Thanks to everybody who contributed, I have great news.

Last week the cash was sent to Hagan and he has paid his Uni fees for the year. It took me quite a while to convince Western Union that Hagan wasn’t the nephew of a late great uncle who was trying to smuggle $68 billion dollars from the country, or that he was somebody I met on a dating site.

After that little hurdle I got this

And then I spoke to Hagan on the phone to confirm he got the cash and was all paid up for the year. Amazing. It would have been possible without you (just about) but then I wouldn’t have been able to share this with you.

To all who contributed Hagan told me send his ‘Greetings’ from Accra and a massive, massive thanks. Consider yourself stakeholders in his happiness.

Sorry for the lack of updates by the way, I have been working abroad.

Next up, I will be working out what to do with this site for the next year as I am sure we don’t need a year to raise next year’s cash!

Finally, some words of wisdom from a friend at work today…..

‘If you snooze…..you lose.’

Well I just heard that my students who I put through the NVTI exams have passed! So I did achieve something after all. Good news.

The haganometer needs a push so on good advice I have created a Facebook Group . Let’s see how that goes.

Hagan has informed me that he has his exams coming up soon so he is studying hard. He is dedicated, hard working and cleverer than me so I am sure he will be fine.

I need to get at least £300 by 16th Jan so if you’re about to pay too much money for some imported Chinese moulded plastic and call it a present, think again. How about spending the money on something more productive :p

Just a small update this time.

The Haganometer is rising slowly so thanks all.

The target is £800 - and the total raised so far is £75. Not exactly setting the world on fire here but the important thing is to do what you can. As long as we all do what we can then we can’t do any more right?

Hagan has received my digital camera and after a small bribe he got it from the post office to send us this photo outside of his new university.

My mate Hagan. He doesn’t know I am writing this page about him. I hope he doesn’t mind.

As you may know, I was supposed to train a teacher at my placement. Hagan was my trainee, unfortunately, nobody asked him if he wanted to be a teacher except me, when I got there. Guess what, he doesn’t.

Hagan had Polio as a kid and now has a resultant physical disability. He has not let that stop him becoming the well-rounded, good laugh, loyal and totally dedicated great friend of mine that he now is. If anyone is going to make a difference to the way Africa responds to people with disabilities, it will be more likely to be Hagan, than a VSO volunteer.

Here he is..

The bicycle is called Jerry.

Hagan has now left the school, where he was working as a teacher, to study in University. He will tell you he is there because of me, the truth is, however, he would have got there anyway.

Here are some words from the man himself.

My name is Hagan . I am 27 years old. I have a disability but that is not a limitation. I am the last child of my parents. I have five brothers. Three of them are farmers and two are working with private companies here in Accra the capital of Ghana and at the same time studying. My dad hails from the Volta Region of Ghana and my mom hails from the Eastern Region of Ghana.

My father and mother were both farmers until Eleven (11) years ago when I lost my father. My mother retired from her farming five (5) years ago due to old age and associated health problems. They were still married until my dad died.

For the past two (2) years I have been teaching in a vocational school for persons with disability where I met Jonathan Barrat. I taught English, Maths and Computing and I was an advocate for disability where I have been educating the local community about issues of disability. Currently, I am going to study Telecommunication Engineering, a four years course leading to the award of a Bachelor Degree at Ghana Telecom University College.

So why am I teling you all this? Well if you feel kind of helpless in Britain, working, busy, wanting to do the right thing but not sure what the right thing is, then I can assure you, helping Hagan is the right thing. I have committed to pay half of his university fees for the next four years. I would love your help.

Because Hagan never got the chance to get to Senior Secondary School, he is attending a private university at the cost of $2600 per year, for four years. He has already obtained sponsorship for $1000 per year and I am making up the rest. I have until February to get together $1600 dollars.

So your chance to help is to assist me raise the $1600 per year (apx £800). You can donate using paypal, just click on the link below. I will keep a running total on this site. I have also posted a digital camera to Hagan so he can keep us up to date on how he is getting on and I will try to get regular written updates from him.

If Thank You becomes a cliche, it will be my fault, as it is the most used phrase on this site. Cheers!

I don’t know why I have been so reluctant to finish this off. I guess, somewhere in the back of my mind I keep questioning whether I could have done more to tackle the problems I faced.

