Margarita and Andrius started with the Sand Filter. The first one we ran was a bit messy and we were taking longer than we should but at the end of the day we felt rather comfortable with this workshop. During the first class we noticed that kids are not using a lot of sand and gravel so their filters do not work very well so we had to encourage the rest of the classes to use plenty of materials in order to make good filters. We tried to avoid telling them how to do it and see how they think. After the teams finished with building their filters we asked them to explain what they did and why. Kids seemed not to be very surprised during the first day as we did not manage to get good quality water, but that changed later (I will try to upload some photos ASAP, so you can see the difference in quality). Especially in Believers when we swapped workshops and added paper napkins as a material to use in making filters the results were amazing. Some kids even said that they liked the sand filter the most of all workshops.
Caroline and Patrick started with the Siphon workshop on week 2. They used some examples where pipe was used to connect lake and house and both of these were at different heights so kids had to decide if water is going to flow or not. After that they were given a challenge when they had to transfer water from a full bucket to an empty one. Siphon was the solution we wanted to get, but some kids went for other options such as to use straws or plastic cups to transfer water. Siphon, of course was the quickest solution so kids who understood how it works were usually winners. After the workshop we showed them how Siphon works and that you can transfer water from one bucket to another in less than 15seconds.
Some kids from Epinal seemed to like our lessons so much, that they came to our house. It was nice of them that they wanted to talk to us a bit more, but we were usually a bit tired or busy, so we could not spend a lot of time with them. It looks like they stopped coming (probably they were told not to come, because we mentioned that to Mr Aye, who helps us out with schools).
On Friday we only had one class in Epinal, so we went to Epinal primary school which is also in Kasoa. We were welcomed by the headmistress and were shown around. All kids were excited to see us there. Unfortunately we are not teaching there, because they are quite young (age of 3-8 years old) and our workshops might be a bit too complicated for them. Photographer from Epinal took quite a few pictures of us in the schools and said that they are going to make posters from these pictures.
We spent Friday evening traveling around. We took a trotro to Old Barrier and got a taxi to monkey sanctuary. The funny bit was that taxi driver had no idea of where the Monkey Sanctuary was and we were just driving around and around looking for it. In the end we found the place and he asked us for 20 Cedi. We said that he should not treat us as obruni and should give us the real price. He laughed and said that we should pay 10 Cedi. The final price that we bargained to was 8 Cedi. We thought that this was still quite expensive, but considering that we were looking for a place for at least half an hour it was not too bad (8 Cedi = 2.5 pounds). In the Monkey Sanctuary we were taken to the place where visitors usually see monkeys. Unfortunately it was quite late and we were told that at this time monkeys usually go to sleep. We only noticed one monkey jumping from one tree to another and one sitting in the tree.
The guy who was showing us around told us that his uncle studied in University of Edinburgh and was very interested in what we study. He said he would also like to study in UK. After talking to him we left the place and went to a place called Big Milly’s Backyard (a bar which is next to the beach), where we noticed a lot of obruni (white people). We had a drink there and watched some local traditional dances.
On Saturday we went to Cape Coast. We visited the Cape Coast Castle, which long time ago was used as a dungeon for slaves. We also familiarised ourselves with Ghanaian history, because there was also a museum in the castle and we had a guide who told us a lot. After that we went to a restaurant on the shore and had some lunch. We also had a walk along the beach. We went to see Fort William as well, but we were asked to pay to enter, so we decided not to go as it seemed to be a bit dull and abandoned. Cape Coast is a very nice place and there are some more castles and places to visit, so we hope we will come back there later.
On Sunday we went to Mr Aye’s house and had lunch there. Even though we are here for only two weeks everyone seems to be very friendly and hospitable. We enjoyed the lunch very much (It was the first time I tried snails!!!!). After that we had to buy materials for the workshops. We decided to run a car workshop, so we had to make 4 cars. It took us some time, but we managed to do it. We have tried them today in classes and I think everything went Okay. The cars require a lot of maintenance after the first day, but we hope we will manage to fix them by tomorrow.
That’s it for week 2. I will try to upload some photos, hope it will work this time, because last time the internet was very slow.
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