The Soggy-Kope Fiasco...

Written 8th October 2014

This weekend we went to visit the others in Akatsi (pronounced Acatachi). All of their projects surround the town with only our project 5 hours away. The trotro journey wasn’t bad at all. Everyone was so nice and made sure we knew where we were going and that no one over-charged us because of our colour. We had one stop over in Ho but other than that it was a straight journey. We got there at about 4 and met the others in a spot (bar) run by the legend that is, Koby. He drove some of the group to go and pick up food and on the way back took them to a Ghanaian radio station where they were introduced by DJ Whiskey (!!!!) to the entire of Southern and Eastern Ghana. It was a weird moment hearing Erin’s incredibly strong English accent on Ghanaian radio. 

Koby put in one of those colourful 80’s disco ball lights above our table which gave the whole night a sort of party feel (although for the first two hours it was bright day light out!). Lots of people came to join us, even DJ Whiskey, and we drank and danced and chatted the night away. When I say “night away” I mean until 10 o’clock, which is pretty late for Ghana! We usually go to bed around 7 so this was a late night for us. Koby was kind enough to take us home and took a particular shine to Frances. It took some convincing to get him to leave, but eventually he did. 

We were staying with Rosie and Myrtle who pretty much live in a palace. They are living in the MP’s house while he lives in Accra so they have like 4 rooms, a living room and two bathrooms WITH RUNNING WATER AND A SHOWER! We thought we had died and gone to heaven it was so luxurious. I don’t know if I have explained our toilet/shower situation but in short our toilet is a hole with a shed over it, next to a chicken coup and our shower has no door and we use a bucket to splash freezing water over ourselves twice a day. Get why we were so happy now?! 

On the Saturday had planned to go canoeing on Lake Volta but it chose that day to be chucking it down with rain. In true British Style we decided to persevere through the rain. After watching Myrtle absolutely deck in front of the entire trotro satiation and get covered in mud, we all piled into a trotro and headed to Soge-Kopta to find a place to eat and canoe. Soge-Kopta was dubbed Soggy-Kopte because despite our hopes of it drying up, it just rained all day. After a bit of confusion we found a place to eat which served pizza, burgers and spaghetti! This place also had the best toilet posters ever which gave us a little giggle. In true Ghanaian fashion everything was over fried or made of pastry…EVERYTHING! Also they forgot cheese on our pizza which sucked. All we wanted was some normal home food but alas, we are still looking. The Intrepid Five; Louis, Izzy, Laura, Beth and I decided to brave the rain and go canoeing. On the way to the shore I slipped on the stairs and now have one hell of a bruise on my bum :/ The canoe man came around the corner bringing, in the bottom of his boat, a live eel…! He then proceeded to bat it with his paddle and then ultimately kill it. All of us were horrified and suddenly found something really interesting to look at behind us :/ The canoe ride was pretty fun with Louis having to bail the boat so that we didn’t sink and some random man on a bridge shouted “WHITE PEOPLE!!!” at us which was really funny!

Sunday was pretty uneventful but we did go to Akatsi market and see all the cool material which was annoying for me because I had no money left and the nearest ATM is an hour away. The travel back was fine, the highlight being this little girl sitting next to me on the trotro held my hand the whole way. It was so cute! We were glad to be back in Lolobi Ashiambi because we had been missing our familiar faces that we see everyday. 

Abby x

The Suspected Malaria Case...

Written 1st October 2014

On the Sunday we were in New Ayoma I threw up at Alex and Tobi’s which was really embarrassing but it signalled was the start of something more serious. It was down hill from there I think because I just felt nauseous all day Monday (not just because of the groping and violation of personal space) and then that night I was up and down to the toilet to be sick and other things all night. On the Tuesday morning I woke up with a fever and flu like symptoms so it was decided after a few phone calls with home and with Nana, that I should go to the hospital. Rebecca, Frances and Eunice accompanied me there which was nice but thats were the nice ended. The hospital was crowded and noisy and everyone was shouting and when you are ill that is the last thing you want. By coincidence we met Alex who was had a check up because he had been diagnosed with Malaria the week before, as had Tobi. We sat and waited for about an hour before getting my vitals checked and a malaria test done. The malaria test was horrific! They stuck a pin in my thumb and then drew the blood into a pipette which was already bloodstained from the last person. I then sat and watched as the same pin was used for the next person. If I didn’t have malaria then I probably do now. Luckily the test came back negative and we were ordered to wait for a doctor. We joined a massive que and I found a place to sleep because I just felt like death. 3 and a half hours later we were still waiting and all I wanted to do was to go home a sleep because I knew it was just a bad flu. Luckily Eunice agreed and we went home. It was an experience…one which I never want to go through again!

