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Back to work – Paul in Ghana

This week I was finally able to get back to school after such a long break. The school opened on Tuesday, but I did not have any lessons until Wednesday. So on Wednesday I turned up only to find that they were still cleaning the school, so no lessons. On Thursday the children had been ordered to do the weeding with machetes. I don’t think health and safety, or any idea of efficiency applies to Ghana. By Friday there were at least some students in the classroom, but I was told it was too early to begin proper lessons and just do revision. This seems ridiculous when I am only working at the school for 7 more weeks and it seems most unlikely that they will employ another maths teacher to teach the class after that. The students also did not have any of their books so I was forced to do the whole lesson on the board. Apparently no one is expected to work on the first week back at school. When they had 2 weeks of revision and 1 week of exams before Christmas I find this complete waste of time rather criminal. How does Ghana aim to pull itself forward and out of poverty when the culture is so laid back?

On Sunday it was Kirsty’s birthday, but as we had school on Monday morning we decided to go out for the evening on Saturday. We were joined by some of the teachers from Radiant, some of the hockey players Kirsty plays with and Grant, who is now back after spending Christmas in Spain. (As he is a South African he thinks of Spain as a cold country, so it did not seem strange for him to go there when it was cold) We first went for drinks at a “spot” near Kirsty’s house. After a few hours waiting for everyone to arrive, we decided to go back to Kirsty’s house to go to the toilet before going to the nightclub. I don’t normally tell you about when I go to the toilet, but I think this is a special case given what happened next.

I went in and could not get through the door to the toilet. It is a stiff door and requires a knack that I have not learnt let. As I was pretty desperate to go, I was pleased to see Grant emerge into the house as I assumed he could open it. But he was looking very concerned and informed me that Chris had been kidnapped and taken away in a taxi. They were launching a rescue mission and wanted everyone with them. So they all rushed out the door of the house, but I decided I could not possibly go until I had gone to the toilet. They all went and I heard Kirsty’s host family’s car moving off at speed, evidently in persuit. I tried again at the handle of the door, but it was no good. I was by this time very desperate and quite scared after hearing that Chris had been kidnapped. I did not want to leave the house because I was on my own and the some of the kidnappers may have still been out there. I then saw a plant pot and shall I say desperate times called for desperate measures!! Unfortunately it was only afterwards that the plants were artificial and so were unlikely to drink any of the liquid deposited in the plant pot!!

After this I decided the safest place was through another set of doors, in the dining room. I thought I could not attempt to phone Chris because I did not want to antagonize the kidnappers into doing anything rash. I tried phoning Kirsty, but her phone was switched off. I was very much on my own.

Then my phone rang and it was Chris. He said everything was fine and they were coming back to pick me up. But I was not sure whether to believe him. Was he only saying that because he had a gun to his head? Did they want to take me away too? There was no way to tell. When the car pulled up I was unsure about going out. But when I saw that it was the family’s car I was much reassured and it was only then that the real story came out.

When I was in the house, Chris and some of the others had been standing outside waiting for us. Then a taxi pulled up and Chris assumed it was someone friendly saying hello-this happens a lot in Ghana. But then they tried to grab the mobile phone in his hand (which was actually Kirsty’s, given to him for safekeeping!!) He tried to resist until they pulled out the gun. At that point Chris threw Kirsty’s phone in the ditch. As the taxi driver bent down to get it, Chris ran away very quickly raising the alarm. The driver then went into the family’s car and took another mobile and a wallet with money inside. They then drove off. Grant had seen the driver looking threatening and then driving off, with Chris no longer there. That was why Grant came in claiming Chris had been kidnapped. So when they went off in the car they were going to the club and it was me who was missing (as I was hiding in the house). Kirsty’s mobile had not worked because when Chris threw it in the ditch, the battery had fallen out. The thief had retrieved the phone, but not the battery. They have since found the taxi, but are still trying to find out who the thief was. Uncle, who is in his 70’s, has claimed that when found he will make sure he personally teaches the thief a lesson. His son claimed that he did not care about the human rights of the thief and so I shudder to think what kind of punishment will be handed out.

