Ghanaian Food Rant

I have been studying Twi and picking at my dinner for the past hour and I am over both of those things. My Twi is getting better, but it is still hard to communicate and understand what people are saying. It is a hard language to learn because it is tonal. I am sad to be back at homestay because now I have to eat the food my family prepares for me. Today I had lunch out in Koforidua so I enjoyed a mango and hard boiled egg (the fruit is amazing here and is cheap-oo) Ghanaians do not like fruit though, and they do not understand why we like fruit. I am okay with them not liking fruit I will happily eat it all for them. My family does not give me fruit often because they think its gross (strange huh?) so meals here usually consist of a hot stew (stew meaning oil with salt and tomato paste) a light stew is half oil half water but then they throw groundnut paste in too (peanut butter). The stew is served with mashed plantain (fufu) fermented mashed cassava and corn (banku) boiled plantain or boiled yam or mashed rice balls. I told my mom I don’t eat rice or bread (so they think I am crazy) but they give me plantain or other starchy veggies instead. I told my mom how much I love cabbage and  fresh vegetables (which are abundant here just not appetizing to them) and I ended up getting a cup of hot oil with cabbage overcooked in it J . Tonight I managed to pick out the meager vegies and drain a cup of oil out of my bowl before attempting to dig in. They smoke the fish here and it sits outside all day covered in flies. People here love it, I can eat it if it is served in stew and I didn’t see it on the street covered in flies. If I cook for myself I buy the frozen fish, or canned. It is hard to pick around all the bones though but otherwise it’s not bad. I don’t always look forward to a steaming bowl of oil and carbs after a hot long day. I cannot wait to live on my own and have salad time all the time. It is easy to find ingredients here to make tons of different dishes. Some volunteers on site visit talked of making brownies and fettuccini alfredo after scavenging the market and getting creative with powdered milk and laughing cow. For me I am excited to make cucumber salad, curry, mango avocado salsa, guacamole, and all foods that would absolutely horrify Ghanaians.

My counterpart invited me over for dinner and due to his experience with peace corps he knows that we cant eat cups full of oil and his wife sister Patience is an amazing chef, She makes the best fufu in Brekumanso and I actually thoroughly enjoyed eating it. The stew was more like a light tomato and onion stew with fish and a piece of gnarly cow fat (big delicacy here) that the kids excitedly fought over when I declined my piece. I stick to fish and chicken here. The actual beef of the cow is the same price as the fat chuncks, most people but just straight cow fat and call it beef.

Anyways, my favorite Ghanaian food I can eat without major modification or feeling like s*** after is beans and gari. They cook white beans (watch out for the rocks though!) and top it with a spicy tomato/pepe sauce. Then the sprinkle gari (ground dried cassva? I think) it is a white flacky kinda crunchy crumbs. Then for extra you can add an egg or fried coco (ripe plantain very gooey and sweet). Then sorry Ghanaians… I go find a waekye or noodle lady with cabbage and have her top off my sack with chopped cabbage. I then mix together my wonderful concoction of white beans, gari, ripe plantain, spicy sauce, cabbage, and a hard boiled egg and bite a hole in the bag and slowly suck down my lunch. It tasted like the inside of a burrito!

For those of you unfamiliar with Ghanaian street food everything is served in plastic baggies. If you get waekye they fill a bag with beans and rice and other choice toppings then tie it up, you then mix it and make a hole in the corner of the bag to squeeze it out. Here when you buy water it comes in a sachet…same concept…. Bite a hole and drink the water. Surprisingly they balance pretty well without spilling on tables and tros. I guess it is like those freez-e pops except instead its square and full of piping hot porridge or peanut butter to make groundnut soup for dinner later.

I think Ghanain food really is good though, most people love Waekye I just don’t eat rice. I like groundnut soup and fufu its basically drinking spicy peanut butter. But when I do eat it I feel very ill after due to the fact I just drank oil and peanut butter ( and the amount that makes me sick is a few bites…Ghanaian can eat bowls of it!). A lot of the food really would taste great if they just cut back on the oil, so I will be cooking traditional foods and immersing myself in the culture but just tweaking the recipes a little so I don’t gain 30 pounds or have a heart attack. I ate lizard meat on a stick the other day it was covered in pepe and onions and tasted like greasy delicious chicken. One piece of lizard meat had a strange consistency though and after examination it looked to be just a hunk of rubbery tail ( I deemed it not edible) but the rest was tasty. I heard cat is very very tasty from a volunteer who was served it the other night.

