Little tangerine in a big fruit bowl.

Today I did actually have my first day at work, which is cause for a little celebration me thinks.

Having been told to arrive at 8.30am, I got to the offices on time only to be greeted by an eerie silence, and seemingly no-one around. Dreading another tumble-weed morning like yesterday's, I began to wander around to see if I could find any signs of life. Office by office, one by one, the doors creaked open to reveal empty rooms, and in the back of my mind I started to plan a day of laundry and chores at home. That was until I heard the rumblings of what sounded like someone on the phone making a hush-hush conversation about something secretive and fairly serious. I stood listening for a while, as the voice went up and down in rhythm, and then, strangely, other voices started to join in too, as though they were having a secret MI5 conference, all on their phones communicating important secret messages across the world. Utterly confused by what was going on, curiosity took hold of me and I pushed the door open, and there I found my manager and colleagues all huddled round a couple of settees in what must be the manager's office (tiled floor, BIG mahogany table and even BIGger black swivelly chair!). There was a heap of bibles and hymn books on the table, and the staff were holding hands chanting what I now realised were prayers in a rhythm and rhyme of their own, some loud and serious, others more joyous, others pleading lke they really were begging God to listen. That's when I realised I had brazenly interrupted morning devotion. Oops!

Once the prayers were over I was warmly welcomed, and invited to join which I was happy to do. This being the first time I had ever met my boss and colleagues, it was quite a strange experience; sitting there with a bible in hand and a hymn sheet on my lap, singing along to the hymns and bowing my head in prayer with the others I thought to myself, 'well, this is different!'. At first I was a little awkward and nervous, but eventually relaxed and thought this is actually a really nice way to start the day! And then came the bulls-eye question, straight out of the blue and straight to the point - "So, Emma, are you a Christian?". Knowing full well that as unprepared for this moment as I was, my answer could come out sounding as confused and crazy as my blonde curly hair, I chose a careful "I believe in God", which seemed to be sufficient for now.

So the day was off to a good start. Next I was invited to sit in my managers office whilst he was busy answering a few emails, making some important phone calls, and dealing with the many queries of his handful of staff. I quickly realised that this is a very busy man. I began to regret asking if there was anything I could / should read whilst waiting when I was handed a double-yellow pages size insanely dull-looking report of the District Assembly of 2007, which I politely pretended to read whilst waiting and simply enjoying the air con in his office.

I was eventually invited to take some tea with him, which I thought was nice. Right, finally, we will get to sit down and I can tell him all about me and my educational and career background, and he can tell me what kinds of things he would like me to do in this placement, all over a nice cup of tea and some bread and jam. Sorted, we are making progress. What I hadn't realised however, was that this was his way of asking me to break bread with him. He offered for me to cut the loaf, which I went ahead and hacked into huge great white lumps (blunt knife), whilst he popped teabags into mugs, added sugar, found the spoons, brought milk, went back to get the spoons, opened the milk, eventually poured the water, all of which took about fifteen minutes. When eventually he was done, I sat down and promptly started to guzzle the tea, absolutely oblivious to the fact that we were supposed to pray first. Luckily my friend Bev turned up at that point, and was able to point out to me what I was missing. I have clearly got a lot to learn. Luckily my manager asked her to say the prayer instead of me, which I thanked God for, as I know that on the spot like that I would have attempted a prayer and ended up just saying something really daft like 'Thank you lord for the lovely sweet tea, please can you provide some biscuits next time'. ("Oh, and, erm, hobnobs would be nice...")

The rest of the day involved me tagging along with my boss, who was on a mission to track down some health workers at the hospital. Why we didn't go directly to the hospital to find them, or why he couldn't just make a couple of phone-calls to see where they might be, was beyond me, but I am slowly learning that in Ghana you often "don't know what you don't know" and so I am learning to just go along with things!

And so we spent a good three or four hours, whizzing from one place to another on his motorbike, visiting one person, speaking to another, taking tea with another, all whilst trying to track these seemingly very important people down. I felt like I was a detective in a murder mystery. The journeys in-between were fast, but the meeting and greeting of people was very sloooooow, and felt even slower in the scorching mid-day 45 degree heat. (I have not made friends with the sun here yet and I am sure it is laughing at me everyday as I promptly wilt like a withered pot plant as soon as it hits 10am, only coming properly alive again with my evening bucket bath after dark). It seems like my manager knows everyone about town, and along the way in between the professionals that we met, we also met the tailor, the hairdresser, the bread maker and the bean seller, all of whom we had a long "hello-how are you - I am fine - how are you - nice to see you - how is your wife / husband / children / house / cow...." with and so I slowly realised that this is all part of him introducing me to the community, whilst simultaneously letting them know they now have a white person on board. As this can (sometimes cringe-ingly) bring real credibility to an organisation or project.

I discovered that the reason we were on such a mission was that there has been a CSM outbreak in the Upper East Region (Cerebral Spinal Meningitis) which is pretty serious and lethal, and has affected some of the communities in which World Vision works. He was therefore arranging for all of his staff to receive a vaccination, which swiftly took place that very afternoon, and also for some community action teams to start heading out to educate the communities and also provide some vaccines where possible. I realised that this is a very serious issue for them, as something like this could very easily turn into an epidemic, and so World Vision should be a key organisation to be seen to be taking fast action.

Later that afternoon, I found myself back on the settee in the manager's office, squeezed inbetween a bundle of Muslim leaders, like a little tangerine in a fruit-bowl of round mango's, large papayas, and big spikey pineapples. This was equally surreal and intriguing. They had been invited to discuss who will attend an inter-faith event organised by World Vision next week, and by the way they discussed the issue and dealt with it I gained a real insight into how much presence and influence World Vision have in the communities and how positively people respond to them and their activities, as well as how the different faiths in Ghana really do happily and fruitfully interact and respect each other.

By the end of the day I was pretty worn-out, and nearly fell asleep flipping once again through the yellow pages after all the excitement for the day was over. Whilst I was no-where near to being clearer on my role, why I am here, or what on earth I will be doing in my placement, I think it's fair to say this could be a way more interesting induction than I had hoped for, and probably far more eye opening too.

xx