‘Happy new day!’

Our first four days in Ghana took us through VSO ICT (in country training) at the Sunset Lodge, Accra. Ibrahim the country director always greeted us with a ‘happy new day’ because he felt we should be celebrating every day not just a happy birth day, a happy Easter or a happy Christmas and so on. To be honest training should have been over 5 days, but we arrived on Monday and they had rearranged the schedule.  A shame, it meant for 3 days we were pretty much stuck in a hotel in an air con room with dodgy lighting from 9-5.  We could have been anywhere.  The trip around Accra etc had been dropped from the schedule.  Getting out were evening trips and we were so tired we really didn’t want to be out for long.  We took one trip on the tro tro (local bus) to a vols (volunteers) house for a drink and a look see and we went out for a drink at a Spot (bar) on Oxford Street another night so experienced the taxi.  The other night Samina and I decided to watch a movie and have an early night as we were so tired so we missed the cultural night (I’m here for a year and figure I’ll catch up). There were three planned language sessions during the day.  Great but so much to take in so quickly and, as you know, language is not a strength of mine, not even my own.  Still, it was, for the most part, useful stuff and the real bonus was getting to meet the new vols who would be placed all over the country.  The VSO regional reps were great and we all began to think about the next few days would entail….