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Published: February 17th 2009
Hey Folks,
Just thought I'd bring you up to date... no pictures in this one... sorry.
End of week 1 at work:
Spent the rest of the week working on a number of assignments...
Wednesday morning was a bit hectic, before I'd even sat at a desk I had been asked by Florence to do some research... 'yeah, no probs'... could I research and put together a document detailing migration trends in Ghana and West Africa, looking at any applicable laws etc. Well, I came up with a mountain of stuff... more than I could assimilate in 1 and a half hours!!! I passed the info across to her and hoped that it would be ok...
Also helped another volunteer out with some of the files I'd seen the other day. We had a new one to look at... with an actual abuse that we could potentially do something about! Yey! I started by setting out all the info in a document and then outlining the issues - lots of issues - and looked into the law... well, the laws in Ghana may be written in their constitution, but they clearly aren't adhered to … this guy had been arrested and left in prison for a whole month before he had even his 1st appearance before the court! He was claiming that he had no part in the claimed robbery anyway, and at his first appearance the alleged victim of the robbery didn't even recognise him... yet he's still locked away, 3 months and 5 useless appearances later... shocking!
Got a trotro home... another one that reeeeeeeeeeeeally wasn't road worthy... we nearly conked out at a 'u-turn' (this is generally the only way to cross a main road... they don't often do roundabouts or traffic lights... unless it's a really special point in the road. Otherwise, you join the traffic going one way and do a MASSIVE U-turn with everyone else, like three trotros side by side, to go in the other direction!) so we were making a MASSIVE U-turn in the middle of THE busiest road in creation... and this damned trotro decides to break down... as we coast across the road, the millions of speeding cars whizzing past and the people crossing the road, I really did see my life pass before my eyes (which I had closed... )
Safe to say, I made it home for spring rolls, noodles and sauce no problems... and a movie at the boy's house later that night... only it was one of the French boy's movies... so it was 'Moulin Rouge', spoken in French, but sung in English (?!) v.good all the same.. and a great chance to see what luxury the boys are living in by comparison to us across the road!!!
Really didn't want to get up on Thursday (it's only day 4 of work)... had another bad nights sleep. Ditto for Friday too... at home you would not see me stirring much before 7.45am... I now get up at 6.15 and get into work for 7.45am!
On the way to work on Thursday, I asked for a bottle of water at the little shop down the road... well, again, they disproved my theory that these little shops sell everything you could possibly need/want... cos they didn't have any, but they had a small boy who was willing to go and get me a bottle. I followed him to another little hut... just to make sure he knew what it was that I wanted... and to make sure that he wasn't going to rip me off (entrepreneurial little people that they are...)
On Friday morning I got a trotro to work as per... had a local sat next to me... not unusual, you will typically find yourself the only 'Abruni' (white person) on a trotro. However, this local, with a following of 5 kids, wanted to talk to me and tell me his life story... it felt like I was back on the bus from Billingham to Hartlepool... guaranteed to get a fruity loop who wants to talk to you... anyway, he told me (all in about 15 minutes) how it was reeeeeeeally expensive to send the kids to school (it actually is surprisingly expensive) and how he worked for the British Commission doing something with agriculture … and how they paid for him to have a jeep, but it was just in for repairs at the moment... right... whatever,... you're not going to woo me with your story... and 5 kids in tow! Interesting trotro journey all the same... they always are!
Spent Thursday and Friday at a conference in a hotel a little out of town, we had to take a taxi there... it was a great way of getting to see some more of the city. Passed the 'airport residential district', along streets where the diplomats and ambassadors live in their HUGE houses, through Roman Ridge which is one massive, sprawling shanty town, and out to East Legon near to the Uni and where the hotel was. The conference was a two day event to discuss and survey how the discovery of oil and gas will affect Ghana, and how the Government should put laws and regulatory committees into place to prevent from corruption, improve transparency and accountability, minimise environmental damage and regulate how to fairly and evenly distribute the wealth that it will bring (although, the whole Country is talking as if they've got the profits and have already spent them 10 times over!). You fallen asleep yet? I nearly did... but really, it was interesting and a great opportunity to listen to various speakers from all over the world; Nigeria ('this is how not to do it - we screwed up'), Azerbaijan ('here's a tremendously difficult mathematical equation as to how we do it, so this is how you must do it'), Uganda ('we don't know how to do it either... we're looking for suggestions'), Russia (we don't care how you do it... we're making lots of money... and don't care), and England ('we have no reason to be here, but we thought we'd stick our finger in for a piece of the pie too'!)
