We've now been in Ejura for a month and a half, and the time has flown by. There is now a definite weekly routine. Monday is market day so school tends to fizzle out early, we then wander round the stalls after lunch picking up any essentials for the week ahead and sampling some of the delicacies on offer. Some of the favourites are sweet balls (donut like things made from Cassava flour), fried cheese, soya kebabs (actually better than most of the meat alternatives), and Klum Klwi (ground peanuts shaped into sticks and fried). Hmm Hmmmn.
Tuesday is the beginning of the week proper. There is a full day of classes, and attendances are high. I've been running after school lessons for the older children, and Holly does library, so we tend to finish about four. Everything is quite relaxed from then on, we tend to read, plan for the next days lessons, shower, walk around the town or into the farm land, and sit around talking. At six-thirty the sun rapidly goes down, and at seven-ish we get dinner out and start trying to gather everyone round. With five volunteers, six boys, and Richard (the assistant headteacher) it can take a while to get all assembled. After dinner we sometimes go to a spot (bar) for a beer or a coke, or just stay around the house listening to music and chatting. Recently we've bought some DVD's so we occasionally watch a film in the computer room.
Wednesday and Thursday proceed in much the same way, unless of course there's heavy rain. Rain means attendances go down at school and lessons are generally delayed, it also often causes the power to go down which puts a stop to my computer classes.
Friday is the beginning of the weekend and also a big Mosque day, so traditionally this means attendances are low and school closes early. Annoyingly this is when many of my computer classes have been scheduled for, I think the idea being it will be an incentive for the children to come to school. This is fine most weeks and most of the children do turn up, but Friday is also when many impromptu holidays come up so the school is closed completely.
On that note, I now understand how people find out about local goings on and celebration days, there is a huge loudspeaker in the centre of town that broadcasts up and coming events. This is why no one knows what is going on until the day before, when the announcement is made. They also announce if children go missing, or if there's a fire, or any things of importance like this.
The weekends, when we stay in Ejura, are spent doing laundry, cleaning rooms, and lazing around. Though this weekend we were more constructive and painted the boys new bedroom which has just been added onto the house. On Sundays I have also been helping Simon out with the cooking. So far I've done a coconut curry which worked really well - surprisingly they don't ever use coconut in cooking despite the local abundance. And also I did a spicy "chickpea", tomato and carrot sauce. That was nice as well, but the "chickpeas" (they're like chickpeas but bigger and have a slightly different taste) took 4 hours of boiling before they went soft – not a process I'm in a hurry to go through again. I have a huge respect for Simon, its hard enough regularly cooking for fifteen people but to do so on charcoal fires without the use of onion, garlic, mushroom, or meat is very limiting indeed. Good job.

First of all, sorry I haven't written in ages. Fate, slow computers and Kumasi's internet drought have come between me and this blog for the last few weeks! Hopefully today I'm going to try and get some photos up on here or Facebook, but last time it ended in disaster, so we'll see!

Since I last wrote, we've lost two volunteers. Noa from Israel and Jasmine from America set off for home on Friday morning. The house is very quiet without them, and I'm very jealous of Jasmine who said that the first thing she'll drink in New York will be a pint of cold milk, and that for the next week absolutely everything and I mean EVERYTHING she eats is going to be topped with cheese. She'd been here for six months, so I expect she'll have a lot of cravings to get through! Noa is hoping she'll have contracted a mild dose of marlaria, or have a dormant spider bite, so that she won't have to go back to work when she gets home. Fingers crossed!

Last time I wrote we were on our way to the Hand in Hand project in Nkoranza. Set on beautiful grassy grounds overlooking farmland and forest, it's a children's home that funds itself by renting out guest rooms. In Ghana it is believed that when a woman gives birth to a mentally or physically handicapped child, it is because she has been attacked by water spirits, so the newborn babies are often left by the side of the river to be 'reclaimed' by the water. Institutions for disabled children are reputedly more damaging than helpful for children. If they don't have serious issues when they go in, they will when they come out. Hand in Hand takes abandoned children who have been left on their premises, given by families who can't cope or removed from state institutions. Set up by some Ghanaian and Dutch doctors, the project only takes a very small number of western volunteers. For the most part, each child is assigned with a constant Ghanaian volunteer who lives at the home full time, long term and acts as a parent to the one or two children they are helping. Obviously there is a lot of fear in Ghanaian culture of these kinds of problems, but Hand in Hand are gradually trying to change attitudes in the local community so that disabled people are now a more accepted part of Nkoranza life. The home itself is beautiful. You'd struggle to find a better equipped children's home in Britain. There were individual chalets for 'parents' and their children, there was a colourful play room with a ball pit - one little boy with cerebral palsy demonstrated it to us, divebombing in with a massive grin and wriggingling about for about five minutes - there was a play park and even a swimming pool for the kids. there's a school just outside the grounds, and in the complex there was a gorgeous outdoor church, where they congregate every Sunday among the breathtaking rock formations. Disabled adults who have been helped by Hand in Hand often stay on to work there, serving in the restaurant, greeting visitors and working in the craft workshops. They has a kente clothmaking workshop, they fired recycled glass beads and made necklaces, purses and bags to sell in the giftshop. The project was really trying hard to be self sufficient, and not have to rely on donations any more, and you could really see that it was going that way. On our second day there we met Bob, a vivacious Chicago Jewish playwright with a song or literary quote or dramatic reference for every possible sentence you said to him. He is the husband of Ineke, one of the founders. Their home at the project was covered in black and white photos, Ineke's artwork, piles of movies, music and books. There were photos of Ineke being decorated by the Ghanaian president, as she is the founder of the National Health Insurance System in Ghana. Bob assured us he never wanted to work for Good, he just happened to marry a good person. He told us that Ineke was an MD, had written books, was an artist and a lifelong volunteer, but all she ever wanted to be was a clown.

