ANZAC Day

Left the hotel at 7.30am to attend the ANZAC Day service the High Commissioner has on, followed by brunch at the High Commissioner's residence. The three Australians from our group all went, Gerrard, Pipa, and I. The service was very nice, with a special visit from the Turkish ambassador in Ghana.

The brunch was spectacular, the best breakfast we have had since being here. Real bacon, beef and pork sausages, scrambled eggs, omlettes, baked beans, toast, and pancakes! Fresh watermelon or orange juice, lemon cake and of course, ANZAC biscuits in the shape of Australia. It was so good!

We met the French Ambassador who is looking forward to retiring soon and renovating a ruin he has purchased back in France. He was very interested in the IBM CSC program and whether it was also available in France, which of course it is. He thought this was a wonderful program that not only helped a developing nation, but would be very helpful in our careers as well.

We also met lady who started her work in Ghana 31 years ago as part of a Christian organization providing aid. Ghana today is nothing like what she landed in back then, and hearing her stories made me think how grateful I was that things had developed so far, and yet there is still so much more to be done. I also confirmed a number of risks and opportunities for our project through this conversation, so more data and references, yippee!

Back on the real work, more logging risks, will this never end? Looks like we will go into tomorrow as well, as long as we can start mitigation next week, we'll be alright. The room we had today only had an upright fan, no AC, so it was hot, hot, hot. Thankfully a storm came over and cooled things down for a few hours, it was another torrential downpour for an hour that then just stopped. Ghanaians are saying the weather is strange this year, it's usually not this hot, as it's usually raining all day, every day. It's been sunny nearly every day so far. At least with little rain, it keeps the mozzies at bay for a bit longer.

We made a visit to the Food and Drug Board today to keep gathering data for our risk plan, some great ideas came out of this.




To end the day, the seamstress/tailor came to the hotel to take our measurements and collect our fabric. I'm getting a tight little mini skirt that screams "tart", and a crop top so my mid riff can be all it can be, and free :). The seamstress thought a Ghanian shirt would probably make a bigger impression, and a dress for Natasha.

- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight.

Location:Eight Rd,Accra,Ghana

Volta Region Day Trip

Up and out early today, cars leave at 6am for our drive up to the Volta region, north of where we are in Accra. It took just over 3 hours to get there, but well worth the experience. On the way up to Volta we saw Baboons by the side of the road, rummaging and playing, unfortunately it happened so unexpectedly I didn't get a photo, but wow, real, wild Baboons.

Arriving at our destination we made a number of trips out to health facilities, but the stand out will be the Comunity-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) which we travelled for a number of kms off made roads and into the wilderness into what felt like a remote village with a single health clinic that provides service for villages miles around. These villages are mud and grass hut villages, the real deal. If someone is really ill and can't walk to the clinic, they have a motorbike they use to deliver supplies, and if it's more serious, they strap the patient to the rider of the bike, and motorbike them to the clinic. Forget ambulances, they couldn't get out here anyway! They have one small fridge out here to house certain medications, i.e. vaccines, powered by a gas cylinder. Outside that, no electricity and water comes from a manual hand pump. We were served water in little plastic pillows, which is filtered, easier to transport and less waste out here - no bottled water here folks. Mobile coverage is available, but has a habit of dropping out from 1 week to a month at a time. In those situations, when supplies need to be ordered they jump on the motorbike to take written orders into the district centre. You can see pics of all this on the "More Pics" Blog entry. I can't get the iPhone and iPad to sync photos on the blog app reliably, so I'm just uploading them separately. It's better than nothing though. The trip to the CHPS centre was a humbling experience.

I didn't know we were going out here or I would have brought lots of chuppa-chumps, as it is I handed the two I had over the the head nurse to do with what she pleased.

From here we headed back to the district health centre which you can see here:

The district Health centre in the Volta region



We managed to grab lunch at 4pm, so it became dinner as well, and was worth the wait for the views over the Volta region at the Sky Plus hotel and resort. Sky Plus sits on top of one of the taller hills where we were, hence the views and welcome breeze. See the 'More Pics' blog entry for a pic.

By 5.30pm we had finished our rounds, and it was time to start the journey home, once dusk settled and night came on, things got rather exciting, in part because there are no street or road lights out here, not even reflectors on the road. So when I say dark, I mean invisible! Excitement covered everything from the normal avoiding goats and chickens, to people just appearing in the middle of the road, walking home, or a broken down truck blocking our lane and requiring heavy breaking and swerving from us. But, the most exciting was the games of chicken! Maybe it's because they drive on the RHS of the road here, or that they drive in the middle of the road often to avoid pot holes, but I still have fingernails in the dash from watching a set of headlights coming straight at us, to only veer to the side in the last minute before contact. And believe me, we were hurtling down the road. Thank goodness one of our team members, Adaeze, made plenty of light conversation which was a welcome distraction from the high speed assault on the highway.