The actual nightclub was rather boring in comparison. Genesiz nightclub is supposed to be the busiest in Kumasi, as place that Mr Squires once claimed was famous for nightclubs. As it was there was only our group and a few Indians in the club. I think Squires got the information from wikipedia, for it was nothing special. It was half past one by the time we got there, so it should have been busy. But there was hardly anyone there, so it was slightly disappointing.

Kirsty had a party held by her host family on Monday evening. Luckily they have not found any evidence of anything in the plant pot yet, so they do not hate me yet. The highlight of the evening was when they brought out the birthday cake. A marks and Spencers syrup pudding imported from England and shared between more than 10 people. Disappointingly they did not have any birthday candles.

I hope everyone is OK in England. Are you all back at Uni yet?
From Paul

Happy New Year from Ghana

This week we have finally got a result to the elections in Ghana. The run off was last Sunday, but due to some difficulties getting the ballot boxes out to the rural constituencies one result did not come in until Saturday. By last Tuesday the NDC had 50.13% of the vote to the NPP’s 49.87%. But as the one remaining constituency is a NDC stronghold, it was obvious that the NDC would win. The NPP boycotted the final constituency claiming that they had been the victims of corruption. But it seems most unlikely that corruption would have come from the party who were previously in opposition. After all power corrupts, not no power. If the elections had not been free and fair is it really conceivable that the losing candidate would have gained such a large percentage of the vote? Despite being an NPP area, there were pockets of people celebrating the result on Saturday. John Atta Mills, who was the losing candidate in 2000 and 2004, will now be sworn in as President on the 7th January. Nana Akufo-Addo has claimed that “I’ll be back” which made me laugh, much to the annoyance of the NPP supporters I was with!!

Due to the election results being announced (theoretically at least) on Tuesday, we thought it was safer to wait until Wednesday (New Years Eve) to travel to Busea. Unfortunutly that meant that most of the hotels were booked by the time we got there, but we did eventually manage to get into just about the most grottiest (if that is a word?) for 10 cedi a night. Busea has one of the best beaches in Ghana and is one of the few genuine tourist centers. There appeared to be very few locals that were not trying to gain from tourism and so everything was far closer to western prices than we are used to. From the beach there is a view across to an island that looked to me a little bit like Tracey Island from Thunderbirds!!

As well as the beach, Busea is also famous in Ghana for pancakes. So we found a place called “Daniel’s Pancakes” to try them. This was a small business with two brothers running it. One was in charge of pancakes (presumably Daniel) and the other in charge of fruit juice. But there seemed to be some competition between them as the “fruit juice” one would not let us look at the pancakes on the menu. At the end we had to pay each of them separately which confused us totally. Due to an absence of honey, I had to have the chocolate with my pancake. I’m not sure it really added to it. I also had the freshly squeezed orange which was really good, as well as a nice change from my normal reliance on water!!

For the evening we had food at a restaurant and then attempted to stay there for as long as possible as we waited for the New Year. We were told there would be African dancing, music and acrobatics round a bonfire from 7.00. But this did not actually start until nearer 11. Even by Ghanaian standards that was later than we had expected. Unfortunately it started to rain which dampened the bonfire and meant that we were the only ones on the beach watching. So much for the dry season that we are supposed to be in. Then again the lightning and thunder did make it a dramatic way to pass into 2009. The drummers were quite good, while the fire eater was fairly impressive considering there was probably no health and safety precautions made. The most impressive was when he crawled under an inflamed plank of wood that was supported by two beer glasses. There was no countdown to the New Year which was fairly weird. So we just had to guess based on our watches that ran at different times.

On New Years day we decided to attempt to learn to surf. Kirsty has surfed once before, but neither Chris nor I have ever even attempted it. Based on this experience I will not attempt it again either!! To have a one hour lesson cost 25 cedi (12 pound 50), which is more than we have paid for anything since being in Ghana.. The first problem I had was carrying the board. As most of you know I am not exactly the strongest and surf boards are not light. In my defence my problem was not the weight, but the shape. The board seemed to long that whilst I could lift it, it was not balanced and so was falling down onto the sand at one end. In the end I was forced to let the instructor take it for me. The second problem was that I had never really thought about surfing before, so made the rather foolish error of putting the board in front of me when wading out towards the waves. The first large wave came and knocked the board towards me, sending me flying and then submerged beneath the water. It would not be the last time I would end up underneath the waves when I was supposed to be surfing on top of them!!

