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 h
ive 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 hairdresse
rs, 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.
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 h
ive 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 hairdresse
rs, 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. 
1 comment:
I had posted this same post but without pictures originally. When I tried to add the pictures everything was lost including Jennie's comment. Which if I recall was as follows:
I can see now what your life is like and what kind of language is Ewe?
To this I had responded by saying that Ewe is the local language in Volta Region. It is also spoken in parts of Togo becasue after the war the British and the French just put a line to mark what will be ruled by the British and the French. Ewe is a tonal language so Michael finds some of the pronunciations a bit more difficult than I do. It is not as difficult as Thai which is even more tonal. We know the basics for now and will have a teacher soon so can learn to speak it more fluently. VSO pay some money towards it as it is not essential in Ghana as many people speak English. However, it would be useful for me when I visit small communities where people do not speak English.
Where VSO volunteers have to speak the local language VSO gives them two months at the beginning of their placement where they learn the language before they go to their placement.
Apologies to Jenny for loosing the comments made.
Kiran
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