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....