This post is going to be short. It’s going to be followed by some good news, something really positive.

When I joined the school I spoke with the director about common goals. Although I am an atheist and the school was run by the Catholic Church, our goal was the same, to help others. I didn’t anticipate so many conflicts.

When you are involved in a project which has two goals, saving lives and saving souls, which has priority? I know which one I would chose. Unfortunately my employers chose the other. My opinion of that place is that they didn’t care about the kids as much as they should.

I could give so many examples but I think I will save them for when I speak to VSO London. The truth needs to be told, but I never got into any of this to be a whistleblower. My priority is to get my life back. I gave up so much and got so little back I just want to move on.

One of the reasons I left was because in Britain, we tend to focus on ourselves. This worried me. I wanted to work with people who all had a common goal, so we could achieve much. The reality was, I found more selfishness among Europeans in Ghana, than I ever have done in Britain.

I now find myself working in a high pressure environment in London and yet my perspective of it is so different.

So what did VSO do for me? Most people wil say it was rewarding, fulfilling etc. For me, I just learnt to appreciate what it was I despised before I went away. I guess you could say it made me happy.

I leave you with just one example of why I found it impossible to work with my school.

I had one severely disabled student. He had absolutely no mobility apart from a withered hand and a head and a brain. When you got to know him he was such a laugh. He used to love taking the mickey out of people and we always sat, chatted and laughed when we weren’t in class.

Because the school had no real facilities for caring for people with disabilities, he was looked after by a boy with learning difficulties. Why? Because nobody else wanted to do it and this was the easy way. The cop out.

Anyway, he was often ill, with aches and pains and would often complain that he wasn’t getting any medical attention. I would always encourage him to report any ailments and let me know if he wasn’t taken seriously. I tried and tried to get him help but nobody listened to me. The brother who dealt with medical issues would often run away from him when he tried to report a problem.

One afternoon I was just around the corner when he reported a problem so heard the conversation.

‘Brother I need to speak to you I am ill.’

‘Well take a look at yourself, what do you expect.’

I had to draw on all my strength not to punch that brother. I blame VSO for putting me in that position. I blame the school for not listening to me, or taking me seriously.

I spoke to the director about the brother a little later and his response? ‘What do you want me to do? Kill him?’

I once gave that same student a fun keyring which said ‘Don’t stop the party on it.’

When I left he cried saying ‘Sir, Sir, you lied, you stopped the party.’

I think about that and many other moments often and it makes me feel so sad, sad for him, for me and for Ghana.

I have been feeling pressure since I got back.

Pressure to finish this story, pressure to get a job and a place to live and pressure to report back to VSO. I haven’t wanted to do any of them.

After a long holiday I have now got a job and a new house (hooray) so just two things left to do before I can really get on with everything else.

VSO debriefs can wait………so here’s the rest of it. This is likely to be a very long post. There was no one reason why I quit, just one too many annoyances and frustrations with a very significant event creating a turning point after three months of my placement. Here we go then.

NOTE- I didn’t sign up to VSO to be a whistleblower, or to damn the Catholic Church and I don’t want to put people off volunteering either. The truth should be told however it should be remembered that this was MY experience. Yours will be different.

PART ONE - THE VSO SIDE OF THINGS

November 2006

Ok let’s take a short trip back in time, to November 2006. I arrive. VSO are disorganised but seem to care at least. Ghana is uncomfortable.

I arrive at my placement. It’s nothing like the description (expected but still frustrating) and I am told on day one that the placement is not sustainable. The reason? The teacher I am supposed to train in IT does not exist. Well he does exist but nobody bothered to ask him if he wanted to be a teacher. If they had they would have known the answer was ‘no.’

His name is Hagan by the way and we will hear more about him later! (a positive story for a change.)

Here is an extract from the VSO Website.

“The volunteers aim to pass on their expertise to local people so that when they return home their skills remain.”

The whole purpose of my being their ‘Sharing Skills and Changing Lives’ was simply not going to happen. Without a trainee, the project was simply not sustainable. It took me five minutes to find that out.

(I later learnt that my Programme Manager visited my placement prior to my arrival, took one five minute look around and then asked where to buy the famous St Theresa Centre Honey, before leaving. I was told this by the VSO Volunteer who accompanied her and he was shocked by this, particularly considering the distances and cost involved in the visit. )

At this point I should have contacted VSO Ghana and demanded another placement. I didn’t. I regret that.

