I'm sitting at my favorite internet cafe, one of the few buildings in Tamale, possibly in the whole of Ghana, with aircon! However today they seem to be testing my loyalty to the place and have turned it off. Great!
My nose is running and my ears are blocked (the Tzedek cold being passed around the house is in full swing) and I’m suffering from a lack of sleep due to last nights celebrations. Jo's brother is engaged (Mazel Tov Mummy June!) and Jo also received a parcel complete with kosher sweets (g-d bless Candy Planet) and some dodgy pub quiz game. Whilst the whole house was shrieking over the impossible questions on the lap top (many of Tzedek's volunteers seem to have a 'slight' competitive streak in them) I was slaving away in the kitchen making a kosher cake in a pan on top of the stove. You can't accuse me of not having initiative!
Tonight is our official party to say thank you to all the NGOs for looking after us so well during our trip. This has been a long time coming as we still need to return the favour of them taking us all out for lunch on our first day here. However, the issue of food will prove to be very interesting... Ghanaians don't like the majority of our food and we have trouble getting used to theirs. What we miss dearly (cheese!!!!!!!) they have no interest in eating at all! Also they rarely eat cakes and sweets which in my view are essential to any party! This is just one of the many cultural obstacles we face here, whist I respect their opinion on the matter I’m still convinced that if I get my chocolate cake just right they'll see the light. It's only fair, I've spent the last two Sundays in church being preached to, now it’s their turn! I'm also going to attempt to make enough pizza with cheese more expensive than gold in an oven smaller than my suitcase...slightly worried though some would argue it's character building right??!!
Okay enough about food and parties and sweating in an internet cafe were the slow connection means that a page takes on average two minutes to load...'What about the rest of your trip?' I hear you say. 'Why is this your second entry in six weeks?' Well my excuses are poor, its just seems that everyone else says it so much better!
Last night Dan (Tzedek Dan) conducted a session which led us to reflect on our experiences here. He asked us to list three challenges we have faced and three lessons learnt. Mine were as follows;
Challenges;
- Communication
- Seeing the way women are treated here.
- Food (don't act like you're surprised!)
Lessons learnt;
- Patience
- Learning to accept and try to understand other people's opinions and customs despite not agreeing with them.
- Fully appreciating how lucky I am to have been born in the UK.
I think the above is self explanatory. It was really beneficial to actually discuss our experience in this manner whilst comparing it to our worries and hopes before the trip. I can almost certainly claim that we have all had our perception of poverty, Ghana and ourselves somewhat altered in the past six weeks. We have all learnt a tremendous amount about development and the positive (and possibly negative) effects we can have on developing peoples. During our orientation a phrase often said to us as volunteers was, 'do no harm'. Two months is an incredibly short time to have an impact within our NGOs. We are all novices in development and are here to learn.
I'm sure I could ramble on for the rest on my allotted internet time but the real reason I’m here is to finish my NGO's website...http://www.prowacid.moonfruit.com
(Mum and Granny I will write more, I promise!)
Abi
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