One Month On.

So, it's a month today since my return from Ghana. Honestly, it feels like a hundred years.

London life has swallowed me again in an alarmingly short space of time. I am back at the GP practice, where nothing whatsoever has changed, I walk the dog, I sit in front of the mirror and fry the ends of my hair in futile attempts to make it curl. I blanch at the idea of cold showers, and carefully monitor my dwindling supply of gin sachets. My tan, to my intense dismay, is beginning to fade.

Still, I hang on grimly to the school wherever I can. I have a photograph of some of the boys I used to teach as my computer screensaver, and I chat to them frequently, while I'm doing my bits and pieces of writing, or just tidying my bedroom. I don't have a huge amount to tell them, and often it's just regular assurances that I will be getting them a new classroom, and they don't have to worry.

Yes, GOM and I are on a mission, and our project with the school is just starting to get off the ground. The Rev. has had plans drawn up by an architect, they have opened a bank account, and managed to get some planning permission. In my turn, I have opened an online appeal for donating money to the school, and am toying with a vague notion of jumping fully-clothed into my university lake during freshers' week in return for sponsorship...

I have every faith that we'll be able to get a new building for the school, and I will return to Ghana early next year.

"So... Tell us about GHANA."

God I hate that phrase. I've heard that more than any other since I got back home, a week ago yesterday.

Tell you about Ghana?

Whenever anyone asks, my mind becomes a total blank. I mean, when someone says 'tell us about Ghana', all they really want to hear is a couple of sentences, summing up the fact that I had a lovely time, but nothing to make them feel inadequate about what they've been doing with their year. Maybe... five minutes of me talking, tops. Then I can shut up.

There's no way I can sum up Ghana in so little time. And whenever anyone even mentions it, I find the words just come spilling out of my mouth in such vast quantities that the person on the receiving end soon gets a slightly glazed look. I want people to try and understand where I've been, what I've been doing, the people I've met. How can you make people feel the baking heat of an African sun with nothing more than words?

It never works. All that happens is I go rattling on and on, and I can see them slipping away slightly- I know I asked, but I didn't want a bloody thesis on the subject- and the whole topic starts to feel slightly inadequate...

I miss Ghana. I knew I was going to, but it doesn't make it any easier. I miss being yelled at, I miss the beauty of the early mornings, before the heat casts a haze over the ground. I miss my children so much, I find myself hearing their voices shouting in my name, and have to look around just in case-

They're never there, but I could have sworn I heard them running after me.

It's not that I haven't enjoyed a lot of things about being home. It's fantastic to have a running shower twice a day, to see my family again, totally unchanged, to have everybody exclaiming "Goodness, look how brown you are!" It was even nice to get back to my old job at the GP practice this morning, to bring some routine back into my life.

But now I am a little cold, and a little lonely. I'm trying so hard to keep the happiness of this past six months alive by talking about my experience, but my efforts always end in frustration when the people I talk to go "yeah, I get it. Cool."

No, mate. You don't.

But there are bright moments. I was walking to work today, and there was a touch on my arm. An old black man was looking down at the two chunky bracelets I wear on my right wrist, with a bright spark of curiosity.

"...Where did you get those?"

That familiar accent. I told him. We smiled, we shook hands- with a click on the end. And for a second, It was just like being out there again.

Here I am again

Sitting in the internet cafe, the chickens strolling past. And I cannot for one second believe that I am about to write, for the second time this year, 'tomorrow we fly'. It's all passed so soon I almost feel like I've been conned- surely five months should have lasted sl-i-i-ghtly longer than this?

Apparently not, and at around ten thirty tomorrow night I will be leaving Ghana. I feel as though I should impart some highly meaningful message about my experience to my followers, find some way of demonstrating that the experience has put me in touch with my Deeper Side. But sitting here, I'm coming up with absolutely nothing. I don't know where to start, or how to try and explain about the ways in which this trip has altered my perspectives on life.

