The travels of Tim and Megan: Ghana

Sunday

We had a proper sleep-in on Sunday morning. We eventually got up around 9.45am. There was no electricity or running water, so we had bucket showers (we needed a shower!). When the water was on we made sure we filled up the two massive barrels with water so that when the water was off again, we would have a good water supply for bucket showers, washing, cooking etc.

Later in the morning, we went with Cathy and Gus to Chances Hotel to laze about by the swimming pool, but alas it was not open to the public (only hotel guests), so we went to the reliable old Freedom Hotel again to do the same thing there. It was a scorching hot day. When we arrived at Freedom Hotel, there was hardly anyone there, so we had the swimming pool almost to ourselves. We had a couple of dips in the pool and lay in the sun. We also had lunch at Freedom - Megan had chicken fried rice and Tim had vegetable curry with jollof rice - delicious.

After a couple of hours, it got too hot for Tim, so he headed back to the Mad House to cool off in the shade. The others stayed another hour or two at Freedom. There was a fair bit of sunburn going on by the end of the day! In the afternoon, Emily arrived back from Accra with our new Madventurer volunteer, Steph, a 19 year old girl from Indonesia / England. The power eventually came on again at about 3pm, so at least the ceiling fans cranked up and the fridge came on again.

We all went to White House for drinks and dinner to welcome Steph to the Mad House. It ended up being a massive night - we had quite a few beers and then the shots started...it was all downhill from there. Back at the Mad House, Steph emerged from her room with a big wooden stick, which she then broke on the ceiling fan in Emily's office...Emily was not amused. Cathy and Tim then had stick fights with the security guard - he taught us some techniques for "fighting enemies with a stick". It was hilarious. Tim thought it would be a good idea to drink the remaining white wine from the fridge - being rather cheap and nasty white wine, it turned out this was not a good idea...

Monday

Tim woke up feeling less than average. Thankfully Gideon called and said there was no building work to be done, as the masons needed to sort something out for the roof. The girls went to teach in the kindergarten, while Tim died a slow and painful death in the Mad House.

Monday was also Cathy's 23rd birthday - and she was very excited. Enyo, our cook, had baked her a birthday cake, and when the girls arrived back from the kindergarten at lunchtime, we soaked Cathy with two buckets of water - apparently this is a Ghanaian birthday tradition! Lunch was pasta and veges - it was really yum. In the afternoon, Megan, Tim and Steph added their hand prints to the wall of the Mad House. Unfortunately the paint did not wash off our hands very well! Later in the afternoon, the girls went off to the orphanage to play with the kids, while Tim went in to Ho and checked out a few more shops. Megan really enjoyed the orphanage, reading to the kids and colouring in with them.

In the evening we went in to Ho to a bar called "Talk of the Town" for some birthday drinks for Cathy. It was a much quieter night than the Sunday night had been! Megan and Tim stuck to soft drink and also declined the spicy Ghanaian sausage cooked on an open grill in the garden bar. Gideon and Wisdom joined us at the bar and Gideon entertained us with some bizarre stories / jokes - very random.

Tuesday

Tuesday began with a very different sort of average. Tim woke early and had two texts from friends saying that there had been a massive earthquake in Christchurch, that buildings had collapsed and that there had been a lot of deaths. Tim texted his family in Christchurch straight away and thankfully, they were all OK, but very shocked and distressed. It was hard being so far away and not having great access to news updates.

In the morning we went with Gus to the Ho Hospital for a tour. The hospital was very basic, but given the general state of things in Ghana it wasn't too bad. It was a little upsetting - the sick people just seemed to be left lying on beds without a lot of attention. Apparently a lot of the people in the hospital had malaria and some of them died from it.

After our hospital tour, we went to the building site and continued to remove and flatten the dirt pile in front of the toilet block. We also went with Gideon to buy some wood. Lunch back at the Mad House was red red and fried plantain - our favourite! Our afternoon trip to the cocoa plantation was cancelled again so we went to White House for french fries and fanta and then wandered around Ho, and got a couple of photos of Bear! Then we headed down to the Vodafone internet cafe to get some updates on the Christchurch earthquake.

As we left the internet cafe, there were dark black storm clouds rolling in. Late afternoon storms were fairly frequent during our time in Ghana. We got a taxi straight to the Mad House and we got home just in time. The wind really picked up and we got loads of lightning and thunder and eventually heavy rain for the rest of the evening. Dinner was OK - boiled yam and beef, tomato and herb sauce. There was the usual silly-buggers in the evening, including a lot of singing from the girls. We got a good night's sleep, as the storm meant that it was not too hot.

