Dana in Ghana

The first day in Accra I didn't really do much. The flight exhausted me so much, that I ended up pretty much laying around all day. Later Beatrice and I cooked together and it was fun. Also the food tasted really good. In the morning I had tried Ghanaian peanut butter the first time and it was so rich and yummy I could've eaten it just on its own (nonetheless I ate it with bread).
Beatrice had had a dentist appointment earlier in the day but in the afternoon she took me outside and showed me around the neighbourhood. People were so friendly, the children looked at me shy and smiling, especially when I waved at them. Some of them stared at me and giggled. The women gave me many compliments about my looks, I didn't ever hear I was pretty before so often. (They themselves looked breathtaking too and they had the brightest and most honest smiles.) The men asked me why I didn't bring them money in a joking way, because being European means I'm rich apparently (I cannot lie, the euro is very strong compared to the cedi).
They all laughed and smiled with a radiant energy. 
Some little children were talking about me behind my back, I think they called me Obruni - which means as much as white person - and an older guy with glasses said to them: "No that's a white lady! Say hello to the white lady!" 
And they proceeded to say: "Hello white lady! White lady!"
Another girl even giggled a bit when looking at me "so white", I nodded at her and laughed "Yes, indeed!". I mean what can I say? I'm whiter than most of my white friends already and I never catch a tan, I'm probably looking like a prime example of a white person to the children. Especially because I was wearing a white skirt, that was the perfect subject for comparison.
There was also a nice woman and she was the one that I specially kept in mind, because I've never seen a woman with such unique features before, that showed me her baby girl and said: "She's like you, just from Ghana!" Everyone laughed. The baby had the lightest skin out of all of them.

After meeting the people in Beatrice's area I felt way more confident and comfortable than the day of my arrival, so the next day I faced a new challenge: taking an Uber.
Taking an Uber is something I had avoided back in Europe, because it had seemed unsafe to me, ironically it is probably the safest tool of transport here in Ghana. People don't scam you with the prices, unlike taxis and also your location is seen online, together with the data of the driver.
I was driving to the city center to meet Samuel and when I arrived at his hostel (after a very quiet drive, because either me being white confused/intimidated the driver or it was just the language barrier, because even if they speak English, Ghanaian people of course prefer their own language, which in Accra might be Twi as I learned), I shamelessly used the wifi there for a quick whatsapp-call with my boyfriend.
After that was done we took an Uber to the bus station, where a bus would take Samuel and me to Sunyani the next day, together with Karin a woman from Frankfurt. 
We continued to visit the Makola Market, taking a Trotro. Those are vans that have been stripped of their interior and had it replaced with benches. For a small price they take you around the city. Some children came as beggars to the window, with mischievous smiles. It hurt to realize that they weren't just talking to us and waving, as other children did, but actively asking for money, food and drinks.
The streets were completely filled with vendors. They called me pretty and shouted "Hey Blondie" or made hissing sounds to gain attention. Some would follow us around.

We took a break and I ate some jollof rice in a comparably quiet corner and then made our way to an art market. On the way we saw a Rotary Club bus stop, I didn't expect to see their logo in Africa even though I knew they were active here. It was a pleasant surprise and I took a picture.
On the art market vendors would take us to see their shops, they didn't let go of us for an hour, calling us friends, "Team Dortmund" because of the German soccer club. Apparently they tried to lure us in by referring to German culture.
With one, who was playing instruments, I improvised a little song and they took a video.
I had a magic little moment within the roofed art market, when Karin and Samuel were haggling over some Shea butter. A nice young lady offered me a seat and when I told her I was traveling and couldn't buy her prints, she immediately kindly accepted. 
I made her a compliment about her looks, she was wearing ripped blue jeans, a green hawaii shirt and had short dreads that were bleached up to my hair colour in the ends. She told me she loved my hair, I said that it looked just like hers in the bleached parts, she said it wasn't natural and I said it still suited her well. She was talking unusually quiet and soft and was not demanding. It felt for the first time as if there would have been potential for a connection between us, but it didn't come so far, since we left and our small chitchat didn't ask for exchanging numbers and staying in touch.
Back at Beatrice's place I took my first ever "shower" in Africa: she filled a huge bucket of water for me and gave me a little one to pour the water over my body. I had to develop a special technique to get the shampoo out of my hair and after that was done I went back to sleep.