Abby x

The Dead Cow and Jeremy Kyle Ghana Style...

Written 29th September 2014

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote but I’ll try and make it brief because I’m exhausted!

The biggest thing is that school has officially started and, as it turns out, we are very busy. I am spending every day at the primary school which is a proper challenge. The others have one or two lessons a day while I’m teaching all day everyday so come home emotionally and physically shattered everyday. The first day of proper teaching was Wednesday of this week and fair to say was not the best. The headmaster, Mr Sogolo, walked me to Class Six, told me that there were no text books or curriculum, that all the jotters were in the cupboard which was locked because the teacher was in hospital and had the key, and then left. 30 confused faces stared at me as a frantically tried to figure out what to do. They had only had one day of teaching with the real teacher so I had really nothing to go on with their level or stuff they had to learn. What makes things worse is that they are proper devils. There is one 15 year old boy in the class (class is not determined by age but ability) who thinks he is the big man and all the other kids follow him. The only punishment that they will respond to is beatings, which I refuse to do, so any positive reinforcement or punishment that I try to do never works because it is always better than what other teachers will do. On Thursday it, unbelievably, got worse. They twigged that I won’t cane so their behaviour was out of control and I still had nothing of value to teach them. Friday was the worst though. I tried to do something fun with them by running a business enterprise day and get them to create and present their own product in groups or ‘companies’. They were so confused because I was asking them to come up with something themselves. These kids have never been asked to think for themselves or to be creative which saddens me. They have no concept of individual thought or argument, only one of copying and repeating. This is something I plan to tackle over the year because it is such a fundamental part of being human. It’s going to be a challenge because I will have to start right at the beginning of being creative and I don’t ever remember not being imaginative. Does anyone have any suggestions?

On a more positive note, we have met some other volunteers from Germany who live half an hour away. Their names are Alex and Tobi and we have been spending a lot of time with them which is really nice. Because we live 5 hours away from everyone else it has been really great being able to have some people to relate to. On Saturday we went through to New Ayoma, where Alex and Tobi live, for a Muslim Festival called Salah. They were kind enough to show us around and then took us to the house of the Muslim leader to watch a cow being slaughtered…! Luckily we arrived late (as per usual) so we only had to see a whole, skinned cow lying on the floor while everyone around it ate and laughed and pretended that nothing was wrong. The rest of the day we just played cards and chatted about stuff but it turned out that the best part of the festival was the next day so we went back REALLY early the next morning. What we didn’t realise was that because it was a Sunday there was no public transport so we got a lift from a passer by. It turns out that this passer by was a man off to his sisters funeral so he was playing really depressing music by the genius of Liberty X. When we got there things got really weird. The five of us were invited along to what can only be described as the Small Town Ghanaian Version of Jeremy Kyle and were asked to give marriage counselling to this couple who we didn’t know. It was a very weird situation to find ourselves in. In the end (through incredibly rough translation) we concluded that the man was a total asshole and deserved no love what so ever and that the woman should just ditch him. What made it worse was that the man’s girlfriend was waiting outside the meeting and they walked away holding hands! The festival was pretty sweet and was worth waiting for although we only got to see about half an hour of it because Frances and Rebecca wanted to get home :( 

Someone recently asked me what one word would I use to describe this year. It took some time but the word I decided upon was, bizarre. This country is bizarre! The situations that we find ourselves in are bizarre and I’m loving it!

Abby 

First Impressions and Horrific Dancing...

Written 22nd September 2014

So we have been in Lolobi Ashambi for just under two weeks now and we haven’t had a chance to sit down! It has been so unbelievably busy to the point where we are starting to go a little bit crazy. I am just feeling over stimulated all of the time and its resulting in feeling annoyed and snappy at certain points, but overall I’m having so much fun. Lolobi Ashambi is a small town in the Volta Region of Ghana very near to Togo. It has about 200 people in it and is pretty run down. I don’t really know much about the place because I only found out that I was coming here two days before we came. Ashambi doesn’t speak Ewe which is what we learnt on training which is kind of annoying but I’m getting there with it. I can greet people and reply to greetings which is important because it is considered rude to not greet every single person you walk past. I’m in a three with Frances and Rebecca which has its perks and its challenges but on the whole we are making it work. 

