Officially back in Holland

Written on the 16th of August
Thursday was my last day in Tamale. I had my last lesson with the kids and this was really hard. I played some games with them etc. and at about 11am I said that I had to go and reminded them that I wasn’t coming back the day after. They sang a goodbye song for me, I gave them each a small letter and I got given some letters as well. Then came the moment I had to go, each one of them cried, it was so hard to leave! They all wanted a photo of me but I’d only brought a few family photos, so I kept them for the girls I read with. They all walked home with me and one of them, the clown of the class, wouldn’t let my arm go. It was so sad!
Between that class and reading I had time to pack my bag and left half of my clothes behind, as I knew that even if I took them with me I would never wear them in Holland, so they’ll be given to the kids. Which meant more space for souvenirs! And don’t you worry, I’ve bought plenty (I’d say about 80% aren’t presents.. but are for me haha). When I went to reading, one of the main girls wasn’t there which was sad, but it was probably for the best as she couldn’t quite get her head around us not being able to see or talk after that day. I got some massive hugs and I know that although I’m leaving them, I’ve really helped them, which feels amazing. At night, Francis and I went on a motorbike ride for a while, although I tried to get out of it as he was hoping on us being in a long distance relationship when I was leaving. But Francis is a lovely guy and we had been great friends and I did remind him every day that we were JUST friends, so I felt rude not to and it ended up being fun anyway.
The next morning I got up at 5.30am to leave at 5.45am to the bus stop and left with the bus at 7am. I travelled the whole day and arrived at Accra at about 8.30pm. I had been very lucky that for once my stomach felt okay as the toilets along the way are.. interesting... Rockson, one of the guys at Fred’s house, had made sure I could get a lift to the resort after my busride with one of his friends. I got a taxi to that friend’s house and for some reason we didn’t end up leaving until 11pm. I thought we’d been waiting for a car, but we ended up getting a taxi so who knows. We arrived around midnight and of course the reservation I’d made, hadn’t gone through. He decided to spend the night there as well and after awkwardly saying about 3 times to the staff at the hostel that I didn’t want a double bed for me and him, we went to the dorms and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out. The dorm was a wooden room, without walls just wooden fences about a metre high, with mattresses on the floor and mosquito nets hanging over them. The room was £2.80 a night, so I wasn’t complaining!
The next morning, I actually got to have a look around and the location of the resort was beautiful and they’d really given everything a lot of character (see photos). When I asked if there was anything touristic to go and see or do nearby, I got to hear there wasn’t which was a shame as that would mean time would go even slower and I was just ready to go home now. As I was in a dorm it was easy to meet people. Straight away I met 3 people from Leamington Spa (coincidence huh?) and two sisters from England as well. I spent most of the day with the two sisters and we just ended up lying on the beach (hoping for sun, without result) and well eating... They had such good food! Oh and of course, there were souvenirs there as well, so, of course, I couldn’t resist the temptation. The next morning, they left and two other girls joined the dorm. One was Dutch, who I’d met in Tamale (another coincidence seeing her there) and a British girl. I spent all day with them and it was really nice. We just had another day of relaxing. I also heard that day that although I was meant to get a lift back with the same guy who gave me a lift here, he wasn’t able to do that anymore. Seen as I’d exactly calculated how much money I’d need for my last weekend(therefore no money for a taxi to Accra as it was meant to be a free lift), I realised I had to ask my parents for a little bit of money. However, as the British girl, Annie, was picking up her boyfriend from the airport the next morning, the Dutch girl, Gwendolyn, and I joined her so we were able to split the costs. My flight was that same evening. I assumed I was able to leave my luggage somewhere locked up at the airport which didn’t end up being the case. I went to the nearest hotel (and possibly the most expensive one in all of Ghana) and was allowed to leave my luggage there for the day for free, which was perfect!
Gwendolyn and I decided to spend the day in Accra before I got onto my flight and so after finding CROISSANTS (i got so excited) we hopped onto the tro-tro to go to some markets. The ride was about 15 minutes and was £0.20. Tro-tro’s are so cheap because they squash 20 people in a normal sized van, but it saves you so much money! We got there and got told the markets didn’t actually exist anymore, so we ended up going to the markets I went to during my first day in Ghana. More temptations...
So what I’ve bought, for myself, as souvenirs this trip:
- One beautiful long dress made with African fabric
- One short dress made with African fabric
- The top I got made in Tamale made with African fabric
- A painting
- 2 bags, one of goatskin and one of African fabric
- Two necklaces, 5 bracelets, a set of earrings
- The blanket that I’d bought in Tamale of African fabric
- A woodwork of a Ghanaian lady with a basket on her head, in her arms and a child tied on her back, which is the way I will remember them
- A pair of trousers
And I think that’s it...
I’m so glad I’ve done this though as otherwise I think I’d have regretted it. Don’t worry I didn’t only buy things for myself though, of course I also bought this for my family and my one friend in Holland haha. (jitske)
I got to the airport at 6pm and my flight was at 10.45pm, so had lots of time to spare. When I got onto the plane, I had planned to watch at least one movie as they were so good, but I really couldn’t keep my eyes open, so ended up watching 10 minutes of one.
Currently, I’m waiting at London Heathrow as I arrived at 6.30am this morning and my flight to Amsterdam isn’t until 1.20pm. This is kind of annoying, as I just want to get home, but ah well I will be home soon! Can’t wait! Finally get to see my family again, my one friend (haha), Sammy the dog and the house. Looking forward to it. Just 3 more hours of waiting to go...

