That's right. I'm on the lookout for a couple mama rabbits and a daddy rabbit to start my rabbit colony in Fufulso. This was a decision I made just a few weeks ago at our In-Service Training. Someone was talking about raising rabbits as an alternative livelihood project. You see, rabbits breed quickly, are very tasty and nutritious, and sell for a relatively good price of six Ghana cedis (about $4) a piece. I'm going to start experimenting with raising some at Madam Hawa's house and if they thrive, I'll start trying to get some of the people in my village interested in trying it too.
I've got a lot of plans like this in the works right now. The Guinea worm cases are finally slowing (we've only had 15 cases so far for April), so I finally have time to do and think about other things. Some of these other things are...
1) Planting moringa seedlings and promoting them in town
2) Painting murals for both Guinea Worm and HIV/AIDS awareness
3) Starting a student health club
4) Meeting with the District Assembly (once they finally get decide upon a new District Chief Executive for the new administration) to find out how I can help with any district health or WATSAN initiatives.
5) Promoting rainwater harvesting and improving harvesting capabilities at various places in the village
6) Finish my GPS mapping of the village
7) Community Led Total Sanitation - aka, promoting and helping with the construction of household latrines and soak-away pits (to get rid of mosquito breeding grounds)
And on and on.
It seems I have a lot on my plate. Yet somehow, I don't really feel like I'm doing much right now. Part of that is the rains are starting to come small small, so people are starting to go to farm all day, making it difficult to get people to come to meetings and help with other projects. But it's nice to have a bit of a break. Last month, I was able to do a little traveling. I had to go to Accra for medical, then a planning meeting for the upcoming PST, then WATSAN IST in Kumasi, with a couple of days at the beach in there somewhere. Check out flickr for pictures of me bodysurfing and looking like a badass in a matching outfit with my counterpart.
I'm hoping that I'll be able to get at least a few of these projects off the ground before the newbies come in June. I just found out on Thursday that I'm going to be one of the trainers for the new group, so I'll be going down to Kukurantumi quite a bit in the next few months. My friend Alice is also studying abroad in Accra this summer and planning to come to my site for the first couple weeks of August. And some cousins are going to be in country at some point as well. So yeah, I'm going to be busy busy busy. But that's a helluva lot better than bored bored bored.
Leopold is nice and healthy, though he fails at catching the mouse in my kitchen. Maybe I should feed him less.
Life, in general, is good these days. I can finally sleep inside again (sometimes), though chilling in my hammock just before bed is still my favorite part of the day.
Okay, I'm heading back to the village now. Check out the photos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/hannahefrank).
Adios.
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2 comments:
oh those wily wabbits! What a great idea....love all your plans-you are doing great work,we are so impressed! And Leopold is adorable!
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
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