Volunteering in Ghana - Day 1

Intro

How I came to be involved with volunteering was through my friend Beth who helps run the Raising Hope Foundation charity with Kinza and a few other wonderful people. They run summer camps, help out at orphanages, as well as sponsoring Ghanians through education and currently they are building an orphanage along with its own farm land.

Day 1

Having spent most of the night trying to cram all of my things into my rucksack, waking up was a struggle. The snooze button once again became my best friend. On the way to the airport with my mum and the reality of where I was going and what I was going still had not sunk in, and I don't think it truly did till we touched down on that red African soil.

At Heathrow I met Glenn, who I hadn't seen since my failed attempt at eating the biggest burger I've ever seen in 40 minutes. I also was reunited with Hellie, who I hadn't seen since our last la crew reunion and met Silv for the first time. Likewise they felt the same as me. There was an air of uncertainty in the atmosphere.

On the plane to lisbon we sat on the backrow. The legroom wasn't enough, but when is it? And the meal...don't get me started, although I ate it anyway. When we arrived at Lisbon we had 40 minutes to get to our connecting flight. We walked for what seemed forever, showed our passports, had our bags scanned again, had visions of an oasis before we eventually reached the gate for Accra. The gate turned out to be the same one we landed at. So really they made us walk in a massive circle, when really we could have stayed on the same plane. I'm looking at you TAP Portugal.

On the second flight to Accra, I was sat next to two Ghanian's: Friday and Desmond. Both were very nice and now lived in the UK and were visiting. They asked me if someone was meeting me at the airport to which I said "Yes". They said "That's good, that's good". It turns out that armed robbery is quite common at night so you have to be careful where you tread.

We arrived at the airport 2 hours late. I'm looking at you TAP Portugal! Beth, Danielle, Kinza and Dani were there waiting for us. Kinza picked us up some water. We were expecting bottles but we were introduced to Ghanian filtered water which comes in plastic pouches. They make good water balloons. Ghana did not present the scorching sun I was expecting but instead we were welcomed with that all too familiar rain.

We also had our first experience of transport in Ghana. For us we had hired a "Tro Tro" which is pretty much a narrow people carrier filled with too many rows of seats. We also me Kwame, who helps out at the orphanage and he helped us to load our bags into the Tro.

We speeded out of the city, barely able to take in any of the landscape through the condensation on the windows. The driving is fast, all over the road, dangerous, and as far as I could tell there doesn't seem to be a highway code. How my boxers remained clean, I have no idea.

as we got further out of the city we passed huts, which looked like they had been made out of old shipping containers. A familiar logo kept popping up and that logo was Vodafone, which surprised me seeing how much they charge for roaming in Ghana. But seriously, almost every other wooden, or container hut was red and rocked the vodafone symbol. This seemed to be the case in every village we passed through.

Along the roads armed police stop cars at checkpoints to see where they are going. It was interesting to be in a tro tro full of white people and to be considered suspicious. A shining light pierced my eyes as the policeman scoped out our faces and asked the driver questions. I was too busy looking at his gun to hear what was said. I heard rumours that in Africa it's not uncommon to bribe police for them to turn a blind eye. In this case no bribe change hands and we were allowed on our way. It became a routine as we were stopped, blinded by light and then allowed to continue on the road. When I say road, I really mean dirt track covered in potholes.

We arrived in Sogakope at around 2 am at a youth hostel. I was surprised to see a massive flatscreen on the wall and a double bed with a fan about it keeping us cool through the night. Which was nice.

Click Day 2