The travels of Tim and Megan: Ghana- Part 2

Monday

We woke up around 7am and there was running water, so we had a proper shower and prepared for our first day on the building site. We had bread and jam in the Mad House for breakfast, which was nice, but not really filling enough for the day of building ahead. We caught a shared taxi with Emily and Cathy to Sokode Gbogame, arriving at the building site around 8.30am.

Our project was the building of a toilet block for the kindergarten in Sokode Gbogame. Thankfully, we joined for the last two weeks of a six week project, so when we turned up, a 10-foot hole had already been dug and the majority of the foundations had been laid. Prior to our building project being completed, the children from the kindergarten had to use a grotty old shed with a hole in the ground inside it and a patch on the side of the road as their toilet. Not ideal.

Day 1 on the building site was really tough. It was scorching hot and there was a lot of physical work required, as we were mixing cement and then carrying it to the site to lay the foundations. Mixing cement does not sound like tough work, but when you basically have no tools other than a shovel and a bucket, it is very hard work! We had to carry sand in buckets from the big sand pile across to the cement mixing spot, then we had to carry a couple of huge sacks of cement mix to the same spot. We added some big stones to the sand and cement mix and we mixed it all together with the shovels. Then we had to walk about 300m away to a water supply and carry back several buckets of water, which we added to the pile to make the cement.

Then we had to scoop the wet cement into wide pans and carry them over to the building site to lay the last layer of foundations, or the floor of the toilet block. We probably made about 30-40 trips each and the pans were really heavy.

That, coupled with the intense heat and not a lot of breakfast in the belly, meant we really struggled. Gideon and his friend, Wisdom, were also working on the building site with us, along with two masons, who were showing us what to do and leading the way. Gideon disappeared briefly and returned with a bottle of some yellow-coloured beverage and shared it around the group. He encouraged us to try some and told us that it was really refreshing and would help us feel better in the heat. We each tried a little bit and it was seriously the most disgusting drink we have ever tasted. It was like tequila but worse. Megan and Tim both nearly threw up after tasting it. Not cool. Gideon thought it was hilarious!

On the up side, when the kids came out of the kindergarten block for their play break, they were so excited to see us. They ran up and literally threw themselves at us, shouting "Yevu, yevu". They were fascinated with our white skin, staring at it like we had gills! They also loved to ask us what our names were, then they would repeat back our names like parrots.

We stopped around 12.30pm for lunch. It was only four hours of work, but we were absolutely shattered. We got a taxi back to the Mad House (costing about 22 pence each) for lunch. Enyo had made us spaghetti and meat sauce - delicious. We got a lot of heavy carb-dominated food in Ghana, but we really needed it! We didn't go back after lunch, as it was too hot, and the masons had finished off the last little bit of the foundations after we had left, so it was a good place to call it a day.

Instead, we kicked around the house for a while, sipping on our little plastic sachets of drinking water, trying desperately to re-hydrate our bodies. Most of the drinking water in Ghana comes in 500ml plastic sachets (see photo on "part 1" blog). You tear a small corner off the sachet with your teeth and then you're away laughing. Cathy used to entertain us with how quickly she could down a water sachet - we timed her at the building site one day and she did it in 8 seconds!

Later in the afternoon, we went into Ho and walked through the market. We bought a few little bits and pieces, including a couple of mini footballs for the kids at the kindergarten to play with. Then we headed to the White House to meet the others. As it was Valentines Day, the White House had a cheesy CD of old love songs that kept playing over and over - including all our Celine Dion and Whitney Houston favourites. We ended up staying there for over four hours. We eventually pulled ourselves away from the Valentines Day festivities and caught a taxi back to the Mad House.

Dinner was jollof rice and chicken, which was delicious. Jollof rice is kind of like fried rice with a few veges and spices mixed in. YUM! Needless to say, we were stuffed after our first day on the project, so we crashed pretty early after dinner. We had a really fun day - people in Ghana are so friendly. We would exchange "Hellos" with almost everyone we passed on the street - very different to London!

Tuesday

Tuesday started well - running water two mornings from two and the mosquito nets over our bunks were obviously working, as neither of us had any mosquito bites! Unfortunately, one of our tasks at the building site was to remove the giant pile of dirt (that had come from the digging of the 10-foot pit beneath the toilet block) from in front of the building site and carry it away - and all we had was shovels to dig the dirt and one wheelbarrow and a few buckets to carry it away in. When we arrived at the building site on Tuesday morning, all of the kids from the kindergarten were carrying dirt away from the pile in little buckets they had brought from home. They looked like a little trail of ants carrying away food.

While it was pretty cute initially, we quickly realised that the kids "help" was actually a hindrance. Once the kids lost interest in carrying dirt away, they resorted to fighting each other, throwing stones at each other (and occasionally us), playing and lying all over the dirt pile, preventing us from doing our job. This made what was already a gruelling job a lot harder! It was so incredibly hot - we were all sweating insane amounts and we soon had sore backs, legs, arms and nasty blisters on our hands from the shovels.

