Exciting developments in work and play!

July 6^th, 2012

Hi all!

Week 2 has been a great week so far. We have been able to get started on our projects at work, and things are taking shape quite nicely! As some of you may know, my main project when coming here was to interview women that own small businesses and work with the NGO Global Mamas to better understand their decision making process, goal setting, business progress, and any gained financial independence and empowerment. When talking with my supervisor, Mel, earlier this week, I discovered that GM started a service day last summer that could be continued this year. Last year, the Mamas (what we call all the business owner ladies) all got together very early in the morning and cleaned the Kotokraba market. Many of the women buy thread, dyes, and other supplies from this market and have a very close connection with the stall owners. This service day was very well received! This year, the idea is to have the 2^nd Annual Global Mamas Gives Back service day at a local hospital. Lauren and I have decided to take this project on as the main coordinators. Yay! I’m very excited about planning this event, as I hope it will be a great way to get to know a lot of the mamas (there are about 80 of them in Cape Coast) as well as work with a local hospital. 

As the first step to this project, Lauren and I went to meet with Patience, one of the Mamas and a community leader. We talked with her about our ideas, and she gave us a lot of great direction and motivation. She said that we should focus on district hospital, and that we could potentially adopt the maternity ward and the childrens ward. She said that we could do an early morning cleaning of these two areas, as well as contribute in some way based on the needs of the hospital. To better understand their needs, Lauren and I will go meet with the hospital administrator on Monday. Patience said that in the maternity wards, sometimes privacy is an issue, in that they don’t have dividers up between the women giving birth. We brainstormed that we could potentially donate some of our ‘rejected’ (due to bloches in the pattern or imperfections) batiks to the hospital, to somehow hang dividers.  Patience is currently on maternity leave, as she just had a lovely baby boy named Yao in March, so she helped us get in contact with another woman that will go to the hospital with us. We thought it would be great to have a local lady with us when we go.

So, work is looking promising and I’m feeling very excited! As far as social/personal life, 2 new interns got here this past week now making us a crew of 4 female interns. I’m enjoying getting to know them! Our experiences all vary widely, (from religious studies, to MBA, to womens and gender studies) so it will be fun to work together. We discovered the pool at the hotel across the street yesterday. It is truly the most beautiful setup ever! The pool is quite large and deep so that you can actually swim, and it sits RIGHT next to the beach. You can lounge in a beach chair and read while glancing over at the rolling waves, palm trees, and Elmina castle out in the distance. (See pictures on my photobucket account here-  Lauren and I each bought a 3 month membership to the pool and gym at the hotel for a total of $20 USD. Yay! We hear that there are also often live music performances and pool parties on the weekend. Life is good!

Today is looking quite beautiful and sunny so we plan to go visit Cape Coast Castle today. I hear they give a good historical tour and the views from the top are said to be quite lovely. I’m sitting here now on our balcony/porch writing and sipping some tea. A great start to our Friday!

Sending you all my love from Ghana!

Best,

Colleen