Cath's attempt at a World Tour.

I am lying on the cold floor in my room on Sunday night after my first full day without my team for 10 weeks. Can’t do my washing as the water pipe isn’t flowing which means not enough spare water to clean clothes but should be okay tomorrow. I said goodbye to the ICVs at their debrief event on Saturday and saw the UKVs off at the bus station for their 12-hour journey to Accra on a coach, followed by resting in a hostel, they should be on their flight to Amsterdam right now and then it’s a short flight to London and off in their different directions to home. I ate two thirds of a pack of mint Oreos to get me through the grief as they were such an awesome bunch of life changing, memory generating people. The next cohort of volunteers don’t arrive until the 17/04 so hoping to do some travelling in the area if I risk assess it before going and then it gets approved by International Service.   Monday to Wednesday we were in the office completing the last couple of things ...

No more malaria on the team, last full week in the office completed and a few days of stormy rain to lower the ambient temperature to within tolerable levels. This week’s big event was our last visit to the communities to put on a tournament for our 3 villages: Nwagu, Gupanarigu and Limo. Earlier in the placement we had done a needs assessment to determine the biggest issues in their communities and the most common ones between all 3 were drug abuse (mainly tramadol, an opioid pain medication used to treat moderate to severe pain) and open defecation. We decided to focus on drug abuse as there isn’t realistically anything we can do to discourage open defecation if there are no alternatives such as drop toilets in the house or public toilets. These reports can be passed on to different organisations to make it a target in the future. Currently the focus of the government seems to be getting electricity supplied to them over pylons that are in the process of being built.   We h...

Well as the title said I have malaria. Now I don’t tell you this for sympathy or gifts in the post (which would be very nice regardless). Getting malaria here is as common as getting a cold in the UK and costs just over £2 for the medication which you take over 72 hours with as much rest and rehydration as you can. As you can imagine for the everyday Ghanaian, they don’t have the luxury I did of having a few days rest as they can’t afford to lose that income. There are 4 types of plasmodium parasite that infect humans causing malaria and the severity of it varies from person to person. The length of time you have it before you notice symptoms, your natural immune system and if you are taking an anti-malarial to slow down its progressions are some of the factors that alter its impact. Unfortunately, this meant I didn’t attend much of Independence Day, any of Garrison Day or International Women’s Day. However, as I have told the volunteers and they have told the communities, your healt...

This weekend marks the end of week 7 and only 3 weeks remaining of this cohort. Next week is already looking full with Ghanaian Independence Day, Garrison day (tour of the barracks) and International Women’s Day. However, did I take this weekend to rest and recuperate for the following week ahead? No! There will be time for that when my team head home to the UK before the next one arrives. Also, I sweat regardless of whether I am moving or not so might as well make the most of my time here. Last week in the office we had another session with our peer educators and visited our three communities to talk about child rights, focussing on child labour and marriage. Ghana introduced the Children’s Act in 1998 which aimed to give legal classification of a child, childhood, child protection and strengthened the system that dealt with child protection. This act defines a child as a person below 18 years old and prohibits engaging a child in exploitative labour meaning labour depriving child ...