Counting Down the Hours . . .

First, take a second and click this link: Our Group. I know I have mentioned this a few times but I'll give it one last plug. Before we leave Ghana we are hoping to send a blog update to you all, however it is unlikely we'll have very quick or lengthy access to the web. So, we plan to simply send an email to our blog which will make a post automatically and if you are signed up to our group (28 of your currently are) you will automatically receive the update. Right now we have a giant list of emails we copy and paste each time we send a message which may take too much time to do, this way it should be a bit easier . . . at least theoretically! Okay, plug done. On to even more important things:

THANK YOU!

We really don't feel like we say this often enough (I know, you don't want to get hourly emails from me . . .) but seriously we are very thankful for the support each of you have offered to us during our fundraising and preparations for this trip to Ghana.

Thanks to your support we have now officially surpassed our goal and a total of $6,035.43 has been raised!!! Thank you so much! Thank you - and yes, thank you again!

So, yes, we do in fact leave on Sunday! We are pretty much prepared but as always there are lots of last minute things to do. The good news is that we have the basics, so everything else will be a bonus if we remember to pack it!

We also learned our first lesson about life in Africa - be flexible, take it as it comes - last week Rick and Suzanne told us that the community we will be building in has changed. Now, instead of building in Fiankoma, we will now be in Kofiase. You can click here for some great info on this community from the Habitat for Humanity Ghana site. Kofiase is quite close to Fiankoma and is North East of Kumasi if you look at our previous map (sorry it isn't labeled on this one though).

There are about 5,000 people who live in Kofiase which is largely a farming community where people grow such crops as yam, cocoyam and plantain and other tasty eats like tomatoes, okra, beans, garden eggs, yam, maize and cocoa. (Did we mention we are both really looking forward to the local food???) The temperature should range between 26 to 40 degrees Celsius, a far cry from the 1 degree temp we saw here in Victoria this morning!

In Kofiase, Habitat for Humanity has helped 22 families build their own homes since 2003. It is likely we will work on several homes while we are there, which will likely include helping to make and lay bricks, do simple carpentry and helping to finishing the homes with a cement/mud stucco. We will also spend time getting to know the people in Kofiase and will likely visit schools, go to church, perhaps meet the local chiefs and hopefully play some soccer!

We have learned that in the Akan language, people are often named based on the day of the week they were born and it has been recommended to us by several people to make sure we know which day of the week we were born. We have done our research and found that Bruce was born on a Monday and would be so named, Kwodwo (which sounds more like Kojo in Akan) and that I was born on a Saturday and so my name would be Ama.

Well, that's it for our last post on this side of the ocean! Thank you again for all of your support and stay tuned for updates before we leave Ghana (hopefully) and upon our return to Victoria in January (definitely) - we are hoping to arrange a photo slide show evening of sorts so we will keep you all posted.

Now, back to the packing . . . talk to you soon,

Brandy & Bruce

18 Days & Counting!

We're now just 18 days away from our departure date - we can hardly believe this is all coming so fast!

Bruce and I will be away for almost two months and volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in Ghana for over two weeks will be the central point of our time away. There are so many things to prepare for and we made some progress over the past two weeks while we hosted family visitors leading up to the Thanksgiving long weekend and my big 3-0 birthday (I'm 99.99% there in accepting the fact I am now 30). Last Thursday we received our tourist Visa's from the Ghana embassy in Vancouver (it was VERY fast!), are both up-to-date with our various shots and are slowly collecting all of the things we will need to take with us.

Yesterday, we heard from our team leaders, Rick and Suzanne, with confirmation about the community where we will be volunteering - Fiankoma is a small community near the town of Kumasi in Central Ghana's Ashanti region. Here's a map (click for a larger view):


As we were doing some web research about Fiankoma last night, we came across the website of a Habitat for Humanity International volunteer who participated in a build last summer in Fiankoma. Feel free to check out Dave's page here - you will find photos of the community, Dave's daily journal entires from the trip and some information about what a typical Habitat work day is like etc. What a great resource for us as we prepare ourselves for this experience!

One very exciting aspect of our travel is the fact that we have secured flights which allow us to bring a third piece of luggage each, at no cost, as long as they contain either school or medical supplies. We have started a collection of items we will be taking with us and will gladly accept donations of any of the following items:

School Supplies: pencils, erasers, notebooks, coloured pencils, inflatable globes (available at dollarstores), pencil sharpeners, chalk etc.

Fun & Games: soccer balls, pumps and patch kits (because apparently in Rick's words "the soccer fields are gravel and eat balls for breakfast"!) bubbles, paper for drawing - we will also gladly accept suggestions of games we can play with the kids, such as duck duck goose.
Medical Supplies: boxes of latex gloves and dressing supplies (bandages & tape etc.)

