Friday 9th November - start to come home...

It is quite cool when we wake up - relatively speaking of course.  The waves are crashing on the shore as normal, but there are lots more flies about and also a wider variety of birds than usual.  We have breakfast and are visited by Alexandra and her potential landlord, which is good news.  He has offered her better accommodation than yesterday, and seems a reasonable guy, so hopefully that will all work out.  

We then go to the college and leave some paperwork there for Castro to look through to enable us to register TEABAG as an NGO in Ghana. Chris and I then went back to the other vocational college to try to find the head there today.  She was which was great.  Her name is Jemima Frempong which is a relatively common name in Ghana but has a delightful ring to it.  they have taken the Director of ICCES to court, so we will see how that pans out.  It was good to have a conversation and she is a delightfully feisty lady.  She used to be the head of a local primary school, and she had all the children out cutting the grass with their machete's.  Her husband is also a lovely man with really black skin, and a wonderfully pink mouth which he opens really wide when he laughs, and which is just so infectious, you can't help but smile. 

Back at the college,  my friend Louise has been busy interviewing students to update their sponsors.  She has managed to see nearly all of them, which is great.  I wandered around to find some of the first years working on a big blackboard doing some maths calculations.  What is the value in base 10 of 443100 written in base7?  Do we do sums like that any more now?  Anyway it was instructive and they enjoyed teaching me too.  

We then drove back to Accra to the flat where we now await our driver to the airport, though not for several hours.... It has been a busy couple of weeks, and one rewarding by the warmth of the welcome we have had from so many people.

Thursday 8th November

As we have run out of cash, we need to go to change some Sterling into Cedis.  This involves a walk of about a quarter of a mile along the main road to what looks like a shed which is where the Forex exchange office is.  There is a footpath, but it is not very even, and has the odd missing drain cover.  The corner of the road has a really foul smelling drain passing around it which is most unpleasant and    you have to feel for the young children playing around the fod stalls that are just next to it.  We come out with a wad of money - each note is worth between £1.65 and £3.30, which leads to quite a lot of notes.

We get back to the flat ok and then set off to drive back to the village.  When we arrive, two students who we sponser seesre there to meet us, one of them, Richmond, was there in his new uniform which was very smart. We met with Castro, the head of the centre, and talked about the various meetings we had had in Kumasi and Accra.  As we we talking the Chief, Nana George went past with his niece, and they stopped to talk with us.  The letter I had written to the head of ICCES was much discussed and seen to be really strong and a great letter.  Their advice is that we now lobby the District Commissioner and encourage him to speak to the Minister, so we will see how that works.

We tried to visit another College, about 10 miles away which we have visited before, and which is also having problems with ICCES.  However, the head teacher was not there, so we came back to the village, and met another of the students we sponsor.  She was in some distress because her mother in law had died 3 days before.  Alexandra has had a hard time over the past year or so.  She is about 21 and her mother died 18 months ago.  SHe became pregnant and whilst the father has not really supported here, the mother in law has.  However, here others inlaw relatives have been quite difficult.
She is now really concerned about living there still, and wants to find somewhere else to live.  Her brother had been supporting her a bit, but he also died 6 months ago.  Ghana as a society is very much based on the extended family;  if you do not have one, then you can be very much left to your own resources.  She came to see us later in the evening with Chris who is now a year old and seems to be doing well. She has found somewhere to live, but will need help paying for it.  Is that the right thing to do?  These decisions are not easy - her accommodation for a year costs £50.  The baby's father has agreed to pay for the baby to go to a crèche from next January which sounds like good news as she should be able to finish her college course that way.  She is a bright and engaging girl, so you can only wish her well and hope that helping her now will enable her to at least get a qualification which will help her in the future.

Wednesday 7th November

It was a good start to see on the Internet that Obama had been re-elected.  Some of the people we had talked to were clearly keen that that should happen, but it does seem that the world is better with him in the Whitehouse.

