Our house

During my tour of the house – which is a bungalow – Aaron was keen to tell me that we have just been connected to running water! So we no longer need to collect our water from the borehole. This was exciting news! It means that the toilet now flushes and the taps run, although the shower is not connected and we’ll need to bathe using buckets of water. It is not heated but on their last trip to Wa my housemates had invested in a kettle so we can heat water for doing our washing. It doesn’t matter that the water isn’t hot to bathe in because the weather is so hot that cold water is refreshing, particularly in the evening.

When you first enter the house there is an area to store the motorbikes and cycles. I will not be using a motorbike but will need to buy a bike from Wa for cycling. The first room in the main house is the large lounge. All the floors are concrete although the lounge has some tiles on it, and the walls are painted either blue or green. All the windows have grills on them to help stop mosquitoes and other insects coming into the house, and also offer additional security.

In the kitchen is a large barrel for storing water because the tap at the sink has such low pressure that the water trickles. It’s also important to have a stock of water just in case the running water stops for any reason. There is a gas cooker with hob which is better than I had expected, although the oven only does one temperature – its highest! There is also a fridge and some shelves for food storage. On one side of the room is a worktop with the water filters on it. Water for drinking must be filtered to avoid us catching any bugs so these are filled regularly.


From the lounge you enter a corridor. This leads first to Cath’s room, then to mine with the toilet and shower room opposite, and finally to Aaron and Noriko’s at the end. My room is quite large with a double bed and, so they tell me, the best fan in the house as it is new! When I switched it on it nearly took off! Also in my room there is a desk and chair and a small wardrobe (one of those fabric ones you can get from Argos) with a cardboard shelf in it.


One of my tasks later is to buy some curtains for the windows and also a means to attach them. I need to put up a mosquito net too (another problem-solving task!), but thankfully this is not urgent as it is the dry season and there are relatively few mosquitoes, unlike in the south where I was bitten several times, despite being covered in insecticide. This is to be avoided because of the malaria risk.

The toilet is a normal flushing one! The shower is not connected and the sink tap barely runs, but there is a tap in the wall below the shower which is strong. This is used to fill the buckets to ‘shower’ in using a big ladle. The water then washes away down a drain on the floor.


Washing clothes was a new experience for me today! I boiled the kettle and filled one of the buckets in the shower room with hot and cold water, and a second bucket with cold rinsing water. I then put some travel washing liquid and some fabric softener in the warm water and began the task of scrubbing my clothes. Once they were rinsed I hung them outside and found them dry within an hour and a half! My housemates tell me that a better way of doing it is to soak the clothes in the soapy water overnight before rinsing them the next day, so I will try this in future.

Outside, the garden is dry and dusty with little growing in it, although Cath and Aaron have plans to grow vegetables in it at some point.

The journey north

Once we had completed our in-country training it was time for our long journey north to our placements. On Saturday morning we left our hotel in Accra at 6.30. Our driver Issa had travelled down from Bolga the day before in a four wheel drive which had an open boot for our luggage. As well as our luggage (and water filters etc) there was Mike’s too, and some deliveries to go north, along with some VSO bits and pieces. We only just managed to get our luggage and some of Mike’s in once the VSO bits were in, so Mike couldn’t come with us and went up on the bus instead.

The journey to Bolga was long – 14 hours – but strangely it didn’t feel like that. I think when you know it’s going to be such a long journey you don’t really think about the time, and also it was interesting to look at the changing scenery along the way.

The land changed gradually from fairly hilly, tropical and green to flat, dry and brown, and also became far less populated.


We passed over two rivers – the Black Volta and the White Volta, so known because of its chalky appearance, before finally arriving in Tamale. This is the most populated area of the north and we stopped for a quick, late lunch, having broken the back of the journey. It was just an hour and a half before we arrived at Janet’s house in Walewale, and met Mike’s wife, Charlotte. The house was basic but fairly large and well cared for, and I could see that Charlotte was keen to make Janet welcome. She had invited several local people round to meet her already, and had organised her room. It was noticeably hot in the house, but cooler outside where there was an evening breeze.

Walewale is in the Northern Region of Ghana (capital Tamale) which is so called because it used to be the most northern part of the country. However, some time ago the borders were moved further north, creating two areas called the Upper East and the Upper West. Michelle is staying in Bolgatanga which is the capital of the Upper East region and is about an hour’s journey north of Walewale. I am staying in Jirapa which is far to the west of the Upper West region, where Wa is the capital. The road between Bolga and Jirapa is said to be the worst in Ghana, and as even the ‘good’ roads are full of potholes and difficult to drive anyway I was concerned about this leg of the journey!

