I'm Back!

Project Ghana mission accomplished and now we are back. I was unable to blog from the Ve-Koloenu village as we had no connection but kept a diary of the events.

We maybe back in the comfort of our own lives, but can life continue to be exactly the same as before? After seeing what we did, the poverty, the hunger, combined with smiles and laughter, can anyone just carry on life as normal? One thing for sure, the way I look at life is not the same, it’s just not possible.

The entire time I was there I felt happy because the people around me felt happy, the children had smiles on their faces and were playful. In all honesty, that’s not what I was expecting. What I saw helped me realise how fortunate we in the west really are. If we don’t have our fancy smartphones, laptops and tablets we feel unhappy; but seeing the way life was lived by the locals, we soon realised that we maybe measuring happiness in a wrong way.

Something I learnt about life is that you need to make the most of it. You need to take every opportunity you get and do something with it because there are people out there that don’t get half the opportunities we do but would love to get them. We need to understand that there’s more to life than just TV and Xbox, instead of watching TV you should pick up a football because that’s what the children in Ghana do and they are just as happy as we are, if not happier.

Here in the UK we really do not realise how spoilt we really are… even when it comes to the very basic things like food. We want fancy foods that taste good, and if the takeaway is not liked, we refuse to eat and kick up a fuss. Food is not a luxury, it’s a need to survive and many of the kids we met out there are happy if there stomachs a filled to survive (unless you look at Prince or George who are the Chief’s sons). No one wastes any food because they can’t afford to, all food tastes good to them because their survival depends on it. We sometimes say that we don’t like the food that is in front of us and we don’t eat it so it goes to waste; that would never happen in Ghana, and I found myself thinking ‘I can’t eat this’ but forced it down me as I was grateful that I had food to eat.

Religion is very important to many Ghanaians. The main religion you would find is Christianity but there are also a lot of Muslims. We asked one of the Chiefs if there was ever any problems with racism and he replied by saying there was never any issues at all. I was surprised to hear this. People were not judged by their beliefs.

I now won’t take things for granted and will try to make the most of life. If only we could bring back some of the things we saw when we were there, then our society could learn a lot and become better.

The following posts will cover more of the time that we spent out there and the activities we covered. Keep reading!