VSO in Ghana / East Africa Cycle

Herald Magazine article

2011-11-03T14:25:00.001-07:00

And.. there's a feature running in this Saturday's Herald Magazine (05/11) about our trip.

The Return

2011-11-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

Tall buildings, choice of foods, i=Pads and Kindles and i-Phones, restaurants, public transport, trains and fast cars and smooth roads, friends, family and delicious meals and cold rainy days, delicious sandwiches and reliable electricity and running water... so many things to be excited about now we're back..

I'm trying to remember to be grateful for all those things but its easy to see that appreciation slipping away.
I miss the random and bizarre interactions and aspects of being in Ghana and then East Africa, the incredible friendliness and generosity of strangers, the warm sunny days or excruciatingly hot sweaty ones, the wonders of spending so much time outside, the slow loping pace, the vibrant colours and crazy drivers, the spontaneity and incredible kindness of all those who took us in (that applies to Scotland too).
Thank you. Lucy

Travel as a selfish activity..

2011-08-18T06:06:00.000-07:00

Travel is exhilarating and so many more things but ultimately its incredibly selfish. While we've been cycling around East Africa - exploring in a slow and almost old-fashioned manner - the area has been struggling with the worst drought for 60 years. We have, on the whole, been out of contact with the rest of the world and the route we have taken has generally been far more lush than I'd expected. While staying with relatives in Naivasha and Nakuru we saw first hand the concern and impact of less than average rainfall but since then there has been no mention of rain or its lack. It is only in crossing the west of Tanzania - and seeing dried up river-beds and hearing leaves so dry they crackle when they hit the earth. There is no doubt that we've been consumed by the practicalities of our route, where to buy food and water, how to avoid potholes, how to find a place to sleep but ultimately there are so few things to worry about day to day and we're guilty of sometimes forgetting the bigger picture and wider issues.

A long way further east the worst drought for more than 60 years is affecting millions of people.

To make a donation to the DEC East Africa Crisis Appeal call the 24 hour hotline on 0370 60 60 900, visit http://www.dec.org.uk or donate over the counter at any post office or high street bank, or send a cheque. You can also donate £5 by texting the word CRISIS to 70000.

Anyone wanting to stay up to date with developments in East Africa, the emergency response and the fundraising efforts can follow the DEC on twitter at http://twitter.com/decappeal or become a fan of 'Disasters-Emergency-Committee-DEC' on Facebook.

A totally unscientific study

2011-08-14T12:19:00.000-07:00

Totally unscientific study on women and cycling..
In Kenya we cycled with a lovely guy called Eric who covers 40km to
buy slightly cheaper maize over the Ugandan border which he can then
re-sell. He, as with most people we've met on the trip, seemed
genuinely shocked that a woman would and could ride a bicycle. And in
line with the comments of others, was particularly surprised that a
man would travel with his wife. "But where are your children? Who is
looking after them?" is what he and most others have asked. He told us
that there was research proving it was unscientific for women to
cycle. Interestingly women here are expected to walk for miles, carry
incredulous loads, balance children and do the farm-work but
apparently, they're too weak to cycle. So I've pulled together some
stats in a completely unscientific way..
In the course of cycling around Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania
we've seen about 58 women on bikes and tens of thousands of men.

The breakdown is as follows:
Kenya - 2
Uganda - 0
Rwanda - 0
Tanzania - 56

The impediments are multifarious. In remote rural communities most
women don't have access to sufficient funds to buy a bicycle - still
something of a luxury. Men tell them they are not strong enough and
that it is inappropriate (even unreligious). And they are expected to
wear long skirts or dresses and carry their babies which makes it less
practical.
Bearing in mind that these communities have little or no access to
public transport, it makes the injustice somehow more significant.
Lucy

Character and characters

2011-08-02T08:01:00.000-07:00

You get a bit of a feel for the nature of people when you're cycling along, generalisations based of course on nothing more than a few days experience. But it's quite interesting to think back at our perceptions of the distinctive character of different areas.

The Kikuyu we met were very educated and opinionated people - happy to speak with us on equal terms (depending on social class). Along the roadside you got a real warm feeling from people as they gave a nice open two handed wave and a big smile. This was often accompanied by shouts of 'Jambo'. I've no idea who told them that I was, but it was really nice of them to make me feel welcome.

Kalenjin people seemed incredibly modest, gentle and showed genuine interest in what we were up to, although certainly didn't force conversations or shout after us. Children would just smile and wave or run alongside.

Luo (Western Kenya and Eastern Uganda) were much more vocal and shouts of Muzungu, How are you? of Jambo tended to echo round the traditional homesteads as we passed through villages. The thousands of other cyclists often entered into conversation. Interesting to note that it would be largely men that would speak to us (ie me).

Jinja and Kampala had real multi-cultural feels with all sorts of tribes as well as Indians, North Africans and whites all over the place. Difficult to really get a sense of the places in just a day or two.

Uganda was a real surprise - incredible landscapes changing every few kilometres, great food and hospitality. Heading down the West of Uganda from Fort Portal not only the landscape but the language and feel of people changed every few kms. Literally go from one village to the next and people wouldn't understand the few local words you'd picked up earlier the same day. As we went south, the children became more and more excited and confident at approaching us, asking things and grabbing onto the bikes. Some villages the menfolk were hostile looking, others very friendly and open. Women generally were generally always cheery and waving. The most disappointing aspect of our interactions came closer to the border as children became more aggressive and continually demanded money, pens, books, sweeties...etc...etc. As Lucy has blogged about earlier, we learned that this has become a real problem caused by foreigners handing stuff out as if a few shillings is what will close the income gap.

This got incredibly frustrating as day after day we were looked as as stationery shops or confectioners. And it was in these last few days that we had a few things stolen from our bikes as we were moving - kids grabbing stuff from panniers.

An immediate change across the border in Rwanda. Language became a real problem - outside of the cities almost no-one has any English and only a few speak French. But the children no longer demanded stuff, they were just incredibly excited - overly so because they would grab onto all parts of the bike in excitement. This led to a comedy tantrum from Lucy and resulted in one little girl tumbling backwards into the ditch. Still, child abuse is (allegedly) common in these parts and the girl got up laughing.

There is certainly no mistaking the fact that this small country is massively overpopulated. There is almost no break in the houses all the way through and every piece of land, no matter the gradient, is farmed. Of course the country has a pretty horrific recent past and one weird aspect of the character is staring (maybe related, maybe not). Cycling along, fellow cyclists would just stay at our pace and stare. Not saying anything, no facial expression. Just stare. Whenever we stopped, crowds of people would gather in beside us and just stare without expression. No matter what we said, even in local language, did or gesticulated, the expression rarely changed. Very chlostrophobic and really difficult to handle when you're not used to it.

Crossing the border into Western Tanzania was just the most dramatic change imaginable. Suddenly space. Miles would go by with noting but the odd mud and thatch homestead. And people would just wave, say Jambo, or just show indifference to us. It was such a pleasant change after feeling so hemmed in. One particular aspect we noted was the deference that rural girls and even some adult women would show us. Many would quietly say a word that I can't remember how to spell, that literally means "I hold your feet", often accompanied by a curtsey. In fact lots of the kids demonstrated absolute terror at seeing us - running away or hiding in bushes. Probably Hibs fans.

Bit of a ramble but I found it nice to recall!
Andy

Primates

2011-08-02T07:46:00.000-07:00

Saw chimpanzees in Kyambura Gorge.

Saw gorillas in Parc National des Volcans in Rwanda
(pic to follow).

Both experiences shocked me. I was previously unaware how closely related Lucy was to the primates.

Things I didn't necessarily know before we set off....

2011-08-02T06:48:00.000-07:00

1. It is possible to cycle 1750kms through East Africa without being eaten by lions, bitten by snakes, attacked by armed robbers, swallowed by potholes...
2. In Rwanda trying to bribe a police officer is punishable by three years in prison (not something we tested personally).
3. You can be imprisoned for making someone a birthday cake.. (see Ugandan President's birthday).
4. You can stand very close to a warthog without being harmed.
5. Drivers here are actually incredibly passive, despite seeming aggressive.. What happens while they are driving is not considered to be in their hands.
6. People can almost run you down and simultaneously greet you like a long lost cousin.

Lucy

Pics..

2011-07-23T01:51:00.000-07:00

Give me pen...

2011-07-23T01:37:00.000-07:00

This is a big thank you to all those agencies and individuals who have decided to assuage a momentary feeling of guilt by that handing out pens, sweets and money to poor children along the roadside in Uganda, Rwanda and other developing countries.. Thanks. The fact that this means children stop going to school in case they're lucky enough to get some money or a Bic biro.. and that more of them get run over.. and that it creates a culture of begging from a young age seems to pass most people by. Once you're on a bike and you're rolling through towns and villages and countryside slowly you get a real appreciation for how many children now think muzungus are bank machines.

Lucy

Roads

2011-07-23T01:18:00.000-07:00

The road less travelled.. generally seems to work out the best to avoid trucks and traffic, but from the map and so many directions lost in translation.. it can be pretty tough to calculate what the surface and gradient will be like before you actually cycle it. Generally there seems to be an inverse relation between the number of people who tell us it's "good, flat, tarmac" and the terrible quality of the road. A red or yellow road on the map could in fact be an almost vertical marram track, strewn with boulders, giant holes, crooked ravines, sand, road works and mud. The further south we went in Uganda the more exciting and unpredictable the roads became and the more spectacular the views. There were clues - such as the word volcano or crater lake in the map - but no contours. It's exciting too that road works continue despite the traffic. The idea of closing a road to allow safe passage while gritters, rollers, water sprinklers and giant diggers cut up and re-form the road, is anathema.