Our plan for today was to visit the Minister for Employability Skills and Welfare.  We also had an appointment with a specialist in agriculture to talk through planting possibilities for Mankoadze. It took us a good hour to travel 8 kms to the ministry this morning.  The traffic is like that most days, and must take a lot of energy to drive through.  It feels more anarchic than driving in Cambridge traffic jams, and there's some honking of horns to encourage those closer to the traffic lights to move faster.  There are certainly more people trying to sell things to stationary motorists on the main roads than there ever would be in Cambridge.

Unfortunately, the minister had had to go to his constituency, and was not able to see us. His No.2 was also out.  Fair enough really, but actually amazing, that the possibility of turning up on spec might sometimes work.  I now have a phone number to call on Friday, so I will try that, and find out what the minister thinks about our letter concerning the attitudes and plans of ICCES.  We then travelled to a shopping area but not the one that had fallen down in the morning I am glad to say.  We had a fantastic cup of real coffee - a real treat when you haven't had one for over 10 days - and visited a bookshop who's owner had heard of TEABAG which was gratifying.

In the afternoon we visited an organisation called FARA which is concerned with research into plants and their agricultural contribution.  It's interesting to observe that there seems to be a real connectivity  between research and action here.  It doesn't usuallyfeel like that in the UK.

We are travelling back to the village tomorrow, so need to pack so that we can come back and go to the airport promptly on Friday.  As I write, there is electricity here which means the air conditioning can be on - at 31 degrees C that is really helpful.  However, the area of Accra opposite our flat is in darkness.  Some areas experience 8 hours per day of blackout which makes running many things, very difficult.

6th November, Tuesday

Chris has a meeting at the university in the morning, so Louise and I take a taxi to the National Cultural Centre in Kumasi.  Our driver's route is slightly eccentric, taking us through the grounds of the main teaching hospital there.  The only facility he pointed out to us was the morgue, but we did drive past it, and I pointed that I was not keen to visit there, thankyou!

The cultural centre was made up of a wide variety of craft workshops with a range of different activities traditional to the area - pottery, Kente weaving, broadloom weaving, sculpture, batik dying, printing, rafia work and rattan furniture making, brass casting and so on.  The people there were really interesting to talk with and were keen to explain their activities.  They were not at all pushy about encouraging purchases which was great, though of course we did buy some things.

In addition, there was a museum about their previous Ashante king and all the paraphernalia required to be a king in that area.  His right to kingship depends on having access to a solid gold throne which apparently fell from the sky at the behest of a priest.  The British thought that they had captured the throne, and therefore had control of the region, but of course, they were fobbed off with a fake one - which is now on display, and which doesn't look very much like a solid gold throne at all.

The king survived in part by having only male cooks.  His many wives are not allowed to cook for him in case one gives him something that makes him favour her over all the others.   He has an official food taster too, who after eating the food has to wait 30 minutes before the food can safely be given to the king.

After this visit, we take a taxi to the airport where we have to wait an extra hour because the flight has been rescheduled for a bit later on in the day.  It all works smoothly though and we pass underneath fantastic cumulo nimbus clouds and a magnificent red and purple sunset.  

Monday 5th November

There won't be any firework displays here today, I hope!

Louise and I go off to meet with a man who has responsibility for championing sweet potato through much of West Africa and in particular in Ghana.  This is a project we are interested in to improve the diet in Mankoadze, and have had some interest from staff there to suggest that they would be prepared to try something out.  It turns out that this is one of the areas where Ted is working, and so he can supply some technical assistance to help get a garden going, and can also offer someone to come and work with the catering students to try out new recipes.  The building and construction people could help with a storage tank for water, and the electricals team with wiring a pump, so it certainly could fit all areas of the college if we can make that happen.

He would be interested in then using the network of Vocational Colleges to spread information about this as a case study, which could be really exciting.  I learnt a lot about the development of seed stock, and creation of cuttings that are the starting point of sweet potato.  Ted is American, but has spent most of his life in different parts of the world trying to make projects like this happen.