Our host/mother Eunice is a character to say the least but here cooking is fantastic. Fufu, which everyone warned us about, is surprisingly nice but there are a few gag-worthy foods. One morning we were invited to the chiefs house for breakfast (at 6am) and were served porridge. It’s not like porridge at home though, its boiled, fermented maize and has the consistency of 4 day old sewage. To make things worse she served it with a huge sardine roll, fair to say all through church I was not feeling so great.

Speaking of church I went for the first time out of choice. It was…..an experience. It’s all in the Lolobi language so we didn’t understand a word of it and just sat on the wooden benches for 3 HOURS trying not to look bored. The only time he did speak english was to introduce us to the ENTIRE congregation. Frances and Rebecca were mortified but I thought it was sweet of him to do that. 

One of the best things that has happened was that ALL of the other volunteers came to visit us in Ashambi. On the saturday we went to a funeral in Kumasi, the next town. Eunice, Frances, Rebecca and I wore hideous matching dresses which we got made the day before. Yes there is photo evidence, no you cannot see it. At the funeral they were doing a traditional dance which consists of tiny little movements and looked so simple (looked being the key word). Some of us thought it would be a good idea to go and join in. IT WAS SO HARD AND WE WERE RUBBISH! By the end we had to leave because we were sweating and exhausted. It was hilarious though and people in our village keep pointing and laughing because they saw us there. Yes there is video evidence, no you cannot see it. 

School started last tuesday but not really. The first week of term is what they call a ‘clean up week’ and most of the teachers turn up at 11 and leave at 12 30 with just the teacher on duty staying to supervise. The kids cut the grass with machetes, they chop wood with machetes and they even clean the classroom with machetes! Definitely would not pass health and safety rules in the UK. This week Monday (today) is a holiday so I spent the day with Eunice, Elizabeth, Emefa and Linda cleaning the creche. The creche is an old church which should just be burnt to the ground because it carries so many diseases. We walked in and there were two dead birds and a dead bat on the floor and the roof was covered in nests and decaying bodies of who knows what. On the plus side the kids knew not to touch the bat because of Ebola, in fact one of them pointed at it and just started to shout EBOLA BAT, EBOLA BAT, EBOLA BAT over and over again. After an hour of sweeping and five industrial washes of the floor the water was still coming out mud brown and sandy. Tomorrow we start observing for the week which will be either really interesting or really boring, either way it will be useful. 

Reading the blog back it sounds really negative but I promise you that I am having an amazing time! It’s just that the negative things stick out more because they are so few and far between. 

The One Where We Arrive!

So we have arrived in Ghana! After, what has felt like the longest year ever, we are finally here! The travel went smoothly bar a panicked sprint through Gatwick after a ‘mistake’ on the board which said that our gate was closed. 

On the flight from Gatwick to Lisbon another Vol and I were sitting next to a Ghanaian woman named Matilda (or Fofoe if you wanted to use her African name). She had been living in London for the past 30 years after moving there to have a better life when she was only 20. She was heading back to manage the small school that she had set up the year earlier and would not be going back to London until at  least May. She was lovely! The three of us talked for the ENTIRE 3 hour flight about teaching, Ghana and her children whom she had to leave back in London for school. She told us some amazing stories such as not knowing that she was pregnant until she was five months along, how she had adopted her sister's, who sadly passed away, young son and how incredibly proud she was of her daughter who was the first to go to University and gained a Masters in Chemical Engineering from Oxford no less! We were explaining to her a bit about what we were doing and what Project Trust was all about and she decided right then and there that she wanted some PT Vols for her school. So we swapped details and we are going to help when we can down at her school in Achatci. 

Anyway right now I am sitting alone, while everyone else is with their parters, in a hotel room which I will be staying in for the next 5 days. Tomorrow we have orientation with Nana (our Rep in the country), the next day we are touring round Accra then on the Wednesday everyone but three of us is leaving to go to their projects. The reason that we are not leaving is that my partner Sian had some issues with her visa and is having to fly out of Thursday so the four of us based in Hohoe will be leaving on Friday to start teaching on Monday :/

First Impressions;

