Cath's attempt at a World Tour.

Sorry readers for the delay in this post. I started my journey down to Accra on Monday 25/06 at 3pm. It was painful to say goodbye to Hajia, IS staff and my ICVs all at once but it was a beautiful sadness and thankfully what's app is a thing in Ghana. If you believe in bad omens, then the coach being over an hour later would start your senses tingling. However, the coach was nice and fancy; big comfy seats, individual power sockets and air conditioning so it looked like it was going to be a hassle-free journey. We set off and got 45 minutes outside Tamale then the coach suddenly stopped and remained stopped for no obvious reason for 2 and a half hours until an older, more cramped with no sockets replacement coach turned up. 18 hours from start to arriving at the hostel but we eventually did arrive and volunteers spent a few hours relaxing until they started their plane journey the same afternoon.  The following day, Tom and I met Nanna (my co-team leader) in Accra as she had

During my time in Tamale, not one day has passed where I didn’t get called Siliminga. It means white person, but it isn’t said with any malice. Most of those who say it are small children shouting “Siliminga, hello, Siliminga, how are you?” Replying with “Hello, I am fine”, doesn’t dampen their spirits and they continue their musical chant over and over again, getting louder the further we go or more passionate and excited if you answer back. There is no winning in this conversation game that I have found. However, there is a part of me that will miss this daily exchange and the buzz of feeling special even though I’ve done nothing to deserve the attention other than being white. Still very white, I might add after 6 months here …. I must tan when I’m sleeping, and it’s gone by morning. This week was our last 4 days in the office. On Tuesday, we had our last peer education session where we invited a tie dye trainer to come in and teach peer educators from our communities and some

This week was our last week visiting the rural communities that we worked with this cohort. After looking at the budget we also decided we were able to do events in one of mine and one of the previous cohort’s communities. We visited them earlier in the placement and education for girls (aka girl child education to Ghanaians) was still a major issue so we went back to see if we could challenge some views and promote a healthy debate. Facilitating a discussion for community members to talk about important issues might seem an obvious way to tackle this but ask yourself – when did you last sit down with your neighbours and discuss issues in your community?   So, we visited Nwagu on Tuesday, the main roads leading us to the dirt one that took us further out into the bush looked unchanged. However, the transformation from the end of January to now in the rural areas was breath-taking. The sky was blue, the small sparse scruffy patches of grass had changed into ankle high carpets of

2 weeks today will be our debrief event marking the end of our placement here. I will have to pack, get some snacks for the 12-hour coach journey to Accra, handwash my final items, give out anything I think would be more beneficial here than taking it 3000 miles back to the UK and, hardest of all, saying goodbye to the people I have spent 6 months of my life with: my amazing host mum and all the staff at International Service. Greetings are very important in Ghana so it will feel strange to end my new routine and not to say “Desba” to the tailor on my way to the roadside, “Antiray” to the PAGSUNG women making soap and “Anula” to the yellow-yellow drivers who already know I am going to home to Bachee-bachee junction before I finish my evening greeting. This week has involved a lot of planning in the office, we have looked over what we can realistically do with our remaining time here and so have a very busy week 9 visiting 2 old communities, delivering a school session, doing

Water, an easily accessible necessity in the UK and in most of the developed world. It is easy to get cold, bottled, out of the tap; for cooking, cleaning and washing our clothes. We don’t have to wait for a “rainy season” or worry about the water being purified in case it carries waterborne pathogens. As I am on a DFID funded placement, they risk assess everything to an extreme degree so I have not been placed in a house where water shortage is a noticeable problem. I am also very lucky that my host mum has a fridge and water filter so I only have to run it through the filter before I can drink it out of a glass. Some weeks we have been rationing water as it does not flow through the pipes to the houses at all times. Residents have to wait until the water flows and then open up their pipes to fill storage tanks, jerry cans or buckets. Drinking water, for most people in Tamale, is purchased in small 500ml sachet bags which can be purchased for approximately 15 peswas (2.5p) each

This week was a quiet one in the office as we attended 2 goalball events and PAGSUNG/Youth Alive’s mid-term review. The other project in Ghana, which I have mentioned before, is REACT who had 2 groups, 1 in Tamale and the other in Sandema near Youth Alive. This was their last week in Ghana and featured two goalball events that their project was building up to: a regional competition and a national competition. PAGSUNG attended the nearby regional competition at Tamale Polytechnic University while Youth Alive supported the Sandema team. The regional matches were between the different goalball teams from the communities that they have been working with, the winner of the regional progressed to the national competition on Thursday. During their time here, REACT’s focus was ch allenging the disability stigma. “In Ghana, over 300,000 live with a severe visual impairment. They're often undervalued by those around them - and as a result, excluded by society. All because of a lack

Tuesday was our first awareness raising event for this cohort. We are working with 3 communities and have 15 volunteers so split the group into 3 groups of 5 and we all went into the communities to do an event linked with an international day. We felt the most relevant one during our time here was Day of the Families. Like in the UK, families do vary from home to home. However, I have found the nuclear family is most common here with a mother, father and multiple children. Furthermore, it is common for extended family like grandparents and aunts/uncles to live together or nearby. Tamale and the surrounding area is a majority Muslim region and they do practice  polygamy here, so it isn’t unusual to find a household with a husband and multiple wives. One of our volunteers lives in this kind of family unit in a complex that contains 27 members. http://www.un.org/en/events/familyday/index.shtml - “ Although families all over the world have transformed greatly over the past decades