Tuesday
Today we woke up at 7:00am and headed to school. Once we arrived at the school we spilt into three groups and started painting our individual components of the library. Above the door to the library one group began painting the letters of the alphabet, another painted flags of Ghana and UK and the last group gave the shelves one last lick of paint.
After lunch we headed to one of the classrooms with our buddies to take part in science experiments that we have been preparing for to share our knowledge and equipment so they can continue to do more science in the future. At the end of the day our teachers surprised us with a drumming and dancing workshop with our buddies. Other than being highly embarrassing it was entertaining hour.
Wednesday
We woke up early and followed a slightly different routine to normal, packing our overnight bags for the rainforest. We arrived at school and continued our project. The penultimate day on projects we finished painting our respective countries flags, added final touches to the bookworm mural and continued with our other designs. We packed up, found our buddies and got on two buses and left Cape Coast heading to a cocoa farm where we were shown the plants that chocolate originates from. We ate the beans from the fruit which tasted surprisingly similar to mango but with sharp bitter kick. We ate lunch with our buddies and continued long the bumpy road towards Kakum National Park. Arriving at the rainforest we were led through the forest towards a grand treehouse which was very impressive staining 10m above the ground. We dropped off our bags and headed back to reception area where we browsed the museum learning about diversity and history of area. We were then led to canopy walkway, a series of rope bridges suspended over and within the forest canopy. It was amazing experience with spectacular view of the dense jungle although some people jumping on the bridge did lead to a few green faces. After the exhilarating experience we went to reception, began planning sports day and said goodbye to our buddies, we returned to the treehouse to get ready for the pitch-black evening and a realisation that we were really were out in the wilderness of Africa. We had a dinner of rice and local sauce called red-red. As night appeared we made our way to a bonfire where we met our guide for the night walk. The forest transformed at night, turning into a haven for massive millipedes, spiders and ants. We heard the cries of monkeys and peculiar screaming noise of an animal called a tree dicer. We roamed deeper and deeper into the forest, trailing our guide silently to not scare away the animals. We finally returned to our treehouse where we warily attempted to sleep.
Thursday
We woke early due to the sunlight seeping into the treehouse. Many of us were still tired and groggy as it had been difficult to sleep because of the constant drone of crickets and the fear of waking up to a spider being a little to close to comfort. We made our way to reception for breakfast. An odd sight of 15 people eating pancakes in a rainforest. We then loaded onto the bus and headed back to Cape Coast with many of us getting a well needed nap along the way. We arrived at school to finish the projects. Murals and quotes written on the walls were finished along with perhaps the most strenuous and tedious job of then all scrubbing the floor of paint. In-between the taught the primary school years English – a much more challenging task then the previous session. Finally our hard work had come to an end and we could look up at all of our work and progress as a finished article. The place looked clean, the room felt brighter, the murals, alphabet and quotes looked amazing ad it now really felt like a library rather than bare room. Both our buddies and as we were amazed by the transformation of the place and many students eagerly peeked inside to see our work. After this we trekked back to our hotel, shattered from the effort we had put into the project and other events of the last few days. However, despite the tiredness some people were eagerly awaiting the slaughter of Glyn the Goat who was to be our dinner for tonight and some people watched the local ways of preparing meat right from the animal to the dinner plate