Getting Caught Up

Post by Mai

I'm back!!  Hi everyone and thank you for following my posts in my journal and blog while I was gone.  Sri Lanka was an incredible experience, and we were able to help a lot of people, but it is hard to compare it to Ghana.  The Horana hospital where I volunteered was very similar to the one I volunteered in the Cape Coast area of Ghana, but the surrounding area was different.  

Where I stayed in Ghana was in an extremely impoverished area compared to where I was staying in Sri Lanka this summer.  The family I stayed with while in Sri Lanka was an incredible family with loving kids that we enjoyed spending time with.  They didn't speak English, but that didn't stop us from being able to communicate.   

In Ghana, I stayed in a makeshift house/shack and took bucket showers, but in Sri Lanka, the house had a shower with only cold water.  The first thing I did when I got back was took a very long hot shower.  

I was able to donate the medical supplies to the hospital where I volunteered and the clinics we set up in the villages further inland from Colombo.  For the last five or six days of the trip, when Aubrey went to Nepal, she was able to hand out first aid kits at the clinics she set up.  

Altogether it was a success, and we were able to continue the Hearts for Hearts mission to help people in developing countries.  Now that I am back I have shipped a "test" package to Maggie in Ghana to see if it gets there OK.  I sent it to a school so it has a reliable address to go to with the hopes that will ensure safe delivery.  When we went to Ghana last year, we were warned about shipping and items not arriving which is why we carried extra suitcases filled with medical supplies.  We shipping items as well but the fees for picking them up were so high that it started to become counterproductive.  I'll give an update on this blog when the package arrives.

Other than the adjustment to the time zone, I have been swamped getting caught up with life since I got back from Sri Lanka.  I had all of my bio homework completed before I left and I annotated the book I needed to while in Sri Lanka so when I returned home, I wouldn't feel like I was in a rush to get everything done for school.  

I went back to school on last Monday so now I am back to trying to juggle my schedule between school, homework, working at Golden Spoon, college applications AND planning the next area to send medical supplies.  I am thinking about returning to Ghana next summer since they needed really needed the help with the clinics and medical supplies.  Since I have been there now, I have a much better idea of how to set things up without having to use a local coordinator.  Nana, who was on the trip to Ghana last year, is from Ghana so I have a pretty strong base of people I know and can help me make plans.  

I'll update more on this soon when I have more info to share.  In the meantime, it's college essay time. : )

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