Ottery woman Rosie Tomlins is heading into unchartered territory - to become the first volunteer for a new UK charity working in Ghana.
It is hot today. There is no breeze and the air is hot and heavy outside. This sort of heat is exhausting, it makes you feel tired and floppy. The puppies are lolling outside on the porch panting. The monitor lizard is asleep and the snake is under a large rock in his vivarium. It’s peaceful and still. I’m listening to Snow Patrol and beginning to plan fundraising events and volunteer programmes.
I am beginning to wake up earlier and earlier. At daybreak all the birds sing and the frogs croak and the bats in the roof shuffle around. It’s noisy and active and relatively cool outside. Last week we woke before daybreak and fuelled up Kilo-Tango for a three hour photography mission. Jonathon took off at first light, and we followed the silhouette of the aircraft until it disappeared round Krobo mountain.
On Friday last week we had a fire on the farm. Farming in Africa can sometimes involve burning sections of land to clear it of all the dead plants and dry grass. Before the fire is started Matthew took some safety precautions of burning a border around the perimeter with a flame thrower and putting down a water line to prevent the fire from spreading. I was given a Neem branch to act as a fire beater and watched the borders to make sure the fire didn’t jump.
Bush fires in Africa are scary in the dry season. They can get out of control in just a few seconds. As I was watching the wind suddenly picked up and flung huge ribbons of flames high into the air. The fire jumped across the boundary and began to burn part of the rest of the farm. Ash was blowing everywhere and the heat was so intense it is impossible to get too close to it. Everyone was busy carrying water and beating the line with the Neem. We managed to control it just before the donkey paddock luckily! We were all black with soot, shoes were black my face was black, and I was soaking from the sweat, Matthew even had his eyebrows singed!
At the weekend I went to stay with at a passion fruit farm belonging to someone called Michael, who has just had a baby daughter with his wife Valerie. Afia (Friday born girl) is absolutely gorgeous and was completely unperturbed by spending all evening with a" yevu" (white person.) Michael’s house is beautiful and is situated right next to the river Volta. It is completely circular and all the rooms are shaped like segments of cheese, with a circular lounge in the middle. We had a BBQ and enjoyed grilled tilapia, yam chips and some palm wine. Bougainvillea bushes surround the garden and a hammock is strung between two trees on the bank.
On the Sunday Michael took Abreena (Tuesday born girl – Michael’s cousin) and I across the Volta to an island where people live in house made from mud and broken shells. There were a group of women sitting in the shade making banku (pounded cassava) who seemed very pleased to have a yevu visitor. They spoke to me in Eve and I replied in English and a few of the boys hitched a ride on the boat to get to the other side of the river. When I got back to the farm I helped Matthew to make a new vivarium for his monitor lizard (to replace the Tupperware boxes) out of several panes of glass from his windows.
Another Monday, another trip into Accra, this time to collect Jay and Teresa, the two Americans on a scouting trip to bring out a team of doctors from Iowa. Before arriving at the airport, I had to buy several mice to feed the snake and they had begun to chew their way out of the box I was holding, so I looked pretty strange waiting in arrivals! They arrived safely and we all piled in the car. As it was St. Patrick’s Day, Matt and I decided to celebrate by having an Irish coffee. I bought a quarter of a litre of Whiskey for the equivalent of 35p (!) a miniature Baileys and a Guinness. Despite the obvious question of quality it turned out to be quite good, or it might be because of the copious amounts of sugar we added!
Our scouting trip took place over two days. It is about a 3-4 hour drive north to visit the hospitals, my favourite being Dodipapase Hospital which has goats in the corridors and bougainvillea weaving through the wall. We took several cases of donated equipment with us and it was exciting to see it being out somewhere where it could be useful. At the clinic we visited, Mabel one of the Health Aids, took quite a shine to me for some reason and we spent most of the afternoon hand in hand (!) which is actually considered normal, it is quite common to see grown men hand in hand who are just expressing friendship!
We stayed in a hotel in HoHoe and ate in a "spot" (local name for a bar) which was situated by the petrol station and was decorated with strung fairy lights. It had begun to rain and the air smelt freshly musty. The next day the land was green; all the dust had been washed off the leaves. Breakfast was this porridge soup called Koko which tasted just like thick vinegar (it was disgusting!) and wobbled like jelly even though it was hot.
We dragged the sofa outside and sat with some mosquito candles burning and the CD player plugged into the inverter in the car in bright moonlight. It was a clear clear night and absolutely beautiful. Matthew and I finished off the Baileys and we sat up until the cockerels started crowing just before dawn.
On one of my days off Matthew and I cycled about 20km to Osuduko mountain which is a tall hill with a pylon at the top. It took us two hours to climb and when we reached the summit we could see across the flatlands and watched a massive mushroom cloud storm move across the ground. The storm stopped operations at the airfield and they had to tie the planes down to prevent them being blown away. From where we were sitting That evening we had kenki for dinner which is an interesting local food made from fermented corn flour. It is sold wrapped in maize leaves and served with this horrendously spicy sauce which made my eyes water!
On Jay and Teresa’s last day we woke up before dawn and travelled to the edge of the Volta to watch the sunrise above Akuse. Early morning and late afternoon are my favourite times of day because the air is cooler. Watching the sunrise was amazing because the whole sky became red and orange. The fishermen were setting out for the days fishing in beautiful wooden canoes. (Although I learnt recently that not many fishermen can swim!)
Teresa then went on a two hour photo mission by Ultralight to take photos of communities in the Afram Plains, which is a rural region on the other side of the lake. On the political map of Ghana, the roads to get to these places and recorded as “paths and tracks” which are reported as impassable by vehicles in the rainy season. So getting medical help in some of these places is nearly impossible, looking at the pictures made me realise how important this charity is and what a difference it will make to the lives of these people. I’ve started to make my map, scanning in a huge map of the political districts in Ghana and cutting them down to the sub districts and using the data I got from the ministry to record how many hospitals there are in each area. It’s actually quite scary, in a region which is roughly the size of Devon and Cornwall together there are no hospitals at all. My next job is to go to the offices where information from the census is kept to obtain data about population in each region and the proportion of people who are in each age group. It’s a big job but it’s actually quite interesting, especially as next week I will be combining the research for the map with visiting a hospital to observe in the maternity and surgical wards.