Wednesday

Wednesday was a bit different - we finally got to visit the cocoa plantation, in a village called Shia. Shia was about an hour's drive from Ho, mainly because the road was really bumpy and rough meaning that we had to drive very slowly. We were all loaded into Gideon's Land Rover, with Tim in the back, behind the seats.

The cocoa plantation we were going to visit was owned and run by a man named Justice (we love the names in Ghana!). Justice is well known by Gideon and the Madventurer crew. On arrival in Shia, we went to Justice's house. He showed us around a bit of his massive cocoa plantation, pointing out different types of cocoa trees, and the occasional tree affected by fungus (not good), as we went. Justice picked one of the cocoa pods off a tree and cut it open, showing us the cocoa beans inside and he explained how the beans are dried and roasted before being made into delicious chocolate. He even let us taste the cocoa beans - Emily was surprised that they tasted nothing like chocolate!

After the cocoa tour, we got a village tour. Justice took us through the little village to meet with the head chief! Shia was the village where John Lawler (the founder of Madventurer) first worked many years ago, and where he was made a chief to recognise the great work he had done for the village, so it has had links with Madventurer volunteers ever since. The head chief was very nice - he gave each of us a soft drink while he chatted away to us in his lounge. Then he walked with us down to the village school, to show us some of the buildings that John and previous Madventurers had helped to fund and build. At one point, when we were at the far end of the village, we could see the border with Togo, less than 100m away - so close to adding another country to the list!

We also met with the local parish priests and we saw the small hospital / health clinic. As we walked, we were spotted by a group of school children, who sprinted over to us and mobbed us! For some reason we were extremely popular. They even followed down the road for a while. Shia was a lovely little village - very quiet and the people were so welcoming and friendly to us. As we were about to leave, we got a great photo of three women walking towards us up the long dirt road, each carrying a huge basket of wood on their head (see photo below).

It was really interesting to see a cocoa plantation and we also thoroughly enjoyed our tour of Shia and meeting the head chief of the region. Back at the Mad House, we had chicken and chips for lunch and then headed to the building site at Sokode Gbogame. Unfortunately, the building materials we needed were not available, so we could not carry on with the project. Instead, Michael (one of the masons) took us for a walk around Sokode Gbogame, to show us some buildings with the same type of finish on the walls as we were going to put on our toilet block.

It was really fun wandering through the village. Needless to say, we soon had a band of happy children following us. Megan had brought some balloons with her and we each blew up a few balloons and gave them to the kids. We are pretty sure some of them had never seen a balloon before - they were super excited to get their hands on them and some of them got the fright of their lives when they squeezed their balloons too hard! There were loads of goats, sheep, chickens etc roaming about the village and we had running bets on anyone being able to catch a goat. Michael managed to grab hold of a baby lamb (see photo), which was pretty funny when its mother got angry with him!

Later in the afternoon, the girls went back to the orphanage to visit the kids there. Dinner at the Mad House was rice balls and steak. After dinner we all played Pictionary. Tim, Cathy and Steph were awesome and dominated Megs, Emily and Gus. Megs threatened to throw her toys out of the cot - it was all very funny. We heard that Arsenal beat Stoke 1-0 to close the gap in the premier league, but picked up two more injuries in the process...typical.

Thursday

There was no water on Thursday morning so no showers. We headed to the building site at around 8.30am and we spent the morning mixing cement or mortar to be applied to the outside of the walls, to give them a rough-cast finish. The masons had a hand held device that flicked the wet cement on to the wall - it was fun but we did get pretty messy. It was nice to have a change from hard physical work!

Tim won a five-way "rocks, scissors, paper" contest for the first shower once we got home, but when we arrived, the water was still off, so we had to settle for a bucket shower. Lunch was spaghetti and tomato sauce. After lunch we watched a bit of TV while some of the others had buckets showers and then we headed into Ho. We visited the internet cafe and changed some Great Britain Pounds into Ghanaian Cedis (which was a lot harder than it should have been).

Back at the Mad House we started sorting out things for packing and chilled out reading and doing a bit of sudoku! Dinner was rice with sausage in sauce, which was pretty good. In the evening, Megs joined the others on a trip into Ho for a few drinks and to try a traditional Ghanaian dish called "fufu". Tim was pretty tired and feeling worried about the Christchurch earthquake, so declined the fufu trip. He was pleased he did, as it turned out that it was "grasscutter fufu". Grasscutter is a large furry sort of rodent - like a giant rat - that is common on Ghanaian menus, as it is apparently quite easy to catch and provides a lot of meat. Apparently, it tasted smokey and had a leathery skin. Not cool.

