The Remainder of the August Ghana Trip.

With Emmanuel and Joel, two incredible Touch A Life children.

The rest of our team's trip to Ghana was spent joyously watching the children from all three Touch A Life programs (in Gomoa-Fetteh; in Tema; and in Kete-Krachi) unite and create amazing works of art. For an entire week, they lived, laughed, and loved together. They painted pictures, built sculptures, decorated masks, choreographed dances, banged on drums, and jammed on guitars. The creative energy was obvious, and all 40 of the Children's Art Village volunteers felt honored to be a part of it all.

It was a blast to see the kids interacting with the other children from the Village of Hope Orphanage. The Touch A Life children get along with others so well; in spite of their backgrounds of spending their childhood on Lake Volta, the TAL kids make friends easily, are great at sharing, and have a general appreciation for life that isn't always evident in other children their age. They are truly resilient, and it was amazing to watch their kind interactions with others.

After camp ended, Pam and I stayed in Ghana for another week. We joined a team of Portuguese journalists who came to film a sequel to a documentary they'd previously created. Their previous piece captured the traumatic events occurring on Volta. Alexandra Borges, the lead journalist, had been part of a series of rescues and had fallen in love with the children she'd met. As a result, she wanted to return to Ghana in an effort to continue to raise awareness on the issue.

The journalists met us at the Village of Hope and along with our Ghanaian staff, we made the 11-hour trek up to Kete-Krachi. We spent the week there, bonding with the teenagers living there and participating in rescue missions. We were able to rescue 13 more incredible children. We escorted them to their first doctor's visit, which was one of the hardest things that Pam and I have had to witness during our stay. All of the children were sick, and many were diagnosed with malaria or typhoid. One sweet boy, Humphrey, was diagnosed with cerebral malaria and was very seriously ill. Fortunately, he received treatment and his health was restored, but it was difficult to watch Humphrey lay helplessly in his hospital bed when he was clearly in so much pain.

On the flip side, we got to participate in many fun things with the kids, too. We played soccer during a thunderstorm, which was an incredibly memorable experience, to say the least. We took the boys on a shopping trip to get snazzy church clothes. We watched the kids weave Kenti fabrics and work on other vocational projects.

We went from Kete-Krachi to Tema to join up with the youngest kids in our program. We had a party on the evening we arrived and we presented the children with new drums. Additionally, they got a treat: their first-ever taste of pizza. It was so much fun to run around the front yard with them, dancing to the drumbeats and snacking on pizza.

Rachel