On the road!

My followers, I am officially OFF PLACEMENT! I am officially a traveller. Yes, for the next five weeks I shall be bouncing all over the country, up mountains, down waterfalls, across the grass plains in the North. All the volunteers have been looking forward to this time ever since we signed on for the Lattitude Experience. The levels of excitement are on a steady increase.

My Roomie, Bryan and I left placement last Wednesday for Senya; where we are eagerly awaiting the return of The Savage to Ghana. The night before we left, there was the longest, heaviest rainfall we have experienced since arriving in Ghana. The electricity was off all night, and an army of mosquitoes took the opportunity to storm our bedroom and EAT ME ALIVE. The next day, my calves, thighs and bum were completely covered in angry, red bites, which seemed to be tracking all over my body. I looked as though I had contracted the first stages of leprosy. It was a good start.

Arriving in Senya, the three of us spent the evening quietly enough: sitting on the floor of a teachers house, eating spaghetti out of a plastic washing up bowl, and dodging around the scorpion in the hallway. Yes, an actual live scorpion. Well, until the teacher killed it.
An even more golden moment came later that evening, when My Roomie accidentally trapped herself in Bryan's bathroom; (the handle of the door is broken off, so there is no way of opening the door if you fully shut it). We had to telephone the teacher again, and Bryan and I crouched in the hallway screaming with silent laughter as he kicked the door down, praying the sound of splintering wood would be drowned out by the very noisy church service taking place downstairs.

The next morning we travelled to Accra, then on to Takoradi, from where I am currently blogging. It is still incredibly hot and sticky, and the placement environment could not be more different from Achiase. Takoradi is a busy market town, with streets crammed full of stalls. Walking around for an hour I notched up three new marriage proposals, bringing my total count so far to thirteen. I am staying with Reporter Clarkson; a Canadian volunteer and fellow blogger, and her partner, The Ginger. They are placed at a boarding school- considerably larger and more sophisticated than the tiny battered church hall where I teach my students. The contrast is huge, and I am fascinated at the differences between their suburban lives and my rural experience. Tonight we will be trawling around the bars and clubs of Takoradi, and nursing our hangovers at a nearby beach tomorrow.

All of us are so eager to begin travelling; there is so much for us to see. Over the next five weeks, I will be living in three pairs of shorts and four vest tops, washing my hair only sparingly, and generally adapting to life as a filthy backpacker. My blogs will be less frequent between now and May, because there is no guarantee of me having internet access at any time.

What is amazing to me is that I feel I can do this. I couldn't even take a simple tube journey around London before I came out here, and now I am haring around an entire country in battered minivans with just enough money to get by on. I would never have thought myself capable of doing something like this a year ago. Since arriving here I feel like I've grown so much. I'm still as messy as hell, I still lose things everywhere, I still can't cook to save my life; but I feel so much happier with the person I am. I have made some incredible friends, who have changed the way I look at myself and other people, and I have learnt to live in an environment which I could never have imagined half a year ago.

I thought it was the end of the world when I didn't get into university; it's turned out to be one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

Adios, amigos!