A Summary

Thought I might write down a little summary of the good and the bad of our time in Ghana. Here's my top fives:

Good things:
1. Rita - without a doubt, she was the best thing of our time in Ghana. Yes I know she was our house cleaner, but she was far more than that to us. When we arrived she could hardly speak English and people would tease her "how are you going to speak to your white lady?" - but we developed our own funny way of speaking and now her English is much better. She was regular company for me every day, and was surprisingly perceptive. For someone who can't read and write she is also very savvy and business minded - she has about five jobs or ways of making money on the go. She's very funny and enjoys a joke - she and Warren had regular banter about who was "obo lobo" - who was fattest! She made us feel very welcome and part of her family, and we will miss her a lot. She tells me she's changed her name to Rita Downey - which is quite strange because that was my grandmother's name....

2. Baby Jacinta - its not every day that someone names their baby after you - let alone your whole name - Jacinta Downey!! I came to know baby Jacinta and her mother Asha (Rita's sister) very well - I spent many afternoons sitting outside their house under the mango tree, just having a chat and playing with baby J. When I was leaving they kept trying to get me to take her back to Australia with me! But that wouldn't be the right thing to do to take a baby from her family - maybe she can come to Australia to visit one day?

3. Volunteering at the school: I enjoyed being with the children so much - they are so cute with their shaved hair and big white smiles. They don't have very much in the way of material possessions or toys, but they make their own fun and games with simple things like plastic wrap from their food, layer upon layer to make a ball so they can play dodge or keepy-off, or they play soccer with a plastic drink bottle. The simple things in life.... They loved having me at the school, and every time I would arrive at the gate there would be calls of "Miss Jacinta, hello!" from hundreds of kid. In fact, the children were the ones who could all say my name correctly - mostly the adults called me "Madam Jessie" or "Cynthia".

4. Mercy Mission - is a non-profit charity run by a lady named Comfort Sey, and their focus is assisting people with disabilities, and running health promotion training such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis workshops in local communities. I accompanied Comfort on some visits to all the villages in the Mines concession area to make a register of all the people with disabilities. It was so interesting, but heartbreaking to see the disabilities and problems that some of these people have to contend with. I saw people with polio, club foot, amputations, head injuries, spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy and conditions I had never seen or heard of before! It was frustrating in a way because it was impossible to help each person individually when they needed so much and there was so little money to go around. However they were very excited to actually have people who paid them attention and wanted to listen to their issues and problems. The aim of Mercy Mission is to provide advocacy to local and national government groups for people with disabilities, assist with health insurance and they are just about to start some vocational training (such as handicrafts, cake baking, soap making etc) in conjunction with World Vision which will be great. Last Christmas we had a big Christmas party with about 300 people with disabilites (which was an interesting logistical exercise to provide that many disabled people with transport to one location) and it was a great succes. If you're interested, see www.mercymissionghana.org for more information.

5. My "long service leave" - well it wasn't technically long service leave (poor old physios don't get that!), but it was really good to have an extended period of time off work. I hadn't had more than just my annual leave for the past 13 years of being a physio and I had really started to feel a bit tired. And my hands were sore!! So the rest has done me a world of good, and I feel revitalised and ready to go again now.


Bad things:

Ghana is a third-world country and so there's some bad that goes with the good as well. It was definitely not all roses all the time!

1. The condition of the roads and traffic accidents: Thankfully we didn't have to travel on the roads very much - only a short two-minute drive from the minesite to town. But we did travel to Accra every few weeks, and the road is torture! It has been ripped up to be resurfaced, but I'm guessing it will take 10 years to finish, so in the meantime it so bumpy and dusty, and awful. Also there are major traffic accidents every few kilometres where trucks or buses have run off the road or collided, or cars run into trees - its scary to see! Unfortunately people involved in these accidents invariably die, or suffer from amputations, head injuries or spinal cord injuries because of lack of quality medical care. Its not pretty, and we're very thankful that we didn't experience any problems like that. Phew!