1. SO HOT. Its midnight on a ‘cold’ night according to Nana and I’m sweating buckets and know I won’t get much sleep because of the heat...
2. PEOPLE ARE SO NICE. There is a perception in Ghana that white people or ‘Obrini’s’ can’t take care of themselves so literally everyone is helping us carry our bags and get in and out of places. Ghanaians are also famed for being incredibly accommodating and friendly and we have definitely seen it already and we have only gone from the airport to the hotel!
3. GHANAIANS ARE CHEEKY. Because we are Obroni’s they are charging us double for things. E.g at the airport 4 guys helped us load the stuff in the van and we had to tip them and they were asking for $20 (US) which is crazy. Managed to get away with tipping them $10 with my newly found refusal and negotiation skills

Emotions at Current Time;

1. Tired
2. Exhausted
3. Lonely 
4. EXCITED!

Going to watch a wee bit of Frozen to cheer me up a bit before I crash.

The One With The Mug Tears

So with a little under two weeks until departure date I thought it might be quite nice if I wrote another blog post, since it has been six and a half months since the last one!

In August I traveled once again to the Isle of Coll for training. On training I met the Ghana Fam, who I will be spending A LOT of time with over the next year and are just amazing. More importantly I met Sian, my partner, who I will be living, working and occasionally fighting with. She's great and I can't wait to see what this year brings for us. On training we did some teaching which was so much fun and I was surprisingly OK at it. We also learnt more about the county, it's history, it's people and our projects.

My project is in Ve-Koloemu near Hohoe, which I know will mean nothing to you, but trust me it's a pretty cool place! The school is called St Michael's RC Basic High School and I will be teaching Form 1, 2 and 3 which is like 1st, 2nd and 3rd year. The only problem is that they have me teaching English which is ok, Maths which is meh, Science which I haven't studied since 4th year and ICT with no computers. I feel like some swotting up is in order then!

On a more relaxed note my fundraising is done and everything is paid off! This is just crazy. I never thought that I'd ever get to this point. As a reminder I had to fundraise £5,600 for PT and £1,500 for traveling ect. This is the most amount to money I have ever had to deal with and has been, what you could call, a learning experience. I just want to take a minute to thank everyone who was able to donate or help with my efforts. I like to make a special mention to my Mom. Without her I'd be sitting here pulling my hair out because I'd have been so disorganised. Mom, I PROMISE that I'll work so so so so hard in being more organised, tidy and on top of things.

People keep asking me if I'm nervous about going and leaving everything behind. Up until yesterday I have said "Noooo I'm definitely ready to go!". However yesterday I randomly chose a 'There's no place like home' mug and I burst out into tears. I then told Mom this story and burst into tears again. So maybe I'm not as ready as I thought...

I'm starting to pack now which is weird. How do you fit your whole life for a year in under 20kg? It'll be a challenge I guess.

Anyway I'll end this one here. I should have another one up the day before I leave or sometime around then :)

Abby x

Map of Ghana with Hohoe

Waterfall near Hohoe

Ghana Fam with Our Dave (Ghana Desk Officer (front))

The One Where Macaulay Culkin Appears....

Hello! 

As many of you know I am off to Ghana in August of this year and  honestly can't wait! A year away from home (sorry mom) in a completely new place (sorry Scotland) doing something that might actually be beneficial (sorry school) = bliss. It's going to be a year of extreme heat, hard work, new experiences and hopefully some cracking stories. 

In Ghana I will be volunteering in a school but I don't really know exactly what I will be doing. The Project Trust website says;

"The projects in Ghana are based in small rural communities in the Volta region. Volunteers work in a range of different schools within their communities, working with students from Kindergarten up to Junior High School age. As well as teaching English there is the opportunity to teach basic science, ICT and maths classes and endless opportunities to get involved in and set up extracurricular activities."

Now, you may be thinking "em Abby...what is Project Trust" well let me tell you dear friends. Project Trust is a charity that sends 300 young people overseas to partake in worthwhile volunteering projects. It is based on the Isle of Coll which makes for a very interesting journey getting there, but it is part of the adventure I guess. All in all PT frankly awesome! 

All this fun and adventure doesn't come cheap! By July I have to have raised £5,600 for PT and £1,700 for myself (for travel ect). This was my face when they told me how much I had to raise...

But it isn't actually that bad surprisingly. I've been writing to trusts and holding events and babysitting my butt off and as of 14/02/2014 I've raised £3325!!!!!!!

Any way that's just a bit about what I will be doing and how I feel about things and stuff...This blog is mostly for me to look back on and cringe at, but if you find it interesting then by all means read my inner thoughts and feelings.

Abby x