Ghana: First impression

The first week in Ghana is already over. And there were various ups and downs.

But I should start at the beginning.

This was not a good thing, because the extreme onset of winter in Munich led to my flight to Brussels being canceled several times. After several hours in the Lufthansa queue, I was finally able to start my journey a day late. So after about 10 hours I set foot on Ghanaian soil. From -5 degrees to 28 degrees with 80% humidity.

My driver also showed up after a few minutes and we continued with the most battered car in the parking lot. I have no words to describe the drive to Abetefi because I have never been on such bad roads in my life as here. 30km of the road was under construction and the replacement road consisted of more potholes than pavement. Even the highways in and around Accra had potholes in which I could have laid very comfortably. So it took us almost 5 hours to cover 160 km. Since I only arrived at the volunteer house at 11 p.m., the greeting was short and lonely.

It stayed that way more or less on the weekend, because all the other volunteers were on a trip and only 3 were still in the house. So I had the freedom to get used to the much warmer temperatures, to explore the local markets and to adapt to the much more moderate pace.

At least on Sunday I had the feeling that I was doing something useful. Kevin, an older American with incredible inspiration, has built swings out of tires and ropes for a school in the neighboring village. I was then allowed to help hang it up. It took about 2 minutes for the first children to discover us and put the swings through an endurance test. So far all the swings are still holding up and no child has fallen.

On Monday the projects finally started. I've gotten to know two so far.

One is reforestation. To do this, trees are planted, seedlings are grown and weeds are destroyed. The biggest problem here is the almost weekly bushfires. These are laid by the farmers to save themselves digging. Nothing is taken into account and we lose around 50% of the trees planted because of this. Nevertheless, it is nice to see that trees from recent years have already reached an impressive height. In addition, there is a kind of plantation where people grow seedlings. Here the work mostly consists of watering, shoveling soil and pulling weeds.

The second project is called eco-bricking. Here, a kind of brick replacement is made from collected plastic waste. This is used primarily to build benches and borders for schoolyards. The work is a bit tedious, but at least you can see the results in the end.

So far the work has been fun, even if you can't work as long as you would like because of the heat. We usually start around 7 a.m. and are usually back by midday.

So much for my projects. Details about the food, the people here and the country will be in the next post.

Very best regards

Veronica