a change...

Well it is an age since I have updated this. I think after being somewhere for a while one gets immune to the things which once seemed bizarre and crazy! Plus I could wax lyrical for hours on opinions on The State Of Africa and I don’t want to bore anyone/be too controversial…

However, a lot has changed since my last post, and my mum for one likes reading it. Even though she knows exactly what is going on in my life before it goes on here. Bless her.

You may have thought I was due to be coming home to the UK imminently. Well, I was. But, a great deal has gone on with my company (and that’s another story for another day) and I am actually staying, for a while at least. My time in Kumasi is almost over, and I shall be moving to Accra on Friday.

I have always said I don’t know which I prefer, Accra or Kumasi. Accra is a busy, bustling city, with restaurants of every cuisine imaginable and bars and shopping malls (well a shopping mall) and people of all nationalities and bowling and a cinema and big hotels and beaches and pools and sandwich shops and balsamic vinegar and live music and haloumi cheese and ready salted crisps. But sometimes I think you can forget you are in Africa (OK so at times that’s exactly what I want), and I sometimes wonder what the point is of being here if you could be in any city of the world.

Kumasi, on the other hand, is a lot smaller, with about five restaurants of any standard, and a similar number of bars, nothing else to do, and fewer international residents. But living here for over 18 months means I have really settled, I know Kumasi a bit, I have some good friends, and I know a lot of people to chat to when I go in to one of the (five) restaurants. In a word, Kumasi is a community, and people look out for each other, and I’ve grown to love that. I also loved when I was working on the water project (again, another story for another day) the fact that my drive to work took me through rural villages, and we felt like we were doing something do help those villages.

In Accra I will be working in our head office, and it’s new and pretty, and I can wear new and pretty clothes (I am a little fed up of steel toe cap boots and mud-splattered combats day-in, day-out), and I am looking forward to a wider range of food available and a more balanced diet again (there is only so many times you can eat tuna pasta in a week) (and I’m over that limit). I will also be doing different work, and as they say, a change is as good as a rest. So, apart from missing the community and good friends and acquaintances in Kumasi, I am looking forward to the change.