South downs Living Blog

o    Standing in the long green grass the hot afternoon sun warming my face, I am watching the children of LOVE KIDS FOOTBALL ACADEMY training and knowing that I have helped make this happen, I am genuinely happy. Then BAM out of no-where a shooting pain goes up my leg, screaming in agony I hit the floor, something had bitten me.

Realising I had no credit on my phone, no ability to get money as my card had been blocked by the bank as they thought it was fraud, a team of children around me that spoke very limited English and my two year old son whom was panicking profusely, I felt rather scared. I picked myself up, tied Finnley onto my back and ran to the orphanage where they assured me that if it was a snake somebody would have seen it; but would take me to hospital to make sure. So the entire family came with me, which I was grateful for and the bite ended up being from a poisonous ant, which my body should be able to fight the toxin so no medication was needed..

Aside from the excitement of revisiting the hospital, the past week has been slightly hectic. The football academy has had lots of interest from the youths of the town and training occurs at 6-830 in the mornings and 3.30-6 in the evenings. Along with attempting to get some sponsorship and second hand equipment I have also still been trying to pay as much attention as possible to the children at the orphanage. I feel like I have bonded with all of them, but in the last week I have spoken a lot to the eldest girl whom is 12. The whole orphanage speak highly of her, she is very hard working and was very shy to start with. I have helped her with her English and made jewellery with her whilst the others were sitting their school exams, and she really is a beautiful young lady.

Tomorrow is graduation and unfortunately due to other family commitments no one is able to go and see the children celebrate passing their school year and moving up to another. Therefore Finnley and I are going along to support them, it is at a hotel and Ebonenzer has been asked to do a speech to parents and carers. We have been practising it a lot today and it involves a poem called “whisper whisper whisper”. He told me today that all students HAVE to speak in English at school otherwise they will get beaten, all the children seem good at the language so it is obviously an effective way of learning.

I have spent some more time at Hand in Hand community too, where the children have mental difficulties, they all know us there now and welcome us with smiles and cheers which is just lovely. We purchased some beads from there and string from the market, so have been making necklaces and bracelets back at the orphanage. Some of the volunteers at Hand in Hand are coming to Love Kids Orphanage on Friday to meet the children .They will see the vast difference between the care home they are staying at which is modern and here, which due to lack of funding is very squashed and provides limited opportunities for the children.

Finnley is continuing to have an amazing time and has learnt the majority of the children’s names, how to dress himself, counting up to 30 and the alphabet since he has been here; which for a two year old I think is impressive. His speech has also developed by speaking to the children all the time, so other than having a fun time, he has a lot learnt a huge amount in his time in Ghana.

I am really enjoying Nkoranza and seeing that my efforts are now helping the children around me is wonderful. I only have three weeks remaining and have many things yet to see and do; hopefully another trip to the hospital will not be one of them.

Shocked and dissapointed ...

For the past five weeks I have been through a massive range of emotions, but today for the first time I was genuinely disturbed about something I witnessed. To observe this horrific behaviour was deeply hurtful and I had to remove myself and Finnley from the situation.

A little girl aged 18months lives with her parents in the room next to the one I am currently sleeping in, she is closely related to the ‘parents’ of the orphanage and shares the garden with all the children. I had some crisps I was sharing with the children – and I ensure that they all receive equal amounts otherwise all hell breaks loose. The little girl had some too, however after promptly finishing hers demanded more from the packet – when I refused she hit me and screamed. Her father came over and ordered Anastacia, whom lives within the orphanage to give the little girl one of her crisps that she had been consuming slowly. She obliged.

Seconds later, the little girl bit Anastacia’s stomach whom started weeping before being repeated hit by the little girl. Anastacia turned around a started hitting back, the older children as well as the adults around starting cheering excitedly as two beautiful small children beat each other up. I found it horrendous to watch and obviously both girls ended up in tears. I realise that the culture is different here but that is wrong in my opinion that is wrong in every culture. Since I spoke to the children at the orphanage about not beating each other, I have hardly seen anyone hitting anyone; obviously things cannot change instantly and there are still some situations that are easily resolved by asking them to apologise to each other. I am terrified that Finnley will pick up on the hitting, the last thing I want is a bully as a child. Luckily he has learnt well and if anyone hits he shouts “No hitting, that’s enough”, the fact that his voice presents itself in such a high pitch that nobody but me can understand is rather entertaining in itself, but at least he knows his right from wrongs.

Today was boiling hot, the first day it has not been overcast since I have been here. Finnley found the heat too much so we stayed inside with the children doing finger painting and lots of reading. I bought about 10 books over here and could easily recite them all with my eyes shut now.