Cycling the pass from Muko to Kisoro in the far south west of Uganda should be set up as an expensive adrenaline activity for those needing a sudden and lasting (several hours) glimpse of their own mortality. The smooth tarmac and "thousand hills of Rwanda" is almost a joy after that.

Lucy

Random camping

2011-07-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

After an incredible day of lion and elephant safari with a Kazak couple we picked up the night before, an evening camping inside Queen Elizabeth National Park seemed a wonderful way to finish the day.

The guidebook says something like 'be careful where you walk around the campsite'. Never mind around, are you safe in your tent? Warthogs seemed pretty interested in our dinner. Distinctly cat-like calls echoed through the area and snuffles and grunts convinced Lucy that the only way to overcome her Hyena/ snake/ hippo/ crocodile fears was to carry out her midnight pee in a tupperware pot without leaving the canvas.

I slept soundly.

A few days later and after a dusty ride up and down the road from Kyambura Gorge a local mentioned a hot spring near the rural settlement of Kitigata just 20km ahead. Getting a second wind, we pushed on and even a Lucy tyre puncture delayed us no more than a Ferrari pit stop in our quest for serene hot bathing.

Not quite as anticipated, the spring was packed with over a hundred locals. Our arrival provided mirth, but mainly the 'you ain't from around here' staring session akin to entering a pub in East Belfast. Unfazed, we erected the tent and ploughed, tripping and stumbling through bodies for a bathe. Lucy received much attention from the local men - interested in her production capabilities. I got gravel down my shorts.

Our sensational ability to cook and eat also gathered a crowd of kids.

Folk continued to arrive and bathe long into the night and the place was full again before we woke up. Great to see it being used, but perhaps not the idyllic peaceful night of our dreams...

Again I slept soundly, thanks for asking.

Andy

Volcanoes, craters and cement

2011-07-16T07:51:00.000-07:00

The western part of Uganda seems to be dominated by volcanoes and craters. Cycling through it is clearly a little challenging, as evidenced by the distance travelled each day. But then, as I keep reminding Lucy, distance is not the object, and the area is rich in activity, beauty and incredible sights.

Spending the night at Nkuruba Crater was incredible. The stillness of the crater lake, the echos of bird and monkey calls, the shimmering moonlight. Truly memorable, as was the view from the 'Top of the World'. This peak, manned by a slightly odd local lad, looks over several of the crater lakes dotting the landscape for miles and miles.

Surrealism followed as we stayed in a local guest house (read cheap room, noisy telly, tasty local food) in Hima, home of the mighty Hima Cement man and his imposing factory that towers over the town in catalysed the formation of.

Really interesting place and one of the friendliest in the area (we'd just cycled through a few contrasting places - dirty and a bit hostile), probably a result of the relative spending power generated by steady employment. I guess the Hima equivalent in Scotland could be somewhere like Grangemouth, but I can't recall feeling the same warmth towards that little corner of my homeland...

Andy

Dust, dirt, Muzungus

2011-07-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

After some hairy experiences on the road to Jinja we cut our losses and accepted a lift to the capital.

Kampala is a distinctly African town. Dirty, dusty and filled with traffic.

Our first and last experiences of the city are traffic jams. In between we had a lovely time with friends of friends of acquaintances who are current VSO volunteers, most importantly Stuart and Elizabeth who were kind enough to put us up for a couple of days and hike our bikes around on their car.

Managed to visit the Luganda King's palace, which once was the site of some horrific doings by Idi Amin, and now the site of my first Irn Bru experience in Africa. heavenly.

We owe a great deal of thanks to Stuart and Elizabeth for making our stay incredibly relaxing and jovial. When they're not taking wrong turns into matatu (aka tro tro bus) parks, they're taking on the sizeable task of advising the Education Inspectorate on modern procedures and targets. See http://www.ritchiesinuganda.blogspot.com/

Women as heifers..

2011-07-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

While sitting in a nearby, natural "hot spring" in Uganda (picture a very busy steaming swamp full of smiling semi-naked people) a very friendly chap just asked the husband, (while staring at my bikini-ed boobs) : "Does she produce?"
To which Andy responded: "Not yet." Nice.

The Source of the Nile

2011-07-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

Speke reached the source of the Nile all-right, but he didn't know it, AND he went and died in the process. What's the point of that?

We reached it and we knew about it. The damn fool should have cycled. But we did almost die as well. Firstly on the mental road to Jinja (more on that later maybe) and secondly nearly drowning in the rapids.

Great beer and food though.

Andy

Random stuff to the border

2011-07-11T09:15:00.000-07:00

After raiding the Gold Mine, we spent our ill-gotten gains on some well-earned pizza in Kisumu, followed by a trip to a Congolese music bar.

This was our first glimpse of the mighty Lake Vicky. It's more like looking out to sea - despite this being a narrow section it's just water as far as the eye can goosy-gander. Getting closer took something away from the majesty of it. Although there were some nice waterfront restaurants selling local food and drinks, it's clear that the best days of the Kisumu riviera are past. Trucks, motorbikes and cars all congregate in the evening to clean out their filth into the lake alongside boat operators trying to attract tourists for hippo trips. This takes place opposite a huge factory which we're told just dumps its waste into the lake. Pretty sad for those trying to eke a living from the tourists here.

HOWEVER, we did get incredibly close to hippos. While sipping a local brew, 4 of them came within 20m of the cafe.

At our noisy hotel we bumped into some nice Americans who invited us to the orphanage they're volunteering at. Really interesting to chat with them and especially to listen to some of the same working issues we faced in Ghana.

Trip to the local museum revealed some interesting stuff about the Luo tribes, but the highlights were the phut phut ride there, dangerous but recently fed snakes and massive Seychelles tortoise. 125yrs old, 140kgs allegedly. Looked about right.

Then off the border.

rossed the equator for the third time. But Lucy was too grumpy to stop for a photo with me.

We had a great 50km ride across the border with lovely local Peter who travels weekly into Uganda to collect cheaper foods to sell and for his family. Busia is a classic border town, all hussle and bussle, traders, money changers and dodgers hanging around. Quick meal of Ugali and nice green stuff with goat stuff and Peter accompanied us into Uganda.

The border is totally open so no queues and people just walking back and forward, except for the whites who must pay $50 for the privilege.

I guess it's similar to most African borders. Language, culture, architecture, everything just the same on the other side. Mainly because some numbskull has probably just taken a ruler through traditional tribal lands. The only difference was the profusion of bicycle (boda boda) taxis and President Museveni posters...

Just bumped into...

2011-07-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

1992 Olympic steeplechase champion Matthew Birir (as you do) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Birir.
Our sandwich stop one day happened to be outside his house. He's now a farmer
like most of the people in the famous Kip area of Kenyan Kalenjin country (unless they're athletes of course). Kenyans seem to be an unbelievably modest, matter-of-fact bunch and it was clear that this guy is no exception as he re-lived his incredible days traveling over the world as an athlete. The conversation started something like: 'Where are you from?... 'Oh you're from the UK? I used to live there...' (Where abouts?) 'Oh Crystal Palace' (Oh right, what were you doing there?) "I was involved in athletics' (as a coach?) 'No I was an athlete...' etc etc

I asked him what he did with his gold medal. He said he kept it in his house there, adding the immortal line without mirth, 'but it's perfectly safe. Kenyans don't value gold. They're only interested in cows.'

Later in the day we met a few more Kenyan internationals (hanging about, driving motorbike taxis etc etc) but the highlight was cycling past Kipsaus school where about 100 primary age boys and girls ran down the road alongside us up and down hills for up to 5km. Not a bead of sweat or panted breath - completely carefree and joyful, running just for no reason other than it was fun. Seemingly running without a ball to chase is fun to some people.

The downside of meeting all these damn fit kips is that this it is the only place so far where people are utterly unimpressed that we're cycling 2,000km.

Andy

Dangerous birthday cake

2011-07-02T01:16:00.000-07:00

Three men from the opposition youth movement have been arrested in Kampala for presenting the president of Uganda with a birthday cake for his '73rd' birthday... Some serious sensitivities about age (officially he's a sprightly 67).
Lucy

Pics

2011-06-30T08:20:00.000-07:00

Stunning images of attractive lycra-clad sporty/bumbling cyclists will follow by the way..
Lucy

Andy

Thankyou..

2011-06-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

... to Laura, Jeremy and Alistair for putting us up and showing us such fantastic hospitality despite the fact you didn't know us and we were several days late.. and filthy.. and too tired to speak..
From Nandi to Kibigori was a whooshing great downhill stretch complete with hairpin bends and one or two huge potholes. Breathtaking ride through the terraced green fields then a sharp right through flat ground overhanging with sugarcane twice my height. The landscape is so varied over such a short distance.
On our right is a huge ridge. We're told later by Rob - the geologist at the gold
mine - that this is in fact a mini rift valley running off the Great one formed billions of years ago. We go on a stunning adventure to see colobus monkeys with Alistair and Laura and then test claustrophobia to the max with a trip down the gold mine. It's fascinating, painstaking work that bears no relation to the panning of the Wild West. Concise geological mapping of a reef or seam of quartz (formed billions of years ago when liquid rushed in to fill gaps left by the shifting plates). Precise explosions. Grinding and then chemical treatment. Interesting to see where things actually come from. I didn't even freak out.
Lucy

ps note Indiana Jones - stylee wagon chasing Lucy down the mine

Vaseline

2011-06-30T07:50:00.000-07:00

Some great friends and relatives insisted we bring Vaseline. Thank you. By day three everything's hurting and the chafing has begun. We're told the back road to Nandi Hills is smooth tarmac. It's actually mud and rock and boulders and it's very steep. I take my first involuntary dismount remarkably well... and finally agree to get back on. The morning is cold, hazy and damp. The landscape is made up of steep escarpments and lush green fields full of maize that look like benign triffids. We take in spectacular views, our first puncture, a short piece of terrifying highway and then the lush green tea fields surrounding Nandi Hills. The clue to the incline is in the name. Stunning. We stop for lunch after 82km and decide to call it a day.