All of these items will be donated to Habitat for Humanity Ghana who will then distribute them to members of the community in Fiankoma and other Habitat affiliates throughout the country.

If you have any connections to donations of these kinds of items, please get in touch ASAP as we will be accepting these items up until Monday, October 29 so we have lots of time to plan our packing before our departure on November 4.

Another thing we will be bringing comes from an idea of Kate's that I'm totally loving . . . creating a photo album for us to take with us - something to share photos of our city and its scenic, temperate environment, how we get around (on bikes with plenty of rain gear), what we eat (lots of salad, a bit of chocolate and sometimes some chicken wings!) and who our families are (apple and beef farmers, nurses and a whole gaggle of nieces!). I'm excited about putting this all together to share with both our team members and our new friends in Fiankoma.

Well friends, this brings us close to the end of this friendly blog post . . . but first, we wanted to say thank you SO much to each and every one of you! You have been so supportive in sharing in our excitement and our fundraising efforts! Thank you, we could not have embarked on this journey without you.

And so, it is with great pride that we share our current fundraising total with you . . .

Drum Roll Please . . .

To date, you have helped us to raise $5,054.43 !!!

This total is amazing and means that we are now just $945.57 away from our $6,000 goal. We are so close, and I know we can easily beat our goal now with less than three weeks to go!

So, now is the time to make your donation online, mail us your cheque or volunteer for our last fundraiser (which will be our third Candy Blitz next Friday, October 26, by the way - drop us an email for details) - your donation is helping to build much needed safe, decent, affordable homes in Ghana's Ashanti region. You can find complete details on how to donate here.

Well guys, this chick is heading to bed with dreams of Ghana in her head - goodnight and thanks again for all of your support!!!

Brandy

PS For those of you who have not yet signed up for our Google-Group to receive automatic updates each time we post to our blog, you may want to sign up. We will have VERY limited access to the internet, let alone electricity, once we arrive in Ghana and may only be able to send very short and quick emails so posting to this blog will be the fastest way for us to communicate with many people. If you would like to add yourself to our list, please click here - looking forward to sending you updates!

And the Fundrasing Keeps Rolling On!

Just a quick note since we've had a very busy two weeks with the long weekend, a big birthday celebration and lots of guests - but, we wanted to update our total and let everyone know we now have less than 25% to raise! Today, with a kind donation from Carolyn and Peter, we hit $4,569.43!

Thank you to everyone who has mailed donations in, donated online and gave generous donations in lieu of gifts for my birthday - we truly appreciate your support and hope you'll keep them coming, we're so close!

We'll do another update soon once things slow down a bit - right now though we are awaiting the arrival of our tourist Visa's from the Ghana embassy and are counting things down as we only have 24 days until our departure!!!

We're 64% of the Way There!

We're getting there!

We have received several donations over the past few days and we're up to $3,842.98!!

It was an especially nice boost to receive a box of rolled pennies from the Habitat ReStore in Victoria (thanks John & Margot!) as well as a generous donation from the Habitat for Humanity Victoria Board. In addition to supporting our trip to Ghana, Habitat Victoria has also committed to build a home in Argentina!

We are very grateful for the support of the local Habitat Affiliate and are looking forward to returning home and hosting a photo slide show presentation to share our experiences with the board and our other donors as well.

In terms of other news, we have received some more direction about our travel Visa's and this is making it all seem so much more real! For the past two months we have been very focussed on raising awareness and planning our fundraising events and so now the reality that we will actually be traveling to Africa in just 8 weeks is setting in!!! We have met many people who have lived and volunteered in Ghana so now we are eagerly connecting with them to learn all we can about where we are going. We have been reading books (such as: The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinki, Lonely Planet West Africa and The Famished Road by Ben Okri) checking out travel blogs and learning all we can about Ghana.

We have yet to hear exactly which village we will be in, but we do have a good sense of what our building experience might be like based on photos we have seen of some other Global Village Builds.

First, here is a photo of a Habitat Ghana family in front of their family home. In Ghana, many rural homes are wooden structures with mud walls and bamboo or palm thatch roofs and provide shelter for the entire extended family. Roofs must be replaced often to prevent collapse of the house and heavy rains can destroy mud foundations or cause entire walls to collapse. Families continue to occupy the remaining part of the house which is therefore very crowded.



The homes we will build will likely be made with earth and cement bricks, made as seen below, and will have cement floors and aluminum roofs.




