presentation from Richard the manager for the Upper West region about all the other types of work that Plan do in the region was fascinating - even being fairly familiar with how they operate, the range of good and innovative work they do seemed mind boggling.
We left Wa along a road that quickly turned into a dirt track, which was a brilliant red against the lush green of the vegetation on either side. This was deceptive however, as there is very little topsoil, so whenever there is a flood, a brush fire or simply not enough rain, the arable soil simply dries up, and any crops planted will wither and die, making nothing other than the most basic of farming impossible, and even then whole communities are sometimes forced to move if their crops fail.
We entered the Motigu school to find all of the students sat out on chairs in the partial shade to meet us, and for all the men in the community to be under one tree, and all the women under another. Some of the female students were doing an awesome welcome dance for us, which involved them doing some complicated shuffle-steps and then charging their hips into one another - it was quite a welcome! We then went to meet the village Chief, Elder and Imam, who welcomed us warmly, despite some confusion about which was which. The women of the village were dressed in beautiful colours and fabrics, and many had some striking blue eye shadow, formed almost into tear drops under their eyes. They seemed very happy to meet us, especially Arielle after she explained that she'd spent the last 4 days trapped with men and was missing the company of women! They even got her dancing with them, which can sometimes be a cause for embarrassment, but she handled herself brilliantly.
We then had a blessing from the Imam and a round of introductions from Plan, Teneo and the local school, with Adams translating everything that was going on. The speeches were fairly formal, but were nonetheless fascinating. It's not that often that the whole community will get together in one place, so Plan always take the opportunity to reinforce their key messages of the importance of sending youths to school and all the rights they should be entitled to, as well as core messages about hygiene etc. Adams turned out to be a particularly fine public speaker, who was totally captivating even though we didn't understand a single word he was saying.
The next step was to take a look at the actual pre-school block, and for Piers and the Minister For Education for the area to cut the ribbon, opening it officially. You could tell that the thing ths kids were most excited about was finally getting to use the play equipment that had also been provided, but a good proportion were also fascinated by us and our strange skin colour. Once we started high-fiving everyone then the fascination seemed to overwhelm them and we were getting pinched and squeezed to see if we were real. It's the sort of thing you can imagine happening to the original colonialists but I really didn't expect in 2012. I suppose that's one of the wonders of them not having electricity - according to Adams we were almost certainly the first white people they had ever seen.
We started handing out the many, many gifts we had bought along. They were intended for the whole school rather than individuals, so we decided that the best thing was to only hand out a couple of footballs and let the school take care of the rest. They were blown away by how much stuff we'd bought with us, and it was painfully obvious what an enormous difference it would make. The footballs we got from Fair Corp were particularly in demand, and the school headmaster said that they'd have to be very careful with them, becuase if word gout that Motigu had 50 brand new footballs, other communities would turn up and try to raid them!
We got to spend quite a long time playing with kids - football, a few rounds of 'Heads, Shoulders, Knees & Toes' and, best of all, The Hokey Cokey. You haven't lived until you've done The Hokey Cokey with a hundred or so screaming kids with literally NO cultural understanding of what is happening. It was wonderful.
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Location:Motigu Community, Ghana
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