Instead I decided to stick with it. My training with VSO in the UK had prepared me for all of this. I was even trained in conflict management. So in this conflict of interests, training versus expectation and inompetence, the training won.

ILLNESS

As soon as I arrived in my placement I was immediately ill. I had severe diahorrea. I later learnt that this was from the food I was eating in the priests house. (A friend of mine was later hospitalised when she came to visit and ate the very same food.)

Severe diahorea makes you dehydrated. Arriving in an equatorial country for the first time has the same affect. Looking back at that time, I was in a more serious condition than I thought. Nobody at my placement cared. I was miles from anywhere and any other VSOs. I was in a bad way and recally feeling feint many times.

It was under these circumstances that I was forced to walk to a chemist 3km away through the bush. At the time it was horrific.

The reason I had to do this was because the Oral Rehydration Sachets which should have been in my medical kit were in Accra. In fact so was my entire medical kit. I asked for it approximately 5 times before giving up. In the whole time it was there it never arrived. I blame VSO Ghana for putting me at serious medical risk. I came out of it ok in the end and I’m not going to cry about it now, it was just another thing.

LACK OF CONTACT FROM VSO

VSO hardly ever contacted me. They hardly ever returned my calls. They are administratively inept. When I did speak to them I got the feeling my use of their time was an inconvenience.

MALARIA

I got malaria. My mosquito net was not impregnated with promethrin. I did not get the promethrin treatment kit I was promised. I asked a few times and gave up.

MALARIA PROPHYLAXIS

My malaria medication is expensive. VSO Ghana took three months to send me mine. When they did send it they sent 2 months supply. In the end I just bought my own. I couldn’t even be bothered telling them or claiming the money back because of the ridiculous conversations which would have happened. Basically I paid one months wages on medication which should have been provided by VSO. I felt it was worth the cost not to have to go through the hassle of phoning every few days for a month.

The same applies for my kerosene lamp and various other things I should have been provided with. In the true style of ineptitude, I was of course, provided with things I didn’t need. Oh well it’s other people’s money. Who cares.

MY SALARY.

VSO Ghana did not arrange before my arrival with my employer how much I would be paid. This meant my first pay packet was delayed by about two months. I had to borrow money to buy food. This was followed by a series of so many errors with the amount, I gave up trying and never received my actual salary.

Neither did I receive any payslips, except for one, which was for the wrong amount. I did receive junk mail from VSO and a Christmas card sent my priority mail. Mmmm nice use of the British public’s money. Thanks.

Wow so far this looks like a solicitors letter. If VSO wasn’t a charity doing a lot of good things elsewhere, it would be.

It continues.

LACK OF CONTACT FROM OTHER VOLS

VSO Ghana keep a list of all the volunteers and their contact details, email addresses and phone numbers. This is sent out to all the Vols so we can keep in touch with each other. My details were wrong and, despite me asking, were never corrected. Thanks.

THE PASSPORT SAGA

This one is so long I could write a book about it. Lucky for VSO Ghana, I have better things to do. Suffice to say they refused to give it to me. They cited various weak excuses and treated me like a child.

They didn’t want to give me my passport in case I decided to run away in the middle of the night. The strange irony here of course is that, I did and partly because of the way I was treated when I asked for it.

Why did I want my passport? I needed it to buy FOOD across the border. It took me about five months to get my passport in the end. FIVE MONTHS! Oh and how did I get it? I went to Accra and demanded it. Thanks again VSO for making me do that. By this time I was feeling hugely insulted by VSO Ghana.

SURPRISE VISITS

One morning my programme manager just ‘arrived’ in order to do my 5 month placement assessment. The fact that I had only been there three months at this time did not bother them. I had to leave my students without a teacher at late notice.

It transpired, however, that my programme manager was only interested in buying honey. I did take the opportunity to complain about the problems I was having with my placement and with VSO. Her response was to look at her watch, buy some honey and leave. Another six hour round trip on OUR money for a 15 minute chat.

The end result of my various points raised was a rare treat later that day in the shape of a phone call from VSO, wow. Amazingly I was told that my problems might seem less like problems if I changed my malaria medication. Nice - thanks. I give up my job and my life and they can’t even be arsed to listen to me.

