Day 1
We all gathered at Weydon School at 8am and packed tightly into two buses. Sol donned the ‘hat’ and we were away!
Rather hectic transfer of bags to trollies but no major mishaps. Really smooth flights, Naomi and Lucie even managed to sweet talk the staff on the flight deck to go into the cockpit and meet the pilot of the plane. The pilot had lived in Ghana for 3 years and wanted to know about our projects, he also told them about ‘TAP’ care in the air charity program that he worked for supporting orphanages in Accra. After the luggage had been collected Howard and Osumanu were there to meet us with smiles. We transferred to our hotel for the night where we had a very late dinner before we hit the deck. An eventful and busy first day with a lot of travelling successfully completed! Akwaaba!!!
Day 2
Howard’s birthday!!!! Another early start loaded up and headed to a restaurant for a big breakfast to get us going for our journey to Elmina and Stumble. We arrived at Elmina to drop off passports etc to the office and collected our budget. Our next stop was Stumble, a beautiful hotel on the beachfront. We were all very excited to be here, the beach is lovely and the waves are massive! We played football with the locals, Doug and Josh had a bit of a gymnastics competition with them to! After a quick dip we gathered together for dinner and a surprise birthday cake for Howard! A much more chilled day, getting us ready for our first day in Dwabor!
Day 3
Happy Birthday Simon! (Emily’s Dad)
We had the most amazing breakfast at Stumble, pancakes with banana and chocolate spread! We began our journey to Dwabor, we were meant to leave at 9am but we have quickly come to understand Ghana Maybe Time (GMT) meaning that time doesn’t really exist! We finally left around 11.30 and stopped by at the market to buy supplies for our stay. We have a lady with us called Augustina, she is a cook and went to catering school, we are lucky enough to have her with us for our stay and to teach us lots of new techniques. When turning onto the bumpy track that leads to Dwabor we managed to lose to cases of our roof! Don’t panic they were quickly recovered by Howard! Our arrival into the community was so welcoming and the children were running after our bus all the way up to the school, it was amazing to see and very overwhelming. Some of the children thought that Liam was a climbing frame and he had about 10 hanging from him J
We met our buddies and were so happy. We set up our beds and nets before it got dark, had a great dinner and decided to get and early night.
And as your all probably dying to no the long drops were smelly yes but not as bad as any of us had imagined!
Day 4
We had our first experience of call to prayer this morning, this starts at 4.30am and can be heard all over the village and it’s done with a microphone and giant speaker! That with the sounds of chickens and an early sunrise we were up and showering by 6am. The shower by the way is a bucket and cup in a wooden hut! We went to a welcoming ceremony this morning in a place called the palace where we met the nana family. (The elders of the original families in Dwabor) They welcomed us into their family and community and blessed us in all that we do while we are here. We gave them a bottle of schnapps, which they used for libation and threw onto the floor to represent the present, past and future success of our partnership. It felt really good to be accepted into the community. When we came back to the kindergarten school which is were we have set up camp we were swamped with children and played with them all morning. We spent time with our buddies and have been planning our sports day, the first of our projects, which will take place tomorrow.