Well that is my rant on food for the day. I am excited to get to site and experiment with all the ingredients the Ghanaian markets have to offer. I also enjoy eating all the different street foods here, although most are not paleo there are still a lot of gluten free options. During my shadow visit to Tweapease I lived of kwadu (little bananas), ground nuts, and hard boiled eggs which was pretty cheap and filling. People actually just gave us bags of bananas and plantain to eat because they know we like fruit and that’s all they had in the village and what grows in abundance. I learned during this time that if I lived off of bananas I would eat for less than 50 cents a day and never have to cook, but then I also learned that bananas are a good treatment for diarrhea….so lets just say I didn’t have to go in a latrine for a week after my banana bender.

Drinking here is interesting too, beer is expensive 2.50 ghana cedi ($1.25)per a big bottle ( the beers are the size of a rogue or  the big micro brews) and they all kinda taste the same and there are only a few options. Liquor sachets are 30p (15 cents) each…. They come in varieties of gin, whiskey, and other strange uknown flavors and types. You can mix them with Fanta or avaro because they taste like unfiltered s**** and probably take years off of your life. The wine comes in large juice boxes and also tastes like s*** but they are fun to stick a straw in and be like “hey I have a big alcoholic juice box, look how small my hands look!”. The sangria on the other hand tastes like kool-aid with 3 extra cups of sugar. We have learned to water it down then add goal (a better of the liquor sachet options) to make an enjoyable beverage. There are shops that sell what look like wine and liquor in actual bottles (more legit than the plastic 15 cent packets) but I haven’t looked into pricing or what is available. Our group likes to stop by or meet at “the spot” (what bars are called in Ghana) and have a beer after a long day of training if we can afford it. It is really fun to see the locals at the spot when they are all dressed up in there finest clothes, fresh haircuts, and sunglasses at night. All the barber shops here has pictures of Ludacris, Obama, and Chris Brown outside them and say “God’s Grace Barbering” or “Not My Power Salon” or “Halleluiah Barber spot”

 In my village of Brekumanso where I will be living there is a spot but I haven’t checked it out yet I was told that in my village they drink appeteshi, people cant afford beer so they go into the spot take a shot of appeteshi and leave. Appeteshi is palm wine that his been fermenting all day…or longer. In the morning they make palm wine from the trunks of palm trees which is a sweet and kinds spicy drink barely alcoholic that I have not yet sampled. Appeteshi is after the wine has become much much stronger and is basically a strong spicy liquor. Lots of Ghanaians don’t drink, some drink occasionally, and some drink palm wine all morning and the rest of the day. When there is a funeral and lots of people in town and music is blasting it is hard to tell when a random stranger comes up to you and starts talking very dramatically if they are just a normal Ghanain interested in the Obronis, drunk, or mentally ill. It is hard because maybe they are your Uncle from the town nextdoor wanting to meet you and it would be extremely rude for you not to greet them proper. Or they could be your DRUNcle and they won’t remember if you greet them or not but they will tell you really lame story or joke that makes no sense for the next hour without letting go of your hand. Or they could be a crazy person who will not leave you alone and follow you for the next hour if you greet them. A lot of people have issues where they teach at a school with an alcoholic teacher who comes in drunk everyday. They never get fired but if you are lucky they will transfer them to another school to deal with (yeah…I wont even go into this…its mind blowing).

So that is barely a TASTE of my Ghanaian experiences…. Wow the Ghanaian sense of humor would make one very long and interesting blog post I will have to do that someday.

 Cheers

Emily

So I love my site. There are a lot of pros and cons to it but I will focus on the pros.


Beautiful mountains (okay big hills but they are my mountains),
lots of places to hike and explore
jungle/fruit/fertile land
friendly community
close to Accra
close to beach
close to district capital
egg sandwich lady that makes be veggie omletes Brodo debi
amazing house
garden
the stars are mind blowing at night
In the jungle ("forest" but it looks like jungle)
my counterparts wife makes awesome fufu

 I really like my village, and there are a lot of small villages hikes/bike rides away. I am really excited to return in September and explore the backwoods areas. I have to go back to Anyanasin to my homestay :( for 4 more weeks to finish language training a swear in. It was a breathe of fresh air being on my own and in my own house (or other PCV's homes) but now I have four more weeks of constant awkwardness until I am officially a PCV!!!