SURPRISE VISIT NUMBER TWO

One afternoon after class I cycled into the village. I was amazed to see a VSO vehicle outside a bar there! Curious I went in. I found a member of the VSO Ghana staff there. Wow they have come to see me. How nice.

How wrong more like. No they had come to buy honey and couldn’t even be arsed to tell me they were coming and bring all those things I had asked for. If I hadn’t rumbled him I would never have known. I presume this happened more than once it was just this time I found out about it.

I should point out that my placement was a long way from everywhere, including other volunteers. To come all the way to my school and not even say hello was one of the biggest insults I have ever experienced. I’m guessing the British taxpayer paid for the petrol too.

MONEY WASTING

Spending other people’s money is easy. This one is a tough one. If I give you lots of examples of how charities in Africa waste what is given to them, you might consider giving less in future. We all know it happens. Let’s just say it happens more than you think and leave it there. For my part I will only be giving to one charity from this point forward.

VACCINATIONS

I needed two booster jabs while I was away. VSO should be able to offer these so I called them and they told me to come in. I made it all the way there only to be pointed to a local clinic. VSO had not even bothered to check with the clinic that they even had the jabs I needed. Needless to say, they didn’t.

That little waste of time and resources cost the British Taxpayer a night in a hotel for me. Sorry.

MANGO FLY

You may or may not know about the mango fly incident. Long story. Cut short I got a fly larvae in my arm from a bedsheet in a hotel on my first night.

I complained to VSO about the hotel and they stopped using it.

I found it strangely childish that when I went to get my jabs, I found out that I was staying alone in the same hotel and in the same room where I got the larvae. This was depite the fact that VSO no longer use this hotel. Proven by the fact I met various other VSOs who were all together in a hotel up the road.

If I really thought about it, I could go on.

The examples of their incompetence are numerous and laughable.

I made two attempts to complain about the lack of support and was treated like a child on both occsions.

THE FINALE

The final hilarity ended by VSO booking my flight to leave and not telling me about it. They simply booked the flight and thought I would find out myself. It was only a chance query by me which caused me to discover I had a week to pack my stuf and leave. they had even booked my flight two weeks too early, right in the middle of the end of term exams. What a complete farce.

I then spent the next four days trying to find out the time of my flight and which airport I was flying to. I wasn’t given this information until a few days before and only then when i sent a message to the EMERGENCY HOTLINE for volunteers in trouble. Jokes.
Try arranging transport from the African bush to the capital without knowing what time you want to go! VSO seemed upset when I said I didn’t have time to visit them before leaving. Work it out for yourselves.

The next point might get me sued for lible so you will have to work this one out for yourselves too.

Here is the transcript as far as memory allows from my final phone conversation with my programme manager at VSO on the day I left.

‘Hello Jonathan are you coming to visit us on your way to the airport.’

‘No, I don’t have time because I only just managed to arrange transport and it doesn’t allow enough time to catch my flight if I visit you.’

‘Oh, ok. Well it’s just that I don’t want you to think we have been anything other than helpful during your time here. I get the impression you think we have been obstructive and not supportive.’

‘You have been.’

‘Maybe if you come in we could talk about it. I was also thinking, although you are not entitled to it, if you come in I could arrange to pay you your in placement grant.’

‘No thanks.’

Ok now you make your own conclusion from that conversation. The in placement grant is £500 and I was certainly not entitled to claim it.

So despite all of this which happened with VSO Ghana it may surprise you to know that none of that made me leave. The complete lack of support and general incompetence didn’t help but the main reason was my employer. It’s a very long story which involves beatings, medical incompetence and outrageous selfishness.

I will write part two of this back story in a few weeks time.

Sorry if part one wasn’t funny.

…that’s the noise I have heard every morning at 5am for the last eight months, until yesterday. The reason I didn’t hear it is because I have resigned from my job, from VSO and from Ghana. I am home. Gulp.

The reasons are numerous and soon, when I have a chance, I will write the hidden story of the last eight months. Briefly, lack of support from VSO, an inaccurate description of my placement and an unwillingness to make a real difference on the part of my employers were contributing factors. Perhaps I just couldn’t hack it am blaming those things.

