You shall go to the ball.....

Before we came away to work in Akropong I had a call from my friend who is a fairly senior American Marine here in Ghana inviting me to the Marine Ball this Saturday. This is a very big occasion in Accra and landing a free ticket is a real score plus a fantastic networking opportunity, everyone who is anyone will be there, so of course I accepted the invite. As soon as I got off the phone I realised I had nothing to wear, now I know that it is what we are all expected to say but seriously when packing for 2 years in Ghana I was trying to be as practical as possible, surprisingly enough no ball gowns and only one pair of heels which really are not for the evening. I had to buy something, there was no other option expect not to go. My friend told me that the Marine’s will all be wearing full dress uniform (eek!) so I had to hit the shops...one problem..Where do you buy a evening frock in Ghana!? Where do you buy an evening frock on a volunteer living allowance! I then realised that all the women I knew would direct me to Accra Mall where the dresses would be at least half of a month’s salary for me here (clearly not an option). So I headed to the office downstairs to ask the secretary of another NGO, she delighted in telling me all the best places at the market and popped me in a taxi to Makola Market. Buying an evening dress in one of Africa’s largest markets was certainly one of my most memorable moments so far in Ghana, those of you who have spent any time in Africa will be familiar with the numerous stalls of clothes (bizarrely known as dead white man’s clothes) which are basically things you find in charity shops in the west. On my budget I started my search there, where a rather nice, but upfront sales women decided she would help me find something suitable, a number of ghastly polyester bright dresses were tossed my way before I declared I was looking for a black dress, many crumpled black linen primark esq numbers were suggested before she squeezed me into a black and cream dress which would have been ok if it was a size bigger, sure it I got in to it but it was hardly suitable for meeting Accra’s elite. I said I wouldn’t take it but she wouldn’t let me take it off without firmly patting my bust and bottom and getting her friends to come and look at the white lady with the African figure! These ladies were a lot of fun but time was ticking, with only one hour left to find a dress I asked them to direct me somewhere else. I ended up in at a lovely shop on the market where the sales lady ‘Abigail’ invited me in, closed the door, stripped me and had me try on nearly every dress in the shop...I was beginning to loose hope when we hit the jackpot and found a suitable dress, black with a little silver trim, it might not have been my first choice at home, but I will be comfortable enough in it. Then I realised, no shoes....there are so many Chinese made shoes at Makola I knew I would get a pair of black strappy heels for about £6, I even indulged and bought a silver necklace and earring set (I just pray it doesn’t go green on my neck during the night!). The whole experience was a true delight and set me back around £25...who knows I may be the best dressed lady at the ball...just hope I don’t have to answer one of women’s most standard first meeting questions...’I like your dress, where did you get it from’!

Working nine to five...

It has occurred to me that after being in Ghana nearly 2 months I am yet to write anything about my job here, given that it is the main reason I have been placed in Ghana I thought it was about time to write something about the work I am doing! The title of this post may be somewhat misleading as 9-5pm is far from what I am doing over here, VSO were not wrong when they told us one of the key attributes they were looking for in individuals was flexibility. In fact I am writing this post (albeit not posting it on the net!) in my hotel room on a Friday night. I am in Akropong, a small town in the Eastern Region of Ghana in a Presbyterian Teacher Training College Guest House after spending the day delivering a workshop on Advocacy Action Planning to 20 deaf members of the National Executive of the Deaf. What I knew about Advocacy before I came to Ghana was limited to about a paragraph, but now I delivered a whole days training on it and have even been tasked with writing the Advocacy Strategy for the organisation. I remember being told on my training before I came out about the multitude of ‘hats’ we would have to wear when working with our organisations, officially I have been sent over as a Fundraising & Communications Advisor, but in 6 weeks I have managed to wear the hat of HR Advisor, ICT Specialist, Teacher, Advocacy Analyst, Small business developer and professional networker! But most importantly I have been a student, the amount I have learnt about people management, disability, international development and cross cultural communication since being here is incredible, and I am seeing improvements in my sign language everyday! I still have so much to learn about so many things but I delivered my first joke in sign language to day – a real triumph!
My office is based in central Accra, in an area called Adabracka (many ex pats like to call it Abracadabra!) I am based in a compound called Accra Rehabilitation Centre where all the national head offices are for disability NGO’s. It is a very encouraging place to work as within the compound there is also a residence for disabled men aged from 16 up where they learn skills such as tailoring, shoe making, ICT etc. Employment for the disabled is a real problem in Ghana (as it is anywhere I guess, but more so in the developing world). So many of the disabled are left to ‘Beg for alms’ (what they say here...I had never heard of that before infact I thought they were talking about arms/weapons when they first said it and I had to go and look it up in the dictionary!). So in the centre these men learn a trade and take it back to the villages where hopefully they can get set up as a shoe maker etc. There is also a fantastic income generating chalk factory where many disabled work to make chalk and the Education Authority buys it in bulk. The office I work in is small, on the second floor and is crammed full of things they need to throw away in my opinion..They seem to keep so many things, dead computers, broken chairs, papers from the 80’s, Lord only knows why they are keeping them! There are 4 full time members of staff and me, perhaps I will write about them in another post, I like them all and we are able to have some jokes. The office is nearly always busy and my work so far has been very varied, I have spent a lot of time familiarising myself with the organisation, reading previous funding proposals, analysing publications and marketing material, interviewing members of staff etc. It appears that I will be called on to do many different things and have already delivered 2 workshops on income generation activities and advocacy (both of which I knew nearly nothing about before I left) so I feel that this will be a great learning experience for me. One of the things they want me to do is help strengthen the women’s wing of the association and get funding so the deaf women can have training on issues surrounding health, motherhood, HIV/AIDS etc as well as setting up some income generating activities with them – I am really excited by this and am eagerly doing much research into small business development.
As well as me being flexible with work, they are also being very flexible with me. I am treated as a staff member but also as a kind of consultant I guess, this means I am able to float in and out of the office within reason, which leads me nicely into my next post....

