Journeying to the east

Sorry to sound unsympathetic to those of you shivering away in the chilly climes of the UK but it’s still getting hotter here in Cape Coast. In fact, a quick blast of cold UK air every now and then would be very welcome ! We are generally coping with the heat and humidity and are used to feeling hot and sticky most of the time.

We recently spent a few days travelling in the Eastern Region and Volta Region of Ghana. We stayed a couple of nights at Atimpoku at a beautiful location by the river Volta. It was really peaceful and there was a great view of the river and the Volta bridge.

We were very fortunate with the accommodation (we hadn’t been able to book in advance) as this particular place had just one room left (all the chalets were occupied). It was a bizarre room behind the reception, basically a bed in an office / study and we shared the staff shower and toilet outside (which was quite quirky!).

From Atimpoku we visited Akosombo – home of the Akosombo dam, a hydro-electric dam which produces electricity for most of Ghana and parts of neighbouring Togo and Benin. Apparently it generates 1020 Mega Watts of electricity, which we understand to be quite few light bulbs worth! It was a very interesting visit and brought memories of GCSE Geography lessons back to life.

We then travelled further north to the town of Hohoe, whose points of interest included a vulture colony (although disappointingly they weren’t singing ‘We’re your friends’ like in the Jungle Book !) and visited Wli (pronounced ‘Vlee’) falls. The scenery in the Volta region is much greener and much more hilly than the coastal area around Cape Coast – it was both interesting and refreshing to see a different ‘side’ of Ghana.

Update from Steve

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit a project in the Keea district where a charity called the Sabre Trust www.sabretrust.org are building a new Kindergarten school. The trust has partnered up with Davis Langdon, Arup, A-Kon (Ghana based quantity surveyors) and Atelier (Ghana based Architects) for this project. It is basically a prototype Kindergarten classroom which is designed and built using sustainable principles and resources wherever possible.

I also had the opportunity to take part in a ‘Staff vs students’ football match at Cape Tech (the teachers are playing in the yellow shirts). I lasted for about 20 minutes before being substituted. The younger forwards left me standing on a couple of occasions (I blame the heat!!! Or was it just that they were about half my age ?).

We have now (eventually) started teaching the new first year students and I am getting to put to use some of the

resources I developed over the summer and the early part of term. It is still

quite frustrating though as lessons are often abandoned at little or no notice (or so it seems – or it may be just a communication error) for other school activities like try outs for the athletics team, i

nter-house quizzes and ‘entertainment’.

On Fridays the building construction students continue to work on the Mothers Union counselling centre site. After the students’ hard work the ‘Mothers’ provide food such as Kenkey (ground maize soaked in water and made into a dough) and fried fish for them at the end of the day which the teachers distribute between themselves and the students.

Update from Vicky

I have now finished my lectures at UCC and the students are on study leave preparing for their end of semester exams. They say that they enjoyed the lectures, especially the practicals, despite the fact that the resources (e.g. bars for bar reading and dot cards for C.I.) were ‘home made’. Most things I had made out of ginger biscuit boxes, of which Steve and I had accumulated an alarming number !

Steve masterfully engineered a couple of mounts onto which we stuck loose prisms to create two prism bars (of sorts).

There have recently been some interesting cases at the eye-centre, including this 10 year old boy who had never had an eye examination before. He was found to be extremely long-sighted (+14DS) and visually impaired (even when wearing spectacles). He is one of a number of patients to have benefited from some magnifiers donated by Burrows Opticians. The others have included a 22 year old student with oculo-cutaneous albinism who was still in ‘basic’ (junior) school, having great difficulty with his schoolwork due to his visual impairment, and a nurse in his late thirties with end-stage glaucoma who was unable to read labels on prescriptions and medicines etc.

There's not much sign of Christmas here yet, although we imagine it's a different story where you are! It will be interesting to see how things change over the next few weeks.

Yes, we are still here !

Update from Steve

Well we are now 7 weeks (half way) into the first term of this academic year, yet there are still no lessons under way for the new intake of first year students. This is for a number of reasons, but seems (to me anyway) to be a real waste of valuable teaching time.

I used this as an opportunity to take a very informal Geography lesson, using the inflatable globe that we brought with us. I was at least able to explain that the United Kingdom and United States were not next door to each other which is what some students seemed to think ! We also did a ‘tour’ of the UK based on the location of premier league football stadiums. I think every Ghanaian has heard of Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford and some had even heard of Derby County (but not Pride Park!).

