tro tro

Have you heard of a trotro?

Basically it’s a minivan. Oh, have I mentioned the roads, and road rules? Well they don’t exist, not in the way I am used to. I knew it would be different, but I didn’t expect to have to ‘empty my cup’ of road rules and road safety. Australia is such a nanny state for road safety, and rightly so in many ways, it reduces road fatalities and injuries.

But, to the trotros, there is no particular brand of minivan, any automobile bigger than a 5 seater car and smaller than a bus is a trotro. By the way, we fit 6 people plus the driver into the taxi yesterday, and it wasn’t a big taxi. The trotro doesn’t leave the origin until it is full, depending on where you are leaving from, heading to and the size of the trotro, this could take hours, or like today, you may have to wait in line as there are simply so many people headed to the same destination. The first one I went on was to Suhum, I think I counted 29 people, including me, but I couldn’t see everyone. If you are a small enough child, you will sit on the lap of your mother, father, brother, sister etc.

Forget about seatbelts, road worthy, doors that close, legroom, somewhere to put your bag and anything else you can think of, forget it. The one I was on yesterday, I think it was a 3 hour journey, the speedometer did not work, at all it was stuck on zero. That’s a good thing; I probably wouldn’t have liked seeing the actual speed. Oh, the roads aren’t necessarily paved. And if they are there are pot holes. But it’s not all bad, don’t get me wrong, it sounds highly dangerous, and goes against everything I have grown up with, but it is fun.

You bounce around, the people are incredibly friendly, on a few occasions I have had a nodder on my shoulder, the rhythm and the slight bounce puts a lot of people to sleep, and there is clearly nowhere to put your head, except the shoulder of a neighbour, that’s ok by me.  Oh, getting on a trotro, well now that’s something I haven’t done alone yet. And not really looking forward to it either.

 There are bus stops, and everyone waits, as the trotro drives past they yell out the destination, and you get on the one for you. The thing is, unless you are going somewhere close by, or a big town, like into Accra the capital, what they yell is further than you are going. And if you are like me, and not sure of the surrounding towns just yet, there is really no way of knowing where you could be headed. And it all happens quite quickly.

But, the upside is, the learning happens quite quickly too. So that is lesson one on trotros, as the time goes on, I will inform you further about this public transport system.

Wham Bham thank yo ma'am

I’m really only writing something down because I feel I have to, not because I want to. I need to get it off my chest. I need to get it out of my head, and away from my heart, for now at least. It’s about Ghana. It’s about Africa. I could say wow, but I have said wow enough. I could tell you that it’s not what I expected, but I had no real expectations, I had no idea about any of it. Everything was a whirl wind. Everything happened so fast.

I’m going to try to skip a day and shoot straight to Saturday. My roommate, who is a volunteer psychologist, asked on Friday night if I wanted to go to the hospital in Suhum with her the following morning. I was very keen to. She planned to visit a little boy she had been working with, who was to have surgery the Saturday morning.  When I met everyone they invited me to the Cape Coast for the weekend, I didn’t want to be in the apartment alone, and I had heard about the Canopy walk before I arrived in Ghana and was really keen to go. The plan was that we would go to the hospital in Suhum on the way to the Cape Coast and meet the rest of the volunteers there in the afternoon.

I decided to pack in the morning when we got up, that always gets me, forgetting things should be my middle name. By 7am we were down the road, it was the first time in the 36 hours I had been here that I saw this side of where we live. I hadn’t really thought of what the trotro would be like, I had read about it in the lonely planet guide, but I hope my description in the next post is better than what I had read before I arrived. We got to the stop, and Delfina basically said, you wait for them to yell out the destination and if there is enough space for us we get on. Luckily before ours arrived I saw a few others go by, stop, let people on and off, so I had a bit more of an idea. I also saw that it was very much one person per seat, that made me very, very thankful, with the exception being small children. I think one went past that had only one seat free, and as we were two we waited for the next.

The ride was ok, there are rows of seats, and then in the aisle seats fold down to use all available space in the van. On the whole, those seats are ok. A few trotros in I had one that was slightly broken, which meant that I was sitting on a very strange angle, with my head against the window. The only problem with this seat was, the bumps and pot holes made me bump my head, other than that, no worries.