It is market day tomorrow and we will be going with comfort to purchase some beautiful lace that I saw last time as well as elastic and beads to make bracelets with the children. Although I am slightly unsure whether it will be worth the hassle and they seem to massively appreciate everything at the time then dismiss it later on. I bought them all pens last week and most of them have lost them, Francis explained its pointless giving them toys as they just pull the heads off dolls and burst footballs with a blade, similarly with new cloths, they do not treasure them but ruin them quickly. There are obviously a lot of behavioural issues here that would be dealt with in the UK by counselling or similar but here the finances nor resources are available.  

It is hard to get messages across to the children due to the language barrier, but they understand emotions very well, so hopefully the beatings will reduce and the appreciation of belongings increase as they get older.

Five weeks in...

Manic, is the only way to describe this weekend. Busy is good, but both Finnley and I are exhausted! Hopefully next week I can balance the ‘relaxed’ Ghanaian approach and fit in everything I need/want to achieve.

Saturday starting with a visit to the nearest town to talk to the bank about opening an account in the name of the academy, to keep it separate from the orphanage. They were exceptionally helpful and informed us that it would be ready to use by Wednesday. Coming home to the children is always lovely, they run up and hug me and Finnley announces proudly “we’re back!”, which makes the children giggle. Listening to him as helped their speech develop greatly, I think because he only says short sentences and has a tendency to repeat things over and over they like to copy him.

We took a walk into the centre of the village to try and purchase some credit, which is virtually impossible! Whilst waiting for a gentlemen to find us some we got chatting to some of the locals. They were telling me about the way the education system works and only college equivalent qualifications are needed to teach. Average pay is £150 each month so teachers struggle greatly to purchase a house and keep a family. There was one child in the group who had a monkey on a lead and kept it has a pet, the children kept giving Finnley nuts to feed it, but I didn’t want him getting that close to it. Just before we left a man ran up to us with his tiny baby and explained that he wanted to know the meaning of Finnley as he had named his son it after hearing about Finnley and myself in the village. When I explained that the meaning was ‘fair haired courageous one’ he looked at bit disappointed, but laughed that he would just colour his son’s hair white when he was older.

On the walk home I saw something that struck me as a little strange, two black parents with a white child. I then noticed that the child had bright white hair, some small patches of brown and red eyes, an albino. He had a genetic mutation, so was actually black but skin pigmentation was affected. I spoke to Kofi about it when I returned and he explained that it wasn’t uncommon in Ghana.

I also approached the subject of God with the children yesterday, as a non believer in a heavily Christian country I was unsure what their response was. Initially they asked if I was a muslim, then when I explained I was unsure whether I believed in God they said they would take me to Jesus; meaning that they would take me to church next week to help me find faith.

Today football training began at 6am in a park 1 mile away, so tired and with Finnley on my back i was exhausted before I even got there. Both teams showed up for a two and a half hour training session, some even walked for an hour and half from the next village to take part. We took more images o f the players for the website and I was able to chat to them all properly for the first time as I took the cool down.

I spent this afternoon washing clothes with the children, I had a lot of clothes and my hands are red raw with cuts from the chemicals in the soap. Ama loves washing, she begged me to let her do mine but she never stops working, always cooking, washing or cleaning – i told her she would make a very good wife one day, her response “yes I think so too!”.

Although the children are exceptionally hard work as they do not get a lot of attention from anyone else, they are such bright and happy children all with dreams of become a footballer or bank manager, I hope that one day they achieve their dreams and have the life they deserve.

As if by magic...

It is strange how one email can change the course of so many young people’s future. I never check my mail in the mornings yet for some reason today I did, and sitting in my inbox was a message from a gentleman in the UK offering his support to Love Kids Academy. He was deeply involved in sports in the UK and donated financially enough for us to purchase an area of land to develop into the academy. To say the least I was overwhelmed not only by his sponsorship, but also by his offer of helping the academy expand.

The orphanage was very happy today, the children have end of year examinations at school and they all did exceedingly well. If they do not achieve over 50% they will not move up a class, so there is alot riding on these exams. Comfort was very proud of all of them.

One of the older girls, Ama whom is about 11 took control of cooking everyone dinner and a treat this evening as comfort had to go to a nearby village. She firwt made Kenki, which is a very suguargy hard biscuit and then banku, a maize and cassava flour mixture surrounded by a bean stew. She is very confident at cooking and would definitely be viewed as being very well ‘trained.’

It has been a busy, but lovely day, we even fitted a trip to Hand in Hand in earlier and a quick exercise session with some of the local children that don’t go to school. All of a sudden every day is flying by.

Day 31 11.45pm

Exhaustion, illness and a general air of petulance chased me today. A month into my adventure and I am finding my escape from the hustle and bustle of the UK has turned into late nights, early mornings and stressful situations, all things I was trying to flee from for a couple of months. I am sure however all the effort I am putting into raising awareness and fund of both LOVE KIDS ORPAHANGE and LOVE KIDS ACADEMY will be well worth it.

