Ghana girls head away for the weekend

COUNTRY: Ghana
PROGRAM: GapBreak
PROJECT: Teaching & Orphanage work
WRITTEN BY: Tara Dear

We've all been having an amazing time since our last blog, filled with weekend travel, exhausting school days, and regular trips to the orphanage. We finished off our first week at the orphanage with our first teaching experience in Ghana!

After a few days in their company we feel like we've adopted a lot of little brothers and sisters who always run to greet us whenever we arrive. We also spent a couple of days cleaning out the classrooms and the bedrooms, uncovering unbelievable amounts of dust. Since we started our proper placements, we've been going back there to visit twice a week.

Our first weekend travelling was eventful, to say the least. (Sarah
says "wild XD") We headed down to Cape Coast on Friday, hoping for a
relaxing weekend by the beach. Instead, we found ourselves in the
midst of traditional African dancing at the bar, sampling the local
beverages, and getting to know the obibini who showed us how to pull
in the fishing boats in the proper Ghanaian way, which involves a lot
of harmonious singing. We also visited a few tourist destinations,
such as Kakum National Park where we survived the canopy walkway and
discovered Sarah's fear of heights, Hans Cottage (Australian crocs are
better), and Cape Coast Castle, which was pretty heart-wrenching as
it's a memorial to the slave trade. PS there are chocolate pancakes in
Cape Coast, so it's definitely a return destination ;) We left on
Monday just in time to get back for teaching on Tuesday!

We are all placed at separate schools and are teaching in pairs. Most
of us have been given a class of our own to work with, usually around
twenty kids about six to ten years old. We've all become a lot more
innovative as there are very few resources in the classrooms apart
from a battered blackboard, some old books, and a lot of chalk (in
three months' time we may all develop chronic coughs). Some of the
subjects that we're covering are science, English and maths, although
working with a few kids who don't know the alphabet is a challenge.

Our latest weekend was spent at Apam, although Tara and Sophie endured
a four-hour church service with their host families instead. At Apam,
we stayed in an old, spider-ridden, and potentially haunted fort which
at least had a beautiful view of the ocean. We had a lovely
slumber-party with four of us under one mosquito net.

Right now we feel like we are at last settling into our placement and
the Ghanaian way of life. Many of us are now sporting braided hair and
African fabric, and are improving our skills at ripping open water
sachets and ice-cream bags (Fan-ice) with our teeth. We kid ourselves,
optimistically, that we're beginning to blend in ;)

We'll write again after the deer festival weekend at Winneba where we
plan to hunt down a sacrifice to the gods in the forest ensuring that
the sun will continue to rise. Hope all is going well Down Under, lots
of love, Ghana Girls 2012 <3