Lovely cup of chai.

It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive...

2011-06-30T07:43:00.000-07:00

It's a saying I love but in certain circumstances it's difficult to appreciate. Day two rolls like spaghetti hoops, soaring downhill, punishing uphill. All too steep. Stunning but slow. I expend a lot of energy coming up with more and more ingenious reasons for stopping (you'd be surprised how many there are). At each stop we are greeted by friendly and over-excited children. At one such top-of-hill-stop we meet an Olympic gold athlete (more from Andy on that one). It turns out we're cycling through marathon country where the children run to school at high altitude, over an incredibly hilly landscape - producing the world's top runners. Suffice to say we only make it about 50km before pulling in to a tiny village called Kamwosor. We stay in the local truck stop (quite literally) run by the lovely Joanne and eat the most amazing chapattis in the world in the least salubrious cafe. Great chat though.

African saddle sores...

2011-06-30T07:36:00.000-07:00

It started so smoothly. As the sun came up we rolled out of the farm near Menengai and floated downhill through the misty morning. There was barely a car in sight. Crossed all the way into the Northern Hemisphere. Could this really be so easy? Luke's route to Eldama Ravine really did seem quite remarkable. After 25km of sheer joy we started on the reality of 25km of sheer uphill. Luke's popularity plummeted. At the Mission we were met by wonderfully kind people and some exuberant cows. One of which slobbered all over my stuff. Day One complete. Not even saddle sore but unable to speak.

Lucy

Nice burdz

2011-06-29T07:33:00.000-07:00

Nakuru

2011-06-25T01:38:00.000-07:00

It was like saving up for the biggest, brightest, most explosive and colourful firework in the shop, telling everyone about it, organising a big display full of nervous anticipation and excitement and then watching it spit, fizzle and fade without even leaving the ground.. That was the start of the big ride. I'd managed to pick up malaria again just before we left Ghana and then got ill again in Kenya. The doctor ordered rest. The Nightingales in Nakuru could not have been more accommodating, hospitable and welcoming. Putting up with ill, distant relatives for almost two weeks (we were meant to stay for two nights) seemed just another part of their day. The silver lining in that much delayed fireworks display was that we got to know them and spend time with such a fun and easy-going family. It wasn't part of the plan but it was great. A thousand thank yous.

We visited the stunning Menengai crater.

Learnt more about farming than we'd ever imagined. Saw the wonderful Kenana knitters project - which uses local wool and natural dyes to create the most stunning toys and clothes and provides much-needed income generation for the local women near Nakuru.

And borrowed Luke's very cool 4x4 to spend the day driving around Nakuru national park. Which was an unforgettable experience (partly due to my driving). We saw hundreds of pink-tinted flamingos and pre-historic-looking giant storks flapping at the lake edge in the early morning sun. We saw herds of gruff-looking buffalo and graceful gazelles, huge thick-skinned rhinos (including a baby), strutting giraffes, skulking hyenas and finally a lion's mane (he was submerged and very relaxed in the long grass). Amazing.
Lucy

Naivasha – 2nd – 8th June

2011-06-24T08:29:00.000-07:00

Lucy’s mum grew up in Kenya so we’ve had the good fortune in Naivasha to have people to stay with.
We stopped in at Crescent Island on Lake Naivasha to stay with Barry and Linda
Gaymer and daughter Akira, distant relatives of Lucy. Linda runs a private wildlife reserve on the island and Barry is a professional game hunter, conservationist and many more things. The island is actually the rim of an old crater, now filled in by the lake, and just taking a stroll along it on our first day we ‘discovered’ an incredible array mammals – giraffe, wildebeest, Thompson’s gazelle, zebra, impala, elland, monkey, - including finally a hippo grazing by the waterside. Apparently they can run up to 40km/hr and I fancied my chancies of outrunning it but Lucy wouldn’t let me get any closer.

After taking the bikes out of their carefully packed boxes and putting them back

together in Barry's shed (yes that is my muscular physique in a vest), the following day we took a 60km bike trip into the foreboding Hell’s Gate National Park, so named because it quite simply feels like you’re descending into the centre of the earth. Absolutely stunning ride. The photo of us is up against Herschey’s Tower, named
some German chap who was looking for a route from the coast to Lake Victoria. He met a sticky end here at the hands of the locals after he failed to bring them any presents from the seaside, or something.

Unfortunately the fun sort of stalled there. Lucy came down with something the same night (just the usual tropical stuff – fever, headaches, runs etc) and we’ve been laid up ever since. Then I picked up more or less the same thing although more minor. Trips to doctors have revealed little, although the Nairobi expert reckons we’ve got mal-absorption (common in the early white explorers which makes it sound much more interesting than it feels). After months of planning, it’s been so frustrating and demoralising to be unable to continue.
However on the plus side we’ve had a lot of time to get to know Lucy’s relatives and their way of life, and we’re still in some stunning places and managed to take one or two trips out. We're incredibly lucky to have been with Barry and Linda when Lucy fell ill and we're incredibly grateful to them and Akira for looking after us (and putting up with us) for so long.
Barry has been pretty prominent in conservation efforts in the Naivasha area for his whole life. The challenges they face are increasing population pressure, land taken up by flower farms (from which your Tesco, M&S etc flowers come) and changing rainfall patterns. This means there is less water in the lake, less grazing land for animals to roam on and more people looking to poach animals for food. The national parks are seemingly fairly ineffective at protecting the animals on their land and guards and guides are known to collude with poachers. Private landowners seem to have a far better record than government run parks of protecting the wildlife – of course there’s a financial incentive to do so when you rely on them for tourist or hunting income. However they’re finding that the pressure of population, land and water is affecting their ability to continue. Barry also maintains that the ban on all hunting in Kenya (following pressure and funding from western wildlife charities) has had a detrimental impact on rare species because there is now much less financial incentive to breed them for tourist hunters (who pay a lot of money for the privilege of shooting something).
One day I left Lucy in bed and took a hike up Mount Longonot, 1,000m high over the Great Rift Valley floor that is part of an old crater rim.

Like most of the volcanoes in this part of the world, it rises straight up from nothing. A bit like the lost world down inside.

Andy

Arrival in Kenya

2011-06-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

I had a dream sometime in April that I had decided to skimp on costs and take a flight with Tro Tro Airways instead of BA. I'll keep this idea away from Michael O'Leary.

So we left Ghana in style by EasyTro on 1st June and arrived in Nairobi the following morning. Fortunately I slept through the whole white knuckle ride. The first thing that struck us descending the steps of the plane was the temperature – colder than a naturist caught in a Siberian blizzard. A brutal shock after spending almost 9 months in the West African oven to discover that parts of Africa were actually cold. Lucy immediately chastised me for persuading her to ditch her down jacket. I’m too busy regretting our decision to cut down on weight by only taking one sleeping bag to share…
We wanted a quick exit from Nairobi to avoid getting lost in traffic fumes and we’d been recommended a driver (John) to take us to Naivasha. John was brilliant telling us a bit about politics, tribes, landscape, history, and took us on the Old Naivasha Road (built by Italian prisoners of war during WWII) to marvel at the spectacular view across the Rift Valley as we descended the north escarpment alongside Mount Longonot. It was a tad difficult to take in what we were seeing. The area of Ghana we had been in was dense tropical forest, bright lush green all around, sticky and humid beyond belief and rarely could you see beyond your immediate surroundings. Looking across the dry savannah for literally tens of miles and with fresh air to breath it felt like the whole world was opening up for the first time. Truly awe inspiring.

Cycling in East Africa

2011-06-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

We’d always intended to take a bike ride somewhere in Africa. Well we've finally chosen a route taking in some pretty exciting parts of the world. 60 days round Lake Victoria taking in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania, hopefully finishing for a few days on Zanzibar (but we may have to get there by bus, boat or plane because of the distance), and returning on 10th August to London for Papa and Sarah’s wedding in London.

Preparations seemed pretty endless at times, particularly perhaps to those within earshot – which bikes, which tyres, which clothes, what medical stuff, what camping
kit, how many pannier bags, where to go, how far can we pedal, how do we fend off hyenas and snakes…? Planning stuff just helps build the excitement in my book of square Mulholland things to do. In Lucy's book it is just time that could be better spent reading a book, or worrying about hyenas and snakes.
The packing process was particularly fraught, generally with me taking a boot camp survival mentality and Lucy attempting to plan for some sort of comfort. Pah! I’d just like to get in writing now that I did not sneakily eject any of her stuff.

