I've now been in Ghana for two months. Many people back at home have been asking about the work I'm doing here so I thought I'd explain briefly and then recount the story of a recent meeting.

My role is a Community Advocacy Support Officer (CASO) and I'm based with a partner organisation called ProNet North. I mostly work on a Comic Relief funded project called Tackling Educational Needs Inclusively (TENI). This means I'm working with ProNet to deliver education-focused activities in Jirapa. I have three main objectives: to support parent teacher associations in advocating for better education services in the district; to work with relevant officers at the Ghana Education Service and District Assembly to promote retention and performance of girls in school; and to increase women's participation in decision making.

In theory this could include just about any education/community/women's empowerment related project you could imagine. To narrow it down a bit, I'm currently working on three specific tasks:

1) A micro-grant has been awarded to seven PTAs in the Jirapa district and I will join the monitoring team to ensure each school spends their grant on the activities they specified in their application. Some schools wanted to spend the money on textbooks, others wanted to buy materials to build urinals at their school. I'll also work with the team to collect case studies to show how the grant has positively impacted on children in that school.

2) ICT training for girls. I will work with an officer at the Ghana Education Service to help deliver and monitor this year's training for 144 girls in Jirapa. Each of the eight areas in Jirapa have been given laptops to use in the schools but one of the current challenges is finding a training room in each area that has electricity.

3) Another VSO volunteer has been working with ProNet and the Ghana Education Service in Jirapa on the issue of disability and inclusive education. She has developed a screening toolkit for enabling teachers to assess and refer children with vision and hearing problems. She's also gathered a group of people with an interest in the education of disabled children and held regular meetings to discuss disability and education. I'm going to support this group in moving forward.

I've also asked ProNet if I can support their work on voter education and women in politics…no surprises there!

Having just re-read the words I've written above, I think I may have given a slightly false impression of smooth organisation, planning and structure. It's taken me two months to vaguely work out who's who, gain a slight knowledge of how things work and grasp some idea of what I'm supposed to be doing. Whilst not completely chaotic, my work here is certainly nothing like you'd find in the UK. And this is where I feel it would be helpful to tell the story of possibly the most amusing work meeting I have ever been to…

A few weeks ago I was invited to attend the Ullo PTA circuit meeting. This is a meeting of the parents and teachers of a collection of schools in the Ullo area of Jirapa. ProNet had originally informed me this meeting was on Thursday and came to pick me up in the 4x4 (this was pre-motorbike time). Unfortunately it turned out the letter informing people about the meeting had the wrong date on it. The meeting was on the Friday instead.

After this false start I was picked up in another Jeep on the Friday morning by the Community Participation Officer, who also happens to be standing as a candidate in the forthcoming elections. He's clearly a very busy person as his phone kept ringing every three seconds. This was one of my first PTA meetings, so I was excited that we finally had the right date and we were on our way.

Next we picked up the chair and secretary of the Jirapa PTA coalition. And, naturally, they wanted to stop and buy some grilled dog meat. Would I like to take part in this delicacy? Never known for being adventurous with meat, I politely declined.

Apparently eating dog is fairly common here. One volunteer was telling me about a local football match she was watching, which had many similarities to a local football match in the UK. Spectators lined up to watch; the teams looked very smart in their shirts; the winning team was presented a trophy…and a dog. A live dog and a ceremonial sacrificial knife. Thankfully a public slaughter was not necessary and the dog was led away to be killed, grilled and eaten by the winning team. Nice.

Anyway, with dog meat in a plastic bag on the back seat, the four of us proceeded to the meeting. Around 10am we passed a junior school and saw the children walking home. Why? The teacher had sent them to farm. As the conversation took place in Dagaare, I couldn't quite work out if they were going to help their parents with the harvest (not unusual) or if the teacher had sent them to farm his land (also not unusual but far less appropriate).

So we detoured to the local junior school to investigate further. No-one was there. Instead, we found a school PTA meeting taking place at the primary school next door. This enraged the chair and secretary of the PTA coalition as they hadn't been issued an invitation. The district coalition is meant to be invited to all PTA meetings; partly courteous, partly for practical monitoring reasons.

After words were exchanged with the executives of the meeting, and the Community Participation Officer issued an order for the teacher of the junior school to report to him on Monday, we continued to Ullo.

Arriving at late Ullo primary we found five people waiting for a meeting that should have started 30 minutes ago. The Community Participation Officer looked livid. No-one else seemed to find this situation at all perplexing but they explained that some people turned up yesterday because the date on the invitation was wrong. Further discussions, phone calls, and someone cycling off to the village, eventually produced a few more people. Sixteen people including four women. Chairs and benches were brought outside and we sat in the shade of a large tree. Chickens pecked around the chairs and children from the school provided a not-so-quiet background noise. Of course, the teachers were in the PTA meeting so classes weren't really taking place.

The meeting took a few hours and was conducted entirely in Dagaare. I managed to pick up the general gist thanks to understanding a few words and the secretary writing notes in English which I read over his shoulder. Every now and then one of the members of the meeting wandered a few yards away to urinate. A flock of sheep wandered past. Chickens continued to scratch in the dust under the tree… I think you're probably getting a good idea of the setting by now.

After the meeting a teacher asked me if I would like to marry him. Yes he was being serious. Despite having only met him 40 seconds prior to the request, he seemed genuinely confused that I didn't want to marry him. As far as he was concerned, I was a 27-year old unmarried woman without children and he was of good character with a good job. Practical.

In Jirapa, a largely Christian rather than Muslim district, a meeting rarely comes without an alcoholic beverage afterwards. So the majority of the people in the meeting adjourned to the local spot and sat in the shade of a mango tree to socialise. Two massive bottles of Club beer later (glad I had a good meal of porridge at breakfast) and the day's work was finished around 2pm. Slightly tipsy, I wandered into the glaring sunshine and back to the Jeep.

As far as I know there is no public transport to Ullo, and several people needed a lift back to Jirapa. So four or five people squashed onto the back seat and a few more clambered into the truck at the back.

On the way back we passed a funeral and unsurprisingly the Community Participation Officer and election candidate wanted to get out and pay his respects. And more importantly, if I know politicians, he wanted to be seen to pay his respects. Traditionally in Ghana you should not pass a funeral without stopping but in practice this doesn't always happen.

A few words on funerals in Ghana: they are important and lavish affairs. It's very important to keep ancestors happy. As far as I have gathered they involve dressing-up the body and sticking it on a large, makeshift platform near a large tree, while family members and friends come and pay their respects. The amount of money paid is relative to how close you are to the family and how well you knew the person. For this funeral, not having a clue who the person was, I paid 20 pesewas (about six pence). An animal is slaughtered to feed guests, and pitou drinking begins, accompanied by xylophone playing and wailing and dancing. Funerals last long into the night and often continue for around three days.

After stopping briefly at the funeral, many more people wanted a lift back to Jirapa. Women suddenly appeared carrying all manner of pots on their heads and hauled themselves into the truck. In total there were about 18 people in the Jeep, all wanting to get off in slightly different places en route. Heavily laden we eventually made it back to Jirapa and I had a long nap, Ghanaian style. Community advocacy is hard work!