I’d like to tell you about the hospital, but I don’t think that is such a great idea just yet. I think I won’t give you a good enough description, and you might get the wrong idea. At the time, I was horrified. It is a private hospital, I think. It was clean, and the doctors knew what they were doing. But I just wanted to cry. In hindsight, it’s now 4 days ago I was there, it’s a pretty good hospital for what’s here. I think the best way to look at it, is not to compare it to anything in Australia or Europe, or anywhere, and relate it to what’s here. The young boy is fine, he was still heavily drugged when I saw him, but after about 10minutes I decided to wait outside, in the waiting area.

I realised that I have never seen anyone in hospital who has just had surgery, or who is very unwell. I think (apart from working at Hudsons at the hospitals), I have only been to the hospital to see new babies. I was very quickly brought down to reality, and I wasn’t ready to see it, if something happened to him, and his condition worsened.

Leaving the hospital I wanted to throw up. I had been in Ghana 2 days, well not even, and I had seen more that affected me than I have seen in years. It wasn’t just a culture shock, that gives some sort of justification for the gap between “first world” and “third world” or whatever the politically correct way of saying it now. There is no justification for it. There would be no problem if there wasn’t such an extreme difference in life expectancy and literacy and numeracy. But there is. So here it is, according to the Lonely Planet guide to West Africa.

Life expectancy

o   UK- 79 years

o   Ghana- 59 years

o   Nigeria- 49 years

That’s ridiculous, no?

Rate of literacy

o   UK- 99%

o   Ghana- 59%

o   Mali- 24%

It’s not necessary. Maybe, it’s not important to be literate in these countries you think? Not when you see a young person with a bowl of water sachets on their heads, weaving between traffic to sell to people in their cars and on tro tros. I think if these kids were in school, learning WHATEVER really, they wouldn’t be on the road. I should explain the situation with the shops, I will, stay tuned, it will be like the tro tro post.

Population living on less than $2 a day

o   UK- N/A

o   Ghana- 78.5%

o   Sierra Leone- 74.5%

I don’t know how to make this strike a chord in you. How will you realise how severe this is? Don’t feel guilty, but don’t forget about this. Remember that something like 40% of groceries bought are wasted weekly in the first world.

The water went out this afternoon, and the only option is a bucket shower, woo! A bucket shower is not the best thing in the world, but it’s certainly not the worst. Oh I should mention its only cold water, there is no hot water. But that is ok, it’s so hot here it doesn’t bother me, it’s a cool relief.

I will explain everything in more detail, the volunteering, the community, the locals, the traditions, the food, the shopping, the taxes(bribes), the everything of it all, I will let you know it all. I want you to know this is a hugely overwhelming experience for me. I want to make a difference, but I think this will make a bigger difference in me, than I will make in it. Does that make sense?

The beginning of this post gave the impression I would tell you more about my weekend. I will, but I am tired now. Its 10pm, and it’s the middle of winter, outside is beautiful, warm with a cool breeze, but in here it is a billion degrees even with the fan on.

I hope you are all well and safe and happy J if I gave you my address DO NOT USE IT. I will explain later, but it’s really not worth it. I have enough internet to check my emails, facebook takes up a little too much.

If you don’t have my email it is Carolyn.hughes88@hotmail.com xo

BUGGER!!!

I can’t believe it. I could scream. We had 2 weeks in Madrid, just waiting for our Ghana visa to be returned. We didn’t even double check anything we had read in the lonely planet guide. How come, as soon as we get to Dakhla, in the Western Sahara, after 30 hours on a bus, how come we check now? We can’t get through to Mauritania from here, without a visa. Which we should have picked up in Rabat. But we didn’t know we could no longer get it at the border. It would have been a simple google search.

And now what? If we go back to Casablanca, to get the visa, that’s a week we lose, and 200 euros each, in stuff up. One alternative, is to fly to Bamako, and get the visa at the airport, which is not guaranteed. The flight, which is the cheapest flight out of Dakhla, is more than 500E. Another alternative, is fly directly from here to Accra, and spend a month travelling around Ghana, maybe go into Togo and Benin. But if that is what we do, and miss all of central Western Africa, is it worth it for James to come with me. we wanted to spend 6 weeks travelling together, before I head to Ghana, and this one little slip up, has changed all our ideas.

30 hours is a long time to be on a bus, let alone to do the same journey 3 times in a week. We are both pretty pissed. We planned a bit of the trip, but wanted to do most of it along the way. This includes hoping hotels/ hostels have space, not knowing where the bus goes from or how long it takes, and not double checking visa requirements.