Well hello,

I have survived practicum and found out I am going to be placed in a Twi speaking region. Intensive language lessons start next week. I told my family tonight the news about my language placement and they said okay from now on no English…. I know barely any Twi so here it goes.

So this was my last week of live-teaching-practice. It went pretty well, Peace Corps trainers sat in and evaluated us. The majority of feedback I got was very positive so I am feeling confident about teaching. Today we found out what language we are studying. I got Twi so that means I will be in Central, Eastern, or Ashanti region. Some people got Volta, upper west, upper east, or northern. Only about 9 days until I know where I will be. Getting Twi means that I will most likely have electricity, be close to Accra or Kumasi, and have fruits/veggies available. I am a bit sad I am not going somewhere more extreme but who knows my village could be extremely rural even though it is in the Twi region.  This also means I could be very near the ocean J

I am trying to think of some interesting stories, I spend hours making sweet videos to show everyone but they take 5+ years to upload so I think I may have to oust the video blog idea…. But maybe after training I will have 5 year periods that I can sit and have my video uploaded.

I can fetch water and carry it home on my head now. It is not as hard as it looks….plus I use both hands….walk slowly….and spill… so it is not that impressive. I can’t wait until I speak Twi. I can tell all the women and children are talking and laughing about me, which I don’t mind most speak some English so we can piece together conversations. I like fetching water with the girls, it is a great work out and the kids are always laughing and playing….. watching the 40 pound 9 year old carry a bucket 5 times the size of mine though it a bit mindblowing. It really seems like people have kids here so they can have a small boy or small girl to fetch water, sweep, pound fu fu…. The kids work hard here. I do all my own chores here at first my mom would always stop me and say “leave, small boy will come”… but I really can’t handle watching a malnourished 10 year old do work for me. Plus my mom and sisters always say “Kwasebiya you done well”…I think the last volunteer that lived here was really lazy….plus they like laughing at me because I do everything wrong. I guess laughing is better than awkward silence.

Everything is always a bit awkward here. I am getting a bit more comfortable everyday though. Our training group gets along well and we found a place to watch the Eurocup so watching the games in a nearby town with a juicebox full of wine is a great get away. I am getting my first dress made… I have decided I am only buying super awesome fabrics that nobody else has (the fabric here is all unique but a lot of prints here are similar). It is a fun way to kill time exploring the market… we had seen girls walking around with dresses that say high life and we found some material in the market but it was super expensive for a champagne of beers dress haha. everyone always wants to talk to the Obroni too… and when I speak Twi to them they go crazy. Many people ask you to marry them or take them back to America with you.

Responses for when people yell Obroni! Obroni! (It really never gets old for them) :

Obibiya! – Black Person

Obibita tun tun!—very dark black person

(at first I was appalled by this and decided there was no way I would say that, but Ghanaians get a kick out of it and it usually ends in laughter and respect from them)

yen fre me Obroni! Me dindi….. – don’t call me Obroni  my name is….

Obroni wO hE?!!--- Foreigner!? Where??!

Shops around where I teach and the people I buy my apples/phone minutes/ground nuts/fabric from all know my name and so it is fun greeting everyone I have met and conversed with for a bit…. But it sucks because if you don’t greet someone who knows you it is very disrespectful…. I have trouble remembering everyone’s name and if I have met them/ If I am related to them and how. Also it is awkward with guys, I don’t want to be rude because greeting is a huge part of Ghanaian culture but I also don’t want to deal with indecent proposals (they can be funny though). I went for a long walk the other day in between two towns I normally catch a car through and atleast 2,000 times I heard Obroni wo ko hE!!!?? Or something like that which means and also sounds just like Obroni where you going??!! Sometimes I am game for stopping at every chop stop and women carrying bananas to town and using my minimal Twi to explain where I am going, where I came from, how a am doing, what my name is, and that I will go and come and meet them in the morning (typical Ghanain greeting I experience). Sometimes I just want to walk more than 15 feet without stopping.