Leaving broke my heart and those of seven students who cried for three days when I told them. They clubbed together and bought me some soap as a leaving present.

This post is dedicated to them.

and here they are, from the left, Ebenezer, Nicholas, Jessica, Enyonam, Suzzie, Patricia and Prince. They are putting on a brave face after the announcement of my departure.

They had very little before I arrived and they have very little now. I hope, however, that they have more self-belief, motivation and ambition now, than they did a year ago.

Nicholas was a friend of mine and, as you might expect, given his condition, he has a few more needs than your average student. His day to day needs, such as toilet, washing etc, were inadequately taken care of by a boy with a learning disability because the school has absolutely no facility or expertise for dealing with people with disabilities.

He frequently had minor ailments and aches and pains which were dealt with in such an incompetent way I became exasperated. Once he was given a used lip balm and told to wipe it on his head to help with malaria.

This is just one example of the way my employer dealt with the students and although I tried, I was unable to influence them in any meaningful way.

What may surprise you, however, is that the school was owned and run by rich, white Europeans, presumably hoping to book themselves a place in heaven. Eventually I couldn’t stand it any longer.

So here I am back in Britain. I have no house, no job and no money. Ah well, at least I might have time to fill in the gaps on this site. If anybody would like to give me a job, that would be nice.

Finally, thank you thank you thank you to everybody who sent me stuff, messages and IT Kit. Whatever it was I achieved, you all helped me do it.

PS Dear Vanessa, I lost your email and never got a chance to say thank you personally!

Some famous artist was once asked what his art was trying to say. Infamously he answered, well if I could say it I wouldn’t do the art would I?

I have the grand sum of ten minutes for my net access this time. Ten minutes in the last six weeks. So I leave you with some art and no words.

SUNDAY 11^TH MARCH 2006

HELLO READERS! Good to be back….. so what’s new?

Well, thanks to a friend of mine sending me a network switch and some cables, I have started to network the classroom. The first thing I did was to install a networked version of Microsoft Encarta onto the students’ computers. They think it is tremendous. For now, they have just been looking at the pictures and watching the videos. (Imagine being 21 and having never seen all those things you take for granted – from moon landings to ice-skating). Eventually they will have seen them all and will start actually reading the entries.

The day before yesterday it rained for the first time in five and a half months. I had a free period so walked out into the rain and got soaked. It was quite beautiful. Everybody was happy about the rainfall, but sadly it only lasted a few hours. When the rainy season starts in earnest, it will rain for a few months!

When it rains the temperature drops to about 22-25 degrees. This actually feels a bit chilly to me now. Only a few months ago I would have thought it to be a hot day. Having said this, chilly is definitely a very nice experience.

The downside of the rain is the increased humidity, which increases from around 80% to 100%. Not so nice. As soon as you start to sweat, you overheat as the air is too humid to evaporate any more water. The hanky in
Africa, is used to wipe the sweat from your face not blow your nose. It’s a technique I have adopted and it works remarkably well.

The second unfortunate side effect of rain is that all the insects that have been hiding in the dry season, instantly breed and start flying around. Last night the whole place was awash with giant flying ants. For ‘giant’ read one inch long. Outrageous.

FRIDAY 16^TH MARCH 2005

ACCRA!

It nearly rained again last night, despite lots of thunder and strong winds. “The rain is coming soon,” is repeated daily in my conversations with staff and students.

So anyway, on Monday I finally made it to
Accra and I got a lift, which meant I could go to Koala and have a party. For those of you who have never been to
Accra and have not been frequent readers to this site, you won’t know much about Koala.

Next to the ‘Shite Café’, it’s the best and worst place to be in the World. The best because it sells ‘luxuries’, such as toothpaste, and the worst, because of the cost.

A lot of Europeans who work in
Africa earn a basic Euro salary plus extra for the inconvenience of being away from home. Let’s say for the sake of argument that most of them earn say £50k. That’s 900 000 000 Cedis per year. The average yearly wage in
Ghana is (allegedly) 6 000 000. So by very rough calculations the ‘average Euro’ earns 150 times more than the ‘Average Ghanaian’. The kind Lebanese gents who own Koala, the only real supermarket in
Ghana are well aware of this fact and milk the situation, thoroughly.