Last blog in Ghana

Written on the 10th of August
Two more days in Tamale. This means every time I go somewhere or see someone I need to think about whether I’ll see them before I leave. I’ve already had to say goodbye to my peanut lady, the restaurant owner whose restaurant I visited at least 20 times and some people that drop by our house sometimes. The question they always ask is, will you come back? But I’m honest with them and tell them I don’t think so as I love travelling and experiencing new things, so if I was to come back to Africa, I’d visit a different country.
On Monday, we had a lot of rain again, so only two girls came to school. It took us about an hour to get the water out of the class room as the class has no windows. On Monday night, the girls and I went out for a meal. We got pizza, it tasted so good! It was the last night for two of the 3 girls so we had a drink afterwards. Now it’s just Valentine (the Romanian boy), Laura (the German girl in my room) and me left.
There are many things I’ll miss. First of all, I’ll miss the kindness of the people. Walking anywhere you get greeted with big smiles and all children want to shake your hand or just be said hello to. Everywhere we go the kids shout: “Hello Slaminga!” meaning hello white person! And that isn’t offensive just an observation and they will not stop shouting that until you wave to them and say hello, so cute! The volunteers and I were saying the other day that we’ve all gotten so used to talking to everyone that when we go back to our own country, people will just look at us strangely when we all say “Hello” with big smiles, especially to the kids haha.
I’ll definitely miss that I can live without a phone or a watch. In Ghana you can live without the time and it’s been amazing experiencing that as it makes you realise how easily stressed we get when someone or something is late. Here it’s like, you waited 3 hours? Oh wow that’s good, I waited 5 hours last time, so you’re lucky!
I’ll definitely miss people individually, like the girls I’ve taught for the last 6 weeks and the boys from Fred’s house. I can keep in contact with the boys as they have facebook, but the girls from the village, don’t use the internet, so there’s really barely any way we can keep in contact, as they can’t afford writing letters to Holland. It’s sad as I can understand that, but they don’t seem to understand that I can’t call them (as it’s way too expensive) or contact them any other way. They keep saying “I’m not happy” because I’m leaving, which makes it even harder to leave!
I’ll miss the simplicity of life here. No tv, no internet unless you go to a cafe, no one cares about how you look, no expectations, it’s great! I would love to say, I can keep that going in Holland, but I know that as soon as I go back I’ll start caring again about what I look like and what people think.
But I’ve got soooo many things to look forward to, that I can’t wait to get back! I can’t wait to see my family, although time has gone fast, at the same time it feels like I haven’t seen them for months. I can’t wait to see the new house, to see my new room, to settle in. I can’t wait to see my dog, I can’t wait to have my first warm shower in nearly 7 weeks, I can’t wait to sleep in my own comfy bed, I can’t wait for the Dutch food and I can’t wait to start university!
This will be my last blog post written in Ghana as I don’t think I’ll have internet this weekend. I really hope you’ve enjoyed reading them and that I haven’t bored you. I’ll be continueing writing when I’m in Holland, although I’m not sure how long I’ll continue that for.

some of the girls from the class I teach:)

the cake that Valentine made

Hope to speak to you or see you all soon!