Aware of the time and the fast approaching dark (sunset is almost instantaneous and takes place at 6.30pm every day regardless of the time of year) we said our goodbyes and Michelle & I continued our northward journey to Bolgatanga. This is a fairly large town, and Michelle’s house is near the centre in quite a lively place. The house has a wall around it for security. She is living with Christina who is Irish, and again the house was basic but attractive. Having made arrangements to meet Michelle and Christina the next day I left with the driver for a lovely, quiet and family-run hotel in Bolga called Siralodge. Although it was on the same road as Michelle’s house it was quite some distance from it so I knew I would need to get a taxi to see her the next day.


The owner of the Siralodge helped me hail a taxi after lunch on the Sunday and I went over to Michelle’s. We went for a short walk so Michelle could buy some food supplies from a tiny shop. This was far from a supermarket, or even a corner shop as we know it, and we began to realise that shopping would be a complex business. She managed to buy some rice and a couple of tins and some wafers and water, as well as toilet roll and a pair of flipflops for the shower.

Next Christina took us to a restaurant where I sampled groundnut soup with chicken and a rice ball. The soup was spicy and delicious and the rice ball was cooked rice squeezed together so it was quite stodgy. The Ghanaians dip bits of rice ball into the soup and this proved to be tasty too, although I couldn’t eat all the rice. They eat with their fingers and only use their right hand (using the left is rude), but we stuck to knives and forks!

Next a variety of VSO volunteers joined us to watch Ghana in the quarter final of the Africa Cup of Nations tournament. They were playing Angola, the host nation, and won the match 1-0! We cheered loudly along with the Ghanaians in the restaurant! Ghanaians seem surprised their country has come this far in the tournament because they didn’t really rate the team.

Soon it was time to get a good night’s sleep at the hotel so I bid farewell to Michelle and Christina, and on Monday Issa arrived at 9am to drive me to Jirapa. They weren’t kidding about the road! It was awful. There was no tarmac and it was full of craters and potholes, and I learned why there are so many handles to hold onto in four wheel drive vehicles!

This picture shows a good part of the road!

There were very few settlements along the way, apart from the occasional farming community. Also there were hardly any other cars on the road, and we passed just a handful of people on motorbikes.


Halfway along the road we came to a small town and a sign marking the border between Upper East and Upper West and gradually the road began to improve a little.


Then Issa uttered the immortal words, ‘That road has improved so much since I last drove it that I think we will arrive early in Jirapa’! I can’t imagine what it was like before, and I also can’t imagine what it must be like going along it in a tro-tro! We passed some dried up rivers as it is the dry season and finally arrived in Jirapa about 2pm. At the house we were met by Aaron and his partner Noriko who are two of my housemates.

Issa and Aaron unloaded my desk and chair from the truck, along with my luggage, and before long Issa had left and we were sitting down to lunch and chatting. For lunch we had toast and peanut butter, and coleslaw. I was relieved to find tea was on offer too!

Aaron went back to work after lunch, while I unpacked and settled in and Noriko worked on some Japanese translation work. Around 5.30 my other housemate, Cath, returned from work. Cath is lovely and we had a good chat about her work in the schools, and about life in Ghana in general. We found to our amazement that we both did our teacher training at Goldsmiths in South London, and are the same age bar a few days. We worked out that Cath was in the year above me because I had my year out before I went to college, but then she took a year out in her third year, so she would have been in my year for our final two years. We didn’t meet though because we were doing different specialisms, and spent a lot of time out on teaching practices.

Noriko cooked dinner. It was ‘red red’ which is a Ghanaian dish of bean stew, leaves of some kind (nobody could name them but they were like spinach) and fried plantain. After the football – the quarter final between Zambia and Nigeria which Nigeria won on penalties – I fell into bed exhausted having made plans to visit the Education Office with Aaron in the morning. Ghana will play Nigeria in the semi-finals on Thursday!

In-country training

We have spent the last three days on VSO in-country training, having moved to our hotel on Tuesday after saying goodbye to Mariam and Darlington, and leaving our lovely villa.

