After my wonderful relaxing weekend at Busua beach, I've had a good week in Takoradi and can safely say that I now feel well settled in and very much living as a Ghanain ! I am eating local dishes, drinking local beer and have built up quite a large vocabularly of the local tongue! My work at the school is now more focused and productive, and I have enjoyed excursions to the nearby coastal towns of Sekondi and Cape Coast, and had the ultimate initiation into Ghanain life- going to church! Read on for more...

This week I have started to walk everyday into Takoradi (as Fiffi lives in another town called Effia), which is about 3 miles in total, and this has enchanced my daily routine so much, in many ways! Previously, I had been getting a shared taxi into town (which is the main mode of transport here) and whilst this was fast, cheap and reliable it was also stuffy, subject to big queues and dropped you in the middle of town- chaotic and nosiy! Now I take a quiet country road, which cuts through lush vegetation and palm trees, and best of all- a chocolate factory! You can smell the chocolate melting as you appraoch, and it so gorgeous! In the shade of the factory is a little old lady who sells roasted plaintains (a staple food here) which I buy every morning for my breakfast. I feel like walking around is the best way to observe Ghana, for example just this morning I saw a chameleon.... a lady with a sewing machine on her head... some exotic birds...... sometimes its the little details that make life all the more interesting! It also rounds the day off nicely, as you walk home into the sunset and all the amazing colours that accompany it. The hours of daylight are exactly 6am - 6pm, so you can set your watch by it!

This week at Mansek I have finally got the hang of the timetable, have started to get to know the students properly, which has made everything a lot easier!. I have led workshops on music theory, sight reading and scales which I have really enjoyed, and Fiffi says that he has had really positive feedback from students, so he is keen for me to do even more! Just this afternoon I led a workshop with the part time students (whose ages range from 6 - 46!) on rhythm, and was really fun, lots of smiles all round! They are a joy to teach- very focused, willing to learn, and so musical. I have been also teaching guitar, and have taught myself the recorder and healped lead the recorder group! My work with the teachers continues to be on theory, and helping rehearse the orchestra, although we are desperatley awaiting a delivery of new music from the UK!

Outside of school I have been enjoying living as a Ghanain. I am building up my vocabularly of the local tongue - Fanti, which as languages go is pretty useless for transferrability as it is only spoken in this region of Ghana! But it is a lot of fun, and gains me a lot of respect from locals (and smiles and laughter!). So now when children shout at me 'Obruni' (white man!) I simply shout back 'Bibbini' (black man!). Ha ha! I can say thank you and well done, which comes in useful for my good students! Everybody does speak English, but converses in Fanti, so it is a useful skill to have. Local food is a delight, very healthy, tasty and spicy! Fish, rice and plaintain are the staples, which varying amounts of spciy tomato based sauce! Everything is cooked fresh from local ingredients and feels very wholesome. I now eat with my right hand only (no cutlery) as is tradition when eating from a communal plate. Yesterday I helped to make Fufu - which is made by pounding Casava (a tuber) and Plaintain together, and is served with a spciy fish soup, with big chuks of fish. My favourite Ghanain dish so far is Plaintain fried in Ginger, prounouned 'Kelly Welly' and is a great snack any time of the day! Also, local beer is pretty good and very cheap (50p for a huge bottle). Yesterday I tried 'Herb Afrique' which was a pretty awful spirit!

This week I have enjoyed day trips to Sekondi and Cape Coast. As you may remember, the Highlife band were supposed to play at Cape Coast on Saturday, but couldn't get hold of a PA so couldn't play in the end, but as the bus was booked went anyway! We found a nice bar by the Fort (which was central in the slave trade, now a museum) and had a couple of beers by the sea, nice! I found a great second hand bookshop and bought a book about Cornwall, which has been lovely to read! Then I have had two trips to Sekondi, which is 10km away from Takoradi and is much quieter and right by the sea, so is a nice trip out! Here I went to church with Fiffi and his family on Sunday morning, and the service lasted almost 5 hrs! from 8.30am to 1.15pm! which is pretty much normal length. It was a very lively, relaxed and fun affair with, as ever in Ghana, plenty of laughter! I sat with the in house band, as was soon encouraged to play percussion, djembe and bass guitar! which was great fun, as the music was somewhere between reggae, gospel and traditonal anglican hymns! But the time flew by, and the sermon on Rosa Parks (which lasted for an hour!) which very interesting and profound. So whilst I won't go every week to church, it is certainly an experience I will enjoy again in the future! As I will go into another time, Ghana is a deeply Christain country and attending church is very much a part of everybodys life, so my attendance confirmed my status as adopted-Ghanaian! I was formally introduced to the congregation who were overjoyed to see me, and I used my Ghanaain name -Kobinah (Tuesday born).

So all in all, a busy and fulfilling week and am feeling a lot more settled and a participant in Ghanaain life rather than an observer! As always, there are so many other things I could have written, but these seemed the most importnant things this week. Again, thanks for all the messages- I read them and re-read them- so comforting to hear from friends and family whilst I'm in this very different- if wonderful- country!

James Kobinah Sills x