Speeding up

So last night it apparently snowed over much of Western Massachusetts and New Hampshire. (In October - THAT is scary!)  While I saw a couple snowflakes twirling through the air on my way home from the college, we didn't see any real weather here.  I can, however, say that nothing motivates excitement for a trip to West Africa like the onset of winter cold.  I'm ready to go!

Many things are on the "to do list" before that is going to happen, though.  Right now we're in the "nuts and bolts" preparatory part of our trip.  Visas, immunizations, and continued fundraising are all in motion.  Steve is getting some great leads on breeding potential of various species from a number of experts that he's in contact with, which we'll share as soon.  Emmanuel and I are going to talk on Sunday and hopefully begin to see what aspects of the work can start ahead of time.

Some really cool folks have been assisting here outside of the science, too - Jeremy Cohen, who leads groups to Ghana with his organization called "This World Music," helped spread the word about our kickstarter campaign and then last night he let me know that the group had raised funds and installed some computers for internet access right at the Dagbe Center.  It will make it much easier to post updates, since the next nearest viable internet access is 40 minutes further!  Knowing that internet in the Volta Region will be a lot slower than what we'd find in the cities, we'll see about the kinds of media that I'll be able to post there.  But many thanks to Jeremy for his continued support and information, which is a huge help.

Also, Mary Brust, who heads the board for the Vermont Global Village Project, is helping us out a lot with funding.  Mary has led many trips to Dagbe, and we often combine my college ensemble with her dancer friends from previous trips for local performances.  We'll be performing some Ghanaian dances at the Vermont International Festival this December, right before Steve and I leave - a perfect send-off!

On this blog page will soon be a button where anyone interested can pre-purchase a DVD of our video or a CD of our audio recordings from the upcoming trip.  This will include footage of the work we do with antelope, but also local performances of drum and dance.  If you made $20+ contributions to the Kickstarter campaign, you'll get a DVD automatically.  But if you aren't a part of the Kickstarter campaign but want to support our work, please feel free to pre-order a DVD and/or CD, which will be delivered in the spring after we return and have had a chance to edit and create the discs.   The profits from these discs will all go into the antelope project fund.