Andy

Fitba tops for school kids

2011-06-17T05:13:00.000-07:00

Ghanaian's are crazy about football.
In February I sent round an email to a fairly large circle of people asking if they had any old kids football tops that they would be happy to pass on to the kids in the Koforidua, expecting I’m maybe come back with 20 or 30 tops to hand out to a few people. How wrong could I be. The response was unbelievable and my poor parents ended up with a living room full of 306 items of football gear, including 201 various replica club shirts, 19 pairs of boots, 48
pairs of replica shorts and 6 pairs of replica socks. On top of this, Alves
Primary School provided a full set of strips, Eskmill Boys Club of Penicuik provided
two sets and Glasgow Rangers FC youth team supplied another set.. A couple of likely lads can be seen below sporting the colours of their favourites for the last time.
Many of the donations are clearly of great sentimental value, including two
toddler tops dedicated to Aberdeen’s 1983 Cup Winner’s Cup and 1984 League and
Cup Double triumphs, several to Henrik Larsson’s brilliance at Celtic and
Barcelona, two to 60 years of the legendary Penicuik Hearts, some to misty memories of Scotland’s last visits to the World Cup, various to times spent in Australia, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Malta, Italy, Monaco and Turkey, and not to mention one paying homage to the Cellar Bar in St Andrew’s.

The generous donators in full were:
Alves Primary School
Eskmill Boys Club
Clydesdale Hockey Club (Don Sinclair, Richard Jack, Russell Bradley, Steve Maitles, Johnny Mackay)
Gregor & Ruaridh
Ben, Sarah & Friends
Alistair Moles
Adam Jacques
Lorna Sibbald & Daniel
Alastair McWhirter
Thomas, Angus & Friends
Kris
Evin
Michael
Cadell
Graeme & Sheila
Rangers FC
Jill Morton

As well as this we brought back £400 in donations from a well known Edinburgh employer towards more strips. What on earth to do with them all? Well I spent many happy hours sorting them into roughly colour-matching sets and decided to give one or two sets to some of the schools with teams of boys and girls. My good friend Benedicta (local education officer) helped select the most worthy schools and worked with Aidan and I to distribute them fairly, with Benedicta always reminding us to insist on the girls getting a fair shot!

Agavenya PS & JHS

Bonya PS & JHS

Asikasu PS & JHS

Jumapo JHS

Densuano PS

Eskmill Boys Club of Penicuik provided two full sets of shirts, shorts and socks – really good quality strips – that they’d recently won the local Salmon Cup in. We
donated these to Bonya Primary and Junior High School, who now proudly display the newspaper clipping of Eskmill Boys Club on their notice board.

Bonya and Agavenya Schools arranged a friendly tournament to celebrate their new
kits. In two thrilling contests played before a raucous capacity crowd of chanting, dancing school kids (and subject to frequent pitch invasions), the girls’ .match went to penalties and was won by Agavenya, in the boys match a strong Bonya line-up edged past a nippy skillful Agavenya side 1-0. All the kids seemed really proud to step out in the new kits

Eskmill Boys Club http://www.eskmillfc.co.uk/EFC-Teams/u14-team

There are still more strips to hand out and Benedicta is on the case, so I’ll post up more photos when I get them.

Primary School Partnerships

2011-06-17T04:26:00.000-07:00

Not long before our tropical disease-induced flit to the UK, I started going round some schools with a local education officer, Benedicta Addo. She is a gem – a driven and selfless individual committed to the school children she is there to help. Her main role is to try to keep female students in school, but she has also heloped a few schools develop links with volunteers in the past.
She and I, with the support of Aidan Cantwell, have linked up two schools in Ghana with two in Scotland. The idea is to give them the opportunity to exchange cultural and educational learning between pupils, teachers and communities.
We spent a lot of time identifying schools here that were committed to the idea and then took them through the process of developing their understanding of what was involved, how they should prepare and how both schools could get out of it what they wanted. The principal challenge was to embed the understanding that for a partnership to work it has to be equal and therefore shared learning should be at the core of the relationship rather than a donor-recipient situation.
The partnerships are between
Mile 50/ Adweso Primary School, Koforidua and Skene Square Primary School, Aberdeen (http://www.skenesquare.aberdeen.sch.uk/)
And
Densuano Primary School, Densuano and Alves Primary School, Alves, Morayshire (http://www.alves.moray.sch.uk/)

You can learn about the Scottish schools from their websites.

Mile 50/ Adweso School is located on the south edge of Koforidua with an interesting mix of students from all social and cultural backgrounds. My esteemed visitors Mike and Evin were treated to some dancing and drumming performed by the kids, as you can see below.

Densuano is located in the eponymous village approximately 10km along a dirt track out of Koforidua. It’s a relatively new school and was built following a campaign by the local community, with huge support from the village chief. Alves Primary School gifted a set of football strips to the school and some gifts are winging their way back to Scotland as we speak.

So far things are at an early stage but I hope to post more more partnership updates in future as they develop.
Andy

Cadbury Cocoa Partnership (CCP) – Skills Training

2011-06-17T04:14:00.000-07:00

Before Christmas it was obvious that the principal aim of my CCP role was never going to quite work out. During December I re-focused on what I could actually achieve.
VSO is managing the project in the Eastern Region and is doing so by working with several Government sector partners (Ministry of Agriculture, Depts of Co-operatives, Community Development, Social Welfare, and the Cocoa Board (aka CocoBod). One of the objectives of the project is to strengthen the ability of these institutions to run the project and support the communities.
I therefore agreed with those concerned that I would assess the skills the staff needed, make some recommendations for delivery of training to enhance these skills and try to deliver some it myself before leaving.
With the help of some other volunteers, flip charts and post-it notes, I facilitated the partner staff to come up with what they needed/ wanted to improve on, married this with the upcoming project activities and made some recommendations for formal training, mentoring, practical tuition etc, along with costs and a proposed timetable.
Things move pretty slowly and by now it was mid-April. I had until mid-May to try to deliver some of the proposed training and so quickly sought and received approval for budget to deliver some of the skills requested by the staff.
Responsibility and power in most workplaces in the country seems to be retained by the few, with those further down the chain getting few opportunities to develop and neither receiving nor requesting information about the bigger picture. This commonly leads to misunderstandings, duplication, frustrations, de-motivation, a complete lack of proactivity, constant fire-fighting and, in the case of projects, complete failure to go in the right direction.
It’s really valuable to see just how bad things can be on a project, and particularly to see it from the perspective of a relative outsider. There are plenty of blunders being made here that I’ve made myself in the past, and problems surfacing that looking back I now see more clearly from many more perspectives than just my own. While I may commonly be heard to bemoan the bureaucracy and constraints of working in the UK, seeing things here makes you appreciate some of the structure and working practices you’re accustomed to.
During the consultation phase, many team members had asked for project management or work planning training of some sort. Hannah Curtis, another volunteer, and I developed a two-day course covering the fundamentals of these topics, with emphasis on (as well as a little theory): project planning; communication; delegation, motivation and time management, all aimed at beginning to address some of the issues mentioned above. Some of you may stifle a few giggles at the thought of me teaching someone else about time management, but I’ve always talked a good game.
Having watched a few workshops here before and witnessing everyone dozing off while someone lectured at the front, I was really conscious of the need to keep the subject matter at the right level and also to give the participants the opportunity to learn from practical sessions rather than direct teaching. We worked incredibly hard preparing interesting activities and key learning points and I could not have been happier with the result - I don’t think I’ve been more satisfied with a training session I’ve been involved in delivering. I saw so much potential in people that I’d completely written off before as unmotivated or completely lazy. It’s never been so starkly apparent to me that if you give people room, they’ll thrive.
There were 35 participants and most came to us at some point with huge compliments for the course, from junior staff who took a lot of learning about the importance of taking on responsibility and planning out activities, to senior and very capable people who said it helped them critically analyse what they were doing themselves and how to improve it. There were also a lot of compliments about the style of participative learning which I hope will start to embed itself in the project a little more.
So what was the impact? Well, who knows? I’d love to have got this moving much more quickly and to better embed responsibility for the teaching. I tried to do this as best I could in the time available by giving the partner staff themselves ownership and responsibility for the continuous training report and agreed a timetable with them and VSO. Some of the other volunteers have agreed to take forward more of the training.
As with any training, it’s only useful if you actually practice it and I think for the project management stuff it will need more in-depth training for key members of staff. However I like to think some of the key messages were taken on board. And I really hope that the open-ness we all developed in that workshop will be carried in a small way into their working lives. I’ll always remember that alertness, enthusiasm and potential that the participants showed and how good it felt.
For me, I’m quite proud of myself for not taking the easy option on this project and just walking away as it was all too tempting to do. I put a lot of work into this and it feels like it paid off. Sadly it’s probably the case that I’ve learned a lot more from th experience than anyone else has from me being here. But just now I feel that I’ve done the best I could. I honestly feel that, more than in any other previous job, I’ve remained intelligent, focused on my own goals and positive. These were some of the lessons I’d hoped to learn from a complete change of working environment and I think I had the freedom to do that once I forced myself to lift my head and look around at what was happening.
Andy

Michael and Evin's Big Trip South

2011-06-16T11:40:00.001-07:00

We had the exquisite pleasure of the company of a couple of true gents during the last two weeks of our stay in Ghana. We also had Evin and Mike over.
Here's a few highlights of their trip, which included communicating through the medium of drumming, getting fitted by a drunken grieving tailor, following ant colonies and skint his knees during a chaotic Man Utd goal celebration at the local spot (unfortunately no photographic evidence of this one).

Anyhow, thanks a million for spending your hols with us - brilliant laugh and helped us seen many old aspects of Ghana afresh.

Ability Bikes

2011-06-10T00:26:00.000-07:00

Ability Bikes is a bike mechanic and retail shop whose core business is to receive discarded or broken American and British bikes by shipment, repair them and sell them on for a profit. Nothing particularly remarkable about that – it’s fairly common practice in Africa where there is practically no domestic bike manufacturing industry.

