Living life as a local - unibreak students settle into their new home, Ghana.

COUNTRY: Ghana
PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Teaching & Health
WRITTEN BY: Eloise Davidson

I don’t know the specifics - the who, the what, the when or how we all came to call Ghana home. These last three weeks have been so special, making most of us reluctant to leave. Perhaps we can dredge our feet into the sand and refuse to go?

Things such as roosters crowing, or the shouts of obruni (tourists) that follow you all the way home is just second nature to us now. After our weekend in Cape Coast we came back to a power outage. None of us were smart enough to plan for this so it’s exciting to say we survived.

This week Alex was in pediatrics she reports quite fondly of her ward and the experiences she has had with the friendly head nurse that likes to include her as much as possible – even outings to her home! Madeleine is in the emergency ward and she is completely speechless – apparently it's such a huge, busy place and demonstrates how lucky we are in Australia. I (Eloise) am in the female ward, the head nurse Linda is such an inspiring nurse to be around. She gives you the chance to not only experience Ghanain nursing where all is equally distributed between students and graduates but the opportunity to teach as well. This week I was able to show them some of my nursing skills and tricks that we use in Australia to remember certain points.

The teachers are hard at work giving their hearts and souls to all the kids, spending hours constructing lesson plans for the children while Nicola goes above and beyond for her students. They all seem to thoroughly enjoy teaching the children however none of them are prepared when the cane is pulled out.

The orphanage has become the place we all like to go to relax and cuddle, teach and play with all the children. It's a place we will all miss enormously. On Wednesday one of the older kids had somehow got his entire thumb infected so off to the clinic we marched! It is amazing to then find antibiotics cost three cedi. Three cedi for a whole course of antibiotics! It is a completely different world.

On Friday Laura, Alex, Madeleine and I went with Seth to Accra to purchase gear for the orphanages, teachers and nurses. We are all very excited for when Monday rolls around and we are able to give our purchases and plaster and paint rooms at the school Laura and Isobel are at!

That being said Laura, Nicola, Isobel and I are in Swedru for our last weekend looking forward to a quiet, relaxed weekend going to church with our host families and exploring Winneba whilst Madeleine and Alex explore a bit more of Accra. As the days count down and the sand falls from the hourglass it is sad to know we are left with less than a week.

Stay tuned,
The January group.