Picnic at Moonshine Beach

---

(Note, 19 Mar 2015, Kumasi, Ashanti Region) We are travelling to the north now. We have some time and, finally, some internet access today, so I am posting some blogs from the past week. This one is about the beach pcnic for the orphanage kids last Saturday.

(by guest blogger Kit Rawson)

On Saturday (14-Mar) , the day before we left for our travels around Ghana, Kathy and I had the privilege of attending a beach picnic that the volunteers put on for the orphanage kids a few times a year. The logistics of getting 50+ kids, plus Grandma and the Aunties who run the orphanage, plus 5 volunteers, and two parents of volunteers to the beach, plus beach toys, birthday presents for the kids with February birthdays, water, snacks, and a meal for all are complicated, to say the least, but this group pulled it off, and I was impressed. The dreadlocked guys who operate the little beach access spot called Moonshine Beach opened up their place and a nice spot under a shade tree to the group at no cost and no obligation to buy anything, a nice donation for the kids. The food and presents for the kids, as well as the rental of two trotros to get them there and back, came from donations that the volunteers had gotten for this purpose, and the volunteers put in plenty of time making it all happen.

The kids certainly enjoyed themselves. They arrived with great energy, many quite dressed up for the occasion. The Moonshine Beach proprietors left drum for the kids to play, which they did with exuberance, and a few with a lot of skill. Dancing and singing commenced almost immediately. After the initial energy burst subsided, the good clothes were shed for swimsuits and beach clothes. Kids were formed into groups to go into the water, under a semblance of adult supervision. The ocean is certainly polluted in that spot, with visible floating trash and whatever comes out of the foul-smelling creek about 100 meters up the beach. However, you take what you can get, and it was abundantly clear that being able to splash in the ocean, which they rarely get to see even though it is only a few miles from where they live, brought those kids nothing but joy.

Later there were games (big circle games, like Hokey Pokey, and many others), the meal (the kids sat quietly while the volunteers served first the younger and then the older ones), dessert (pineapple plus peanut butter filled pretzels that Kathy brought all the way from Costco in the US), and dancing to reggae-sounding Ghanian music. When it was close to time to go, the little ones were washed off by a couple of older kids at a hose that was available, and volunteers and older kids dried them off and somehow found their clothes and shoes that had been strewn around in the sand. Pretty soon everyone was back in the condition they had arrived, the trotros appeared, all were accounted for (how, I'm not sure), and it was time to head home.

It was a great day that we were lucky to have been a part of.

---