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So… this blog consists purely of blogs that I started to write and then got sidetracked. So for the next 1500 words you get a jumpy, incoherent bunch of introductions and jumbled ideas…. Enjoy!
1. I seem to start each blog with an apology for not writing for ages. Since my last blog I have had my first visitor to Ghana, had two birthday parties (both different, both fun but only one involved my new cat and an adult pass the parcel!) and as most of you will know been back to the UK. All three of these events deserve their own special blog and I will get round to it but as my blogs are getting longer and longer i don't quite have the strength yet and so am going to ease myself back in with short blog about my return to Ghana!
First off my luggage. I seem to have brought more back with me this time then when I came for the first time. I also do not seem to have learnt my lesson as very little of it could be called essential.
2. Life has been jam-packed since I have got back and I am in the process of writing three past blogs at the same time as keeping up-to-date with my present hectic lifestyle! So hopefully blogs will be arriving in a slap-dash order over the next few weeks.
This blog is going to focus what has happened since my last blog. Well I had made it back and settled back into life in Tumu but there was no let up. It seemed that as punishment for having the audacity to take some time off my schedule was going to punish me!
It is quite a well known fact that the first 6 months of a placement is a bit hit and miss. All aspects of your life are all over the place as you try and find your feet. But then around the 7 month mark, things start to change. This also rather conveniently coincides with the beginning of the school year. As any teacher knows after.
3. I now have a huge amount of half-arsed, half written blogs that I am determined to actually finish one. Hopefully the variety of my last two weeks will take me over the finish line this time and mean I can backtrack to the others.
I had been super excited about heading down to Accra to train the new volunteers (one of the perks of being a rep) mainly to impart knowledge and make new friends but the free internet, swimming pool and the chance to eat outrageously expensive food were added perks. We found out two weeks before there would only be two volunteers but it was still on (more time to swim) and then 3 days before the flight turned up it was called off due to one person not getting medical clearance and the other deciding he had 'stuff to do' until March. How VSO was unaware of this until 3 days before they left I will never know this put a bit of a dampener on my week. Fortunately to fill the pool/cheese size gap in my heart was first a superhero leaving party in Bolga and then a hastily arranged three day programme in a rural village an hour outside Tumu.
First was the superhero party. As you can (hopefully) see from the pictures there were some amazing costumes considering the restraints of Northern Ghana. Fortunate for me I had an ace in the hole. One of the perks of having the parents.
4. Having had loads of time on my hands and not being very efficient with my blog writing, the signs were ominous for my blog once work properly picked up and so it has come to pass! Since my last two blogs I have been slightly running around like a headless chicken. Work went from stretching out an hour's work into 5 to staying after hours and working though lunch breaks to get stuff done. My weekends of juggling, reading and power napping were replaced with Aids marches, bonfire building and pito drinking. Since the last blog we have had elections, house lockdowns, I have watched Homeland season 1 (awesome!), read nearly all 13 Series of Unfortunate Events (and learnt some valuable life lessons from them which include…) and tried to explain (badly) why just because we have a Queen does not mean Britain is a less democratic then Iran and argued against the assumption that South Africa have a better army then the British. All very exciting. This blog will be a full on 'Kansas isn't here anymore' whirlwind through my work since September. Brief overviews with the odd anecdote to flesh it out. Also aiming for under 1000 words. Considering I have already wasted 200 of them on this introduction I am not feeling confident!
Beginning of the school year almost every teacher begins with hope and excitement. It takes approx. 5 weeks for that hope to be pounded and grinded into a unforgiving pulp of despair and lose by aggressive pupils, interesting management decisions and mountains and mountains of paperwork meaning I had a short window to try and bottle the good stuff before teachers lose their motivation. Fortunately all the programmes I was so frustrated about being postponed/cancelled over
5. It's shocking how far behind I am in my blogs but I think I have found a new 'legal high' to give me a bit of a boost. Last night will wandering through iTunes I discovered two things, one, the soundtrack to primary school musical called the 'Hopeless Camel' with such hits as 'wiggle that hump' and 'Horrid Herrod'. While this was highly amusing, not really much more than a tempory hit. I then came across '101 Power Ballads' which I am currently listening to on shuffle as I type this. In brackets I will keep you up-to-date with the song that comes on and try write to the tempo (Danger zoning at the moment, it just faded out into Total Eclipse of the Heart!).
As some of you may know it was Christmas recently. Now while my family loves me, it turns out they love Christmas at home more (I apparently warrant a boxing day amount of love) and so instead I spent Christmas with a variety of volunteers in Bolga. A brilliant time was had by all. Between us we put on a (Grobiz cover your ears!) lovely spread with a range of traditional/variations of a Christmas food (my tradition of snatching a small victory for the jaws of complete disaster happened when Ellie and I turned the end of a disastrous yam chip making session into quite orgasmic yam mash) and a mix of local dishes and curries. Nothing like a bit of cranberry sauce, mulled wine and roast chicken to go with your jelloff rice and ginger and guinea fowl stew! ('It's all coming back to me now')
After that spectacular meal we had secret Santa! We played the version where everyone gets a number and you can make the decision to stick or twist. There was a 5 cedi limit (£1.80) and the range of present reflected the cross-section of volunteers and locals. At one end of the spectrum people were getting key rings, biscuits and pens, at the other people were receiving 'sex' tea and packs of 'Rough Rider' condoms (brilliant or bit too much for a condom name?). I stole a present and got a pack of jellybeans and a fruit drink (sadly, much more useful to me then sex tea or rough riders!).
6. When it comes to writing blogs, James is presently sitting on a naughty step. I wish I could claim that it had all been a huge marketing trick to get you all hooked and then leave you clamouring for more but apart from my father, my lack of blogs have been met with indifference! As you can see from the next 1000 words, I have manfully tried to start plenty of blogs but fallen short at the end of the first hurdle/paragraph/when it was time for lunch.
Tasor
New blog plan. Change blogs into bitsized hits instead of miniature essays. Combine this with the power ballad plan and we should have liftoff
Aint no party like a Ghana Party
In-between all the work we stay sane and quench our thirst for socialisation with the odd volunteer party. Now volunteers put most people in England (and I imagine the rest of the world) to shame when it come to the lengths they would go for a good time. None of this 'there's not a convenient tube stop', 'my girlfriend is a little tired' or 'there announcing the results of strictly tonight'. We are hardcore when it comes to travel. No road it too bad, no length to far, no amount of hours or breakdowns too much. I have seen volunteers travel for 24 hours to spend 14 hours partying or arrive at 10 in the morning and go straight from the party to catch the 4:30 bus the following morning with no sleep. So here is a break down on a few recently (and not so recently) parties so you can see what us cool cats get up to when we are not working, watching Breaking Bad or reading the Hunger Games.
Parties up north fall into a few categories:
Bolga Bashes
Jirapa Japes
Lawra Loudness
Tumufest!
So there you have it. The rag tag starts to what could have been Shakespearian ballads but more likely slightly misspelt midlevel blogs within my cannon.
James xxx
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