early doors

..So we left manchester and flew to frankfurt where it started to snow quite heavily.....hahaha unlucky! we hear the snow has now made its way over to the uk. It was sooo hot when we finally got off the plane in Accra, Neil looked a bit dodgy so took him longer to get through passport checks than me, including interrogations and phone calls...no rubber gloves though thankfully!

Got picked up at the airport by 'Sly', who turns out to be a right player! funny as though. As we were waiting for a couple of the other volunteers Sly took us to meet Martin (project organiser), 'Slim' and 'Policy' (our driver for the night), they took us to this little back alley bar about 5mins away but as the pace of life here is so different it tooks us about 20mins to 'mooch' over there. It was a dimly lit area with a few trees behind some delapidated flats. It was here they bought us a cold ghanaian beer called Star, which went down a treat. They handed us a glass of the local 'gin' which was about 60% apparently and was quite flavoursome to say the least. After this we went off to meet the other volunteers and got a lift in Policy's 'tro-tro' (small minibus/local transport) pumping out Elton john on the way to the hotel for the night. After about 30mins we arrived at this little lodge when we were taken to a room with 1 double bed but it did have a toilet and a shower which we got straight into....not together mind! thats just a bit wierd. It had a ceiling fan which was a god-send as it was a warm night( as is everynight). Next morning we woke up to meet at 8.30, but as we are now on ghanaian time it ended up being after 9. We've now got used to turning up half an hour late for everything.

We met Martin in a small room with football trophies lining the walls and photos of other volunteers. Hewent through what we'd be doing for the next month, explaninig where we would be based and a bit about how to get around and that we weren't to pass through ghana....ghana must pass through us, so we could fully experience the culture and tell everyone back home what a great place it is - almost every person we have met since arriving has been so friendly and welcoming its been fantastico!

Next was breakfast- red rice and beans with lamb stew and egg cabbage which does sound wrong but was really good. almost everything we have eaten has been spicy in some way, but it has all gone down well.

All the volunteers were then split up, Neil and I were taken to the Botchways where we met Patrick, his mum 'janet' and later on his dad and brother Seth - who is the local school headmaster. They are all super friendly and Mum janet spends all her time in the kitchen continuously cooking us 3 meals a day...healthy portions tosay the least(i'm not complaining) but apparently doesn't go down too well if you don't leave an empty plate!



about 4 pm after relaxing and chatting with jonathan( another volunteer staying at the same place) we went with him and patrick to play football with some of his mates. It was a decent sized "pitch" hard ground covered in sand and stones, grass down one side too. The goals were tiny... about 2ft by 1 1/2 ft wide, made from random bits of wood and a net. This made the game very interesting and only 1 goal was scored after about 2 hours...sometimes no-one scores so think we were quite lucky. It shows how passionate the ghanaian are about football as by the end we almost had a small crowd watching it. The rest of the night we spent chilling after experience the first of many bucket showers, which was really refreshing.



We had to be up at 5.30am for our first training session, which was tough. The first traingin session was with the senior team, they hadn't played for about 3 weeks so 'Slim' the coach just took control to assess the fitness levels and we just sat and watched to get an idea of their strenghts and weaknessess. At the end of the session we were put on the spot and asked to say a few words, which was quite intimidating as they were 20+ brick 'poop' houses.





So far so good, just heading back for another momma lunch before we go out for the juniors training session.

p.s we were originally going to publish this post on tuesday with some pictures but the pc was retarded and the internet is so slow and also had viruses left right and centre, coupled with a power cut for 2 days in the afternoon thru evening , so this is the first chance to get back on it. we promise to put some pics up and some more news over the weekend as we have some time off then..it has been fair hectic but all good. laters obruni....