Houses are typically two rooms and will likely include a kitchen and shower as well as a toilet which may be attached or detached from the main dwelling.



We have also learned that we will likely be volunteering in a Habitat community which may look something like this, which gives you an idea of what the finished homes look like.


All of these photos are from the Habitat Ghana website and looking at them again, gets me thinking about all kinds of things . . . how will we pack everything we need, will we survive the heat, will we be fit enough to build with these blocks? Mostly though I am excited and can't wait to meet and get to know our team mates from across Canada, I can't wait to try Ghanaian food and I can't wait to meet the families we will be building alongside!

Thanks for helping us get there everyone! We're getting close to our goal, thanks to each and every one of you!

Brandy

Mmmm BBQ!

Thanks so much to everyone who came out to our M&M Meat Shops Building for Ghana Charity BBQ!

A BIG thank you! to Richard and his staff at M&M Meats Shops and also to Jon and his staff at Cobs Bread for their generous support of the BBQ! We were serving up some delicious Tasty Burgers and hot dogs on delicious Cobs buns!

Sharon, Alison & Chantal serve up a hot dog, assembly line style:
BBQ --> Bun --> Serving Bag - nicely done women!

We also have to send a big thank you out to our friends who volunteered to help out by flipping and serving burgers and hot-dogs and enticing donors to our table while spreading the word about Habitat for Humanity and our house building trip to Ghana. Thank you Al, Alison, Chantal, Crystal, Emma, Gerry, Jen, Sharon, Mike & Zeta - you guys ROCK!!!

Crystal and Zeta were working hard to cut the buns Cobs Bread donated.


The well gloved Al & Alison were serving up some delicious BBQ!
He could have used these later on when he helped us clean
the grill - what a trouper!

We met a few people who had some wisdom and advice to share about traveling to Africa which was awesome as always! I think we also recruited a few more skilled trades volunteers for Habitat for Humanity Victoria which is always a good thing.

Gerry our Master BBQ'er

Chantal, our Mistress BBQ'er

Overall the weather was great and we couldn't have asked for a warmer, sunnier day in September - the clouds held off and we had loads of happy customers.

Little Emma, and I don't think our other volunteers would take offense
if I said she was our cutest volunteer, did a great job of handing out coupons to
our donors - here she's taking a well deserved hot dog break.


Jen came by to do some street side advertising.
Here she is hiding beside her impromptu sign!

A special thanks also goes out to our new friend Mikhail who came by with his parents after karate. He enjoyed a hot dog and soon he was our biggest supporter, telling every passer-by what we were all about and that a hamburger or hot dog was "just a donation" - great job Mikhail - thank you!

Our new friend, Mikhail

All in all, it was a great success and we were able to raise $624.86 - thanks Victoria! That officially puts us over the half way point for our $6,000 goal - we're getting there!

BBQ Madness!

Well, I'm off to bed but I hope to see lots of you tomorrow at our big BBQ!

If you're in beautiful Victoria, join us from 11am - 3pm at 3637 Shelbourne Street at Cedar Hill Cross Road. A special thanks to Richard and the team at M&M Meat Shops and Jon and his team at Cobs Bakery for their support!

Not only can you buy a tasty hot dog or hamburger, but you can also buy your own Habitat House for a $2 donation at both the M&M Meat Shops and Cobs Bakery locations at Shelbourne Plaza. We're hoping each store window will be filled with these, creating our own little Habitat Village ; )

M&M Meat Shops Building for Ghana Charity BBQ

M&M Meat Shops Building for Ghana Charity BBQ

11am-3pm Saturday, September 22, 2007

3637 Shelbourne Street (Shelbourne and Cedar Hill X Rd.)

Come on out on Saturday to enjoy some burgers or hot dogs and don’t forget to tell everybody about our barbecue!

Thanks so much to Gerry, Chantal, Zeta, Crystal, Alison and Al who have offered to volunteer for the event. If anybody out there is interested, we are still looking for volunteers to come give us a hand on Saturday flipping burgers and hotdogs and to help with set up and tear down. We especially need a hand with a vehicle to transport some tables and supplies to the event.

We hope to see you there!! And please spread the word.

The 2^nd Garage Sale was a success!!

We raised $236.58!!

Thank you very much to the Victoria READ Society for donating all the garage sale items. Also to Mike and Megan for helping out with pulling all the desks, chairs and tables out of the shed that held all the goodies donated by the READ Society.

We have now raised 40.6% of our $6000 fundraising goal!! Thank you to everyone who has been sending their donations in, it has been very exciting to check the mail every day. For those who still wish to donate, you can click here to donate online now. Every bit helps and gets us closer to our goal – thank you!