(Taylor works on the ONE Communications team and is currently traveling with President Bush, First Lady Laura Bush and Live Aid and Live 8 organizer Bob Geldof. Read all her posts so far from the trip here.)

A lot happened in Accra, Ghana today. First, President Bush met with President Kufuor of Ghana and they held a joint press conference. They about talked about, among other things, the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). Ghana has received a compact from MCA to build roads and improve infrastructure. MCA compacts go to well-governed countries, countries who fight corruption and invest in health and education for their citizens.

Then it was on to a lunch with Peace Corps workers in Ghana. Ghana was the first country in the world to welcome the Peace Corps. The first 52 Peace Corps workers arrived here on August 30, 1961. Since that time, more than 3,700 volunteers have served in this country (including two of my good friends Monica and Alex Smith - who met when they both served as Peace Corps workers in Ghana and the Cote d’Ivoire and later married. Monica was a water and sanitation specialist and Alex educated people about HIV/AIDS).

The Ghanians have a special bond with Americans who serve in the Peace Corps and gave them a big welcome at lunch. The lunch guests, including President Bush and Bob Geldof, heard harrowing tales of Peace Corps life in rural Africa, including one woman who was bitten by a cobra and then discovered that the local clinics had run out of both poison anecdote and pain medication! (Don’t worry - she survived and told her tale to the President in person today.)

After lunch was my personal favorite part of the day: a tee ball game! We watched some Ghanian youngsters play ball - the Little Dragons vs. the Little Saints. I;m not sure my travelling companion, Sir Bob Geldof, understood the intracacies of the game, having grown up in Ireland, deprived of the World Series…but we all enjoyed it, nonetheless.

We also met Jordin Sparks, last year’s American Idol winner. Jordin was here with Malaria No More and visited Maamobi Polyclinic with the Presidential delegation.

In Ghana, one child out of every nine dies before his or her fifth birthday - many of these deaths are the result of preventable diseases.

At the Maamobi Polyclinic, Ghana and the United States are working together to eliminate two preventable causes of death in children: malnutrition and malaria.

PMI was launched in Ghana last December, and in its first year, the initiative will provide $17 million for malaria treatment and prevention. The US will also support Ghana’s National Malaria Control Program to provide more than a million mosquito nets for children and pregnant mothers’ beds.

We also saw a big market and a US sponsored trade hub in Ghana - more on that tomorrow!

-Taylor Royle

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 5:15 pm and is filed under American Idol, Peace Corps, Taylor Royle Bush Africa Trip, Taylor Royle, Ghana, Bush Africa Trip, MCA, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.