management and motorbiking!

Ramatu and I greet Letty (the new VSO Management Support Officer from the Phillipines) on her first day in the office. She will be working with me to get the Organisational Assessment done over the next three weeks.
Mike advises Mark, Mashood and I about what should go into the ICT proposal for the District Commissioner. Unsurprisingly, we are finding the 7 working computers at the Community Information Centre painfully inadequate for the numbers of students and adults wanting to learn and access the internet.
Here I am working on the master plan for the Organisation Assessment - the start of the Organisational Development (OD) process. Quite a logistical nightmare and then I have to actually make all this happen according to the plan! Planning is not a word much used in Ghanaian contexts.
We shall see what transpires.

Ready for action in the Comme Ci Comme Ca hotel car park. This was before we had actually seen our bikes and the state of the roads!

My TENI bike (TENI = "Tackling Education Needs Inclusively = the Comic Relief funded project = trying to ensure equal access for tyhe disabled and "the girl child" - hence we allocated the 20 places at the ICT club to 10 girls and 10 boys). I can just touch the ground with my feet on either side. I am told it is heavier and therefore more stable than some of the other bikes but this is small comfort when it is lying on your leg and you have fallen into the concrete drain just outside the VSO office in Bolga!

On Day 3 we went to the Tongo Hills to practise steep slopes. The gradient was fine but the ruts and ridges in the road were an added challenge.

We met the Chief who has 17 wives and over 100 children. One of whom showed us around the extraordinary village. There are shrines here where they take animal sacrifices and the shrine will tell the villagers how to vote in the national elections. It only talks to men though! Male children are taken there from 2 weeks old so they can get tuned in.

The chief and the motorbiking gang. One instructor and 10 learners had its moments. Dan was actually a mechanic. He is the one with the dentist mask to keep the dust out of his face.

We found some of his delightful children. You can see some of the animal sacrifices in the background. they were dotted all around the village. the main shrine is up on the hill behind.

The guide demonstrated how to get into one of the houses. it is a bit like a concrete igloo but with a boulder blocking the entrance. Great defensively I am told!

My birthday was spent waiting at the DVLA Office to get the paper work sorted for my driving licence. Now there we saw a whole new level of bureaucracy. Forms in triplicate with carbon paper and 8 receipts for the 20 cedi amount so that each person who signed a form got their appropriate recompense. A certain sequence of form filling that had no apparent logic but required us to return the next day and miss our last day of motorbike practice. Still, I now have a Ghanaian driving licence (for motorbikes and cars!) so I must be a competent road user mustn't I?!