My Birthday

Written on the 7th of August
Summary:
When it rains in Ghana, everything stops. No one goes outside, which means no one goes to school, work etc. It's crazy! I mean when it rains it usually rains hard but still if you have a raining season every year you'd think you'd get used to it.. So this happens once in a while, more this week than it's happened before, which means our room has been flooded for a lot of this week as we have no windows. lovely. I had a really good birthday! A volunteer made me a cake, which is really hard to do in Ghana as they don't eat cake here, which was absolutely lovely. During the day we went to the swimming pool and at night I just had some drinks with the Ghanaian boys which was a laugh. I'm now leaving Tamale on Friday instead of Sunday, it's surreal how soon that is! I'll be going to a beach resort near Accra for my last weekend.
Detailed:
On Wednesday it rained from 6am until 11am. This doesn’t happen very often as when it rains in Tamale, it usually rains heavily but only for about 20 minutes. But like Fred said: “when it rains in Ghana, it’s a public holiday”. Everything stops. Kids don’t go to school until the rain stops, people don’t go to work and patients don’t go to their appointments. In other words, I didn’t have work that morning, so I just stayed at home and went to the internet cafe in the afternoon, but the sun was shining in the afternoon, so I still went to reading. When I told my girls I would be able to continue reading with them, I thought I’d read with the 2 girls every day. But slowly it became 3,4,5 and now 6 girls that I read with! This means they don’t get to reach much in the hour, but it seems they’d prefer to read a little bit than not at all. I gave them some biscuits and it was so cute as many of the older girls just saved them for the younger girls, which was really thoughtful.
The next two days were just as normal. Lessons in the morning and reading in the afternoon. After reading on Thursday I went with Musah and Francis for an hour motorbike ride which was fun. Francis at the front, me in the middle and Musah on the back. A Ghanaian sandwich haha! Thursday night though I spent more time on the toilet than in bed, which was really tiring, but I felt a lot better around 7am. The girls left to Mole national park in the afternoon and are coming back on Sunday. This means Valentine and I were left as the only volunteers. He did the Friday day shift and the night shift. On Saturday morning, I went to the internet cafe to chat to my parents and some friends. My parents and Luc and Judith had sat in front of skype with party umbrellas on and blowing some little party trumpets, and sang happy birthday it was so funny, but did make me miss them more. They even teased me by showing my wrapped presents to me, it wasn’t fair haha! I also skyped Jitske, my Dutch best friend, and her family sang to me on skype as well, which was so nice.
Afterwards, I came home and Valentine, the Romanian boy, had a cake with a candle waiting for me. It was so sweet! It is literally impossible to buy cakes here, so after searching for a long time, he’d found two plain bases of a cake, put one on the bottom, put nutella on it with pineapple and banana put the other base on top of that and then put more nutella, pineapple and bananas on it. It was really nice! After we’d had some, we went to the swimming pool. It was pretty cloudy, which was a shame, but still hot and it was nice to just lie down next to the pool for the day and now and again go for a swim. At about 5pm we could see the dark clouds coming really quickly and it suddenly started pouring really heavily. As we were meant to get picked up just after 5pm, but our van’s windscreen wipers don’t work, we couldn’t get picked up until the rain stopped. The rain quieted down a bit around 6.30pm, which is when Rockson, one of the boys, came and got us. But it was still raining, so we drove about 10 miles an hour as the windows were steaming up, the fan doesn’t work in the car so couldn’t get rid of it, and driving without windscreen wipers is near to impossible. We were on main roads and everything, and the drive ended up taking about 40 minutes, but luckily no one died...
I’d given Rockson some money to buy some drinks for us tonight, so he’d bought a crate of 24 smirnoff ice’s. Valentine hadn’t slept for about 36 hours, so he went to bed when we got home, so I stayed up with 5 of the boys until about 12am. We had a lot of fun. They definitely tried their hardest to get me drunk (tried to convince me to drink 18 smirnoffs as it’s my 18th) but they failed as I didn’t want to drink more than two. We had some ipod speakers, so we danced and sang and they decided they wanted to create a new hairstyle for me, using shampoo... Look below for the results. Also it’s a tradition in Ghana, that if it’s someone’s birthday they pour water all over you. At the swimming pool someone had realised it was my birthday and got a whole bucket all over me, but Francis, being the creative one, thought Smirnoff ice would be a good replacement. I was covered in sticky Smirnoff ice, then they found water bottles and poured water all over me, I was soaked! At 12am, after one of the boys Musah had given me a speech of about 20 minutes about how long distance relationships can work and that I don’t have to like someone from my own country and that I shouldn’t go for looks etcetcetc, basically doing the talking for Francis, trying to convince me we belong together, I went to bed.
I’ve decided that I’m going to leave Tamale on Friday instead of Sunday, because if I left on Sunday I’d arrive on Sunday night and I didn’t want to spend the whole Monday waiting in Accra for my flight which is at 10.45pm. I’ll now be leaving on Friday morning to Kokro Bite which is only 25 km away from Accra. I’ll be staying at a beach resort there for the weekend, which is really well known (Big Milly’s Backyard) until Monday afternoon. Then I’ll get a taxi or a tro-tro to Accra for my flight in the evening. Apparently it’s really nice there, so it’ll be a nice way to end my time in Ghana.
It’s so surreal that the end is coming near. I’m really glad I decided to stay the amount of time I did, as some people stayed for 2 or 3 weeks, and that just isn’t enough. It really doesn’t feel like I’ve stayed here for 5.5 already, more like 3! But I’ll be happy to be going home soon, it was definitely long enough for me.