Another trip we made was to Lake Bosumtwi, which was 45 minutes from Kumasi, the main town near us. We stayed at a lovely guesthouse right on the lake and spent a lazy day and two nights reading our books and spending far far too much money on CHEESE! and wine. The lake was very still and peaceful, one legend is that it is the home of the god Twi, another that it is the place where souls go to in between when they are alive and dead. The villages nearby were very, very quiet, and not quite as friendly as Ejura, so we couldn't do much exploring. It almost made me feel nostalgic for the hordes of Ejuran children running towards us at every turn screaming 'How are you?' 'How are you?' 'How are you?' Almost.

School is going very good. Madam Paulina and I have been working on the P1 English lessons, and she's getting into a routine now, so I've started to break away and do some remedial lessons, which are lots of fun because their more creative and very rewarding. It's unbelievable, but we only have a month left of school before the exams start. Time is going so fast.

We found some pirate DVDs in Kumasi, so the Namaskar boys have been spending a few evenings watching Disney films and Die Hard.

The Girls' Club is going very well, they've joined a group of local schools who have guest speakers on issues like hygeine and teen pregnancy, but for some reason this means that we now have to let the boys come to the girls club, which I still don't quite get.

The local women have worked out that us Obrunis love babies, so we're getting regular deliveries of babies to cuddle, with instructions to 'send it back when it's hungry'. Babies are often cared for by their brothers and sisters, so we don't usually mind relieving a child of her younger sibling so that the kids can play in Namaskar House, and the babies are very cute - even Jack has been known to tickle some feet when he thinks no-one's looking.

A week or so ago us girls applied lei lei, or henna. We bought it at market as crushed leaves, which when mixed with water and left on the skin leave a red stain. Ghanaian women cover their whole hands, but it looks a little ridiculous on our skin, so we just did our nails.

I think that's all my news - I'm missing people at home, but it's very fun here, so I'm not missing you too much!! Hopefully I'll be able to write more in a week or so.

Love you all, miss you all xx

Jack:

I've now decided to abandon theory lessons for this term, so as to get the children practicing on the computers for two periods a week. I think next term once all the children are more familiar with how to use a computer the theory lessons will become more useful. The lessons I have been doing are going really well, with all the kids super keen to come and learn (every time I walk in the school they swamp me shouting “Sir! Sir! ICT today?”).

All the classes can now move, click, and drag with the mouse, and they know where to hold their hands on the keyboard, and how to type with the “home row” keys (the keys over which your fingers should rest). Its amazing the difference it makes if you learn to type correctly from the off, it took me ages to retrain myself two finger typing, but the children are picking it up really quickly.

Last Wednesday I watched the Champions league final, my first televised game in Africa. The game was rubbish (unless you supported Barcelona) but the atmosphere was super lively. It was shown in the community hall which has this huge open air courtyard where they projected the game onto one of the walls. I went with the house cook, Simon, and most of the boys from the house, they advised to get there early so as to get seats and its a good job we did as by kick off the whole courtyard was packed.

There was lots of betting, and shouting about betting, before the match, and when the lineup was announced everybody was whooping and chanting as if they were in the stadium. Early on the crowd seemed to be quite balanced, but when Barcelona scored their supporters either became more vocal or some people switched allegiances, I suspect a bit of both. By the end it was positively partisan.

We were watching the game on the American channel ESPN and a personal highlight of the whole experience was seeing Shaka Hislop and Robbie Mustoe as the half time “experts”. Of course neither could match the insightful analysis and charisma of Alan Shearer - still it's good to see these two former Goliaths of the Premiership have gone to a good home.

We had PTA meeting last Friday after which all the parents and committee members came to see the computer room, they were so impressed with the computers and everything they can do. People were coming up and shaking my hand, slapping each others backs etc. After they had all seen the room everyone came back in and said a prayer of thanks for the computers and the opportunity for their children.

This week is sports week for all the schools in this area of Ejura. We were told at the last minute that this would mean no classes for the whole schools, as everybody would be going to the fields to watch. It was frustrating to hear that, one because we were given no notice and two because the school seems to have only done one full week in the month since we arrived. But them it was even more frustrating to arrive at school on Monday to find that there would be school every morning after all!

When I first arrived here I thought a major problem was the lack of communication, now I'm starting to think its more just that no one knows whats going on in the first place. This seems incomprehensible to us volunteers from a European/American perspective, where something like an inter-school sports week would have been planned and timetabled months in advance. Here its much more the case that people arrive in the morning and decide from there whats going to happen, and somehow amid a general sense of chaos thing do generally happen. Still I don't think four and a half months here will be enough for me to get used to this system – whats wrong with setting a time in advance and sticking to it!!!

Holly will write in a few days, and hopefully upload a few photos too.