I suppose I could take things down to a very basic level, and go right back to the beginning, A-level results day, or The Day My Life Ended, as I used to think of it. Sitting in front of the family laptop, staring blankly at the UCAS website as it chirpily informed me that I had not made it into the university of my choice, it was like all my energy had drained away in a second. I thought I was useless, that I would never get anywhere or achieve anything, no matter how hard I pushed myself. What was the point in making an effort over anything ever again, I wondered. To get into Uni was all I had been working for, for about five years, and I hadn't got there. Ergo, I was a waste of space and nothing anyone said would convince me otherwise. Everything looked totally bleak.

September passed in a haze of bleak, everything was a big pile of shite, I joined some classes and looked online for ways to fill my time, but I still failed to see the point in everything. Even after that entirely unexpected phonecall, and my uncertain agreement to come to Ghana, I never really thought I'd be breaking routine, least of all to go to Africa. I mean, Africa was so damn far away!

And when, against all my beliefs, I actually stepped off the plane and realised that in fact I had gone to Africa, it was like waking up for the first time since August. Suddenly I was surrounded by a group of loud, cheerful, fantastic characters, the like of whom I had never met before, and every day flew by in a blur of baking sun and blue skies. Then I was in Achiase with My Roomie, and this was the slap in the face I had needed for a very long time. No running water, dodgy electricity, goats in the hallway, monster spiders in the bathroom, dust everywhere- this was like nothing I'd ever done before, nothing I could have ever expected or imagined. It was absolutely perfect. Every day I was pursuing happiness, and every day I got that little bit closer, and life started to look better and better. I was amazed by the incredible sense of community in Achiase, the sense of peace and security throughout the entire town. I would feel safe walking at night, even when two enormous men with machetes came up suddenly behind me. I felt welcomed right from the beginning, even in the constant yells and catcalls took a little getting used to. Now I'll feel lonely walking down the street with no one shouting at me...

Above all else, I now believe fully in the redemptive power of children. Working at the school has been one of the best experiences of my entire life, and I wish I could bring all the kids back with me just to show all my family and friends how fantastic they are. I have gained so much respect for how eager to learn, happy, hardworking and enthusiastic they are, and I truly believe that with the right help they could, (and should) take over the world. I am going to miss them so very much when I get home, and I wish I could thank them properly for the difference they have made to my life. Whenever I have to struggle with something in the future, I'll think of them and they'll get me through it.

I must just say this- once I get back, the blog will live on. I'll keep writing right up until September, when it will officially be the end of my 'unexpected gap year'. There may not be so many entries, but this is not the final one, so please, keep following! Hearing all your feedback and comments has been so encouraging to me, and I hope you've enjoyed the experience of Ghana in my words.

If it were possible, I'd love to do a little jump back in time to last May. I'd stroll down the road to Skehans, the yellow pub on the corner, and go inside, and I would locate the blonde, morose, exhausted-looking girl staring into a half-pint of cider, panicking about work deadlines, looming A-levels, having to get up and do another wretched day in school the next morning. Give her a tap on the shoulder, and smile when she turns round and looks uncomprehendingly at this person in faded shorts and a scraggy vest, with hair in a messy bundle on top of her head, a shitload of jangly bracelets and an actual tan.

"Don't you worry," I'd say. "It's going to be a bit shit. I'm not gonna lie. But it will get so much better. I promise. Just you wait."

And I'd give her a hug and a big smile, and as she pushed me away, about to call for someone to throw this freaky stranger out of the pub, I'd nod at her drink.

"Incidentally, where you're going, the booze is so much cheaper than that."

Ayikoo, Ghana. Until next time.

Eight days- Football Fever

G-O-O-O-A-A-A-L!

I've honestly never been that interested in football. I was aware of it to the extent that I would sometimes walk through the house and see my brother or GOM yelling at the TV screen like a couple of morons, but I always took it for a load of idiot men running around on a field kicking a bit of blown-up leather.

How wrong I was.

