Travelling in Style
After all the fun and festivities of yesterday, it was sad to leave behind Sunyani and Berekum; but that will be a day I'll never forget. People seemed a little calmer today, probably still quite tired from all the ruckus.
Kumasi was the same again, its vibrant atmosphere well-etched in my memory. We went to the main station and got tickets for a large bus back to Accra: another five hours confined in a small space. It wasn't that bad though; we had air-conditioning and enough space to be relatively comfortable. Next week we'll be travelling up to the Northern region, which could take as long as 12 hours...
The journey from Kumasi to Accra was a stark contrast to a short trip I just had with Kwame coming back from an internet cafe in central Accra. We use a 'tro-tro', which is one of the most popular forms of public transport in Ghana. Most of them are minibuses with varying numbers of seats - meaning different measurements of space in each. On one occasion I had to sit sideways to fit in! Each tro-tro will have a driver and a kind of 'attendant', who shouts the destination of the service out into the streets and instructs the driver to stop when somebody wants to board. This can happen anywhere, unlike at home where buses have strict routes with defined stopping points. The attendant also collects money from passengers and makes sure everyone has paid.
Before going into the internet cafe, a goldmine of a business called 'busyinternet', Kwame and I had a meeting with David Post, an American who works for the Global Youth Partnership for Africa (GYPA). This organisation creates and manages affordable volunteering opportunities for university students in the USA and David is currently on a research trip of Ghana and Sierra Leone, looking for projects to partner with. That's how he got Kwame's contact info and arranged our meeting this evening - and there could be no better man for him to find.
As Ghana National Co-ordinator of the Global Youth Action Network (GYAN), it is Kwame's task to link together all youth organisations and projects in the country. GYAN is an international umbrella organisation and has members all over the world, which are co-ordinated on national and regional levels by voluntary staff in most cases. Kwame is doing a great job and that's why I wanted to have him involved in the documentary. He has all the connections to local projects we need and has organised a great programme of visits.
So there are lots of exciting possibilities there for a productive partnership between GYPA and GYAN. It would be amazing if more volunteers could be recruited that way and I really hope our discussions will be followed up with solid action.
I think it's time for a chilled-out weekend after all the madness of the last week. Tomorrow I definitely won't be getting up at 5am, no matter what the chickens have to say about it, but next week is going to be another busy one so it's important to relax and recharge.
Everything is perfectly on schedule and budget so far and I'm hoping this will continue. We've had a few minor complications, but that was expected. Things never go flawlessly with projects like this, so you just have to be prepared. And, of course, time has just flown by and I can remember the past few days only as a speedy blur of activity. That always seems to be the case with things like this, so it is very important to maintain concentration and not let events rush past too quickly.
Kumasi was the same again, its vibrant atmosphere well-etched in my memory. We went to the main station and got tickets for a large bus back to Accra: another five hours confined in a small space. It wasn't that bad though; we had air-conditioning and enough space to be relatively comfortable. Next week we'll be travelling up to the Northern region, which could take as long as 12 hours...
The journey from Kumasi to Accra was a stark contrast to a short trip I just had with Kwame coming back from an internet cafe in central Accra. We use a 'tro-tro', which is one of the most popular forms of public transport in Ghana. Most of them are minibuses with varying numbers of seats - meaning different measurements of space in each. On one occasion I had to sit sideways to fit in! Each tro-tro will have a driver and a kind of 'attendant', who shouts the destination of the service out into the streets and instructs the driver to stop when somebody wants to board. This can happen anywhere, unlike at home where buses have strict routes with defined stopping points. The attendant also collects money from passengers and makes sure everyone has paid.
Before going into the internet cafe, a goldmine of a business called 'busyinternet', Kwame and I had a meeting with David Post, an American who works for the Global Youth Partnership for Africa (GYPA). This organisation creates and manages affordable volunteering opportunities for university students in the USA and David is currently on a research trip of Ghana and Sierra Leone, looking for projects to partner with. That's how he got Kwame's contact info and arranged our meeting this evening - and there could be no better man for him to find.
As Ghana National Co-ordinator of the Global Youth Action Network (GYAN), it is Kwame's task to link together all youth organisations and projects in the country. GYAN is an international umbrella organisation and has members all over the world, which are co-ordinated on national and regional levels by voluntary staff in most cases. Kwame is doing a great job and that's why I wanted to have him involved in the documentary. He has all the connections to local projects we need and has organised a great programme of visits.
So there are lots of exciting possibilities there for a productive partnership between GYPA and GYAN. It would be amazing if more volunteers could be recruited that way and I really hope our discussions will be followed up with solid action.
I think it's time for a chilled-out weekend after all the madness of the last week. Tomorrow I definitely won't be getting up at 5am, no matter what the chickens have to say about it, but next week is going to be another busy one so it's important to relax and recharge.
Everything is perfectly on schedule and budget so far and I'm hoping this will continue. We've had a few minor complications, but that was expected. Things never go flawlessly with projects like this, so you just have to be prepared. And, of course, time has just flown by and I can remember the past few days only as a speedy blur of activity. That always seems to be the case with things like this, so it is very important to maintain concentration and not let events rush past too quickly.
posted by Frederick at 02:30
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