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While some work was done over the December period (more on that elsewhere), it was mainly the month of travel and holiday! First out of the gate was a long weekend with my father. Having just been in Nigeria my dad popped over for a three day weekend with his favourite (read only) son. I got straight off a night bus and went to meet him at the airport.
After a slightly delayed arrival we were off for a weekend of fun! We ate pizza (was amazing!), went bar hopping, watched Arsenal on TV, got very lost walking home and had to get a taxi; and went sightseeing!
Now as I have never been sightseeing in Accra this was also a first for me. Fortunately we had a car and so could pop from one place to another without too much hassle. We saw the main parade ground (lots of concrete and a set of arches that look like a Maccy Ds M), went up a lighthouse (good view), had a drink in the Streetwise charity bar on the beach, saw the Mausoleum (very good museum) and visited a fun local art gallery (going back before I leave to buy some art). We went out for Chinese that night (amazingly good but about a month's salary for the meal!) and then I got sick….. Sad times…. After mopping about for a few hours we went to the cinema to see Thor! (first time in over a year, super fun!) before saying goodbye.
A whirlwind weekend but really good fun. Another bonus of your father turning up 23 days before Christmas is presents! Now I did specify that I was nearing the end of my placement so just a few small fun gifts would be great. I ended up with an armours (realise this is the wrong armours but have no idea how to spell the other!) bag full. This bag spent the next week and a half being trapsed around Ghana.
After my farewell I headed down to Elmina to keep the two Ellie's company doing some work for the SABRE trust which is an NGO focussing on Kindergarten teaching. I will hopefully go into more detail in another blog but a quick overview. Had great fun but was a bit of a shock to be subjected to 12 hour days with 20 minute lunch breaks (a bit of a change from 8 hour days with a two hour lunch break we were used to). To put it in context, Ellie Fro was referred to as 'Stalin in the early years before he lost his commitment' due to her hard line whip cracking! In her defence we did get loads done, had fun doing it and got fed pizza, wine and thank you cards on our last night (as well as riding the pony) so can't complain too much!
After that Ellie B and I sped up to Lake Bosumtwi for a long weekend away. With us travelling north and Alice and Anita heading down from the south it was a race to hotel! We started off badly as Ellie B's inability to say no to anything and rather too much alcohol at our leaving party the night before meant that she still had 8 pictures to draw in our Ghana school book we had created, while Alice and Anita got straight on a tro all the way to Kumasi. We then did better and by 1.30 we were 20 km away. Unfortunately we then had to head to Kumasi. I had never been to Kumasi but within 5 minutes was convinced that I had entered the third circle of Hell. I have loved almost all of Ghana, even Accra has certain charms about it but Kumasi has no redeeming features. The traffic is terrible, all the streets feel like they are closing in on you and most of the people you meet seem to be more aggressive and not as pleasant as elsewhere in Ghana. It took us to 7 to get within a few km from our destination in a taxi and then we promptly broke down meaning we spent 40 minutes walking through the dark to get to our hotel. Even I was starting to lose my sense of humour at this point. Fortunately the place we stayed was amazing. It was right on the Lake (see pics), the staff were the most competent I have met in Ghana and really friendly and we had a great time recharging our batteries. So we left early Monday morning (6 AM) and that relaxed mood lasted all of 15 minutes before our first breakdown. Four breakdowns later and a change of taxi we finally made it to Kumasi, where our driver got lost. After hours of wandering we finally found a tro to Wa. 7 hours later we trapsed into Wa broken. The Jirapa girls managed to catch a ride north and I spent the night in Wa before heading to Tumu the next day with a great journey. Now this could have been bad luck but unfortunately we all know better. Ellie B has been 'JuJu'ed. It is the only reasonable explanation. Her travel luck is appalling. Once on a trip to Tumu I had to ring VSO to warn them something might have happened to her she took so long, she has spent nights asleep in tros broken down at the side of the road. The list is endless and now people actually refuse to travel with her.
So after some casual work and a VSO end of year meeting (struggled to keep a straight face when my fellow GES officers were worried that they were working me too hard!) which was a bit of a love in as they said lovely things about me (not good for my ego!) I was off for Jirapa Christmas! Nique had ridden over from Wale Wale and we were ready to set off…. Only my moto would not start and Kenneth in the office wanted to deliver a guinea fowl to me for Christmas before I left! Fortunately it was dead and roasted (best way to keep it for the journey apparently) and found my fitter on the road who jump started my bike we were off!
Once in Jirapa, 4 days of some of the most hectic fun ensued. First off, there were 5 of us in the house meaning it was bursting at the seams, secondly there had been no running water for nearly a year so daily bore hole runs were a must. Being Christmas normal bore hole etiquette did not exist and it was survival of the fittest. Even being a white male gave me no extra credit. Next was trying to fit as many of all of our Christmas traditions in as possible. At points it was like that episode of 'Friends' where everyone wants there potatoes does in a special way for Thanksgiving (we had three or four different types of potato and yam!). First off was Chinese Christmas Eve which consisted of duck pancakes and Jaiowsi (Chinese dumplings). Ellie had braved night riding and marriage proposals to pick up a live duck that was then 'prepared' for us. I was left in charge of pancake cooking. Apparently this has to be done with your hands and my whimpering of burnt fingers was met with derision and scorn as apparently it's not a Barrett Christmas unless you have done hours of manual labour, many of those in physical pain'. Fortunately I managed to get away with using some random kitchen equipment while Ellie's back was turned leaving me with most of my finger prints still intact.