There are surprisingly few accidents on Ghanaian roads, and they are very tolerant drivers. The beeping of horns is used as a form of hello more often than a warning, and rarely (if ever) out of frustration. In fact, since being here I havn't seen anyone argue - maybe it's the heat, it's too hot to argue :)

We made it home by 9pm, phew, what a day! No one can complain we are not busy :)

- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight.

Location:Volta Region, Ghana

More pics

A remote Village we visited, I should have brought more lollipops!





A remote Christian Health Services Clinic:


Water in a bag:


Mango tree, full of ripe fruit:



Lunch with a view:


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Volta region, Ghana

Meeting with the Australian High Commissioner

We started at 8am this morning, back to logging risks and marking probability, we will consequences/impact as a separate exercise for this as each needs to be carefully considered on it's own. We passed by the presidential palace today, so I gabbed a photo shot to show you, it's not open to the public, so this is as close as we get.





At 10.30am, I left the group to visit the Australian High Commission in Ghana, and to meet The Australian Ambassador, Mr Billy Williams. I've never done this before, so didn't know what to expect. At the entrance I had to hand over my mobile, computer, camera - they took everything! Except a small IBM gift, a leather folder for Mr. Williams, but even that was checked before I was scanned and then let through two security gates to reception. I was asked a further three times, I think, whether I had a mobile phone on my person, before I was introduced to Mr. Williams and invited into his office. The Australian High Commission in Accra is a well kept and modern building, not palatial, but like all the consulates back home, a big step beyond what the locals have.

Mr. Williams is a perfect gentleman, who tries to meet any Australian who wants to visit him. We had a discussion about the IBM CSC program, Australian business interest in Ghana, and Ghana's interest in Australia, mining and mining software are of main interest right now, but tourism is a big opportunity about to take off. Ghana's stable politics and relative safety for tourists, and it's people's deep seated values in peace and harmony are what help give Ghana it's title as the "Gateway to Africa". Mr. Williams actually represents Australia and flies between 9 African nations, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. I was lucky to be able to meet him! Mr. Williams had volunteered for this posting as he has an interest in developing nations, and is coming to the end of his current assignment now. Since being here however, Mr. Williams has setup a number of programs to help the Ghana economy and education. My 1 hour meeting flew by in a minute, just as I was getting used to be being called "Mr. Bonney", so I thanked Mr. Williams, and registered for the ANZAC Day ceremony to be held on Wednesday morning.

Wow!

The rest of the day was slogging it out with our risk log from the 7th layer of the abyss to hell, adding a probability/likelihood assessment, and planning our time for the week between interviews and content creation. Creating risk logs of this magnitude are not something you hurl yourself out of bed for, but done right, we are looking forward to watching how changes play out over the next 5 and 10 years in Ghana, as we are influencing that right now.

Ghanian's love proverbs, they have them everywhere, but today I saw one I'm bringing home with me - "Treat your guest as a guest for 2 days, but on the third day hand them a hoe". Well, look out any house guests at my place when I get back :). My wife would like another one they have, so best to leave this one here "It is the man's duty to make his wife beautiful". I have to pay how much???

We ended the day buying some material to get shirts made, since no one here is super-sized like me, I have to get one tailor made. So I bought a tent :). I bought 6 yards of Ghanian cloth with a wax pattern - should be enough to make a shirt and a dress for Natasha. They only sold it in 6 yard lots.

Tomorrow we start leave at 6am to travel out to the regions, this will hurt! Hence I'm hitting the bed early.

- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight.

Location:Eight Rd,Accra,Ghana

Some pics

Natasha at the airport - security checked :)


Breakfast area at the beach resort we stayed at over the weekend



A typical shopping opportunity in Ghana


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sunday week 1

Wow, a week already! I'm looking forward to next week actually, the first week was spent planning and starting the baseline, I'm hoping this week is when we explode the quality content.

Breakfast is at 8.30 today, leaving at 9am so we got a sleep in, yay! In Ghana-Time of course, breakfast came about 9.30am, which was fine by us, taking advantage of our last opportunity to sit by the beach.