You see, out here the people live and breathe football like oxygen. The channel is turned to the world cup twenty four hours a day, the house is constantly filled with people watching the matches, and even the Rev.- the most mild-mannered man on the entire planet- is magically transformed into a howler monkey for the ninety minutes it takes to play out every game.

On Saturday I was in Takoradi saying goodbye to most of the volunteers, who I will now not see again before they fly this coming Saturday night. We all decided to go down the the Jubilee grounds; a large parade field, to watch Ghana vs USA on the big screen down there. We bedecked ourselves in flags, headbands, hats, and drew black stars all over our bodies in liquid eyeliner, because it was the last chance we'd have to do something like this. As we walked down to the parade grounds, every person we passed cheered us, shouting "GHANA GHANA GHANA!" in our wake; a variation on the usual cry of "Obruni!" The parade ground itself was heaving with people, bearing costumes, flags, banners, huge noisemakers, and the air was buzzing with excitement. Ghana is the last African country in the world cup, and we were facing up to one of the largest superpowers in the entire world... Only on the pitch of course, but there was something rather symbolic about it.

When the first goal came, a few minutes into the match, the entire parade grounds erupted. You've never seen football celebrated until you've watched it with a host of Ghanaians. I was lifted off my feet by a group of men I'd never met before and tossed from person to person, I fought my way back to the people I was watching with and we all leapt up and down, screaming ourselves hoarse and blowing whistles in each others' faces, and the whole place danced like there was no tomorrow. I'd never felt something like that before; I never knew when you take a couple of hundred excited people and put them into one place together the whole quality of the air itself becomes something electric. We were going to win this match!

At half time the enormous speakers blared out music and the dancing continued. It was dark by then and the only light other than that emenating from the huge screen came from the enormous full moon over our heads, sillouhetting the leaping crowd at the front of the field and the enormous flags being waved two and fro, as though someone had put them on slow motion.

And then disaster struck when the USA scored a goal and everything was evened out. When that moment came everything fell suddenly silent- someone in the sky had clearly gone 'enough of that', and turned the volume down. Everyone was too dismayed to even yell abuse at the screen, and suddenly I found myself more tense than I had been since all the visa difficulties I had about a month ago. Over a game of football? What on earth was happening to me? I had to take small periods crouched in a ball with my face against my knees- I couldn't bear to watch the screen and my calves were killing me after over an hour of jumping up and down like an idiot. Oh, and my voice was going. Everything was falling apart!

By the time we got into Extra Time, all the Ghanaians were almost as pale as the smattering of obrunis in the crowd. We needed to win this game or we would be out of the running for the world cup, and that would be a complete and utter disaster for people right the way across the country. When the second goal came and the tension broke, the whole place seemed to explode outwards, a shockwave of hysterical relief passing through the square and sorrounding town. The last seven minutes of the game were carried through by all the people leaping up and down, using our combined mental powers to deflect the ball repeatedly from the Ghanaian goal. If the energy of all the people had a colour it would have been blindingly white, like burning magnesium. We knew the USA wouldn't score again, we weren't going to let them. We had the power.

And so when the final whistle came, the explosion wasn't as vast as it had been for that last goal- from that moment on we had known, secretly that we were safe. And so everybody danced again, under the bright full moon, the air humming with a physical sense of joy. The flags waved, the people sang, there wasn't a single person within a fifty mile radius not celebrating with us. The feeling of concentrated joy, exuded by hundreds of people all at once, is something really quite incredible. When we left the parade grounds we went on to a bar, and then to a club, and when we staggered home at half past four in the morning, the party was still going on. And I was fully converted to the power of football in uniting people, whole countries, giving them something to be proud of, something to celebrate, something to bring them all together. I'm still buzzing now, and I could never have considered a sport capable of bringing on that much excitement. With a week left in Ghana, I am so, so glad I got to share such a fantastic night for everyone in the country.

England lost against Germany on the Sunday night incidentally- but who cares about that?

