Mike will be in Uk early Dec and early Jan, with a range of photos etc and is happy to provide people with updates, assemblies, slide shows etc if you want.
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.
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?!
The medium-distance tro-tro (e.g. Bolga to Walewale) doesn't leave the start-point until all seats are sold. This can be frustrating if you’d like to leave by a certain time – or if you’d just like to leave. But there is a way…. On Tuesday I was at Bolga after dark sat on maybe the last tro-tro of the day, hoping to reach Walewale (30 miles). After a while the tro-tro mate (tout) told me the bus wouldn’t run – there were only five people on it. He needed to fill all 18 seats at 1.40 cedis each to make 25.20 cedis (just over £10). Now a way round this is that you buy all 18 seats. This now makes you the Bus Owner, and you get to travel in the front. The bus sets off, and everyone else pays you. (I didn’t realise this on Tuesday, negotiated the 25 cedis down to 10 and was prepared to pay that - £4 - to get home. But I’d missed a trick here. I should have bought 7 seats. Then the first 11 seats filled would have been fares for the tro-tro mate, but if any of my 7 seats had been taken then those fares would be mine. In fact the bus was packed from people boarding at villages between Bolga and Walewale, so the tro-tro won on the deal. I was still addressed as “Bus Owner”).
Clutching the takings the driver takes us to fill up with just enough fuel for the journey (after a push-start that is). After that the journey is uneventful – just one further push-start in Balungu - the driver has to get out to open the tro-tro sliding door, and unfortunately this time the engine dies. A couple of passengers are summoned to push the tro backwards (downhill slightly) for a jump-start – no good. The driver jumps out again and bangs on the front door. (Having bought two seats, I don’t actually have two seats but I am in the front passenger seat). My neighbour and I get out; I could probably claim exemption from pushing as marginal Bus Owner, but I help anyway. Success! We all get back in. But the sliding door won’t shut. The driver grabs his hammer and goes round to the door again. Engine, please don’t die…..I make it to the workshop at 9.58 – ahead of the attendees, so the day works out ok.
Mike joined us and we got on our bikes and rode the 5 minutes into Walewale centre. The orphanage has about 25 orphans and then a day care centre for other children. These children pay to attend the day care and these financial contributions enable the orphan children to be taught and the staff to be paid.
Madam Paulina and her husband are having a residential block built next to their house and are hoping to move all the orphans there when it is finished.
Well, this school (and this teacher in particular) was really playing on my mind. Soon after my first visit I had started collecting resources. I saved empty tins and metal bottle tops, which I wrote on inside with a black marker pen. I put letters on some, shapes and numbers on others and devised sorting and matching activities. I collected sticks and made some into bundles of ten and found an assortment of similar sized stones. I then offered to go back and teach a lesson for them. 
Armed with my resources and some balloons and puppets that I had brought from home, I got on my bicycle and arrived at the school at 8.30am. The children were still sweeping the compound but we were warmly greeted by the staff who were happy that I had come with some new ideas. The 150 KG1 kids (aged from 4 years) were rounded up under the tree. It then became obvious that the two KG2 class teachers would also like to watch and were quite happy to leave their hundred or so kids to their own devices, so I invited them to join us. It was now definitely feeling more like a Maths assembly with about 250 children sat on the ground in front of me. 
I launched in with some missing numbers, counting on fingers, counting forwards and backwards (we pretended to be rockets but I suspect most of the children hadn't got a clue what a rocket was!). We found different ways of making six with our fingers, we sang 12345 and "One man went to farm, went to farm a field (an adaptation of "One man went to mow" which had been suggested for the african context, but not only did they not understand "field", most mampruli speakers seem to find it impossible to pronounce the word). Anyway, we bashed on...remember these children speak very little english so all my efforts had to be transated. Also, they are trained to repeat whatever the teacher says so we had some hilarious moments when they repeated all my instructions.
We did dropping metal bottle tops into a tin (a challenge in the outdoors with so many children).
The Head teacher Madam Christiana was delighted with what was going on. She very kindly took some photos for me (just to prove that I am actually teaching some children out here) and then was very disappointed that she wasn't going to be in the pictures so I had to quickly take some of her. She is the lady in the yellow dress with the spotty dog puppet on her hand.
Our session had lasted over an hour and the children had been great. To conclude, they sang me a mampruli thank you song. I was then able to chat a bit to the Head and teachers and pass on some materials about mental maths activities that had been compiled by a VSO volunteer in another region. The staff have promised to collect loads more resources and use some of the ideas. I have promised them another visit soon to see how things are going. My parting words were that "learning really ought to be fun!!" (Understandably, given the conditions, sometimes it feels like a bit of an ordeal out here). The Head thought about this and said "Yes, it's true, learning should be fun."