When I actually attempted to surf it did not get much better. I could get on the board and let the wave take me, but standing up on the board was another matter entirely. Every time I got onto my knees I ended up falling off and under the sea yet again. The instructor was not a great deal of help, with his sole piece of advice being “get on the board and try again”. I could have worked that bit out without him. Kirsty and Chris seemed to be having much more luck. I did eventually get on my feet, but only for a few seconds as the wave petered out near the shore. I could not honestly feel those few seconds were worth all those times being tossed in the drink by the waves. In whole hour session, I managed to stand up twice. I’m glad I tried because it would have been boring not to, but to paraphrase Sir Steve Redgrave, if you ever see me attempting to surf again, you have my full permission to shoot me!!

We arrived back in Kumasi late on Friday after a couple of days at the beach. The people from the office had bought a goat and had promised to take us out on Saturday and show us how they slaughter it and then prepare the meat. I was not looking forward to that one bit. Mercifully, by the time we had arrived they had already slaughtered the goat, who I had called Gordon when I saw him (or her) sitting in the back of their car the week before. Whilst the end result was the same for the goat, to have not seen it actually happen somehow makes it ok. Is that the same as saying that the slave trade is OK as long as it does not happen near me? The closeness of the two ideas is something I am not exactly comfortable with. But as it means that I can safely continue to eat meat without the memory of them slaughtering Gordon every time, I am very happy that things worked out in this way. The goat meat is actually very tasty and I think they should definitely have it more available in England.

Post Christmas update from Paul

I think it would be fair to say that I have had a very different Christmas. The fact that it is warm outside and I am living in a very different culture made that inevitable, but at times I could not really believe that it was Christmas time!!

On Christmas Eve we were invited out by the men at the office that I have been working at. Due to the increased traffic they were not able to pick us up, so we made our way to the city centre where surprisingly we found them without too much difficulty. They then took us to a bar for drinks while they tried to persuade us that their party, the NPP, was going to win the presidential run off election on Sunday. They also bought us goat meat which although quite tough, it had a reasonably nice taste to it. As promised they also bought jollif rice, which made a nice change to plain rice.

By the time we got home I may have been ever so slightly tipsy. Unfortunately the rest of the family were going off to church for a Christmas Eve service. Rather annoyingly Chris then suggested that it would be fun to join them. I could not really refuse and be the only one in the house not going-I might have looked like some kind of anti-Christ!! The Church service was in TWI, the Ashanti language, which just added to the “fun”. Chris later admitted that he regretted his decision the moment he walked into the Church and has vowed that we will not go to a TWI service again!!

On Christmas day we also did not manage to avoid going to Church, although at least we went to the English service this time. In the end, it was not too bad. There were a few Christmas songs, but the whole thing seemed remarkably unchristmassy (I don’t know why, but the spell checker does not like the word “unchristmassy”!!) Everyone seemed to be carrying on as if it was not Christmas day at all. The shops on the streets were all open and there were just as many people on the streets as usual. I’m told that Christmas in Ghana was especially subdued this year because everyone is more concerned about the election on the 28th December. The 7th December and 28th December elections are national holidays where nothing is open, so maybe shopkeepers felt they had to open on Christmas day to make up for lost revenue.

Despite that there were some things going on at our host family’s house. A lot of the family all came to our house, so Christmas did still carry some importance. We were given some biscuits and a bottle of coke which I think was our Christmas present. Our Christmas meal was jolliff rice and chicken, which I believe had been recently slaughtered. All I can say is there were some chickens on Christmas Eve and there are not any more!! The family seemed to like the presents that we gave them. Tiffany really liked the toy mobile phone we gave her. She seems to get very excited by anything that flashes and as she only ever talks to her mum on the phone, the idea of having her own phone makes her very excited. As for activities that was about it, in the afternoon I read my book. So I would be lying if I said it was the most exciting Christmas ever, but it was not an unpleasant experience either.

