Langbinsi - Sam at the Presbyterian Agricultural Station

On Thursday I have fixed to go over to Langbinsi to see Sam, a volunteer working at the Presbyterian agricultural station.  Langbinsi should be one of the pilot locations for Organisation Assessment within the Secure Livelihoods sector, but there is a valid but peculiarly Ghanaian reason (which I won’t quote on the blog) that has delayed the start. I want to try cycling there which almost doesn’t work out as my bike was borrowed and then knocked over by a sheep, but the bike is mended and back by Wednesday night.

I meet Maggi on the road, who cycles this way to an orphanage where she works – an hour’s commute morning and evening. It’s not a massive distance to Langbinsi, but the choices are to cycle on sand or, if you pick a firmer surface, on ruts running at right angles to the direction of travel. Anyway this is company for the first hour. When she's not in Africa Maggi works in the Justice Ministry in Germany, at the German Criminal Records Bureau. We ask some local schoolchildren to take photos near the orphanage.

The road is really quite a challenge – I get a lift from a lorry but he’s only going a mile to the next village so it’s back on the bike again.

Here you can the road part-collapsed by a broken culvert.

This would all be much tougher in the rainy season.

Well, I could have done this faster on a tro-tro, but it’s good exercise and I’ve worked long enough on previous evenings so I think this is fair.

Sam and his colleagues Ignatius, Thomas, Belinda and Steven greet me warmly and explain how the Station runs. (Sam came to lunch in Walewale on Sunday but I missed him as I was travelling North on the coach from Accra. I've come to the conclusion that you haven't really met a volunteer unless you meet them in their home town - work, home or both). The station is essentially a source of agricultural advice – the staff at the station may not know the answer themselves, but they will know someone who does. They encourage better animal husbandry and crop care – and also encourage the keeping of cattle, which can be looked down on as being something that the Fellani people do rather than native tribes.

Sam cooks a splendid lunch for us (a colleague joins us) . His house is on the agricultural station - basically mud-hut construction but with electricity and running water. We have a good session afterwards talking through options and tactics on the Organisation Assessment.

It’s getting on for 5pm before I go, and this time I take the easy way and put the bike on the roof of the tro. (It probably cost me more to cycle than to tro-tro, because a couple of days later the bike pedal breaks, costing me 5 cedis - £2 - for new pedals).

Sam comes with me to see me off on the tro, and engage in local conversation about the likelihood of a tro coming - one turns up and the bike goes on the roof. There is a very noisy argument lasting some 10 or 15 minutes and involving a dozen people or so which seems to be about who is on the tro and who is not, but my place doesn't seem controversial so I keep my head down and eventually after various adjustments of passengers we move off.

I get back to Walewale just in time to see Charlotte, Janet and Maggi emerge from the Moonlite Spot (i.e. bar) after having caught the last few minutes of the Ghana football team’s African Nations Cup semi-final victory.

Walewale Organisation Assessment complete!

This is covered on Charlotte's blog too (and Janet's) , but I'll allow myself to express my excitement about it here as well!

Charlotte had been compiling a report as the organisation assessment progressed for West Mamprugu GES (apparently "Mamprusi" is really just the language, and the land should be called "West Mamprugu"), and when I arrived in the early hours of Monday morning this was not far off ready for review at the Tuesday Organisational Development Committee meeting in Walewale. Although the report contained recommendations that had emerged naturally from the findings of the assessment, it made sense to get the assessment document agreed, as a basis for planning the proposed prioritised changes. My role is principally OD adviser, but in this case I 'rolled my sleeves up' after arriving to help get the report ready for the Tuesday 8.30 am meeting. I brought a printer/scanner/copier out in December, and we were able to print 14 copies of a 22-page document double-sided, though this took a while overnight! We also agreed I should attend this meeting - I wouldn't normally, but this one was quite critical and of course being on hand it's easy to make those decisions.

We wanted to achieve 4 things: really congratulate everyone on finishing the assessment, get an early evaluation of the process, initiate an agreed review process for the report, and establish an understanding that some action planning needed to follow.

In the picture Janet talks to Robert about the newly displayed Mission statement.

