Week 1

Days 1,2,3

I landed in Accra on Thursday May 20th where 2 of my friends who had arrived a few days before, picked me up. We stayed in Accra until Saturday afternoon as another one of our friends from the US was arriving Saturday morning, and after picking her up, we began our 4 hour journey back to Hohoe on a “trotro”. A trotro is a really old busted minivan that has twelve seats but will fill up at least 20 before it decides it has enough passengers to leave. As you can imagine, it was a pretty unique experience.

The first three days in Hohoe were spent mainly walking around town, trying to re-familiarize myself with the village and the people. We were accosted by waves of people at a time, many who remembered us and wanted to talk to us, greet us, or hug us, and some who just wished to befriend the “yevus” (white people) that everyone seemed keen to talk to.

The hotel we are staying at is the only proper hotel in town (a 1 star hotel to be more specific) but it is pretty decent. I am sharing a room with two of my very good American friends from my previous trip to Ghana, and there are currently six other previous Hohoe volunteers occupying the rest of the rooms. Most have returned because they missed their kids and wanted to come back and teach, and there is one other person also working on a project at one of the orphanages. We are all pretty busy during the day but always meet up at around 5pm for dinner, and just hang out after as there is nothing to do after 6pm, which is when it gets dark.

I stopped by Divine Star Monday morning to see the children, as they were the only thing I could think about all night and as I walked in, all the children started screaming “Madame Lana, we miss you!” and hugging me. Knowing that after 7months, all of the kids at the school still remembered me was one of the greatest feelings anyone could have. However, to my surprise, only 10 of the 45 students in my old classroom were present, and I was horrified to learn that most of the children at the school had been sent home until they could pay their $8 a semester school fees.

Tuesday was a national holiday (African Union Day) and it rained all day on Wednesday (the roads get really muddy when it rains and it is really hard to go anywhere) , therefore I was not able to go to school and see my kids.

My afternoons were spent at Eugemot orphanage, where we had a big bonfire on Monday night and introduced the concept of roasting marshmallows to the children who were so excited to try an “American dessert”. Most of the children did not eat more than two as they all started complaining about how American candy was too sweet and it would give them a stomach ache.

The orphans are still the same bubbly children they were back in September, but many of them have lost weight. There are two new orphans aged 11 and 13, and two of the babies can now walk so they are always running around.

I was shocked to find out that their water situation has worsened as the children now have to walk about two minutes to get to the river where they take their daily bath.