Louise and I then went back to the University Campus and walked to the Botanical Gardens which was not the experience that term might suggest.  We saw a very few trees with labels on, but did see huge colonies of fruit bats who flew noisily overhead.  And at ground level, we observed many people chanting and singing, apparently using the place as a prayer centre.  It was most odd by our standards.

We went out for dinner in the evening, with Chris' contact at the university and his wife which was a most pleasant evening.  They had lived in Brighton for a while and also in Rugby, and it was most interesting to get a sense of their view of the UK.  

Sunday 4th November

We are flying to Kumasi today, a town about 200 miles inland, north west of Accra.  Chris is going to meet a contact we have met several times before who is the Chairman of the Ghana Energy Commission and head of the Energy centre at KNUST which is the university in Kumasi.  We are going to fly there, and I have some expectation that the plane might be rather faded and rusted, but in fact it is almost new and very comfortable.  Kumasi immediately strikes you as drier, though no less hot - it's still 31 degrees C.  We are staying at the Engineering Department Guest House, which is very comfortable, and we spend the rest of the afternoon having a walk around the grounds which are very extensive.  There are some serious trees in the grounds with vultures, large hawks as well as black and white birds from the magpie family, but much bigger, all roosting in them.

We have dinner in the Guest House which is very pleasant, though 2 of the three dishes we had chosen were not on the menu - today or so they said.

The Internet is down, and so is the power some of the time.  It's situations like that that make it clear that we are in a third world country. 

Saturday 3rd November

Breakfast is accompanied by weaver birds - they had been there when we had dinner the night before.  At breakfast they were all very busy and noisily so too.  Some were happily weaving into their nests as well as just making a noise.  We did see one crocodile too, though not in the swimming pool, I'm pleased to say.

We drove further north from this hotel to the Kakum National Rainforest, a small pocket of rainforest illustrative of the vegetation that had at one time covered a large area of Ghana.  My school friend is not keen on heights, so instead of the canopy walk where you walk on rope ladders between the trees at a height of about 30 metres, we did a nature walk instead, which proved most interesting.  We had a guide to ourselves who walked us around a forest area, explaining a lot about the different plants we saw.  Their medicinal properties were well known and really interesting - some were made into a tea, some had the bark made into a drink, others were rubbed on wounds etc.  It is of course a remarkable resource in so many ways, and worryingly damaged by man too quickly.  We had to avoid treading on ants which marched across the path, but generally there were far fewer insects than perhaps we would expect.

From there, we drove back along the coast road to Accra, stopping for lunch and to buy three delicious pineapples on the way.  

Friday 2nd November

We spend the morning at the college meeting some of the students who have been sponsored in the past and updating their profiles. Its good to find that most of them are doing well.   Some are off sick which is a shame, but hopefully we can catch up with them next week. A man from the forestry commission stops by.  He has some responsibility for understanding about plants that might grow in the area, and my school friend who is a plant pathologist is really pleased to meet him.

She and I then leave to drive to Cape Coast to visit the slave castle, built initially by the Portuguese, then briefly owned by the Swedes, lost to the Danes and then finally completely buit by the English.  About 1500 slaves could be held underground there for between  2 weeks and 3 months, before boats would come to take them to the West Indies. The conditions were truely awful, and compounded by the founding of the first Anglican Church directly above the area the men were held. Of course, there were tribes people who made money from selling their enemies to the British, but the industrial scale on which we made this happen is fairly horrendous.  The 1807 AntiSlavery Act made a difference, but there were illegal slave shipments into the 1830s.    It is not a jolly place to go, but if you are to understand Ghana, it is a place that I think should be visited.

After a visit to the attached craft market, we headed off for a hotel where the main features are a swimming pool and a lake containing crocodiles. Not to be confused, I would suggest.

Thursday morning is an early start as Chris has to get to a conference on windpower in Accra.  So I drive him at 5.30am to catch a bus.  The light is just dawning as we leave.  The main road to Winneba is already busy at that time, and we drive down to the market to find the bus.  The ticket costs the equivalent of 50p. It will go when it is full.  We are not convinced that the bus we are sitting by is the one we are waiting for, but just as the bus gets full a woman comes to tell Chris that the bus is ready to go, and there is just one seat waiting for Chris, so that is good.

