Don't panic. You're in the right place. We've just changed the look and feel of the blog. - Colin and Judi

LESS THAN A MONTH TO GO AND COUNTING….

It seems that our time in Ghana has just flown by. It’s now less than a month before we return to rainy, windy, snowy Vancouver and we are starting to think about what we still want to accomplish here and about re-entering our ‘real’ world.

Since we returned to Accra from Tanzania, it’s been a little cooler because of the ‘hamatan’ – the sand-laden winds from the Sahara. Still, it doesn’t stop us from wearing summer clothes and running air conditioning at night – so it’s really a matter of the degree of heat. It continues to be humid enough for me to forget any chance of straight hair, so that will be a treat for when I get home.
Believe it or not, after four days in Accra, we went away again for the weekend. (You can’t keep a good man down, and Colin is surely a good man!!) This time we ventured down the west coast, about four hours drive to an ecotourism beach resort, called Green Turtle Lodge. We had a very relaxing couple of days on a nearly empty beach with just the local villagers passing by, as usual carrying their goods on their heads. The lodge uses solar energy, boasts an open-air kitchen, delicious food and composting toilets (which stink, no matter what Colin says). We bumped into another AJWS volunteer and his girlfriend there and enjoyed meeting a British couple who were working as volunteers in the far north on the Burkino Faso border. Our visit to the local village was fun as we were surrounded by lots of noisy kids wherever we went. OK, enough about our idyllic life, back to work!!

We are both back at our respective NGO’s, now. We each have a list of things we’d like to complete this month to leave in place. Overall, I have been quite pleased with the level of enthusiasm of the ICA staff for the new processes I’ve introduced around fundraising. We’ve set up a planning group that meets weekly to help sustain the focus on fundraising, and to take advantage of the strengths of each of the senior and program staff. They seem to be quite dedicated to following up with their prospects etc. but the main question will be how much of this new learning actually sticks. Just when I start to believe we are making good progress, I see from the minutes of the meeting I missed that they spent nearly an hour revisiting a decision to have a white board on the wall to track donor prospects. Apparently two people who had missed the meeting when the decision was made, also wanted to have a say. (That would be silly enough if wasn’t for the fact that the white board is already up and in use, and proving to be a useful addition.)… Hmmm…. Sustainability!!...

Colin will be spending quite a bit of January ‘on the road’, providing management training at ProLink’s field offices. I’m not sure that either he or they have quite figured out what sort of management training yet, but of course he is so experienced that he can pretty well work with them on any issue they raise. We expect to combine at least one of his road trips with a visit to the city of Kumasi, the last remaining tourist area we want to see.

Col is also trying to get the postcard project launched. This is an innovative income-generating idea that he has developed with ProLink. He has spent much of the past few days reviewing photos of the various tourism sites in Ghana. This is a whole new line for Colin, and except for the IT aspects of it, he appears to be enjoying it.

One of the more moving experiences we’ve had in Ghana was our visit to Elmina Castle on the west coast. This is the largest of many such forts, built on the Ghana coast (formerly Gold Coast) by British, Dutch and Portuguese colonials. Elmina was occupied by all three nations at different times-almost entirely as part of the massive slave trade. The numbers of enslaved Africans were astounding and a testament to one of the most shameful periods in history. (Although, there is much going on in the world today that could compare.) I’m very bad at numbers, but I believe the guide said the castle was used for slaves for about 350 years and housed an average of 500 a month. And here’s what’s most shocking and hard to comprehend – they were shut up in tiny, dark, crowded cells with almost no sanitation (read, toilet facilities) and very little, if any, food. In those conditions, more than half died of starvation and disease in the month or so that they were kept in the castles. Their bodies were thrown into the sea. The rest were transported by ship, after first passing through the castle’s ‘door of no return’. Less than half of those on the ships survived. As Colin pointed out, even if the slave traders really did consider the Africans as somehow ‘subhuman’, it didn’t make economic sense to let so many of them die in such deplorable conditions. Of course, none of it makes any sense when seen through today’s lens.

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Sign on the back of a 'tro tro' public bus!!