sk1981

One thing, amongst many, that I have enjoyed in Ghana is learning people’s names. I have met girls named ‘Patient’, ‘Wonder’, ‘Blessing’, ‘Comfort’ and my favourite, ‘Thank-God’. I have met boys named ‘Ebeneezer’, ‘Zerobabel’, ‘Godsway’ and my favourite, ‘Godknows’…. ‘Hi, what’s your name?’ ‘God knows’ – I just think that’s a great way to introduce yourself. Among the many people I have met, last week I met Nelson Mandela. Unfortunately, not the Nobel Prize winning granddad of the world, but a slightly overweight IT man from Aflao who came to fix the modem so I can update the blog again, yippee! In the last few weeks there have been some surreal moments. We started with a crisis – the school exams were to start this week but our printer had broken down. Over the next few ... read more

Second week in and I am more settled. I’ve stopped waving at people and shouting back ‘yavu’, which apparently is not Ewe for ‘yoohoo’ as I thought, but actually means ‘white person’… whenever the ‘foreigners’ walk down the street people wave and shout ‘yavu’, so I just thought it meant ‘hello’ and would wave back shouting the same….yup, feel pretty stupid. I’ve learnt that ‘I’m coming’ can mean ‘I’m thinking', or ‘just a moment’, or depending on who you are talking to might also mean ‘just a moment, but in half an hour’, or in Peace’s case it means ‘hold on a second because I’m just about to do a drop squat and pee right in front of you’ (Peace is about 6 years old, so it’s only just excusable). I’ve also learnt that when David ... read more

Some pictures from my time so far... A few of these are from my first day after arrival, Sunday 1st July. It was a very rainy, humid day. Sylva was the main photographer, taking pictures of the children's home, his mother, Baby, who is the cook for the home, and some of the other residents at the home. There's also some pictures from our trip to Lake Volta over the last weekend. Finally, there are some pictures with the older children who left to go back to their schools in other towns today (July 10th) and will come back after I have left.... read more

I have been in Klikor, Ghana for one week now. I must say from day 1 I have been made to feel very welcome by all the staff at the children’s home and the school where I will be working, at the Guest House where I am lodging and by the children and community themselves. Klikor is a rural area where most of the population are farmers. The roads are dirt roads and can become quite difficult to manage during the rainy season as it is now – especially when you’re donning flip flops when wellies might be more useful! Still, the weather is quite bearable as there is cloud cover and a gentle breeze. When it rains, it hammers it down, drumming down on the tin roofs and churning up the mud on the roads. ... read more

Saturday, 30th June 2012 … And so it begins. As I stepped from the plane at Kotoka airport in Accra, I remembered the guidebook’s most encouraging phrase, “Ghana – Africa’s friendliest nation’. With that in mind, I smiled at everyone as I walked, no skipped, through the tunnel , completely unprepared to meet the barricade of officials on the other side yelling in my face, “Yellow Fever! Yellow Fever!” I’d only been in the country for 5 minutes so I was sure I didn’t have it. No, they were after my Yellow Fever certificate. I hurriedly produced it but noticed one lady was counting a wad of notes which she surreptitiously tried to pass to one of the officials only to be told, very succinctly, ‘”I’ll deal with you later” – whether that meant the official ... read more