Perspective

Greetings from Cape Coast!

I am here for a few days visiting a volunteer that is already one year into their service, to get an idea of what it will be like once I get to site after we swear in August 12. So far I have found it helpful in gaining some perspective on service, and has helped me to see beyond training. I have seen the volunteer's village and living quarters, and experienced travel from his small village into the city of cape coast. It is a relatively short distance, but can take over an hour due to the poor road conditions and transport available. Also, today we need to be back mid-afternoon otherwise we might not get there at all - transport quits on Sunday pretty early.

As for the region, I am gaining no perspective on what my site will be like, because Cape Coast is basically a different world from north Volta. You can apparently get most things you can get in Accra, and every time I enter a taxi they try to charge us triple the price because they think we are tourists. But it is interesting to experience. An additional perk is internet :)

So what do you do in cape coast? You go to the beach. I now know where to meet all of you that want to come visit, but don't necessarily want to endure the long, arduous, exhausting travel required to get up to our site from Accra. There are plenty of resorts, not quite like Cancun, but relatively nice (flush toilets!). So look it up. I also did a tour of Cape Coast Castle, which is one of the slave castles along the coast. I'll go into detail about that later (hopefully), with pictures as well.

But as nice as this vacation of sorts has been, it will be over soon - I'll be back in Kukurantumi for training in a few days. Tomorrow i will observe the volunteer teaching in their school, and see how they interact with the other teachers, to gain some more perspective there. For now I will take 5 and catch up with world news, then my half hour will be up!

Best,