 

On Friday morning, Samuel and I hurried to breakfast again. The worried employee asked us repeatedly if we were going to check out.We hurried to the Twene Amanfu school. Today Jed was gonna hold the workshop. The students had gathered outside, so we couldn't use our powerpoint, but regardless Jed did a great job. The Twene Amanfu students reacted the most out of all students, with an occasional "yes sir" for example. 

There was a bit of a conflict, because we had no "Environmental embassador" T-shirts for the headmistress, also the headmaster asked for one. I noticed that every school had a favourite teacher, because when one of them came upfront to receive the t-shirt, the students cheered explosively.
One important teacher was motivating the students, to participate in the project and like other teachers I had seen before, he held a long stick in his hand. When I asked Samuel about it, he confirmed my worries, that the students actually still got beaten in Ghana. This shocked me.
We left the schoolground and tackled our next stop: our team members arranged a donation for a local orphanage. First I went with Jed in his car (today three doors wouldn't open from the outside, I wondered if by tomorrow it would be impossible for him to get in), to collect 10 huge bags of water sachets. I stepped out of the car and wanted to help carrying. The boy who handed the bags out to us (who was clearly younger than me!) looked at me questioning: "Are you sure, you can carry that?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure you want to do it?"
"Yes, I want to help."
"Are you sure?"
"YES."
"Okay, take it, but he (Sylvester) takes the other one."
I took the bag out of his hand, but since it was a thin plastic bag and he had his fingers right under the knot as he still held it, it ripped a bit and I needed to put it down first, to rearrange my grib. This made him look even more questioning and worried, because he probably interpreted me putting the bag down as weakness. I carried the bag for one meter with his eyes piercing my back (it sucked, because I have the arm strength of a cooked spaghetti noodle and I feared that the bag would rip even more - I hate plastic bags for carrying heavy things), then Sylvester stepped in, because he wanted to carry one bag in each hand "for his balance". I accepted although grumpy. I was sure that the 15 meters to the car, wouldn't have been any problem.
We then proceeded to make our way to the orphanage. It was quite a long drive and the roads were so bad, that I feared for Jed's car, that made unhealthy noises.
There we got greeted by two children in wheelchairs that also were the first persons in wheelchairs I saw in Ghana. We donated the goods and a guy that worked there plus a boy from the orphanage prayed for us. We took the obligatory photos and then went on to visit the school on the other side of the road, that existed specifically for the orphans. We talked to the headmaster and planned together, to also do our project there.
When finished the group of us went to the Frankfurt Hotel to eat. This had been our very first hotel in Sunyani and we met the owner Joyce. Joyce had lived 33 years in Germany and had built the hotel solely on the shoulders of Aldi and Penny as it seemed. We talked a while in German, she explained her design choices and her (apparently not very Ghanaian) love for gardenflowers/plants and then allowed me to use her pool on one of the following days.
We promised to come back and then made our way to a little pavillion (the "hostel") at the UENR, to discuss some things and also Samuel wanted to go to the ATM (he wanted to check if there was money available there again, because we had completely drained three of them beforehand).
After that Samuel and I had our first free afternoon since we had arrived! We used that to walk into the city and visit the Melcom! There we got some overpriced Nutella, Samuel jumped for it like a eagle for its prey and we got some other stuff including Magnum ice cream, that was already broken due to harsh treatment and immediately fell apart when we removed the packaging. 
We then went on the hunt for some coconut and on the way purchased some bread for the Nutella and a water sachet to remove the Magnum disaster from our hands.
When we got our coconut, I took very long drinking it. Sylvester came for a short check-up and only as he was about to leave again, I had finally finished the coco water. The coconut seller then opened my coconut and offered to bring it to me, which he did: in a plastic bag! I honestly took that personally. Even though I wanted to see it as hostability or kindness it seemed to me rather as if he had deemed me incapable of eating coco flesh out of the shell. Indeed it made me feel infantilized no matter the possible intention.
Me being a bit moody we made our way. Also since we had purchased everything and a pineapple, that we needed (Samuel is very much a pineapple connoisseur).
At the hotel we not only devoured the pineapple but also again aimed for a pizza as dinner.

