Blogs from Teshie, Greater Accra, Ghana, Africa - page 3

June 18, 2014 Yesterday Jamal took me and the other 3 new volunteers on orientation. He took us into Accra and started the day at Black Star Square, which is a central part of Accra and where Kwame Nkrumah led the revolution of 1957. Jamal told us about the political history, and said he would invite us all back when he was inaugurated President of Ghana. After that he took us to Jamestown, which is a poor neighborhood that has remained a traditional fishing community. Jamal told us that he’s tried on several occasions to start a school in Jamestown, but he hasn’t been successful due to the parents not receiving education and not understanding the value of their children being educated. Next we went into the Accra markets, where Jamal got us Burkina (a cold ... read more

June 12, 2014 Watching the world cup with Jamal and the volunteers: Brazil vs. Croatia. Jamal is a huge football fan. One of the projects he started with Dream Africa is football (practice and games) for boys and girls. For those who don’t know Ghana has one of the premier football teams in the world. On Monday Ghana plays the US. Jamal has already teased me about that, but I told him since I’m in Ghana I’m a Black Stars (the national team) fan. I led my first class today at the fishing village and I feel like the worst teacher ever. However, I know that’s not true and after I talked to another volunteer and Jamal they helped me feel better by reminding me that it was my first day alone. It just made me ... read more

Welcome to my African adventures. After a whole weekend of bus rides, plane flights, and airports I got to Ghana extremely tired. The hot humid air hit me the moment I stepped of the plane and since then I’ve been constantly sweating. It took a bit of help but I eventually found the Dream Africa Care Foundation people at the airport. One of the other teaching volunteers came to pick me up. Samantha was very nice and helpful and told me a lot of stuff in the car. The ride in the car (without seatbelts) was over bumpy roads that had recently weathered a storm; June is the wettest month here. When I got to the volunteer house there was a power outage, which happens a lot here, although Jamal turned the generator on after that. ... read more

Last night at the bar was so fun! We had only intended to go for one drink, maybe half an hour, but we ended up staying 3 hours. In the end, there were quite a few of us - Me, Laura, Steffi, Sammy, Raisa and Mathias. And Sonja joined us later. We left from the house, and two of the dogs followed us out the gate (Bobby and Peace). They walked with us all the way to the bar, kind of protecting us and making sure we were ok, which was pretty cool. Especially seeing as Peace doesn't seem to like us all that much! It was fairly bizarre. Looking around where I live, there is poverty. Not by Ghanaian standards, but by Western standards. People carve out a living by selling things from the front ... read more

School as usual this morning. I got there and as it was Friday, it was Religious Education. Except they did nothing. Absolutely nothing. From 9am until break at 10am, Lucy just sat there, chatting to other teachers and myself, whilst the students occupied themselves with stickers that somebody had brought in. I got a few photographs and Lucy and I talked about the education system in the UK vs. Ghana. They too, get visits (like we do with Ofsted), theirs being from the Ghana Education Service. But they don't seem to have lesson plans or anything, which is strange. I left after break, and didn't make a big deal of it being my last day. I'd bought every student in my class a pencil and an eraser, and some pens for Lucy to mark with. She ... read more