Day 8-by Lydia

This morning was yet another early one; worship was now due to go ahead at 8am so everyone rushed to get ready. Our breakfast was impressively early at 6.30am-something of a shock in comparison to breakfast in the UK! Polly was feeling pretty unwell so she and Ellen remained in camp whilst the rest of us walked down the hill to the Roman Catholic Church. This is the biggest building in Dwabor and easily fitted our team along with the Catholic members of the High School. Michael, the Deputy Head, spoke the majority in Fanti and there was a lot of preaching and praying. Unfortunately, for my accident prone self, we had been in worship only 20 mins or so before I nearly fainted quite unexpectedly. I went back to bed and am now in Elmina writing this blog after stopping at another being-built playground to look at the design with Alex the Bamboo man  The remaining team are clearing room for the Playground (boys using machetes) and removing the bark from the 2000 logs that were delivered yesterday. This is probably our first full day of project work so we look forward to watching everything develop.

Day 7-by Lydia and Holly

Extreme early start today after a sudden rain attack at 1am for an out of bed wakening at 5.30am. Several members of the team wandered down to the football pitch to set up for our first project: Kindergarten Sports Day, which we had demonstrated the day before (an eventful practice!). Ghana Maybe Time (GMT) meant that the intended Wednesday Morning worship never occurred but it gave us an opportunity to complete the Sports Day, Cricket and Football layout-an attempt to sort around 120 under 6 year olds into 12 equal groups. If you have never tried this before; don’t risk it!

Sports Day began on a high with our JHS buddies helping look after our teams. Each race had 3 repeats and the kids loved participating in the sprint, relay, sand-in-water bag-on-head game, lime and spoon, and sack race. Overall community humour moment was when one of the smallest children ever ran in the sand on head game, a drastic fail . The event went down a storm with the winner of each race receiving a very flash Weydon pencil, something we are sure the children will treasure. Next came the Cricket Match: an organised (thanks to Miss Frost) but chaotic game that enabled the older students to have an interesting day too. The boiling midday sun was not a good mix for a cricket game with the Ghanaians, though, on true English Cricket style, there was brief yet heavy downpour of rain. Canopies were up along with a sound system so announcements could be made about the scores and winning team. If all this wasn’t enough a football game began immediately after the Cricket between the teachers in Dwabor + 2 Weydon students, and the Ghanaian students + 2 Weydon students. By now the whole village was out to support in numbers, adults cheered on the student team whilst Kindergarten children danced cheerily and amazingly around the speaker system which played music and had the football commentary.

The football match, which seemed to last hours in the eyes of some spectators under the canopy in the hottest part of the day, ended 6-2 to the teachers with Ollie Brown as man-of-the-match.

When we finally got back to base, Becky and Mia made everyone sandwiches which were much appreciated, especially by the sweaty boys who had played football most of the afternoon. After a break folowing lunch, a group went to put logs in the land rover ready to be stripped for the pathway. The rest of the afternoon was spent by most, stripping logs and collecting water from the well. A successful day which now means 1 of our 3 projects is complete!

Day 6-by Ellen and Hannah

Today we had a cheeky lie in which meant we were behind schedule by about an hour and a half, meaning most of the morning was a big rush with many people missing out on showers. BUT don’t panic, we had ours ;). Because there was always a big queue for the shower, we made a new awesome one out of bamboo and weaved palm fronds with the help of Gaza (our cool security guard) and Joseph and Alex (random dudes). The new shower is bigger than the old one, about 2x2m and tall enough for no one to be seen over the top. It has a stone floor where we stand to have lovely morning showers of half a bucket of cold water which we share with a partner and then is used to wash our dirty clothes, although they still aren’t clean because of the never ending clay. YAY. At least this is all character building ;).
As well as making the shower out of bamboo, we (with the help of the locals) also made bamboo cups by sawing off a joint of bamboo, shaving it with a knife and sandpapering it smooth.

As today was our first proper working day towards the building projects, we prepared logs for the log pathway. This basically meant using a chisel to prise the bark off each log and then carrying them on our heads up the hill to where our path will be built – this is more difficult than it sounds as, for each log that we shaved, our local helper Joseph got through about 5. Unlucky for Lydia she started her “own special method” of shaving logs and cut her hand but its fine, she’s been taken care of and is now reduced to the important one handed jobs of putting the scrabble letters back in the pot. Oh and Ellen got a blister on her thumb. Sad SAD times.

Whilst a few of us were shaving logs, another few were attempting to train the Kindergarten children ready for sports day. This meant they had to line up and then practise each race which was very chaotic as the children always want to be held or hold our hands. The rest of the team were off shopping for the next 4 days worth of food and Nick went to buy tools for the projects and Emma bought supplies for sports day.

We had changed the cooking teams over,so for dinner, the new group made spaghetti with tomato and vegetable sauce – which we ate in the daylight for a change!
Because of our late morning start today, we were banned from playing poker, so went to bed very early (8.15 LOL PARTAY ANIMALS).

So today was quite an eventful day with lots of funny moments e.g. the moment when Mrs Bowden flopped out a Marie Clair magazine to read in peace and then got bombarded by kindergartens wanting to join in and look at the pretty pictures.

