Day 1
We all met at school at 6:30 on Saturday morning ready to set off to Ghana, all full of excitement for the journey ahead. After managing to squeeze all the luggage, books and students into the minibus we were driven to Heathrow by Mr. Williams.
We arrived at Heathrow and after a few hiccups we all checked in for our flight to Lisbon on board a TAP (Portuguese Airlines) A320. After departing at 11:40 we arrived in Lisbon safely at and made our way to the checking in area for our onward flight to Accra, the capital city of Ghana.
The flight to Accra took about 5 hours and took us over some of the great African deserts with amazing scenery. Whilst on board the group got chatting to a family and had great fun entertaining their children. Other passengers were very interested in what we were doing and commented how amazing the trip sounded and Diary
wished us luck.
We touched down in Accra at 9:45 local time (10:45 UK time), and were amazed at how hot and humid it still was. We went through customs, which included having our fingerprints taken electronically.! We were met at the airport by our Partner Ghana representative, Michael who met us with an amazing ‘bus’ which took us to out hotel for the night. It looked like a converted lorry with seats facing each other and ‘open sides’. We arrived at out hotel around midnight and very quickly sorted our rooms, showered and fell straight into bed.
Day 2
Today, we woke up at around 4-5am, mainly due to the boys not resetting their clock to local time!!, and were ready to leave at 7 am, where we began our drive to Pershie. We got into the bus and drove for an hour and then stopped for a breakfast of sausage, egg and beans. The roads were very bumpy in places and this made the trip very exciting. We soon set off again, waving at local people as we drove past.
Accra was very busy even at that time of the morning and there were thousands of stalls set up by the road and in markets selling lots of different items.
Upon arriving at the school, we were greeted by all of the school children, some of whom performed a dance and sang for us; welcoming us to Pershie. We all felt very welcome, the dancers we in bright clothing and had circles painted on their body. They all looked beautiful. We were then taken on a tour of the two communities and went to the village’s salt farms and learnt about how they get salt from the sea. We played with the children in circle games, clapping games and many more, we even taught them the hokey pokey, while the boys played football with local children. It was great that they wanted us to come and join. We find it lovely to see how happy they are and how kind they are to each other.