A tin of ‘Best-In’ value mixed vegetables might cost 15p in
Britain. In fact a lot of the products in Koala still have the British prices on them. 15p in Cedis is 2700. How this product ends up costing more like 25 000 Cedis is beyond me. Or, more precisely, it’s not beyond me at all, it’s obvious.

I wonder if the owners of Koala have realised that a large number of Euros in 3^rd World Countries are not on salaries 150 times that of the locals. My salary for example, is a mere 4 times the average.

Want another shocking example? One small block of cheese – one day’s wages for me, four days wages for my colleagues.

Tortuously, I was presented with a million things I needed and close to a million things I couldn’t buy. Luckily, in Abor there is very little I want or need so I was able to spend a month’s wages on Western luxuries. I can justify anything if it keeps me happy while I am here.

The following day (Tuesday) was quite an event – it went like this.

Get up and clean teeth with a NEW toothbrush and REAL toothpaste.

Shower with SOAP, wash hair with SHAMPOO and shave with FOAM.

Apply DEODORANT.

Have NICE BREAD with BUTTER and JAM and NICE COFFEE with MILK. Eat a chocolate CROISSANT (I can’t begin to explain how completely amazing this was!)

LUNCH

POTATOES + VEGTABLE curry and LEBANESE BREAD, followed by YOGHURT!

Etc etc.

Everything in CAPS was a novelty. Ironically, the Lebanese Bread was the only thing I didn’t get from the Lebanese Supermarket, therefore subsequently I could actually afford to buy it without guilt. Very nice it was too.

In a few weeks time I get to go to
Accra again but this time on VSO business and in a Tro Tro so I won’t be able to buy so much ‘Best-In’ quality produce.

WEDNESDAY 21^ST MARCH 2007

Slowly, slowly or ‘small small’, as the locals would say, I am beginning to worry less about actually coping here and starting to focus on my work.

My students are really nice kids, but also have had an inadequate education. Their level of English is not far from basic Pidgin English. They have very small vocabularies and atrocious grammar. Nobody has ever bothered to correct their mistakes. Now in their early twenties, to have me raving that their English is too poor to pass an exam, is quite a shock to everyone, especially them.

Having now been here for four months, I care less about the toes of the resident English teacher and have decided to become an English/IT teacher, therefore treading on afore-mentioned foot digits. Ah well. I start next term in a new dual role. This creates more work, but also much more flexibility so I am quite happy about the whole thing.

If English was not the official language of
Ghana, I would not be so perturbed by all this but it is. I don’t care if a Professor from the

University of
Accra comes on GTV (Ghana Television) without a subject-verb agreement to his name, my students are going to get it right. Fortunately, the Director of the school agrees with me, so roll on next term – all ‘fourteen weeks’ without a break of it.

GEEK APPEAL UPDATE

The Geek Appeal was a good bit of fun, which had a few lovely responses, so thank you. As a result the classroom is halfway to being networked and I have been able to upgrade a few PCS along with putting some memory and processors in our growing spares dept. Some kind soul also sent me a bunch of blank CDs and I will be able to teach the kids about CD Burning and Piracy and such, they will love it I am sure.

The joke about needing a wealthy philanthropist also bore fruit so I am going to ask them to help me find some special mice for the physically disabled. I hope they read my email before this!

EVOLUTION

So, my kids don’t know what dinosaurs are and my five year old nephew would give them a run for their money in the English Department. When I got here I often questioned what on Earth I was doing by trying to teach them IT. What on Earth were VSO thinking? Anyway I have got over that and along with teaching them English, I am also planning to fill the enormous gaps in their general knowledge.

It is a heavy responsibility to teach a devout Christian that the world is not in fact 5000 years old and that he is not a direct descendant of Adam and Eve. It is also, quite possibly, something I should not be doing at all in a centre funded by the Catholic Church, ah well, I’m going to anyway.

A FAIR SWAP

You might consider it a fair swap to receive a free education and food etc, in exchange for a bit of indoctrination or religious conversion. Personally, I consider it rather unfair to teach somebody English, Maths or even IT but no History and Science.

So part two of my efforts to bring about some change will also happen next term by way of a science club. I would really like to start an Astronomy Club as
Ghana has the clearest skies, especially during light off, but finding a telescope in a Third World County is an impossible mission.