Not a lot happened on Boxing Day until the evening. One of the people that Kirsty plays hockey with offered to take us to a nightclub. Just for the novelty factor and the limited things that we had to do made it an exciting prospect. Although his name is Icke, everyone refers to him as “The Peacemaker” although we are not really sure why. We went to a very crowded bar first because we did not want to arrive too early. It seemed noticeably busy, even by Kumasi’s standards which meant that it took ages to find a seat. Due to the noise it was impossible to have a proper conversation with anyone, and the drinks were expensive so we decided to move on early to the nightclub. Unfortunately they were charging 8 cedi each (4 pound), which although it seemed cheap enough for us, it was too much for the other Ghanaians. We thought it was unfair to go in without them, so we decided to postpone it to Kirsty’s birthday on January 18th. So overall it was not one of the most successful evenings ever!!

I hope you all had a good Christmas and have a fantastic 2009!!
From Paul

Merry Christmas from Paul in Ghana

I finished school for Christmas last Thursday, so for the time being I have a lot of spare time. I will not be teaching again until the 12th January which is quite annoying because I am running out of things to do in Kumasi. On Christmas Eve I have been invited out for a drink by the people at the office, which may or may not involve being given food. I hope so because Joliff rice was mentioned and we do not often get that with our host family. I have no idea what I will be doing on Christmas day. We will stay with the host family I think, but they have made no mention of what they are actually doing on the day. We then aim to go to Busia on the 30th December and spend New Years Eve on a beach. Other than that it is fairly empty.

On Saturday I went Christmas shopping in the market. Before this point I have always stayed on the outskirts, but on this occasion we decided to brave going right into the centre. Kejetia market is the largest in west Africa and very crowded. The narrow passageways do not help and it is always a very slowly process going down each alleyway. They seem to be attempting to sell everything, most of which is completely useless. For example there was one passageway in which everyone was selling random things which they had packaged up in a fancy way. They had ten cans of coke wrapped up, as well as soap and other standard household items. We tried to avoid the foodstalls because of the different smells of meat, spices and fish. However we ended up in one part of the market where there were live chickens in very cramped conditions. The selling of live chickens is not unusual on the streets, but so many in such a small space gave a pretty horrid smell. As for the conditions, it is obvious that animal welfare groups do not have a very loud voice in Ghana. In the end we bought a handbag for the owner of the house, some jewelry for the housekeeper (whether it is tasteful or not we have no idea, we just picked the first lot we could find for less than a cedi) and a toy mobile phone that flashes for the little girl. I think that should probably suffice, especially as we are not expecting anything in return.

On Sunday we went to a hotel where they had a swimming pool. For 5 cedi we were allowed to use the hotel’s swimming pool for as long as we liked. It was refreshing and good to get a break from the hot conditions. I think it is the first time I have ever been sunbathing on the 21st December. I really hope your jealous.

Christmas seems to be a much more low key event in Ghana. I have seen the odd Christmas decoration for sale on the streets and we were even able to buy some wrapping paper to wrap up the presents. But we have asked different people what they do on Christmas day and most people do not seem to know. Whilst they do know it is Christmas time, I think it is most unlikely that it will snow!!

Merry Christmas
From Paul

Paul’s Gap Year in Ghana

Paul is away with us at the moment and is sending us regular updates.

Follow his trip here:

This week, with the schools having no lessons due to the end of term exams, we went traveling to explore the Volta region. Francis originally quoted us a price of 320 cedi each for the trip, but eventually decided it would be cheaper if we went without him. In the end it cost us less than 100 cedi each, so our decision was justified. Even so, it was the first time we have been for more than a day trip and meant that I now had to do a lot more of the planning, rather than leaving it up to him as I had done before.

