Categories: uncategorized
Date: 23 October 2007 14:07:45
Congratulations to my sister who gave birth to her first baby, a 4.52kg baby boy on Sunday. As I have been away from Australia for almost a year now, I have missed everything to do with the pregnancy and the birth which makes me a bit sad but I should be back in March so I will be greeted by my little 4 month old nephew. I had bought a bottle of champagne (which turned out to be sparkling muscat) in Kumasi and had to keep it in the fridge for over a week because the stubborn little boy didn't want to come out. I opened the bottle on Sunday night and I shared it with the other volunteers after dinner to celebrate. My parents now have their first grandchild so they sound pretty proud.
In Ghana news, I joined the church choir last week. It was a fantastic experience singing in a gospel choir like that. I went to both practises, Thursday night and Saturday afternoon (which is more than I can say for some of the other choir members). Towards the end of the practise on Saturday I realised that I wasn't going to be allowed to sing on Sunday. It is apparently the policy of the church choir to allow new-comers to be in the choir for a month or two before they sing on Sunday. Silly me thought it would be like other church choirs that I have sung in where if you go to the practises and can sing the song, you can perform it on Sunday. I was a bit annoyed that this hadn't been explained to me from the beginning because I leave in 3 weeks and I had spent the money and time going to the practises. I did enjoy the singing though and I learnt a few gospel songs so I should be happy about that. This coming week is a children's service so myself and another volunteer are going to get dressed up in our traditional African dresses and take some of the older children to the service.
The water has been off for the last week or so. This has happened before but I thought it strange that it was still on at the local village so I started asking the children and they explained to me that the water bill hasn't been paid so the pipe for the orphanage had been cut. I didn't mind the 2 and a half months without electricity but no water means bucket showers and handwashing my laundry with fetched water and no flushing toilet. Not particularly nice. I do have friends in the next village though and they have a shower so I have often been going there for that.
There are now 3 Dutch volunteers and myself but I am pretty lucky that they will speak English at dinner so that I can understand.
I guess it's about 3 weeks until I leave for England. I have very mixed feelings about this. I think I will really miss Ghana.