Diary of the week...

Well, some of the week anyway! Thought I would try and keep a diary this week to show a typical week, but I'm not very good at keeping them or writing things down at the time so some days may look pretty empty!

Monday 10thth August

I was going to go to the baby unit as usual in the morning but found out that the immigration office closes at 1pm so I had to go there in the morning instead, I didn't want to end up an illegal immigrant and my visa only had 2 days left on it! This turned out to be a lot harder than it should have and took about an hour and a half to even get to the Projects Abroad office on 4 tros (should have been 3 but a silly mate forgot to tell me where to get off and I went ages in the wrong direction!). To my delight and surprise, when the rest of the passengers on the tro found this out they all had a go at the mate on my behalf! It added about 45 minutes onto the journey in morning rush hour so I was not too pleased lol. Anyway, I eventually got there and got my authorisation letter and headed to the immigration office (in a taxi this time because I couldn't face anymore tros!). After much indecisiveness and self-induced stress I decided not to apply for a Togo visa or a Ghana re-entry visa and kept is simple and renewed the same visa I already had, which cost 20cedis for a further 30 days in the country. The immigration officer only wanted one photo but I had 4 together, and no surprise on the organisation front, no-one in the office had any scissors so he had to rip one photo off which isn't very easy with photo paper!

After a stressful morning I headed home and had lunch, then went to the children's home in the afternoon. I was really looking forward to seeing Herbert (sad, I know!) because I hadn't seen him on Friday as we'd gone travelling in the morning. He was strolling around the corridoors with the other children looking quite happy so I left him to himself for a bit and played with some of the other kids. I think he's getting too attached to me which I feel bad about because in a few weeks I'll have to leave him and I don't want him to be really sad. One of the other volunteers who had been there in the morning told me that they were playing on a mat outside when another blonde volunteer walked past and Herbert ran over to her, but when he realised it wasn't me, he cried and ran back. Hearing this nearly made me cry lol! But also makes me feel bad about the fact he is getting really attached. I hope it doesn't take him a long time to adjust to not having me there. Some children take a while to adjust to the orphanage when they get there, and can spend days on end crying and its really sad to watch.

Tuesday 11th August

I was supposed to go to the orphanage school today but I went to see the babies first as I normally do and didn't want to leave so I stayed there instead.
Afterwards me and two other volunteers, Aline and Jessye, went to Melting Moments Cafe, which does arguably THE best western food in Accra at very reasonable prices unlike places like Frankie's in Osu which is a complete rip-off! I had an amazing cheeseburger and chips, and read one of the many UK trash magazines which they always have there.
Me and Aline felt like escaping reality for a little longer (and getting some more colour in our skin lol) so we went home quickly and grabbed our pool stuff and headed to La Palm Royal Beach Hotel and had a sunbathe, swim and an amazing ice cream. Aline mentioned to me that she would really like to be able to take some of the kids from the orphanage to the pool, I'd been thinking the same a few weeks ago but didn't think the aunties would let us and had forgotten about it. But Aline said that a month or so ago the aunties had let some Danish volunteers take a few of the toddlers to the beach so we will try our luck tomorrow and ask. I would love to see Herbie's face if he got to go in the water!

After dinner we went to the Projects Abroad quiz night and out for a few drinks afterwards. We had fried chicken and rice for dinner again. They eat so much rice here, I've had enough of it! I don't think it will ever appeal to me again at home lol.

Wednesday 12th August

I woke up to the sound of the 11 year old housemaid (servant, more like), Mary, being beaten which was horrible and served as a sharp reminder of where I am. It sounded like she was being caned again and was wailing loudly, Mary is such a quiet, timid, obedient girl that I find it hard to imagine what she could possibly have done to deserve that. The last time we heard her being beaten (which lasted longer) me and Fionnuala felt so sorry for her that we decided we should treat her for a day to make her feel like someone cares about her. She hasn't seen her family in over a year. I bet she wonders sometimes if this life is worth putting up with for the sake of an education. As far as I am aware without probing too much, Mary works in the house cleaning, washing, cooking etc in return for her school fees being paid. she never gets to bed until about midnight, then is up at about 5am the next day sweeping and cleaning before going to school, then she comes home from school about 2:30pm and it all starts again until midnight. Anyway, last time I decided to ask our host if we could take her to the cinema with us at the mall. Five days after I first asked (and 5 days of reminding and getting excuses back such as she has no time, she has to clean etc), we finally got a 'yes'! We were so excited and took her to watch Ice Age 3. she smiled a lot during the film but I think she was very overwhelmed at being in the Mall because it is extremely westernised. Even i forget where I am when I go in there. But we bought her some popcorn and some chocolate (Cadbury's, no less) from the supermarket so she felt a bit more treated. We then got a taxi home and Mary was straight back to sweeping. At least she had a small break.