Beauty

I have decided to name this post ‘beauty’, it is fair to say that so many thoughts have been running through my mind since I have been in Ghana, many questions have been raised, situations contemplated in fact it is a challenge to even collect my thoughts but for now I will focus on beauty. Ghana is a beautiful country on that I am certain, at first glance Accra is nothing but another developing African capital city, the hustle and bustle, the pollution, noise, extreme poverty, erratic power and water supply but as you begin to look below the surface you find a city and a country full of treasures at every corner. Ghana’s beauty is found in its people. Not a day goes by when my socks aren’t knocked off by a Ghanaian’s generosity, hospitality and joy. I have lost count of the times people I have just met have paid my fare on the tro tro for me, invited me to share their meal with them and gone out of their way to give me lifts. In fact the following 2 particular examples have stuck in my mind:
It was a Friday night, the night that Ghana’s Black Satellites (under 20’s national football team) won the world cup – Ghana went crazy! It got me really excited for the world cup next year!!! I was going to meet my friend Jude (a VSO who came over with me who is working for Ghana Education Service) at the other end of town near his home to find somewhere to watch the football. After work I headed to my usual tro tro (bus) stop to catch a tro to meet him. The traffic in Accra makes London look like Lincolnshire and this particular night was much much worse as everyone was heading back to watch the football. To say I wasn’t entirely sure of where I was going was an understatement, the tro’s do not have numbers or anything to distinguish one from another, just a guy who is always known as ‘MATE’ hanging out the window gesturing with his hand to show which location the tro is headed to, different gestures mean different things and I am just getting the hang of what is what. Normally I ask the guy when he stops, this night I had no chance though as people were just cramming into the tros in desperation to get home. Just as I was thinking, ‘Oh dear, I haven’t really thought this through very well’, I decided to ask a nice young lady next to me which direction the next tro was going in. She asked me where I was heading and I told her, it was I think somewhere near where she was going as she told me to come with her, we hopped into a cab, she negotiated with the driver and paid the full fare for the whole cab, she insisted! On my living allowance there is no way I can take cabs in the day, I only do it at night when I figure it may not be so safe to take the tro tro, I was so so grateful to that lady – can you imagine that happening in London!
Another example of the generosity of spirit was found when I met this fantastically matronly like lady called Angie a senior fire official here in Ghana. As I came out of the VSO office last week after a meeting, my intention was to walk to a main shopping area called Osu, she greeted me out of her car, ‘where are you going’, so I said, she told me to get in and that she would give me a lift. We talked, her daughter lives in London, she told me all about Ghanaian foods and insisted in driving me to the places in my neighborhood where you can buy this and that (I have eaten there since and she was right, the Kwelewele and Boarfruit have been fantastic!). She then took me to the main fire offices and showed me around, before taking me to the market and helping me buy some great fabric. She insisted that I should get a lift back to my house in the fire truck!!!
It is not only the people, but the geography which lifts your spirits here in Ghana. At the weekend a number of us decided it was time to head out of the city to the coast for a long weekend break at a place called Ko Sa, a very small, basic beach resort (just a number of huts really) about 2 hrs out of Accra. The place was fantastic, owned and managed by a Dutch couple, plenty of sun, sea and sand, lots of walks to tiny fishing villages, lobster and beer for supper and great company – it was just what I needed to feel energized for another week of work without electricity and water!
I apologize for the lack of email contact at the moment, the power is erratic to say the least, it keeps coming on and off all the time – it fact there was no surge protector in the office here so the power surges have blown up the internet router!!! ERROR!
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