Fifteen days; me and my mole.

I almost had a heart attack when I turned around from the sink with my mouth full of toothpaste and found the Rev. standing a few inches away from my face. He was staring at my head in a sort of bland concern- (if indeed you can actually string the words 'bland' and 'concern' together).

"Eh," he said, gesturing at my neck, "You are hurt."

"Wha- oh. No. No. It's a mole. It's natural, I've had it since I was a baby."

If I got a cedi for every time I've had to explain away the mole behind my right ear- no, it's not a mosquito bite, not a disease, not a wound, not contagious, not going to kill me- I could easily afford to stay out here for another couple of months. The children at school pile on top of each other so they can get a chance to poke it.

If only I had the luxury of another month out here. The volunteers have been departing in a steady flow ever since the last knees-up at Kokrobite, and I'm sure that now I should be starting to wind down as well. The topic of conversation between us all invariably turns around to plans for the first few days back in England, what we will wear, what we will eat, who we will see, where we will go.... And I don't really feel ready for it. I don't feel ready to set about packing my things, I don't feel ready to even start thinking about returning to the reality of life in the UK. I mean, surely by now I should be starting to feel even the slightest of pangs pulling me back to England? The others have all clicked back into place so easily, The Fear seems redundant now. But where is the urge to go home? In less than two weeks? I seem to have misplaced it somewhere among all the detritus on the floor of my bedroom.

I mean no offence to my family and friends at home. I love you all. Really, I do. But at this moment in time, the excitement of seeing old friends again is entirely drowned out by the desolation I feel at having to leave me community, my school, my pupils. With a matter of weeks left I am lumbered with a deep sense of regret that I didn't do more for my school. I'm not sure what, just- more. I wish I had the power to give my kids everything they deserve. I wish I could pack fifty of them into my suitcase and take them home with me. My Mother would love that, especially now they're ripping out the kitchen...

A Tribute To My Roomie.

"Don't take this the wrong way," the volunteer said confidentially, patting my arm. "But after the first week, me and my partner talked about everyone, and we agreed on one thing. You two were NEVER going to work. You were the couple who would end up killing each other."

I wasn't offended. This was what everybody thought. I'm pretty sure that secretly, the two of us were more convinced of it than everyone else on the trip put together. But now I am here alone, with the goats and the chickens, and the rain coming down in sheets, I want to pay tribute to My Roomie and our unlikely friendship, which has been one of the defining features of this trip for me. Two reasons for this- Firstly because I promised her I would, and she'd probably come back over here to punch my lights out if I failed to follow through. And secondly because I've learnt so much from her in the time we've been out here, and she's generally just a bloody fantastic person.

Fantastic, yes; but if God in His infinite wisdom and mercy had decided to pick a totally unlikely couple and dump them in the middle of nowhere for half a year as some sort of sadistic social experiment, we could well have been the first people He had gone for. Without even the presence of other, normal people around to balance out the severe differences between us, the capacity for disaster was huge.

Somehow though, we made it work. The presence of mice in our bedroom helped us into working as a team- (it takes two to make hurling books and shining torches a really effective method of extermination)- and the moments of pure, pure hilarity during the course of our stay have been golden.

I could talk about her resourcefulness- giving oneself a contraceptive injection in a totally unsanitary environment with no professional medics around to help out shows huge strength of character. She had intitially asked me to do the honours- I laughed. The Scientist later pointed out that she could have struck a nerve with the needle and paralysed herself for life. She laughed. We considered the notion of the Rev. coming into the bedroom to find her paralysed on the bed with a needle protruding from the base of her spine. We both wet ourselves laughing.

Or the time she trapped herself in Bryan and The Savage's bathroom- the door has a broken handle and once you close it you can't get it open again-, and we had to recruit a teacher from Bryan's school to come up and break the door down with his foot, while Bryan and I clung onto each other in the hallway crying with hysterical laughter and hoping that the clamour of the church service taking place downstairs would drown the noise of splintering wood.

