DAY3: Monday 19th October 2015
Today, after a delicious breakfast of pancakes, we got to go the school and meet all the girls, we all found this brilliant and the girls were so excited to meet us! We had a tour of the school which was very interesting as it was very different to ours, for example they were allowed to go into the staffroom!!!
We went into the classrooms and introduced ourselves and then got to speak to the girls, everyone was extremely welcoming and many were amazed by our hair. They then performed a welcoming ceremony with speeches from the teachers, prayers and brilliant dances. We all performed a “Thank You” Ghanaian song we learnt on the coach journey from the airport which they seemed impressed by.
We set off with some of the girls to collect water, we attempted to carry the packs of water on top of our heads like the girls but we obviously didn’t have the same level of balance as they did. Daisy took this balance issue to another level by getting her foot stuck in a drain and taking a tumble, luckily her camera which took the brunt of her fall was okay, as was she although a little bit bruised and scratched. We’ve all been a lot more careful of the drains since.
We then got up to dance with the girls this was really enjoyable for both the Elmina students and us, they taught us there dance moves which we attempted even if this was not particularly successful! We then attempted to teach them some dance moves, the Macarena, they seemed better at learning ours than we were at theirs!
After a delicious lunch of spaghetti, vegetable sauce and oranges we returned to the school. We had a meeting with the staff in the headteacher’s office to plan our itinerary. We then handed out letters from our school to their pen friends they were all very pleased to receive these. We then got to meet our buddies which was very exciting and we spent a while sitting with them chatting about their lives and ours and the similarities and differences of our lives and we all learnt a lot. We are all really looking forward to doing more on the projects and spending more time with our buddies.
Day 4: Tuesday 20th October 2015
Today we started our project work. We began by clearing the library with our Ghanaian buddies, we spent the rest of the morning preparing the walls and woodwork, sorting out books and putting on the first coast of paint.
We then returned to our hotel for a lunch of tomato cheese salad, bread and rice then for dessert delicious pawpaw and green lime oranges.
After we refreshed up and went on the short but not walk that is starting to become very familiar to us!
We returned to the school to find that our buddies had completed the second coat of paint and we joined them to clean the floor of all the paint splatters. The blackboard was then painted to neaten it up. You can already see a big difference!
We returned to the hotel, hot and sticky to cook and enjoy a delicious meal of yam, vegetable sauce and fried plantain.
We enjoyed an exciting buy busy day!