Sunday 25th Oct - early start for travel to Jirapa

Sun 25th Oct Wake up at 3.20 am to make sure to be at Tamale bus station by 4 am to catch bus to Wa. Funny how attitudes change – on the long bus-ride Accra to Tamale in September we all thought the toilet facilities en route were sometimes inadequate – now one feels more “I’m on a 7-hour bus-ride – I’d better take account of this ….. “. Anyway my main journey-food is a loaf of bread that I buy at Tamale bus-station. This is just me – Charlotte very tempted to join my mini-OD-tour of Upper West Region but in the end her duties in Walewale keep her at home in Northern region. I’ve heard poor reports of the road but it’s really not too bad – mostly dirt road but generally a reasonable surface.
Reach Wa at lunchtime and find the Jirapa bus – this journey is only about an hour.

In Jirapa I’m staying with volunteers Aaron and Cath, plus Aaron’s fiancée Noriko. I’m quite tempted by the thought of a bucket-wash on arrival, so Aaron and I head off for the bore-hole and queue up to fill water-carriers. Aaron is keen for me to write a VSO B&B guide since I’m doing plenty of lodging with other volunteers – “We’re hoping for a good write-up Mike, and then maybe we’ll get more business”.

I decide that what the guide really needs to do is to give instructions on the local rules for
where you get water
how you wash
whether you save the water you wash with, and what you do with it
local rules for when you flush...

e.g. at Haydn and Linda's ( see Tuesday27th) , you don't need to go out for water, they just leave a big plastic dustbin underneath the shower-head with the shower turned on when they go to bed, and when the water comes on in the middle of the night they wake up and turn it off before the bin overflows.