Week 7
The work this week has been a bit more exciting as we have been making huge iron rods into towers that will support the window frames. They will be surrounded by concrete once put into place, and have involved lots of wire bending and shaping.
We haven't missed out on the digging either as the Toilet block is on its way up. There are going to be four ladies on the bottom level and four gents on the top level. We are carving out foundations at the moment, but we have been assured it won't be long until the bricks are laid, and the whole thing is complete!
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The evenings have turned into a mixture of films or books, and to date I have read about 4 books, and watched maybe 15 films! A complete mixture of western action, fiction and comedy films, and a whole new sector for me - Nigerian movies.
The house we are living in has a VCD player (Video CD) which is identical to a DVD except most films come on two disks. (We have only watched half of Desperado with Antonio Banderas as Disk 2 is missing... what happens next??)
The Nigerian films are great fun and not too hard to follow, as the bad guys are blatent and the end always has a definite moral to the story. The funniest one I have seen so far is 'Valentino' basically the story of a love rat! He's worse than one of the characters on Eastenders. Living with his 'Sugar Mummy' and secretly dating her daughter, he also ends up with plenty of other girls in tow, from the advice of 'Prof in Human Affairs' his best mate. (Are you still following?)
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We have become accustomed to the fact that we stand out like a sore thumb here because of our colour, it's obvious when you step off the plane really, but the children of Ghana seem to find it so fascinating to see us 'Obrunis' (white people) that it never wears off completely.
The nice thing about seeing people regularly is they tend to regard you as less of a novelty, but if we go anywhere new, we quite often get the fresh chant of "Obruni, how are you, I'm fine, thank you, and you..." and from the nursery behind our house this chant takes place every morning. They never get tired of it!! haha!
The afternoons are definitely my favourite time as loads of kids come to the site of the school building to help us out. (Something never encouraged in such a health and safety conscious environment of the average building site back home!)
These boys range from 7 - 15 and are so enthusiatic to help and strong too! They don't care about our colour any more, they are more worried about taking the pick-axe from each other or carrying a heavier load of earth, which is funny to watch as there is a definite pecking order - namely all young boys are called 'small boys' and if one boy is even a fracton taller or stronger he will order all the littler ones around.
(And because there is no teaching involved in the afternoons, I get to pull silly faces at them all and act 9 again! Hooray!)
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This week was also Jeffrey's Birthday, and as his family are all away, we took him out for a drink at the local spot. Everything is served in its bottle - no pulling of pints in these places, and if you're looking for a cold version of Ovaltine, try 'Malta!' the non alcoholic Guiness drink.
(written by Lucie)
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