You know you’ve been in Ghana six weeks when you...

• don’t wince when your taxi driver swerves suddenly into the path of oncoming traffic
• become impatient when he doesn’t
• stop taking photographs
• start saying words in a variation of the local accent for maximum comprehension
• forget frequently that you are in Africa
• have a rolling list of things that people could bring, package, send to you from home
• invest in a handkerchief to dab perspiration from your face, elegantly
• bump into people you know in random places
• wake up at 6.30am and feel you've slept in
• buy pure water sachets through your car window... and plantain chips, coat hangers, phone top up and anything else you just might need
• eat street food without a second thought
• think in cedis
• know people other than those who were on your flight
• start feeling chilly when it’s overcast
• have moved house three times
• ferry an assortment of washing basins, gas cylinder, pots and pans when moving house
• recognise tro tros and their mates
• have marmite, oyster sauce and kellogs special k in your kitchen cupboard
• start building a collection of locally tailored items
• run out of mr kipling’s cherry bakewells.

An ode to a tree

A tree has suddenly been chopped down in the garden at work. We’re puzzled to the point of hysteria by exactly how such a snap, comedy action has happened and what the motive was. Each time we speak to someone, the plot thickens. It is a fine cactus tree, probably worth a lot, now lying crestfallen. Overnight someone has hacked it into smaller pieces that scatter the driveway. Sometimes the eccentricity of the people you meet can befuddle. And the lack of logic to purely follow orders without stopping to think if it’s in jest, or makes sense. Who’s to blame and who will be held accountabIe, we don’t know. Maybe it’s a case of the juju. Here’s the fallen tree. Victim of an impulsive outburst. Or throwaway comment. We’ll never know...

Weekend at the beach

Beaches in Accra are a bit dirty, but if you head out 45 minutes or so to Kokrobite, you get gentle idyllic ocean, where I was referred to as 'roman sister'!

View from Big Milly's

Just outside our beach house

Fishing action

More fishing related activity

Playing in the sea

Smashing snails for the bbq

Obruni observations

Non-Ghanaians are called obrunis here, which is meant as a non-offensive term for foreigner. I’ve had a few occasions where everyone protests a little at needing to shift over to let the ‘obruni’ out of the tro tro. After a month here, I feel like a lot of what I thought was different has just become accepted, but here’s an attempt to capture what I experience when I leave the house on most days – a random sign for a dog restaurant on my way to work, women selling doughnuts, opening the doors to little wooden boxes balanced on their heads to extract them for customers in passing cars and tros, the just bearable heat walking in direct sunlight. Women frying fish by the roadside, fanning coals to roast plantain, frying plantain chips, scraping oranges, slicing watermelons, the incredible sweet taste of the pineapples, vibrantly coloured butterflies, batik fabric, an abundance of beauty salons, the hissing to get one another’s attention, the dust, the absence of pavements, people asleep in shops and on the roadside, the gust of wind that is so welcome but blows grit into your mouth, everything you own turning the colour of the road,  open gutters, the beeping of the taxi drivers ever ready for business, the calling of the tro tro boys, the amusing signs on the backs of tro tros and taxis from ‘cause and effect’, ‘good friend’, ‘inshallah’ to ‘clap nicely for jesus’, the equally amusing shop names. 4am church services, roads that turn to lakes when it rains, patient babies strapped to their mother’s backs, crazy driving, relentless traffic, spectacular rain, coupled with repeated flashes of silent lightning that lights up the night sky, the hawkers and market sellers, all tiny micro businesses selling the same stuff, repeated again and again. And again. Only seasonal fruit and veg, the sweetest, juiciest sugar cane, second hand clothes markets, the universal availability of phone top up in the smallest denominations, ditto washing powder and milo. The red signs from the AMA warning you that a house isn’t for sale, the section in the newspaper warning against financial dealings with an individual who no longer works for their organisation, people living in shacks from which they do business in the day, girls wrapped in sheets waiting to use communal showers, rows of laundry hanging out to dry, goats running about, geckos scurrying, the calls of ‘oi Obruni’ and ‘one one cedi’ through the market, the incredible generosity of people who offer to pay my travel fare or buy my shopping.

And amongst this array of chaotic, jumbled, micro level bustle, where everything is so different to home, enough can be found – a diet coke, a sprite, some New Look sandals, Chinese food, colgate, an apple, to normalise it so it feels completely easy!

The epic journey to work

My journey to work deserves an entry of its own. There is a hint of irony in its contrast with my route to work at home! Leaving the house, I have to trudge through a road of red earth, or red mud if it has rained, hugging the edge of the road so my toes don’t get crushed by the heaving taxis and tro tros that are negotiating the irregularities of the path. In a couple of minutes I reach the top of the street, my face already coated in a film of dust and perspiration. From there I’m confronted with a quarry of a road with standstill traffic, tros completely full as I have to shout my desired destination in the hope that they’re going there and have a spare seat, which others on the roadside are also clamouring for. The odds are against me as there is only so much risk and aggression that I’ll employ. This part of the journey can take either 2 minutes or 45 minutes. It’s all about luck, speed and dexterity as I race between lanes of moving traffic to climb aboard.

The first tro takes me down the road to the bus station, where I wait for a second tro. Here there are orderly queues of people. Sometimes the line moves quickly, other days it extends indefinitely and I have to weigh up the advantages of waiting in the heat or opting for a cab. Either way, we twist and wind around the suburbs of Accra. The tro deposits me at a place called Atomic Junction, from where I walk a short distance to take a shared car that drops me outside work. The whole thing takes about 2 hours. On public transport, it costs the equivalent of around 60 pence. In a cab, it’s closer to a day’s allowance which rules it out as an option for anyone on a local salary...

8-5

Started work last Monday and really enjoyed my first week. There are under 10 members of permanent staff at the education NGO where I’m working, and also 3 Canadian volunteers through a different programme, and we all get on really well.

I spent my week immersed in reading on education in Ghana, understanding the context, issues and policy priorities. I found it all fascinating and am feeling really engaged  by the work I’ll be doing here. Current issues at the moment are around capacity in schools to accommodate the new cohort of senior high school students as the senior high school curriculum has been switched from 3 years to 4 years and then reverted back to 3 years. Schools are struggling with the transition as this year they have students completing the 4 year programme and new students starting three year programmes, but a shortage of classroom facilities. There is also lots of effort to improve school buildings especially where there are schools under trees and separate toilets for boys and girls and a huge move to improve participation, especially for girls where the regional variations are most stark. There’s also a significant focus on inclusion, and building capacity for better provision for children with disabilities. I will be doing some policy analysis, leading on an inclusive education forum and helping to set up a Civil Society Education Fund that is all about devolution of power and getting more local ownership for education issues. We’re all in this together....!