Politics and Waterfalls

Last week began with travelling to a more remote village with the DofE kids from the UK. They were there to build water filtration systems to provide clean water to the villagers. The system is clever and the technology has been gifted by a man from Germany I think. It works by passing water through layers of gravel and sand which remove any worms and bacteria from the water. We met the chief of the village and played with the kids. One baby was so shocked to see a white person he ran away screaming! There wasn’t much for Jonny and I to do as there were too many hands to all have a job really. It was interesting to see the systems though and I am glad I learned about it.

We decided not to go back to the village the next day and busy ourselves in Sogakope instead. I went to the market which happens every four days. It is bustling and fascinating with people selling fresh tomatoes, beans, blackened fish (which give off an almighty whiff!), soap and mobile phones. I was shopping for material though and found some bright fabric with ABC and 123 on it; perfect for a teacher I thought! I bought 6 yards for 18 cedis (about 7-8 pounds) and took it to a local seamstress. She has made me a fantastic African dress for only 10 cedis (3-4 pounds). So all in all I now have a traditional outfit for about a tenner!

When I visited the social welfare office last week I bumped into Joseph, who is the director of a local NGO called ‘Kids’ Foundation’. As usual here it’s hard to figure out what they do but he told me that as a second role, he is part of a good governance committee in Sogakope and was due to present a sanitation report to the District Assembly. I asked if I could come along and see his presentation to which he happily agreed. So at 7am on Friday morning I donned my African dress and made my way to meet Joseph at his office. He told me a little about what he was going to present. There is a real problem here with litter; there are no bins and of course no council run services like pick up or tips, so rubbish gets thrown into nearby grass and burned. There is a lot of plastic used for market goods and for purified water which comes in plastic sachets, which all gives off horrible fumes when burned. In addition, there are open sewers where the chickens, the locals then eat, feed and where mosquitoes breed. However, Joseph’s main concern was to sanitise the area to attract tourism. I know that tourism can bring money and create jobs in the local area but I get the feeling that the health and well-being of the local people gets overlooked.

Anyway, we proceeded to the District Assembly which from what I can gather is like the headquarters of the local councils and looks like a big concrete car park. Joseph took me round to meet the head of town planning, the budget director and the chief executive; who I am told is the top civil servant in the area. I told him I was a civil servant in England and felt like I was starring in the Last King of Scotland when he excitedly responded ‘Oh, then we will talk much and share ideas’. The meeting was a General Assembly to bring together all the local councillors from the South Tongu District and was meant to start at 8.30am. By 10.45am and after a very helpful Ewe lesson from the man sitting next to me, the meeting commenced! The room was vast, set up like a court room almost with the chairman and Chief Executive sat on a platform behind a table and everyone else sat in assembly format in front of them. First came prayers and a minute’s silence for a recently passed Police officer, followed by apologies and spell checking the agenda and report that would be the focus of the meeting, which took a good hour and a half. Then the chairman gave a speech about God given responsibility for half an hour and they opened the floor to hear the local councillors concerns for their area of responsibility. It was hard to understand everything as a lot was in Ewe but one issue seemed to be that the newly laid roads had many potholes- Ghana and the UK maybe are not that different after all! The senior panel’s response to this was that the engineer who planned the road had only visited in the dry seasons and so had not known where the rain would collect, which I thought was a great excuse but a sad waste of precious funds. It got to 3pm and Joseph had not yet been invited to present. Very hot, thirsty and regretting my decision to wear my African dress, I told Joseph I had to leave as Jonny and I had promised we would visit the local orphanage. So after all that, I never got to hear the presentation but will visit Joseph soon to read it myself!

The local orphanage was funded by a Canadian philanthropist who happens to be visiting at the moment with his daughter. He is a very interesting, kind and humble man who is doing a lot of good in multiple African nations and has provided a beautiful home for orphans to live in. Agnes, a Ghanaian lady, single handedly runs the orphanage which currently houses around 20-25 kids ranging from 4 to 19. People often don’t finish senior school here until they are in their mid-twenties, due to interrupted education in their childhoods. The older children help and look after the younger kids and so there is a lovely sense of community and caring between them. Jonny and I have been visiting every day, sometimes twice a day, to play with the kids and give them some attention. You cannot help but fall in love with these kids who have so little but offer so much unreserved affection. That is all I will say for now as I am already in tears but I will write more about the orphanage soon as we will be helping a lot more in the future too!

We took a trip this weekend to the district capital, Ho, to visit the highly acclaimed waterfalls there. It was 6 hours on bumpy dirt roads in vehicles that looked like just the skeletons of tro-tro’s but it was well worth it. After a 40 minute walk through the rain forests of a small village called Wli, we reached a massive water fall. Swimming up to it you felt a hugely powerful wind and spray from the falling water. It was an amazing feeling and I achieved one of my dreams to go under a waterfall (or get as close as possible due to the force of it!). A thousand plus fruit bats make their homes on the cliffs next to the falls and something must have disturbed them as they started circling the pool of water below- which was a little unnerving! The next day we visited a monkey sanctuary which was effectively a forest housing a small community of Mona monkeys. We got to feed them bananas which they expertly peeled in your hand and then scattered back into the trees to enjoy. That is really the first exotic wildlife I have seen, other than the geckos and lizards which I love, so it was a nice treat before the gruelling, dusty 6 hour trip back to Sogakope.