One of my favorite ladys is the beans and gari (ground fried cassava) lady who has a shack on the outer edge of Kukurontumi and sells the salted/nasty/dried fish, beans and gari, and hard boiled eggs. I eat an egg and fruit for lunch most days and she gives me my egg for 30 p (cheapest egg in town) every time I see her she gets excited even if I am not in need of an egg we have always have the same long pointless conversion but her smile makes me happy and she loves trying to talk with me in Twi. Her kid is also adorable. I cant fathom how she makes a living off of her near empty stand of fish heads and eggs..the fact that she stands there all day everyday waiting for someone to spend 10 cents blows my mind. I think she is also only in her 20s too.

Well we made our way to Koforidua for high speed internet. I found some sweet fabric to get a few more dresses made before I leave for my site visit to drop stuff off. I also found curry powder, ginger, and lime. I am going to attempt to make a Thai style cabbage salad tonight. I am so excited to have something that is not full of oil, extremely overcooked, and made with canned tomato paste and dried fish!

Madame Emily

This week I started practicum, this means a teacher is letting a white chick who has never taught before take over all his 70 min lectures. Luckily my school is only 2 short line taxis and a 20 min walk away, some PCVT’s are leaving before 5am to go further. I am teaching science this week and math next week. It is scary but I guess there is no better way to learn to teach. My school in Kukuratumi has nothing and I was told it is a “nice” school. Talking to the other PCV’s that are teaching us I learned peace corps volunteers go to the schools that lack teachers because no Ghanaian want to teach there, so most likely resources are non existent. My “nice” school provides teachers with chalk and nothing else, it took me half a day to find a marker, and I really miss staplers right now. I was able to build a pinhole camera for my light energy class but there are many experiments in the Ghanaian syllabus that are impossible to perform. I cannot even find the simplest supplies for the simplest experiments. The sanitation situation is also very poor.

 I am not sure what my thesis will be over but even after living with one of the richest families in the village and seeing all the “nice” schools It is obvious that the sanitation is very poor as well as the lack of education on the topic. The world is the bathroom here as well as the trashcan. I still am not used to littering but there is no other option here. The children at school do a lot of manual labor. Often I see school children with machetes cutting the lawn or weeding. They come back to class tired. Mt first day at practicum only one teacher was there and he did not know where the other teachers were or if they would come to teach their classes or not. I have not seen caning yet but I heard some of the trainees saw corporal punishment their first day of practicum… in comparison I had a great first day. 

I am not sure if I will work on my thesis at the school or in my village. Water seems to be abundant in Ghana for the most part. If I work with water I have a feeling it will be greywater/wastewater management not ground water extraction or desalination. I still really want to do biointensive gardening, I am not sure if I will do it on my own or as a project involving the community or school. My host mother has a farm if I ever get a break from training she said she would take and show me what she does. I actually have a bit of free time this week but some festival I cannot pronounce is going on. Apparently it is the best festival ever for PCV’s because it is the festival of silence no pounding fu fu or loud music or TV. My mother says we cannot go to the farm this week because of it L though. I wish the festival applied to the roosters and I would get to sleep past 4 am without being woken. I also heard the festival lasts four weeks, we are supposed to bring fire wood to the Chief, and you are not allowed to work during it..... some of us were stopped and told we should not go to work today.... does this really last four weeks? 

Too much to type about

I have a video but I can't upload it right now! I will try after school some day this week!

I have not had internet for a bit so a lot has happened since my last blog post. I am currently in Ghana Training and will post this as soon as I have internet.

I apologize for the terrible grammer/spelling I haven't had much time to edit.

June 4^th I went to Washington DC and the next night I was on a flight to Ghana. So far I have learned a bit of Twi, Completed the Accra adventure challenge, sat through many training lectures, laughed a lot, eaten some interesting foods, and am almost done with atlas shrugged (thank God I am so sick of Ayn Rand right now). While in Accra we also had a nice party over at the Ambassador’s crib which was a cool experience. We found a bar on our first day off to watch to Espana  Vs Italia game which was a nice change from the intensive and looong lectures. I do have a phone now so I can text and call the US for pretty cheap actually, I will be hopping around from Kuku to shadowing PCV’s in villages and living with a local family during the rest of training.

I have a lot of first impressions of Ghana, but in a nutshell I love it here so far and I can’t wait for things to get more intense. (Right now it’s more like “Posh Corps”) That will continue to change more though. Washing everything with one bucket is interesting, but extremely refreshing. Nothing feels better on a hot day than pouring a bucket of rainwater over yourself.

