Blogs from Ashanti, Ghana, Africa - page 14

Well, another early start and we were out of Nkawkaw before 5:30. The ride out was OK, we had beautiful highway all the way to Kumasi. Unfortunately, the only food along the way was eating packaged food from gas stations along the way. I'm becoming to love Shell Stations! Cake and cookies and Milk drink are about it (along with plantain chips!). Barry was having another bad day of cycling and had to take a nap around noon. I have a picture of Barry lying on the ground, and chickens almost pecking his face - It was pretty funny! Kumasi is a city of close to 2M so we were on the outskirts with 15Km to go. We got into town and things are again pretty crazy with Taxis and Tro Tros everywhere. WE finally parked, ... read more

November 9, 2008 You know the saying “When it rains it pours”. Another volunteer, Hannah Finnegan, arrived in Dunkwa last Monday. Without delay, I whisked her off to the village of Apebouso, where the school is. She and I were teaching and getting acquainted for a few days. Wednesday Alesha returned from her brave, Ghanaian adventure in the city of Kumasi. I had a few days of “double takes” as I stepped into my humble, little, village home and saw not one but TWO white girls sitting in my chairs! Mind you my normal sight is Praise’s little black face. Often times there 2-3 other little black faces tossed in, but not often faces of white, female, adults. This past week we’ve been trying to adjust ourselves to one another, adjust school schedules, cooking menus and ... read more

Hey all! Sorry ive not uploaded anything in ages, everytime I've been to the internet cafe its either not been working or after 15 mins its broken again! Hope everything is good back in England, it was so weird to hear that you had snow when it's so hot here!! At the weekend I went to Lake Bosomtwi which was lovely, so beautiful and peaceful! It's in a valley so surrounded by lots of green forest so it was luxury relaxing by there. I didn't dare swim in the lake, just in case I caught anything! Ive been moving all around the orphanage this week, which has been really nice as I keep meeting new kids, who are all so great! On monday i was at the nursery and one of the boys, francis, was wearing ... read more

I haven't really spoken much about the type of work that I have been doing here in Africa. Over the past 2 months Rabina and I have been working in the classrooms at Agogo APTC Practice Primary. We help the teachers by teaching lessons and marking. I have been able to work with both new teachers and student teachers as well by introducing some different teaching methods, classroom management strategies and visuals that can be useful in the classroom. For our child speak pen pal project component we are still waiting for letters to arrive from Canada so that we can respond. We have started our afterschool project which includes building a library and starting a school newspaper. The school has really jumped on board and has cleared out a room for us to use. It ... read more

10/26/08 I have a lot of stuff to write about from this week so I’ll get right to it. As far as classes went, I spent the majority of the week reviewing for the mid-term the following week. Last week I was informed that there were going to be inter-house soccer matches this week, probably on Thursday and Friday. As the house 1 master it is my responsibility to get the team organized. I tried to have a meeting with all the house 1 students last week but word didn’t get around. On Tuesday of this week one of the teachers asked me if I was ready for the games on Wednesday, and I said that no one had informed me that the games were going to start on Wednesday. Then, on Wednesday another teacher asked ... read more