Just 1.5 weeks left

Written on the 3rd of August
Summary:
There have been some problems between one specific volunteer and the Ghanaian boys, which hasn’t been nice because it’s meant that we haven’t seen them around the house as much and we used to be more like a family. I’ve tried to chat to the volunteer to show that he needs to change the way he speaks to them, but without much success I think... I’ve now started teaching the extra classes which I’m so happy about because that means I will be able to teach the same girls for 6 weeks! I’ve put some impressions on Ghana as a whole at the bottom of this blog. Ps. My birthday is on Saturday haha. 18!
Detailed:
We’ve had some tension between us as volunteers and the Ghanaian boys that live at Fred’s. One of the volunteers is very outspoken and English is his second language. I think because of this, some things he says are received as rude and disrespectful towards the Ghanaians. For example, he saw Francis take his mango from the fridge, but Francis will have assumed it was for everyone. The volunteer then didn’t ask Francis about it, but told Fred about it and I think it all turned into a much bigger deal and now Francis doesn’t come around the volunteering house as he doesn’t want to be accused of things. I now go over to Fred’s house to see him and I’m glad that they aren’t holding anything against me or the other girls. Another incident happened which was when the volunteer had found a boy in a village with an really big and infected burn. He took the father and the boy in the van and Rockson was driving it. The volunteer said it was an emergency and he needed to hurry to the hospital, but Rockson had had instructions from Fred to first go past Maltiti to pick us up. The volunteer couldn’t believe that although it was such an emergency that they’d first go past Maltiti. He said things like, “you have no common sense” and other things that they really took to heart.
It’s such a shame as we’ve always been like a family. I’ve tried to make the situation a bit better by talking to the volunteer and telling him that there’s no way he can say things like that and that he should adapt to them and the way they live as for example them following instructions from Fred is very important to them. The volunteer is quite stubborn, but I hope it made him realise he should keep quiet a bit more. I also talked to some of the boys at Fred’s house and tried to make them understand that the things the volunteer says come out ruder than they are meant to be and that he does mean well.
Fred did organise the extra classes! Yay! That means I’m teaching the girls I’ve been teaching for just over a month now (wow time flies), I can teach for another 2 weeks. I’ll be teaching from 8am until 11am every day and will be teaching on my own. I’ve loved that responsibility! It’s great to know what level they are at so it’s now much easier to prepare a lesson than before. The amazing thing is that these lessons are just optional as it’s their summer holiday, but they all come! The even better thing is that these lessons haven’t been offered to the really young kids, so the kids in my class can actually hear my now haha.
A new girl arrived on Sunday night. Her name is Mareike, but she’s calling herself Laura in Ghana as it’s easier, and is 19 years old and is from Germany. She’s now sleeping in Anna’s bed, so I’ve got a new roommate. She’s staying for 2 months.
On Tuesday, Snoopy, one of Fred’s dogs, followed me all the way to school, he then sat under my chair for the whole lesson and walked back with me when I left, so cute!
Some more impressions:
- The schools in villages don’t have toilets, so all the kids go to the toilet in the grass just behind our school. They drip-dry when they pee and they use paper out of their school books if they need to do the bigger business. This is really sad to see as it’s so unhygienic, but I guess it’s what they’re used to.
- Kids above 2 don’t ever cry here. They’re brought up to be tough and as soon as they show tears, the parents will get angry or just ignore them. Also when the kids in the hospitals get an injection and cry, the mums laugh, which is unimaginable in a European country.
- I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned the amount of animals that walk on streets here. Goats, chickens, cows, dogs, everywhere! They’re a major obstacle on the roads.
- The ladies and men are always separate. I never ever see them stand together, walk together or anything! I always see the women working and carrying everything, and all the men of a village sitting together chatting.
- All the women never bend their knees. Whenever they wash their clothes or pick anything up from the ground, they keep their legs straight and just fully bend their backs to reach what they need and can stand like that for at least an hour!
- People always come up and chat to you because you’re white, then within a minute they want either your phone number or you email address. They all say they want to be your friend. It felt nice to be among foreigners for a while at Cape Coast and not continually get asked this.
It’s my birthday this Saturday and all the boys at Fred’s house keep asking me what I want to do haha. I just said we can just go and have some drinks or something. All the girls are going to Mole National park and Marcus will have already left to go back home so it’ll be just me and Valentine which is a shame, but I’ll celebrate my birthday properly when I come back home!