We are now halfway through our trip and everything has been going great (apart from the toilet is still a hole and hasn’t magically changed). We have continued our project work of painting classrooms and putting in a rain water harvesting system, and also taken a few trips!
On Wednesday we visited Elmina Castle, an old slave fort. We found out a lot of interesting history about the building, and also entered the “room of no return” which we weirdly returned from. The castle also had a lot of good shops, and we enjoyed spending quite a lot of our money there! We got the chance to buy drums, fabrics and jewellery. Our buddies also came along with us and had a great chance to use our cameras! After that we visited the Coconut Grove to eat, and even though our orders got pretty messed up, everyone ended up happy with what they ate.
Friday we watched a bit of the president’s funeral and learnt about politics in Ghana. From the large amount of TV coverage we saw of the funeral it was evident that people in Ghana were very proud of him and all he has done, and he will be greatly missed.
We also learn some traditional dancing and drumming! It was really fun (and quite funny to watch)! A couple of us were actually really good at it!
Today was Holly’s birthday! We made cards for her and put up some balloons. This morning when she walked into the library we all jumped up and yelled “SURPRISE!” I think we need to give credit to Ellie for that, as it was her idea, and she even painted a happy birthday t-shirt for Holly to wear. Hope you had a good birthday Holly!!
Our buddies have been coming to help us often, and today some of us came to the cocoa farm with us! We were all pretty shocked to walk out and see a massive ex-military vehicle! It was insanely fun to ride though, we all looked out the window (and nearly got beaten up by trees), and it was really exciting to see all the scenery around us. We passed through some villages and attracted quite a bit of attention! The road was so bumpy that a couple times we completely bounced into the air out of our seats! The cocoa farm was very interesting and a couple of us even got some to bring back to camp (and some of us named them)!
Everyone is having a great time, and we are all looking forward to a trip to the beach tomorrow (and the amazing chips and flushy toilets they have there). We will tell you all about that next week!