An update from Anna

Hello from Walewale, this is Anna writing. We thought it might be interesting for you guys to have the perspective of someone who’s been here less than a week. Dan and I left home last Saturday evening and arrived in Walewale on Monday morning. We’ve seen and experienced so much since we’ve been here. I don’t want to bore you with all the ins and outs of everything we’ve done so thought I’d pick one day to give you an idea of what being here is like. Tuesday and Thursday we had lots of excitements with the ICT club but I’m going to leave that for Mum to write about so I’ll talk you through Wednesday.

We woke up as normal at 6am with the sunrise. We had been told that the Imam from the local mosque wanted to visit and that he would be coming for breakfast at 7am. Assuming they were on African time and would be several hours late, Dad wasn’t even dressed when we saw a car approaching at 7am. We thought he might bring one or two other people with him but this turned out to be six so we had to rush to tell Fati (who cooks for us three times a week) to make more oatmeal and eggs. They stayed about an hour and asked lots of questions about what we were doing here. After that we walked to the Ghana Education Service Office where Mum works to greet people. It is so hot so even walking short distances is exhausting. From there we went to see Madam Paulina’s school, where we were mobbed wherever we went. We went into P1 the youngest class where there were 90 kids sitting on the floor, desks and generally wandering in and out of the classroom. They wanted us to sing them a song. We went for Old Macdonald but their English wasn’t really good enough to understand what we were talking about.
In the afternoon we walked to the market. Seeing the slaughter house made me rather hesitant about eating any more meat here! The market itself was really noisy with hundreds of people selling stuff and donkeys, goats and cows wandering wherever. We bought a live guinea fowl and walked to the chief’s palace where we waited for Mashood, a friend of Mum’s who was to act as our interpreter. When we were called we went in to see the chief sitting on his little podium, attempting to do the appropriate greetings but I think we failed. We all had to crouch and the men had to do a clapping thing while Mum and I were supposed to make a clicking sound with our thumb and little finger but neither of us managed to make much noise. He said he was pleased to see us and asked what Daniel and I had to say to him. We stayed talking for quite a long time before presenting our gift to him. Obviously I made Daniel hold it and just pretended to be hanging onto it!

Next we headed over to an orphanage, where there were lots of very excited children who wanted to play with us. It was a nice change to have children who weren’t frightened of white people. When we are walking around town the small children tend to either look at us and cry or just stare! I rode on the back of Fati’s motorbike, hanging on very tightly as we swerved around various animals and people to get to her house. We met Mum, Dad and Dan there and she showed us where she lives and we met her daughter and boyfriend. She gave us watermelon to eat and then we helped her collect water from the well.

Dad had a really good technique but I was absolutely rubbish, it’s much harder than it looks. She then wanted to see how good Dan and I were at cooking so gave us both a pile of charcoal, two sticks and a box of matches. Needless to say I won and set my charcoal alight first but Dan’s construction probably looked better.
We walked home back through the market and stumbled across a group of children who were particularly excited to see us. They went for the usual chant we get wherever we go ‘Sulaminga (white person). How are you? I am fine. Thank you. Madam’ but were particularly enthusiastic and jumped up and down a lot as they continued to repeat their tune. The other side of the market we ended up with about twenty kids following us. We had several attempts at trying to send them home but they were undeterred by all our efforts. In the evening, Victoria and Louise, Norwegian and Swedish volunteers from the orphanage we had visited earlier came over for tea.

I know you lot are freezing either with snow or the promise of it. Right now that’s hard to imagine as I’m absolutely melting. We have a fan but unsurprisingly the power is off so it’s not working. We’ve just handwashed all our clothes which is quite a mission and are chilling out for a bit. We’ve done a lot of travelling the last couple of days and we’re going to be away again until Christmas Eve. Hope you’re all looking forward to Christmas. There is pretty much no acknowledgement of it here although we are going to teach them a carol in church tomorrow.