Amy’s adventures in Ghana

We got water in our house yesterday – sooo exciting!!  Honestly never thought I would be so excited about having a shower.  So we filled up all the buckets, washed our clothes, cleaned the house… I had a wee production line set up, boiling water on the gas stove, filtering it and then filling up the bottles for drinking water.  The water we use for cooking and washing up needs to be filtered, so there was a batch just being filtered as well.  So I think we are fully stocked up now for another week. The rains should start to come in March/April which I think will mean we’ll get running water more often. 

My email is playing up.  I am so annoyed cos I had sent some group emails round with photos but they don’t seem to have sent properly.  Now that I have my laptop configured it is easier for me to email but the connection is really slow- so bear with me!  You can have a look at SIMLI Aid’s website at www.simliaid.org they are a much bigger organisation than I realised and are involved in lots of areas of human rights, not just women’s rights.  It’s great actually to be involved with such an interesting charity.  I am really excited and really just want to get my teeth into some work now, but it all takes time.  We are going to visit some of the rural projects on Wednesday and Thursday this week which will be great and then hopefully we will be given more information about what they want us to do. 

I found out that they were awarded around £16,000 from Comic Relief for a microfinance project, which gives small loans to people, mainly women, to start up their own businesses.  So I guess we may apply to them again for some more. 

Ok, lots of news.  I am in Tamale now, my home for the next (possibly) 2 years!  The drive up from

Accra

was pretty hot and sweaty, 7 of us crammed into a land rover with all our luggage piled on top. We had to leave some stuff behind as it was overloaded!  It took about 13 hours as there was major roadworks for part of the route.  I was so excited to see our house – we’d heard quite a lot about it and I had this vision of it being perfect. I am sharing with Pam, from the

Philippines

.  I wasn’t disappointed when I first saw the house, it looks so cute from the outside.  It’s a pink bungalow with a garden and a wall all around it and big fancy gates. It’s pretty new and in a new part of town very near the office. There are lots of half built houses so we don’t have many neighbours.  It’s nice inside too but there was no furniture at all – only a bed in each room.  Also it was pretty dirty but it definitely has potential!  Pam and I have done quite a lot already, started to clean and we now have 2 tables.  Actually as I write this Pam has just made a wee wall hanging pocket thing for the shower room. 

Unfortunately we only get water at the weekends – so couldn’t do much cleaning as we hardly have any water! There is a large hole outside which we can fill with water at the weekend then draw the water out. So that’s what we’ve been doing this week.  It’s funny how your priorities change so much. Most of today has been spent collecting water, filtering water, boiling water. I even had a dream about water last night! It’s so damn hot too. I don’t have a thermometer but it must be high 30’s if not into the 40’s.  We have ceiling fans but it is soooo hot at night.  And with the mosquito nets the fan doesn’t really have any effect.  I cant remember what it feels like to be cold! 

Tamale itself is great. It’s much smaller than

Accra

but still a big town, but it feels small enough to get to know people. We are actually about 4km from the centre, so we are going to buy bicycles as we rely on taxis at the moment. As I said, the office is about 5 mins walk away so that’s really handy. We’ve been to the office but we start properly next week and are going to visit all the community projects they are involved in. 

It’s predominantly Muslim and there is a mosque near our house.  We can hear the calls to prayer in the morning and evening.  I think we are going to go on Friday with our neighbour Sahadatu.  She owns a wee shop just next door to our house which is really handy. There is a big extended family of her sister and husband and 4 kids and her daughter. They have been really friendly and just brought us round 2 huge pineapples earlier.  She is going to take us and show us what to do at the Mosque.   

Oh, we also inherited a family of chickens with our house!  Don’t worry, they will be promptly slaughtered if they show any sign of sneezing or sickness!  The Ghanaian government seems really concerned about bird flu and are advising everyone to avoid eating chicken.  Around our house there are lots of goats and cows just wandering around. Not sure whose they are.  We also have a cashew tree, a papaya tree and 4 banana trees in our garden, so when they produce fruit I guess we can keep it. 

The fruit is amazing here. The pineapples are so sweet and the mangos are huge.  It’s mango season next month and they are grown here a lot, so I am looking forward to overindulging.   

Ok, I have a bit more time now, so will try and give yous a bit more detail about my time in Ghana so far.

I forgot to tell you that i was upgraded on the flight over! woohoo, have absolutely no idea why but the plane was really busy. result.  I was sat next to a nice girl who was a consultant for an NGO which builds roads and she gave me the names of some friends of hers in Tamale. Apparently there are lots of Cuban doctors and she has Lebanese friends too - so quite multicultural. 

There are 10 VSO volunteers here doing in country training. 5 from UK, 2 Indian, 1 Canadain, 1 Kenyan and 1 Phillipino.  We are staying in a pretty swanky hotel in Accra and the schedule has been pretty relaxed.  We start early, about 8am, but usually finished by 3 ish and theres always lots of waiting around for people or whatever.  Been told we need to get used to this - it’s Ghana Maybe Time (GMT - get it?!) We’ve been having classes in the local language appropriate to our area - there are over 70 local languages in Ghana. Mine is Dagbani. Greetings are the most important thing and apparently if you don’t greet someone they will really hold it against you. There are about 10 different ways of saying HI, depending on the time of day, weather, their sex, age etc…  arrrghh!  In Dagbani, the word of "white person", which we will be called alot, it’s not insulting or anything, is Siliminga.  ho ho, that amused me!  So I’ll get to Tamale and everyone will be calling me a Silly Minger!

Before I came to Ghana everyone told me that the Ghanaian people are so friendly and my experiece so far is that they are.  Walking down the street in Accra you don’t get any hassel really, hardly anyone harassing you to buy things which I have found  in many other countries.  If you speak to someone they seem to go out of their way to help you in anyway you can. For example we stopped a lady selling stuff by the side of the road for directions and she actually got someone else to watch her stuff and took us to the place we wanted to go. 

The food is grand too. No chance of me losing any weight here! 

All the VSO’s were invited to a reception at the British high commissioner’s house on Wednesday - free beer and wine in a ridiculously fancy house with armed guards, barbed wire round the 10ft walls etc.  Fair play to him, but I felt a wee bit uneasy.

We travel up to Tamale tomorrow. I cant wait to get there now. I think we start work on Tuesday. I got told yesterday that their funding runs out in March - no pressure for me then!!  I’m looking forward to acutally doing some work now and the project sounds really exciting.  Apparently they have been doing a project educating people about witches, cos a lot of elderly women are considered to be witches, if the "lesser gods" indicate that, and they get kicked out of their villages. 

anyway, my time is almost up.  over and out.

Yes, I made it to Ghana. It got up to 42 degrees C today! it was pouring with rain and freezing when I left UK, so makes a lovely change. It’s grand here, we’re having a fab time. Staying in a great hotel in Accra with air con, thank God!  We’re doing our in country training, which mainly involves eating and goign to the market and chatting -ti’s a hard life!  Everyone is lovely, a good mix of ages and nationalities - 5 from UK, 1 canadian, 1 Kenyan, 2 Indians and 1 Philippino.  Me and my housemate, Pam from Philippines are going to Tamale on Sunday. We found out today that we will share a 3 bedroomed house together, with 2 bathrooms.  result! 
I haven’t taken any photos yet, apparently you need to ask for permission from anyone you take ap hoto of, even if it’s a group shot, so I havne’t dared yet.  Accra is huge and not really that photogenic to be honest so I’ll wait for some exciting beasts to photograph.
Righto, that’s all for now.