I was going to write a first blog post to introduce myself but I read it back and found it boring as all hell. So I’ve decided that you can learn about me the fun way.
Below is the first blog post I ever wrote, a blog for a volunteering project out in Ghana called REACT. REACT is a program run by international service and deploys a mixt team of blind and sighted volunteers from Britain and Ghana to work in northern Ghana to promote disability rights and teach the Paralympic sport I play called goalball.
I was given the responsibility of running the team blog before I was then told that Rebecca, a Ghanaian volunteer, wanted to work on the blog as well, unfortunately I had already written most of it but she did write up Friday morning for us, see if you can spot the difference in writing styles.
When these blogs were posted originally there were pictures, unfortunately I have no talent for picture selection so for the time being these posts will be unillustrated.
I hope you enjoy reading about my time in Ghana.
Ghanaian blog post week 1
Blog post for Friday 13
Wow, the first week in the react office has simply flown past and while today may be an unlucky day for some we’ve certainly had a good week:
Trying and inventing accessible new sports, experimenting with, creating and suggesting improvements for renewable equipment, testing our artistic skills
Then rounding out the week by visiting both Walawale [wola wolly] and Tolon to speak to local leaders.
But, to begin at the beginning, Monday was our first day in the office. Due to scheduling complications, an ever present part of life in Ghana, we had our morning meeting with Mr. Tom postponed to the afternoon, leaving us with the morning to ourselves, time we did not waste. We got out the Showdown table and engaged our competitive spirits.
Showdown is a sport for the blind played on what looks slightly like a long thin table-football table, and is played in a similar way to air hockey. Players stand behind the goal at each end and use flat bats shaped like miniature cricket bats to send a small plastic rattly ball back and forth under a raised net, both players are blindfolded making it a test of listening and timing your shot. Team leader Chris managed the notable achievement of failing to score a single point in either game that he played.
As the day moved on, some of the group left the showdown table to move indoors and start on a poster, a design that I believe incorporates both the UK and Ghanaian flags as well as a number of disability symbols. The poster was then finished with the team motto: “disability is not inability”.
I was asked about my artistic skills by my roommate, so I drew a sheep in a field. I didn’t think it was too bad although I freely admit that my sister got all the art genes in my family.
The afternoon was spent in discussion with the Regional Sports President of the Ghana Blind Union (GBU), Mr. Tom, covering a range of topics, focusing around the challenges faced by visually impaired Ghanaians as well as how to approach the community meetings later in the week.
Tuesday morning we went to see the new stadium, which unlike the old stadium, is an actual stadium with changing rooms, stands, a football pitch in the middle and most importantly a sprung 400m running track that happens to be almost exactly the rite width for a goalball court on the home straight.
Before I continue, I would like to express the amazement I felt last Saturday when I joined the Tamale team training, upon discovering that Ghanaian goalball is played out doors, with only a thin carpet of tarpaulin to turn concrete and hardcourt sporting fields in to a surface that you are expected to dive on. It is impressive that they can persist at all, and that isn’t even considering the strain I found it to play under a midday sun.
That said, while I would never have considered it before, the running track is a perfect site for Ghanaian goalball, which is exciting as we will be hosting the final grand tournament at the new stadium.
After visiting the stadium, [where I won the 400m race by dint of no-one else realising that we were actually racing], we spent the afternoon discussing questions for the community meetings and thinking of strategies for the sensitisation sessions in the coming weeks.
Wednesday was the most exciting day so far, not only did we invent a number of versions of a game using a blind cricket ball in a circle both around a table and on the floor, but Ross came round to demonstrate some of his creations and collect our ideas. Ross is a consultant for REACT who has taken it upon himself to make goalball affordable in Ghana armed only with his imagination and an iron.
One of the most readily available materials in Ghana is plastic, whether it’s the 500ml plastic sashays that are bought in bulk and litter the streets or the small carrier bags that shops put plastic wrapped food in, plastic is everywhere.
So ross has been testing the limits of cheap plastic as a resource, ironing bags around the ends of ropes to act as glue, ironing several sheets of black plastic bag together to form a surprisingly stiff opaque board that can be used to make eye shades, even when presented with a prototype elbow or knee pad made of water sashays ross couldn’t help noting that the pad made a slight crinkling sound that might be solved by ironing it. He also has managed to improve the grip on a worn out old goalball by pock marking it in patches with, you guessed it, an iron (well, a soldering iron, but you get the picture).
My personal favourite creation, however, doesn’t involve the trusty iron. The homemade VI basketball is formed of the cheapest basketball Ross could find, folded beer bottle caps with stones or dried beans inside do fantastic impressions of bells when dropped through a small incision that can be fixed at a bicycle repair shop. The result was an impressively noisy functioning basketball.
Thursday was a long day, starting with a two hour coach trip for our first community meeting in Walawale. Now, you may think that a two hour coach journey is long, however until you have done one packed in shoulder to shoulder in a bus with fewer seats than people and no seatbelts in 30+ degrees heat, you really have no idea.
Chris and Mr. Tom made a speech together in what appeared to be a church hall with Mr. Tom translating in to the local dialect of Dagbani (dug barnay). The conversation then started to gain pace until English translations stopped and we had to rely on Mahe a volunteer from Tamale, to summarise the conversation as it happened.
After the initial meeting we then drove a short distance to a primary school to make a similar presentation to the children. As the school presentation broke up I spotted a child standing close to us and went to say hello, at which point both his friends wanted to shake my hand as well. What followed can only be expressed as an exponential curve on a graph of children to space ratio as a flash flood of children attempted to shake my hands simultaneously, initially reaching over each other’s shoulders to reach either of my hands before flowing around the press to shake my wrists, elbows and even triceps.
From the school we headed for the chiefs palace, via a few scheduling complications, and met the local chief. The chief is a key part of local government, so we were keen to get him on side as his support could help secure facilities for various activities without prohibitive costs.
The chief made a short speech in English, thanking us for our work, and saying that helping the disabled community would help the whole community.
All that remained after the chief’s palace was the long journey home, via a 4 o’clock lunch stop.
Friday was a good day with less sun than earlier in the week. At 8:45 we headed to tolon. We arrived at the chief’s palace at around 9:30. It turns out we arrived very late although it was still early in the day. We were told that per the culture there, 7am to 9am is the only time in the morning that one can meet the chief for any form of discussions unless we were ready to wait until 5pm that evening as that is the only other time we could be allowed to meet him. 9:45 to 5pm? Who has time to wait that long? We decided to proceed to other places. We ended up at the chief Imam’s house. We were welcomed gracefully. We introduced ourselves and stated our mission. He expressed his gratitude for our presence and mission and wished us well on our journey. We left there and later met a group of visually impaired people who told us that they had a goalball team in place but do not train regularly. We took the chance to show them the resources we are trying to create goalball items out of. We said thank you and drove back to our office feeling thankful.
We were home in good time and so the rest of the afternoon was spent filling out paper work, writing blogs and generally crossing I’s and dotting T’s.
After that hard work we treated ourselves to some creative domesticity, ironing sheets of plastic for eye shades and sealing plastic pads ready to be encased in fabric to form knee and elbow pads.
With that we drew our first week to a close, a week of finding our feet and experimenting with new ideas as well as sowing seeds for future community sessions.
So until next week it’s goodbye from Richard and Rebecca
Richard Wheatley and Rebecca Amponsah are both visually impaired volunteers on the react project.
Richard is a UK volunteer from London while Rebecca is a Ghanaian volunteer from Accra.