2. Malaria: thankfully I managed to avoid the mosquitoes (for the most part - see my blog post "Malaria from an anti-malaria workshop"), but Warren wasn't so lucky and had malaria twice while we were in Ghana. Unfortunately he had to work outside in jungly areas at times so had a higher risk. It was quite nasty, and unfortunately, while he recovered from the malaria, he's still suffering from "post-viral fatigue" which means he gets tired very quickly (he still has sleeps just about every afternoon), and still can't run - which is killing him! The local people get malaria all the time, and often it is not properly treated so it continues to recur. Thankfully they don't get the strain which kills you in Ghana, but it can still be fatal for the young, elderly or immune compromised. Its a big big problem in all of Africa and many other parts of the world, and it doesn't seem a solution is any closer at the moment.

3. Lateness, Inefficiency and Bribes: For someone who likes to always be on time, this drove me crazy! Everyone is late, all the time - and not just 10 minutes - its usually two hours or more! Everything is just generally inefficient too - for example, at the airport when we left, we counted 11 passport checks and 6 security and bag checks! Now I'm all for being thorough, but that's just inefficient!! What's more, you can bypass the security checks with bribes (which we never do) so why even have them? Last time, the guy in front of Warren paid the customs dude a bribe to not check his bag, and Warren made a fuss of it and told the guy off. Unfortunately the customs guy then decided that he would take everything single thing out of our suitcases in the middle of the airport so I had my undies on display for all to see!! (funny only in retrospect). You can try all you like to fight the system, but it will only get you frustrated, and is probably never going to change.

4. Dodgy electricity, water supply and internet: Really we were the lucky ones because we actually had electricity and running water, which many local people don't. So I shouldn't complain.... But I couldn't dry my hair properly because the hairdryer didn't get enough power!! And I lost count of how many emails I lost because the internet connection cut out before sending them. Small trials really.

5. Having nowhere to go at night: During the day I kept myself reasonably busy with going to school, Mercy Mission, the markets, visiting baby Jacinta, hanging out with Rita and the girls etc. But at night time there was nothing to do! There were no restaurants to go to, no take away to order - I got tired of cooking every single night. We could have gone to the club house for a drink, but that place was malaria city - so staying inside away from the mosquitoes won out over the gin and tonics! We didn't even have any DVD's to watch. So TV it was - I think we've now watched every episode of Top Gear, Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival, NCIS, Law and Order and Ninja Warrior. So bring on Domino's Pizza and Tuesday night steak night at the Rivervale!


Memorable Moments:

1. Baby Jacinta - as I was saying before, its not every day you have a baby named after you, so this was pretty exciting! She's such a cute thing too, and while she's going through a "I only want my mum" stage, she was still always happy to come to me too. Hopefully she'll live up to the high standards of the name!!!!

2. Market place acceptance - I wrote another blog post about this if you care to go back and read it. It was a good day when I went to the markets after six months, and suddenly all the food was cheaper! The ladies had obviously decided that I was alright, and I'd become one of the locals. I was pretty happy about that. It was always a bit interesting at the markets because many of the ladies didn't speak english, and they have also recently changed their currency from "old Cedis" to "new Cedis". I was used to the new currency, but people would usually tell you the prices in old currency so I'd have to do some quick calculations in my head. Thankfully Rita was usually with me to help out.

3. The kids cheering and dancing at school when we donated books and pencils. They were all lined up in perfectly straight lines in the hot sun at an assembly, and when the headmaster announced that we'd bought some new books they spontaneously started cheering and dancing around the place!! It gave me goosebumps that they were so excited.

4. Rita's birthday party: I don't think its the done thing to make a fuss of birthdays in Ghana - usually people don't have enough money to buy presents or extra food, but when it was Rita's birthday we cooked her dinner (her favourite Banku with okra stew!) and a cake, and I sewed her a new dress. She was SO stoked, and said it was the "best day of her life".

5. Dancing - the Ghanaian people love to play the drums, dance and sing, and it was great to see people let go with reckless abandon and dance their little hearts out and sing at the top of their voices! This happened at many functions that we went to - Warren's birthday party, a wedding, the Mercy Mission Christmas party, church services etc. Its really fun to participate in and the drum beat sucks you in - you can't help but dance!