Friday – 8th July 2016
Today we woke up and prom ate pancakes with jam, sugar and nutella for breakfast at 7:45am. We then headed out for partner school, traveling the same route, where we aimed to finished off the tables and chairs for the new library.
After sanding down the tables and chairs for a second time and applying the last coat of vanish, we ate our lunch ( which was very tasty rice with small pieces of carrot and single egg) then begun painting the inside of the library and using poly filler on the shelves we had sanded down when it was time to leave, we had finished vanishing the tables and chairs and begun our way to the beach where we played football, enjoyed the sun, returned into the sea and go sand absolutely everywhere.
Once we were finished at the beach, we headed back to he hotel where we ate spaghetti bolognese for dinner accompanied by various types of melon. After we had filled ourselves us we returned for the night and got some well needed rest for another day of work.
Saturday – 9th July 2016
Once again, we woke up to the sound of the horns of taxis and chickens at around 7:00AM for breakfast we had omelet and toast, and then left the hotel at 8:30AM all to go to he school to carry on with our project. We finished filling in the craves of the bookshelves, sanded all of the new chairs and painted some of the bookshelves. We did all of this until 12 o’clock, where we stopped and at our tuna or cheese sandwiches. Then we interacted with our buddies until 13:45 for our delayed bus to take us to the Elmina Fort. We packed up about a kilometer away. We barged through huge crowds on our way also catching a glimpse of the Vice President of Ghana’s car! Also on our way to the fort we went through a large festival which was taking place where we witnessed lots of dancing and Ghanaian music. We eventually reached the fest where we had a tour of it by a man called Nicholas also known as Kojo. We were taken through the majority of the rooms and dungeons of the slaves and the Governer’s offices. There we also learned that it is the oldest castle in west Africa, the town is named Elmina which is the Portuguese for ‘THE MINE’ as the ground was rich in gold which was their first intentions for building the Castle.
The Castle was then turned into a slave trade ‘terminal’ when the Dutch came over which was part of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, until when the British came and the slave trade was abolished in the mid 1800’s . After our interesting tour, we went to a gift shop, where we could buy some gifts before leaving to go back to the Hotel.