Another holiday?!

Hey everyone,

I hope that this entry finds you all well and enjoying the cool temperatures! After a month of ‘cool’ (well just in the 20s) where I actually needed a blanket at night it’s suddenly started to get HOT! On Saturday it was 42 degrees and boy did we feel it... However a colleague has assured us that it only goes up to 43 in the HOT season which is March and April… so that was kind of reassuring, but goodness me that is HHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Warm winter jumpers? Whatever do you mean?!

Speaking of Saturday, I had quite a lazy day until the afternoon when we went out to a ‘Babies Home’ in a village called Sirigu which we’ve been to a couple of times– its run by a group of Sisters (as in religious) and it cares for children up to the age of three who have been abandoned by their families. Normally they’ve been born with some sort of deformity or their Mother died during child birth meaning that their family see them as ‘Spirit children,’ i.e. that they aren’t real people and there is a history of families killing these children in the Upper East Region of Ghana. So the children are brought to the home until they are three when they are returned to their families, to varying degrees of success. However, as there aren’t enough Sisters to care for these babies they have to be accompanied by a ‘carer’ who is usually their sister or Grandmother. This means quite often that an 8/9 year old girl has been taken out of school to become the child’s carer…

We first went to visit the home back in October and it was a difficult visit to say the least – I felt really useless; what could I do? Going along and playing with the children for a little while and telling the Sisters that they were doing a great job – not much use in that… The babies seemed so small and they were all so vacant looking. It wasn't that they were looked after but just they didn't seem to have a lot going for them... However, a new Sister has just taken over and this time when we went to visit the children were a lot more lively and mischieveous, which was great to see. There've also got a few different projects that they want to do to improve the home - they want to start giving the carers lessons and they've started to build a play area. So its exciting to see the changes and be involved in a small way - we've got a few ideas but we'll see how it works out.

As for general life - we're on holiday again! We broke up from college on Saturday morning after a staff meeting at 7:30AM(!!!) followed by assembly and then the students were allwowed to leave. So I'm spending this week getting organised for next semester by starting to do some observing of students with the teaching practice co-ordinator (so I know the expected standards) and sorting out a few other bits. Chilled but its amazing how long things can take to do here! We're (Jet, Sarah, Mary and myself) then off to travel through the Volta region and end up in Accra as of Saturday so I'm really looking forward to that!

Anyway, enough waffling, take care

Sam xxx