Monday November 2, 2009


This past weekend, the new volunteers went to Cape Coast. We visited the Cape Coast Castle and the Elmina Castle. These were between 350-500 years old. They were slave and trading ports run by the Portuguese and Dutch, and eventually the English had taken over. We also went on a canopy walk. There are five canopy walks in the world, but this one was the highest of them all! The other group on our tour were volunteers with an organization called Global Volunteers from Austria and Wales. They were really nice and made the canopy walk even more interesting. Our van ride took 9 hours there and 9 hours back, but that was with the stop at the mall in Accra. The mall is ridiculously nice, but we were there to get things like peanut butter, drinks, candy, etc. Food that is not available here.

Today at the school, I taught more math. If I ever ask them what they want to learn, they scream math, so I might as well get them ahead while they are excited about it! I also took their picture today because I want to get them printed (which I can do here), and I want them to make paper picture frames and put their picture inside of it. This wasn’t my idea, but it sure is a good one! I also let them color and draw anything they wanted because they never get to do any type of creative art. It was neat to see how detailed some of their drawings and colorings were, and others kept it simple.

After lunch, we went to a shop and made batik. We were given a piece of cloth, and they heated up wax. We then got to pick a design, dip it in the wax, and put it on the fabric. They did the rest, and it was a very long process. It is amazing how cheap you can get this fabric for all the time that is put into making it! We also went to market again today. It wasn’t near as crowded and chaotic as last week, but it was still a challenge to get around. We also had a speaker come after dinner, and he talked about child labor. He is part of an organization called PLAN Ghana. He said there is a PLAN USA, Asia, Latin American, etc. He spoke very well and addressed all of our concerns, but it is too complicated to implement any kind of system in a developing country.

The phones here have been down for the last 6 days because of a storm last week. This also means that the internet has been down, so I have been writing my blogs, but I will have to post them all at one time, sorry! O, today was my first time to ever ride in a taxi! A little ridiculous, I know…