I’M COMING HOME

Well hopefully, in July I will be flying from Accra to Milan, taking the train to France, having a holiday, coming to Britain to buy ‘stuff’ then coming back to
Africa again. That’s the plan anyway.

(UPDATE: I got a quote for a ticket to
Milan - $1200! Righto)

THURSDAY 29^TH MARCH 2007.

CHICKEN DEATH

I went to the village a few days ago, to drink beer with a friend of mine. As usual the place was surrounded by rubbish, chickens and flies. Halfway through beer number one, a chicken approached me.

It stood between my feet and looked up at me. It started to cough. It started to splutter. It started to do both at once. It fell over and died at my feet. After it coughed its final cough, about half a litre of fluid came out of its mouth and splashed about the place. The girl working at the ‘Spot’ (the name for a bar in Ghana), put down the drinks she was serving, came and picked up the chicken, threw it on a pile of rubbish and continued to serve drinks, (needless to say she did not wash her hands between either).

‘Welcome to
Ghana,’ said my friend. ‘Welcome to
Ghana,’ is the ubiquitous term said by anyone and anything whenever anything vaguely disgusting happens, or even when nothing happens at all.

If it wasn’t for the fact I saw a live cat fed to a pig the day before, I think I would have been more concerned. As it was I grinned, accepted the welcome, and ordered another beer.

As we have a poultry farm in the school, later that day, I asked the guy who runs the place what the symptoms were of a chicken dying from bird flu. He laughed as if to say ‘This is
Africa, I neither know, nor care,’ and I suspect both are true.

MY PASSPORT

So far, in this blog of mine, I have told the truth but I have also withheld some information. Some of the things I have not told you about are corruption, religious indoctrination and propaganda. There are reasons for this and the main one is that I have to live here. Despite the government’s claims that nobody, since the current government came to power six years ago, has been prosecuted or imprisoned for exercising their right to free speech, I don’t believe them, so I am chickening out on that one.

My students have nearly finished their exams, which means I am nearly in Accra, eating chips and getting bitten by the same
Accra mosquitoes which gave me Malaria the first time around.

Despite asking for my passport from VSO for the past four and a half months, they have not given it to me. They think I am going to take it and run away back to
Britain. I have tried to explain that I need it to go to
Togo to buy FOOD, something which nobody at VSO seems to care about. As a result it has been something which we have almost started to argue about. Withholding my passport, in truth, would be the only thing to make me want to leave, but VSO Ghana fail to grasp this simple concept.

While in
Accra during the holiday I will finally be able to collect it.

VSO Ghana’s administrative ineptitude, however, is the other thing I have not mentioned (until now) and, since I am hoping they will arrange my flight to
Milan for me, my hands are tied again. I will leave it at this for now but you never know, I may be forced to revisit, when I no longer need favours.

CYCLE RIDE

FRIDAY 30^th MARCH 07

Yesterday I went for a cycle ride. I had no idea where I was going. All I knew was that there was a road that lead South of the village with little or no potholes that I liked the look of.

I left at 3pm so as to leave me three and a half hours of daylight, without it being two hot, and rode off into the sunset. Despite the heat, it was the best thing I have done since I have been here.

To completely leave the school (and its politics and evangelism) and the village (and its cries of Javu Javu) behind me and cycle ten or so miles into the
Africa bush, alone, was beyond the scope of any adjectives I know.

I managed to cycle all the way to Keta Lagoon. The road was flat and empty. I passed through several villages, some of whom had not seen a white man for a while but they were so shocked to see me I was gone before the Javu shouting started. Outside of the villages, away from the heckling, I would wave at the occasional farmer who seemed intensely happy to have somebody greet them.

The sense of freedom was intense, free from
Europe, mass consumerism, pollution and waste. The bush was flat and vast and the road slightly elevated to protect it when the lagoon floods. This meant I was able to see for miles from the raised seat of my bicycle.

It’s a shame the rest of West Africa is in such military and political turmoil or I would seriously consider cycling home all the way to
Britain.

As I came back a few hours later, feeling all warm inside, I cycled past a small house. One of the side windows opened and a man leaned out of it. He hawked up something quite terrifying and spat it out into the road in front of me. He looked up at me, grinned, and called out ‘Hey Javu Javu, Welcome to
Ghana!’. I guess I was naive to think the elation would last.

