Football, religion, money & politics

Just come from watching Man Utd - Chelsea, with a load of passionate Man Utd and Chelsea fans. In a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana. It's interesting that, unlike other continents I've visited, everywhere I've been in Africa people are only really interested in English football (there's a little bit of interest in Spanish, and no interest in Italian football). I think it's because of all the old colonial links. Most houses here don't have TVs, so I watched the game in a 'cinema' - a room with wooden benches and a normal sized TV.

On Thursday we had a very hotly contested football match between the Central Office of the charity, and the Education department - as the start of the leaving celebrations for the volunteers who are leaving at the end of November. I'm finding it a bit weird - after months of meeting lots of different people for short amounts of time, I've been with the same 13 people for the past month and now 9 of them are leaving. I've made some good friends though that I'm sure I'll keep in touch with. All their talk about leaving also made me feel a bit homesick for a while - the first time I've ever had that.

Went one of the many churches on camp this morning - strictly as a spectator of course. Religion is a huge part of life here, both in 'Little Liberia', and in regular Ghana, with every other shop havinbg a name like "Jesus Loves You Electrical Supplies". There was lots of gospel style singing, dancing in the aisles, and a full force African preacher. I've also met a guy who used to belong to a pseudo-Jewish sect called the African Hebrew Israelites, who's going to take me to their synagogue one Saturday.

My classroom management workshop hit a bit of a hitch due to those wonderful things, money and politics. To cut a long story short, between Central Office, the school, and myself, everyone wants someone else to pay for it. The school doesn't have the money, Central Office doesn't like spending money when there are rich Westerners around to squeeze for funds, and I don't want to pay on principle - one really important HIV workshop has already been cancelled after a lot of preparation work had gone into it, because Central Office wanted the volunteer to pay for it. But we've already donated $500 a month to be here, which provides 95% of the charity's income (and the salaries of the very comfortable executive). It doesn't help that there's politics between the Central Office and the school, over a pay dispute. In the end I've agreed to funding the workshop, but it's going to be a bare bones affair. I've now got a week to organise it from scratch.

Otherwise, I've been doing reading tutoring and a bit of HIV education, and I'm taking over from departing volunteers to help with Press Club, Debating Club and maths tutoring. Plus I'm going to work with one of the teachers who has really bad classroom management and often lashes out at kids. I'm really enjoying working with the kids, who are great. They love coming round to our house on camp to play, but can get a bit too much sometimes and really push our patience. I'm slotting right back into teacher mode, and find myself dealing with the naughty kids more and more. It's satisfying to me though, to see that they do respond to being spoken to (there's a theory that, because they are used to being beaten at home, that's the only thing they'll respond to at school and elsewhere). One of the other volunteers even resorted to chasing them away from the house with a stick when they got particularly bad, which I really didn't like.

Another difficult part of life here is the steady stream of people asking us for money. They usually have a genuine need, but I have to say no every time, for two reasons. Firstly, there are 45,000 people on the camp, all of whom need money - we can't give to everyone who asks. Secondly, they're only going to sort themselves out by learning t obe self sufficient and not to rely on handouts. It's tough to say no to hungry and sick people, but I have to just remind myself (and them) that I'm helping them in other ways.

In other news, one of the volunteer houses (not mine) got broken into, and a few things stolen, including a laptop and my phone (so you can't call me for the time being). There is a suspect - a local 16 year old girl who's a real trouble maker, and she was taken into questioning by the camp security force, known as the Vigilantes. They eventually released her though, apologetically explaining to us that they unfortunately are not allowed to torture any information out of her.

Anyway, I'm off to a restaurant on camp to eat. There's a great variety - egg sandwiches or spaghetti. Dinner last night was spaghetti, breakfast an egg sandwich and lunch spaghetti. So I guess dinner will be an egg sandwich!

Sorry, I meant to keep this short. Good on you if you made it this far!