So last Thursday we caught a bus to Hohoe from Kumasi. On the way there we went without crossing Lake Volta, so had to go the long way around which ended up taking over 8 hours. When we got there we found that Hohoe is much quieter than Kumasi. It was a real struggle to find food on the streets, which is in complete contrast to Kumasi, where it is difficult to move for different people trying to sell you all kinds of different food. The Matvin Hotel, where we stayed, was also very quiet. It was supposed to have a bar and a restaurant, but the restaurant was not open in the three days that we were there and the bar only sold Guiness. The rooms were reasonably cheap at 10 cedi a night, which when Chris and I were sharing a room meant that the cost was less than 3 pound a night each. Whilst there was no electricity, at that price we felt we could hardly complain.

The next morning we decided to visit the Wii falls, which according to the guide book was the most popular tourist destination in the Volta region. We paid for a guide to take us for the 45 minute trek through the forest area to the waterfall itself. Although we had not seen anyone on route, I was still surprised to see that there was no one else there. The waterfalls are the highest in West Africa, standing at approximately 50 metres above the ground. However officially they are not the “largest” in Ghana because more water comes down at Kintampo than Wii. The water actually looked more like a fine mist coming down, but as you got closer there was still quite a lot of water coming down at once. The pool at the bottom was not very deep, so it was more of a case of wading out towards the waterfall than swimming. The water from the fall felt very similar to that of hail stones as it hit the back of my neck. As I waded closer the volume of water made it very difficult to stand up. We have some videos of us being pushed around while trying to stand under the waterfall which looks quite funny-if you have ever seen pictures of people being hit by water cannons the waterfall had a very similar effect.

Unfortunately the sky clouded over so we did not stay long. I cannot moan too much about that because it was probably about 30 degrees still and I’ve heard it has got down to 2 degrees C in the UK. The guide had abandoned us by this stage, so we had to find our way back through the forest on our own. We had to cross 9 streams on the way through and with so much greenery the forest could easily have been somewhere in the UK. What you would find less of at home where the large spiders in the middle of the pathway. Chris and Kirsty are scared of spiders so our journey back took a lot longer due to their attempts to avoid them. To be honest had they not mentioned them I probably would not have seen any of the spiders. Admittedly, when I did see them they were rather large, but as long as they were not poisonous I did not know what all the fuss was about.

On Saturday we set out to go to climb Mount Afadjato. It took a one hour taxi journey along some very rough roads to get there. We paid the taxi driver 20 cedi between us to take us to the mountain, wait for us to climb it and get back down again, and then take us back to Hohoe. Can you imagine a British taxi driver doing all that for just over 10 pounds?!! Arasjato is the highest mountain in Ghana at just over 800 meters high. I’m told that that is not very tall for a mountain and that it could be climbed in 45 minutes. I think that was a rather low estimate considering how unfit I really am.

The climb up was incredibly physically demanding. It was fairly steep and the terrain was quite rough, but the worst problem was that the temperature was about 35 degrees Celsius and the forested area made the air extremely humid. It reminded me of the tropical biome at the Eden Project-the difference being that there were a few steps to climb, rather than an entire mountain. The heat made it very difficult and I had to stop to rest after every few steps. I don’t think I have ever sweated that much and within a few minutes I was soaked with sweat. At one point I lost my footing and slipped. Luckily I landed on my backside not too far from where I slipped. Even so it was fairly painful. Chris and Kirsty play football and hockey every week so they are much fitter than I am and were waiting at the top for a long time for me to catch up. The views at the top were really good. As it was not too high there was no cloud cover in the way, as was the problem at the top of Snowdon. We were so far east that the next mountain range along was in Togo, rather than Ghana.

Whilst going down the mountain was not as physically demanding, it was a lot more treacherous. My mild fear of heights and my uneasiness after slipping earlier meant that my journey down was very slow. I was glad that the guide stayed at the back with me, although he did look very bored trying to go as slowly as I was going. I also found that my 1.5 litre bottle of water was going too quickly, so I was forced to ration myself to one swig every 20 minutes. That did give me a slight incentive to keep moving as if I was too slow the water would run out. In the end it took 3 hours to climb up and down, double the predicted 90 minutes that the taxi driver had told us. But he was not too upset that he had spent 5 hours on only getting 20 cedi.