James is snoring like a steam train, it’s 10:30pm, and there is a chance we will be back on that bus tomorrow morning, in 12 hours. The thought of that makes me feel sick. He is lying with his feet at the pillow end of his bed, before he fell asleep he said, “you really should try this, it looks funny, the room from the end of the bed.” I tried to wake him up, to lie the other way, but he told me there was no point moving now.

I am not looking forward to risking the lack of visa at Bamako Airport.

The scenary is amazing. We saw the earth change from black and fertile to dark red, pink, then yellow sand. It was one of the most amazing things I have seen, as the landscape changed, so did the people, the foods, the housing and the towns. The film I wanted to upload, was too big, the smaller one wouldnt upload either. the internet here is too slow.

Planning written before we left

We visited the embassies. Got the injections [yellow fever and meningitis] and photocopied all our documents. Feeling a bit stressed about not knowing anything about what we are walking into. But I guess that’s the point of it. Life isn’t supposed to be easy, but is this the wrong choice?

The following day, we got into the Ghanaian Embassy at around 11am. The difference in formality, security and everything between the British Embassy building and the Ghanaian is remarkable. I had expected there to be more security at the British Embassy, but this was just ridiculous.

The British Embassy was on the 32^nd floor, we entered the building and were told to immediately identify ourselves, our bags were scanned and we had to walk through a scanner. On the 32^nd floor we were asked to leave all electronic devises in the foyer in a locked compartment, while we waited to be served. Before entering the waiting area, which was divided into 4 parts, we were security scanned again. We waited for about 15 minutes. To be honest we didn’t really have much need to go to the Embassy, we needed to know where to get the injections and any other help they could provide. I guess in a small way I was hoping for some sort of consolidation on our plans. If we rocked up, and they said “Africa, why would you want to go there, and travel through all those countries, we really don’t recommend it, blah, blah, blah, reason, reason, reason” or if they said “oh cool, Africa, I just came back from there, there is nothing to worry about, beautiful place.”

Is that really so much to ask for? Well, we didn’t get that. We got blank looks, they were friendly enough and quite helpful, but just a small validation of our [my] fear would have been nice.

Well, we got lost on the way to the Ghanaian Embassy. We had a pretty crappy map, that had different embassies we needed circled on it. Pretty funny really, James’ bag has camouflage clothing, climbing gear, and a shabby map with a whole heap of African embassies, and the British and Australian embassy’s details on it.

The Ghanaian embassy was nothing like the British, it couldn’t have been less similar. There are 4 high rise buildings in Madrid, D, the forth houses all the Commonwealth country embassies, well not all of them, but quite a few. So it is quite pronounced. The Ghanaian Embassy is on the 3^rd floor of a non-descript building, in a non-descript street.  There is one security guard for the whole building, who just waved us over to the elevator. We got to the Embassy, and there is no security, just a receptionist with a buzz lock door. She handed us the Visa Application forms, and we were on our way.

After filling out the forms and getting our ugly mug shots taken, we headed back to the embassy the next day. The receptionist had her hands full. When it came to our turn in the queue, 10 minutes of waiting, tops, she asked us why we were there. We asked to hand in our applications, and she asked for our mobile phones. Neither of us have one, so she buzzed us through to the waiting area out the back. No ID check; no security scanner, nothing. I don’t understand it.

I’m not going to lie. It was pretty stressful. Number one- we aren’t Spanish residents, they almost turned us down because of that, saying we would have to go to Australia to get the visa, umm shit! Then we asked if we could go to London, as we are British passport holders. That was a maybe, but as we are not residents, what’s the difference between London and Madrid right? Then he asked us to fill out our residential address in Australia, and previous employer.

I don’t know what happened, but we came back and he offered to have it ready for us by the end of the day. CRAZY. There is an option where you pay double for same day. But I was not prepared to pay 200Euros. So we now have to wait the 4 working days. Had we handed it in on Monday, we would have got it back yesterday, but we weren’t prepared enough, so we handed it in Tuesday and as the office isn’t open Fridays, we now have to pick it up on Monday. Which is good, for me. As I am petrified of what Tuesday brings.

It’s slowly setting in! Considering we haven’t even been planning this for 2 weeks, and we leave after 16 days of planning, it feels so far out of anything I can control. In that sense, this is an amazing lesson to learn, I hate not being in control, which is why I haven’t jumped out of a plane, and I hate roller coaster rides. We took our first dose of malaria tablets today. It’s ridiculous really, I mean, the side effects are intense. Nightmares, anxiety, paranoia; just to name a few. How will we know if it’s the extreme heat, travel exhaustion, a bad day or what? This is the experience of a lifetime and I am petrified.

