Day 18

Today was buddy day, a celebration with all our buddies of our hard work on our projects, and a chance to relax and have fun with them. It had been planned that we would go to the beach, in Bessiase, as it was less of a western beach then the ones at Elmina, so our buddies would feel safer. After several teary goodbyes to the smaller children of Dwabor, as we knew this would be the last time seeing them, we caught the bus with our buddies as well as Gaza, Alex, and Joseph who helped us with the language barrier. The bus was very different to the ones back in England, the bus was packed with 4 people in each 3-seater, and many people standing up holding large objects like their giant bowl carrying things on their heads, and stacks of oranges as well as a man holding a massive old fashioned tv! To make the journey even crazier, the back door was open the whole way and the roads were mega bumpy.
When we reached the beach basically everyone quickly got started on a game of beach cricket and some others went into the sea. Many of the buddies couldn’t swim, so were nervous at first, it was quite difficult getting them into the water – particularly the girls, but once they were in they loved it – many of them had never been to the beach before! The Ghanians that could swim made sure of showing off (especially Gaza) and as the waves were like massive it was so much fun.
After a shower (A SHOWER!!!!!!!!) we had lunch at the restaurant with the team having mostly chicken and chips, and the buddies having chicken and curried rice. It was the first time for all the buddies to eat in a restaurant, so they felt very honoured and excited, and struggled with their knife and fork technique because they were all used to eating with their hands. During the meal, some random Ghanian kid who looked about 10 climbed up a 30ft palm tree in the space of 1 minute, and perched on a scarily thin branch to pull out the coconuts and lob them into his wheelbarrow. It was quite entertaining.
With ten meals over ordered, and all the leftovers on the teams plates, most of our buddies picked up the leftover pieces of chicken and put them straight into their bags, to their family what they had eaten and to feed the pigs. My buddy started putting rice into his pockets which was weird, so I hurriedly got him a plastic bag.

After 5 and a half hours at the beach, half of us went home on the sabre bus tractor plane thing, and the other half got taxis. The journey was mostly quiet on the buddies behalf as they were tired after the day. We arrived back at Dwabor to a campfire and a singsong where we shared some British songs. After a very happy day, the evening was very sad, with lots of people crying as they were sad to leave Dwabor – Becky being the first to crack, followed by Mia, Gaza, Joseph and basically all the girls except Lydia who had gone to bed for an early night LOLLL. After lots of hugs goodbye, we went to bed at our latest night ever – 10.30!!!