Heartwarming experiences and emotional goodbyes

Written by Georgina Kempton - GapBreak 2009, Ghana

We're leaving Swedru on Monday morning to go travelling up north for 2 weeks before heading back to Accra to fly out to our various destinations (London via Joburg for me!). There's been a very intimidating sense of finality growing.

The weekend after that was spent at Akosombo, up in the Volta lake region. The drive there was beautiful - if you ignored the tro tros/locals, we could have been in the hunter valley!!! On Saturday we did a Volta cruise for 6 hours, which was very relaxing. We stopped halfway at Dodi Island where we were met by lots of local kids who led us across the island and back. On Saturday night a whole group of us went camping to Boti Falls - we stayed behind because Claudia was feeling crook but we had a fantastic girls night, went out and bought Ghanaian street food, the equivalent of junk food - Ghanaian chocolate, popcorn and milo sachets!! Just to indulge ourselves because everyone had had a bit of a tough week. Then we decided to go all out and on Sunday morning the 4 of us headed to Accra and saw a movie (angels and demons - loved it!) and had pizza for lunch. So we had a lovely indulgence day :)

The weekend after that (last weekend) we headed back to Kokrobite to Big Milly's for a last weekend on the coast. The boys aren't travelling with us so it was a nice last group weekend too. It was beautiful to go for a big swim in the Atlantic and just chill out. There was a huge reggae party on the beach on Saturday night so we had a great time mingling with Ghanaians and other travellers, and dancing to old songs like 'celebration' that the band was playing on the beach. Lots of fun!!! All in all an excellent weekend.

The weeks have been speeding past and I just finished my last day at school a few hours ago. Very sad - Phoebe and I found ourselves tearing up on more than one occasion. We've donated 20 desks and chairs to the school as well as a beautiful cupboard with about 60 books, clocks, games, a soccer ball, encyclopaedias, posters, maps etc. When we presented everything they were stoked, and phoebe gave a little impromptu speech which was returned by ma (who is not only our host grandma but also the founder of our school). We then had our classes to ourselves as usual for the next hour or so, and after break we did P.E. in the form of dancing...macarena, hokey pokey, nutbush, musical statues etc!!! We went and said goodbye to our kids after lunch which was awful. In Ghana when someone is coming back or coming over or anything they just say 'I'm coming, I'm coming ok?' and one of my beautiful KG2 girls Francisca said to me 'Madam Georgina, you are not coming?' – I almost burst into tears. We had to spend a few moments collecting ourselves! I can't even imagine what leaving our family is going to be like on Monday, it makes me sick just thinking about it...so let's avoid that!!!

My big project at school has been teaching the kids in my class to write their names. I bought them all exercise books and wrote about 13 times in each book their names in dots so they could trace and then copy. It's been so heart warming to watch their progress - and the fact that they now know what different types of weather are and can distinguish different shapes is so amazing. It's hard to believe I’ve taught them that stuff - we all started off with so little confidence in our teaching skills, and now it just feels natural. I'm going to miss my class so much!

Other than that, not too much to say. We're starting our trip with 3 days in Kumasi, a big city about 4 hours north west of Swedru. We’re thinking of skipping back down to Accra on the 10th because Obama is visiting Ghana....we think it would be amazing to see him!!! But we'll see how that turns out. Other than that we're exploring the north...will tell you about it!!!!