The next morning there were no workshops since it was Saturday, so our regional group had decided to work at our container. The goal was to build a little stall, where the group could store plastic bags collected from the schools. They wanted to do this to get a feeling of how much the bags weighed and of their amount, so the recycling company would not be able to scam them with the prices in the future (the amount of trust issues that is just normal here).
At the scenery I promptly felt very useless, because it turned out that Sylvester did once work in construction and was a total allrounder. He shoveled the ground to even it, he carried rocks to fill a gap between the ground and the container, he showed us how to weed with a machete (Samuel tried, but he of course couldn't compete with the master), he handled cement easily, he drove out with his moto to buy more cement, he cut mesh and metal pipes... All in all he was every capitalists darkest desire. He worked like a machine for the whole day in the heat (and that for free! The 19th century factory owners are already rubbing their hands). (I myself spent lots of time in the container, since the air had gotten very humid over the past three days and I just cannot handle that). During the day a yet unknown member joined us, her name was Lilian and she currently studied for her masters. She also showed us how to weed and chatted quite long with Anthony and Samuel. 
Every once in a while someone needed to get water for the cement. Of course only after Sylvester (the machine, he really earned that name) and a "metal guy" who took care of the soldering had built up the stall. Samuel and I (I just honestly didn't want to keep standing around uselessly) volunteered, which got highly protested. After Anthony had given in he still sent Francis with us to help. This occurred many times until Samuel had enough and confronted Anthony. This turned out to be a cultural difference: if you're a guest, Ghanaians will do anything for you and also want to prevent you from doing stuff like carrying water buckets (in fact it's considered rude if they let you). Whereas in Europe when someone tells you not to do something this mostly subtly expresses that you are incapable of doing it. Anthony told us that this applied to almost every situation, like for example carrying your luggage for you. This was a really important revelation, because it unveiled some of the situations I previously had found to be blatantly sexist as simple (although I find rather obedient) acts of service. This was also good to know for the future because not only I but also Samuel had sometimes felt offended by such situations. 
I later went out with Francis to get some more water (which by the way Sylvester had provided before in between his various tasks). I did realize, that often when we were walking somewhere I had talked quite a lot with Francis and that we had started to form some kind of connection that allowed us to chat a bit during tasks etc. We talked about the USA and about lizards in Ghana and tipping culture, but also about Canada and Germany. Almost everything, nothing too personal, nothing too interesting. I'm not even too sure if he likes our little chitchats, but sometimes he laughs a bit.
When we returned everything was almost over, Sylvester who had hustled the most revealed that he had eaten almost nothing all day and only drank a coffee in the morning after 5 hours of sleep. We quickly send him (the absolute MVP) home and then also made ourselves on the way.
 

Today we wanted to visit one of the TwB and Ummy Relief Foundation farms that is the pilot project for the TwB agroforestry project. Delayed as always we started making our way to the farm which is located in a quite remote community. The way was so long that we stopped to take lunch in between. We ate fried yam and sweet potato with beans, which I really enjoyed. We even got fried cheese! It was a delight, because normally it is impossible here to find cheese.We shared the plate as five people and ate with our hands and it cost only 80cedis!