I have to say that I think we got an excellent result from the meeting.  Ok, at this stage this is 'just talk', but it's good talk to hear at this point!. We ended up achieving the 4 objectives. I facilitated the evaluation session - unusually for me, we stayed in our seats - but I'll put here a few of the evaluation comments.

"We were more than inspired by VSO wanting to help us change our organisation"

SARA Girls' Club materials and "Ghana must go"

This isn't really Organisational Development but it's a great example of how a simple thing can become quite lengthy out here in Ghana.
On my first morning in Accra, Aaron the Teacher Support Officer in Jirapa asks if I could pick up SARA girls' club materials from the Ghana Education Service (GES) in Accra for Aaron & Cath to use in Jirapa GES.  If Jirapa wants these then I suspect they may be wanted in Walewale and Bolga as well (the other focus areas for TENI Comic Relief project, Tackling Education Needs Inclusively). Phone calls to Walewale (Charlotte) and Bolga (Christina) - yes please.  No problem I thought - we have a VSO colleague Jude who works in GES Accra, he can locate them and I'll nip over in a taxi and pick them up.....
(As an aside - Jude is one of several volunteers, namely Emily, Danielle, Lana, Jemimah, Jude and Sandra who come over this week to the Byblos hotel at different times to meet up with the 3 head-teachers Janet Michelle and Karen who are in Accra for In-Country Training before heading for Walewale, Bolga and Jirapa).
With a few phone calls we identify that the contact is called Aunty Devine. (He is the only man in the Girls' Education Unit, so the "Aunty" nickname is Ghanaian irony). Jude bikes over to the Girls' Education Unit on Thursday, and then bikes to the VSO office with 3 important bits of paper - authorisations to collect 3x15 SARA kits from the GES warehouse. In Tema. Which looks like 45 minutes drive from Accra.

Can we get a VSO driver? No, understandably they're all busy. Can we get authorisation for a taxi? Yes,  from the Education programme. OK, I have a meeting at 3pm Friday, but I finally have everything we need and we order the taxi at 11 am which should be plenty of time - the taxi is coming straight to the VSO office in Accra as soon as he has filled up with gas.

Well, 12 noon passes and 1pm passes. I am just deciding that I have to cancel this when dear Sandra from Nadowli, but in Accra at present, offers to go instead.
Here's a photo of Sandra and me, at a spot back in Nadowli last November.
The taxi turns up at 2pm (he had to queue for gas) and off they go..... We are still trying to find out by phone, Internet or any other means where the GES warehouse is in Tema, but without success.
Some time after 6pm Sandra returns in the taxi with a car and boot stuffed with 45 briefcases of materials. They had to try 3 different places in Tema, and eventually found the GES warehouse inside a paint factory.  Isseh, who has been loading up the pick-up truck that's taking the 3 head-teachers North tomorrow, has gone by now. The total load is seriously bulky. Sandra knows these materials (they're a little old, Jirapa is trying to resurrect an earlier initiative), and we decide that Nadowli should have 12 of the kits leaving 11 each for the other 3 areas - seems fair since we wouldn't have had any of them without Sandra and Sandra will make good use of them in Nadowli.

I create a space in the taxi beside many SARA briefcases and we take the taxi to where Sandra is staying, stopping to buy some "Ghana-must-go" bags (say it quickly) on the way. At Sandra's the taxi-driver demonstrates his ability to stuff a dozen cases into one 'Ghana-must-go' bag.

The rest come back with me in the hope that some can be loaded into the pick-up truck the next morning.

A few more Ghana-mus-go bags and various tips later,the taxi driver is signed off after his 5.5 hours work, and the kits are all bagged ready to see if we can at least get the Jirapa (= furthest location) kits in the truck - if we can't do this we don't know when Jirapa will get their stuff.

Up the next morning ready for a 6 am start. Unfortunately the kits just can't be fitted in. So I have 33 kits on my hands.

I go out to scrounge more containers and find a cardboard box. With one or two ripped bags we have enough now to box or bag them up to provide an 8-bag and a 3-box/bag for each location. Two 8-bags can come on the coach with me for Walewale and Bolga, and I taxi the rest to the VSO Office to await the next driver going North, photograph them, and email everyone concerned.

