Tamale

We made it to Tamale! Ellen, Rachel, Lyndsay and Michelle all headed off to Enchi and Amy D, Amy W, Brittney, Darlene, and Jen headed up to Kaleo after a few days of touring Tamale. We've done so much in the past 2 weeks, it's flying by! After waking up at 3 am for a long bus ride to Tamale, we finally got to our guest house. We spent our first day visiting two villages nearby, where the women make shea butter and spin wool. We got to see how they live in the villages and the children led us around their village. Each of us had two, if not three or more, kids hanging off our arms! They were so excited when we brought out bubbles and stickers. There were so many cute kids with Canadian stickers stuck all the way up their arms and on their foreheads. The women were very welcoming, and in one of the villages they performed a traditional dance for us.
The next day we headed to Sinbad's village where we played with even more kids! Alanna and Jackie, with several other girls in Kelowna, did a project this year where they organized buying water filters to help the village. When the village dam has water, it is dirty and is making the children sick. Alanna & Jackie are also gathering information to try and get water piped in to the village. Tomorrow we are going back there to drop off the filters, which we are all so excited to do! Sinbad is part of a cultural group which performs amazing dances - with so much energy! They got all of the girls (including Muriel) up to dance! Don't worry - I got video of everyone!
Next we started in the Tamale Hospital. They work 6 hour shifts, so we get up at 7, and go get breakfast from the egg lady outside our guest house. She makes these incredible scrambled egg sandwiches which I'm going to miss when we leave!
This weekend our group of 10 girls headed off to Mole National Park to go on a safari! We had amazing luck, and one elephant walked right in front of our jeep!  We were so close! It was beautiful and just what all of us were hoping to see! Other than that we saw enough antelope and warthogs to fill an album with,  and at the pool where we were lounging, baboons came up and ran over a bunch of tables to steal a girl's drink at breakfast! Two baboons came charging at me when I was cutting a pineapple outside! The fruit here is amazing!
All of us are having a great time! Off to do another week of clinical at the hospital and drop off filters at the village! Sending lots of love back to everyone at home! Everyone here says Hi!
- Kim Barlow

Laura holding a baby at the shea butter village