Whilst we had been waiting, the market was slowly coming to life. People were cleaning up the rubbish that had accumulated over night, and setting out their stalls. Driving back to the village, I stopped off at the College and the students are getting together to start their lessons at 7.15am.  I went back to my lodgings for breakfast!

I spent quite a lot of the morning with Castro, the head, sorting out our response to the letter from ICCES.  It took some effort to get it to be a reasonable length and to confirm all the points we wanted to get across. However, we did in the end, which was good.  We then printed several copies to deliver to Accra and the local offices.  

We spent some of the afternoon talking with some of the students and helping them practice their English.  It is difficult, as they hear so little English from native English speakers, and so pronounciation and Vocabulary are hard to get right and develop.  After the end of college, we walked through the village, getting lots of photos of small children wFho lined up to have their photos taken, and some mothers too.  The beach is lovely in the late afternoon sunlight, and we watched some fishermen launching their dugouts through the waves, which is really hard work, into seas that crash into the shore- not for the potentially travel sick.

Wednesday 31st October.

We start the day by visiting the local schools all three of which are supported by TEABAG. One at Onyadze is a Junior High School taking students from 11 to 15 which is the end point of free education in Ghana. It is well run and efficient, and we have a brief chat with the teachers. The head is away at a meeting so we do not stay long.

The next school is at Abrekum, which is also a coastal village, but one that is much poorer than Mankoadze. The road down to it is full of potholes and you have to drive from one side of the track to the other to avoid them.  There had been a thunderstorm in the night, and so the top was very soft. We gave a lift to one of the teachers from the main road to the school.  He had been waiting some time, when we passed by.  We were greeted very warmly by a member of staff, and shown round the classes.  All have wooden desks with 2 or 3 children sitting at them, depending on size and about 40 children to a class.  There are no resources, just a rather old chalk board on which the chalk becomes difficult to read.  A lot of the teaching is cloze procedures, or traditional chalk and talk. Chickens pass through the class too, usually quietly.  The children were delighted to have their photos taken - there were lots of noisy cheers!  We left the teacher with some pens and notebooks, and were not brave enough to hand them out ourselves - that way lies riot!  Fortunately it was the beginning of a break so we did not have too disruptive an effect on the teaching.

We visited the primary school in Mankoadze too.  The head teacher was hard at working slumped over his desk on the verandah of one of the buildings  He clearly operates a clean desk policy.  No doubt a lot of thinking was being done.  At the moment the school has a full complement of teachers.  Sometimes that is not the case, and then the children sit peacefully in their desks waiting for something to happen.

At College, the year 2 catering students were doing their practicals.  Coleslaw, bread rolls, meat stew with saffron rice and topped off by bread and butter pudding.  I got to try out the bread rolls and bread and butter pudding and they were both delicious.  They are part of the Ghanaian curriculum, though nearly all the villagers do not have access to an oven. 

Some of the students had been to an Entrepreneurial class that morning.  This is a curriculum topic that all the students study, and is a very valuable part of the curriculum.  Often workers will give you the price for something which reflects just the price of the raw materials.  They are then disappointed when you come to pay them and they want more money than has been agreed to pay for their effort.  Teaching accurate costings and factoring in time - realistically - is an essential part of the curriculum.

Castro, the head of the College, and I were then called to a meeting between the head of the village and ICCES, the organisation that is causing us problems.  The chief gratifyingly informed them of how much he valued our support.  The Director, who has personally been very difficult, was 'unfortunately' unable to attend, so he sent 6 of his staff instead. The 6 delivered a letter to the chief and then came to the College to deliver a copy to us.  It's message was to suggest that ICCES should have day to day responsibility for the College. Many of the ICCES run colleges are badly failing, and his attempt to take control of ours is probably to rescue his reputation just before the election.  We will have to fight this one immediately and for that purpose it is valuable that I am here at the moment.  Some more interesting Ghanaian politics might ensue I think!