Time is flying...seven months in?!!!?!! Coming back to Zebilla after such a lovely holliday...I have to say that it really does feel like home (!). Although the environment is changing all around me (crops growing taller than ever, things turning yellow with maize ready to harvest, new animals on the block, even the children are growing and changing so fast!) there is something now so familiar about this place that it would be hard to feel at all out of place. ...

With permission from Lucy (a World Vision sponsored child) and her family, here is Lucy's story. Lucy lives with her mother, father, three brothers (aged 22, 18 and 14) and her younger sister (aged 7). The family has lived in poverty for years. Her father became seriously ill four years ago and suffered a stroke. Since then he has been unable to farm and the family's situation has worsened. Before the father's stroke, the family had a large number of crop...

When I tell people that I volunteer with an organisation that has sponsored children at the centre of its work, I often get asked whether the faces of the little children that they see on the adverts are really the faces of the children who are being sponsored by that charity. Well I can say that in the case of World Vision, yes it is actually them! Before I went on my fancy little trip down south for a holiday, I was putting in many of my placement hours under...

Four days in Zebilla, and we had covered more like 4 weeks worth of things to do! In between our trips to market, to the locals and to new born baby Aaila, our crazy adventures in Togo, and our dabbling with Ghanaian food (soooo many people wanted to cook for us that we've gone through the whole range of Ghanaian cuisine!) we managed to pack in some walks about town, visits to (still closed due to summer holidays) schools, introductions to the World Vision tea...

When I woke up this morning I had absolutely no idea what was in store for me in the next few hours. My first day of 'leave', taken so I could properly look after and entertain Marianne and Lisa, I was taking absolute pleasure in the fact that the whole day stretched out ahead of me sparkling with sunshine and time to relax. I imagined nothing but a lazy start, a yummy breakfast with friends (yey!), a wander about town for a little bit of Zebilla sightseeing, ...