I've decided to adopt one of the babies at the orphanage - it's a toss up between Pamela age 6 months or Lena age 3 months. Maybe both?
I arrived at my host family on Friday morning and I can't believe my luck. Margaret is the host mother and she's got 4 kids, Claudia who was 30 yesterday, Junior is 28, Lois is 26 and lives in London with her husband and Peggy who's 24. Plus Lois's two beautiful girls, Edu (3and a half) and Ishi (2) who have spent most of the time crawling and climbing all over me. They are used to "obrini" white people as they've had lots of volunteers. So far i've had a room of my own but another volunteer is due to arrive tomorrow so we'll share. somehow you just get used to it - and compared to the rest of the experiences, it's a doddle.
So let's get down to basics. Yes, there's almost permanent electricity though it did go off for a couple of hours yesterday when there was a tremendous tropical storm. Water ......... there's a shower room which is encouraging, it's just that there's no running water so it's buckets full twice a day. Except that since Saturday there's been no water coming through the tap, so water is collected from teh well in the yard, or in buckets from teh storm yesterday. And I'm serious about this! How quickly we adapt to our surroundings. I'll never take running water for granted again. As for toilet facilities - again encouraging, there's a WC that does have a flush, but as there's no running water, it only works manually. Too much information? Lucky then that you're only reading this, and not living it!
Food in the house is very good - I have eggs with tomato and onion for breakfast (sounds like something out of my no-carb diet!) or oats so plenty to fill me up for the day, which is just as well as I wouldn't touch the food at the orphanage if you paid me! Dinner is anytime from 3 pm at weekends or 6pm when I'm working. Rice, beans, plantain, delicious fish (like tilapia), occasional chicken. Loads of wonderful fruit, with a mango tree in the garden (and in any case they cost 1GCD (Ghanaian currency equal to about 35p) for 100!!! - who's making the profit when Tesco charges min one pound per mango?), papaya, watermelon, pineapple - I could go on but I'm sure I'm making your mouth water anyway.
What have I done since Friday? Mainly spent time engaging with the family, finding out about their culture, what makes them tick, what needs they have (utilities and education mainly), their religion (Christian and practicing). They all speak brilliant English even little Edu. Spent time washing my clothes in two large buckets of water, one for washing one for rinsing - remember those days? No of course not, we've never had to do that! I went to church with them on Sunday and experienced something quite awesome and fascinating. Dancing, singing, swaying, arms waving ... the pastor's sermon was about an hour and was all about religion being all the food we need as G-d will provide. Now I know what to expect when I join them for their Christmas day service!
OK now for the orphanage. I was taken there yesterday morning and met Madame, as she's called, real name is Charity - how apt! She wanted me to go and take some lessons immediately despite the fact that I've never taught in a school before in my life. I decided I'd be much better off looking after the pre-school babes including "my" Pamela and Lena. About 10 - 12 under 2s, none of them was wearing a nappy yesterday so when I went today, I took enough for all of them for at least a day. Will probably take more tomorrow - it makes it bearable to have them sitting on your lap or carrying them around to stop them crying. Pamela has truly bonded with me and cries when I put her down and miraculously stops when I pick her up again, which I do frequently. Most if not all of the kids are orphaned due to their parents' not surviving illnesses as basic in some cases as tonsillitis. Medication is very very expensive for them and hospitals won't treat you unless you either have an insurance card or can pay.
The older kids are well behaved and very polite. They are used to having white volunteers around and all speak English, as they are taught at the school there. Madame and her manager pounced on me within half an hour of my arrival to ask me for money to pay for the kindergarten floor to be screeded and food and anything else I'd like to dip into my pockets for. I understand from talking to other volunteers that the orphanage isn't half as poor as Madame would have us believe, so I'll talk to the co-ordinator from the main office in Accra (linked up to Gap Year for Grown Ups, with whom I booked) to see what they really need. The children don't look starving or without clothes so it may be that screeding the floor may be a worthy donation. No doubt I'll be leaning on all of you when I get home!!
That's about it for now. I'll update again when I can get to the Internet cafe. Thanks to you all for your great comments, emails and texts. If you don't want to text me to the Ghana phone, feel free to send a text (which I assume is free) to my UK phone which I have here and I'll respond when I can. Oh and by the way, I just would like you to know that it is SO hot here that most of the time, I can't go outside.
And Gill/Susie and whoever else helped - so far so good on the packing. I could have done with one or two things that I left out, mainly on the clothing front but I intend to go local and ethnic and will have some stuff made. WAtch out for me at the airport when I get home. I intend to embarrass Simon and Matt not only in my clothes but in the dirty great drum I've bought!!
Love to you all, Helen