However the interesting thing about this bike shop is that it is run and staffed entirely by people who have some form of physical disability, mainly caused by polio during childhood. Polio is pretty rare in Europe because of the vaccinations we get as babies, but you can’t walk down the street in Ghana without seeing a few people with twisted or missing limbs that is often the mark of a polio victim. More often than not, children with such disabilities are seen as a burden to the family and their prospects in life are relatively limited.

Ability Bikes was established in 2008 by 7 Koforiduans with the assistance and training of David Brannigan (http://bikesnotbombs.org/ability-meeting) to develop their technical skills as mechanics and business managers. Maud and Torsu run the shop and carry out the administration, Mirriam, Agyen, Lizzy, Julius and Sule run the workshop. All are co-owners.

This is quite a big year for them as they’re trying to make a significant shift in their sales numbers, moving away from selling wholesale to other bike dealers, to mostly selling direct to the public in order to maximise revenue and start to consistently make a profit without subsidy.

I was working with them from January to June to help implement an inventory system and develop a basic marketing plan. With the former they had a really smooth delivery in April and now have a good and simple stock accounting system.

With the latter they spent several weeks identifying and analysing their core markets and deciding on the actions required to tap into them – prioritising the low cost, high impact actions. I provided a bit of guidance. Maude and Torsu will now take forward the plan and design some stickers and leaflets, organise school and workplace demonstrations, arrange product placement in key locations around the town and other things to boost sales.

It’s been absolutely brilliant working with these folk. They are the most fun-loving, sharp-witted, entertaining group of people I’ve come across. I’d love to stay in touch with their progress when I get back – and help wheneer needed. It was quite sad to leave them and they reminded me a lot of what I miss most about being back home – random banter.

I should mention that Agyen is planning to do a few bike rides through Ghana to try to raise awareness for disabled people and possibly some funding for disability projects. Ultimately he hopes to do a circuit of Ghana. He’s looking for sponsorship to cover his costs but I wondered if he could do a relatively short ride, get a bit of publicity, set up a sponsorship page etc. I know the guys in the states are looking at this but if anyone has any experience in this area, please get in touch.

Web links
http://bikesnotbombs.org/ability-meeting
http://www.withmyowntwowheels.org/mirriam
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39302532@N04/sets/72157625872280523/detail/

Bumbling Tourists upgrade?

2011-05-16T16:55:00.001-07:00

Mike & Evin arrive tomorrow. Can't wait to see Evin in this heat ...b'Jeezuz...

Media-watch

2011-05-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

Lucy's review of Cape Coast's Fetu Afahye Festival is available online in the Herald Magazine 14th May edition. Unfortunately you have to register but you can take a free trial for 3 days and then cancel.

http://theherald.newspaperdirect.com

It's a brilliant read. Almost makes me wish I could go... Eh? Oh! Hang on...
Andy

Signs of God

2011-05-16T15:53:00.000-07:00

God plays a huge part in Ghanaian society. Just one of the many things that Britons have donated to the country.
Most Christians attend church several times every week. On Sundays the streets empty and shops shut up as mornings are devoted entirely to three and four hour services. Churches and mosques are usually the focal point of even the smallest village. Often you’ll come across a small settlement of only mud huts that has a grand sparkly religious building placed in the centre.
Interestingly, mosque-goers dispense their worship moderately and quietly.
The big thing in church-going right now is to be Evangelistic or Charismatic. The latter being, as far as I can gather, more evangelistic than the evangelists. I was told that in the 80s, many Ghanaian’s broke away from the evangelistic Pentecostal Church because it wasn’t fundamentalist enough (nb one Pentecostal Church round the corner from us wakes us up at night and in the morning with their all night services), and people wanted speaking in tongues to be compulsory in their churches. So they started up the Charismatic branches.
I dedicate the following pictoral offering to this aspect of Ghana (zoom in for details)…
Andy

So what on earth has Andy been doing apart from clogging up hospitals?

2011-05-16T15:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I was brought out here by VSO to work on the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership (CCP) with two main roles:
1. Train VSO’s own project manager to plan and deliver the project and improve the management systems
2. Train the staff in the district partners – Departments of Community Development, Co-operatives, CocoBod (the Cocoa Board) and the Ministry of Farming and Agriculture
Pretty soon after getting here I feared that role 1 (which should have taken up 80% of my time) was not going to go anywhere. There’s very little I can say about this online given that VSO Ghana’s future relies significantly on these types of projects.
Having spent three months trying to find different ways to approach the problems that I was here to address, I made the decision in December to stop and look forward. Through a combination of disappointment and illness, I’d been pretty down about the whole experience and had begun to spend a lot of time moaning about the situation and finding it difficult to see a way forward with the work.
Come December I stopped blaming and started taking ownership for resolving it. First by telling VSO I would no longer continue with Role 1. I think I’d made some minor progress with that role, but if I’d stayed here for 10 years I was never going to be able to tackle the fundamental issues that needed to be looked at – problems that have now bred wider problems – unless things a lot bigger than me changed, so it was therefore time to cut my losses.
Since then, my CCP focus has been wholly on helping the project’s district partners to identify their own training needs and to deliver one or two elements before leaving. Just as I was making progress on both, unfortunately I was sent home for some r & r which delayed things still further, although it opened up new opportunities that arguably have been the most rewarding aspects of the working experience. I’ll blog separately these, but I just wanted to give a bit of context first.
I learned some pretty valuable lessons in all this. Trust my gut instinct and act on it – it’s usually better than my reasoned judgement and it’s certainly quicker to come to the fore. There is always another way, so don’t be scared to take a leap even if that looks like failure to begin with. Recognise the importance of doing something you enjoy and that others appreciate and benefit from. The poential in great people is always there, you just need to be open to seeing it and them.
The last one I’ve only realised recently, looking back at how massively better working life in Ghana looks through the lens of having achieved things and as a result of having met some brilliant proactive, enthusiastic, passionate personalities along the way in people I didn’t see them in before.
Later I’ll blog a bit more about some of the bits and bobs I’ve been up. I'll also try to persuade Lucy to take up her quill...
Andy

Cain and Mabel...and Jesus

2011-05-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

An acknowledgement to Christmas and Hogmanay is slightly overdue on the blog. I hope you all had a top time wherever you are.
We certainly missed friends and family over the holidays, but we managed to make the most of it ourselves. There were times that being here felt a little lonely, but this was not one of them. We hosted a party on Christmas Eve, with around 20 volunteers and 40 neighbours, colleagues and friends coming along.
Tradition dictates that on Christmas Day, you must slaughter some animals that you’ve been fattening up all year. To feed our guests, we invested in two chickens (Cain and Mabel) and a sheep (Jesus) and enlisted the help of friends to do the needful.

Mabel had the last laugh, crapping on Lucy's foot before the deed was done.

In their memory…

Phew, I'm about to begin again...

2011-05-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

Many apologies for the pathetic lack of updates the last few months. It was a bit upside down for a while and since that point we've been crazily busy. I only have 6 months to catch up on so I'm going to chuck up all the posts I've had half-written for ages.

Going back in Feb/ March was very strange. We're so grateful to all of you who helped us out - too numerous to mention all, but particularly Jean & Douglas, Mark & Fiona, Fiona & Phil, Paul & Leanne, Col & Caz, Phil & Hope, Evin, Mike, James & Cathy.

We didn't take many pics but here are a few...

Odd being in the cold and snow. Odd being surrounded by goods, rampant commercialism etc, odd feeling ill. But the main thing that was odd was that having worked for several months in Ghana to feel a sense of place, being home made us feel that even less. Not that you didn't make us feel welcome, but we had no purpose being there other than to get better. And everyone else was just getting on with their lives as if we had never been away.

Lucy and I are both feeling great now - I can really see how ill I'd become now that I'm better. And that stone in weight I lost is back with a vengence.
Andy

Snakes on wheels

2011-03-07T01:52:00.000-08:00

There is an extraordinarily light, dewy quality to the morning here if you can beat the sun. At 5.30am there is just enough light to cast shadows beneath the banana trees and across the the amber road. And there is the wonder of sliding rather than steeping out of your front door, wheels gliding silently across the concrete and then grinding a little as they force the gritty dirt to give way.
Setting off when you imagine all the world's asleep is like sneaking down to the Christmas tree in the run-up to December 25th when all the presents are still hidden but the anticipation of what is to come is at its peak and you are gazing upon a future event which you know is just a few sleeps away and no-one else can see what you can.
Pink breasted woodpigeons, bright yellow weavers and elegant white egrets strut and sing in the dewy light. Wooden shacks selling cream crackers from China and sardines from Thailand are creaking open. Men and women are shuffling through the muffled streets. Suddenly there is a crescendo of drumming and high-pitched shrieks and singing as we pass the Pentecostal church.
The wheels glide smoother as the road becomes tarmac - slick and grey in the brightening dawn. More taxis appear - some veering too close, most beeping their horns encouraging a racing heart and tight clammy grip on the handlebars. The simple movement - the knowledge you are both leaving and going somewhere and that you have a specific destination in mind - quells the other niggling questions about where to go in life and how to get there.
You can't beat the sun. By 7.30am it is beating us; warming the haphazard green fields of maize and cassava, turning the road pale, heating us from heel to heart, heel to heart.