The Hotel Byblos was very different from our villa and, while we assumed VSO would not book luxury, we gradually realised that the standard of the accommodation was not acceptable. Two of us had been stuck out in a separate building in which the rooms were so pokey we had to remove the furniture to get our luggage in the door. They were grubby too and had varying degrees of poor air conditioning, with no storage space at all. The last straw was the lack of security at night... While the main building had security guards, the other building did not, and we couldn’t lock its main door which opened straight onto the street. Finally the next day, after Janet had argued with him, the manager upgraded us to some good rooms on the main site!

Our training took place at the VSO office where we met a variety of people involved in education in Ghana, including Tenko (Country Director for VSO Ghana), Ubold (Education Programme Officer), Eric (lead for TENI – Tackling Education Inclusively), Dora (Programme Area Officer for Education), Antoinette (Finance & Support Manager), Comfort (Reception) and Nii (National Programme Manager).

Michelle, me, Tenko, Janet and Mike

Dora and Ubold

We had a full range of training in an air conditioned room at the VSO office, led by several different people. Ubold started with a session on expectations and challenges, Nii took us through Ghanaian culture and background, Tenko took us through security, and Dora, Ubold & Eric gave a question and answer session on the Ghanaian education system. On the last day we had a health briefing from the doctor and then were given the following to take with us up north - sterile first aid kit, water filter, sheets & blanket, two mosquito nets and our pocket money for the three months (1058 Ghana cedis which is approximately £400). We believe it is likely that we will be able to live on this if we’re careful with our money as the cost of living is much less than in the UK. That said, we will use our own money when we travel around, partly because we don’t trust the safety of the tro-tros (small buses).

Kwesi, the Cocoa Research Institute driver, arrived at the Ghana office later on the last day with our outfits Gertrude had made for us. They are all made of the same fabric (blue & green with a printed pattern) and are lovely. It’s a good job we won’t be wearing them at the same time as nobody will be able to work out who is who! Mine fits really well apart from being a little long and it will be perfect for Fridays when everyone dresses in national costume.

While we were on the training Mike (who we'd met already in England) organised for a variety of volunteers to come and meet us. On the first night, in the Lebanese restaurant next to the hotel we met Emily who is based in Accra. She was really friendly and chatty, and had been in Accra on a fund-raising placement since September. Over the following days we met Sandra, who is based in a town near me in Jirapa, Lana who is based in Tamale, and Jude, also based in Accra. Jude is working for the Ministry, writing a scheme of lesson activities for teachers. The volunteers’ approach differs from person to person. Jude was very laid back about illness, and eats and drinks pretty much whatever he wants. He says that is the only way to build up an immunity. We decided between us though, that this was not a good idea for us because we are only here for 3 months and don’t want to be ill for any of it! Emily had been ill for three days, recovered and not had a problem since, but she told us about Cath up in Jirapa who had had dysentery and ended up in hospital.

On Tuesday it is Michelle’s birthday so we decided to celebrate on the last night. We went to an air conditioned Italian restaurant, and Janet and I gave her a card, and a bracelet and Ghanaian flag we had picked up at the craft market.

Tomorrow we transfer north which will be a long journey. We will stop at Walewale and drop Janet off at Charlotte & Mike’s house, then at Bolgatanga (known as Bolga) and drop off Michelle to live with her housemate, Christina. I will be staying in a hotel in Bolga until Monday as the driver needs a rest day on Sunday. On Monday I will transfer to Jirapa where my adventure will continue!

Shai Hills Reserve and Cape Coast University

Two more days have passed and shortly we will be transferring to the Byblos Hotel for our in-country training.

On Sunday we went to the Shai Hills Sanctuary. This is a small reserve and Darlington was able to drive us through it in the 4-wheel drive. First we saw the baboons and fed them with a banana, and then as we drove on we saw antelope and a variety of birds, including guinea fowl who had no road sense.

Within the reserve is a cave that had been previously occupied by a tribe called the Sayu, and is now occupied by thousands of bats. We climbed up to it, but Janet had to retire as she was wearing the wrong clothing and footwear! The smell was overpowering but the sight of the bats was fascinating.


At some point during the drive a stick insect popped into the car for a visit. It crawled over me and I didn’t mind too much but when it got to Janet she screamed loudly!


After coming away from the reserve we stopped for a drink and Darlington entertained us with stories of what happens in Ghana when people steal things. People don’t talk to the police but deal with the problem themselves, and thieves are badly beaten. This explains why nobody steals anything from the stalls overnight!


Next we visited a coffin shop Darlington knew about. It was full of novelty coffins! By that I mean they were carved into shapes relevant to the dead person, such as a cocoa bean pod, or a chicken, or a large insect. This was completely different from anything we’d ever seen before. The shop was set in a very run down area.

