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Group1 Zina Blog4 / Ghana - Afadjato

So it’s the end of week three! My how time flies when your having fun!! This week some of the volunteers took a trip up along the Agumasta Range, which sits behind Mount Afadjato, to record GPS Readings for a map of the wildlife park. I stayed behind with Buki and Staci as I had climbed Afadjato last Friday and couldn’t really face doing it all over again LOL! As we stayed behind our task was to make a start on the Coco yam nursery. We’ve been told that this will be a Platform2 nursery containing around 20, 000 crops, so it’ll probably be completed in a few groups time. That’s pretty much been our task this week. It’s rainy season so the weather can prove to be a little unpredictable, but so far I think we are doing OK.

My favourite past time so far has been sending time with the local village children; they are sooo cute…..and yes….I have fallen in love with them all!!! Hanging out with them is great especially as they usually help out a lot with the translation from Ewe to English when we are communicating with older people within the community (any volunteers going to Ghana or Africa in general make friends with the children they will be your ears and sometimes your mouth when communicating with adults in your community).

The children have also been keeping me well fit and entertained by showing me their playground clapping games, songs and dances. The other night Buki and I taught some of the children a little dance to a Gospel garage song from London called ‘Bibles Bibles’. It was quite fun actually as we had a whole chorus of dancing teenagers singing “Bibles Bibles” and doing a funky little dance too, at one point Grandma from the house opposite started to join in singing the chorus and dancing too, everyone was just having fun that night and really enjoying themselves, and whenever I think about it, it’ll always bring a smile to my face!

Buki and I took a trip to Accra on the weekend. We stayed in a nice hotel, a little expensive, but we had a TV and a HUGE bed!!! LUXURY!!! The only downside was that they didn’t provide breakfast, which was strange but we did have a good time. Buki had a friend living in Accra so when we arrived in the city on Saturday we went for a Ghanaian kebab, which is very different from your usual donner, it’s more like meat on a stick, you can get sausage, chicken or guinea foul, which I’m told is some kind of bird? I stuck to the sausage myself, which was very tasty!

We also went to church on Sunday, it was a huge international charismatic church called Christ Embassy in a place called Circle, the service was a lot like home but on a much larger scale, and at the end of the service the Sunday School children performed a little number which was very good. After church we went to meet up with my friend Kwabena, I met up with him two weeks ago when we first arrived. It was nice and his house was gorgeous, made me realise why he wanted to move back home! LOL! We also got the chance to visit the Ghana Wildlife Head Office and met some of the people that oversee the different projects they have running all over the country.

So this week’s been pretty cool! The group is getting on really well still, we are just so happy to be here and really grateful to Platform2 for providing us with such and amazing opportunity and picking such a fantastic group to share it with!