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Group1 Zina Blog5 / Ghana - Afadjato

This week I got to explore the village some more. Priscilla and Genevieve took me to their farm where we picked some Coco yam leaves for their evening meal, it was really cool to see how the leaves are picked and then how they are prepared to form part of a very tasty meal! I also got to pound some fufu (a very tasty local dish made out of pounded cassava) on my exploration of the village as I got invited to come and visit the grandma of one of the local children. We spent all evening talking and laughing, singing songs and dancing too as many of the local children came round to gather and spend time with us. The funniest moment had to have been the shock on some of the teenage girls’ faces when they realised that young girls didn’t really do things like cooking meals for their families every night as part of their day-to-day routine back in England.

On the food front I’ve tried goat meat, banku with both okro and tomato and fish stew (believe me okro stew is much tastier!) and fufu with groundnut stew and chicken……emmm… Yum Yum!!!!

At work this week we’ve been doing an intensive school programme. This week we visited a number of schools, introducing ourselves as local volunteers and preparing them for us visiting them over the next 6 weeks. On the way to the first school we were given a hand book to look through the sort of activities we may like to run with the local wildlife clubs. Whilst looking through the hand book I discovered a wildlife song done in the tune of when the saints go marching in. The song is called “We are the wild”. We taught it to the children in the wildlife clubs which was really fun, although after 21 schools in three days it all got a bit intense! LOL! One of the schools we visited was in the community we are living in Gbledi Chebi. It was really cool to visit the local children at school and we are all really excited to start working with them especially!

So this week we had our first real group trip out of the Volta Region. We went to Cape Coast which is a city in the Central Region. Ok first things first, to any other volunteers out there coming to Ghana get ready for long travels across the country on the mode of transport called a tro tro. A tro tro is a minibus, probably a 15-seater. It’s the local equivalent to public transport, although you usually end up sharing the bus with 20 – 30 people instead. It can get very cramped but just remember to pack your ipod, a book and take the opportunity to catch up on your beauty sleep!

Our weekend in Cape Coast was pretty amazing! We visited Kakum National Park, where we crossed several high rope bridges. It was cool but strangely not scary at all! It was a little trek to get up to where the rope bridges were though. After that we visited a place called Hans Cottage, it was a resort where people stay, eat and drink usually, but also a bit of a mini tourist attraction. Reason being is that they actually have crocodiles outside in the river and lying around on the surrounding banks. Also, for a small price you can watch while the crocodiles are fed live chickens, and that’s when they really come alive. We didn’t actually get to see much close up as we couldn’t afford to pay for the crocodiles to be fed, but as we were leaving we managed to catch a glimpse of one being fed which was quite cool, although not for the chicken of course LOL!

We also got to visit both Elmina and Cape Coast Castles. It was pretty amazing actually. Both castles were used by the Portuguese, Dutch and British during the time of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. It was cool but also saddening to walk the routes that ancestors of mine would have used to exit Africa forever. The next day we took a trip to a lovely beach, the waves were quite violent and sand managed to get absolutely everywhere!!! LOL!! But it was a lovely place, very quiet and relaxed, different to Labaadi in Accra and they do a lovely club sandwich too!

Every night we ate at a seafront restaurant where I ate lobster for 36 and HUGE shrimps also for 36!! which would never happen in the UK!! In the evening time we would visit a beach resort called Oasis, where we watched many culture shows which often included traditional dancing, contortion – which is very big in Ghana, well at the beaches anyway – and fire swallowing!!

The shows were quite cool and we certainly got to meet some characters I can tell ya, out of all of them I can only remember Mr X, the fire swallowing acrobat and his funny friend Charles. The weekend was absolutely fantastic! And I look forward to what next week holds for us all both at work and in the village!