A permanent home... with challenges

Said my goodbyes to Adabraka, packed up my things once again and headed to Achimota, which is my permanent home and on the outskirts of Accra. I’m sharing with Vanessa, who’s also a new volunteer from the UK.  The house is huge – five bedrooms with a garden, so there is lots of space and I have an en suite bathroom. But we soon discovered that all that glitters is not gold as we were confronted with this massive house, completely empty, with only 4 Ghana cedi of electricity on the meter, a range of leaks, no gas, a front gate that took at least two people to close it, locks that didn’t work and heavy traffic - far into the night we can hear the car suspensions creaking as they struggle through the potholed dirt roads.

The leaks were temporarily resolved when our running water supply stopped, and we have spent our evenings playing ‘hunt the cockroach’, trying to scare off the less welcome of our fellow tenants! We’ve done lots to the house this week, so it feels more like home but we’re still getting through a can of cockroach spray every night and having to be inventive with our meals – ranging between bread, dairylea and steamed fish and rice in the rice cooker while we wait for our gas canister to be filled.  Just when we thought we were getting there we woke this morning up to find the water was back on and caused a leak and small flood in the bathroom!

Our house

Garden - spot the banana trees at the back

Kitchen after much cleaning and cockroach spray