I am intolerant of food tolerances and feel phoney about phobias but it seems to me that a preternatural fear of snakes makes a great deal of sense. They offer us nothing but fables and fall guys and master a texture, shape and movement so alien to humans and other mammals and so repulsive to me, that even a flash of their shape on television leaves me weak and nauseous. Having momentarily forgotten my fear of falling, being run over by a tro tro (the local minibuses packed with people, goats, chickens and merchandise driven like track cars), smashed up by a 4x4, or toppled by a rampaging goat, (remarkable how many fears can whizz through one's mind while my husband swears he's been thinking of Scotland's chances of qualifying for the World Cup) I begin to relax and actually enjoy the smooth sensation of rolling quietly alongside lush green views. Realising this momentary pleasure I look down briefly and see an enormous dark grey snake sleeping on the road. My front wheel skims its lustrous shiny sides and I start screaming (for those who've read earlier blogs from the husband this might explain claims of a mad woman shouting Rake!) and shouting SNAKE repeatedly - as if that might provide some kind of protection from fangs filled with deadly venom. By the time the husband has caught up, I've burst into tears. The reaction is part outrage that a creature I have done so well to avoid while walking in the bush (by clapping my hands loudly - a not altogether foolproof method) has dared to leave its natural habitat. The husband seems quite confused but simultaneously impressed by the turn of speed I'm capable of (something which could easily be used against me on later rides when I claim I can't go fast). He explains very calmly that it would have been "just warming itself on the road because that's what they do". Thinking, wrongly, that if its explained as an everyday occurence that the wife will not then spend every minute of every cycle in Africa, expecting another snake to be lying in wait on the road. Great.

Malaria

2011-02-28T09:43:00.000-08:00

Having justified the right to write the Ghanaian blog whilst on a brief break in the UK, I realised it might be best to explain that we're only back for a few weeks and that we're back because we were both ill. It seems that despite taking regular anti-malarial prophylactics, it is still quite feasible to get malaria. I'm not entirely sure what treatment Cheryl Cole took but we'll be looking to follow her lead as long as it costs no more than £4.99. In Ghana people seem to get malaria so regularly that those suffering from it get about as much sympathy as someone suffering a common cold. It feels significantly worse and seems to last much longer but they would be astonished to hear of this fuss we can make of it here. I don't have a picture of the malaria parasite to illustrate this blog so instead I offer a photo we took of one of the traditional fishing boats with the words "Oh God" on its colourful hull. His name crops up on almost every sign in the country, in some form or other, and the main response after being diagnosed with malaria or typhoid or whatever other tropical treat, is to seek help from God rather than medicine. Back to the Cheryl Cole treatment...

Looking back

2011-02-28T09:05:00.000-08:00

It's most likely obvious to the majority but I've just realised - when pondering how to write the blog whilst on a rather unexpected sojourn to the UK for malaria-related reasons - that by the time an event has been written about it is inevitably in the past anyway. By the time one describes the particular tone of the sunset in words it has usually become redder or paler or disappeared altogether. And so it is that I feel justified in writing about things which happened before we came back to the UK to rid ourselves of tropical diseases. The first thing is that Ghana seems infinitely more appealing and rosy now we're not there. The memory of the heat fills me with nostalgia rather than making me sweat to the point of becoming dessicated. The constant shouts of: "Obruni, obruni," seem softer and less intrusive now they're no longer a daily occurence. Placing the looking glass in reverse, after a couple of weeks (for me - months for Andy) of drawing upon the wonders of the Ghanaian health service, our experience of being admitted to hospital in the UK and being treated by the NHS has been quite wondrous. Ghana has given us a new measuring stick by which to compare and appreciate - in this at the very least - how fortunate we are to have been born here.

Time

2011-01-17T09:31:00.000-08:00

IT is not that meetings, meals or buses start late here. Events begin when they are ready. Buses (or at least the tro-tro minibuses used across the country for long and short journeys) do not leave early or late – they depart when they are full. Meetings start when the majority of the participants have arrived. The day starts not at a particular time, but when the sun comes creeping up over the horizon. It is as if there were a unanimous, unspoken decision taken in a time before clocks and watches not to challenge the order of things. And that decision has remained intact – despite the advent of new technology. Each day, each week is so loosely partitioned, the dividing lines are almost imperceptible. Each night there is a fleeting sensation, as day becomes the briefest palimpsest of thinly veiled layers - as the degrees fall as softly as eiderdown and light is edged offstage to be replaced by darkness. Each week is punctuated – for so many of those people we have met – only by church on Sunday. The year is not drawn up in four quarters. The vigorous changes of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter are altogether missing. In their place is rainy, dry and then dusty. Right now we are in the dusty Harmattan. It is something that colleagues have spoken about with dread since we arrived. The days have turned milky white, the sun shrouded in white muslin, the air drier, heavy with dust that has been carried – somehow – from the Sahara. It begins when the air changes and the dust comes. If you ask when it will finish, people will tell you, it will end when it ends. Some will say January, others March or February or April. Equally if you ask when the bus will depart the answers will be varied and confusing. Ask how far it is to your destination responses will include: very far, not far, too far, close and very close. The assurance is always you will get there when you arrive. The specifics are something that will just happen and can not be controlled.

You are the bumbling tourist (3)

2010-12-07T06:04:00.001-08:00

You are attending the final day of the funeral/ commemoration festival for the deceased Queen Mother of the Kwahu Tribe. Having visited the local tailor, you are dressed just the thing and think you fit in wonderfully while watching the crazed dancing and wailing of around a dozen fetish priests and priestesses who are possessed by occasionally violent Lower Gods. A flamboyantly dressed lady dances towards you.
She rubs her hand on your crotch, squeezes her ample breast towards you and motions with her hands that she is interested in getting to know you in a carnal fashion. Not knowing how to react to a being of the otherworld, you just smile politely. As she grinds her bottom against your nether regions, an argument in Twi language ensues between her and another woman beside you. Your wife is nowhere to be seen. What action do you take?

Answer: A tricky one. The key here is preparation. Befriend the people near you who then will automatically take your side when something kicks off. When the argument balloons out of control, quietly shuffle out of sight. The priestess is issued a straight red by the mob and the game continues. You may be cautioned following the examination of video evidence, but you’ll be long gone by the time the review board gets round to meeting in this part of the world.

You are the bumbling tourist (2)

2010-12-07T06:03:00.001-08:00

It is 10am. As you are finishing your late breakfast, you receive an urgent invite to the palace of the powerful local Chief for some local chop (food). Although you are full to the point of bursting, you are aware that to turn down such a kind offer would be seen as a slight. Besides which, the Chief has already provided exceptional hospitality recently. At the palace, you carefully select a modest portion of recognisable foodstuffs and accept the offer of a large beer. However just as you are squeezing in the last mouthful of chop, two things happen simultaneously: a) your wife slides a large and unidentfiable lump of something from her plate onto yours; and b) the Chief himself comes over to offer you more chop from the bowls. You are aware that finishing all this food and the beer will make you sick, however to refuse would be rude and offensive to your host. The history of visitor sacrifices has already been mentioned in conversation. What do you do?

Answer: There is no easy answer to this, but the main thing is that you come out smelling of roses. Accept the chop and engage the Chief in conversation. You discover that the he has to attend an appointment relatively soon. Time waste by picking at the food and speaking a lot. The Chief soon makes his excuses and leaves, and you insist that you must stay to finish your beautiful meal. Once he has departed in a flurry of ceremonial cloth, quickly guzzle the main staple (the beer), push the plate to the side, offer the remains to the servants and head off with the wife. The time-wasting risks a yellow, but the Chief now thinks you enjoy his company and his food and the wife has no choice but to award brownie points for digging her out of a hole. Nice one.

You are the bumbling tourist (1)

2010-12-07T05:57:00.000-08:00

You are cycling to the funeral/ commemoration festival for the deceased Queen Mother of the Kwahu Tribe. You and your wife are happily tootling along on a flat stretch of uncharacteristically good road, enjoying the dawn chorus and the phenomenal views across to the surrounding hills. Suddenly she accelerates at breakneck speed, screaming like a maniac and shouting RAKE!! RAKE!! RAKE!! When you eventually catch her up, she is crying her eyes out. What do you say to her?

Answer: This is a time for a calm head. Take a soft line and ask what is up. It turns out, as correctly guessed by one reader, that she is claiming a large black snake was lying a few inches from her pedal as she cycled past. However, having not seen it yourself, immediately issue a yellow for play acting, but bear in mind it is also best this early in the day to keep the flair players motivated. Stop play, allow medical attention to be administered on the sidelines (groundnut paste sandwich and energy drink), and wave play on.