There is a line when travelling, and crossing it can create silly expectations and ruin any amazing surprises. But at the same time, not coming close enough to the line can deem one to be unprepared. A quick example- I had no idea what Edinburgh would be like, I hadn’t seen photos or researched it, we pulled in on the train and it was absolutely spectacular. Had I seen photos, the wonderful surprise might not have been there, or so strong. Not knowing what to expect is great, except if we should be prepared for a dangerous place.

The research is a bit like that. We found a website, and a series of you tube clips made by a couple of guys from Australia in 2010. They were travelling over land from Morocco to South Africa for the Soccer world cup. Their experiences have been inspiring to us, and have quelled quite a few of our fears. Check them out www.amateursinafrica.com

Sundays in Madrid

For starters, I thought everything would be closed. What the past few months away have taught me is to be prepared that not much will be open on Sundays, supermarkets, etc. Madrid doesn’t seem to fall into that category. Obviously it is such a big city it couldn’t fall into that category. But now I’m rambling. So James and I, with the impression that most things would be open just set out for a walk this morning.

We have been driving ourselves nuts with planning. Basically I just wanted a day off, away from the computer, a day away from the guide book, without thinking about everything so goddamn much!!

After about 3 hours of wandering through stores, most were open- H and M, Blanco, and so on we had a burger. The purpose of the day wasn’t so much to buy anything, merely to distract us, and change the focus of the conversation a bit, from AFRICA to mindless shit. We walked through the clothing stores, pretending we had some idea about what we should wear in the Sahara. The answer is still ummmm, well its going to be hot, and sandy, and hot, and hot, and more sand.

As we walked back to the hostel, James said- why are we so fixated on shopping, we should be concentrating on other information and I said- what we wear is the only thing we can control right now, it is the only real decision we can make.

We didn’t buy anything.

Chucking all our clothes into the washing machine, everything that needed washing for the past week, and 2 hours later, having clean clothes was satisfying. It was something we could tick off our growing list. And of course it meant clean clothes to start the week.

The more research we do, the more we realise we don’t know, get worried about then think, hell why not. We are finding rail journey’s that would be wicked, only to find out they are definitely not in operation in 2012,  then we find another, but it takes us in the wrong direction, crocs in Burkina Faso, a boat up the Niger river, sleeping on the beach in Sierra Leone. We get to the point where we wish we had more than 6 weeks. Then we read out the border crossing from Morocco to Mauritania, that has 10 stops in 3km and just off the road is riddled with land mines. We read about officers asking for bribes, and canopy walks, do not travel warnings, local cuisine and donkey cart pub crawls.

We are so far out of our depth here its not funny, and hilarious at the same time.

Tomorrow is the Embassy tour of Madrid. Are you ready? Coz we certainly aren’t. oh and of course the yellow fever injection.

By the way- we learnt today that malaria tablets have side effects like mouth ulcers, night mares, anxiety and others I can’t remember right now. Really? Like travelling through Western Africa isn’t going to be challenging enough. 

January 7th 2012

Bushtaxi is a concept we have discovered today, it’s like taking a normal taxi except you sit on the roof of an overloaded car. Not in the safeish “your mate is driving slowly as you hang on style”. In the out of control flat out across broken roads with a few tonnes of cargo loaded on top and any number of passengers. Precarious is the word. Chom is quite concerned by the concept, having not done the dumb shit I have. I am greatly looking forward to adding to my dumbshit list.

We have been warned that there are time delays that we will have to endure, case in point is a bushtaxi that leaves not at a specific time but instead when the taxi is full. Hearsay suggests this could take hours (like many hours) sitting in the sun waiting for some random to turn up and fill the last seat. I think there is no need to rush until the thing is full then its hell for leather. Also they are cheap which of course is a massive win J James Hughes

It’s getting to the point of heart beating so fast, what’s coming out of my mouth, “BUSH TAXI” is not what I am thinking about, how can I comprehend that? How is that like anything that we have ever seen; let alone experienced.

January 2nd 2012.

A lot has happened in the past 10 days. The money I transferred has now been accepted. I have still to pay the other half, but I will do that in a few days, maybe a week from now. My outgoing expenses have quadrupled. Some of the things I have to buy in the next little while scare me more than anything. Not cost wise, although my credit card is going to come in handy- thanks to the commonwealth bank for that one. But for one, sheer volume and two, the dreaded yellow fever vaccine.

