Advertisement
Published: June 16th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Hi everyone!
We had torrential rain all night from about 2am onwards last night (it's getting towards the end of the rainy season here), and it was still tipping it down at 7 this morning, consequently there are more mosquitos around and I have been bitten a fair few times today, didn't get bitten at all last night! Aishu (my roommate) gave me the good news that the toilet was flushing (we were using buckets of water before!), and I got excited that the water had come back on, so tried the shower and to my delight water came out, but only lasted for a few seconds :-( It must have been a result of the heavy rain filling up the watre tank.
Before I came I knew that my host, Mrs Odonkor, had a home help, but it turns out it is an 11 year old girl called Mary...she was 'adopted' by Mrs Odonkor, I say adopted like that because I don't know if its anything official, but basically Mary comes from a very rural area and her parents sent her to live at Mrs Odonkor's so she can go to school, and in return she does all
Red Red.
Local dish - fried plantain and beans of the cooking/cleaning/washing. Me and Aishu aren't completely at ease with it, Mary seems to spend the whole time she's not at school either cooking, cleaning or washing clothes. I can hear her scrubbing and sweeping floors from about 6am onwards, and she makes our breakfast, lunch and dinner, and Mrs Odonkor says she will wash our clothes for us for 5 cedi (about 2.50 pounds). At first I didn't want to make her do any more work than she already does, but she gets to keep the money so it might not be so bad after all, because that's quite a lot of money here for a young girl. To put it in perspective, a tro-tro ride costs about 30 pesewas which is about 15 pence, a bottle of water is about 40 pesewas.
I'm getting the hang of tro-tros now, and managed to get one here on my own sucessfully, woo! They are very confusing though, there are so many and go on different routes. There is a kind of conductor guy who takes the money and shouts out where the bus is going, and they also do hand signals out the window which signify which route
Drumming.
Me and Fionnuala having a go at drumming at the Arts Centre. they are going on, luckily the main tro I have to get goes in the direction of the city centre towards the big Circle (which means roundabout), so he shouts "Circ, Circ, Circ" and does a circular hand movement. Its so hot on the tros when they stop, but its a huge relief when they start moving again and you get a breeze through the window! The conductor guy's title is "mate" so you have to shout mate when you want to get off..I found this quite embarassing at first because its a completely different context to when I usually say 'mate', but they don't know that so I don't care now lol. Even though it hasn't been a sunny today because of the rain, its still really humid and you still sweat form walking.
It was my first day at the Orphanage today, so I was met by someone from Projects Abroad who showed me how to get there and waites with me to meet the Mother of the Orphanage (the other workers are called Aunties). Now, Ghana may almost be on GMT, but here this means 'Ghana Man Time', people just seem to work to their own
schedule and aren't on time! We were supposed to meet Agnes, the Mother, at 9am but she didn't turn up until about 10:30 and then kept running off, coming back 10 mins later, staying for a minute and then dashing off again. This is normal apparently! But eventually I got hold of her and filled out some forms before she dashed off again. I went to the baby unit to see what it was like before I start properly tomorrow. There are a few newborn babies and lots of children who I think are about 1-2 years old. Syaing that, they may not all be newborns because there was one baby who I thought looked newborn but was apparently 5 months old. I sat with the childrenw hile they ate, and then dressed some of them after they had been on the pottys and washed. Most, if not all of the clothes are donated and they are all communal and washed by some of the Aunties. I got passed a skirt to put a boy in but I just couldn't because I thought that would be a shame, so I went and found some shorts. When it came to dressing
the last few children who were ready to be dressed, there were no boy-coloured t-shirts left so I had to put one in a pink t-shirt. After that I had to put them in the cots for a nap, and I played with each one for a few minutes before putting them down, they are so cute and laugh even if you make the silliest noises at them or just play lifting them in the air! At the moment there are a few volunteers working in the baby unit, but before there was only one and the Aunties, I think they can do with any spare hands they can get. I took a liking to a little boy called Herbert, the faces he pulled were just so cute & funny!
I'll be off in a bit to go home for tea. Last night was egg curry with yam. The egg yoke was completely white though because the chickens are malnourished. There are loads of skinny chickens running around! For my packed lunch today I was given a tub with rice and something that looked like the curry from last night, I think it was tuna curry (?!) but some
Goat.
One of the many goats in the streets. bits tasted like chicken! I saw something that looked a little bit like fish skin mixed in, so it probably was some kind of fish. Ah well, it filled the hole! lol.
I'm going to a Projects Abroad quiz night tonight so i'll get to meet some more volunteers, I've already met quite a few!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.086s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 40; dbt: 0.0376s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Marj
non-member comment
Re Getting the hang of things
Hi! Enjoyed reading Blog! Sounds like you've been there for ages already!