Being here truly shows me the value of money, because 80 cedis is around 5€ and it would be impossible to find a meal for 5 people for that amount in Europe. Prices have gone of the rails.
We continued on our way to the farm and first visited a community, where Ummy Farms (a company connected to Ummy Relief Foundation) worked together with local women on the realization of their projects.
The women were really welcoming, although they didn't speak any English, they sang, clapped their hands and chatted and laughed a lot.
We had gathered with them under a tree and peeled peanuts, which was an activity that I surprisingly really enjoyed because it cleared my head while keeping my hands in action. So I peeled quite a lot and got complimented on my ambition, saying I could become a farmer (but maybe they were just being nice).
Samuel then spoke on plastic and Rahim translated for him, it was again all improvised and then I spoke on the agroforestry project by TwB. I used the tree the women were sitting under as an analogy, because Abdul Rashid had told me, that a tree meant life and community, because it provides shade for a whole community to sit under it.
So I used this analogy to explain, that a tree doesn't only provide and strengthens a community of people but also plants, that it provides nutrients, shade and water and allows other plants to grow and that it also cleans the air and improves health for everyone and everything.
Everyone really seemed to like this little speech of mine and that made me happy. Some of the women then gifted me a small package of peanuts as a welcome gift, Abdul Rashid then sponsored some toffees and drinks to the women, which I found generous and we were good to go.
Before that though Samuel and I noticed how the children running around all had bloated bellies and sometimes sticking out belly buttons, which looked really unhealthy and scary. We asked Abdul Rahim about it, who is a nutritionist and he told us about the malnutrition of the children and that he planned to install a factory of peanut paste that Unicef uses to treat malnutrition, because Unicef had stopped providing these. I asked him to take me to that company if possible and to let me in on the project, out of interest.
Again, I knew about malnutrition, my family always supported projects against it, but seeing it with my own eyes still hurt and was altering.
By the way, children here sometimes are really cute, because they often want to hold our hands with their dirty little ones and then they walk with us and stand next to us until we leave, completely content and quiet. It's probably the nicest way of handling my whiteness I've experienced here.
We then got to see the farm, that was even further away and we could see the little trees planted for the agroforestry project. In a few months they will already be quite tall. Abdul Rashid explained to us how they had planted different kinds of trees to avoid monocultures. I really admired the thoughtfulness.
We then drove home, with Abdul taking on a meeting inside the YellowYellow. Abdul Rahim even slept a bit.
At the apartment we relaxed a bit, because later in the evening Abdul had invited us for dinner. 
He picked us up with his motorbike and both Samuel and I sat behind him on it. First the thought really scared me, but because I was sandwiched between Samuel and Abdul, I figured that if we fell I would fall on Samuel and therefore I'd prevent injury.
After a very wobbly drive (there were more holes than street), we arrived at Abdul's house. 
His wife brought us Fufu that was vegetarian (but still cooked with fish, as we tasted it, which technically not vegetarian, but what was I supposed to do?), but she didn't eat with us and instead went to the other room. Also something not common in Germany and therefore weird to us. 
Abdul's one-year-old son Nasara joined us and wanted some of the juice we had brought as a guest present. He seemingly loved spending time with his dad and he could also only say "dad".
In the background there was a TV-program running, that reminded me a bit of The Voice or DSDS but with stars reimagining popular songs in their style. What was extremely funny to me was the everything but subtle product placement that consisted of beverages being put in plain sight on the judges' tables, that were filmed in an unusual wide angle so it would've been caught by the cameras.
Nasara then was supposed to sleep but he was already able to open doors, so he came back. This caused Abdul to threaten him, saying he would cane him. Still then he gave in and even let him sit on his motorbike, so he could pretend to drive it, before Abdul brought us home. After another adventurous ride, we then arrived home.

 