I live with a Ghanain Family in Asynasin right now and it is going well so far. Living with a family that you can barely communicate with is interesting. The majority of the conversation when the daughter is not around is “Eat AALLLLL!!” “Go Bath” “Go School”. They are very nice though and the mother lets me cook and clean with her.

So Far I have managed to stay “paleo” I have not had to eat bread or rice, but I cannot get away with not eating cassava, plantain, and other starchy veggies. But we sweat constantly and walk everywhere so I doubt I will put on the weight most PC girls put on especially since I don’t eat the rice. I did eat a mango the size of a small child for lunch today….I can’t wait to try a pear, that is what they call the prehistoric avocados from heaven here. My family doesn’t approve of my diet. According to them all white people like rice and I eat fu fu totally wrong L  I do like the fu fu because it is grain free and served with spicy stew. My family likes the canned mackerel so all the aswesome spicy stew my mom makes is ruined by the whole canned fish staring at you. The Okra stew here has the consistency of snot and is served with Banku… it also smells fermented…but its not bad, I am sure I will get used to it but for now I’d rather eat coconuts and street meat.

My family named me qwayaseebeeyah (how I thought it sounded at first) I later found out they spell it Kwasibea. I am named after their Mother who is also the wife of the Chief of Anyinasin so basically I am royalty. We met the chief the other day in a strange ceremony involving a lot of greetings juju prayer/rituals involving schnapps and lots of yoooooo’s (Yo means Okay in Twi…. People yo it out a lot).

I learned this week that my watch was not water proof while taking a bucket bath.

I also learned that boys have it way easier. I am not even going to go into bathrooms or lack thereof here.

The roosters start at 4am everyone is up by 5am, eat, bath, clean, leave around 7am for the day to begin. You cannot sleep in in Ghana.

My room has a light and a fan. The light is a nice neon blue blacklight bulb and is located under the fan. When I want to have the fan on and the light on I feel like I am at a rave or an epileptics worst nightmare. When I use my headlamp to read and do work to avoid the flashing blue light my mom turns the light on and says “Kwasibea You Use Light Keep On”.

Right now I am experiencing “Posh Corps” water is easy to get, I have a fan, there is an abundance of cheap fresh food everywhere, taxis and tros cost 20 to 50 cents and can get you around very easily, I have a cell phone, and well… I like it here.

Training is long, I have no teaching experience and spending 8+ hours in sweaty classrooms after eating Banku can be tough. The kids and baby animals roaming the village are adorable though. I really can’t complain, anything negative I have written is funny and interesting to me more than upsetting.

I should find out soon what language I need to focus on so I will have an idea what region my permanent placement will be J until then I am teaching at a JHS Math and Science form 2 for the next two weeks and working on my nonexistent teaching skills. I built a tippy tap the other day and am excited tot do science and hands on teaching activities though. Teaching is much more structured than Wat/San so I am thankful I will have structured teaching as one of my projects to balance out the lack of structure in completing my thesis.

Well I love hearing from people and will try to get back to everyone despite my lack of connectivity. If training ever dies down I will find my way back to the internet café in New Tafo more often, but for now I will probably only be going for short periods rarely.

Peace Corps had to evacuate Mali a few weeks ago... my thoughts go out to all the volunteers who had to leave in the middle of service.

What about my future you may ask? Read my new title and you may find a clue.... I am Ghana go to a new Country..... Did you guess it?!  

Akwaaba (welcome)  to my latest blog design! The past few weeks have continued to be interesting with a fast paced scramble to relocate MI students. A few other Michigan tech engineers and I jumped on the Ghana bus for a departure on June 4th... Sadly I will not meet many "team Mali" members, we were all split up. Luckily I quickly found the Gha Gha for Ghana facebook group and started connecting with my new training group of TEACHERS.

Yes yours truly is now going to be teaching Math and Science to Junior High students. Although I will still be a "wat/san engineer" I am going to be located at a rural school and teaching. Yes, this was a bit short notice, but I was planning on teaching while in PC anyways, just not as formally as a math teacher.

So I did the whole invite/visa/resume/paperwork/blue folder/country desk for the second time, which I guess is neat because usually you only get the one long awaited invite and I got two! Now I am mentally preparing myself for Ghana. So much for the long hours I spent practicing French for Mali, but on the bright side Ghana has given me a lot to look forward to.

