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. Even the wierdest of things, like seeing a bright neon pink chicken standing at my door making a whole load of pink-chicken noise, by now feel absolutely normal!

So, after all the fun of the last few weeks, its seems time really will not ever stand still for me in Zebilla, no matter how sleepy or chilled out this place is, and ready or not (after a quick sleep and a visit to the misionaries where I was filled up with home made cookies and other luxury foods from Burkina) it was straight back in to my volunteering placement! No rest for the wicked. Or in this case no rest for the World Vision staff and volunteers!

I've been interviewing more vulnerable and disabled children for the World Vision Korea film crew (who were absolutely lovely and were treated like royalty the whole week - we even had our own cook who made Chinese food for us, it was great!), supporting a young and aspiring female leader to set up a fantastic Shea-butter social enterprise for unemployed women in Binaba, writing reports, helping others to write their reports (and picking up the annoying nickname of 'fast-fingers' along the way oh dear), meeting GES (Ghana Education Service) staff to help them prepare for the new volunteers, preparing a training workshop for NGO's working wth orphans and vulnerable children, meeting the new VSO Country Director (finally things might sttart to pick up for VSO Ghana!) and networking about town. Phew! (Just realised that last one sounds a bit dodgy, but all above board I promise!).

In-between all of that I've been swinging back and forth between pure elation and wild confusion, like a monkey tied to a tree. (I actually did see a monkey tied to a tree in Zebilla recently, swinging back and forth round and round up and down. It had a crazy but hapy look in it's eyes that said 'if I got down from here I might just think about eating you, hmmmm yes I might'. Eek). Anyway, some, I can say most, days I absolutely love my placement and think it is truly and honstly the best things since sliced bread. But then other days it just drives me absolutely bonkers! Cultural differences lead to confusions that reign over the smallest of things, and there are some things that even after all this time I doubt I'll ever understand. 'Set a date' (booming command from above), so I set a date, great, and then am told I should have known not to actually set a date. What?! Sometimes I am so confused!

In an attempt to try to understand some of the cultural aproaches to life here I decided to look up some African proverbs... and came across some from Ghana!

Abo mekpe na wu ata o.

"The arms is not bigger than the tie" (in other words - know your place in society. Like don't shout at your boss when he is ordering you to do something, Emma just flipping well shut your mouth and do it. Oops!)

Ame tso agble gbo medoa ha da o. "

A person who comes back from the farm should not call a tune" (In other words a stranger or the guest should not set the agenda for the host.)

And the best one...

Amedzro nkugaa, menyaa xodome mo o.

"A stranger with big eyes cannot know the secrets of the community" (In other words, there are some secrets of a society that canot be known to outsiders / strengers.)

So true! I am slowly becoming enlightened, realising that I am an arm not a tie, that I am not the one to sing the tunes, and that no matter how big I make my eyes go I'll never see what I'm looking for. All very useful you see.

I also came across a couple of other ones I found interesting...#

Adzofu di aha vuu, amatsi woku ne.

"Adzofu looks for a drink so badly, they gave him a medicine instead" (In other words greed or severe addictions can make peple go for bizarre solutions) (I think many of us know about that one!).

Akota gbadzaa melo na hala o. "It is not just the broad chest which entitles you to the heap of pork" (In other words, it takes more than brute force to enjoy the best of life)

Dze/ Kpe/ Wu medina Fiavi yona o.

"Whistle / trumpet / drum does not sound, yet the prince is in a hurry to go to the street and dance" (In other words don't be in a hurry for things that are coming to you anyway)

Ge metuaxo na Adaba o.

"The beard does not tell old addages to the eyebrow" (in other words strength or power is not based on the size of your beard or eyebrow. Ha!)

Anyway, as for the rest of the news this week... School term has begun! And there was a whole flurry of activity all about the place as parents tried to raise the fee's, older siblings dashed to get their younger brohers and sisters uniforms sewn, brothers and sisters argued over whose pencil and whose pen, and children tried to get used to the idea of getting up and going to school again. Kind of makes up for missing my nephew starting his second year at primary school :).

I've had to literally chase some of the children about here to get up, get their uniforms on and get to school. Problem was that the first three days all the students were asked to do was 'collect number and clean'. Collect number means tell them you are here so they give you a number (slightly different to the usual register system where the school actually has a list of names), and clean means sweeping the school and cleanng the whole place before classes ca start. In most schools it took three whole days. It's as though school term crept up on everyone, from tiny toddlers to headmasters, and shocked them out of the slumber of school holidays to remind them that school actually must go on!

I've decided to help a few of the poorer children get back to school, it's just too sad to see them sitting about and playing in the dirt when all the other kids are marching past in their clean freshly pressed uniforms pencil ready in hand and big smile on their face on their way to school. I've helped a couple whose mothers I know are trying really hard to raise the cash, but where selling peanuts just won't cut it. One little girl, Matina, just got so excited and was running all over the place saying the same thing over and over in Kusaal translated as "I wont sit down, I won't sit down, me I'm going to school!"

I've even found myself giving random homework and revision sessions, as some of the children are so keen to impress their teachers in their new schools. We did numbers 1-20 in the period table this evening, although I had no idea what they were of course, little do the kids know that they are actually teaching me!

Baby Aaila is doing well, she is goegeous and most of the time whenever I see here she's just sleeping, she doesn't make much noise at all, which is sometimes quite worrying, but she's absolutely fine and must just be a super-peaceful baby! This is Ghana, king of peace after all.

And, of course, a weather update...The rains are back, and we are back to the normality of suuuuuuuuuper hot days followed by nights of booming thunder cracking lightening and heavy downpours. That's more like it, the drizzle was confusing me and making it feel too much like Mancheser! The funny side-effect is that the frog chorus is getting louder, and louder every night, they are everywhere! I feel like I'm in that crazy cartoon where all the frogs are singing away. Bizarre!

So seven months in, and still crazy times. The new volunteers will be here at the weekend, and I can't wait to welcome them to Zebilla! Finally more 'nasara's in town!

With love from Ghana,

Em

Xx

P.s. for now, until I get piccies of the kids back at school, you get the photo of the chicken... I wasn't making it up!