ENERGY CRISIS

Yes,
Ghana is having an energy crisis. A short while ago the President of Ghana, John Kufuor requested that the media stop reporting ‘bad news’ from
Africa. I question his motives, however, it probably means the rest of the world is unaware of said crisis.

In around 1960, the huge Akosombo Damn was built, providing hydro-electricity for the whole country. Since then demand has risen but energy provision has not. Every now and then, during a drought, there is a power shortage which results in rationing. Despite this, little or no provision has been made for the increasing demand. That leaves us where we are now, with frequent rationing of power, but no measures being taken to resolve the situation as it has been left too late. It gets worse each week.

I wonder if this, or the fact that Kufour invited Robert Mugabe to
Ghana’s 50^th Anniversary of Independence was reported elsewhere in the World.

Friday 6th April 2007

ACCRA AGAIN

Yes I am here again this time on VSO business and a short shopping trip.

Politics are everywhere right now, at the school, with VSO and on TV (there was talk of a miltary coup this morning!) and, to be frank, the keyboard in this cafe is just too poor to make it easy to explain everything so I will stop here.

Suffice to say I am still happy about my actual job, my kids are great, but everything else is pretty much crappy.

That’s all for now. There is a chance, albeit slight, that next term we will get internet access at the school. Until then, I will have to rely on infrequent visits to far away internet cafes to update again. See you soon.

Jon

 PS Thank you for all your kind words and love to Britain.

Saturday 24th February 2007

It’s been a while since my last post as I have been busy working.

Having not posted for so long, I wrote my usual huge entry in the interim with the intention of posting it just now. Having reread it, while sitting down at the shite cafe, I realise it turned into a ten page whine epic, so I scrapped it.

Instead here is a poem I wrote on the Tro Tro on the way here.

Marcus Didius Gecko.

Who knows where my Gecko goes?
For weeks on end the only clue…..he is here at all….is Gecko poo

In amongst the VSO highs and lows, while I am lying on my bed
He appears on the wall, and for no reason at all
I line him up between my toes.

Perhaps now would be a good time for a recap.

My name is Jon and I am VSO volunteer. A few months ago I gave up my cosy life in Britain to teach IT to disabled kids in Ghana.

Life on the equator is tough but the climate has turned out to be the least of my challenges.

Teaching a technical subject to children who believe that God created Adam and Eve is the hardest thing I have ever done. They have no concept of speed, time or efficiency, all of which are essential to understanding and learning the basics of computers. A computer is, after all, a time saving device.

They don’t know about dinosaurs, space, physics, gravity, history or much else. If I try to teach them any of this, they think I am telling them fictional stories, boring ones at that.

I once told them that we descended from Apes and they couldn’t stop laughing at me.

Food and the actual logistics of running an IT dept in a Third World country are also interesting personal challenges.

My VSO placement is also isolated beyond belief and very far from the description of the placement I originally accepted.

Despite all this, I am feeling fit and healthy and have had some amazing support from readers of this site. For that I need to take the time to say thank you.

I have four weeks left until the end of my first term, at which time I plan to go to Accra and spend a few days in an air-conditioned flea pit hotel room, eating chips. I am looking forward to it immensely.

I have been here for three months. In that time I have had malaria, frogs in my toilet, snake encounters, a mosquito behind my eyeball, a maggot in my arm, cockroaches in my toilet roll and three marriage proposals and that was just in the first month.

Lately things have been more sedate and more serious. Either that or I have stopped noticing all the hilarity.

As Arthur C Clarke writes in the second of his Odysseys, ‘The human mind has an astonishing capacity to adapt; after a while, even the incredible becomes commonplace.’

I leave you with two pictures.

One is of me in my classroom with my students. There are only seven of them now. Three of them have left after being asked to provide proof that they have the required certificate to take their exam in May. Another left in sympathy. That was a very long story and it would be unfair on them to reveal the details here.

The second is part two of my Microsoft Paint, preconceptions project. Last November, if you read back through the archives of this site, you will find part one, and an explanation.

Anyway, that’s all for now, it was after all, time I made a post which was actually readable for those of you who have lives to attend to.

I will update more fully soon, either at or before the end of term. Send my love to Britain, the Internet and Cheese and Onion crisps.

Cheers

Jon