Having such a strenuous day at school that she dragged us both for a beer at two o'clock in the afternoon, so that I later went weaving slightly down to the internet cafe convinced that the entire community was about to strike me down in flames.

I can't count the number of occasions when she's stopped me from strolling absently out into the road and getting mown down by a speeding vehicles, or behaving like a total moron in front of the locals; "What...? What...? Are you kicking me for a reason?" She's taught me how to use my emotional backbone, and that you can get away with being blunt; another line I've grown used to hearing in my daily routine is "all right stop it now you tit, you're really annoying me,"- something I would never have dared say to a friend before in my life. She imparted so many important life skills to me; I never knew before that the way to get to sleep when pissed out of your skull was to lie on your side, close one eye and concentrate. No, really concentrate. If you don't concentrate it won't work. (After delivering that particular nugget of information she went on to fall headfirst into a street gutter).

So, when does it really sink in for me that she's going? Not when she takes all her photos down off the wall and packs up her suitcase. Not when the school holds her leaving ceremony, and the children all line up and very solemnly present her with gifts, (six bars of soap and a toilet roll). It's when I come back from my first day alone at school to an empty and suddenly very silent bedroom that I realise quite how much I'm going to miss having her around.

Life works in funny ways sometimes, and she was the last person I would ever have expected to live with, but winding up in the backarse of Ghana with My Roomie has probably been one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I'm certain at least, that the memories of it will stay with me for a very long time.

The Beginning of the End

The Savage has flown, the first of the volunteers are officially heading away back to distant civilization, marking the beginning of our final stage in Ghana. We celebrated with a ridiculous party in the beach house at Kokrobite. Yes, the beginning of the end would start with a BANG if we had anything to do with it!

...In fact there are only fragments of the actual night itself I remember.

I remember drinking packets of neat gin with that dude off The Hangover, the one who can't do anything except play cards. Yes, it was actually him, and he was hanging around with his friend from Holland.

I remember the rest of my alcohol then being gently, but firmly confiscated by The Savage, and rushing around in a panic yelling at all the others (and a couple of complete strangers) that she was going to take my hip flask back to Canada with her, and we musn't, musn't let her because it would be a terrible, terrible thing to happen.

I remember a lot of hysterical drunken yelling, the word "MOOSE!", and about twenty repetitions of the song "DOWN IN ONE, DOWN IN ONE, DOWN IN ONEEEE, DOWN IN ONE, DOWN IN ONE DOWN IN O-ONEEEE, DOWN IN ONE DOWN IN ONE, DOWN IN OOOONEEE DOOOOWN IN OOOOONEEEE....." etc etc etc.

I remember staggering off down the beach with some of the volunteers and some friendly local Rastas, who then proceeded to rob one of us blind and hurl her bag onto the roof of a shack, where it would later be discovered in the cold, sober light of the next morning completely empty. Perhaps that Ghanaian who had been yelling "DO NOT GO WITH THEM! THEY ARE CRIMINALS! THEY ARE CRIMINALS!" at our drunkenly retreating backs had had a point.

I remember being encouraged to dance around a beach bonfire, singing some African Tribal music. Or perhaps that was just the yells of a bunch of extremely pissed people; hard to distinguish.

I remember one of the boys, who will henceforth be referred to as Spock after the joys of a recent haircut- finding an emaciated puppy on the beach and feeding it a kebab, while slurring at the rest of us that "this is m'new besht friend... and hish name is TJ.... and the rest of you are all rubbish...."

I remember falling over about a million bodies to get back into the house at two a.m and miraculously scoring the only bed in the entire building. Don't anyone ask me how I managed that because I have no idea.

And then I remember more or less everything about the next morning; waking up to find that a bomb composed of gin sachets, empty bottles and playing cards had exploded on the roof, falling back over a million bodies to get out of the house for a shower, and the dull throbbing at the base of my skull which totally overrode any memory of the previous night.

What a bloody great party.