I have received a few lovely emails from people of Sussex whom have been reading my blogs and have offered their assistance in numerous ways, including fundraising and contacts with the Ghanaian government as well as receiving our first academy sponsor which we are hugely grateful for. I have set up a very basic, temporary website for LOVE KIDS ACADEMY at https://sites.google.com/site/lovekidsacademy2011/ and we are desperately appealing for donations of any kind, from old boots/sports clothes to money and volunteers to help with administration and coming to Ghana to aid coaching and education of the team.

We went to Hand in Hand community yesterday to spend some time with the children over there, they are genuinely lovely affectionate children,  but I still struggle to come to terms with the fact that they will spend the rest of their lives there. They are literally banished from society over fears that they are ‘bad luck’. Whilst there I tried to speak to someone about purchasing some beads and elastic for the children at LOVE KIDS to make bracelets and necklaces; unfortunately the person that runs the ‘workshop’ for the older children at hand in hand was away so we are going to pop down tomorrow to try and buy some. The workshop makes lots of African jewellery as well as clothes in order to create self sufficient within hand in hand community and all the children all seem to love getting involved with making things.

 I genuinely feel like one of the family here at LOVE KIDS ORPHANAGE and am still overwhelmed with how Comfort and Kofi (the mother and father of the orphanage) have made such an effort to welcome me despite my initial struggles

Home is where your heart is...

Four bright yellow walls surround me, a fan violently moving in circles above my head, a cold stone floor below my feet and beautifully fresh pineapple is satisfying my tummy; every evening for the past month these have been my circumstances, yet only now is it starting to feel comforting, a bit like a temporary home I suppose.

LOVE KIDS FOOTBALL ACADEMY has ensured that the past week has been extraordinarily busy, on top of educating and caring for the children at the orphanage and Finnley I have been in numerous communications with global football teams, potential sponsors as well as two very generous people from Sussex, one of whom has agreed to design the website and raise some funds for the academy, the other a concert pianist has offered to put together a performance in LOVE KIDS name.

On Saturday, hundreds of youths arrived in Nkoranza to trial for the teams, it was a sweltering hot day and they all played for an hour. When they weren’t training they all were eager to play with Finnley, which of course he loved. The football talent was astounding, hopefully we will raise enough funds to enable all the children to join the academy but for now the head coach, Barfo Mohammed chose two youth teams, selecting the most dedicated and gifted players. We are urgently looking for sponsors of the team and players individually, as well as appealing for second hand boots, equipment and training kits; our goal of raising £5,000 to be a UK charity seems like a mammoth task currently. Since the trials the chosen players have been coming to see me at the orphanage to sign forms and have their official photographs taken. In addition to providing advanced football training, the academy eventually wants to provide education and health advice to its players; on Sunday they will all be gathering for a sex education lesson I will be taking, in which I have invited Ghana Aids Commission to speak at. There may be something a little ironic about a teenage mother leading a lecture on safe sex, however I think with the increase if S.T.I.s worldwide it is essential that we teach our players to be as healthy as they possibly can be.

I only realised how busy I had been this week when I went to wash our clothes yesterday, there were a huge amount of them and it took me hours to wash them all. The chemicals in the soap here are very strong so my hands are always raw afterwards. Luckily as soon as some of the children came home from school they all helped out, which I was extremely grateful for. The children love being affectionate towards both Finnley and myself, I always seem to have a child hanging off an arm or a leg or sitting on me. I spoke briefly to the orphanage director about it and he explained that the way of life is to train your children rather than play with them, which hurt me a little, but then like so many other things – life in Ghana is so very different to the UK.

Today Finnley, I and Kofi, the ‘father’ of the orphanage took a trip to the weekly market. It is a long walk and with Finnley, whom weighs 11 kilograms, strapped to my back with a sheet, I was exhausted when we arrived; luckily the skies were over cast today so it was not too hot. I purchased pens for all the children as they always claim they have none so cannot complete any mathematical tasks I set them, now they have no excuse. They were beyond elated when I presented them their pens this afternoon and their shouts of ‘God bless you’ were appreciated, but I found slight over the top. I also purchased cake ingredients to bake with Finnley for the children as well as nail varnish. We did nail painting this evening and the girls enjoyed it thoroughly; most of the boys declined, however one little boy asked for his fingers to be painted gold, but then quickly wiped them all off before they had dried. Homosexuality as well as cross dressing is illegal in Ghana, even Finnley playing with a Barbie doll in the bath made the other children stare at him strangely.

Finnley is still loving every minute of Ghana and everyone in Ghana seems to love him too; they know his name and I am referred to simply as ‘Finn’s mother’. We have been here over a month now and the days seem to be flying by, I just hope I have enough time to make a positive difference to as many people’s lives as I can in my few weeks remaining.

Rachel x