The Field

2010-11-15T05:41:00.000-08:00

For the last few weeks I’ve been visiting “the field”. Leaving the confines of the car honking, ear splitting, speaker booming towns and cities to visit communities. This, I'm told is by definition, “visiting the field”. Asking questions about “the field” before arrival is frowned upon. Questioning how we will arrive and depart from said remote communities is also reminiscent of the first rule of “Fight Club”. The command is simply co bra. Go and come. Don’t ask questions.
My colleague Gifti and I are visiting women’s co-operatives who have come together with the help of the Community Development Department to make their businesses and lives more viable. We travel by tro-tro generally – the main local public transport and the way in which goats and chickens, people and farm products move from one place to another on the crumbling bumpy roads. On the most remote trip recently the regular crunching of gears and loud music was punctuated with a loud clanking. The driver stopped and slid under the car with tools.
The passengers waited for about an hour and then – without discussion – all set off walking to the nearest town in the mid-day sun. There is no fuss. This is what happens. For the more remote communities if we’re lucky there are motorbikes. Or we just walk – like everyone else. Most of the groups make palm oil. Strong arms separate the bright orange-red kernels from the spiky, rough husk of the trees, grind the sun-dried kernels, squeeze and press the kernels and chaff and then boil them in huge roasting cauldrons above pits filled with charcoal and acrid smoking chaff.
The paths are waterlogged and slippery in the rains, the smell is overpowering, the sun above unrelenting and the profits minimal. If they work from 5am to nightfall and they are lucky, this is how they can perhaps afford to send some of their children to school and pay for their hospital bills. By the time they have walked miles into the bush to buy the palm fruit or kernels the whole process will take one to three weeks. It varies but spending £15 on the kernels could reap a profit of about £2.50 (excluding time and labour). It is difficult to understand their single-mindedness but for these women this is currently one of the only ways of making any profit at all. They have no or little access to land, no access to loans or investors and most of them have had no formal education. They are expected to farm, collect water, sell produce, cook, clean, look after the children and provide the money for their education.
It is these women I hope to help during my placement here.

Lucy

Down in the Jungle...

2010-11-09T14:52:00.001-08:00

...people, particularly the obruni, are aliens.

Our 20km trek through the rainforest of Ankasa in the Western Region felt like running two marathons. The heat and humidity makes every step a gargantuan effort. The cacophany of noise is at first raw, exciting and awe-inspiring, setting the senses on high alert. Gradually the relentless noise, and dense, living, breathing greenery that the human eye cannot penetrate, is disorientating. Ultimately the feeling of being totally out of your depth is a constant

Of course, in classic Mulholland-Adams fashion, we had not waited around for the guide who was late (we could have missed seeing the monkeys at dawn after all) and had set off into this foreign environment alone.

Armies of red and black ants form motorways of unstoppable movement across the track. Spiders form giant web traps across the path. Dozens of species of stunning butterfly float inquisitively alongside.
Giant dragonfly swoop backwards and forwards, seemingly without purpose unless hovering to collect water from brown puddles. Lizards scuttle away from your feet.
Monkeys call out to each other and stay just out of sight while smashing through tree branches. Crazed, taunting bird calls echo through the wilderness (See Useful Link to Mulholland Tube videos (right)). A 3ft green snake spots us and slithers across our path and out of sight into the undergrowth. I heroically jump in front of Lucy and scream SH - I - I - I - T as an unidentified beast (probably a huge panther) makes it's noisy getaway.

The seven hour journey is broken by a packed lunch at a village of one hut. With one adult and a child. Following Lucy's impression of an elephant eating bamboo, they lead gracefully to the only place of rest from this exhausting assault on the senses. The dense undergrowth makes way for a magnificent bamboo cathedral.
Space, silence and stillness. It feels like reaching an oasis in the desert, or some sort of Eden. It looks like the land of the giants. We can almost see the forest elephants that come here to eat for three months of the year.

Andy

A local cold

2010-10-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

As if it were nothing more troublesome than a mere cold, people in Ghana often casually mention that they have recently had a little malaria, and before long go about their daily tasks regardless. Well I've just probably had malaria, and no daily tasks were being conducted.

It hits you like a hammer, or more accurately a fire extinguisher, blow to the entire body. Sudden and total exhaustion, burning and then freezing sweats, intense headaches, aching bones, failing muscles, confused thoughts.

Fortunately the symptoms were relatively mild, possibly suppressed by the anti-malarial drugs I've been taking religiously every morning. Lucy morphed into a magnificent nurse, ultimately resorting to a visit to the local Seventh Day Adventist medical clinic to confirm the symptoms with the doc. The clinic was packed with people, including children slumped on benches with similar symptoms to mine, but worked remarkably efficiently.

For these people and I, medication is affordable. Four days' daily intake of 22 pills and pirated Arnie Swarzenegger movies and I was back on my feet. Many can't afford insurance and have to suffer without help, with either a loss of working income or worse (it accounts for a quarter of all deaths of children under 5 in Ghana (20,000 children pa)).

Andy

Wisdom

2010-10-26T16:22:00.000-07:00

Wise man in Glasgow say: 'See man with machete, run mile'.
Wise man in Koforidua say: 'See man with machete, ask him 'where coconuts?''.
Andy

Journeys

2010-10-18T05:51:00.001-07:00

It's not so much that things are unknown here and that we don't speak the language, but there is generally an assumption that we will know what is happening - including the why and the when. Meetings are scheduled without anyone being told. Events are planned without prior notice. We follow blindly and willingly and generally the destination involves interesting new interactions. The local buses (the tro tros) leave when full so there is no timetable and the destination may bear little relevance to the sign some of them carry on their roofs. But people's kindness and unnerving interest in what we (the obruni) are doing means we are passed from one to the next with as little fuss as unloading the goats from the boot and roof. No mention is made of the fact that the side door is lying in the boot, no-one talks about the destination but ultimately we always seem to arrive in the right place.

This morning I followed my colleague to the seventh day celebration of the death of a local businessman. The details of where we are going and what we will do when we arrive are not discussed. Funerals are far bigger than weddings here. This is just the first part when family, friends and strangers sit from 6am to 6pm (wearing ornate black or red ceremonial clothes) to remember the person who has died. Libations are poured, messages are blasted from microphones and enormous speakers and music dominates the whole street. The older the person the bigger the celebration. It is not until the 40th day that the proper funeral takes place. I did not know the man who died but I am asked to greet everyone, including the son of the man who died and the local sub-chief who is introduced as a king. It is traditional that the close family should not left alone during this time so their mourning and celebrating and living is very much a group event. No-one should be lonely, I'm told. It's an incredible contrast to how we treat death in the UK. They say this is the most important journey, that the soul of the person will be present and for them to pass over properly everything must be done to honour them.
Lucy

The things I miss (food)

2010-10-04T05:22:00.000-07:00

Quite a few people have asked what we miss and it is tempting to reel off a long list of foodstuffs, shops, bars and restaurants and make each line rhyme – like a song from The Sound of Music.
Obviously we miss people the most. Speaking to friends and family in the very public internet café in Koforidua is no replacement. We’re incredibly lucky though in that the other VSO volunteers in Eastern Region are great fun and the area itself is beautiful. It makes the other challenges more palatable.
However, that’s no counterpoint to the lack of tasty, recognisable food. Sandwiches, cheese, milk (and variety of any kind) are missed as if they were old friends.
The local market here is made up of a maze of tiny streets and alleyways. Rickety handmade stalls selling tomato puree, sachets of pure water, cream crackers (soft and from China) and Jack and Jill wafer biscuits (a new favourite) are crammed together next to women selling oranges from huge metal bowls balanced on their heads, scratch cards to top up mobile phones and huge cauldrons of bean stew and rice. Taxis and people compete for space on the road – the pavements are split and crumbling and every few metres a huge gaping hole emerges with a black hole dropping some four feet to the litter and unknown gutter below. Precariously balanced barbeques on metal tins covered in offal churn smoke into the air next to men preaching with loudspeakers about redemption and women roasting plantain over charcoal. Watermelons, coconuts and pineapples are split and or peeled on request. Tomatoes are piled into pyramids ready to be haggled over and argued for. Second hand clothes and shoes are piled up and advertised with loudspeakers and loud voices. In the core of this maze is a covered area where more specialist products wriggle, squawk and stare. This is where the live chickens scratch in cages to be sold on for their eggs; snails bigger than a giant’s fist ooze and creep over each other in a pile (ready to be boiled for soup) and dead bats hang motionless from the poles where they were barbequed. (We have not yet tried such delicacies but just seeing them is more than enough to bring on emotional and physical pangs for Marks and Spencer’s foodhall).
So for those asking what we miss, I would say food. I would say crisp salad (without the taint and rumours of typhoid), meals cooked without buckets of red palm oil, and clean white foodhalls with baskets and too much to choose from.
More than anything I miss being able to walk the streets anonymously without every child and stranger calling obruni, obruni (white man). That is what I miss today, but in a year’s time I imagine I will be back in the UK missing the greetings of strangers, the catcalls of tiny, cute children, the adventure of stepping out of the front door, the immediacy of fried yam and hot pepper sauce sold on streets corners. I will no doubt miss the stifling heat and the overly familiar strangers, the brilliantly complex handshakes, the laughter and music and uninhibited dancing. That just seems to be how missing things goes.
Lucy

Big trip to Tamale

2010-10-03T08:06:00.000-07:00

My first government junket took place this week in the form of a trip to the northern city of Tamale. The purpose was for my colleagues in local government, the district parliament and some community leaders working on the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership (CCP) project in the Eastern Region to share experiences with their counterparts working on a similar project in the Northern Region.

Spending 12 hours on a bus in Ghana can be a tad sweaty and significantly increases ones risk of being involved in a traffic accident – some particularly tasty examples of which are evidenced in most roadside ditches. Fortunately some decent driving from Kwekoo and some intensive praying at the start and end of each leg helped us complete the journey safely. Unfortunately I cannot confirm whether anyone prayed for the 72 yams, 100 bananas, thousands of beans, 6 guineau fowl or the goat all tied on the roof for the bumpy 12 hour trip back.

Tamale’s population is 80% Islamic and so the culture is very different to that in the south. Women are dressed much more colourfully, most people (men, women and children) get around on scooters and bicycles, people speak a different language and food markets are more plentiful (at least during the wet season, which this still is). I took on the role of observer as my colleagues negotiated their yam and guinea fowl purchases.

