Manso Nkwanta

Manso Nkwanta is the name of the village I will be living in for the next 6 weeks. To the left is the main street in the village. It is about an hour and a half drive from the closest city and is the home to about 3,000 people. This is where the site office for Millennium Village is located because there is access to electricity, but the villages that we will be working in are actually another hour down very bad roads. Although this village is far better off than the MVP cluster, it is still mainly clay huts, and the only cars seen on the roads belong to MVP or the government. Walking down the road everyone turns to look at me. Some of the people who speak English will stop to talk to me, and others will try in their local language. The children are cute and will just run up and walk beside me for a bit.

There is a limit supply of food that can be bought from shacks along the road - bread, tomatoes, onions, and oranges are the main fresh foods, and any packaged food they may have, like crackers is expired. To the right are the local shops where you buy food. The locals in the office share some of the food they have prepared, but it usually looks like broth with cow fat floating in it that you dip some sort of corn or cassava patty in. So far I have been pretty much surviving on the Cliff / Odowalla bars and fruit leathers I brought along. This weekend I will go into Kumasi where I will buy more food.

The staff here has been extremely welcoming and helpful. There are about 20 people who work out of the MVP office. Most of them have families in Kumasi so they stay here during the week and then go back to the city on the weekend. Because there is nothing to do back at their rooms and because there is a lot of work to do they stay at the office late - 9-11pm. There is also another student from the Netherlands here, Leonnor, who is my flat mate at the Government Guesthouse. She is very nice and has been helpful showing me around. I know Guesthouse sounds nice, and it is probably the nicest house in the village, but I would still consider it glorified camping. We share it with lots of spiders, and the other night during a terrible rain storm water covered the floor. I am extremely grateful to have electricity though!

I almost forgot to mention...for those of you worried about my safety.... I heard on the radio the other day that Ghana was just voted the most peaceful country in Africa (and their next elections are not until November, so no trouble there). Plus. the United Nations evidently has very strict regulations for safety. We have drivers that take us to and from the office and our house when it is dark, and there is a "security guard" who sleeps on our porch every night! Feeling a little more at ease?