A group of blind gardeners supported by CRS welcome the St. Francis girls to their project site in the village of Ermon, Ghana, with song and dance. Photo by CRS staff

A delegation of 12 students and 3 teachers from St. Francis, an all-girls’ Catholic high school in Sacramento, California, visited Ghana from June 7 to 21, 2010. The visit provided a unique opportunity to the delegation to join their sister school, also called St. Francis, in Jirapa, Ghana, to celebrate their relationship, which began more than 5 years ago and has grown from strength to strength.

The girls also took the opportunity to visit Catholic Relief Services projects, learn about the work of CRS in Ghana and interact with beneficiaries of the different projects. St. Francis High School in Sacramento has been a great supporter of CRS programs through many years of participation in Operation Rice Bowl and promotion of fair trade activities in the school.
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Carla E. Aguilar is a CRS staff member based in San Antonio, TX. She is accompanying a group of 12 to Ghana and Burkina Faso on the first ever Hispanic Ministry leadership delegation immersion trip. We’re expecting to hear more from her (as Internet connections allow) during and after her trip. The post below was written before Ghana was eliminated from World Cup competition.

I’m in Africa! Someone please pinch me because I can’t believe this is real. The group and I got here this morning and we were warmly greeted by the Ghanians who were quick to say “Welcome to Ghana, we are sorry we beat you.”

The U.S. vs. Ghana game was a painful one to watch, but now that I am in the country, I plan on cheering their team on.
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Carla E. Aguilar is a CRS staff member based in San Antonio, TX. She is accompanying a group of 12 to Ghana and Burkina Faso on the first ever Hispanic Ministry leadership delegation immersion trip. We’re expecting to hear more from her (as Internet connections allow) during and after her trip.

June 23, 2010:

I’ve spent weeks preparing for my first-ever trip to western Africa! And, despite getting all of the dreaded vaccinations (five in one day!), picking up my anti-malarial drugs, and packing my backpack—the reality of this voyage hadn’t really hit me until today.

The nearness of my trip became real as I flipped my calendar open this morning and saw AFRICA written on the June 27 to July 7 squares. I initially got the jitters, but I think that I am ready and eager to go.
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“When you work overseas for an international aid agency, it’s not just the employee who takes on the adventure. Spouses and children also have to put on their traveling shoes, which can cause some blisters when you move a family to the other side of the globe.”

Find out if Lane Bunkers’ kids ride to school on an elephant by checking out his story on the Thunderbird website.

“To bring lasting peace to Congo, earnings from the country’s rich mineral deposits must be shared with the entire population, particularly through state funding of education and health care, Pope Benedict XVI told Congo’s new ambassador to the Vatican.”

See the full Catholic News Service story on AmericanCatholic.org.

Goats in Bor are on the move now that chain-link fencing is keeping them out of the CRS compound.. Photo by Renee Lambert/CRS

Renee Lambert, Catholic Relief Services’ area coordinator in Bor in Southern Sudan, sends in this field story.

The goats of Bor town have been a thorn in my side ever since I arrived in Southern Sudan. While quite adorable, these goats are also clever and very persistent.

Goats will eat anything and everything. They love our compound because we have lots of green stuff to nibble on. And unfortunately for me, they seem to think the beautiful fresh green leaves of my young papaya and mango trees are the goat equivalent of veal.

Repeated attempts to keep the goats out have been completely unsuccessful. I’ve chased them around the compound on more than one occasion—a task that is definitely not in my job description. So a couple of months ago, in an attempt to keep the goats out, we installed some heavy duty wiring along the bottom portion of the fence. Unfortunately, this only resulted in our compound looking a bit like a low security prison without deterring the little rascals one bit.
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Yikee Chu, Catholic Relief Services’ operations manager in West Darfur, shares how she keeps her spirits up in a challenging environment.

Darfur is considered a hardship post for many reasons. If you watch the news, then you probably already have a good idea of why life and work can be challenging here. Nevertheless, aid workers have to find ways to adjust to life in Darfur and, most importantly, stay sane. Here are my top tips for doing that.

1. Whether you are located in the Sahara Desert or not, creating a beach day is a must.
The idea is to recreate what you’re nostalgic for – you just have to be creative! We punched holes into different containers, threw them in a bucket of water and then used them to sprinkle ourselves while lying on mats in the unshaded parts of the compound while reading gossip magazines. For a few hours, we forgot we were working in Darfur. We did a beach day simply because several of us missed the beach, but anything is possible.

2. Get addicted to a TV series on DVD.

There is nothing like the instant gratification of being able to watch just one episode of a TV series after a long work day. These shows offer a much-needed window into the outside world and are short enough so that you can still manage to go to bed at a decent hour.
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The SALOHI program is helping people like Juliette Rahantanirina to improve their lives by creating big returns from a little assistance. Photo by Mariely Neris Rodriguez for CRS

Making ends meet isn’t an easy task for many families in Madagascar. It’s even harder when your husband heads south in search of work and then never returns.

This is what happened to Juliette Rahantanirina, a 40-year-old mother of five. Adding insult to injury, someone broke into her home last year and stole the few items her family possessed. Life became even more of a struggle, forcing her two oldest children to quit school to help the family survive.

Each day, Juliette and her two oldest take on any type of menial job they can find to earn a bit of money to try to meet the family’s needs. Some days they wash clothes; on other days they transport rocks to sell from local quarries.
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We received great news today: As reported last month, Sister Pauline Silver Acayo, head of CRS Uganda’s office in Gulu who visited U.S. parishes in the fall of 2008, was a finalist for the 2010 Outstanding Leadership Award from the International Development Committee of the Association for Conflict Resolution. Today we learned that she was selected as one of the two winners for this year’s award. The selection committee “felt that [our] organization exemplifies the qualities of outstanding leadership in promoting conflict resolution in international development projects.” Congratulations Sister Pauline and the rest of the CRS Uganda staff!

— Reported by Debbie DeVoe, CRS’ regional information officer for eastern and southern Africa based in Nairobi