Greetings from Africa

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Hi all,

So now I have been in Ghana for 5 days, and I think it would be fair to say that it is a little different. I think the first thing that is notable is definitely the driving. The Ghanaians simply cannot drive. For example, after being met at the airport by the African company taking care of us volunteers (SYTO), the driver proceeded to drive us to our hostel where we are staying here in Accra before we go off to our projects tomorrow. On missing the junction, he thought it sensible to reverse back down the 3 lane highway straight in to another vehicle before proceeding to get out and shout at the other drive in Twi (the local language) that he shouldn't have crashed into him. The next day he decided to reverse blindly out of the hostel and almost into an oncoming taxi. Now you cynics out there will think that this is just him not being able to drive, but everyone is like this I assure you!

As I just mentioned, I am currently staying in a hostel in Accra: The Pink Hostel. It is a hostel in quite a nice area of Accra called Asylum down and is your standard cheap hostel. It has a shower and aircon, but these are liable to fail at any moment as the water and electricity I think we can call temperamental. Breakfast is included but this is nothing exciting and is simply some sweet bread, butter and apricot jam, some fruit (normally pineapple) and normally something hot like egg aswell. Now, on the first night we (me and the other volunteers) were told that this would be served at 7am prompt but we have now adapted to Ghana time and don't really expect it to be ready until about half past.

So for the past few days, SYTO have been effectively spoon feeding us Ghana to help us settle in to the way of life. We are picked up at 8am (Ghana time) from the hostel and taken to the offices for our orientation (apart from today where we stayed here at the hostel and learnt to cook local Jolof rice, Redred and Plantain).

The offices are only about a 10 minute drive away and on Monday we didn't realy do anything apart from be ferried to the offices (where we were given talks on local culture, religion, code of conduct etc.) and then ferried back. We (who by the way consists of Athur , Louise and Christa from England; Aisling from Ireland and Ronja, Lisette and Naomi from Holland) then just went out to the local bar. Tuesday consisted of more of the same although this time we were let loose on a beach for about 4 hours before being taken to a coffin shop and back for more lectures. The beach wasn't really anything to shout about; red flag, windy and being constantly hassled by the locals to buy their goods simply because we are white (or Omburonis in Twi). It does get a tad annoying but I am sure I will get used to it after time. The coffin shop was quite different to anything any of us have seen before. The coffins are made to order in shapes like crabs, Nike shoes, Nokia phones, Swans and quite a few more!

Wednesday consisted of moe lectures, but one of the other volunteers( Louise) wasn;'t feeling well so when we had our 4 hour break I went back to the hostel with her. After reaslising she had a temperature of 39, headaches and generally other malaria symptoms it was thought best that she went off to the hospital to have tests - and this was quite an experience! People seemed to just randomly walik into the doctors room when they got impatient and the 'lab' where they took blood appeared to just be a curtained off area of a corridor which you could very easily see into and most people (other patients) would happily interrupt the doctor mid test to see when their turn would be. Anyway, after about 6 hours she was diagnosed with some form of horrible stomach bug and we trundled home in a sha4red taxi (for the cost of just 40p each!).

So today we learnt to cook local food as I said earlier and also had a tour of the old town. This was quite something as it is vastly overpoplated and it is very poor - most people wash and cook in thestreets as there isn't enough room in the houses.

Rightm, I am being kicked off the internet but I will update you all when I next have a chance. My host family has been changed so I am now living far more ruraly with Louise and this also means that internet is far harder to come by!

See you all soon,
Sam(uel) x

P.S sorry for the awful spelling but I can't see what I have written until much later as the text takes ages to catch up with what I am typing and I can't be bothered to change it

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