Friday

Friday was our last day on the project and our last day in Ho! We woke extra early as we had to be down at the building site by 8am to ensure we had enough time to paint the building. There was still no water on - two whole days with no water - and our water barrels had run dry too. We kept our part of the deal by arriving at the building site around 8am, but there was no sign of Gideon. We waited around and played with the kids from the kindergarten. Eventually they went inside and we continued to wait...and wait... There were a few hangovers amongst the crew. Steph had a quiet spew in the bushes at one point. Not ideal. Gideon and Wisdom showed up just before 10am, claiming that the paint shop had opened late and then they didn't have the right paint. We were not impressed.

We mixed some paint and applied an undercoat on the outside wall facing the street and on the walls inside the cubicles. We followed the undercoat with two coats of a pale lemon coloured paint. Luckily, the paint was drying very quickly in the heat. Once the paint on the front wall had dried, we added a Madventurer logo and each painted our name on the wall. The building was almost complete - it just required the masons to come in and attach the doors to the cubicles. But our work was done.

It was a double dose of excitement when we got back to the Mad House. The water was back on, so we all had proper showers (much needed)! And it was red red for lunch! We all packed up our remaining things and Gideon took us down to the tro tro station in Ho. It was sad to be leaving the Mad House and Ho and to be saying goodbye to Gideon. It had been an excellent project to be involved in and we had had a very fun two weeks!

It was a very cramped and uncomfortable tro tro ride to Accra. Gus, Megan and Tim were all flying out of Accra on Saturday and Emily was flying back to England for a short break, so Cathy and Steph decided to join us in Accra for the weekend. The highlight of the tro tro ride was seeing two baboons sitting on the side of the road and also seeing a woman carrying two huge dead grasscutters by their tails - no doubt she was having fufu for dinner that night!

We arrived in Accra around 5pm and Megan and Tim caught a taxi to the Paloma Hotel, while the rest of the crew headed to the house they were staying at (a friend of Emily's). We were delighted to check in to the hotel - although it was just an average hotel room, it seemed incredibly luxurious! The running water and air conditioning was a treat! We had showers and got changed and met the others down at Champs Sports Bar, which is part of the Paloma Hotel complex and a Madventurer favourite.

The food was a treat too! We had chicken nibbles to share, then Tim had a chicken burger and chips while Megs had a BLT. It was a really fun night. We had a few drinks and really enjoyed Champs. But we were pretty tired, so we left the others to it and headed off to bed around 10.30pm. We must be getting old!

Saturday

After one of the finest sleeps either of us has ever had, we eventually got up and returned to Champs for breakfast - full English cooked breakfast and a milkshake! Ahhhhh. After checking out of the Paloma Hotel, we wandered the streets of Ghana's capital and we stumbled across an art shop called The Loom. It had some really good stuff and Megan found a painting that we both loved. It is an abstract painting of a crowd of African people, using both paint and small pieces of fabric. It is called "The People Still To Come" and it is by a local Ghanaian artist. So we bought that as another memento of Ghana.

From The Loom, we caught a taxi across the city to the Osu African Market. We found the taxi drivers in Accra a lot more sneaky than those in Ho, trying to rip us off whenever they could. We had a lovely walk around the Osu area, passing a bar (or a "spot" as they tend to call them in Ghana) called Millie Spot (see photo) and a taxi that had seen better days - its front left wheel was "dislocated"! The Osu African Market was amazing. We found some really cool souvenirs there, including a fridge magnet for Megan to keep her collection going!

It was incredibly hot outside and after the Osu African Market, we felt that we were done with checking out Accra, so we got a taxi back to the hotel and spent the afternoon in Champs - it had food, drinks, air conditioning, live sport and pool tables! Everything we needed for a relaxing afternoon. We did all of these things - we ate, drank, watched English football and Six Nations rugby, played some pool and then we were joined by Emily, Cathy and Steph in the evening, who had just seen Gus off to the airport.

Our flight left Accra at midnight and arrived in London around 6.30am on Sunday. We both managed to get a decent sleep on the flight, so the trip seemed to race by. If any blog readers are considering visiting West Africa or doing a volunteer programme, we would definitely recommend both Ghana and Madventurer - but regardless, just do it. It's an amazing part of the world, full of amazing people. We had a brilliant time are are so glad we did it.

Country Tally:
Megan: 45
Tim and Bear: 42