Jirapa is a wonderful place to live. The people are incredibly friendly and willing to help, the weather is hot, work is laid-back, and people genuinely have time for each other. Riding my motorbike to Wa and around the district of Jirapa, kicking up the dust and feeling the warm air rush past…well, it makes me feel glad to be alive.

However, there isn't a lot of entertainment here. In fact, that's an understatement. There's no cinema anywhere nearby, there's one nightclub in Wa but after an incident in the summer I'm not sure it's very safe for foreigners. Besides, the attention a white woman would get from the men in a club would cancel out any enjoyment of having a laugh and a dance with friends. There are two restaurants in Jirapa run by the Sister's Convent but they only serve food during the day. Recently a table tennis table and a pool table have appeared by the roundabout - this is possibly the third most exciting thing to happen in Jirapa this year (after the installation of the roundabout and the juju murder where the man's liver and heart was eaten). The other day I managed a game of table tennis with friends but the pool table is far too crowded to get anywhere near. It reminds me of the atmosphere around the pool table in the sixth-form common room at school; the game is the centre of the universe for slightly bored and restless adolescent men.

It goes dark around 6pm every day. I don't go out after dark very often, partly because there's nowhere to go and partly because VSO has advised us not to ride our motorbikes after dark.

So you're possibly wondering how I spend my time. No cinema, no clubs, no art galleries, no restaurants. No entertainment of the sort you'd find in most towns in the UK. There is a television in my house, but unsurprisingly it doesn't work. I think one of the puppies chewed through the wire connecting it to the aerial and it hasn't worked since.

Strangely enough, I'm not bored. Household chores take up a significant amount of time - filling the water buckets; hand washing clothes; sweeping and mopping, feeding the dog. This also means I don't have to do any exercise, it seems hand washing clothes and lugging around buckets of water is great for toning the arms and losing a stone and a half! I fully intend to start a new exercise craze on my return to the UK called 'the Ghana regime' (or perhaps some snappier title) where you live on a diet of rice and tomatoes, turn up the heat full blast, and lift water buckets for two hours each day.

I've also started planting herbs in tin cans and plastic bottles on the veranda so this has whiled away a few hours on my Saturday mornings. I'm considering getting a chicken to lay eggs…although my housemate is less keen on this idea as she thinks the house will soon become a zoo. She's probably not wrong; I'd love a rabbit and a cat too.

Other, less regular, chores include things like getting my motorbike serviced and arranging to get the gas canisters refilled in Wa. Checking emails takes a considerable of time as the internet connection is so bad. That's easily a whole evening's entertainment. If I get really restless I ride my bicycle to a nearby village and burn off some energy.

Buying food takes time too. There's a daily market where I can get basic vegetables but the big market is every Sunday. Market day is great as it's really busy and I can spend ages wandering around buying food, saying hello to friends, and stopping for a calabash of the local brew.

Learning to cook Ghanaian food is lots of fun; there are so many ingredients I've never come across before. As far as I've gathered, people here think that the longer you spend preparing and making food then the better it will taste. I can now make jollof rice, groundnut soup, light soup, yam chips, and I've had a go at pounding fufu.

Another favourite pastime is clothes shopping. I am quickly developing an addiction to buying material and visiting the seamstress. 4 yards of material costs about 20 cedis (£6.50) and then it costs another 12 cedis (£4.00) for the seamstress to make it into a dress. My daily allowance is £5 per day so each dress is the equivalent of two days of my allowance but since some days I don't spend any money at all I can easily justify a few dresses! I love looking through the pages of patterns and picking out the style I want, then discussing the various details with the seamstress and having my measurements taken. It takes about a week to get a dress made and they all fit perfectly!

There are bars called 'spots' where I can drink bottles of beer, and also pitou bars where I can sit and drink the local brew - usually on a bench under a tree. Some of the spots serve goat or pork meat too. Every now and then one of the VSO volunteers has a party and I'll travel to another town for the weekend. I'm also planning to get a multiple entry visa for Burkina Faso. If I ride three hours on a dusty track to the town of Tumu then I can cross the border into Burkina where there is a hotel with a swimming pool!

As you can see, there's plenty to occupy my time. But on the occasion when I have a quiet evening in the house and all the chores are done then there's always crosswords, jigsaws, learning how to juggle, watching films on my laptop and reading a good book.

December is going to be a busy month. I'm attending a flashmob for World Aids Day in Lawra followed by a volunteer's birthday party. Another weekend I'm visiting Bolgatanga for a meeting with other CASO's, which will no doubt followed by a cold beer or two. After that I'm spending Christmas with some other volunteers and on Boxing Day I'm heading south the beach for a week.

There's also the election on 7th December - I have to pack an evacuation bag, stock up on food and fuel, and I've been told to stay indoors in case of trouble. I'll probably get a bit bored in the house this week so expect lots of blog posts!