we're having and decide it's a tumor (or something really, really bad). I walk to my other neighbor who's a nurse and speaks Dagbani (our tribal language) and make her walk with me and Zakaria to his family's hut to talk with his Dad. His Dad says Zakaria has the national health insurance (which only costs $3 per year) but don't have the money to go to the clinic. So Cam and I give them 5 Ghana cedis (about $4) and they all start to shake our hands and the mom is crying. The next day they go to the hospital and come back with some antibiotics and pain relievers and he sleeps most of that day. I'm still worried at this time because the growth is still the same size and completely solid, but am feeling a little better because he now has something in his system that might help. Literally the next morning he walks into our compound with this huge smile on his face (still has the growth, but it's smaller) and gives me his usual hug. So as you can imagine, I start to cry. You can tell he's feeling better and is getting back to being his usual sweet, crazy self.

Now the day after I first saw Zakaria's growth I started thinking about all the orphans at our school and whether they have health insurance, too. When we went to the States Cam and I told Lindsay and John (Cam's sister and her husband) about the "cell phone challenge" we were doing for the health extension workers at our nutrition center. We were leaving for 3 weeks and told the workers that whoever taught the most health education lessons would get a new cell phone from us (which is about $50). This is a huge expense for us, but we felt it was a good "challenge" to get the workers more motivated to teach more lessons. Linds and John gave us that $50 for the cell phone (which was so amazing!). When we went to the center, prepared to see who "won" the challenge, they both decided that they'd rather use the money for something better; more sustainable. That's when I asked my supervisor at the school if our students (who are orphans) had the national health insurance. We went and had the kids bring their parents to the school. Twelve of the students didn't have the health insurance (which is a total of $48), exactly what Linds and John gave us! We literally walked (I'm not kidding, 5 minutes after talking to the parents) to the place to buy the health insurance. Just like that, all our students have health insurance! Again, I started to cry. Linds and John, you're amazing, thanks so much.

It's been a little over a week now and the growth is completely gone and he's our little Zakaria again, running hugs and all. All our students have health insurance and our health extension workers are ACTUALLY teaching health lessons when I'm not there. What started out to be one of the most difficult weeks here in Ghana ended by being my favorite. It's amazing the highs and lows we have, in such short periods of time.

We had a great Easter weekend! We went paragliding for the first time, enjoyed a day at the pool (or half a day because a guy vomited in it...ugh!) and a delicious bar-b-q with some of our favorite people in the world. Life is good....

Oh, one more thing! I was just talking to Maria, who is also building a library in her village, and she was telling me about a shipping company her family and friends are using to send books over. She just sent an email to her Dad to get more details, so we'll let you know more about what they're doing soon. Thanks for working so hard to collect books, Karaga is excited about the possibiites of a new library!