Hannah says, hello mum dad and TOM and of course bertie who I know is reading this!x
Ellen says, YAY 1 YEAR JOSH  I love youuu. And mumma and dad and the rest of the clan at home. xxxx

Pictures from Dwabor

Day 5

We awoke earlier than normal so that we could get down to the school to prepare for our lesson on British Day. Different people did different tasks including making scones, London and monopoly game, pom poms and magazines. The day consisted of very excited children who where very loud and enthusiastic about each task. We where greeted by the chief and a few of the elders who attended the British Day presentation which was another initiation into the community. Different school and community authorities spoke and children did presentations of dancing and what the did in their British day lesson. The children who where by then very excited where given water bags which they then used for squirting at each other. After such a busy morning the group was knackered so spent the afternoon relaxing before going down to the well to get water, which took about four trips cause we aren’t quite as strong as the children.

Day 4

As it was a Sunday we all decided to attend the churches. They have three – Methodist, Pentecostal and Church of England. They where different to your traditional English church as there where drums and dancing. We all attempted to sing and dance, but didn’t quite possess the same amount of energy. The Priests where very enthusiastic and gave us gods blessing and protection while we are in Ghana. Each service we attended was translated in both English and fante for our benefit. There has been a lot of project planning as we are starting all our building in the next few days. After church we were persuaded to play a game of football with the local children, who to our dismay where pretty good, and at half our size scored more and played better. Everyone has been getting pretty exhausted from all the children so it was nice to have an evening of poker within the team

Day 3- 24th July- By Holly

This morning, everyone was a little more tired than we had hoped as the music played all night on possibly the highest volume they could and the rain early before sun rise disturbed a few people who had to move their beds inside. More bucket showers and porridge went down a treat and again children arrived from the village as we finished breakfest, ready for more games. The morning was spent having a meeting and then we went down to have a look at the funeral that was going on the whole weekend. The funeral was very different to English ones, filled with loud music and dancing. The body was laid in a grand double bed where all the locals paid their respects until they went back to the celebrations. When we got back to camp, accommpanied by loads of local children, we had a lesson in weaving palm leaves to make a new shower. I have just driven down to Elmina to post this blog with Tom from Sabre and many people caught a lift with us to various places along the way so the landrover was filled to the brim. We will try to carry on blogging in the days to come and so far everyone has really enjoyed themselves.

Day 2- 23rd July- By Holly and Lydia

Light was upon us at 6am so we all grabbed a bucket and had a quick, needed wash. Kindergarten pupils arrived early and began sweeping the floor ready for their lessons. For one of the classes the teacher was running late, we sat outside the door which created a huge distraction for the children as they began waving and high-fiving us with huge grins plastered on their faces. Break time was the most chaotic thing we will probably experience! All the boys felt the full force of the Kindergarten pupils as they gave piggy-backs and played football for entertainment. At 5pm, “the culture group” put on a spectacular show, inviting Ollie up first to dance before parading through the village to the palace where the elders waited to accept us into their community. It was quite a short ceremony and before we new it, we were people of Dwabor! A long eventful day was had by all and a long sleep was being looked forward to, but the six huge music speakers playing constantly in the village through the night kept us awake until the early hours. Overall, its been a fantastic trip so far.

Lydia says Happy Birthday Mum, missing you all xxxx and Holly is missing everyone and Ellie thanks for the pen, it was very useful for writing the blog <3 xxx

Day 1 - 22nd July -By Holly and Lydia

Royal Air Maroc: an understatement to its extravagant interior, delicious food and quiet company! To the delight of the whole team we were blessed with this airline from Heathrow to Casablanca and then Casablanca to Accra. Stepping out of the Ghanaian airport, the stuffy 6am heat immediately hit us along with the crowd of ‘eager’ locals who pounced on our trolleys and demanded magazines, money and marriage. Fortunately for Katia she was the lucky one, receiving a proposal just half and hour after entering the country! We packed up into a noisy minibus and bounced along to first stop several hours later for breakfast. The language barrier meant little of our orders actually arrived fully and correctly, but fried egg and heated bread were a delicacy after the plane food. Harry ended up with no breakfast because his order of a mushroom omelette arrived twice-both times as a fried egg. At every junction on the road, hoards of Ghanaians dashed to the windows of our bus selling local foods and fabric to which we succumbed and purchased Fan Ices (ice cream in a bag) for the team and staff. Eventually we reached our destination just before the sun went down, with exhaustion seeping through our bodies we just managed to set up the camp beds and eat up our first real meal: rice with a tuna and tomato sauce prepared by Emma, Polly, Hannah and Ellen, and finally get some well needed sleep.

Arrived in Ghana

Just a short post to let everyone know that the team has arrived safely in Ghana. I saw them off from Heathrow yesterday afternoon and they were met on arrival by Tom, Sabre's expedition leader.

More to follow from the team once they start blogging...

Dominic

Welcome to the blog...

This is the team blog for the Weydon School summer expeditions to Ghana. The teams will be updating their diary as frequently as the internet connection allows, and friends and family will be able to follow the progress of both teams as they work to complete their projects at Dwabor School.