Lastly we drove through the embassy district of Accra. This was a very smart area, particularly around the very large American Embassy, and there was an International School. As we left the bats of Accra began to fly from their roosting places in the trees in the city. The sky was soon filled with millions of bats as far as the eye could see, making their loud squealing calls. They were flying to their night-time feeding areas.

Monday soon arrived and Darlington drove us to the Cape Coast University where we were met by our contact, Might, at the Institute of Education. The University is piloting a scheme called TESSA (Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa) which is a set of resources for African teachers by African teachers so we were particularly interested to hear about it, and picked up several CDRoms for our schools. On our arrival we were shown to a lovely air-conditioned lecture theatre and were introduced to Kwame (Saturday male born) who was the Deputy Director, Eric who was a lecturer at the teacher training college and Millicent, who was a local primary teacher who was using the TESSA materials.


Kwame and Might gave us an overview of TESSA and then there was a question and answer session. We looked at monitoring materials and found out more information about schools and funding in general. State schools are funded differently from the UK, but the same across the country. They receive separate funds for catering, exercise books, maintenance etc, and a capitation per child of 60 cedis (£25) per year. This is spent on day to day running of the school, including transport for trips. Levels of funding are very dependent on who is president at the time. Unfortunately we found that running the TESSA programme is very dependent on access to computers, and while progress is being made in providing computers for schools in the south, schools in the north are being left behind as they have very few computers and certainly little internet access. Even the teacher training college up north in Navrongo does not have enough computers to train the teachers on. Might fetched us several copies of the CDRom though so we will pass these on to our schools. Their use will depend very much on whether teachers have access to computers and printers at home, although we can use my laptop to read it. Some of the resources are ideas rather than print outs so teachers will be able to make use of it in some way.



We were told that Ghana has a National Curriculum which is online and there should be a hard copy in every school too. TESSA links to it broadly, and is divided into five subject areas – Language, Numeracy, Science, Art & Social Studies (Humanities) and Life Skills (PSHE & Citizenship). The website for TESSA is www.tessafrica.net and more resources can be accessed here, although currently the website is down.

On the way home we stopped to buy some Cape Coast pineapples from a street seller. These are particularly delicious, sweet pineapples and were fresh from the trees. We bought six large ones for 4 cedis (£1.70) – two for Mariam, two for Darlington and two for us.

At 9.30pm Mike Cashman, another volunteer who we’d met in Milton Keynes in December, arrived and stayed overnight with us – the more the merrier!

Tuesday was spent around the villa, updating our blogs and packing ready for our transfer to the hotel.

Days at the Cocoa Research Institute

It’s now Saturday and we’ve had a brilliant few days with Dr Isaac and his friends at the Cocoa Research Institute (CRIG).

On our first day we had breakfast in the restaurant at 7am which really wasn’t to our taste so we hurried through it and started our tour of the institute. First we saw the coffee beans, cocoa pods and beans. The beans go through a drying process. The moisture is used as a by-product, while the beans are divided into good and bad. The sub-standard ones and moisture are used for cosmetics, alcohol and jam.

The Cocoa Research Institute is a massive complex which was built in colonial times and still operates in much the same way as it did in the past. It exists to carry out research on cocoa plants to reduce disease and find the best varieties, as well as to create other products. 1000 people are employed there and there is a clear hierarchy of scientists, catering staff, security staff and drivers. Scientists are at the top of the pile.

We were treated exceptionally well and assigned a driver named Kwasi, as well as various hosts to look after our needs. After we had toured the institute our host for the day – a PR man named Richard – came over to take us to Dr Isaac’s wife’s school, The Royal Ascot Montessori School, which is on the CRIG site.

This is a private school owned by Gertrude who is the ‘proprietor’. She has a governing body and employs a headteacher and the teachers. We found it difficult to work out the difference between Gertrude’s job and the headteacher’s job, but in the end we decided she probably does the finance & admin, while he concentrates on the curriculum and teaching. The children ranged from 1 year to 12 years, but the school has capacity to go up to 14 years. We were disconcerted to find that even the youngest children were seated on chairs in rows. They were being taught in English and were being encouraged to be very polite. The headteacher or Gertrude would say ‘Hello children, how are you?’ and they would reply ‘I am fine, thank you and how are you?’ The children were remarkably well behaved, but really unusually quiet. This may have been because of our presence as they were clearly overawed by us, or maybe because of the culture of the school, or even because of the canes the teachers were holding.