I think mum and James were both shocked when I told them. Mum a little more so. I know she is proud of me, but she is also weary of what I am “getting myself into” whether I am prepared and have I thought of this and that.

After having spent a few days with them, with the ideas circulating and fears coming and going, and new fears arising, I got to the stage of terror. The images I have seen on the TV and read about in newspapers for the entirety of my life all came flooding in. What about bombings, rape, shooting, robberies, murder, bribes? Thinking about all those things worries me, but does it worry me enough not to go? I don't think so.

So, I am going. As I said I have paid the first half, no turning back now. I have to just jump in at the deep-end; otherwise I don’t get anything done. So is this deep enough?

Short answer is nope, it gets deeper.

Many of you know that James is staying in Europe after mum leaves. The idea was that we would head to Rome and hang out there, maybe do another work-away; we didn’t really have any plans.

The idea has changed a bit. Now we are going to back pack through West Africa to Ghana. Wicked hey!! The current travel warnings advise otherwise. Some countries have the green light and some say avoid travel, between the UK travel warnings, Australia and America, all advice is different. 

How bad can it be? Famous last words hey?!

Head Space 21.12.11

I feel like a bit of a sitting duck. They want 50% of the total fee within 14days. And the total amount as soon as possible thereafter. Here comes the credit card. They told me the total amount is 2000 euros, for 20 weeks. That is pretty good I think. That is how much I pay, I don’t get paid anything. I chose this program because they looked the most genuine, and with the amount I could spend, I could have only spent a month or 2 maybe less at other programs.

I told James Ell today of my plans. He said; you know Ghana is in Africa?

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. This is definitely not the easy road. For sure. By the same token it is a fast track to a good job, a job I think I want at the other end. I don’t want a high paying job, I don’t want a fancy car or expensive things. I want a meaningful job? Where I can come home feeling like I am on the way to making someone’s life a better place, or making the world a better place for my kids and grandkids.

Maybe I will get out the credit card, I am going to have so much debt at the end of this. At least it will be meaningful debt and not on a brand new car or anything. Although the only thing I will have to “show” for it is more information in my head.

I can see myself walking through the streets in Accra, watching kids playing and people selling fruit and trinkets at the market, scarfs and meat, and vegetables. I can see myself bending down to the young boys and girls and asking if I can take their photo while they play. I would love to be able to capture their laughter and games.

Maybe someone will mug me. In the information pack that VPWA sent states that when withdrawing money, be sure to take a friend with you and separate and store it on different parts of your body, just in case someone robs you, you won’t lose all of it. I am not afraid of being robbed. I am afraid of being raped. That’s something that doesn’t go away, if you are robbed, it’s sort of short term. I don’t think I will be able to get over being raped. I think that will haunt me. It’s not even AIDs I am afraid of either.

I think there are two things going on in Africa. On the one hand, westerners are so afraid of the unknown and have so many preconceived ideas about Africa that a lot of it remains ‘untouched.’ By this I mean that, well guess, that there are vast open spaces with no McDonald’s signs. That is when I think the world will be completely destroyed, when America takes over Africa with consumerism.  On the other hand, the west has already spoilt Africa through exploitation, corruption, greed for oil, slavery and so on.

A few years ago, mum and I were discussing human rights and I was furious that some people could treat people with absolutely no respect or dignity. What she said, I will never forget, it is one of the reasons I have stuck at this path. She said that not everyone is as passionate as she is about vegetation and cultural heritage, and she doesn’t understand how people could tear down beautiful old buildings to put up high rises. Everyone has different ideas, passions, interests, and unfortunately it seems the people who are passionate about money, getting rich and having fancy things, they are the ones who commit genocide, and replace beautiful old buildings with monstrosities and ice ores.  Obviously not all of them. But those who have committed genocide and created ice ores, seem to have made a handsome sum of money in the process.

I don’t think that everyone should have the same level of wealth or power. But I do think that everyone should have the same opportunities to do what they want to do, to get out of life what they want to get out of it. I also think that worldwide, a taxi fare should cost the same, a doctors fee should be the same, what a doctor or a school teacher earns should be the same. I haven’t completely explored this idea, so tell me if you disagree. If everyone has the same basic make-up, the same basic body structure, so in order for someone with cancer in England to be operate on, and someone in Russia, the surgeon should receive the same wage. By the same token this should be completely affordable for every single person.

