More on life in Ghana...

Hello everyone - I apologise it has been quite a while since my last entry. But here is an update of life in Ghana.

Before I begin I want to clarify something that Joel said - I did not at all 'pray hard to Jesus' on our church visit last week. I think he is bitter because I annoyed him for the three hours we sat outside in the rain waiting for the very long church service to finish!!!

The last few weeks have been good and busy. I have been working hard at my organisation. Now the school where I was teaching has vacated for the summer holiday I am no longer traveling to the village every day. Instead I am now working in the office doing various things. I have been writing up a teacher manual for the school, as currently the teachers have no guidelines whatsoever and just teach what they feel like teaching. Hopefully what I am writing will be used in September to boost the quality of teaching in the school. It's quite sad though as we have only two more weeks of volunteering! It has gone so fast and I feel like I have so much more to do in such a little time... but we all knew before we came that the actual volunteering time we had was short. I will just try and make the most of the time left!

Last week we went on a three day trip to Bolgatanga in the north. The trip consisted of us visiting the NGO Afrikids, driving on really bad roads, having our photos taken with crocodiles, driving on really bad roads, walking across the Burkino Faso border (whatever Sasha, Dan and Joel say, we all walked across the border!!!) and getting our car stuck in mud. All in all, I'd say the roads were the highlight. ;) Seriously though, Afrikids was very interesting to visit and we saw some really good projects that they run. It was great to see how children who have lost almost everything have had smiles returned to their faces by the Afrikids projects. But also, getting the car stuck was an experience. One the villagers who came to help us get the car out said, and I quote, 'I will go to find more black men to help'. Sorry to say, the English boys didn't make such a difference to the final effort to move the car... It was shocking how bad the roads are here, but I guess a government who can't afford to boost the education system is hardly going to spend money on roads that aren't used very often... But it does show us what daily life is like for the villagers. It is very difficult for them to transport their crops to sell in the town when the roads are so bad.

Many of us seem to have fallen ill this week - now both Sasha and Sam have malaria. But don't worry parents, they have their medication and are feeling fine. It was about time some of us got malaria after all! Today those of us who fasted the 25hour fast of Tisha b'Av survived with no problems. It was an experience to mourn over the destruction of Jerusalem out here in Ghana!

Anyway, I think that's all for now - I am getting attacked from all angles by lots of bugs in this Internet cafe and I think it's time for me to go...
Thanks for reading!
xXx