Today was the first workshop without Samuel. Abdul wanted to pick me up to the office at 7:30am so I got up early and ate some bread with potentially gone-bad chocolate crème. Abdul appeared at 8:07am on my doorstep. We drove to the office on his motorbike and got our workshop materials: printed out pictures, the frames and the banners. 
Around 9:20 am we loaded everything on a YellowYellow and we started a journey. I sat in the YellowYellow and tried to call my best friend to show her Tamale on video call, but sadly the internet connection is not fond of me, so I ended up sending her videos instead. 
The roads were extremely wobbly and I was shaking a lot. On half the way we took a little extra round, because a woman from a gas station had mistaken us for thieves (a YellowYellow driver hadn’t paid), but when she saw us, the misunderstanding was dissolved. Because of this occurrence we unfortunately lost Abdul who on his motorbike had approached a turmoil of little side-roads between housing tracts. After a quick phone call with my driver (who was wearing gloves and a mask to protect his skin and lungs from the dry air and dust), we found each other again. 
The driver charged me 30cedis and we entered the schoolgrounds of Fatima Farida, a Muslim elementary school. 
Abdul Rahim was already waiting on us for almost an hour and suggested to talk in a meeting about punctuality. The headmaster apparently also hadn’t been there and just arrived, so he definitely also needed that meeting. 
We soon started our workshop after taking some pictures with the children and the picture-frames. 
Today I was going to introduce our organisations: something Samuel had been doing before but since I hadn’t been informed it was an elementary school I spent most of the time of the workshop figuring out how to explain nongovernmental organisation and nonprofit too barely 10-year-olds and younger. 
All in all, I do have to say that this was probably our best workshop experience since the students were extremely attentive and interested. Probably due to their age they were also emotionally invested and when we showed pictures of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (that is seven times the size of Ghana) some of them gasped and covered their mouths with their hands. Generally, they answered quickly and motivated to questions and it was just a good mood over all. Most of them also were intrigued by the picture of a stranded whale that had eaten plastic, because none of them knew what a whale was. I was happy to enlighten them and showed them pictures on my phone. The students called me Madame Dana and were really nice, one of them told me she had an aunt in Germany who wanted her to come and live with her after school. I told her about the seasons in Germany, but I think she wasn’t too interested and already content with having told me. 
Many called me beautiful (only girls btw) and I returned that compliment and told one of them she had beautiful eyes, she later told me she really liked my eye-colour. 
For me was really important to tell them all that they were beautiful too, because I know that also here in Ghana white people are often the beauty standard, people also sometimes use bleaching crème for their skin. Because of this knowledge and because I also appeared to be some kind of curiosity to them (this time in a good way, because they were so respectful), I found myself in the position of some kind of “role model”, what as an older woman/girl I tend to always be to younger girls in Germany as well, but this time it felt like a bigger responsibility. So, to me it was crucial that I told them they were beautiful, because society to young girls is harsh and I really hoped that (without wanting to sound arrogant) a compliment from me would stick with them. 
When we took pictures together Abdul Rahim asked them not to touch me in the process, what I’d like to add. I really appreciated it as a reaction to what had happened at Paana school. It was really thoughtful, even though I have to say that these young children behaved so well, that I wasn’t uncomfortable at all in their presence. 
And then they proudly showed us the little trees Ummy Relief Foundation had planted with them here. Two students always took care of one tree (and some took more care then others). 
After the workshop I took a YellowYellow to the office, but first of all the driver tried to scam us and then he started demanding my number over and over again, at least ten times, wanting to be my friend and wanting me to take him to Germany. I was extremely uncomfortable as he ignored my “no, I don’t want to give out my number” repeatedly. At the office I gave him the money, he leaned over and said “I told your colleague you should give me at least 35” (meanwhile 30cedis was the only acceptable price and I knew that, Abdul knew that and the driver surely did too). Again, he demanded for my number which I denied him and I nervously called Issahak who came to get our materials out of the YellowYellow and who didn’t notice my voice being an octave too high. I jumped out of the cart and followed him into the office and the driver gave up and left (see how I stayed resilient? Boundary queen I say – it was really not easy though). 
At the office Issahak and I took some rest (recently I’ve been completely down during noon due to the heat). Abdul passed by a while later with his son. As young as he was as destructive, he was also, because he managed to move chairs pretty effectively and focused on the chair Issahak had laid his legs down to sleep. This caused in him waking up in shock several times, which I found hilarious. Abdul and I shared some food and then he had to get going again, but he promised to bring me some Kenki (a maze dough, also wrapped in maze leaf, together with a hot pepper dipping sauce – it’s kind of similar to Fufu that’s why I like it – except Fufu is a softer dough served in soup). I ate almost all of it, even though it was really filling and I had eaten a bit before. Afterwards we then got home and Precious brought me an LED light for my apartment, since the energy would be gone until at least Monday, which was very nice of him. 
On Friday we went to the Darol Hardis school. Again, Abdul picked me up a bit late, we got to the office and we found a YellowYellow driver that charged 30GHS even though the distance was quite short. The campus was quite large and the students’ ages varied. Of course, they screamed after me and gathered at the windows. 
The headmaster and the teachers joked around with Abdul since they had already been working together on previous projects like the tree planting. They then also showed us the trees that were protected by nets spun around sticks in the ground. Some of them had been attacked by goats and thus had to be protected. 
The students gathered for the workshop and they were extremely loud and inattentive. Because the sun was also shining on their heads we decided to split the workshop into two classes and our team also split. Still the students stayed inattentive for the whole time. Also, they didn’t manage to subtract 1862 from 2024 and when being asked to name one of the six Rs one student replied with “plastics”. 
We then wanted to present the metal cage, but it turned out that it wasn’t ready yet, so we decided to return on Monday. 
We decided to go to the office by motorbike and first of all, Rahim and I almost fell asleep. (As I said the heat was getting more and more exhausting). 
Issahak and I talked about a project about Cyberbullying he wanted to implement next year and then somewhen in the evening we went home again. 
 