He will have company soon.
Back in Walewale, we still have no water, so it's another trip to the well.
Laptop going ridiculously slowly - getting nothing done at all. I decide that the computer is horrendously hot. Reboot anyway once I can persuade it to close down, but also judicious application of frozen water sachets in a tupperware box to try to bring the temperature down. (This isn't even the hot season yet...)
We get to work, in groups - Pat and Anthony - Cornelius Charlotte and Rachel...
and Ubald Stephen and Kirsty.
The master-stroke for this workshop is lunch. We’re eating at “Swab Fast Food” next door which last time was anything but fast. This time everyone’s orders are taken as the workshop starts, and the restaurant agrees to have the food on the table at 1pm. It’s all there by ten past one, which isn’t bad. 
During the workshop Mar and Mark emailed with very positive words on the combined OD material from the perspective of Secure Livelihoods volunteers. We end up with a good level of agreement from the Education volunteers too, and decide that we’re far enough forward now that the remainder can be agreed by email. The group will meet in about 6 weeks , but as a User Group to compare experiences etc.
We thought the service was 10.30 am, but it was 10 am so we arrive in the middle. The preacher is taking a passage from Matthew, and his style is “And now a question for the women……” “And now, a question for the men”. This turns out to be a preliminary sermon.
A welcome quiet day then at Anthony & Laura's, though Francis the carpenter and his son are still busy building the chicken run.
The chicken (Akaroogu?) doesn't realise what delights await him.
I adapt “American Pie” to make it a Ghana volunteer song while this is happening. Then down to Mandina’s ten minutes away where you can print and photocopy materials for the Organisational Development (OD) workshop on Monday. Actually this is one place in Walewale which is something like a shop premises as we know it – there is a glass window / sliding-door, and the premises are air-conditioned! I want to print materials for everyone attending the workshop on Monday. A tense and lengthy negotiation follows. I cite what printing would be charged at in UK. I try “We are volunteers and we have come to help your country but we need your co-operation”…….. “ Toby and Mandina I value your friendship and it may be that on this occasion I will have to say to you ‘Thank you for talking to me but I cannot afford the price you are quoting and I must go elsewhere’”. I’ve only just met Toby. Eventually a deal is done. Various technical things don’t work, but in the end I’m heading home with 200 sheets of printing and copying.
The chicken escapes through a hole in the garden wall. (“Garden wall! Luxury!”). Laura and I dash for the “road” (dirt-track), in my case with a couple of long sticks to lengthen my arms as herding devices. We find the chicken nonchalantly strutting up the street, and corner it in an alley-way. The locals find the sight of two Obronis (white people) chasing a chicken highly amusing. (If you thought "Sulaminga" was "white man", that's speaking Mampruli, as in Walewale - we're in a different Ghanaian region here, differnt language).
Anthony becomes that famous Halloween character “London Man” by attaching London tea-towels, underground maps etc to his person. Laura transforms herself into Spider-woman with bin bags. Anthony & Laura have a car (their own purchase), which Laura needs for vetting as far south as the vet college in Tamale, and are very popular lift-givers in Bolga. 
Anyway all reach the party in time. VSO and US Peace Corps volunteers from Bolga and Navrongo. The festivities are not affected by a lack of electricity.
No mains water - has been off for 2 days - so we're again reliant on the neighbour's well.
Anyway, with internet working again I can complete and post online the Organisational development (OD) material which combines all the SL output from Saturday with inputs from the Education volunteers, ready for Education workshop on Monday. No-one will read it before then – people’s email access varies, e.g. may just have access once per week - but at least it’s there.
I could get a taxi all the way to Walewale, with the bike in the boot, for a not outrageous price, but decide to ride to begin with to check there are no problems, and sure enough there are one or two – the bell has disappeared, a pedal needs tightening, etc. But with these resolved I’m doing very nicely and am half-way to Bolga on a good road when the rear tyre deflates.
Now normally I’d have a repair kit but I hadn’t planned to buy a bike today. I settle down to hail a taxi or a bus or a tro-tro – the bike could go on the roof.
Nothing.
Eventually a lad stops to help, and reinflates the tyre – maybe I can get to Bolga before it goes down again.
No – only another mile or two.
But before too much longer another group of helpers arrive.
A small boy is despatched to fetch equipment and a bowl of water, and under a tree the most professional puncture repair I’ve ever seen is completed.
By the way I'm compressing most of these photos by about 90%, which does occasionally give some colour distortions like the pic above, but should mean the pages load faster.
