Settling In

When I post about traveling I'll try to backdate the posts or something; just saying 'last Tuesday' will get very confusing very quickly.  However, this post is not about traveling.... so there! :)

Diana and I moved into the annex of the Denmark House at the University of Ghana on Wednesday afternoon.  The house belongs to the U of Ghana, but the University of Copenhagen has a deal that they can rent it at certain times, including most of this summer.  The main house has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a large-ish kitchen, and a sitting room.  The annex has 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a small kitchen and small living room.  We will move to the main house in about a week and a half; until then there are various people from Denmark coming and going and its just easier this way. Both places have an AC unit in the living room that we turn on at night which cools that living room very well and our rooms slightly- but all of the bedrooms have good ceiling fans so it's quite comfortable.  When I first got to Ghana, all I could think about for several days was, I need air conditioning!!!!  Now I think I'm good with a good fan.

Yesterday Diana and I went with our supervisor Michael to Prampram, where we'll be conducting sanitation research.  We met some of the village assembly men and asked their permission to talk to people, which they readily gave.  This community is used to being surveyed because something similar to a DHS (demographic health surviellence) survey occurs there frequently.  This is one reason this place was chosen for the study- they are used to answering somewhat random questions from surveyors.  Our study will be using some of the same people that conduct those other surveys, so they are familiar to the community.

We also went to the Dodowa health research center yesterday, which is where our week of training will occur next week.  Learning how to work with the translators, testing the survey questions, learning how to use the electornic devices to put in the survey answers and capture GIS data.  I'll try to get some pictures of Dodowa and Prampram, but we are very limited in picture taking at the research site for privacy reasons.  I'll post some latrine pictures I'm sure :)

Today through Sunday is our last free time for a while- we pick up Sylvie, a friend of mine from Emory, at the airport tomorrow- she's the 3rd student doing research this summer.  Sylvie and I are doing surveys with 4 Ghanaian translators, and Diana and another translators are doing interviews and more qualitative research.  Today I'm trying to acquire a phone, internet (I'm in an internet cafe), groceries, and a working GI system- Ghanaian food/something finally caught up with me.  But there's a housekeeper that does our laundry and I had a hot shower for the first time in 2 weeks last night, so there are no complaints about Ghana here :)