The Final Countdown…
I really haven’t been very good at keeping my blog updated
this year, or in fact getting out and doing things that I could have been
writing about. In all fairness, I have
been pretty busy with work, and weekend and evenings have often had a work-like
feel to them, but that is a reason and not an excuse- as I am often told.
However, the decision has now been taken that this is the
last school year in Ghana and with jobs in Dubai and new adventures to look
forward to I have a real incentive to make the most of the last few months in
this country and get around to revisiting places from the past and making, “one
last trip” out to certain places.
That isn’t to say that new things have to stop though, and
there is a new(ish) restaurant that has been frequented a few times, and will
continue to be so until June, and last week I was out in Kokrobite for a few
days. Granted I was chaperoning a school trip and had to take 56 Grade 6
students along, but it is still a chance to get to see some more of the coast.
Ghana does has a fairly impressive coast, not necessarily the type of beach you
want to be sitting on and sea you want to be swimming in, at least not here
with the under currents and the rocks, but it is quite something to look out at.
Of course there was the usual drumming and dancing component
that inevitably comes with any trip to the village, and the never-ending music
that seems to blare from every nook and cranny, but there was also a whole new
enterprise springing up- recycled jewelry. I’m not really sure that jewelry
made of shells, old rubber tires, aluminum cans and waste metal is my thing- I
am much more of a drink the soda, and collect the pearls from the shells kind
of a girl- but it is refreshing to see so much effort going into the idea of recycling
and reusing the objects that would otherwise go to waste, or be left littering and
cluttering up the beach.
This weekend has also played host to the Holiday Bazaar,
which saw the usual mix of things for sale, kente cloth, drums, masks,
carvings, food, beads and baskets. All of which I have looked at, thought about
and then decided that I am leaving and I don’t need to be trying to pack more
things in my suitcase to ship out; a fact I am sure my parents will appreciate
as it would all, no doubt, have ended up being stored somewhere in there
house.
Next week is Thanksgiving, possibly my favorite adopted
holiday, mainly as it is a chance to eat turkey and to have a well needed day
of work, just in time to start planning and starting to think about Christmas…
although this year I am heading back to the UK, for the first time in nearly a
decade, and I have already done all the shopping I need to do online. Again, I
think my parents are glad I have finished shopping (or nearly) as their house (or
so I am told) is starting to represent the local sorting office.
With four more weeks to go, before heading off for Christmas
I am sure I will manage to find some more adventures to keep me busy. This year
I am looking forward to the cold, Christmas markets; carol services and a short
day… what with switching between the northern and southern hemispheres I think
I have had 7 longest days in the year and avoided the shortest day for the last
three years, this time I will feel like I have had a season and a winter. I can’t
wait!