We went back to the Mad House for lunch - and were treated to "red red" - probably our favourite Ghanaian dish. Red red is beans in a spicy sauce, served with fried plantain - it went down a treat. After lunch, we returned to the building site (this time with Gus) and continued to shift dirt and battle with the obstacles the kids provided.

Gus was mobbed by the kids more than the rest of us. The kids liked to follow whoever was taking the wheelbarrows full of dirt away and once the dirt was tipped out of the wheelbarrow, the kids liked to throw their own empty buckets into it, run in front of it, and occasionally try to jump into it themselves! Gus got an extra treat - witnessing a kid throwing up into the dirt, narrowly missing the wheelbarrow! Nice. By the time we knocked off for the day, we had actually made pretty good progress at shifting the dirt pile. It was pretty soul-destroying to think that a bulldozer and a truck could have moved that dirt pile in under 20 minutes - with our tools, it would take more than three days.

Back at the Mad House, we all had much needed showers and sat around reading - we were totally knackered. Dinner was pretty good - boiled yam (a little tasteless) with a spicy meat sauce, which made up for the yam! After dinner Megs joined Emily, Cathy and Gus in Ho for a few drinks. Tim was exhausted and stayed home!

Wednesday

We woke early on Wednesday and there was no water, so no showers. We had a change of scene today - we got a rest from building and went to the primary school in Sokode Gbogame for a morning of teaching. We were split up for the first class and each watched one of the teachers take a class.

Midway through Tim's class, the teacher took two of the kids outside the classroom and caned them. A boy and a girl were playing up; fighting over an exercise book, but nothing too serious. They were just being kids. The boy got three brutal smacks with the cane across the back of his legs, so hard that the cane snapped in half. He then had to go to the cupboard at the back of the classroom and get another cane for the teacher to continue. He copped another three vicious strokes of the cane. He did not flinch once and walked back to his desk with a forced brave face. The girl flinched every time she was hit and, as a result, she copped more punishment - at least 7 or 8 hits. She cried as she limped back to her desk. Tim was shocked. He asked the boy sitting next to him at the back of the classroom if that was common and he said it happened in almost every class.

We had heard that caning was prevalent at the school, despite the fact that it is actually illegal in Ghana. Volunteers in the past have complained about it and Madventurer has spoken many times to the school about stopping the caning; they have even threatened to withdraw funding for projects in the village, but it obviously still occurs. The teachers seem to enjoy it; it is sick.

Aside from the caning, we were surprised at how mundane the method of teaching is. Everything is learning by rote - it is copying what the teacher writes on the blackboard, repeating what the teacher chants at the kids, repetition, repetition, repetition. There is no creativity or encouragement to think outside the square. For the second class, Cathy, Megan and Tim took over and shared the teaching of an English class about Ghana and animals - in particular the difference between domestic and wild animals - a difference that was bizarre for us Kiwi folk. Goats, roosters and lizards are all domestic pets in Ghana!

Lunch at the Mad House was chicken and chips - delicious. In the afternoon, we went in to Ho and visited a shop at KK House that sold Ghanaian souvenirs and clothing. Megan bought a really cool and colourful handbag and some bracelets and Tim bought an African wall mask. He declined the enormous yellow print shirt that the shopkeeper tried to force on him... Gus bought just about everything else in the shop, which must have set the shopkeeper up for an early retirement. We had a drink at White House and then bought some fresh pineapple from a street vendor on the way home.

We spent the evening chilling out at the Mad House, being amused firstly by the crazy security guard, who "taught" us some words from the local Ewe language. He also claimed that if he saw another giant beetle in the lounge, like the one we had seen the previous night (an "enemy" as he called it), then he would run and call for help. Nice to know we were in safe hands! The entertainment continued when Gideon and his friends Wisdom and Moses turned up after dinner to play "Dragon's Den". Gideon had seen Dragon's Den on TV in the UK on his recent trip there. Gideon, Wisdom and Moses presented their business cases to us (the panel of Dragons) and they took it very seriously. It was hilarious. We also learned that Arsenal had beaten Barcelona 2-1 at Emirates Stadium in the first leg of the knock-out round of the Champions League, an amazing result.

Thursday

We woke before 7.15am on Thursday and we were back at the building site today. The masons had made good progress in our absence. The walls of the toilet block were partially constructed when we arrived. The masons kept building the walls, while we continued to shift dirt. For some reason, we did not have access to the wheelbarrow today, so we had to use buckets to shift the dirt away. Thankfully we decided to move the dirt to a location much closer than the one we had used on Tuesday, so we did not have to carry it so far.

Cathy's mascot, a monkey called Theo, joined us at the building site for some photos. Cathy takes him around the world with her for photo opportunities, much the same as we do with Mr Bear! We worked really hard and made good progress. We stopped for lunch around midday - it was veges and pasta. Emily and Gus had witnessed a C-section birth at the hospital in the morning. It sounded barbaric!

