I took me about an hour to upload five pictures today. We went to Mampong instead of Kumasi and the internet is a little faster here. I will try again to post more at a future date. Hope you like these few though

A few pictures

Playing "Take Five" at Hans Cottage with the band. The bass player was our tour guide at Kakum National Park and he asked me if I wanted to come and play with them.

The fishing boats of Elmina

Cape Coast Castle. It was built in the 1600s by the Dutch for the slave trade.

The Accra temple by night

Home sweet home

This is Esther, our Ghanaian mother with Hilda and Christiana, showing us the proper technique for fufu pounding

This is in the market in Agona.

We've been having a great week here. Yesterday I finally got to interview Dr. Samuel. He is honestly one of the greatest people I have ever met. We just spent an hour talking about medicine and malaria and other things and it was a really productive and good experience. I've been able to get a lot done this week for my research, and I have a lot of typing to do to expand my notes...but enough of the boring stuff. Last week we went down to Accra and met some amazing people. The first people that were baptized into the church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) were there and one of them invited us to stay in his home in Cape Coast for a few days. We gladly accepted and over the next three days he told us his story of his faith and perseverance. It was a life-changing experience and I really loved being down there with he and his family. We went on a canopy walk in the rainforest which was just a rope suspension bridge about 70 feet up in the trees. It was really cool. We went and visited to castles, Elmina and Cape Coast that were used in the 16 and 1700s for the slave trade. It was a heart-breaking tour and the descriptions of the way the slaves were treated made me sick. The castles themselves were really picturesque on top of these hills overlooking the Atlatic Ocean. We took a lot of pictures (which I will post at a future date). We also got to go in the ocean (like bathwater) and see the beautiful town of Cape Coast. It was an amazing trip and it would take hours to write about everything we saw and did. So we have about one month of research left to go, so time to crank up the effort. I would love to hear about how any of you, who are reading this, are doing as well, so feel free to send updates through email or just post a comment on the blog.

Hello! I won't have time (at all!) to go into the amazing events that have transpired this last week, at least today, but I will try to do so on a near future date. We spent last week traveling to Accra, Cape Coast and Kakum and had some incredible experiences! We met the first members of the church in Western Africa and heard their amazing stories, attended the temple, went to castles that were used for slavery, I sat in on drumset with a jazz group for an evening, and so many other things happened! Again, I will detail more later when I'm not frantically trying to get a bunch of things done! All three of us are alive and healthy though!

Hey- Well we came back to Kumasi today because we had a couple more errands to run that we didn't get done with before. For those of you who are curious and do not know yet my research topic is on malaria treatment practices in a rural area of the Ashanti region of Ghana. In the last few years things have changed dramatically in the world (and especially western Africa) in the treatment of malaria. The parasite has developed resistance to common treatment methods and new treatments have been needed. My goal is to look at what the Ghanaian government has done in recent years to change their previous policies and impliment more effective treatments. I'm looking at what the health care providers are using, why they're using it and the perceived effectiveness of the treatments. My data-collecting includes interviews, listening to consultations, reading previous (recent) works done about this subject and other things as they come up. I've come to realize that the area I am in is pretty much the perfect setting because about 70% of the patients that are seen have malaria. I've also been able to see a variety of other interesting and painful ailments including serious cases of gangrene, typhoid, huge abcesses, and some other things. I am basically allowed (and encouraged) to do whatever I want. It's a really interesting mix of medicine and cultural exploration because the two are inseperable here. The doctors are very open, but the language has proved to be a huge barrier (one that is really difficult to overcome) but I'm still working on it. So that's what I'm doing until early December!

We came into Kumasi again today to do some research at the University of Science and Technology so we stopped off to check our email too. It's been a good week and I'm really moving ahead on the research! I'm developing more ideas on how to go about collecting data. It turns out that the topic has so many facets, and the more questions I get answered, the more questions I have. It's been great, however, and I'm still trying to learn Twi. Before I left, my friend Molly gave me a good book called Mountains Beyond Moutains... it's one of the greatest books I've ever read and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone. It's about a renowned American doctor, Paul Farmer, who has dedicated his life to treating the poor and destitute. Just through reading about his life (from the perspective of another), it has changed a lot of my opinions. That may be because of the setting I'm in right now, among people who have very little means, and yet so many problems that are beyond their control. I have thoroughly enjoyed it and if anyone else has read it or plans on reading it, let me know. I love it here in Ghana and am learning so much everyday. These people are incredibly intelligent in so many ways and I look up to so many of them. I have to run, time's up on my computer.