Thursday, November 19, 2009

Settling in: a Ghana volunteer placement

In today's blog post we'll be hearing from Nathan Bowles and Sophie Chambers, one adventurous couple who volunteered together during July 2009 in our Ghana Community program. Nathan and Sophie worked in a sheltered housing scheme, which houses mainly elderly and a few younger disabled residents.


Nathan comments that "the most important thing for me is that the whole trip has been life changing. To see how another culture lives, and one that hasn’t got the money that we have is what I set out to do - and definitely did! The overall experience has been amazing and one that is going to be very difficult to beat."

When we asked Nathan to tell us about his arrival experience in Ghana this is what he had to say.

"It’s hard to know where to start! The month I’ve had in Ghana has been the best experience of my life. Nothing could have prepared me for this trip and it is safe to say that I was not expecting what happened over the following four weeks. Here is a brief outline of some of the events that happened and my new surroundings:

We arrived safely in Accra on July 1st, although our flight was delayed. We spent the first night in a Guest House there as the journey would be too long to our village near Ho. People gathered round us as we came out from the airport - the air smelt different - hundreds of people everywhere - us, the only whites!! It was a huge culture shock. And we were exhausted.



We spent a long day travelling to meet our “host”, Bismark...Travelling through Ghana on this day was a huge “eye-opener” as we saw many of the local villages. Literally like something you would see on TV - mud huts, open fires, dusty roads etc.
We had to travel to Ho (large-ish town) to get to our village which is located on the side of Adaklu Mountain. To get to the mountain, you first have to drive across 7 miles of mud and then walk up the mountain for 20 mins to reach our village.

Our village is lovely - everyone is so welcoming. The kids wave and shout “YEVOO” (white person) - they are so excited to see us. However, we have made a baby cry - he had never seen a yevoo before, and was afraid! He is still not used to us! We gave a few kids bouncy balls and within about 10 minutes we had all the village kids round us wanting to play (probably about 30-40 kids!) They are also very keen on pens and paper.



Our room is lovely - sealed so no bugs can get in (although Sophie thought there was a lizard in there the other night)! However, there is no electricity in the village at all and as it gets dark by 6pm, we are in bed asleep by 7pm latest!!


Our shower is a bucket, which is actually really amazing at 5:30am after a night of sweating (no electricity = no fan!) Some men in the village made a toilet for us - this is literally a hut with a hole. However, when we woke up the other day, they had made a proper seat for us!! This is a big thing seeing as the rest of the village (of about 400 people) share 3 toilets. We are treated so well here. Florence (Bismark’s wife) is our caretaker - she makes all our food and does our washing. The food has been really good so far - lots of rice, pasta, plantains, yams, popcorn and eggs. We have not been ill…yet!"


Nathan and Sophie, thanks for sharing with us your initial impressions of a volunteer's arrival in Ghana.

For anyone interested in finding out more about this program please visit our website: www.globalvolunteernetwork.org/ghana

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