All work and no play

June 10, 2018

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 some training with Sagnarigu women and delivering our final raising awareness event in our 3 current communities on sanitation. While we work hard and try and make the biggest impact we can, we can sometimes lose sight of how people cannot drop what they are doing to join our sessions as they have to prioritise their livelihoods above everything else.

Farming in the rainy season from approx. April – October transforms the land and provides this region with their biggest source of food and income. As soon as the first rains come, Mums, Dads and children are out preparing nearby land, tilling the soil, removing rubbish and building stick fences to keep out the free-roaming livestock. Some children are taken out of school during this period as all hands are needed to prepare. It is difficult to tell if it will be a few days or weeks before the next rainfall. It was nice this week that we could give the children some time to simply be children, one of the volunteers put on an art club and bought resources so they could come into the office and do some colouring.

This weekend I finally bought some small souvenirs (not exactly a tourist destination) for myself and family. I knew what items I wanted to buy from the start of the year but kept putting it off as my leaving date seemed like such a distance thought. Had an afternoon of retail therapy in the cultural centre and bought from some of the sellers that I have met during my several trips to show new arrivals around Tamale.

Next week is the final week of Ramadan. We have to wait until Thursday night to hear if Eid al-Fitr will start on Friday and run to Sunday or Saturday to Monday. It is a national holiday in Ghana that can’t be scheduled until the night before it happens as it is based on the lunar calendar. Possibly why we don’t have it in the UK, can you imagine companies trying to deal with the logistics in our mono-chronic society?

This is how women carry babies here. They can be farming, working, riding on bikes etc and have their baby snoozing away on their backs. Some say the babies here are quieter because they always have that contact with their mother.