After wrapping up meetings in the Upper East, it was time to move on to the Northern Region. My afternoon of meetings in Tamale (the capital of the Northern Region) was the perfect representation of how things get done in Ghana…

The recipient of our most recent shipment, the Walewale District Hospital, is located right within the border of Ghana’s Northern Region.

One of the District Hospitals in the Northern Region

When I was in Walewale for a follow-up site visit, the Medical Director of the hospital called his boss/colleague, the Deputy Director of Public Health to tell him to expect my call. Thanks to this introduction, and a government car/driver (roundtrip from Bolga to Tamale can be done in 4 hours in a private vehicle, but is a multiple-day excursion using public transport) I had a meeting set up within a day. Once in Tamale, I met with the Deputy Director, who then accompanied me to the office of the Regional Director of Health Services and initiated introductions…mission accomplished!

Now that this set of meetings have been completed, it’s time to wait for request lists, and then back to the more nitty-gritty details of drawing up documents for Ministry of Health to sign. Writing this reminds me of an awesome cartoon hanging in the office of the Regional Director of the Upper East—below a picture of a boy sitting on the toilet with toilet paper in his hand was the phrase “no job is finished until the paperwork is done.”

Emma