Anyway, back to this morning! Mary came into our room and started cleaning so I gave her a big hug and asked if she was ok. She gave a timid 'yes'. I didn't want to say anything about it directly in case she felt awkward, but I told her she could take some sweets from the bag on the table, and she whispered to me that she had already taken some so I told her that was fine and to take as many as she liked.
I went for breakfast (cold toast and tea with evaporated milk as always!) and suddenly thought, why don't I ask if I can take Mary to the pool!

When I walked into the playroom at the baby unit, Herbert saw me and his big eyes lit up and he had a massive smile on his face and ran over to me with his arms out. He is so sweet!! He has the cutest face ever! We moved outside to play because it turned out to be a nice day. We were not so successful on the pool front though, the head of the orphanage said it's too cold to take the children to the pool, and it didn't help that Herbert's nose was running when I asked her because she used it to say it was from being cold. I don't really agree; most of the children are slightly ill most of the time and most have runny noses, even the newborn babies which can't be good. Its probably from living so close to and playing with each other all the time that it passes around so easily. They really do believe it is cold at the moment though. I know its not as hot in the rainy season as it is the rest of the year, but it still gets very hot. she did however say that we could take them out for the day to do something which doesn't involve a swimming pool, so I'm thinking maybe the zoo....

I forgot to say that I got asked by an Aunty to take Herbert over to one of the other buildings to get a vaccination, which turned out to be a measles jab. I was secretly pleased because it meant I got to take a peek at Herbert's child health record card and see what his date of birth was (because I don't believe the list that is attached to a cupboard which says he is 1 year 2 months; lots of the other childrens' ages on there also seem dubious). But, sadly, he had no known date of birth on the record card, it simply said 1 year 2 months in the DOB box. I'd like to know how they work it out, because although I'm no expert I'd say he is around 2 years old - he can walk, run, feed himself and has almost a full set of teeth including a few molars. It wasn't a good day for Herbie, he had to have his nails cut which he hated and cried continuously and then the injection didn't help, poor thing!

Thursday 13th August

I walked to the Orphanage this morning because I felt like a bit of exercise and it only took about 20 minutes, I should really do it more often! It can take a while to cross Labadi Road in the morning rush hour though. On the way I passed a nice car garage (well, a long line of nice cars for sale by the side of the road) - lots of nice Jaguars, a lot of Toyotas and various 4x4s. I've not seen many Fords here, not sure why that is. There are also a lot of Opels, BMWs and Nissans, on the roads here. There is also a make called Tata which i'm not sure where it comes from, and some car makes which I have never seen before. I got a marriage proposal from a mechanic called Ebenezer who was cleaning some of the cars, and said no about 10 times to his request for my phone number! They are so persistent!

When I got to the orphanage I spent a couple of hours with the babies and took Herbert for a little walk around the grounds and did some chicken spotting. He is starting to say 'chicken' now which is really sweet. It seems to be a lot of the childrens' first word. A lot of the toddlers say mama and dadda too which is heartbreaking. with some of them who have been there a long time, I reckon it is just an easy first sound for them to make, but some of them obviously know what it means, for example a little boy called Joy, because he often points and shouts 'mama' at women that walk by and 'dadda' at men who walk by. It is really sad. All of the clothes are donated and the other day a little boy called Brown (who is incredibly cute) had a t-shirt on which said, "If you think I'm cute, you should see my Daddy". It was a shame, and if I had been dressing him I probably wouldn't have put him in it. I know he is too young to understand but it just doesn;t feel right to me, but to the Aunties they are just clothes. But then again they also dress boys in girls clothes sometimes! A boy called Leilei Davis had floral leggings on yesterday and a pink glittery t-shirt which said "I know I'm a princess" on it!

Anyway, I went over to the school for about an hour, which was, to put it mildly, manic! The older kids (aged 6-7) were in a different building rehearsing for their 'graduation' - they go to schools outside the orphanage after this, so there were no lessons on for the other kids. I gave one of the teachers a colouring book which Fionnuala had given me to donate and she handed the pages out to the kids and I distributed some crayons. They all sat around the courtyard colouring in on the floor. I had about 15 balloons on me and decided to give some out, which was a mistake because there wasn't enough for everyone and some of the kids were hitting me and tugging at my clothes because they didn't get one. One boy called Junior who, incidentally, had marker pen all over his face and down his arms, had a massive tantrum and then started attacking some of the boys who did have balloons. Needless to say, the ones that I had blown up for them popped within a few minutes, causing more tears! Next time I will make sure I have enough for everyone.

In the afternoon I went to the Loom Art Gallery with a new girl called Laura, which had many nice African paintings for sale, way out of my price range, sadly. On the way back, our trotro broke down in the most unfortunate place - diagonally across two lanes whilst it had been trying to change lanes, in rush hour! Cue lots of shouting and laughing, and every passenger adding their bit in as to what the driver should do! Luckily after about 5 minutes the driver and the mate got it going again and we got home fine.

---

---