Tamale is also known for having something of a white elephant of a football stadium built by the Chinese for the 2008 African Nations Cup. The majestically named Real Tamale United currently prop up the Ghanaian Premier Division and attract crowds that fill one in every ten seats. Judging by the number of football tops being worn around town, the remaining 9 people support Chelsea.

We had a really interesting visit to a small farming community about an hour from the city. The project we learned about helped communities develop their own action plans to address their own priorities and then find ways to deliver them. The theory is that this is far more sustainable than NGOs imposing their own priorities.
Our CCP project in the Eastern Region is very similar.

It is designed to try to empower similar communities so that they are sufficiently organised and knowledgable about the instruments of local government that they can deliver improvements themselves, campaign for funding in specific priority areas, get their needs included in local government plans and pester their politicians. It was clear from our visit that breaking people out of a mindset of dependency will be a significant challenge.

Andy

Random football tops

2010-10-03T08:05:00.001-07:00

Most Ghanaians support one of the devilsome duo of Chelsea or Man Utd. However, my heart leapt with joy at the sight of a bicycling local man in a circa 2006 Jambos top. Unfortunately I have no photographic evidence of this yet.
Lovers of Gaelic football will be dismayed by this photo of kenti weaver Kofi of Cape Coast, clearly led astray by a bogman from south-west Ireland. I informed him of the error of his ways. Evin – a consignment of Dubs tops would be a worthwhile investment…

Things are always more complicated than they seem

2010-09-29T04:56:00.000-07:00

I imagine that the pace of life in Ghana is some kind of karma for my years of impatience and rushing about. I have tried walking faster but it is self defeating in the incredible humidity and unrepenting heat. People walk slower for a reason. Many of the women glide past and overtake as I melt in the sun, most carrying enormous loads on their heads. Poise beyond our comprehension. The boxes and bowls often take three people to lift. Only one to carry.
I'm told there is a Ghanian proverb which suggests you can not rush a guinea fowl when he is drinking. It is sage advice for work. Even learning roles and goals is proving difficult.
We share the compound with the inclusion and disability office. There is a young girl with learning difficulties who sits outside my office from 8am until 4pm yet I'm told the inclusion office can not help her and that her parents have disappeared. When we speak to her auntie we're told that if she goes to school there will no-one to look after the granny in the village and that the granny will die. Nothing is simple to address. It is difficult enough to know how to cause a ripple, far harder to understand how to ensure its ramifications are positive rather than negative.

Hair and hospitality

2010-09-24T06:41:00.000-07:00

Greeting strangers is an art form here. The handshake - which involves shaking and clicking fingers almost simultaneously - is no easy feat. The fact that we repeatedly try and - as with our Twi language skils - so often fail seems appreciated to a point beyond our understanding. In the UK we would not consider stopping to meet people we don't know. Here every walk is the start of a conversation.
The hairdresser Atta has spent two hours trying to teach me Twi and taken me as friend. She cut my hair and eyebrows with a razorblade - laughing hysterically at my every attempt to explain or retort in Twi. Friendliness doesn't quite cover it.

Home from home

2010-09-20T06:50:00.000-07:00

The rain's hammering an audible trail across the hills. Thunder, like a child kick-starting a motorbike, signals another deluge. It's hard to believe we've travelled so far, to a place so different, only to find that it rains here more than in Glasgow.
Lucy

People

2010-09-16T15:57:00.000-07:00

Our first week in Ghana was spent travelling on coaches, cars and Tro-tros and wandering round Accra, Cape Coast, Beyin, Ankasa and Elubo, often in wonderment at the myriad activities before us.
The sheer number of people interacting on the streets from 5am throughout the day is the first thing that hits you. Women and children carrying on their heads 10m long planks of wood, enormous bowls containing goats, chickens, water, fruit and vegetables. Children playing with home-made toys. Hawkers hanging around vehicles at traffic jams trying to sell Fu Fu, Yams, plantain crisps, water sachets. Men in suits, others fixing machines, selling railings, motorbike parts, mobile phones, sitting at wooden shacks playing board games or drinking at wooden shack spots (bars). Women at stalls selling fruit, shoes, clothes, fish heads, pigs trotters, nuts, mending clothes, pounding yam and cassava, mending clothes… The road verges and makeshift footways are teeming.

Upon first meeting, Ghanaians display a warmth of feeling that is difficult to do justice in words. Sometimes this is quite overwhelming, for as an Obruni, you receive this warm welcome from almost every single person you pass in the street. Ma achi! (Good morning!) Akwaaba! (Welcome) Wo ho te sen? (How are you?) Often followed by a hearty handshake and a bear hug. Or from children chants of ‘Ob-ru-ni, ob-ru-ni..’ combined with much dancing, clapping, laughter and pointing or a chase down the street. I haven’t checked whether other white people experience this or there is some other aspect of my physical appearance that prompts such mirth.

When you have an actual reason to meet someone, the welcome is perhaps less animated but just as genuinely interested and joyful. Normally an infectious broad, beaming smile is combined with a handshake so lengthy it would wear out Mr Shake-Hands-Man, and complex enough to baffle Stephen Hawkins. At least two finger clicks and five hand positions are required as a minimum to avoid ridcule. I intend to write a book with diagrams on this some time.

Andy

Acclimatising

2010-09-16T15:16:00.000-07:00

The aspects of life in Ghana which it seems easier to adjust to are not what I'd expected. The aptly named "bucket showers" are surprisingly good. The small minibuses crammed with human and animal cargo are remarkably invigorating, cheap and (so far) quite good fun (although we were particularly disappointed when the live cow they were trying to fit in the boot could not be caught). Doing without running water and electricity for a few days in the Ankasa wildlife reserve near the coast with Cote D'Ivoire meant we could see the flashes of fireflies drawing electricity in bursts across the night.
Less easy to get used to is the idea that as "obruni" we are (in some areas at least) something of a freak show - particularly for the children. A friendly chap on the bus pointed out that Andy's skin was not just white but "fresh white".
Most people have gone out of their way to be helpful as we have blundered about. Some have been indifferent and others have bowled us over with their generosity. Our clumsy meandering meant that we also got caught up in festival parade made up of chiefs bearing crowns, the President of the country and a reality television show about how to be a good couple. We offered our best advice and casually sauntered off.
Lucy

Comments

2010-09-01T15:38:00.000-07:00

You can now add comments by clicking on the word 'comments' underneath each post. Andy

Ready for the off

2010-08-31T16:33:00.001-07:00

After a whistlestop farewell tour of the UK (possibly more Happy Mondays than Abba in its profitability) we now reach the eve of our departure. A lot of people have rightly suggested we must be incredibly excited. However to be honest it has been such a mad rush getting everything sorted, we've barely had time to think beyond moving flats, finishing work and getting forms and innoculations all signed off.

Speaking of which, after receiving an elephant-sized cold from the ever thoughtful Colin Gordon, I was unable to get my final rabies vaccine in the usual clinical environment at my local GP. So after transporting the drug between five different fridges via Dad's cool bag, here (in the photo) is my good friend and doctor Richard Woods administering the necessary in the Pitcher and Piano in London during lunch on Monday. An odd side effect not mentioned on the box was waking in the middle of the night to find my self biting Lucy's hand. Fortunately I wasn't foaming at the mouth.
See you all in a year. Andy

Motivations

2010-08-22T00:29:00.000-07:00

11 days to go and the reality is hitting. Insomnia has set in (Andy is sleeping like a baby) and motivations are being questioned. Without sounding glib or ludicrous, it's difficult to explain why we're leaving the relative comfort of home, friends, family and good jobs to go somewhere completely lacking in proximity to these things. Our fancy dress leaving party threw up some great quotes from Mallory (Watson dressed as the exploring legend) which are barely relevant but stick in the mind. "Why climb Everest?". "Because it is there," he said several times before losing his fake beard. That's not why we're doing it but maybe one part of going to Ghana is because it's not Glasgow and doesn't offer the comforts we've grown to love. Lucy

Homeless

2010-08-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

We left the flat with a bit of a bang. Our fancy dress leaving party on Saturday night followed by 10 hours of packing and moving on Sunday. No point doing things the easy way. Cheerio Pollokshields. It feels so real and incredibly exciting now that we've moved out.
Seeing everyone on Saturday was fantastic, and good to see you've not forgotten the joy of fancy dress. Indiana Jones being chased by a giant inflatable boulder - incredible special effects. Marty McFly explaining the Delorean's flux capacitor to Phileas Fogg is a sight that no one should miss.
We'll definitely miss friends and family.
Andy

Packing up

2010-08-08T02:02:00.000-07:00

After a year of saving and planning, it's hard to believe that we're leaving in just a few weeks. Our flat looks like a fancy dress emporium that's been burgled. Packing for the actual trip hasn't even begun... The thought of having to buy padded cycle short isn't helping.

Our office

2010-08-03T12:50:00.001-07:00

We've now completed our final VSO UK training course. A very tough 4 days of self-analysis, and spongeing informaton. The courses have covered health, security, relationships, culture and working environment, dealing with your own and others' preconceptions, and negotiation and facilitation skills in some detail. VSO is pretty thorough in preparing people. Exhausting, but really worthwhile and quite inspiring to meet some of the amazing people who are heading off to some very tough placements.

We have one final training course in Accra starting on 12th September. The above photo shows the office in Koforidua that we'll both be based from.

Flights booked London to Accra on 2nd of September

2010-07-05T17:42:00.000-07:00

Less than 2 months left in Glasgow and it's all starting to feel a bit real now. So in a bid to maintain a high degree of procrastination, I've set up this blog site.
Andy