July 11

We left the guest home at 5AM to catch our plane from Accra to Tamale, the third largest city in Ghana. We arrived in Tamale and from there took the most uncomfortable bus ride I have ever experienced in my eighteen years of life to Damongo, a small village. Damongo is only forty miles from Tamale, however the road was so terribly bumpy it took us almost three hours to arrive.
The bus was hot, stuffy, and so cramped that I bumped my head more times than I care to remember, but the entire time I tried to think about who I was doing this for. I’m sure it will be worth it.

We met two girls, Tanja and Mieka, who are students at a University in Holland. They are also volunteering in the Damongo area with us for the next four weeks. They seem very nice and even helped make the tiresome ride go by faster by teaching me some Dutch.

Once we arrived to Damongo we went to the market place, which was packed with vendors. People stared and pointed like they had never seen someone who looked like me before. It didn’t help that in Damongo, which is in Northern Ghana, they don’t speak any of the Twi language that we learned in Cape Coast. However, I found a young man who spoke some English and he was able to teach me some basic words in “Gonja.”

I think I’m going to enjoy these next twenty-one days in Damongo. Although it’s not as busy as Accra or as beautiful as Cape Coast, there are people here who need our help and I AM so ready to start working. We will be spending the majority of our time at the orphanage and the medical center over the next three weeks and I can’t wait to start making a difference.