I gave my internet stick to Maddie this morning, because she needed it for work, and I figured I would get a lot more work done without the distraction of Facebook. It worked, it’s now 1:30 and I’ve accomplished quite a bit today. Taking a little bit of time off from it now though. I got distracted, and tried to eat an incredibly under ripe mango. Not a good idea. It was crunchy like an apple. Shame.
Mum told me this morning on Facebook chat that she liked my post- My Jewellery. I didn’t really like that post. But at the time I thought I should right something, and that’s what I thought of when I was looking at my hands on the keyboard. I realised I haven’t told you much, if anything about the work I am doing here. It’s great. The people are great, a few people have given me some music to update my iPod, I’m going through it and Helen has given me “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archives. I pulled my headphones, and we started singing along.
Headphones are back in now. I now have 7 days of music. I’m hoping to grab some Spice Girls off Jaime soon. Well that’s funny, still haven’t told you about the work I’m doing. But the environment is great, We are in an apartment about a 10 minute walk from home. There are 5 desks, and extra chairs in the office, there is a rather large kitchen, with a cook top, a mini fridge and cupboards. There are 2 bedrooms, with 7 beds in total (good for a 3:30 itus nap).
I signed up to do journalism and teaching. I started with the journalism, with the intention of switching to the teaching after my first month. I got into some of the youth policy stuff for the Youth Development Centre that we are opening up, and my boss knows I did youth work at uni, so he asked if I’d like to be the youth worker for the centre. Of course! I never thought I would become a youth worker, and I certainly never thought I’d enjoy it. But I’m loving it. I haven’t actually met the kids yet, the centre won’t open for a little while. So I’m not sure if I’ll enjoy that side of it, but the policy and program writing is great.
Sarah and I wrote a Child Protection Policy for the whole organisation, then she went on to write the Training Manual for the centre, and all volunteers working with kids. I’m now working on the Resiliency Programs, and the Big Buddy program (Big Brother Big Sister).
I can’t wait to meet the kids. We want to play with them, and just let them have the opportunity to be free, all the people from VPWA they have met so far have interviewed them and done tests, we want to just kick a ball and hang out. At some stage though, we are going to do some goal setting with them, so that when new volunteers come to the centre, the kids won’t be answering the same questions continuously. The volunteers can say- “hey I’ve heard you want to be a doctor, that’s pretty cool, what kind of doctor do you want to be?”, instead of- “what do you want to be when you grow up.” I think with so many volunteers coming through, the kids will get sick of introducing themselves and saying goodbye. Unfortunately it seems that it might not be open while I’m here, we were hoping it would be open in early March. If it is open, it won’t be for another month at least.
We currently have 9 volunteers; one boy from Belgium, one girl from Sweden- she leaves in less than a week, one girl from Canada, one girl from Germany, two girls from America, one girl from the UK one girl from South Africa, and me. I think the next boy arrives in June which is a shame for Peter, but he’s a pretty cool kid.
Plans for this weekend are as follows; Sarah left her phone in the car of one of our Ghanaian friends. We all went to Tawala on Wednesday night, it’s a reggae beach party, every Wednesday night. The beach is right near Osu, a pretty cool district of Accra. We’ve been there I think 4 times now, maybe 5 and Wednesday was probably the least happening so far. There weren’t many people around. I guess everyone was all partied out from St Paddys last weekend. So our friend, Stephen AKA Red Shirt Guy, who has Sarah’s phone, he lives in Kokrobite. We go there a lot, to Kokrobite, not his house and often find excuses to go there over other destinations, we are quite well known there, so it’s such a shame that we have to go down there to pick it up. Not. We will head down after work; probably leave Pokuase around 4 or 5. It’s only about 35km away, but could take us anywhere from an hour to 4 hours to get there. Friday’s are a bit of a pain to get down there.
We’ll just stay in Kokrobite for the night; tomorrow night we are planning a night out in Accra. Last Saturday we went out for St Paddys day. We started at Evans house. Evans and I went down to Kaneshie market and bought ingredients for Jollof Rice. Such a yummy dish. His sister taught me how to make it. It was a really nice night, we had a few drinks on the roof top, with music playing at bars in the area. From there we got dressed in our GREEN, and went to Ryans, which is I think the only Irish pub in Accra. It wasn’t as happening as most Irish pubs I’ve been to, it actually put Irish Pubs to shame seeing as though it was St Paddys day. We met up with some people other volunteers and people who work in Accra. It was quite fun to see everyone. The music was out at midnight, absolute shame, we’d only arrived about 20minutes earlier.
Some of the guys suggested we go to Trantra/3121, and some others suggested Duplex. We hadn’t heard of let alone been to either. We drove past what we thought was Duplex, and it was closed, so we headed to Tantra, but Godwin couldn’t get in because of his shorts. And someone had told us Duplex was elsewhere to what we thought. So we headed there. We hadn’t planned on going to a club at all, and the thought of appropriate foot ware hadn’t occurred to any of us. Unfortunately Jaime and I were wearing thongs, and we weren’t allowed in. Bastards. So Evans went in with Jaime (wearing Maddie’s shoes) and Sarah, then came out with Maddie’s shoes and Sarah’s shoes for me. And we all got in. It worked really well. We all got in, and once inside, no one mentioned the lack of appropriate foot ware.
It was an absolute blast! They were playing really fun commercial house, my favourite to dance to. We all danced for a bit and I had my first vodka cranberry in months! After a while, the place died down a bit, and it was just me and Evans dancing. We then decided to head back to 3121 and try to get in again. We were stopped on the way there, we met a guy at Duplex, and he drove us to 3121, we were stopped by a police man, who was trying to get a bribe out of him. But Ali stood his ground and the cop left. At the entrance to 3121, we all walked in but the bouncer stopped Evans, and tried to charge him 20cedis. It was BS. So I questioned it, the guy said- you are all girls, he’s a guy. So I said, if you charge us 20cedis we won’t go in, but if you let us in for free, we will spend much more than that on drinks. He referred me to the manager; who I said the same thing to. And we were allowed in for free. Nice One.
We danced the night away. It was great fun! By 5:30, Maddie had already left with Godwin, Sarah was chatting with Ali, and Jaime was outside sitting with a German guy we had met about a month earlier. Evans and I decided to leave. The following afternoon, around 4 we all met up and went to the beach and out for dinner. All in all a very enjoyable successful weekend. The point of the story is; both Duplex and 3121 were a lot of fun, and are on the cards for tomorrow night, when we get back from the beach. Honeysuckle, where we had dinner was also lots of fun.
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