Just Some Really Cute Kids

Fleece jacket and a hat, no pants required. P.S. it is a chilly 85 degrees outside

Our friend Jake with a kid with some cool shades

Just really cute




Jennifer's first baby on her back. All Ghanaian women carry babies on their back wrapped in a 2 yard piece of fabric. This was at our homestay house.

Shea What

Have you ever wondered where shea butter comes from?

Well it comes from the nut of the shea tree. This tree only grows in a narrow strip throughout Western Africa. Ghana is the second highest exporter of shea butter.

Shea nut collection and processing is only done by women and is an important source of income to women in the northern part of Ghana. During training, we visited a women's group in the Upper East region and they showed us how it is made.


First the shea nuts are collect from under the shea tree, and the outer flesh of the nut is removed.This is done by hand or by eating it. The flesh has an interesting taste. If you eat an unripe one it tastes like eating a unripe persimmon. Then the nuts are boiled and left to dry.


The nuts are then cracked. This often involves singing and dancing (see video below, sorry you have to turn your head)

Next the cracked nuts are milled. Then the women roast the nuts over an open fire.

Then the roasted nuts are mixed with water and stirred by hand.

It is mixed for about an hour. We both mixed some and it is very tiresome. Our shoulders started hurting after only 5 minutes. After about an hour the shea butter will separate from the water.

Then they skim off the shea butter and put it back on the fire. It is cooked until it boils.



Although it looks black and nasty when it is cooked, when it cools it will look a creamy white color. It can be used for your body or to cook with. It is a pretty amazing process.

A Little from our Training

We visited a women's shea processing group in the Upper east. This is some women crushing the boiled and dried nuts. They sang and danced the whole time they were working. They were truely amazing. We have some video we hope to upload when we get a faster connection.

This is the Sirigu pottery center. It was started to raise money for school fees for local girls. They offer art classes to generate extra money.


Here is some of the pottery. They sell these pots for less than 5 US dollars. Most of the crafts people do here they drastically undersell because they do not factor in labor or time.

Here is Jennifer sitting on her very first crocodile in Paga!
So most villages have a totem animal they believe is sacred. In Paga it is the crocadile so they do not kill them. It is considered a great luck if a croc gets one of your goats or chickens.

Scot was a little less afraid to sit on it. Who says you should never smile at a crocadile!

Yea We are Official Volunteers!

Well we have traveled all the way up to the Burkina Faso border and back for our training. We were sworn in on August 30, 2011, 50 years to the day the first Peace Corps volunteers stepped of the plane in Ghana. Our swearing in ceremony was at the U.S. Ambassadors house in Accra. It was really fun. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ghana spoke. Later we both were able to greet him in his native language of Dagbani. He asked Scott if we had any kids and he didn't know how to say we would later so he told him we would have them tommorow. It was super funny. We were supposed to go to our site the next day, but they kept us in Accra one more day so we could meet the President of Ghana. We got to go the presidential castle and had a nice reception we he spoke to us and we all took a photo with him. We should get a copy of it later.

Us at the U.S. Ambasador's house

That's right, we have matching purple and gold outfits our host family had made for us!





Scott drinking real coffee out of official US China

H. E. John Atta Mills

The president of Ghana

Scott's presidential beer