If you're tired enough, you sleep well. Last night I had two roommates, an 18 year old young man named Chaz who was just completing his volunteer work, and a 20 year old rugby player from Ireland named Jon, who was, like us, was beginning his volunteer journey. Jon had done extensive travelling. Born in Australia, he told stories of hiking expeditions to South America, travels through Europe and his last adventure enroute to Ghana, a stay in Cairo, Egypt. We found that he will be spending two weeks volunteering as a soccer coach with kids at a rural school in Ghana.
Wake up was at 5:30 with the roosters and the blaring mosque call to worship, as we prepared to move out to our assignment. With a large group of both veterans and new initiates at the volunteer center of about a dozen, our breakfast was less elaborate, fresh bread and jam. By 8:30 we were packed and ready to go. An IVHQ employee, Francis, was our travel guide for the day, ensuring our safe arrival and passing us off to our host family that would be our home for the next two weeks.
We took a taxi to Madina, which is a kind of transportation junction point in Ghana. This is tro-tro (shared vans) central and from here, one can start their journey to anywhere in Ghana. Picture a huge open space, maybe a fairground, and populate it with hundreds of well worn, mostly Japanese minivans, each with 4 rows of seats, holding about 20 passengers, intimately sardined. each van had a handwritten label as to its destination, but these tro-tros each have a team, a driver and a conductor. The latter collects fares and generally has a big voice, hawking and inviting passengers to join their ride. So, add to the fairground, about 500 vans with people chanting a mantra of the routes and cities of their destinations, in the local twi language. Like an arcade hawker, or auctioneer, these repetitive callings take on a chant-like rhythm, and together, form a cacaphony of brutally loud noise. Add to this, that some vans have employed a recorded tape loop of the same hawking, blaring from tinny and shrill speakers mounted on the hood. For frosting, add about 4,000 people, and walking over a bed of wrappers and used plastic water-bag containers that has become kind of a signature of the terrain of this country. Not for the faint of heart or undecided. Reminded me a bit of an outdoor version of the bar scene from the first Star Wars. Everyone, dressed in every color, generating every sound was blended into a cacophonous swirl of energy.
We brought a large suitcase of items with us to be donated to our orphanage, a lot of school materials, and fun stuff, a good deal of it purchased in bulk from Oriental Trading. So, we were overloaded with 7 backpacks and bags between the three of us, Penny, Hannah and I. Francis negotiated with the tro-tro driver, and we settled for paying for two additional passengers in exchange for the seats that our gear was taking up. We stuffed ourselves into the van, and when it was filled to capacity with 20 passengers plus luggage, we began our journey. On the right (aisle) side, tro-tros have fold down seats, similar to those that flight attendants might use for air travel, to completely pack the vehicle.
Our ride was about an hour, through Accra road construction and traffic. Apparently George W Bush pledged several million dollars to Ghana to cooperately improve the roadways in and out of Accra, which is the arrival point for most of Western Africa. This massive cloverleaf three lane highway is adorned with alternating flags from the US and Ghana. Right now it about 50% useful and 50% construction delays, but the future potential for order exists.
We followed the coast westerly, about 10 miles inland to the town of Kasoa, clearly much smaller that Accra and its suburbs. There are main roads from area to area, but off these main roads, things turn rural quickly. There are no street signs or house numbers, but a weaving of local roads, mostly unpaved, that interlace in no apparent order. There is less distinction between residential and commercial. A street might have homes, warehouses, farms punctuated by several storage shed sized road side businesses selling everything from a haircut to eggs to convenience items like juice and candy. Street commerce is largely the domain of women. One thing that we noticed is a tremendous amount of litter everywhere. People drink water from pint sized plastic bags. One bites off a corner, and drinks, and discards the plastic on the ground. This forms a ground cover of black and clear plastic waste that I had a difficult time getting used to. I never found a waste receptacle anywhere.
From Kasua, a taxi completed the remaining five minute ride to our home for the duration of our stay.
We jumped into our assignment by serving and cleaning dishes from lunch for 125. The students, grade pre-K to about year 9, are merged into four classes at appropriate levels. We spent the afternoon observing class, and watched the bewildering crowd of students thin out substantially at 3:30 pm when the day students were picked up. We walked back to our home for a late afternoon lunch, then back to the school to assist with their daily evening activities which included dinner, cleanup, showers, teeth brushing and bedtime around 8:30 pm.
I'll write future entries here about any excursions that we may take, but will try to focus on just one aspect of this new culture and life that we have become immersed in. So today, we begin our assignment.
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