Charity Mawuko and Bridget pounding Fufu

Making fufu is not easy. It is one of the staple foods and is usually made from cassava and plantains. Although Charity also adds sweet potatoes to it. It is a long and hard process. After boiling the ingredients, they all need to be pounded separately and then mixed together and pounded again. I find it a dangerous process as one person has to turn the fufu in the mortar while the other person pounds. There is a rhythm to it and if the person with the pestle misses it surely means no fingers left!! So you have to trust the person a lot.

Once the fufu is pounded it is steamed and eaten with a hot and spicy soup usually made with fish or meat. So we have great difficulty finding vegetarian fufu as the basic ingredient includes shrimp paste. We have to order it a day in advance to make sure we get vegetarian soup. This means we cannot just walk into the local "spots" as the restaurant stalls are called and order anything vegetarian.

Our neighbourhood in Ho

Our neighbourhood is amazingly friendly and we are so pleased we are living in a community of Ghanaians. There is talk of moving us to better housing but it will be where the ex-pats live and miles away from the centre of town. We are not keen on that at all. At present we live 5 minutes walk away from the Central Market which on market days - every other fifth day - is a hive of activity.We get woken up around 5:00 a.m. with Mawuko or his sister Bridget sweeping the front of their house and the older brothers cleaning their car. Mawuko has offered to sweep our front yard as well - and won't accept any pay for it. We do all our chores like washing clothes, sweeping our house (don't know where the dust comes from!) filtering water etc in the morning before we leave for work.We leave for work around 9:00 and both of us walk to our work places. On the way we greet our neighbour Charity, usually washing clothes, in Ewe - the local language here. Then we say hello to Kennedy who has a tailoring stall across from our house. Michael had a shirt made by Kennedy recently made out of local Tye and Dye material. One of the photos of our house is from Kennedy's shop. We have to go past the smelliest goat in Ho which is tied to the tree. Michael always told me goats don't smell but now even he admits they do.On the corner is Enyonam's hairdressers, she is our landlord's daughter. We usually stop and chat to her for a few minutes and learn a few more words in Ewe. Although I tend to forget them as I don't write them down. The good news is we have finally found a tutor who will teach us formally and we are both looking forward to that. The next stop is the cornershop on the main street owned by Esther. Esther has two children, Etonam who is 4 years old and goes to nursery school and Sedem who is just over 2 years old and spends most of his day with his mum and playing with friends in the area. Something that would be totally unacceptable back home. As he goes looking for mangoes and buys little treats for himself with the money given by his mum - last week there were huge tears as he lost his money on the way to the store! These are all stores around our house so I had seen the incident from our kitchen window. Sedem has a divine smile except he would not smile for the photograph.Nancy, (we went to her on our second morning in Ho for breakfast as we did not have anything at our house) is usually the last person I greet before I get to work. It takes me half an hour to get to work if I stop at the post office otherwise 25 minutes.Michael uses different routes everyday as that is his way of getting to know the town. He made the mistake of giving his mobile number to one person he met while exploring and this person keeps ringing him all the time now. A mistake he won't be repeating!It is amazing that we know so many people already. and hope that we will be able to develop lasting friendships with some of them. This last photo is of the off licence across from Esther's place where we buy wine.

Kiran's work in April 2008

Both Michael and I spent the first 5 days of April for a VSO meeting in Tamale - northern Ghana. The meeting was "Call-back" and it is for all new volunteers who have been in the country for 6 weeks. The idea is that volunteers will have been at their workplace and will have lots of questions. VSO arrange this meeting so volunteers can share their stories with VSO and other volunteers and work through any problems they have.

We had to start our journey to Tamale by first going to Accra (3 hours away from Ho) and staying a night there as our journey to Tamale was to start at 6:00 a.m. from Accra. The journey to Tamale took us nearly 15 hours due to traffic leaving Accra as well as the state of the roads. Plus our bus had a puncture and we waited at a market while it was repaired. I had insisted that we carry some food with us because I had an inkling that we may not get anything vegetarian on the way. The journey was tiring but interesting seeing the landscape and different towns. The market was especially interesting as Michael started talking to sellers who had come from Togo. I am sure he will share the stories with you at some stage in this blog.

We reached Tamale at around 9:30 p.m. very tired and hungry only to find that there was no food for the vegetarians!! But the hotel where we spent the night more than made up for it by proving us with a huge breakfast.

We spent two days at the meeting and then had to repeat the journey back to Ho except had to extend it by one extra day as we had to have precautionary medical tests in Accra.

During the second week in April I was at VOLPHIG working on finishing one bid to the World Bank as well as researching another one. Plus advising on the agenda for a Board meeting on 20th April (a Sunday!!) and format for the minutes etc. and supporting both the General Secretary and the Administrator on other day to day matters.

The third week started for both of us by going to the Regional Hospital where one church was distributing mobility aides and VOLPHIG members had been informed about this through the "tro tro post" a name coined by me and adopted by VOLPHIG. A trotro is a 12-15 seater minibus used as a taxi service between towns and cities. It is a much quicker service compared to the state run transport system which has a bad reputation. (Although our journey back from Accra was on an STC bus and it was very comfortable, we were told we were very lucky!) On a market day (every fifth day) one VOLPHIG staff member goes to the trotro stop with letters to members in different villages. They give the letters to other people travelling to the village that day. The post gets to the village and it is more effective than Ghana post. The VOLPHIG bus that you hve seen in other photos is used as a trotro to generate income for the organisation. However, due to its age most of the income is spent in maintenance!

The rest of that week was spent in studying the criteria for the bid and developing questionnaires for our visits to the village communities. This was to find out what they would like VOLPHIG to bid for. I also attended one network meeting of organisations of people with disabilities. The Board meeting on Sunday meant I had had only one day off in two weeks. Very tiring.

The third week was spent visiting 9 communities within a fifty mile radius and the days were long and tiring. some of the turnout was amazing and people with disabilities were really interested in finding out what VOLPHIG had to say. I had advised Francis to use the "World Cafe" concept to find out from them what they really wanted to be included in this bid. It worked really well. Thank you Nan Carle, David Towell and Steven Rose as well as the experience I had gained with all the Valuing People meetings that I had facilitated in London and the Southwark meetings with Choice Support. I spent the next two days with VOLPHIG analysing the findings. Michael helped as well as he had come to the villages as well.

The fourth week in April was spent working on finalising the bid as well as meeting VOLPHIG members who come from distant villages without making appointments. They just turn up and would sit for hours to see Francis and talk to him about their issues. Its a lesson in how to be patient and spend time doing nothing. Most people sleep have their lunch etc all under the tree outside VOLPHIG. The coolest place to be so not a bad choice.

A really busy month and I had only three days off so was really very tired. I am meant to work from 10:00 to 2:00 but so far have not managed to do that. If I have time during my working week then I am sure I will find other things to do.