HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMENS DAY! Here's to women all over the world. I have so far already met so many wonderful women here in Ghana . The photo is of some of the girls on a Sports and Literacy programme out in a rural community called Binaba. They are holding a letter they have written about their hopes for their future. They are beautiful, strong, and committed girls, full of potential, which the project aims to harness. I was told that this year's theme ...

Independence Day Today was Ghana's Independence Day - celebrating 55 years of independence from British colonial rule. The whole country has been preparing for weeks, with groups of children all over the country practising the marches in their droves; everywhere I went I saw school children in their blue or green or yellow and brown uniforms, lined up in rows in the school fields, or even in the streets, marching up and down in small careful steps, arms swin...

Because I am kind, and want to give you a break from my long, waffly blog-posts, I did make an attempt to get our recent trip to Burkina into a nice neat nut-shell (a Shea nut one of course J). However it somehow turned into a poem... not much shorter after all, but different at least! INTRO Long lazy weekend in the sun, four volunteers relaxing and considering what to do next One has a bright idea....let's go to Burkina! THE TRIP We only live one hour...

Out in the field again (and swiftly developing a pink v-neck tan!) I was invited back out into the field today, for more pit-latrine building demonstrations, urinal inspections, and relationship building in the communities. Although this is not directly my area of work, simply going out and meeting some of the communities has been very valuable. Seeing how they live, and getting to know first-hand about some of the serious challenges they face in terms of eve...

Quite literally 'in at the deep end' - building pit latrines in Yelwoko. Today when I came home and glanced in the mirror, I almost didn't recognise myself. Covered in a sticky layer of dust, and bright pink from a day under the unforgiving African sunshine, I am slowly turning a strange shade of orangey-pinky-brown. A shade that no longer seems to wash off with a bucket bath...and that is slowly developing some very funky tan-line patterns on my arms and legs...