On Tuesday morning I was very excited, I had even cleaned. Soon it was 11 am and the German volunteers arrived at the junction close to my house. They were already buying tomatoes to cook tomato sauce for lunch and apparently the one boy group got also asked if he would exchange two of the girls for one motorbike. Interesting. Two of the girls were wearing braids and locks what was a true eye-catcher. We greeted each other and made our way to my apartment. On the way Abdul stopped by and I think he was very happy to see me have guests. Later he also told me I could take the day off to spend with my new friends. That made me very happy but was also unexpected, because for some reason I have problems taking a day off of work. I feel like I need to work at least a bit every day and not having any real social life kind of doesn't give me no other option too. So when Abdul told me that it felt a bit like he was breaking a spell I had put upon myself lol.
Anyway, we arrived at my apartment. First I gave a little tour what impressed the others, because well I have a whole apartment to myself while they share apartments of the same or smaller size with their guest families. Since we were six people we split up and three of them started cooking spaghetti whilst two others took me outside to cut my hair.
Because I really wanted to meet some people my age I had invited them to cook food at my place in exchange for cutting my damaged hair. This now took some time because I have a lot of time. At some point the friend of a neighbour even came by and sat down to watch while he was waiting for the neighbour. 
I really enjoyed learning more about their experiences. We were done just in time for lunch. Some of the spaghetti was baked - they all said it tasted like cheese. We ate and introduced ourselves to each other (since we didn't properly do that yet) and then they committed an atrocity (TW if you're Italian) and put soy sauce on the spaghetti. But since they insisted to do the dishes I got over it.
We then decided to go to a café that was nearby my place (I honestly didn't ever have the idea to go to even google search for a café), it was a bit overpriced but the food and drinks were amazing. After more than an hour we then went to the city center where they wanted to do some shopping. We went to the New Market and the girl's showed off their amazing haggling skills, they managed to bring prices down under 50% and I purchased a really cute cami top. I then showed them a place at the old market that I knew because of Precious - where you could get clothing for only ten cedis. It was a table filled with a big pile of clothing and we dug through everything. Later I even found a low-waist flared jeans (totally not my style, but for 20 cedis it's okay to experiment, plus one of my pants broke so I needed a new one).
After all it felt like a very nice girl's day. We headed back to the hotel where they were staying. I had a pretty deep conversation with one of the girls that felt really good. The group then bought themselves food and I stayed until 10pm. We were chit-chatting and playing hand-clapping-games. 
Finally I was accompanied to a YellowYellow. Since the driver expected all of us to go, he said he wouldn't bring me the whole way for 5cedis and instead brought me to the YellowYellow gathering point at the market. To be honest, I was really nervous being outside alone this late at night. But the driver was a true gentleman and found me a driver and waited for me to enter his YellowYellow before he drove away, he didn't even charge me at all.
Of course I still had to wait a while before other passengers were found and it was a very intense experience. Some men were arguing a few meters away, a handful of sellers was still outside, but driver ran around as if stung by a bee to find more people. It was warm and the city was unusually quiet (not totally quiet but definitely less loud than in daylight). My senses were sharpened. It was this slight consciousness of potential danger, while being relatively save since I was being watched by some passengers that waited with me, that made me feel weirdly alive.
Anyway, we started driving and I updated Precious via WhatsApp about every step of the journey (he had just been online) to calm myself, while my battery was slowly dying. I arrived safely at home.