In the afternoon, we had showers, did some hand washing and rested. We were just about to leave to visit a cocoa plantation in a nearby village when a massive thunderstorm hit. There was plenty of thunder and lightning and it absolutely chucked it down for more than half an hour. So we decided to postpone the cocoa plantation visit and stay put for the afternoon. The roads would be dodgy after such a downpour and the vehicles are not reliable at the best of times.
Dinner was disappointing - just rice and a boiled egg in tomato sauce - that's not a meal! It happened to be our hungriest night too! Megs and Tim went in to Ho around 7.30pm and got some french fries at White House to make up for the lack of dinner. The french fries at White House really are amazing!

Friday

We experienced slight deja vu on Friday morning as we turned up at the building site to see dozens of school children carrying away buckets of dirt from the dirt pile. This time it was the kids from the primary school rather than the kindergarten, so they were more focused on the task! They were organised - the boys used pick-axes and shovels to loosen and scoop the dirt and the girls carried it away in buckets, usually on their heads.

We had become accustomed by now to seeing Ghanaians carrying anything and everything on their heads. We even tried it ourselves and it is a surprisingly comfortable and efficient way to carry weight. It was really good for the local children to contribute to the building project - there was a real sense of community effort. The school kids helped out for a couple of hours and then retired to the classroom for lessons and caning!

After they left, we carried on shifting dirt. We had the wheelbarrow back so we were able to make really good progress. We worked hard all morning and by lunchtime we had moved the majority of the dirt pile away and we flattened out the rest of it. The masons also finished laying the bricks on the walls of the building.

Lunch was spaghetti and meat sauce. In the afternoon, we went into Ho and visited the Vodafone internet cafe. It is an amazing new building, fully air-conditioned, full of new computers with super fast broadband internet, faster than we get in London!!! It was a pretty amazing place to hang out. As Cathy pointed out, we would gladly have paid the 1.80 Cedis to sit in an air-conditioned room for an hour, let alone get good internet access for an hour! While we were there, another big thunderstorm hit.

Once the storm had cleared, we walked to White House and had a mid-afternoon snack of sausages, french fries and yam chips along with a couple of Fantas. Emily had gone to Accra to pick up our new Mad recruit, so in the evening, we chilled out at the Mad House, did some reading and played a pretty heated game of Ludo with Cathy and Gus. Cathy takes Ludo very seriously and she did not approve of Gus's freakish ability to throw sixes on the dice almost every throw! It was a lot of fun and Megan won!!! It was hard to believe that our first week was over already - it really flew.

Saturday

We had a fantastic night's sleep on Friday night. We woke around 7.30am and we wanted to keep on sleeping but we had to get up. We had to make the most of our only free weekend in Ghana! We decided to visit the Tafi Atome monkey sanctuary, an hour or so away from Ho. We caught a taxi into the tro tro station in Ho and boarded a tro tro bound for a town called Hohoe. We jumped out at the turn-off to the monkey sanctuary and took a very run down taxi down the 5km bumpy dirt road to the sanctuary. We were concerned that the taxi wouldn't get us there - it was in pretty bad shape.

The Tafi Atome monkey sanctuary was created in 1993 to protect the sacred monkeys that live in the forest in the area. Since the creation of the sanctuary, the local monkey population has increased to around 350 monkeys, split among four groups. We got a one-hour guided tour of the monkey sanctuary, which cost less than £4 each. Monkeys aside, it was so peaceful and relaxing wandering around the forest.

The tour began rather oddly. We walked for around 20 minutes with the tour guide, who said nothing the whole time. Then she told us to wait on the path while she disappeared to "look for the monkeys". We waited and waited. She eventually re-appeared and we kept walking. She did the same thing again, but this time came back with good news. She had found the monkeys.

We followed her to the monkeys and they quickly descended on us from the tree tops. We had brought with us a bag of bananas to feed the monkeys. The tour guide told us to hold a banana (firmly) out away from our body. The monkeys came down to the edge of the branches and nervously peeled the banana skin with their hands and broke small pieces of banana off and ate it, before breaking more off. We learned why you need to hold on to the bananas firmly, as one was snatched from Tim's hand. Megan also got a close-up of a couple of the monkeys, who jumped from their branches and landed on her!

We followed the same route back to Ho - dodgy taxi along bumpy dirt road, tro tro back to Ho, then taxi back to the Mad House, arriving back around 1.30pm. In the afternoon we met Cathy and Gus at White House. They had been there for a couple of hours already and had down a bottle and a half of wine, so they were in fine form. We had beef pizza and fries for lunch and then we went shopping at KK House to get Cathy a birthday present and wandered leisurely around Ho.

The rest of the day was very chilled out - we sat around home, did some washing, bought a sack full of drinking water sachets from the store near the Mad House (and even carried it back to the house on our heads). We made dinner in the house (noodles and veges) and had a pretty early night.

To be continued...