But it's an ill wind that blows no-one any good. Travelling up north on the Sunday 12 noon coach with a VSO volunteer Jemimah who works at Widows & Orphans' Movement in Bolga, we encounter Aminata and Beatrice from Baba Blankets (blankets made in Bolga and exported by Aminata to New Orleans) who are very interested in the SARA Girls' club materials for work they are doing with secondary school girls in Bolga, and we offer to lend a pack at the right time. Each pack contains 4 videos and 4 comic-book booklets about the adventures of girl role-model "Sara".

Photo - Jemimah, Beatrice and Aminata at OA coach terminus in Accra.

The coach arrives at Walewale around 2am, and thankfully Adam our local taxi man responds to his phone. Our back-up plan if he didn't was to leave all the bags at the fire-station overnight, since that's just by where I get off the coach. All safely arrived in Walewale.

(Update, 1st Feb - Walewale is now equipped. I took a bag on the tro-tro to Bolga. Jirapa's should get at least to Wa this week via a VSO driver going there from Bolga, and that's only an hour by tro-tro from Jirapa, so Aaron has nearly got what he asked for 2 weeks ago).

The Bolga tro in the middle of Walewale with the Bolga Ghana-mus-go bag on the roof

Re-defining the assignment

I arrived back in Accra Monday Jan 18th (see my "back to Africa" photo from the plane) and stayed overnight with Janet, Michelle and Karen, 3 head-teacher volunteers in Accra for In-Country Training . I was something of an anomaly - in theory I was a new volunteer, but in practice I'd been operating as a volunteer Sept-Nov 2009, so I could skip most of the In-Country Training. There were a few items of admin I needed to cover though.
The important thing to do was to agree objectives for the assignment - particularly since the existing document defining the assignment was one I had written myself (rather than being written by VSO which would be the normal process). So the drafted objectives were all valid things to achieve, but prioritisation and deciding which to include as my objectives needed local agreement.  "Local" involved agreement by two people. The first is Dora, the Education Programme Manager - my boss, because I had initially offered my services within Education, even though I have subsequently helped other programmes too, Governance and Secure Livelihoods. The second is Nii who is the VSO Ghana OD lead.
I spent a little time gathering information by phone about the progress of the 20 Organisation Assessments so far, since it was 6 weeks since I had been actively engaged on this work. There are now some real success stories, and also a number of instances where more work is needed to get the Organisation Assessment started.
There are 4 programme areas altogether: Education, Secure Livelihoods, Governance and Disability, but there are vacancies for two of the Programme Manager posts and VSO are recruiting.
Although I was able to meet up with Nii and update him with progress, it wasn't until 3pm Friday that I could get a meeting with Dora and Nii to go through objectives.
(There are undoubtedly cultural differences in working styles between UK and Ghana. My view is that this doesn't mean we should always push for 'our way of working', but neither should we assume that we work the local way - after all we're here to make change happen, so sometimes there may be things to learn. Not always comfortable though!)
This meeting was almost sabotaged by the "SARA Girl Club kits" saga which I'll blog separately, but luckily Sandra from Nadowli covered the SARA collection for me and left me free for this meeting. However we didn't have long before Dora was called out for something the Country Director needed to consult with her on, and we reached a rather inconclusive point that needed to be progressed by email, since I needed to head North at the weekend ...

This is the earliest post written for the "Mike Ghana" blog.
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Earlier posts have been copied over, bringing in copies of some material from the  "Charlotte in Ghana" blog.

What to pack

I put this onto a VSO  community site, but have been asked about luggage by other volunteers going to Ghana or other places in Africa, so here it is on my blog:

Extract from an email to a volunteer heading for Ghana - questions about what to take.


Some of this is Africa-specific, or specific to warm countries anyway, but posted here in case it's of interest. ..................

1) Is there anything you wish you had taken and didn't?

(1) A long list – we have a very definite measure for this because I was coming back to the UK briefly for family reasons after 2 months out in Ghana and came back to UK with a shopping list! Let me pick out a few highlights – either things we glad we brought, or added in the second trip out.