The next day I was meeting the others again, since they would leave to Mole on Thursday. But first, right after getting up, I had to avert a whole crisis at work. We needed to recalculate our budget and I panicked a little. I tried calling Samuel but he was holding a workshop and quite unpleased that I had disturbed him several times (I suggested to just turn off his notifications next time). Fortunately we were able to sort things out quickly. Nonetheless I was a bit freaked out and it was a terrible way to start the day.
We met again at the café from the day before and ate some waffles etc. Whilst doing that we had some interesting conversations about racism in language and our perception of our volunteerism. 
Afterwards we then compared Spotify-Wrappeds and took a YellowYellow to see the culture center. There I had a quick phone call and joined in later, but I didn't really miss a lot, it was like a smaller version of the Accra art-market, except the sellers weren't as annoying. (In Accra they would basically take your arm to guide you to their shop and sell overpriced but pretty things.)
We again went to the market, but only half of us were motivated to shop, so I went with two others to the clothing piles again, except we walked and were a bit too exhausted when we arrived. So after a short digging for clothes we made our way back and joined the others. I had a long and great conversation with Marie (she is the one that I texted first). 
After that we went buying Indomie (the woman that sold these started the fire for the pot buy throwing in some plastic, which made me kind of skeptical). 
The two girls with the braids came outside wearing headwraps that I really liked and purchased Kenkey and a watermelon. I also bought a new cap at a stand, that I had been eyeing for days.
We again ate dinner at the roof terrace and spotted a whole big group of white people from above that made us shout down at them excitedly (I hadn't seen such a large group of white people since arriving in Ghana). Then suddenly also another white dude our age entered the roof and trying to find out if he was German we called him in typical German names like Nils.
The one boy in the group and I then went to "buy some water" next to him (actually we just wanted to talk to him) and he basically reached out to us as if we were a life vest. We found out he came from the Netherlands and also wanted to leave to Mole tomorrow, also he had flown to Tamale by plane this day. We connected him to the group and continued with dinner.
Funnily Abdul had a business dinner with the boss of the Pamepi-organization (the one where we met the Chief) at that exact spot, one table behind us, so I asked him to take me home (we live close to each other) on his moto and said goodbye to the others.

On Thursday I didn't see the group again, I think they left early in the morning together with the Dutch guy.
We had our last workshop this morning. Abdul brought me to the office and I took a YellowYellow. It was a very long way that went through regions of the city I had never seen. There I met a Rotaract member that would help with the workshop since Rahim and Okra both weren't available. 
I asked to use the restroom and the headmistress gave a key to a little girl that sprinted forward to bring me to some roofless stalls at the school-ground. Apparently I got the fancy locked one for the staff, but still there was basically just a hole at ground level, not too comfortable, but possible. When I left the stall half the school's students had gathered in front of the door and they all followed me and shouted something that I didn't understand but it included siliminga. This was such an extremely weird situation. A few dozen primary students waiting for me to use the toilet, it was very icky.
We proceeded to hold the workshop. It went quite well, but the students weren't too attentive with some of the youngest falling asleep on the floor. But at some point I think we all wanted to just get it over with.
I let Abdul take the photos of presenting the cage and the school's headmaster had a YellowYellow and drove me to the office. There I gave out project money and collected bills. 
Abdul then brought me to Precious' shop were one of his employees took my measurements for a dress he wanted to gift me. When that was done we headed home, since Precious had bought me a SIM-card for my router and bought a data bundle. It took so ridiculously long for the data to arrive that we had to hurry back to his shop, since I had an important meeting to attend.
Samuel presented our project to a collective of high-rank TwB members. And I can proudly announce that we reached 40 000 students around Ghana.
I'm a bit sad though, that he didn't include me one bit into the conversation even though I did voice my interest to be part of the presentation repeatedly. It's sad because I did always look up to him and learned a lot while we were traveling together, that I can now use in further project work. But maybe the fact that I was still learning and thus not the best help to him made me exclude me. I don't know and I don't need to think about it, because either way I'm proud of myself and he can be proud of himself as well and one presentation developed out of a tight schedule isn't the end of the world. He did well and I think I did well too and even though having finished the project takes a huge weight off my shoulders it also makes me nostalgic and takes away a former stability. Anyway right now I'm just glad that everything worked out so well and that our team members and us could make such a big impact. It is truly a privilege having the possibility to support a change and to share one vision with creative and ambitioned people around the world. And it is one I don't ever want to give up. Working on RecycleUp! gave me back a hope to combat real-life problems that I had almost lost in Europe and it showed me that political interest and activism are never pointless - I think you just have to find a way to channel it. And I hope that my experience can give back some of that hope to you too.