Monday was our last full day staying at Ayensudo school. This day consisted of project work in the morning until lunch. After yet another delicious and healthy lunch from our cook Augustina we were left for our final preparations of the annual sports day. The games included in the sports day were football, volleyball, sprinting and long distance running, we had a whole lot more planned had time not been going against us. The school was split into four teams – red, green, blue, yellow and each wore different sports strips including two local ones, Junior Shots (Football) and Farnham Rugby Clubs. The leaders of the teams were teachers from Ayensudo, Eze K (Blue), Paddy (Yellow), Prosper (Green), and Adam (Red). The Yellow team were the overall winners and Paddy made sure everyone knew that by waving the winners trophy all over the place.
Next on the agenda was the buddy buffet. This was about an hour or two after sports day and it included all the students and teachers from England, the students buddies and a few of the teachers from Ayensudo. Three different types of rices, chicken, yam balls, fried plantain, two different sauces and banana pancakes was on offer at the buffet which everybody thoroughly enjoyed.
Finally we got to the long awaited “big bonfire” which was crazy. A mix of singing/shouting, ‘dancing’ and crying would be one way of describing it. Since this was our final night spent round a bonfire with our buddies and both sets of teachers, who’d been amazing the whole trip, everyone was very emotional. The night began with a few words from Paddy, Eze K and Prosper which eventually turned into singing and dancing when Paddy got the musician side of him out by rhythmically hitting a knife against a saucepan lid and soon invited the drummers in to join him. We sang songs we were taught out there which were easy to pick up after hearing them three or so times. We then had a pause in the singing when we gave our gifts to our buddies which got most people crying, especially Ben. The night was rounded off with some final heartfelt words from all teachers, English and Ghanaian.