April the month of celebrations!

For me the month of April has always filled with great excitement and joy, I have many fond memories of my childhood In April, seeing flowers budding up from the ground, hearing the birds start singing in the morning, smelling the distinct smell of hot cross buns and mown grass, walking home from church carrying palm crosses on Palm Sunday, making chocolate crispy cakes with mini eggs and of course eating Easter eggs!!

It is hardly surprising that April is one of my favorite months of the year given the fact it contains not only the celebration of Easter but also my birthday! This year I turned 25 in Ghana. Being overseas on my birthday is not an unusual experience for me; in fact I think I can remember more birthdays in foreign places than I can in the UK but being away from friends and family on ‘the big day’ was a new one for me, it is fair to say that thanks to so many people who sent birthday wishes, gifts, money and cards I felt truly loved and had a great day (thank you everyone!). My friends here in Ghana also made it one to remember!!

The day started with my new housemate preparing a lovely surprise birthday breakfast before I headed off the Saloon for a little birthday treat of highlights, hair cut and a facial. It has taken me 6 months to find a saloon in Ghana which I trusted to dye my hair and I settled on a lady in my neighborhood who did a fantastic job. I was slightly worried when she looked at my skin and asked me ‘Do you take plenty Mango’ (Plenty is used here in day to day language to mean ‘a lot’ or ‘many’, for instance you might say ‘That man has plenty money’ or ‘Please add plenty pepper to my food’. The opposite of plenty being ‘small’ or if you want to convey a very little amount you may say ‘small small’, for example my response to the mango question was ‘small small’. The word take is also used more often that not to mean ‘eat’). I could not for the life of me understand why she was asking me if I ate a lot of mango, I guess I eat around once a week or something…she said I needed to ‘take’ more cucumber and coconut…oookkk I thought to myself…where can I buy cucumber!! ??

The evening was spent with some other VSO friends eating supper at our apartment before heading on to a party of a friend of mine who works for US Embassy…most of us VSO’s had not seen a free bar for a pretty long time, needless to say a fair amount of cocktails were consumed before heading on to my favorite nightclub in Accra for some dancing. We made our way home at around 5am…a great effort for some of my friends who are in their 40’s!!

Easter was spent in the Upper West region of Ghana with a great group of girls of all ages and nationalities. After a VSO conference in the north 6 of us headed to a place on the boarder of Burkina Faso to canoe down a river and watch hippos from the boats. Getting there was pretty much the most hairy bus journey of my life, 7hrs down dirt tracks in un road worthy vehicles needs no embellishment, use your imagination…it was shocking! We slept in a tree in the forest and took our own picnic supper and breakfast. Easter Sunday was spent in the village of Nadowli at an Irish friend’s place who is really living and working in a remote area as a teacher. We attended church on Easter Sunday, it was all in the local language of Dagaree but we felt the sense of celebration during the music and dances. It was great fun to dance with the children who were delighted to see us. No Easter Sunday lunch of spring roast lamb for me this year but a meal of Fufu and light soup washed down with Pito (local brew) at a local’s house was a real joy! (The highlight being asked to hold the new born baby whilst the mother prepared food!)

In other more practical news there has been a number of likes and dislikes this month summarized as follows!

Likes
• Working on a number of projects to develop the relationship between USAID and Ghana National Association of the Deaf
• Holding a successful meeting of deaf women in business and reaching a number of important decisions!
• Attending my first piece of performance art in Ghana
• Receiving a few birthday delights in the post!
Dislikes
• Being without water for 10 days
• Having constant power cuts in the office
• Waking up to find a cockroach walking over by body!
• Being unable to sort out a postal vote for the May 6th elections due to postal service issues!