Ghana: A little bit about my placement

Submitted by Oksana on 23 July 2010 - 3:50pm

Three weeks gone like a three days and here I am settled in Ghana.

I've promised to tell a bit more about my volunteering experience.  I work mainly with children in the orphanage.  There are 41 children resident in the orphanage and 40 children attending primary school based in the orphanage.  The youngest child is 1 year old and the oldest just reached 18.  My main duty is to entertain children, which is hard work especially with younger ones, who are so active so that they cannot sit still for longer than 2 minutes. The older children have better English and we can discuss many issues related to education, health, politics and FOOTBALL!  I realy enjoy the time with them because they are open and smart, bit different from teenagers in Ireland.

I also help with bathing, dressing and feeding younger children.  Bathing is my  least favourite activity as it requires to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning.  Usually bathing and dressing takes about 2 hours, and then I go back to sleep for another hour.  Ghanian people pay a lot of attention to their physical appearance and they take bath and change their close twice a day, and bath and change close for children.

Also I take care of children who are not well. I take them to hospital to advocate on their behalf.  It may be quiet long procedure and may take up to 6 hours, untill the child will be seen by doctor and get the medication.  The pharmacies operate differently than back home.  They are usually placed within hospital, where you have to submit the prescription and wait untill you are called to collect exact amoung of tablets.  For example if a person is prescribed some drug to take 1 tablet a day for 5 days, a person will collect 5 tablets.

Unfortunatelly, it is  rainy season in Ghana and our children get sick a lot.  They are prone to colds, flues and malaria.  This is partually due to mosquitoes, who get extremelly agressive during rainy season and partly because of children background.  Some of children in the orphanage are new, they came only two months ago.  They were rescued from child slavery, where they'd experienced severe abuse and malnourishment.

It's time to finish my blog.next time I will tell a bit more about educaton system.