Last week the school hosted the APTI (Association of Principles of Technical Institutes) conference. The conference started with a very grand opening ceremony involving the school’s cadet core and regimental band parading and a performance by the cultural dance group.

For the last few weeks the 3rd year Building Construction students have been taking part in practical work at the Mothers Union site, a short bus ride from the school. The students really seem to enjoy the experience, although I’m not sure if this is just because of the bottle of pop and food they are given at the end of the day.

Hopefully by the next update teaching will be underway for the new first year students!


Update from Vicky

There has been quite a change in the eye centre as Dr Asante (the Ghanaian Ophthalmologist who has been visiting to carry out surgery each month) has become a full time member of staff here. It is excellent news for the eye centre, as the work load was too much for the existing resident ophthalmologist (who doesn’t do surgery) and the one Ophthalmic nurse. Dr Asante is full of ideas and enthusiasm and can hopefully help the eye centre with many of the difficulties it is facing.

Last week there was a special project at the eye centre, examining 130 school children from 23 different schools in Cape Coast. They had all been identified by their teachers as having a vision or eye related problem of some sort. I was involved in organising the project along with Gloria, who is a VSO volunteer working in Cape Coast with the Special Education Department of the Metropolitan Assembly (equivalent of our local council).
We involved some Optometry students from the local university in the project to help out, and who hopefully benefited from the experience and the opportunity to see some interesting cases.
It was a very hectic two days, particularly as the project ran alongside the normal clinic at the eye-centre, so trying to keep the two ‘processes’ separate was not easy and was somewhat chaotic at times !
The project posed various challenges and problems. Trying to source low cost lenses and frames was one such challenge for me. ‘Wheeling and dealing’ isn’t my forte at the best of times, yet alone when there are additional complications of language difficulties, cultural differences and the apparent perception that NGO funded projects carry unlimited funding !
However the project seems to have been worthwhile as we dispensed 26 pairs of spectacles and issued eye medication to 32 children (allergic / vernal conjunctivitis is particularly common in this area). Some of the children’s problems were pretty extreme ; we dispensed a couple of pairs of glasses for very high short-sightnedness (one was -15.00 DS with a -2.50 cyl !) and a number of pairs for high levels of long- sightedness.
It feels like the project was dealing with the ‘tip of the iceberg’, as the problem of lack of accessible eye care here is of serious concern.

General update
A few weeks ago we were invited to spend the weekend at the home of Benjamin, one of the teachers at Cape Tech. He lives in a small village called Asebu about 10-12km away from Cape Coast. We were really privileged to experience life in a Ghanaian family home and were made to feel very welcome. In Ghana the family unit includes the extended family and tends to be very large. Benjamin (in the stripey T shirt) lives with his wife and children, in a ‘complex’ with some of his siblings and many of their children too. Family relationships can be a little complicated as some men have children with more than one wife. Benjamin for example is one of ten boys and ten girls that his father had with two wives. It is Ghanaian culture to consider cousins as brothers or sisters and nieces and nephews as sons and daughters. For additional confusion Ghanaian can also refer to close friends as brothers and sisters so all in all it can be (and was!) very confusing.




On the Sunday we went to church with Benjamin and his brother. They attend the local Methodist Church in Asebu. We were invited to do a reading and we surprised the congregation by introducing and concluding it in Fante. Need less to say we read the actual bible passage in English. !







For Vicky’s birthday we spent an evening at the Cape Coast cinema. It is an interesting cinema because the auditorium is outdoors and the film was projected from a laptop computer and projector, relatively hi-tech AV equipment (on the white table on the picture) onto a huge white sheet. We covered ourselves in copious amounts of insect repellent and settled into the wooden pews ready for the ‘show’ to begin! Unfortunately, for the first hour this AV experience was either Audio or Visual but not the two together. We didn’t know what film was going to be shown and we couldn’t tell whether the film had started or if we were watching the trailers ! In the end the main feature was something like a Bollywood version of a Rocky film – perhaps not what Vicky would have chosen for a birthday treat but another interesting experience all the same.

To add to our recent cultural experiences we went to see a play at the local university. The actors were all lecturers from the department of theatre studies and put on a really good performance. As we were leaving at around 9:30pm we could see that some classes were still having lectures even at that time of night. We’ve also learnt that some lectures start at 7am or earlier. Not sure how many students in the UK would make it to a lecture at that time ….?

We have got a busy few weeks ahead but we are also hoping to have a few days away. It has been FAR too long since we’ve visited a coastal fort !

We hope that life in the UK is treating you all well.