FOOD Things to spread on bread – e.g. marmite, jam, peanut butter, vacuum-packed hard cheese, or whatever is your favourite that will travel. Treats – sweets, cereal bars.(Either decide to give up cereal, or bring some out to start with – you can buy it in Accra but very expensive)

SOUPS and SAUCES

– packet mixes of the ‘just add water’ variety. Tin-openers and bottle-openers

OLD COMFORTABLE SHOES

A few weeks walking on Ghanaian roads paths and tracks seems to deteriorate shoes – I have brought well-worn UK shoes that are still comfortable and have assumed they will all be wrecked during time in Ghana.

THE GO-EVERYWHERE KIT

We try to make sure that we always have: torch, mosquito repellent, wipes/toilet-paper, hand-sanitiser, on the basis that we may be out of the house longer than we expect.

TRAVEL

I find an inflatable cushion and a small towel handy for long journeys on public transport (e.g. your first bus-ride up North). Travel-wash liquid & clothes pegs have been handy (helped to travel light on short trips away).

CHEMIST

Favourite toiletries and medications of course. We also brought out a DIY-tooth-filling kit from Boots.

AUDIO/ COMPUTING

Something to play music in the house.

ALSO - I wish I had taken an MP3 player and some audio-books as I ended up doing a number of 14-hour coach journeys to and from Accra for various reasons.

People who can get BBC World Service on short-wave radio enjoy this.

Portable hard drive to back up your computer files, and Kensington lock if you’re ever going to take your laptop out of the house (some don’t)I’m experimenting with a “laptop cooler”. I also used a spare mosquito net in order to use the laptop “under the net” in the evenings to keep the insects away.4-gang surge-protector extension-lead - many electrical sockets are quite dodgy, and I always plug my equipment just into my own extension lead, and then plug that into the wall - so that if anything gets broken trying to get it out of a tight wall socket, it's a replaceable extension-lead rather than (say) my laptop charger.

TOOLS

I was glad I brought basic bike tools, e.g. bike pump, and one or two others – hammer, hacksaw, adjustable spanner – but having said that there are plenty of people who will fix a bike problem for one or two cedis (less than a pound ). I have knocked plenty of nails (can be bought locally) into doorframes and shelves to hang things on, but late on brought out some cup-hooks which I’ve not seen in Ghana.

PHONE HANDSET (unlocked) For family calls we have been glad to have had a speaker capability on the phone

CASH & BANK CARDS

Not as easy to change cash as you might imagine, but it can be done. Most towns that have ATMs seem to have at least one ATM that works with foreign bank cards (if you have any money in a UK account, that is!). Getting Ghana bank account set up takes a while, though VSO provided us with first 3 months salary in cash.

STATIONERY

If you want pens, pads etc to do your job, it can probably all be bought locally, but you may want to bring out what you need if that makes a difference to you.

ENTERTAINMENT - BOOKS AND FILMS (DVDS)

Another reason for the laptop is to watch a film in the evening if you bring DVDs. We have been surprised that we haven’t found time for reading though. There is a small collection of various books to borrow in the VSO office in Bolga. You may want to bring pack of cards , book or crosswords or Su Dokus, or whatever you fancy.

2) Is there anything you took and didn't need? Very conscious of my luggage allowance!

(2) A common outcome, but I think we brought too many clothes. We quickly found what works well for us, wore that all the time and didn’t touch the other things so much. In my case this was cargo pants and a short-sleeved cotton casual-but-smartish shirt – in Charlotte’s it was an elasticated sundress, with a wrap for her shoulders when required, or ¾ length trousers and T-shirt. I did try the tip of “bring out a pair of trousers that fits you and have another pair made up locally”, but I’ve lost weight out in Ghana so that original made-up pair now don’t fit! We’ve found you do occasionally need to be business-smart (e.g. suit in my case) but not very often.

We brought out “solar showers” from the Outdoor shop – hang up a bag of water in the sun and after a few hours you can have a warm (or even hot) shower underneath. Finding we were in a house with showers we gave away the solar showers we had brought out, and they were popular gifts. (Though in fact I think we’d get warmer showers if we used them.). Everyone’s water situation (when it’s on, how strong the flow is etc) seems to be different, but a common factor is that the water is just a single temperature – basically cold, but can be warming up by the end of the day.
 
Hope that helps!