So here is how it goes down:

June 4th- head to Philly or DC, meet my fellow volunteers, talk about how scared we are (I am not scared now but I am sure the day before I fly into the next 27 months of my life my stomach might turn a bit), get poked with more needles (thank you  PC for helping me overcome my fear by sticking me with so many this year), paperwork, staging things, and we are off!

In the Capitol we will have a welcome ceremony, meet all the staff, and get ready to go to training among many other things.

Then it is off to training where I will stay with a host family and meet the rest of the group daily to do safety, language, cultural, education, and pretty much everything to survive in Ghana training (including dancing and testing myself for malaria! more needles!). I believe as an educator I will find out three weeks after we start training where my village is so I can focus on the local language (we all learn Twi and other less common languages depending were we are placed)! But it will not be until August that I move there.... I really have no idea how it will work being a hybrid teacher/engineer, luckily there are some other guys in my group doing their thesis too so we are all in the same boat.

Then hopefully I will become an official PCV! A fun ceremony and we are sent off to our new homes. I will then update everyone with a new address and begin teaching and tons of other activities.

THINGS I WANT TO DO:

we have lots of free time

my thesis of course-- that depends on what my community or school needs most 

Sustainable mini farming

rainwater harvesting

drilling to ground water and extracting it, water storage, water education...I just love water

HIV/AIDS education

find bikes get them to people who need them and teach proper maintenance

teach late night classes for women who have to work all day

find out what my school needs and write grants/raise funding to get proper supplies to students

My  friend Danielle teaches math in Tulsa to Junior highers so I am grateful that I have her to answer questions I am sure I will have, as well as give me creative ideas and tips on teaching. I am hoping we can connect our students through pictures, letters, and videos for cross-cultural education as well. 

There are just so many opportunities and projects, I cannot wait to see what I will be able to do for my community. I know in PC results can be slow and sometimes I will feel like I am not doing any good but I know after my two years is up I will have no regrets.

Other facts you may find interesting:

I am not supposed to leave my site the first and last 3 months so visitors are VERY VERY welcome between November 2012 and  June 2014! 

Ghana is Tropical in the South and less in the North, the rainy season is April through September. I could be placed anywhere so the climate and diet can very a lot depending where my village is. I am hoping to stay Paleo. It will be hard during training but once I start living on my own it will be very easy to cook for myself with fresh produce from the market (sometimes 5+ miles away). I also have been reading about sustainable small scale farming and am hoping to experiment with Biointensive gardening methods. 

That is all I can think of right now! 39 days!!!

 Em

Coup d'État Poo d'État

Mali has had a very eventful week and no one is sure what will happen in the next few days. The Taureg army in the North is close to taking control of the territory "Azawad", ECOWAS will not stand for the coup and will start taking action Monday if the coup does not return the power to the people and reinstate the constitution. I have been reading the news and volunteer blogs almost obsessively since the rebel soldiers took over Bamako on the 21st. I have been absorbing all the information I can to somehow piece together what the future holds for Mali. This has not been very successful due to the constantly increasing variables.

Peace Corps volunteers sit with fingers crossed.

My head is racing with thoughts, emotions, and hypothesis. In a nut shell Je voudrais savoir si je sui aller a Mali...That is probably gramatically wrong and misspelled french but I am still very proud of how quickly I am teaching myself ( Michel Thomas french lessons during the drive to Tulsa really helped!). I am enjoying learning french but now I am scared to study Bambara more because what if I don't go to Mali? What if Peace Corps evacuates? I have mentally prepared myself for this trip after thinking I was going to South America for the longest time. I have gotten extremely excited about Mali, the people, culture, Africa, training, my mud house, my project, my new village, a possible diet of all non paleo foods (I am sure my first plate of rice and millet will make me cry a little on the inside as I recall all of Mark's daily apple research), and the list goes on and on. I see myself living in Mali for 27 months, I feel like I have fallen in love with the the hardships and rewards as a Mali Peace Corps volunteer and I have not even left yet.

I hope for peace in Mali, I hope the leaders will do what is best for the people, I hope that the current volunteers get to return to their projects and their Malian families, and I hope that I will Join them in June.

I already turned in all my government passport and visa info and have not heard anything back on that, I also have not received any travel info yet that is supposed to come a month before departure.

Right now I am working in Omaha and I got hired to do a bunch of large paintings that has helped pass the time. I am going to visit Tulsa again in a few weeks for some concerts and camping with friends. Hopefully I will have some answers soon about my Peace Corps service.

Cheers