At age 10, three boys are best friends in primary school, and they receive similar marks all the way through school. At age 18, they are still best friends, and are about to make their preferences for university. One decides to be a teacher, one a lawyer, and one decides not to go on to uni, and work instead. By age 50 they are all still best friends, which one is most likely to be able to afford the cancer surgery? They received the same opportunities all the way through school, but each made different decisions. I don’t agree with private health care, it seems necessary, and I know I will always have it, because I am well aware of the consequences. But I think everyone should be entitled to the same level of health care, regardless of whether they can afford it or not.

Maybe I am a socialist? I know I am an idealist. I agree with the system in Sweden I think. I am not 100% sure of the details but I know they pay higher tax and schooling and health is free, or highly subsidised. University in Scotland is free, if you are Scottish. In Germany it is about 200 euros a semester, depending on your program. I currently have a 10-15 thousand dollar debt for my course, and that is nothing compared to some of the other degree programs in Melbourne, whoever decided education should go to the wealthy and not those who deserve it and who have worked for it should be shot. Whoever invented guns should be shot too, and war.

Meeting mum and James at the airport tomorrow in the morning, I have butterflies. When should I tell them? They know I have something to tell them because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, I feel like it is going to be a bit of a dead beat thing to say, so I might just casually drop it into conversation instead of building up to it. I hope they approve.

Application Accepted 20.12.11

Before I begin, I was going to create a whole new page, have Libelle seperate, but that will just get confusing. So Libelle will remain as my only blog account, even though the destination has changed.

I found out this morning that I am off to Ghana for 5 months. Sometimes my life doesn’t seem real. It’s not my life. Someone else is living my dreams. There are two of me going on. Somewhere in between Sliding Doors and The Truman Show. How did I get from the little girl who would run up the hallway to the front door, to ask her Granny to draw her circles to this young lady in a hostel in Madrid, to planning a trip of a lifetime in Ghana, AFRICA!

I often find myself asking questions about who was the first mean person, or who decided it was ok to be racist? And who decided it was ok not to be? Was that the same person who told me that I have a social conscious? I sound like a religious person who had a dream, where Jesus or God, or the Buddah or ‘someone’ came to me and told me to do good. That’s not what happened.

In my first year of uni we were asked why we chose youth work, there were often two distinct answers. The first answer was something to do with religion, “I feel I should” or “I loved the youth groups when I was growing up.” The second group of answers were something to do with “my youth worker helped me a lot” or “I had a tough time growing up and it would have been great to have someone there to talk to.”

I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t have an answer, I don’t know why I did it. The ENTER to get in was the same I got for VCE, and I use signs like that to determine my path from time to time. But that doesn’t really say much considering I also applied to full fee nursing in Mildura, why would I do that?

My first memory of actually caring about issues in the world is year 11 geography. For this class we spent a term acting out a model UN. Each person in the class was assigned a country and we had a president, a vice president and 2 secretaries. I was one of the secretaries. Our job was to take the minutes and type it up for the next class. It was a pain in the butt job.

I was assigned South Korea. Each class we 2 people had to present for 5-15 minutes on their country. We had to talk about the economy, social environment, government, population, schooling etc. I couldn’t find enough to go on, I didn’t know where to look for starters and well I basically gave up before I had even began. As I was researching/ trying to find something I could use in a presentation, I came across a variety of information about people living in poverty. Mr Cranby, our geography teacher agreed to let me talk about the world, the IMF and poverty. In exchange I surprised him, and myself with a 15page hand out and a discussion that lasted more than half an hour. That is the first time I remember getting an A and feeling proud of myself. (I don’t remember too many A’s- usually a b with a scribble beside the mark saying “you can do better than this, you should try harder”).

A month or two before my trip, when I was back living with mum, I remember a day when I was working in the city. I got up before the sun came up and got home well after it had set. That day I did not see one homeless person, I did not see one piece of evidence of poverty or anything reflecting hungry people with nowhere to sleep. That made me think of all those people working in their offices, or at home, people who drive to work, or are too focused on their phones or iPods to notice someone begging for money. It is really sad, imagine you had no money, nowhere to sleep and you had to put a dirty cup in front of you, sit on the street in the same clothes as you had been wearing for a week. I hope with all my heart that that never happens to any of you. But next time you see someone selling a Big Issue magazine, buy it. It’s a good read.