We met the chair of the PTA whose son is in the school, and who is a teacher in the local secondary school. The PTA had recently raised money for new toilets for the school. All through our tour our PR host, Richard, was worrying about the time as we had a drive ahead of us, so after about an hour we headed off towards our car. Suddenly a dear girl of about 11 years appeared beside us. She had special needs but was clearly accepted into the school and the staff seemed fond of her. One of our tasks when working with our schools is to encourage an inclusive approach to children with special needs so this seemed very positive.

Next we headed off to the big Volta dam at Akasombo. The creation of the dam in the 1960s on the huge Volta River resulted in the creation of the Volta Lake, one of the largest artificially created lakes in the world. The power of the dam’s water is used to produce 65% of Ghana’s electricity. The lake submerged nearly 740 villages and displaced about 80,000 people, 70,000 of whom were moved into newly constructed settlements. The total cost of the project was $196,000,000 of which $14,000,000 came from the UK.

Richard’s tour continued on to the Boti Waterfalls. Unfortunately because it is the dry season this usually magnificent sight was virtually dry! After taking a walk down to it we moved on and looked at a palm nut tree which had grown unusually into three trunks, and a rock formation which was strangely balanced.

We had some very funny moments that day too! We stopped to buy some mangoes from a seller at the side of the road. We looked and said we would like three large mangoes and three small ones. We clearly didn’t make ourselves understood because the lady started packing loads of mangoes into bags, but we assumed the Richard and Kwesi were also buying some. Turns out they weren’t and in fact the mangoes were in piles and they thought we wanted three large piles and three small piles! So we had mangoes coming out of our ears for several days! Later we saw vultures laying in the sun warming themselves and had to stop to take pictures – to the amazement of our hosts!

On our second day a gentleman who’s name we cannot recall became our host and Kwesi drove us all to see two schools in Jamasi which is just north of Kumasi. First we dropped in to a ‘kente’ factory. Kente is the woven fabric native to Ghana with all the bright colours. There is single weave, double weave and treble weave – each becoming thicker and better in quality. There were several people working looms and others selling. I bought some sandals, Janet bought a tie and a bag for her notebook and Michelle bought some strips of fabric for school displays. Just outside the store in the village were some adorable small children!

The two schools we were to visit were Michelle’s ‘partner schools’ – ie her school already has links with them. Alfred, who we joined for lunch on Monday, is the teacher who organises the international links for his school, the Jamasi Methodist Junior High School. This is where we began. When we arrived the children were having a break and we walked though the primary school meeting the younger children. Then we moved on to the staff room and met the staff, including the headteacher, and another teacher who was nicknamed ‘Sly’. Finally we were shown to a classroom full of children from several classes, aged between 11 and 14 years. Here we had an open forum where the children were able to ask us a range of questions. These children were noticeably cheerful, lively and friendly, and clearly interested in us and what we had to say. Most were wearing yellow uniforms, while some wore red as it was Friday and they could wear national costume.

After the forum the children sang the National Anthem and then recited the pledge. Michelle asked a boy to record a video for us and he was thrilled to do it. When we went outside the children flocked to see us and have their photos taken with us. As we walked back Janet asked if there was a toilet we could use. They called a boy over (coincidentally the same one who had recorded the video) and asked him to lead us. We thought we were going to the school toilet, but it seemed there was only one and the key was lost. So the boy led us to his house which was next to the school. His very surprised Mum organised for us to use the toilet but to do this had to send someone out to buy toilet roll, as well as preparing water for the flush. Meanwhile, life in the house courtyard continued as normal; somebody was drawing water from a well, a baby was being bathed, and maize was drying on the flagstones.

Before we knew it, it was time to move onto the other partner school up the road – The Seventh Day Adventist Junior High School, also catering for 11 – 14 year olds. This also had an attached primary school, and again the children were excited and friendly, and keen for photos. Alfred and Sly accompanied us and introduced us to the staff. They showed us the ICT suite. This had about six or eight computers in it, which were second hand from the UK. Some of them were broken but others working; none of them was switched on while we were there.

Again we had pictures with the children and staff, several times causing a scrum with the younger children as they tried to be in the photos. As we left the younger children ran after us waving, whilst the older ones stood back – being far too cool for that!

On the way to Kumasi to drop our host off (he lived there) we stopped to buy some plantain chips off a street seller. These are like large banana chips but are savoury – delicious!

