AKWAABAA! which is Twi for WELCOME!! This Blog is devoted to Jason and Tara's adventures through Ghana. Come and sit, read, laugh and cry as you ponder whether you should ever visit this crazy place.
If there's two things people in Ghana like to talk about it's politics and religion. But here people like to be a bit more open and out there with their faith. While this comes out in songs people sing as they walk down the street and gets incorporated into funky patterns on clothing the thing that most foreigners notice the most when they arrive are the shop names and car stickers.
Some of these I find encouraging
Some of them are quite out there
Some make me giggle a bit
and some I just honestly don't quite understand...
One of my favorite that I've seen so far is the 'love thy neighbour real estate agent', I was also intrigued the other day by 'vote for Jesus'... I didn't know he was running. Here are some more for you...
This is funny and pertinent for the roads of Ghana
In the middle of one of the city's busiest tro tro (mini bus) parks
A few people have asked me what I actually get up to over here. Well my main latest thing was a forum that we ran a couple of weeks ago... and which I think I'm only just recovering from. The Children's and Youth Forum was part of the broad Ghana Water Forum, where the 'big men' (and women) of the water industry get together to talk about important stuff. We in the mean time had lots of fun playing games (all educational ofcourse), heckling politicians and government reps and going out to Accra's water treatment plant to see just what comes out of our taps ever day.
Getting prizes ready for the kiddies with Carlos - our MC
I have to say 'Ghanaian time' and event management don't go so well together. Trying to coordinate a program where you weren't really sure if people were going to show up, waiting for politicians who show up hours late and then want to speak for the rest of the morning and trying to keep track of teenagers who were running amock in a hotel full of business men was a little bit overwhelming. It was also fun to note that only running an hour or two behind schedule was deemed a sucess. However the scarriest part of the forum was probably when our bus load of children started driving down the wrong side of the highway during peak hour. I thought the guy we were working with from the Dept of Children was joking when he suggested getting a police escort for the bus to avoid us getting stuck in traffic (which can over delay you by around 2 hours). But no he pulled it off and we ended up with a slightly eccentric police officer on a motorbike guiding our bus through crazy scenarios and madly waving his arms for other motorists to get out the way (it reminded me somewhat of a local song that you hear everywhere about God making a way where there seems to be no way). Suffice to say the kids had a great time.
But in the end I was really inspired by these awesome kids, many of whom were from really rural areas. There was one guy (about 14) who had gotten together with some of his friends and decided to build a water filtration system for a community. They have since travelled to Stockholme as winners of the Junior Water Prize. I wasn't the only one who was impressed and now all the other kids have agreed to start up health clubs in their schools to try to promote safe toilets and having clean water available in their school environments. (in lots of schools here kids have to resort to using the bushes, and as you can image that puts girls off going to school quite a bit during certain times of the month when they hit their teenage years).
Our next challenge is how to follow all these kids up, especially since half the kids live in rural areas with no access to email, internet or phone and only slightly relyable postal services. Much of our hope now lies in our local SHEP coordinators (School Health Education Program). Who are mainly awesome funky women who ride around the countryside from school to school on motorbikes seeing how the health of the kids can be improved.
Funky SHEP coordinator encouraging kids to wash their hands
So now I'm starting to look forward to the next big events on the calander. Next stop Global Handwashing Day on the 15th of October and then World Toilet Day in November... call me a dag but I'm excited
Two brothers who naturally held hands when I asked if I could take their photo
