6/7/2014 Today we began our Ghana adventure, meeting early at Gatwick airport. After a quick hop down to Lisbon and a long stay over and one delayed plane later, we had finally arrived in Accra. After clearing through immigration we met our guide for the week, Yaw and our driver who took us to our overnight guest house, and after a long day of travelling, we were all ready for a long sleep in a bed!
7/7/2014 The next morning it was up bright and early in order to avoid the infamous Accra traffic, and after reminding us not to leave anything behind, our very own Ms. Shakes still managed to forget her phone! Ahead of us was a three hour drive to Agrem Agona, the village where we will be spending the majority of our time whilst in Ghana. Along the way we stopped for breakfast at an isolated outdoor restaurant. There we had the pleasure of meeting a former SJC student from 60 years ago, Andrew. He talked with us about his experiences of being the first ever black student in the school and we exchanged with each other how the school had changed in the many years since. He told us about his amazement that he happened to be looking on the school website when he discovered the link to the Ghana project, and knew then that he would have to meet us in Ghana, even going so far as to call up Partner Ghana, the charity we are working with, to really check that it was his old school that was coming to his home village.
After a short drive later, we arrived at the Partner Ghana offices in Elmina where our stay was outlined and we met a few of the members of the team, and Ms. Shakes was very taken aback by one of their dogs, Scamp. We were introduced to our cook for the trip, Gifty, who had prepared a delicious fish stew for us. A good sign of the brilliant meals to come.
The van was stocked up with the cook’s supplies and we were off again, this time our final destination was Agrem Agona. After a quick stop to take pictures of the sea, we had reached our home. For the next week or two. The chief of the village has been most gracious in opening his home up for us to stay in, a display of hospitality we were eager to show our gratitude for by giving him a small English gift, a bottle of gin!
Before we could get too comfortable in our rooms, we were whisked down to the chief’s palace, for our specially prepared welcome ceremony. Dancing and the sound of drums awaited us as what seemed to be the entire school turned out to welcome us into their community. As we were introduced to our buddies, it seemed that no one was camera shy as Ms. Shakes was swarmed by children eager to get their picture taken. It was great to see of culture so different to that which we are used to at home in the UK
