Not for the first time, I was lured to a woman's house under false pretences! I was expecting a relaxing weekend, of gentle bike riding, mango eating and beer drinking. While all three of these things did happen, I also was put hard at work cooking, carrying food from the market, fixing light bulbs and surviving nightlong blackouts with wonky candles! Lawra (pronounced Laura) is a small town/village/group of buildings about 100 km west of Tumu. There lives Sarah...

So for the next few blogs I plan to travel at breakneck speed to try and catch up with where I am now. I have been in Ghana for almost a month and have only covered the first week so far! (Although, admittedly in 3000 words. It's not surprising it's taken me so long!) And so to Wa. On the Friday, while in the VSO office in Accra, I was called in for a meeting with the head of VSO in Ghana and the head of Education. They asked me if I would like to go spend a wee...

Again, massive apologies for the lateness of the blog! I have now settled in Tumu but am now over 2 weeks behind and was going to spend the weekend catching up but I seemed to be the only person in Tumu who was unaware that they were shutting the power off for the weekend as I don't have a personal radio. (Goodbye frozen mountain of hacked chicken, but more about that later!). So much has happened since Accra, I have encountered scrum hat wearing children, watche...

So it turns out that volunteering includes a room with aircon, hot running water, a swimming pool, three buffet meals a day and wi-fi! (At least until I headed up north, but that was a whole week away and so I pushed it right to the back of my mind). The first few days we spent in the hotel in lectures and doing activities. The most useful was talking to a rep about what life was going to be like up north. It turns out that every VSO house is kitted out with a ...