When you go to a drinking spot or local 'restaurant' in Ghana, the best strategy is to first make the relevant 'hissssssss' or 'TSK TSK'-ing noise (of course) the sure fire way to get the 'bartender' (AKA 'small boy') or 'waitress's (AKA 'small girl') attention (...I never never thought I would actually hiss at another huan being at all, never mind as much as I do now!), then, instead of looking at the menu (if there even is one) and chosing what you want (or ch...

Highlight number two of the week...actually doing some advocacy! The main objective of my week has been to support my colleague Abbie (World Vision Programme Officer for Health) to run advocacy meetings with stakeholders in all six Sub-Districts and their surrounding communities. The theme is Safe Motherhood Practices, and the meetings are expected to have a direct impact on Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 in these specific communities: improve matern...

Highlight number one this week - saying 'Lam' over and over again to 300 plus children at Gbantongo (said Bantongo) school! 'Lam' means smile, although if you saw the way they looked at me when I said it, you would think I had said 'boo!' - some laughed, some plain almost cried. Oh dear, not a good start when we need to get every single one of these kids photographed looking happy to please their fee paying sponsors back in South Korea. It's the time of y...

I was on a hunt for some prizes for the inter-school HIV/AIDS quizzes I've been tasked to run, and so was contacting various NGO's to see what we might be able to get for free when I came across Kofi, from the SHARPER project (don't ask me what it stands for sorry some acronyms here are just far too long to remember!) who invited me to come and meet his team and see what they do. Most of the work I've done here and in Malawi on HIV/AIDS has been on the periphery...

This weekend we had yet another leaving party, this time in Tamale so we had the chance to go and explore somewhere new for a change. We took a four hour tro journey, squished in with the other 30+ passengers on this 15-seater rickety minibus, and were kept company by a lovely lady offering us some of her deep fried cheese snack (wow!), and two gorgeous chubby little babies that were equally curious and scared of us white creatures. Tamale is positively coo...