After pancakes it was onto Jaiowsi (pronounced J ow za) making. This required the most minute dicing I have ever seen (not my forte) and the following day was the actual making process. There was dough for 120 of them….. My job was pleating them, something I turned out being quite good at but hard work but constant refills of alcohol meant we finished eventually (see pictures of this process). No rest of the wicked though as we then had to hack up the duck, set the table and steam 113 dumplings but once done the meal was amazing….. it was like being transported back to HK. After stuffing ourselves we got ourselves ready for a 'candle lit sitting' (sittings are what is done in Jirapa, it basically means going and sitting with friends and drinking). Next was Midnight Mass which was great as there was over 1000 people there (we were of course the main attractions being the only white people there, we turned up late but within 3 minutes an entire row of children had be ousted to make space for us!). Two hours of singing, dancing and acting later we left feeling very spiritual and happy (bursting into spontaneous song or just random shouting was not only, not frowned upon but positively encouraged!). This was not the end of the night though; off we headed for more Christmas drinks, carol singing (Ghanaians seem to use the same tunes but make up their own words to famous carols!) followed by port and bed at about three.
Next morning was a relentless production line of fun, food and goodness! Fried leftover Chinese for breakfast, brucetta and some amazing humus and homemade bread for starters and then the main event, Christmas lunch. Words cannot describe how good it was. It had everything except we had guiwni fowl instead of turkey (Alice was worried our live fowl might die for the 9 hours we had it so we fed and watered it much to the bemusement of the Ghanaian we got to prepare it who could not work out why the box was leaking!). To finish we squeezed in some biscuits and chocolate pudding.
My main job during the preparation was to cook a vat of jeloff rice because we did not want to share too much of our good food when Ghanaians dropped by to offer us greetings. Now because the normal gas cookers and oven were being used I was relegated to the coal pot. The Ghanaian equivalent to a BBQ. You make a small fire (go scouts/brownie knowledge!) to heat the coals then its go time! The results of my multitasking cooking can be seen in the pics.
Next was a bit of relaxing as we watched Elf before we hit the Christmas games with a vengeance. At the Halloween party I hosted in Tumu a few months before, we had played the hat game with Halloween words instead of celebs. We continued this with a Christmas theme which involved people acting out the birth of Jesus to great hilarity amongst other slightly blasphemous charades!
We even had time for a bit of Pictionary before crawling into bed shattered. (Have a guess at my very tired and slightly worse for wear Pictionary attempts in the pictures! Answers are in the caption on the next picture).
Boxing Day consisted of another sitting with Paul the Postman (who had also been our guide for Christmas Eve). During this period we ate dog (very good although drew the line on munching on a roasted paw).
After all this excitement there was no rest as we hurtled down South on the night bus to go collect the middle Delemare sister and head down to the beach for New Years with Ellie Fro, Louis and Helen. We started well by picking Helen up from the airport and got the bonus of seeing a slightly stressed Sarah arrive as well as her flight had been delayed by 24 hours. After a quick pit stop for Helen to drop off her things we were off! And 6 hours later we were sipping beer on a beach at the Hideout!
We were lucky that it was turtle season and so for two nights running we got to see different parts of the turtle circle of life! First night we all trapsed off to watch a MASSIVE turtle potter back towards the sea having laid her eggs and the following night we watched turtles hatch and then carried them down towards the sea before letting them go. I may have accidently brushed one with my foot that had a tendency for bearing right but if Nemo made it with a wonky fin I had high hopes for this little dude! I am sure he is surfing the great African drift as we speak.
The other overriding memory I have of this holiday was the game 'Partners'. I have spoken about this game in other blogs and a few months ago one of my Danish friends gave me her version of it and we have been playing it non-stop ever since. It is basically a more complex version of Ludo with cards instead of dice and as Ellie and Alice described it, it's more about the mini victories along the way instead of the overriding win!
For the first day everyone played fairly and we had fun. As the days went on the competition got relentless and accidental cheating turned into full blown cheating and heated words were said! Even Ellie B, the bastion of good behaviour and morals 'accidently cheated' on more than one occasion although was very good at looking contrite and remorseful after. Thankfully we left before it got to blows but relationships were in danger of breaking at some points!
New Years Eve was fun and all the photos I have are from that night. There were bonfires, lobster, yaigermister (just horrible straight), glow sticks, Ellie face planting after tripping over a sun lounger, the now annual New Year's Eve skinny dip (Middle Mare rugby tackled me in the surf, she claimed she got hit by a wave but I like to believe it was my raw animal magnetism!) and got very embarrassed and we made no new friends as we were having too much fun ourselves! (This seems to be a running theme during New Years, be it with the Bath crew or HK lot, I don't think I have ever made a new friend on New Year's Eve).
So off home we headed. I went back to Jirapa to pick up my motorbike and ended up having to get three builders to jump start it as the carburettor (sp?) was causing problems and back to Tumu I headed.
As I write this I have just over two weeks left in Tumu and just over three weeks left in Ghana. I can't believe I will be back soon. Can't bloody wait!
James xxx
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