It brought together a vast range of people from all sorts of organisations, and to say that 3 white girls from a Human Rights NGO stuck out like sore thumbs, would be an understatement! But we had fun 'brainstorming', having 'facilitated discussions', making comments on post-it notes to stick on the wall and 'consider' hallenges, root causes and solutions for an afternoon.
However, I DIDN'T have fun listening to each of the 30 odd attendees air their deepest thoughts, feelings and grievances... which were generally completely unstructured, totally irrelevant for the most part and always ended up straying off the point completely. Prime examples include the guy who ALWAYS had something to say... 'I didn't understand this point that you made... ' that's cos you were asleep...or 'I don't think you are right in this point that you made...' that's cos you're ignorant... But, it was at the point when one woman actually stood up and had been speaking for a good 15 minutes before she honestly said “I don't exactly know where this is going...” I thought... 'probably no-where fast, pet!' She was also asked to sit on the discussion panel, (God knows why?!) and again came out with the classic “I haven't had time to collect my thoughts, so bear with me as I am speaking...” I knew at this point it was pointless me taking any more notes to try to decipher later!
Also, this country is CRAP for time keeping... I insisted we left the office at 8.15am prompt each day so that we could be there on time.. shouldn't really have bothered, even after we were asked at the end of the 1st day to be there on the 2nd morning at 9am prompt... we still started 45minutes late! ARGH!
AND on day 2 some proper idiot with a right sense of humour asked the most dull guy in the world to give us a summary, 'in a nut shell', of yesterday's presentations... OMG! When we were still there 37 minutes later, I knew that Friday was not going to be a good day... this was followed by the Russian presentation which posed more questions than gave answers and proved to be totally irrelevant...
HOWEVER, the BEST thing about these two days = the food!!! We were fed tea/coffee/cocoa with snacks in the mornings (pastries, sandwiches, muffins etc) then we were provided with lunch. We were fed a right feast - rice, pasta, salad, chicken and fish followed by vanilla and strawberry ice cream :o) Every afternoon session started with the Chair asking all the speakers to be brief 'cos we weren't likely to stay awake for long! Then, in the afternoons, we were given another break for a juice and snacks (pizza, cakes, sandwiches!) Made my day!
Other highlights include the guy from Azerbaijan who wore his coat for the full 2 days (both inside the conference room and out)... must be bloody hot in his country?!
Oooooooo, and apparently we were on TV!!! They love filming everything and taking loads of photos!
We stayed (listening to the ramblings) well past 5.30pm both nights... grrrrr! On Thursday on the way back in the taxi, at about sunset, we were driving for a good mile and there were all these 'birds' flying around in the sky... I'm talking, well over a square mile worth of a sky full of 'birds'... lots of them, … lots and lots... of … bats!!!
On the way back on Thursday night we had sat in traffic for ages before I realised where we were and I could actually get out and hop on a trotro on the other side of the road to take me home... anyway, in the trotro I was sat next to a young lad and as we were coming closer to my stop, he said something to the mate in Twi (local lingo) … well, I just kinda heard 'Jokers' so gave them both a nod and a wink, as if to say 'I'll be getting off there too...'... oh god, well the young lad thought I'd understood and struck up a conversation in Twi... I didn't think it appropriate to sit and smile, so I had to explain that actually, I had NO IDEA what he was talking about, but thanks all the same! We both got off at the same stop and he virtually held my hand as we crossed the busy road, he was probably thinking that I didn't look particularly local or have much a clue about this crossing the road malarkey, he then pointed out Jokers (also known as the local brothel after dark - thanks new friend!) we both walked down the same little street... and it turns out that he lives across the road from me :o)
The traffic on Friday was even worse, and we went all around the houses in Roman Ridge... I thought the driver was taking the three of us to a 'chop' house somewhere to be made into dinner... all the other taxi drivers who passed said that he should have a good dinner tonight (Eeeek!) but what they meant, was that he was going to get paid well cos of his 'white cargo'. Tut.
OOOoooooo... another good thing at the end of this week... I managed to blow dry my hair for the first time since getting here... the fact that I needed another shower by the time I had finished and it was a completely wasted exercise is beside the point... it just made me feel better!
Hope you made it all the way thru. I'm guessing that I'm losing a lot of people from the limited messages/comments i'm getting... would be nice to hear from some more of you... you know, i don't just do this for fun... ;o)
Hope everyone is well,
Clare
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Rob H
non-member comment
I'm going to stop moaning about the things I have to do at work!