On Sunday we started our return journey that would involve two ferries to complete the round trip. The first ferry was at Kpando (pronounced with a silent K) which was about an hour from the hotel. We arrived at 10 o clock, but were told the next ferry was not until 1.30. We were offered the option of traveling in a local’s boat instead. That also did not leave until 1.30, but took 45 minutes to get across, rather than 2 hours. The boat was basically a large rowing boat with a speed boat engine on the back, but even if it left at the same time as the ferry, it certainly looked more fun. After a very long wait we boarded the boat at 1 o clock. The actual ferry never did arrive, so we were glad that we had chosen to go on this boat. A slightly concerning feature of the voyage was the sight of a man bailing out water from just under my feet. Apart from that the voyage was rather boringly safe. It was reasonably quick, only taking 15 more minutes than the man had estimated (which is quite efficient by Ghanaian standards!!!) We arrived at a beach on the other side of the lake and took a tro to Donkorkrom. There we stayed the night for 5 cedi a room which was extremely reasonable. Having said that the noise of the goat outside would have made it unreasonable for them to charge much more!!!

The next morning we took a very crowded tro to get to the next ferry. Part way along the journey one of the passengers got off, rounded up some goats from a nearby field and lifted them on to the roof of the tro. By the fact that no one else seemed surprised I’m assuming they must have been his goats and this was normal in this area. We arrived an hour late for when the ferry was due to leave, but it was still in the port waiting for us. For once we had used Ghanaian efficiency to our advantage. The ferry was about the slowest I have ever been on. If I could not hear them, I would have assumed the engines were not switched on. The lake could not have been more than a mile across and yet it too half an hour to cross it. When we finally got off we took a tro back to Kumasi. Unfortunately the driver obviously thought it was more fun to stay in 1st gear for as much of the journey as possible, even when going down hill!! On a reasonably quiet road, I looked back at one point to see a line of 10 vehicles, including large lorries, waiting for a point to overtake. Eventually, though, we did arrive back in Kumasi.

Have a look at my profile, I have added some photos of Ghana. Please note that they are Kirstys photos, not mine. So any comments will go to her as well as me.

Have a good Christmas

From Paul

Beth says ‘Its hard work in Ghana…’

Work placements in Kumasi, Ghana

Hi David
Just a quick email to say i’m having a brilliant time-everything’s great! Francis is working us hard mind-i’m in 3 schools and 2 orphanages! loving them all though!
Hope your well
Beth

Sarah and Claire enjoy orphanage life in India

Voluntary work placements in Indian orphanages

Hi there- a report as promised!
 
After a 10 hr flight wih British airways and “Sex and the City” we arrived at the smelly, hot and humid Chennai airport. Even at 4.30am there was a sea of excited brown faces awaiting our arrival at the gate! We were taken to our hostel in Egmore and given time to aclimatise to the surroundings and the variety of new sights around us.During the next couple of days we were taken by minibus to see Spencer Plaza (a large shopping mall that provides us with hours of entertainment every week!), a small church of St. Thomas and even a model village so we could see how each religion affects the style of living of each family. We found this very interesting but were more enthralled by the huge platters of food we were given ranging from bland chutney to stupidly spicy orange stuff (yes thats the technical name!) We drank from coconuts and moved on to Mamallapuram to see some temples and the Shore Temple. Morag wasn’t feeling too great so we didn’t sdtay long but fully intend to return at some point…I hear there’s great shopping there too!

Jon reports back from Dubai

Outdoor Education placements around the World

Hope you are well. 3 weeks have simply flown by, and so far we’re all having a fantastic time. Graham has been terrific in helping us all to settle down.

Sian enjoys New Zealand

Paid work in Bay of Islands and Queenstown, New Zealand

‘I went to New Zealand with Changing Worlds for my gap year in September 2005, which seems so long ago now! It was really easy to plan with them, it made my first trip away from home so much less scary! Changing worlds did all the things that I couldn’t easily do from here, they got me a job, found me somewhere to live, sorted out a rep to keep an eye on me, booked my flights and gave me all the information I could ever need!