Another of our group had a birthday today, Amy from the US, Happy Birthday, Amy! Amy kindly gave everyone a New York Yankees original merchandise cap. That's 2 continents now that give presents on their own birthdays! The caps were magnificently well timed to keep shaded in the sun for our tree walk adventure.

Next stop was the treetop walk at Kakuma national park. Walking up to the treetop walk through tropical rainforest, I was already sweating heavily, but when I stepped out onto the 200mm wide plank of timbers that were held up by rope and wire, the heart started beating very fast and pumping adrenaline like nobodies business. They assured us it has been rated to take 8,000 kilos, but as it bounced and swung above what felt like a perilous drop below, that 8k kgs was cold comfort. They don't get too many people my size on it after all. In fact I had sweated so much, my day backpack was soaked through, causing the camera to get moisture in it, and it stopped working too! Hopefully just temporary. It was great fun, and I've got hopefully some great photos I will try to upload to the blog if the camera comes back to life.

I also can't reply to comments on the blog, for some reason it accepts my reply and then just doesn't do anything, but be assured I read them all.

We had lunch in the forest, and feeling the after affects of the adrenaline surge, I opted for what I thought would be a safe option - Lasagne. Well, you can see in the picture below what came out, which they assured me was lasagne, but the one bite I had of it - It was more like a pastie. I couldn't bring myself to eat it however, the visual assault of what it looked like to me was just too real, and too adventurous from the safe dish I was looking for. So Ghana Lasagne:




Meals aside, the Ghana people must wonder how we get any shopping done by having to inefficiently visit shops all the time. Like mentioned in an earlier blog, almost everything can be bought in traffic in Ghana, need bread on the way home, no problem, need a freshly killed Grasscutter (bush rat), that's no problem either. A Grasscutter is a bit bigger than a small dog, and apparently they taste a bit like goat. I havn't been presented with an opportunity to try yet, and I wasn't going to cook my own.

Back to the reality of work tomorrow, roll on week 2!


- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight.

Location:Liver Pool Rd,Elmina,Ghana

Part-Time Adventurers

Wow the sites and sounds today! Grass huts, smoked fish, castles, and the Atlantic sea. Where to begin!

Well aside from finally making contact with my wife (someone please show her how a mobile phone works, and how to answer it), it was great to talk to both her and my daughter who by the way is very busy and can't talk right now. It gave me a boost to kickoff this great weekend with.

We took about 3 hours to reach the Cape Coast, but I wasn't in a rush, there is something about being able to look out the window and let you mind unwind which is rejuvenating and peaceful. Coming this far from the capital, we we're fascinated watching homes transform and introduce a mix of grass huts and mud and grass huts, as well as the wood and tin roofed homes found on the outskirts of Accra, and some new concrete homes going up right in the middle of all this. We can see the transformation Accra is going through, happening right before our eyes.

The castles are the old slave forts, and the tours were fascinating, but a little depressing at the same time. The conditions the slaves were kept in we're worse than animals. I was surprised to learn that slaves were often sold to the Europeans by tribes that had just conquered another, and were looking for an easy way to get rid of left over enemies, and in the exchange, gain guns and alcohol. The whole world had gone mad at the time. I was once again conned at the drawbridge to the first castle, where a local boy asked me my name and where I was from, I didn't think much of it, but when we had finished at the castle, there he was waiting for me with a shell which he had written "To my dearest friend Dwight Bonney from John" and was asking for a donation for his school. I gave him $10 Cedi which is fair bit for them and certainly for a shell that Customs will probably confiscate on my return. So at the next stop, I kept my mouth shut. My mother always told me every time I open my mouth I get into trouble....

Then it was back to the hotel we are staying at for the night, and it is beautiful! This is where tourists come! Pool, right beside the Atlantic Ocean, dinner overlooking the ocean, listening the waves crash. Sipping coconut milk from a real coconut. We launched ourselves into the Atlantic, the water was warm, but oh so refreshing after a hot day. Rough seas threw a giant wave at us every so often that knocked everyone for six, it's exhausting work playing in sea like that, so we retired to the hotel pool which overlooks the ocean for a swim before dinner which would take 1.5 hours to be ready.

Dinner at the hotel is an alfresco affair, undercover and overlooking the ocean. With very little lighting around you couldn't see much of the sea at night of course, but you certainly hear the crashing of waves, unfortunately no sea breeze, it was a still night. So exhausted, I'm hitting the hay again as tomorrow we are off to do the tree top canopy walk and then back to Accra and risk management!


- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight.

Location:Cape Coast - Sekondi Rd,Sekondi-Takoradi,Ghana