(Some context for this week.
This post was heavily redacted by international service, I was not allowed to discuss the excitingly lax health and safety of the buses or even mention Nikita’s trip to the hospital, see if you can spot the subtle reference I slipped in.
I also had a theme of rolling stones songs running through this blog but titles such as “sympathy for the devil” were considered inflammatory in the hyper-religious country.)
Week four marks the centre point of our project, the turning point for our mission as we transition from fresh faced beginners still learning the ropes to hard eyed veterans, minds set on the final objectives.
But let us start at the beginning, with an apology. I have been claiming to begin at the beginning every week so far, then I have opened with the activities of Monday morning. This has led to a number of complaints that Sunday is the first day of the week, so let us begin on Sunday morning, 9 o’clock. This is when the Tamale goalball training was due to start. The volunteer team set up the goalball court while the warm up was led by a handsome and rather dashing young goalballer by the name of Richard Wheatley, [great guy, really great guy].
After a quick review of the rules we tried out a few training drills, encouraging players to take a run-up when they shoot. We then went straight into a game between two teams of local players with team leader Chris dropping a bombshell at the start of the game… the winner will take on a team of REACT volunteers. This was news to most of the REACT volunteers.
Team leader Chris dropped a second bombshell at half time in the first game, making a substitution and sending the only experienced goalball playing volunteer on court to rally the team who were six nil down. This meant I would not be playing for REACT in the second game. Although a revival was definitely on the cards the final result was eight five putting the dashing young goalballer out of the tournament. The first ever performance of the Tamale REACT goalball team was a short five minute game that would sadly end in a five two defeat for the volunteers in spite of a brave showing by Helene [pronounced LN], some scorching shots from Mahe and a staunch defence by my friend who shall remain nameless, [apparently she is the only UK volunteer not mentioned in a blog yet, which is strange…very strange… I should definitely mention her at some point].
On Monday we had a VIP in the office, Lindsay is one of the people who conceived the notion of REACT and works for VSO who run ICS who subcontract International service and VSO. With this in mind we spent the morning working hard to finish a number of ongoing projects and prepare some cool stuff to show off. Cool stuff included the last of the shades we needed, an accessible game called zoom ball and my personal prototype sports box for the gentlemen with a tight budget made from a crushed coke bottle.
Zoom ball was a particular success, made by threading two strings through a contraption made from two bottles cut and stuck end to end. The ends of the string are then tied to more plastic bottle handles. Players hold their handles together and then one will pull their hands apart suddenly, forcing the contraption [zoomball] to zoom noisily the eight metres to the other player who can then send it back.
Tuesday was May day so the ironically named bank holiday “labour day” This meant a day off and a trip to one of the local swimming pools, a treat that no-one else seemed to have thought of since the pool was empty. The deserted pool may also have been because Tuesday was the cloudiest day of the project so far, but I’ve seen English tourists swimming in the rain so the mad UK volunteers weren’t being put off by a little cloud cover.
Wednesday was a strange day with those of us left in the office working hard to prepare bulk loads of kit for our training sessions later in the week as well as working on a number of documents and manuals. As well as starting the blog post my project was “The Guides Guide to Guiding”, [available anywhere REACT books are sold].
Thursday we rose when even the little red rooster was too tired to crow for day, arriving in town for a 6:30 bus to our midterm review in Bolgatanga, a 3 hour journey in a coach that felt luxuriously spacious after the van we had squeezed in a few weeks ago. The extra leg room was not all good news, however, as it was due in part to absent friends, poor Nikita had to stay behind for a top secret mission for which team leader Pricilla and Dylan stayed behind for moral support.
With well upholstered seats and my campfire songs the journey blurred by in what felt like 4 or five hours, but eventually we arrived and the early start was all worth it to see our friends from Sandema again. Gossip and stories quickly started flying amidst a flurry of hugs and excited squeals. The Tamale team immediately kidnapped Lucy in particular as we moved in to the hall for the official review, Lucy was then forcibly extracted from our midst as the first activity was to be done in our teams.
The main activity was a presentation each on what we had planned and achieved so far. We were ready for this, our camera crew, Helene and Dylan, had prepared a montage of our equipment building and activity creation with each member of the team narrating a different item, all set to inspirational guitar music. My personal favourite piece was when my nameless friend spoke in an almost unrecognisable camera voice that made her sound like a member of the royal family, a clip that I will not ever let her forget.
The Sandema presentation was interesting as it became clear that where we have been focusing on lasting resources such as equipment or accessible game manuals while the other team had pushed hard to run as many events as possible and bring huge numbers of people in to their activities. We certainly picked up a few good ideas about how to run the events we are planning later this month.
After a few more activities in teams we were then allowed to integrate for a quick demonstration of Ring of Sound and lunch. Our post lunch activities had us separating in to teams and going shopping in different locations with a brief overlap in a cultural centre.
Friday was spent planning and preparing for our trip to Tolon on Saturday, an expedition that would include both a training session with an existing goalball team and a school sensitisation and goalball training for a large group of teenagers. This preparation included sorting the pads and shades we have made so far in to bags with exactly one teams worth per bag. It was oddly exciting to dump all the kit we have made so far in to a pile, especially when team leader Chris said I could kit up fully.
We also sent a team to the university where we hope to run our regional goalball event on May 22nd. we are hoping for a festival of blind activities for people to try capped by a three/four team goalball tournament with the winner progressing to the final event of the project on the 24th, a tournament with tamale champions taking on the Sandema champions as well as the Ghana national goalball team.
Saturday finally rolled around and our team leaders cancelled the weekend. Arriving at the International service office at 7:30 for an eight o’clock start… well it was going to be an eight o’clock start, but this time there was a very good reason for our scheduling complication, one of our number was leaving. Rebecca is one of our Ghanaian volunteers, those of you with long memories will recall that she helped write the first blog post. Unfortunately she has had to return to Accra for family reasons and it is not known if she will be able to return to the project. As such there were a number of pictures that needed to be taken and gifts to be presented over emotional goodbyes. [I was personally made rather jealous by her complete set of pads and shades, each hand crafted by our team].
We arrived in tolon only a few minutes after our scheduled start time, making us about an hour early. This gave us time to set up the goalball courts and realise that there were no stones to hold down the court. Fortunately, one enterprising dashing young volunteer had a pen knife to hand so twigs were quickly whittled into improvised pegs. [I even made a couple before I was declared too slow and my knife was confiscated for expedience.]
The team was split in two, half to train the existing squad and half for the teaching of sighted students.
Unfortunately, one of the symptoms of disability segregation in Ghana is the lack of English skills among Blind people, despite English being the language used in schools. As a result, teaching blind people with no English is an experience that will stay with me for a long time. [I described it at the time as being like the task Sisyphus was set by hades, which made me feel very smug and intellectual.]
The student training, on the other hand, was enormously successful, the team leading the class appeared to have found their calling, commanding the attention of every teenager and drilling the basics of goalball into them so fast that we soon swapped, taking the blind players in to the cooler class room to drill defence and the students took to the outdoor court to start a tournament.
After the tournament we took the blind players out for a three verses three match, followed by a final between the student and blind champions that, I am pleased to say, the blind players won handily.
With that we headed home and drew one more week to a close. It was a long week, and for many of us the week wasn’t over yet, but that can wait for the next blog post.
Until then
Goodbye
Blog by Richard Wheatley
Richard is a blind UK volunteer with medals in goalball, athletics and rifle shooting.