On our third day we had an early breakfast before bidding farewell to Dr Isaac and Gertrude. To our amazement Gertrude had organised for a seamstress to stop by and said she wished to make us each a gift of a traditional Ghanaian outfit. We were asked to choose a design from some pictures and assured that the finished clothes would be delivered to Accra during the week when somebody from the institute was around on business. We have been amazed at the generosity of the Ghanaian people. They are so proud of their country and wish to show it off, but also they just love meeting new people and helping them out.

We arrived back at the villa in Accra before lunch and took some time to check emails and do some washing. Then Janet and I were off to the mall to sort out her internet at the Vodafone store, before heading to the Accra craft market. We had such a laugh there with the sellers! We bought plenty of wooden crafts and trinkets and enjoyed bartering. Janet is an expert at this whilst I have much to learn! As we left a young man tried to sell me some bracelets and then proceeded to tell me he wished to marry me and take me out tonight! Luckily our canny driver, Darlington, drove off at just the right moment....

Arrival at last

Well we safely arrived in Accra, the capital city of Ghana, and it’s now the evening of day 3! So much has happened! Having survived the slightly hair-raising exit from the airport (many many Ghanaian gentlemen desperate to help us with our luggage for a tip) we met Darlington, our driver, who took us to our lovely villa. Mariam, our housekeeper, welcomed us and showed us around before we collapsed into bed. Not sure why we were so tired, given that we were upgraded on the flight!

The next morning we checked the temperature outside... It was 41.2 degrees! As it was -2 degrees when we left Heathrow it’s no wonder this was a bit of a culture shock! We will take some time to acclimatise as the heat can be unbearable.

Mariam took us shopping. The supermarket, named Shoprite, was really very similar to the supermarkets at home, as was the mall where it was located. We bought groceries for the villa and Mariam planned several meals for us. For those who are wondering why VSO provides such luxury don’t be deceived! At the moment we are here under our own steam, and will be joining VSO early next week for our in-country training. That’s when the making do with the conditions will start! Finally, on the way back to the villa we stopped at a stall for fresh fruit and vegetables. The cape coast pineapples and paw paw proved to be delicious.

Next was the task of purchasing new mobiles and internet dongles so that we can access the internet via our laptops wherever we are in Ghana. This took some time, and was followed by lunch with two teachers from one of Michelle’s partner schools, named Alfred and Grace. We will be visiting their school on Friday.

Tuesday dawned equally warm and sunny! Darlington said it would take 2 hours to reach Kakum National Park. This proved to be Ghanaian time and the journey actually took 4 hours! Kakum National Park is renowned for its ‘walkway canopy’ and we walked around it in the treetops of the rainforest forty feet up. Michelle and Janet found this a little frightening and were quick to make their way round, whereas I have the experience of River Dart high ropes which made it a piece of cake! I even found time for some ‘extreme ocarina’ which will disgust Miss Pedrick! Sadly we saw no animals in the forest as they were having their afternoon sleeps, but we did see plenty of lizards...

We ate then at a pool where the crocs swim and at the time we were there the crocs were out sunning themselves. Another opportunity for some extreme ocarina!

When we left the park Darlington took us to a small fishing town called Elmina. The boats made an amazing picture as they left the harbour with all their colours and flags, and the air was filled with excitement as the boats made their way out to the ocean for a night of fishing. The castle in Elmina was worth a visit. It was built as place to ‘store’ slaves before they were transported to other countries, and the atmosphere was very sobering. 12 million slaves were trafficked through this and other castles during the period by the Portuguese, Dutch and British, and 8 million died.

We arrived back at the villa late, and prepared to leave the next day with Dr Isaac Okubu for the Cocoa Research Institute in Tafo. This is in the Eastern region of Ghana. On the road was some interesting traffic... including cows!

We spent some time getting here – no travel in Ghana is quick, especially if you’re travelling through Accra – and then met the Deputy Executive Director of the Institute. This was our first experience of the customs in meeting somebody very important in Ghana and we had a feeling we may have done it wrong! Ghanaian people are very quietly spoken and when we first walked into the room the director said nothing, so we filled the silence. Then we sat down and Isaac began to speak a long introduction about us. Then the director spoke. I think then we were meant to speak.... so we did! He wished us a happy stay before we left and we were shown to our accommodation – a large B&B – and given a late lunch. This time we tried fried plantain which was delicious with chicken and a curry sauce.

In the evening we met Isaac’s wife, Gertrude, who is the proprietor of the local private school. We will be visiting her school in the morning, as well as touring the Cocoa Research Institute.