Paddy's Place

Paddy, the Maths teacher at the Islamic school, invited us to his home for chop (food). It is a great honour to be invited by a Ghanaian so we were overjoyed at this opportunity. Arriving at his home on Tuesday, we found Paddy cooking jollof rice for us. He must have been forewarned by the 2 engineers that I do not eat meat, which meant we were having hard-boiled eggs and a lovely tomato&onion sauce with our rice. Hmmm...We were introduced to Beatrice, Paddy's beautiful partner and little EK aka Paddy Jr too.

The open kitchen was outdoors with a couch to hang out on. The single room that this small but adorable family lived in was neat with Paddy's work clothes for the week hanging from nails on the wall like posters. The big TV took pride of place in the room and it seemed that we were in a sound competition with the neighbour in the room next to us! We watched football (Paddy's an Arsenal supporter) while the neighbour blasted some hip life music! Overall, a brilliant evening with great fun people..

The construction volunteers left last week and we were sad to see them go. We had grown used to having them around, motivating the community labour with their enthusiasm. Thank you Alice, Rich and Peter! It was really great to have you on site. More volunteers to come out next week, so wipe away the tears guys!

Before the volunteers left, we had arranged to meet them at Shell for a Champions League game as a bonding session. Yeah right! We were sucked into the tense game as were the locals. When a team scored, we celebrated but the Ghanaians dashed about wildly, screaming. It was fun watching them instead. At one point during a celebration, I got carried away literally by a spectator who got too excited! I had to politely but firmly ask him to let me down a few times. He gave me a tour of the area before he let me down. See? Football makes people mad.

On site this week, we finally started the concrete pour after the stone was found, but only managed one day, after the mixer needed fixing. We should finish the pour on Tuesday, taking care to remove any trapped air by poking the wet concrete repeatedly. Then it will be left to cure and kept wet to avoid cracking of the concrete drying out too quickly. Meanwhile we started digging the third classroom, but the ground was very hard and the boys were very tired and bored of digging after a couple of days of it. So we built some shaded work areas for them, and completed a few other site improvements to pass the time. Getting water to the site was solved this week, by installing a 150m temporary pipe to a standpipe in town.

The great news is that the project funding finally came through this week, so instead of struggling to scrape together materials from small donations, we can buy in bulk and really start moving .... so hopefully you’ll hear of some above ground action soon!

Here are some photos. Please view by SET.